“I gather you don’t like her.”
Pauline recovered her smooth demeanor. “I didn’t say that. And I don’t mean to give that impression. She is a woman who has never had to do anything in her life. If circumstances ever forced her to, she might shine. She certainly wants to.”
“Go back to Nassau,” said Bell. “I’ll get out there as soon as I can.”
“She’s on her yacht. She could leave any minute.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Having wrecked, or at least slowed, Zolner’s Detroit operation, Isaac Bell knew that the clock was running. It was vital not to give the Comintern agent time to set up in Florida as he had in New York.
“All right,” Pauline said, briskly. “I’m off.”
“How are things working out with young Somers?”
“He’s a bright boy. I was comfortable leaving him in charge of the office.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Bell. “I thought you’d like him.”
• • •
MARAT ZOLNER knew that Moscow would never accept the death of their new overseer so soon after Yuri’s. He could not kill her yet. He had no choice but to pretend to accept her authority. He said, “I can report that things are going swimmingly. Matters are in hand.”
“It does not look that way, to my eye. Nor to Moscow’s.”
&n
bsp; “I will tell you what I told Yuri Antipov before he died. My scheme is the best strategy—the only strategy—to infiltrate the United States and subvert the government.”
“Moscow has come to understand that. Moscow agrees that America is a unique situation that requires a unique strategy.”
“Do they?” Zolner was amazed. “It sounds to me that certain comrades have been replaced.”
“That is not important. What is important is your failure to execute your strategy in Detroit.”
“A minor setback.”
“Minor? The loss of a liquor stockpile worth millions of dollars?”
His Canadian comrades had betrayed him.
“A regrettable loss,” Zolner admitted, “but replaceable.”
“And the drowning of your staunchest ally?”
There were no secrets.
He said, “There are plenty more where Weintraub came from. Detroit has no shortage of ambitious gangsters. He, too, is replaceable.”
Her next question came like a silken thrust of Yuri’s dagger. “And will you replace your stockbroker in New York?”
Zolner concealed his shock. He had underestimated the Comintern’s reach. It appeared that while he and Yuri had bombed Wall Street, some obscure branch of the Comintern had managed to infiltrate the stock exchange. Through an underpaid, envious clerk, was his first thought. But it could be higher up, inside a bank or brokerage house, through some privileged romantic “serving the cause” like Fern Hawley. Not Newtown Storms; there was not a romantic bone in the broker’s body. But someone with access to inside knowledge, in the finest Wall Street tradition.
He pretended he was bewildered.
“What are you talking about?”
“You have incurred enormous losses in the American stock market.”