“It is time to take direct action against the capitalists,” said Antipov. “Are you with me or against me?”
“With you, of course.”
He signaled silence with a finger to his lips and led Antipov quietly past the sleeping O’Neal and through the covered alley that connected the back of the bottling plant to the back of the stable.
The strong horse that had pulled Yuri Antipov’s wagonload of dynamite from New Jersey had grown restless cooped up in the stall. It snorted eagerly as Zolner and Antipov heaped hundreds of three-inch cast-iron window sash slugs around the explosives and concealed them under shovelfuls of coal. But it grew impatient when Zolner crawled under the wagon to connect the detonator to a battery-powered flashlight and a Waterbury alarm clock — leaving one wire loose, which he would connect only after the wagon stopped lurching and banging on the cobblestones.
The horse began kicking its stall.
“Easy,” Zolner called soothingly. “We’re almost ready.”
The animal calmed down immediately.
“How do you do that?” marveled Antipov, who had never fought on horseback.
“He knows I like him,” said Zolner. “He would never believe what we have planned for him. Would you?” he asked, approaching the animal with an apple.
Yuri, the least sentimental of men, asked, “Couldn’t we unhitch him?”
“The Financial District is crawling with police. The streets and sidewalks are jam-packed at lunch hour. We’ll be lucky to get away on foot, much less leading a horse. All right, are you ready?”
“I’ve been ready for days!”
“I am talking to the horse.”
Zolner opened the stall, said, “Come along,” and hitched the animal to the wagon.
They dressed in workmen’s shirts, trousers, boots, and flat caps, all smudged with coal dust, and rubbed dust on their hands and faces. Zolner climbed up on the driver’s bench and took the reins. Antipov slid open the stable door.
A man who looked like a plainclothes police officer stepped in from the sidewalk. He looked around with quick, hard eyes, took in the horse, Zolner seated in the wagon, and Yuri Antipov frozen with surprise. He opened his coat, revealing a gleaming badge pinned inside the lapel, and a fleeting glimpse of a heavy automatic pistol.
“Have either of you gents seen Charlie ‘Trucks’ O’Neal?”
Zolner spoke first in Russian, saying to Yuri, “I will distract him for you,” and in heavily accented English, “Ve not know such person.”
“Big guy, six-two, broken nose, black hair.”
“Ve not know such person.”
“That’s funny. ’Cause I hear he rents this stable. And here are you guys with a horse and a wagon, which are staples of the stable business, if you know what I mean.”
“Are you policeman?”
The man stared a moment, appeared to make up his mind, and suddenly sounded more friendly. “Don’t worry, gents, I’m not a cop. Van Dorn private detective. Harry Warren’s my name. I don’t mean to keep you guys from going about your business. Though I’m not sure who’s going to buy your coal in the middle of the summer.”
He opened his coat again, took out a wallet, and flashed a ten-dollar bill. “Are you sure you haven’t seen him?”
Marat Zolner reached for the money and stuffed it in his pocket. “Man who rent stable… desk there.” He pointed at the office door.
“Thanks. You gents go on. I’ll wait for him in there.”
Harry Warren was halfway to the office door when Antipov started after him, dagger drawn.
“Was that Russian you were speaking?” asked the detective, turning suddenly and drawing his pistol with blinding speed. He fired once, into the stable floor, an inch from Antipov’s shoe. The Comintern officer skidded to a stop.
Harry Warren glanced at the distant door to the street. No one had been passing by, no one was peering in for the source of the gunshot, which was good. He needed time with these two without the cops.
He said to Zolner, “Translate to your pal to drop his knife before I shoot him. And you keep your hands where I can see them.”
Zolner spoke. Antipov let the dagger fall from his hand.
Warren did not know what he had stumbled into while looking for Trucks O’Neal, but it looked promising. Particularly with the Russian connections Isaac Bell kept turning up. He addressed Zolner in a deliberately conversational tone while watching closely for the man’s reaction. “The reason I ask about Russian is we keep running into a Russian connection to this case we’re trying to solve about who tried to kill our boss. Could be coincidence, though, if it is, your pal’s attempt to stick a knife in my back will require some explaining.”
Marat Zolner and Yuri Antipov stood still as bronze statues. Not even their eyes moved, not even to track the sudden motion of Trucks O’Neal entering silently from the covered alley and clutching a full bottle of counterfeit Glen Urquhart Genuine by the neck.
Harry Warren sensed the rush and whirled. The bottle aimed at the back of his head smashed against his temple, fracturing the thin bone and rupturing the artery under it.
Marat Zolner shut the stable door. Antipov and Trucks O’Neal slung the detective’s body into the wagon beside the dynamite and covered it with more coal.
“Why,” Zolner asked, “are the Van Dorns looking for you?”
“Me?”
“He asked if we had seen you. Why?”
“Say, wait a minute. I didn’t do nothin’ to bring ’em after me.”
“Don’t come back here. We’re done with the stable. We’re done bottling.”
“But there’s eighty thousand bucks of Scotch next door.”
“It’s more like one hundred fifty thousand,” Zolner said quietly.
“Are you blaming me?”
“I’m sending you to Detroit before they catch up with you.”
“I’m not starting over in Detroit.”
Zolner stepped very close and stared down into Trucks’s eyes. “Trucks, I’ve never questioned your loyalty. Remove anything of yours that is incriminating. I’ll have people meet your train. Go! Now!”
O’Neal backed away, spun on his heel, and hurried through the covered alley.
“Kill him,” said Antipov.
“Capitalists first. Open the door.”
Antipov opened the door again.
They sat side by side on the driver’s bench. The horse plodded slowly through the clogged streets of Lower Manhattan, down Broadway to Trinity Church, and turned onto Wall Street. Zolner reined in and set the brake outside No. 23 Wall on the corner of Broad. Left to his own devices, he would have parked the dynamite around the corner at the New York Stock Exchange, the nucleus of the Financial District. But Yuri had chosen the marble headquarters of J. P. Morgan.
He climbed down and adjusted the horse’s feed bag, then knelt by the wagon, pretending to adjust the swingletree while he connected the final detonation wire.
“Cops!”
Yuri Antipov had spotted a policeman coming their way. Marat Zolner climbed back up, sat beside him, and took the reins. The cop pushed closer through the crowd.
Antipov fingered the dagger under his shirt.
“That won’t help this time,” said Zolner. “Wait on the wagon until I’ve dealt with him. I’ll be right back.” He jumped down again.
Yuri Antipov watched Marat Zolner intercept the cop. Would he bribe him? Or blackjack him? Not in front of all these people who thronged the busy intersection. Suddenly, both the cop and Zolner hurried away and melted into the crowd. What had Marat said to him? Antipov was trying to figure out what was going on and what he should do when he heard an alarm clock ring.