The Bootlegger

They continued toward the shipyards, the night dark, the streets deserted. Surprise seemed total. There was no sign of riot brigades, no mobs of Bürgerwehr auxiliaries, no columns of Freikorps. They were advancing stealthily on another police station when its lights went out.

“Attack!” Valtin bellowed, and they charged the building.

The cops opened fire with rifles and pistols. Flashes of red and yellow pierced the dark. Men fell in the street.

Valtin hurled a stick grenade. It smashed the glass of a small window and lodged against wire mesh. But the grenade was a dud and did not explode. The Hundertschaften resumed firing their pistols. The police answered with a machine gun. The roar was deafening, the muzzle flashes blinding. A

Pauline forced herself to look at her face. To her horror, she saw a dark hole between her eyes. A

Three teenage boys, brave beyond reasoning, ran at the building, throwing jars of kerosene. Braver than they would be, Pauline thought, if they had been standing with A

The door opened and policemen ran out, beating at their burning tunics with bare hands and rolling on the cobblestones to put out the flames. Pauline thought in the confusion that the Reds were helping the police put out the flames. But her eyes told the terrible truth. They were leaping over the bodies of the fallen boys to knock down the cops and kick them to death.

Pauline knew in that moment that her hopes for Germany had been hijacked exactly as ex-Kommandeur Fritz Richter had predicted they would be: no gracious wi

She eased A

Government posters at street corners proclaimed the death penalty for possessing weapons. The fighters tore them down. They crossed a broad thoroughfare, which Pauline recognized as one that led to the central railroad station where she could telephone long-distance to Richter in Berlin. She had seen no sign of the mysterious Zolner, and, in all the fighting, he might well be dead. She slowed and let the stragglers overtake her. As she began to turn away, she handed her first-aid rucksack to the last man in line.

He stared over her shoulder, his eyes suddenly widening with terror.

A column of squat gray armored cars was roaring up the thoroughfare.

“Run!”

The survivors of the Red Hundreds sprinted for the neighborhood of narrow, winding streets that housed the shipyard workers. The workers, who had been striking for days, had blocked the streets with massive, well-constructed barricades of overturned wagons, trucks, and furniture. They were reinforced with cobblestones and protected from above by snipers on the roofs.

The armored cars attacked, spitting machine-gun fire from narrow slits in their steel fronts. As Pauline had seen in Berlin, they were painted with skulls and crossbones. Stick grenades plummeted down from the rooftops. The powerful explosives blasted sheet armor loose from the attacking cars, exposing their drivers and machine gu

Workers and Red Hundreds cheered and embraced.

Moments later, there was a huge explosion in the middle of the main barricade, tearing it apart and hurtling men and debris in the air.

“Minenwerfer!” Bomb throwers.

Another ten-pound mortar shell screamed down from the sky. And another.

“To the shipyard!”

Fleeing the ruined barricade, the survivors stampeded toward the shipyard.

The strikers opened the gates to let them in. Pauline emerged from the narrow streets, her ears ringing from the mortar explosions. She saw the ribs of a steamer under construction reaching for the open sky. A searchlight leaped along sheds and tall gantries and swept across the frame of the half-built ship and locked suddenly, brilliantly, on a huge red flag billowing in the wind.

The workers’ cheers were drowned out by gunfire from the river.

Hamburg police in armed motorboats raced toward the builders’ ways, firing rifles and mounted machine guns. Strikers and Hundertschaften dived for cover. The cops stormed ashore. Pauline saw the red flag illuminated by the searchlight descend swiftly down the mast and out of sight. Moments later, the police ran it up again, soaked in gasoline and burning fiercely.

17

The retreat was chaos, every man for himself. The Reds threw away incriminating weapons and ran for the oldest slums of crooked alleys where they might hide, protected by the criminals who lived there. Pauline walked in the shadows of the buildings, head down, empty hands visible, eyes alert, watching for the police. A man still holding a gun raced by. In the wake of the insurrection the cops had retaken the rooftops, and a sniper cut him down.

She saw Valtin in a doorway. He had been shot. His peacoat was soaked with blood. It took him a confused moment to recognize her.

“Where is A

“A

“Are you crazy? Wounds will tell them who we are.”

“Where is Zolner?”

Valtin was struggling to breathe. “If the Central Committee sent him, I didn’t see him.”

“What’s his first name?”

“Why do you keep… Oh yes, your poor betrayed brother.”

“What’s his first name?”

“Marat. Marat Zolner.”

“Marat Zolner.”

“It’s only his nom de guerre.”

“What’s his real name?”

Valtin closed his eyes. “Sometimes he is Dima Smirnov, spelled with a v. Sometimes Dmitri Smirnoff spelled with fs. Sometimes… Who knows? Who cares?” He sagged against the door. His chin slumped to his chest. His feet skidded out from under him. Pauline knelt beside him. When he opened his eyes, what she saw there told her that nothing would save him. He whispered something she couldn’t hear. A bubble of blood swelled on his lips. She leaned closer.

“What?”

The bubble made a wet Pop! against her ear. “Run!”

His hat had fallen beside him. Pauline laid it over his face and hurried away.

Looters were battering open shops and ru

An empty bottle smashed at her feet. Two looters lurched toward her. Before she could move, they had cornered her in the doorway. They were drunk, reeking of schnapps.

One grabbed her from behind, the other reached for her legs. She kicked out, knowing her only chance was to get to her gun before they found it. He caught her ankles. The man behind squeezed tighter. She went limp.

“Right,” he laughed. “Might as well enjoy it.”