The Assassin (Isaac Bell 8)

“Looks like it,” said Bell, who was scanning the finger piers for a likely ship. They had toured that Russian refinery yesterday. Rockefeller was scheming to buy it, but the Moscow-based branch of the Nobel dynamite family had no intention of selling. Now the prize had gone up in smoke.

“Tramp freighter,” said Wish, swinging his shoulder to point the Maxim up the waterfront toward a steamer so old it still had masts. “They won’t be fighting to get on that one.”

Bell saw that the tramp was billowing smoke from its single stack. “He’s raising steam.”

They herded their charges toward it. But as they got close they saw Wish had been wrong. Crowds converging on its pier had forced their way onboard. Overloaded, the ship was heeling at a dangerous angle.

“Wait, there’s one coming in.”

A small ship showing no lights slipped out of the dark. It looked like salvation. Then they saw the Tatars. They were crowded on deck, as they had been on the schooner that landed earlier, a packed mass of angry men bristling with weapons.

“Where’s Mr. Rockefeller?”

The old man had disappeared.

“He was with us a second ago.”

Bell hurried along a row of shuttered storefronts, businesses that catered to the steamship passengers, past postcard shops, a fruitier, a milliner, souvenirs, Kodak cameras, and shoved through the door of a telegraph office. A frightened telegrapher had his coat and hat on and was eyeing the door as he pounded his key.

“I’ll be right there, Mr. Bell,” Rockefeller said without looking up. “I am sending an important cable.”

“We agreed our lives were more important. Let’s go.” Bell took his arm. Rockefeller tried to shrug him off. The tall detective squeezed hard and exploded angrily, “What the devil is more important than the lives of two women depending on us?”

“Nobel’s lubricating oil factory is destroyed. The low specific gravity of Baku crude makes Russian lubricating oil the best in the world, so the Nobels had a nice melon to cut all these years. The best we’ve got is refined at the Winfield plant in Humble, Texas. Not as good as the Russian lubricating oil, but a lot better than no lubricating oil.”

Clearly, thought Bell, John D. Rockefeller could keep his head when all others were losing theirs. Juggling two balls in the air—the Baku refineries and the Persian pipe line—suddenly he tossed up a third, seizing his chance to profit by the fires. But as Spike Hopewell had said about his old partner Bill Matters, somewhere along the line he had gotten his moral trolley wires crossed.

Isaac Bell shook the magnate like a terrier. “You are risking our lives to cable New York to buy the Winfield refinery?”

“Russia will never get that market back from me.”

“Done, sir,” said the telegrapher, jumping from the key.

Wish and the Matters sisters pushed in the door as the telegrapher ran out, and Rockefeller shut his mouth like a bear trap. Wish dropped the heavy Maxim on the telegraph counter and the women put down their bags. Though still calm, they looked frightened, a tribute, thought Bell, to their common sense.

Wish coolly shifted the gun muzzle toward the door and drew his revolver.

“Isaac, old son. We need a plan.”

“First,” said Bell, addressing Rockefeller, “get this straight. I am running this like a military operation. There is one leader. Me. Wish is second-in-command. Whatever we say, goes. Is that clear, Mr. Rockefeller? No more dashing off on your own. You’ll get us all killed.”

“O.K.,” said the richest man in America. “I accept your terms. But not before we resolve another question.” He leveled a long finger at Edna. “I will not allow this woman newspaperman to report my business like public news.”

Edna Matters answered in a voice as cold as it was determined.

“John D. Rockefeller controls half the oil in the world. He is trapped in the burning city of Baku, which produces the other half. That is extraordinary news. This ‘woman newspaperman’ reports the news.”

“I have news for both of you,” said Isaac Bell.

26

Our only hope of getting out of this city alive is to pull together. I am not asking you to team up. I am laying down rules. The first rule is, Mr. Rockefeller is not here.”

“Not here?” Edna looked at him, eyes wide and angry. “What do you mean, not here?”

“You can report on anything that happens, provided we survive. But not his presence.”

“I cannot agree to that.”