The Assassin (Isaac Bell 8)

Bell completed the stanza for him—“‘. . . Ingulf me in eternal dark!’”—wondering whether the old man remembered it was from a humorous poem about a perch with a toothache who was hoodwinked by a lobster.

“Averell became a warm, close, personal friend of mine in the course of business. I will miss him.”

“I’m sorry,” said Bell. “Had he been ill?”

“Briefly. The price of getting old, Mr. Bell. My partners are dying right and left. Most were older than I . . . They go so quickly. One week ago, Comstock was full of vim and push.”

He stood up, laid a big hand on the telephone, and stared across the desk as if the room had no walls and he could see all the way to New York City.

“When poor Lapham began losing his mind, there was time to get used to the idea that he would go. But Averell was a titan. I figured him for another twenty years.”

He’s afraid of dying, thought Bell and suddenly felt sympathy for the old man. But he could not ignore the opportunity to investigate from even deeper inside the heart of Standard Oil.

“Are you afraid the assassin will strike at you?”

“Most people hate me,” Rockefeller replied matter-of-factly. “The chances are, he hates me, too.”

“He strikes me as professional, without emotion.” True of his shooting, thought Bell. True of his deep-laid groundwork. Not true of his impulse to show off.

“Then he’s paid by someone who hates me,” said Rockefeller.

“A trigger finger that won’t shake with personal hatred makes him all the more dangerous.”

Rockefeller changed the subject abruptly. “Can I assume that having broken with the Van Dorn Agency, you are free to travel on short notice?”

“Where?” asked Bell.

“Wherever I say.”

Isaac Bell threw down a bold challenge calculated to impress the oil titan. If it worked, the lordly Rockefeller might open up to him as he would to an equal rather than a lowly detective.

“Where ‘children dig in the sand’?”

Rockefeller returned a fathomless stare. Bell gazed back noncommittally, as he would in the highest-stakes poker game—neither averting his eyes nor staring—while Rockefeller reassessed him. He said nothing, though the silence between them stretched and stretched. The old man spoke at last.

“You appear to have studied my habits.”

“As would an assassin.”

“I may go abroad.”

“Baku?” said Bell.

Violence flared in the hooded eyes. “You know too much, Mr. Bell. Are you a spy?”

“I am imagining how an assassin stalks a man of many secrets—a victim like you. Baku is obvious: The newspapers are full of Russia’s troubles, and E. M. Hock’s History of the Oil Monopoly catalogs the territories in Europe and Asia that you’ve lost to Rothschild and the Nobels and Sir Marcus Samuel.”

“Are you a spy?” Rockefeller repeated. But he was, Bell guessed, assessing him carefully, and he strove to answer in a manner that would instill confidence and project the picture of a valuable man, seasoned in his craft, alert, observant, and deadly when challenged. A man John D. Rockefeller could trust to guard his life.

“I don’t have to be a spy to know that ‘the sun rising over the beautiful Mediterranean’ rises in the east—Russian oil in Baku and the Chinese and Indian refined oil markets you’re determined to dominate. If I were a spy, I would know the secret meaning of ‘children digging in the sand.’ I don’t. But the assassin has had more time to investigate and probably does know all about children digging in the sand. Would you feel safer if I accompany you as your bodyguard?”

“Name your salary.”

“I won’t work on salary. I’ve decided to start my own detective agency,” said Bell, embellishing the lie he had concocted with Joseph Van Dorn.

“I applaud your initiative,” said Rockefeller. “We’ll send you a contract.”

Isaac Bell drew a slim envelope from his coat. “I brought my own.”