The Bootlegger (Isaac Bell 7)
Page 134
“I’d have sent you a tender,” said Fern. “Would you like a drink?”
Bell said that he thought a drink would be a wonderful idea.
“Daiquiris or Scotch?”
“Scotch.”
“We’re in luck. I have the real McCoy. Haig & Haig.”
They touched glasses. She said, “I’m glad to see you again. Lunch was over too soon.”
“I have not been one hundred percent honest with you,” Bell replied.
Fern gave him a big smile. “Is it too much to hope that you lied when you told me you were always faithful to your wife?”
“I lied when I said I was not sending a cable about Prince André.”
“That much I figured out on my own. What’s up, Mr. Bell . . . I should call you Isaac, for gosh sake. I am going to call you Isaac. What’s up, Isaac?”
“Prince André is a traitor.”
Fern Hawley looked mystified. “A traitor to what? Russia? Russia is no more. Not his Russia.”
“He is a traitor to your cause.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Fern, let’s stop kidding each other. Prince André’s name is Marat Zolner.”
“I know him as Prince André.”
“Marat Zolner is a bootlegger.”
“So are half the enterprising businessmen in America.”
“Bootlegging is a masquerade. Marat Zolner is a Comintern agent conspiring against America.”
“He can’t be a traitor to America. He’s not American—or are you suggesting that I am the traitor? Traitoress?”
Isaac Bell did not smile back at her.
“Did Marat Zolner set the Wall Street bomb?”
“No.”
“So you do know Prince André as Marat Zolner.”
Fern answered tartly. “Spare me the battle of wits, Isaac. It’s obvious you know a lot.”
Bell’s reply was a cold, “How do you know he didn’t set that bomb?”
“Because Yuri did.”
“Who is Yuri?”
“Yuri Antipov. A Comintern agent sent by Moscow to ride herd on Marat. Marat did not want to bomb Wall Street. So Yuri did it.”
“Did you know he was going to explode a bomb on a crowded street?”