The Assassin (Isaac Bell 8)

A graceful three-masted, gaff-rigged schooner struggled alongside an oil berth, sails furled, decks rippling with dark figures crowding to get off. The moment it landed, gangs of Tatars armed with rifles jumped onto the pier and ran toward the city.

Wish Clarke said, “If the city blows?”

“We evacuate.”

The sand-swirled sky over the oil fields across the bay was abruptly aglow.

Within the city itself, small-arms fire crackled.

They hurried up Vokzalnaya toward the railroad station. The gunfire got louder, pistol and rifle shots punctuated all of a sudden by the heavier churning of Army machine guns. Looking back, Bell saw the sky over the bay getting redder. A glow ahead marked mansions set afire in the Armenian district.

They broke into a run toward the hotel district.

“We’ll grab the ladies at your place,” said Bell, “then Mr. R. at mine.”

“Then what? Land or sea?”

“Whichever we can get to,” said Isaac Bell.

25

Isaac Bell telephoned John D. Rockefeller from the Astoria Hotel’s lobby.

“Pack one bag and wear your warmest coat. We’re running for it.”

“Is this logical?”

“Imperative,” said Bell.

“I have to send cables.”

“Quickly.”

Upstairs, he and Wish found Edna Matters with a carpetbag and her typewriter already at the door, and a large-scale map of the lands bordering the Caspian and Black Seas spread out on her bed.

“Where’s Nellie?”

“On the roof.”

“What’s she doing on the roof?” asked Wish.

“It’s the nearest thing to a balloon,” said Edna. “She’s checking the lay of the land.”

“Go get her, Wish.”

Bell turned to Edna’s map, which he had already been reviewing in his mind. The train to Tiflis and Batum and a Black Sea steamer would whisk them to Constantinople in four days. But it was too easy to stop a train where outlaws were the only law.

Edna traced the Caspian Sea route north to Astrakhan and up the Volga River. “Tsaritsyn steamers connect with the Moscow train.”

Bell said, “I don’t fancy getting trapped in the middle of a Russian revolution, if that’s what’s brewing.”

“No one I’ve interviewed knows what will happen next,” said Edna.

“Least of all, the Russians.”

“Poor Father. I’m worried sick about him banished to Moscow.”

Bell went to the window and looked down at the street. A trolley had stopped on its tracks. People lugging bags streamed off it and hurried toward the railroad station. He craned his head to try to see the station, but the angle was wrong. The sky looked red. Shadows leaped, thrown by muzzle flashes. Guns crackled and people ran in every direction. For whatever reason Rockefeller had sent Matters to Moscow, he was better off than they were at the moment.