The Bootlegger Clive Cussler (that summer book .txt) 📖
- Author: Clive Cussler
Book online «The Bootlegger Clive Cussler (that summer book .txt) 📖». Author Clive Cussler
“Mr. Storms, we’re not asking for your money. We are asking you to betray a crook.”
“‘Crook’ is not a word that applies to the gentlemen classes my firm serves.”
“What if we told you he was a Bolshevik?”
Storms laughed. “Next, you’ll tell me President Harding wants America to join the League of Nations. And Marcus Garvey is signing on with the Ku Klux Klan.”
“What if it were true that Prince André is a Bolshevik?”
“How can he be a Bolshevik? The revolutionaries kicked him out of his country and seized his estates.”
“What if Prince André is a Bolshevik?”
“If it were true, Prince André would be a traitor to his class, and I would tell you everything you want to know.”
• • •
THE WIND WAS RISING IN NASSAU, shivering flags and slapping halyards, when Isaac Bell returned to the steam yacht Maya. Fern Hawley received him in the main salon, which had been designed in the old Art Nouveau mode by the Tiffany Company. It was a breathtaking sight, thought Bell, that would force anyone questioning the pleasures of wealth to change his tune.
“Why, Mr. Bell, where are your swim trunks?”
“I hired a launch. There’s a mean chop on the harbor. Besides, it’s getting dark and I’m told sharks dine at night.”
“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?”
“No! They didn’t tell me such things. I only learned afterward.”
“Where is Yuri?”
“He died in the explosion.”
“Along with forty innocents.”
She hung her head. “They don’t think the way we do. They’ve experienced terrible things we haven’t.”
“Those forty have.”
“Moscow made Yuri a ‘hero of the revolution.’ Not Marat. He didn’t do it.”
“Why do you say Zolner didn’t do it? Just because he wasn’t killed in the blast?”
“Marat would never make such a mistake. He’s too meticulous. Yuri was impetuous. He would blunder ahead. He couldn’t help himself.”
Bell looked at her and she looked away. He said, “Could Zolner have made a ‘mistake,’ deliberately?”
“Why?”
“To get rid of his watchdog.”
“No.” She shook her head. “No. Absolutely not.”
“You say no, but you’re thinking that it is possible that he killed Yuri, aren’t you?”
She was silent a long moment, then said in a bleak and empty voice. “Yuri was my friend.”
“He was a murderer,” said Isaac Bell. “Forty times over.”
“I didn’t know he was going to do it.”
Bell made no effort to hide his disgust. “Whether you are a traitor, or a foolish young woman who—as I said generously, earlier—fell in with the ‘wrong crowd,’ will depend on your next move.”
“Betray him?”
“I will make it easy for you.”
“How?”
“I just told you. He’s already betrayed you. And your workers’ cause.”
“How?”
“You introduced him to Newtown Storms. Storms invests the enormous sums of cash that Marat Zolner earns bootlegging. Do you deny that he uses the money Storms makes in the stock market to finance his Comintern attack on our country?”
Fern Hawley returned Bell’s wintery gaze in silence.
“I am asking you privately,” said Bell. He had thought on this all afternoon. He had much bigger fish to fry than one confused spoiled brat. “Confidentially, Fern. Between you and me. All alone on your yacht in the middle of a harbor of a remote British colony.”
“Why are you protecting me?” she asked in a small voice.
“Two reasons. One, I truly do believe that you fell in with the wrong crowd.”
“What makes you believe that? You don’t know me.”
“A character reference from a colleague whose judgment I trust.”
“Who?”
“Pauline.”
“She’s yours?”
“She’s Van Dorn’s.”
Fern covered her face. “Oh, do I feel like a fool.”
“You aren’t the first. Pauline is the sharpest detective you will ever meet. She sees a possibility of something worthwhile in you, and what Pauline sees is good enough for me.”
“What is the second reason?”
“The second reason is far more important. You can give me Marat Zolner. Which is why I ask you about the Stormses’ investments financing the Comintern attack.”
Fern smirked the smirk that said she knew more than Bell did. “Actually, most of it comes straight from the bootlegging. Storms hasn’t made him as much as he hoped.”
“Oh yes he has,” said Bell. “Storms is good at what he does, and the market has been kind.”
“That’s not what Marat said.”
“That’s
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