Adler, Kliegman, and Marcum gathered around his desk.

“The high-powered armored rum boat that machine-gunned the Boss is prowling the coast again,” Bell said. “Grady Forrer will pinpoint the location of boatyards in Long Island, New York, and New Jersey that are capable of building such a vessel. You gents will canvas them to find out which one launched her. Pretend that your bootlegger boss is offering top dollar to buy one like it — only faster. Telephone me the instant you find one and I’ll be there with the money.”

Something else that the cool-headed old geezer told him about the black boat had lodged in the back of Bell’s mind. Despite ducking bullets and swimming for his life, Dave Novicki had recalled in fine detail a long rank of three engines spitting fire from a motor box near the stern. He had speculated that the box had room for a fourth engine. That the fourth was not spitting fire indicated either that it had broken down or, as likely, was a replacement standing by in case one of the three regulars stopped running.

No one knew better than an airplane pilot that Libertys broke down often. A big selling point when he bought his Loening Air Yacht had been the design that perched the motor high atop the wing, which provided for quick removal and replacement of the entire unit. He had not signed on the dotted line until Loening Aeronautical threw in a spare motor and a crate of valves.

“McKinney!”

“Right here, Mr. Bell.”

“Do any of your Washington friends work for the War Department’s director of sales?”

“They’ll know someone who does.”

“Find a War Department man who can tell us who buys war surplus Liberty motors and spare parts.”

“I don’t mean to outguess you, Mr. Bell, but at last count the government had thirteen thousand Liberty motors on hand.”

“That’s why bootleggers buy them. They’re fast, cheap, and plentiful. Tell your man to concentrate on motor and spare parts purchases within a hundred miles of New York.”

The detectives scattered.

Bell sent a transatlantic cable to Pauline Grandzau.

Pauline Grandzau shook the Communist girl Anny awake when the Hamburg train slowed to stop at a small-town station ten miles before the northern port city. They got off the train and walked from the town into the forest where Anny’s friend, Valtin, was leading a Hundertschaften company of a hundred Communist fighters in maneuvers in preparation to lead an uprising in Hamburg.

“Is Valtin your friend or boyfriend?” Pauline asked.

“We don’t do it that way. If a girl likes a boy, she says, ‘Come with me.’ And if he wants to, he comes. But that doesn’t mean you have to be with him every day.”

“What if you do want to be with him every day?”

“You can. But if another girl says, ‘Come with me,’ you would be wrong to try to stop him. The revolution has no room for jealousy.”

Pauline Grandzau found that utopian fantasy even harder to believe when Anny pointed out the tall, handsome, dark-haired Valtin. Even seen at a distance through the trees, he looked like a man who could provoke an array of jealousies with a smile.

At the moment, he was concentrating mightily on drilling a hundred tough-looking merchant seamen armed with ancient czarist army rifles, a variety of pistols, including a handful of new Ortgies, some powerful World War stick grenades, and numerous old-fashioned Kugel grenades. Of the hundred, she noticed on closer inspection, at least twenty were younger men, carrying knives and clubs.

They were rehearsing signals for assault and retreat as they advanced and fell back along forest paths that represented city streets and gathered around trees that stood for tenement buildings and factories. A huge heap of fallen trees and limbs became a street barricade.

Valtin ordered a break. The men sprawled on the forest floor and shared cigarettes. Valtin sauntered over and kissed Anny on the mouth without taking his eyes off Pauline. “Who are you?”

“This is Pauline,” said Anny. “She saved me from the Bürgerwehr.”

“How?”

Anny explained how she’d been trapped in the bomb factory. Pauline said, “All I did was find a way out.”

“Why were you there?”

“She is looking for someone named Kozlov.”

“Johann Kozlov,” said Pauline. “I had hoped one of the bomb builders knew him, but the Bürgerwehr attacked before I could ask.”

“Why do you ask about Kozlov?”

Pauline had rehearsed her answer. “My brother is in prison in America. Kozlov tried to get out of being deported by testifying against Fritz. I want Kozlov to retract his false statements.”

“Why would he?”

“To free a wrongly accused honest man.”

“Are you out of your mind? Kozlov is a revolutionary. He can’t operate by ‘honest man’ morals.”

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.