The Assassin (Isaac Bell 8)

The railway carriage from below climbed into the station. A smattering of tourists got off with curious looks for the road-weary, dust-caked travelers waiting to descend. Bell guided everyone into one of the passenger compartments and closed the door. The seats were pitched at an angle to keep them horizontal.

The carriage started rolling down the embankment.

“Isaac!” Nellie gripped his arm and pointed across the bare and rocky slope. With her sharp eye for terrain, she had spotted Josef’s phaetons struggling down a steep road a half mile away.

“You’ll regret giving them that gun,” said Rockefeller.

“We didn’t give it,” said Wish, “we traded it.”

It took six minutes to descend the funicular railway’s nine hundred feet to the lower station.

An electric tram waited at the bottom, which they rode through the old city to the big, central Erevan Square that Bell had seen from above. He sensed the instant he alighted that despite the presence of up-to-date shops, government buildings, and an enormous Russian bank, there was a palpable tension in the air. People walked hurriedly with their heads down and avoiding eye contact. There were many police and soldiers on patrol.

“The faster we’re out of here, the better,” he

told Wish.

Rockefeller spotted a telegraph office. “I must send a cable.”

“Wait until we get to the train station.”

They found another electric tram, which took them across the river and up through newer parts of the city to the Central Railroad Station.

—

Mobs of Georgians, Armenians, and Russians milled in the concourse.

Rockefeller spotted the telegraph office and strode through them like a heavy cruiser parting the waves.

Bell said, “Wish, keep an eye on him. We’ll be at the ticket windows.”

The lines were long. Travelers shouted and gesticulated. Ticket agents shouted back and shook their fists.

“Five one-way tickets to Batum.”

“No trains.”

“What do you mean, no trains? The yard is booming.”

“No passenger trains.”

Bell already had money in his hand. He slipped it across the counter. The agent wet his lips. It equaled a month’s pay. “Go to booking office. Ask for Dmitri Ermakov. Tell him I sent you. It will cost.”

The booking office was next to the telegraph. Wish was at the door. “He’s still at it.”

“We’ll be in here.”

Dmitri Ermakov made them wait twenty minutes, by which time scores of people had stormed in and out of the office. At last Bell was ushered in. He held out three times as much money as he had given the ticket agent. “I need five tickets to Batum.”

Ermakov took the money. “You must understand, sir, there are no passenger trains. Only oil trains.”

“There must be one or you wouldn’t be talking to me.”

“When fighting was feared to break out in Baku, Baku send many oil trains.”

The result, Chief Agent Ermakov explained, was that so many oil trains had rushed out of Baku when trouble started that they were carrying more oil than the Batum refineries could cook and had to be held in Tiflis. Then revolutionaries cut the pipe line and suddenly stocks were running low in the refineries and shipping piers.

“Now every train west is oil train. But one special train tomorrow. Come back tomorrow. Show papers.”