The Bootlegger

“At least you have a name. And Grady’s Research boys say Kozlov joined the Communist Party. And you’re pretty sure he was a Wobbly.”

“But I can’t reckon how an anti-capitalist who wants to abolish the wage system becomes a rumru

“Maybe he was not that dedicated an anti-capitalist.”

“Dedicated enough to get deported,” said Bell.

“The Palmer Raids were an abomination,” said Marion, who had many foreign-born friends in the moving picture business.

Bell said, “The vast majority were turned loose.”

“I had one friend, a French actor, who was released within a week. Another, a brilliant Russian camera operator, spent three months in a filthy jail.”

“At least Mr. Palmer got his comeuppance when his party decided he was not their ideal candidate for president.”

“Fu

“What’s fu

“Your Herr Kozlov had the last laugh when he made his way back to New York to radicalize the sailors’ union.”

“Until he became a rumru

“Which,” said Marion, “you still find to be an unusual change of career.”

She paused for his answer, but he did not speak.

Bell was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the case. Marion’s peignoir clung intriguingly, and she had loosened her hair, which she usually wore up to keep it out of the camera eyepiece. It framed her beautiful face like gold leaf.

“Don’t you?”

“What?”

“Don’t you find it an unusual change of career?”

“Why don’t we sleep on it?” he asked.

She eyed him over the rim of her champagne flute. “Yes. We both have busy mornings.”

“Then we would be doubly wise,” said Isaac Bell, “to go to bed.”

“Wise,” Marion agreed. She put down her glass and headed into the bedroom.

Bell followed close behind.

“But!” said Marion, her eyes suddenly flashing.

“But what?”

“Joha

Bell said, “But that does not change the fact that less than two months later, Joha

“But does that mean that he changed his career?”

“That,” said Bell, “is a very interesting question. You’re asking, was he ru

Marion climbed under the sheets. “Are you ever coming to bed?”

13

Pauline Grandzau trotted briskly down the Nieuw Amsterdam’s gangway, carrying her bag in one hand and Isaac’s Marconigram in the other. She deciphered the Van Dorn code in her head.

Isaac’s last query was the easiest.

HOW DID KOZLOV RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES?

Steamer ticket and false passport, if he had the means. Or try to snag a berth as a sailor and desert when the ship landed, which was difficult with tens of thousands of merchant seamen on the beach waiting for shipping to recover from the end of the war. Or, if Herr Kozlov was especially valuable to the Communist Party, then passage would be arranged by the Comintern Maritime Section, which not only organized seamen’s mutinies but used their network to move Communist agents around the world disguised as ships’ officers and seamen. Kozlov’s execution by Genickschuss suggested that he could have been that valuable, an operative who knew too much to be allowed to talk.

“Red Scare deported to Germany” and “Kozlov associates?” were matters that she had to address, gingerly and face-to-face, with her contacts in the police and the Foreign Service. A copy of the Marconigram was waiting with her steamer trunk, courtesy of the Holland America Line’s chief purser, which showed her exactly how important Isaac thought this Kozlov was. She would find a third copy at the office.

She took the train to Amsterdam, and on to Berlin, and arrived in Germany’s capital as night fell. Outside the railroad station, she found the streets of the government districts in Tiergarten and Mitte blocked by thousands of boys singing the “Internationale” and chanting, “Up and do battle! Up and do battle!”

Tense security police were guarding banks, newspaper offices, and public buildings.

Searchlights played across the façades. Armed bicyclists patrolled the streets in the uniform of the anti-Communist Freikorps. Headlines on news kiosks shrilled the battle cries, and fears, of the political factions vying for power in post-war Germany:

COMMUNISTS TO DYNAMITE MONUMENTS

ULTRA-REACTIONARY ARMY OFFICERS TO LAUNCH COUP

BOLSHEVIKS BURN BOURGEOISIE NEWSPAPERS

FREIKORPS COMMANDEER POLICE

REDS HIDE RIFLES IN MINE SHAFTS

Provocateurs abounded. There was unrest in Saxony, open rebellion in the city of Halle, and in Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city, rumor that the Communists would hoist the red flag over the shipyards.

Pauline gave up trying to get to her office and retreated to the train station to telephone central police headquarters. All lines were busy. Back outside, the streetcars and trams had stopped ru

She waded through the crowds, racking her brain for whom among her network of friends and informants in government, business, the military, police, and criminals could help her find at least the begi

She cut down to the Unter den Linden and walked a mile on the boulevard through thickening crowds. The police headquarters at Alexanderplatz was surrounded by poor and chaotic neighborhoods fought over by Reds and anti-Communists. The building looked under siege behind a wall of Freikorps trucks and police armored cars parked around it end to end.

She hurried back to the train station to send telegrams to her police contacts. Thankfully, the telegraph was working. But only one friend wired back.

PRATER.

She walked as fast as she could to the Prater Garten, a beer garden set under chestnut trees in Prenzlauer Berg. It was just far enough beyond Mitte to offer sanctuary from the tumult shaking the center of the city. Klaxons could be heard faintly, accompanied by a rumble of armored car engines, but at least the demonstrations and fights were too far off to be seen.

She spied a cadaverous man at a table under the trees and took a chair across from him. He had been the powerful Kommandeur of Berlin’s center Polizeigruppen until he resisted Freikorps demands. Desperate to regain his power, he was hungry for information. Give, Isaac Bell had taught her, and you shall receive.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

He eyed her bleakly and puffed smoke from a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Finally, he muttered, “The worst part of being demoted into semi-retirement is that beautiful private detectives no longer call on me for favors.”

“This must come as a great relief to your wife.”

Fritz Richter laughed out loud. “Pauline, Pauline, you always did brighten the day.”

Pauline answered him formally. “You will please remember, Herr Polizeikommandeur, that I asked for information — not favors — and I always give you information back.”

“It’s been too long a time, Fräulein Privatdetektive.”

“I’m home from the United States only this evening. You are the first old acquaintance I have called on.”

“Go back, is my advice. Make a new life in a new country. Our Germany is exploding again.”