The Bootlegger (Isaac Bell 7)

are Comintern, Yuri. Our goal is the same. Overthrow the international bourgeoisie by every means. Come. Let’s walk the horse while we talk.”

“Where?”

“I have a stable. Ten short blocks.”

“It must be a safe place to prepare the attack.”

“Trucks O’Neal will keep it safe.”

“Excellent.” Antipov had come to see the value of the American, a hard-boiled, clearheaded gangster who could recruit similarly trustworthy men when they were needed.

Zolner took the bridle and coaxed the animal to turn the wagon up Washington Street. “What is our target?”

“Wall Street.”

15

A PATCHED SAIL of faded canvas looked common, thought Captain Novicki. Even innocent. And if you hoisted your sail on a slow-moving, old-fashioned, cat-rigged workboat and sat a white-whiskered Barnacle Bill smoking his pipe at the tiller, you’d be damned-near invisible. At least to anyone searching for the get-rich-quick boys.

Or so Novicki hoped as he steered his catboat across Great South Bay. A stiff wind raised a fierce chop studded with whitecaps. The old mariner sailed blithely through it, out the narrow Fire Island Inlet and into the Atlantic Ocean.

Eight miles out in international waters he found a row of wooden schooners and rusty tramp freighters anchored to the shallow bottom and pitching on the swells. Their hulls and rigging were hung with billboards advertising authentic Scotch whisky, English gin, and French champagne. Captain Novicki tied up at the schooner he had contracted to deliver for and handed over mail and gifts of fresh fruit and vegetables to the captain and his family and soda pop for the kids. The oldest child climbed the mast with binoculars to watch for the Coast Guard while the family helped load as many cases as Novicki’s boat would hold.

He was not the only upright citizen taxiing booze to shore. It was evident from the private yachts and motorboats sailing up and down Rum Row, bargaining with the ships selling liquor. But neither they nor any rum-running taxi that night had a more valuable cargo—the finest single-malt Scotch whisky of such a dark color and pungent smoky aroma that it could be stretched five-to-one with grain alcohol and still sold as the real McCoy.

The schooner captain and his wife appeared anxious. Novicki asked what was bothering them.

“There was another hijacking last night. At least we think there was. The boat never came back, and he was in fine shape when he headed in. I’d keep a weather eye, if I were you.”

“Nobody’ll bother a little old catboat.”

“She ain’t that little, and she’s beamy as a barge,” said the schooner captain. “Any gangster who knows his business will see you squeezed in a hundred cases.”

Novicki had timed it so he could run for the coast after dark. Eight miles off and ten miles upwind of Fire Island Inlet, he had an easy sail on following seas. He covered two miles in thirty minutes, ears cocked for the sound of engines. A couple of taxis roared past at five times his speed.

Suddenly, he heard the distinctive rumble of tripled-up gasoline motors. He hurried to the mast and dropped the sail and got the canvas on deck seconds before a Coast Guard cutter swept the water with its searchlight. It moved on eventually. He raised his sail and kept listening.

He was almost back to the inlet when he sensed as much as heard distant thunder.

He gauged his position to be too far off to hear the surf on the beach. Nor was it a storm. The sky was clearing and stars were already burning through the haze. He reached over the side and dipped his pipe into the water, dousing the red glow.

The thunder moved closer.

Fire raced over the waves, a bank of dense flame that unveiled in its down glow the profile of a long black boat.

• • •

NOVICKI TIED HIS TILLER and hurried forward to drop the sail again. But this time he was too late. The black boat had a searchlight that was bigger than the Coast Guard’s. The white-hot beam swept the sea, skipping from wave top to wave top, and suddenly blazed on the sail like a hundred suns. Blinded and confused, the old man stumbled to his tiller as if he could somehow steer his way out of this mess.

A machine gun roared. The barrel spit fire almost as bright as the black boat’s exhaust, and almost as loud. Bullets pierced Novicki’s decks and sent splinters into his face. The storm of lead blasting the wood, shredding the sail, and screaming past his ears was paralyzing. His hand locked on the tiller. The thundering engines quieted, throttled down, as the boat drew near. But the gun kept firing staccato bursts and the bullets kept flying. In between the bursts he heard men yelling. In all the noise and confusion it took him a moment to realize they weren’t Americans. They were speaking a foreign language. He couldn’t hear much over the gun, but it might be Russian, a language he had encountered occasionally at sea.

The oddity had the wholly unexpected effect of clearing his head. He couldn’t understand their meaning, but whatever language they were shouting, it sure wouldn’t translate as “Cease fire!” Confident that the sea held no worse dangers, the old mariner filled his lungs and rolled over the side and into the water.

It was startling cold, cold enough to almost stop the heart. He was dragged under by the weight of his coat, which he had buttoned against the chilly night air. He did not fight it but let it take him deep, away from the riot overhead. The water muffled the thunder of the black boat’s engines and the roar of the machine gun. But he heard the purposeful thrashing of many propellers.

He was running out of air. He ripped at the buttons and got out of his coat and swam at an angle to the surface, trying to move as far as he could from the boats. He broke surface at last, gulped air, and looked around. The hijackers were thirty feet away, swarming over his boat, busy loading his booze into theirs. They had switched off the searchlight and were working by flashlight. He swam farther away so they wouldn’t see him and dog-paddled, teeth chattering, to stay afloat. As soon as they finished, they attacked the catboat’s bilges with axes, chopping holes in the bottom. She started to settle, pulled under by the weight of her centerboard.

The black boat engaged its engines and thundered into the night.