The Assassin (Isaac Bell 8)

Matters felt his spirits soar. He had guessed right about a lot of things.

He answered modestly, “I’m an old wildcat driller. Good at guessing. Besides, I recall that in ’03 Mr. Rockefeller considered roping in St. Petersburg banks to buy Baku oil fields.”

“Are you sure you haven’t been eavesdropping on telephone calls?”

“Quite sure, Mr. Comstock.” According to Clyde Lapham, this was not the first time Rockefeller had set sights on the Caucasus. Back in ’98, Standard Oil sent geologists to survey for commercial oil reserves in Azerbaijan.

“Or tapping wires?”

“I wouldn’t know how to begin to tap wires,” Matters lied.

“What else have you ‘guessed’?”

Matters took his best shot. “What if I were to propose to you a plan to beat Sir Marcus Samuel at shipping case oil to Asia?”

Comstock glared. So-called case oil was kerosene shipped in gallon tins packed in wooden boxes. The Asian market was enormous. Chinese and Indians burned the oil in their lamps and used the wood and tin to build their huts, shingle their roofs, make cooking pots and pitchers. Sir Marcus Samuel, the all-powerful English distributor of case oil to India and China, had visited these offices in great secrecy in 1901 to negotiate some sort of partnership. Matters was gambling that Rockefeller and Comstock wished their talks had panned out.

“Mr. Rockefeller prefers knowing to guessing,” said Comstock.

Bill Matters stood his ground. “I am not guessing.”

Comstock was scornful. “Let me remind you that Standard Oil has not managed to beat Samuel in fifteen years. The conniving Englishman parlayed preferential treatment from the Suez Canal into the biggest tank steamer fleet to Asia.”

“I know how to beat Samuel,” Bill Matters shot back.

“How?”

“Bypass the Suez Canal.”

“Bypass the Suez?” Comstock turned more scornful. “Have you any idea how long it takes a tank ship to steam around Africa? Why do you suppose they dug a canal?”

“Bypass the Transcaucasus Railroad, too,” Matters shot back. “And Batum. And the Black Sea. And the Dardanelles, Constantinople, and the Mediterranean.”

“Poppycock! How the devil could we ship kerosene to India and China?”

“Build a pipe line from Baku to the Persian Gulf.”

“A pipe line? . . .” Comstock’s face was a mask. But his eyes grew busy. “Too ambitious. Persia is mountainous and bedeviled by warlords and revolutionaries.”

“No more ambitious than our pipe lines across Pennsylvania’s mountains to the Atlantic seaboard,” Matters answered, choosing his words carefully. His hated rivals had never built an inch of pipe line, themselves, but stolen his.

Comstock shook his head. “Great Britain will fight a Russian link to the Gulf every inch of the way.”

“Don’t you think Standard Oil should fight back for half the oil in the world and all the markets of Asia?”

Comstock’s face remained a mask. Eventually, he closed his hands in a double fist and gazed at Matters over his interlocked knuckles. “Were Mr. Rockefeller to approve a pipe line, he might invite you to join as a junior partner in the enterprise.”

Averell Comstock would of course be a full partner. Matters had braced himself to pretend humble acquiescence and he said, “I would be deeply honored.”

In fact, he was thrilled—not for a junior partnership but for the access he would gain to the president. Comstock may have his doubts, but he also sensed that the pipe line was a bold idea that Rockefeller would seize upon. In which case, Comstock feared the idea would get to the president from someone else unless he moved quickly.

Matters reminded himself not to get cocky. Older Standard Oil directors, who jealously guarded their power, were the smartest in American industry. There were wise men among them who might intuit Matters’ plot, might guess that for Bill Matters the pipe line was only the beginning.

As the assassin had proclaimed after shooting Spike Hopewell, those who get too close will be killed.

—

Bill Matters summoned the assassin to his private rail car.