“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.
MORE RUSSIANS.
WHAT OF KOZLOV?
• • •
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.”