The Bootlegger (Isaac Bell 7)

Valtin was not aware that Johann Kozlov had been killed in America. Pauline thought that odd if Kozlov had been his recruit. Of course, Valtin had been hiding and preparing for the assault on Hamburg and cut off from regular intelligence. But it struck her that Valtin hadn’t necessarily recruited Kozlov to the Comintern. What if Kozlov was already a Comintern agent and Valtin had been sent either to test his loyalty since his arrest in America or to give him instructions from Moscow?

Valtin was eyeing her suspiciously. “Who are you? What do you do? How do you make your living?”

“I am a librarian.”

“Where?”

“Berlin.” She gave him a card.

“Prussian State Library,” he read aloud. “You have degrees. You are a specialist. Where did you grow up?”

She told him her mother’s last address in Wedding. He raised his eyebrows. “You’ve come a long way.”

“Education elevates.”

“You do not speak with the accent of a Berlin street urchin.”

Pauline said, “I was ambitious to leave all that behind.”

“Not very far behind in a Wedding bomb factory. And now you’re standing in a Red encampment.”

“I go where I must to help my brother. I ask you again, where should I look for Kozlov?”

“Berlin. He was a street fighter in the uprising.”

“Who were his comrades?”

“He fought beside Zolner,” Valtin answered offhandedly as if Zolner was a name she should know. A hero and a famous leader. Ex-commander Richter would know the name. From Hamburg she could telephone Richter and ask what the police knew about Zolner.

“Do you know where Zolner is now?”

“I am hoping the Central Committee will dispatch Zolner to lead the fight in Hamburg. Why don’t you come with us?” He spoke offhandedly again, but it was clearly a challenge. Or a test.

“What is Zolner’s first name?”

“Why don’t you ask him in Hamburg?”

It was dark when the Hundertschaften began marching along a railroad track toward Hamburg and she was alone with Anny. The women’s job was to carry first-aid kits at the back of the line.

“What is Zolner’s first name?”

“I don’t know,” Anny whispered back. “They say he once danced in the ballet.”

16

“OH, I’M SO SORRY, MR. BELL. It looks like CG-9 got new orders. They never came off patrol.”

The Coast Guard lieutenant assigned to oversee Isaac Bell’s interview of the captain of cutter CG-9 did not look one bit sorry that the Staten Island slip where Bell had been told the cutter was docked was empty. “Too bad you had to come all the way out here.”

“Don’t worry,” said Bell. “I have a friend in Staten Island. It’s a nice day. We’ll go for a boat ride.”

Bell drove to the docks at Richmond Terrace and for two hundred dollars chartered a boat skippered by Detective Ed Tobin’s great-uncle Donald Darbee. It was a broad, low, flat-bottomed oyster scow, but unlike a vessel actually used to tong oysters, it had a gigantic four-barrel Peerless V-8 motor for outrunning the Harbor Squad. Since passage of the Volstead Act, the long-haired, grizzled Darbee had installed a modern radiotelegraph to keep track of the Prohibition patrols. The radio was operated by his pretty teenage granddaughter, Robin. Robin was cool as a cucumber and knew Morse code.

Bell told the old man his plan and, together, they removed everything from the boat that could be construed as illegal, leaving on Darbee’s Kill Van Kull dock the leftovers of booze, opium, and ammunition that had fallen under the bilgeboards. “With no contraband on board,” Bell explained, “when the Coast Guard catches us, they can’t arrest us.”

“Don’t like the idea of getting caught,” Darbee grumbled.

“Grandpa,” said Robin, rolling her eyes. “Mr. Bell just told you why.”