He still hadn’t resumed counting money. “What did the fellow look like?”
“Tall man, even thinner than you. Light on his feet, like he seemed to float. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Cheekbones like chisels.”
“Did he speak with a foreign accent?”
“A bit,” said Lynch.
“City fellow,” said Harding. “They all got funny accents.”
“Russian, by any chance?”
“They all sound the same,” said Harding.
Lynch said, “We hear Swedes around here, and Dutchmen. Real ones from Holland. I doubt I ever heard a Russian.”
“We got less Russians than Chinamen,” said Harding.
“So for all you know,” said the bootlegger, “he could have been French?”
“No,” said Lynch, “I met plenty of Frenchies in the war.”
“And French ladies,” Harold leered. “You know, Billy won a medal.”
“By the way,” said Lynch, gazing intently at the half-counted stack of money, “we include compass and charts free of charge.”
“And fire extinguishers,” said Harding.
“What color do you want your boat?” asked Lynch.
The tall bootlegger pointed down the creek where it opened into the bay. The sky was overcast and it was impossible to distinguish where gray water ended and leaden cloud began. “That color.”
• • •
ISAAC BELL found a new cable from Pauline when he got back from the boatyard. She had sent it from the North Sea German port of Bremerhaven.
POLICE LOST MARAT ZOLNER BREMERHAVEN.
ALIAS SMIRNOFF SAILED NEW YORK,
NORTH GERMAN LLOYD RHEIN,
RENAMED SUSQUEHANNA.
Bell checked “Incoming Steamships” in the Times’s “Shipping & Mails” pages. He found no listing for the Susquehanna. But under “Outgoing Steamships Carrying Mail” she was listed as sailing the next day to Bremerhaven with mail for Germany and Denmark. Which meant she was at her pier now.
Regardless of who owned them, North German Lloyd ships sailed from Hoboken as they did before the war. Bell hurried there on the ferry, went aboard and straight to the chief purser’s office.
The purser was American, a disgruntled employee of the U.S. Mail Shipping Company that had leased a fleet of North German Lloyd liners seized in the war. Bell listened sympathetically to an earful of complaints about the new “fly-by-night” owners who hadn’t paid the Shipping Board “a dime of rent they owe—not to mention my back salary.”
“Yes,” said Bell. “I’ve followed the story in the newspaper. Your company claims there’s a plot by foreign lines to sabotage American shipping?”
“Wrapping themselves in the flag won’t pay bills. The company is nothing but paper. Mark my word, the Shipping Board will foreclose on the boat, and where will I be?”
Isaac Bell took out his wallet and laid a hundred-dollar bill on the purser’s desk. “Maybe this could tide you over. There’s something I have to know.”
“What?” asked the purser, eyeing hopefully the better part of two weeks’ salary.
“Early last spring in Bremerhaven, a Russian named Dmitri Smirnoff booked passage to New York on your ship. What do you recall of him?”