“Really?” asked Edna. “There’s a rumor making the rounds that shots were fired at some American business men.”
Bill Matters shrugged. “An isolated incident.”
“Apparently,” said Edna, “the Cossacks reacted by slaughtering refinery workers. And now the rest are up in arms.”
Matters shrugged again. “It’s Russia. My impression is the authorities have strict control of the situation.”
“And what are you doing here, Father? Last we heard, you were in Cleveland. I just mailed you a postcard there. Had I known, I could have handed it to you and saved a stamp.”
“Mr. Rockefeller sent me to rustle up some refinery business—and don’t print that.”
“Not without verification,” Edna said.
Nellie laughed so loudly that people glanced from nearby tables. “Father, you should see your face. You know darned well she won’t print that. Certain things are sacred.”
“Father is sacred,” said Edna with a wink that warmed Bill Matters’ heart.
He sat back with a happy smile on his face. They had bought his story.
“It’s like old times,” he said.
The girls exchanged a glance. “Whatever do you mean?” asked Nellie, and Edna asked, “What are you smiling about, Father?”
“Like going to New York to see a play back when you were in pigtails.”
“‘Pigtails’?” echoed Nellie in mock horror. “Whenever you took us to the theater, we dressed like perfect little ladies.”
“Even after we ceased to be,” said Edna.
“All I’m saying is, it makes me very happy.”
—
“Who was that man with E. M. Hock and Nellie Matters?” John D. Rockefeller asked Isaac Bell. “I saw him at the Astoria, and lurking here in the lobby when they came for tea with their father.”
“He is their bodyguard.”
“He looks the part, I suppose. But are you sure?”
“I know him well,” said Bell. “Aloysius Clarke. He was a Van Dorn detective.”
“A Van Dorn? What is a Van Dorn doing here?”
“Not anymore. Mr. Van Dorn let him go.”
“For what?”
“Drinking.”
“Drinking? I’d have thought that was not uncommon among detectives.”
“Mr. Van Dorn gave him several chances.”
“Who does he work for now?”
“I’d imagine he’s gone freelance. I’ll speak with him, find out what’s up.”
Rockefeller asked, “What is that smile on your face, Mr. Bell? There’s something going on here I don’t understand.”
“I was glad to see him. Wish Clarke is a valuable man. I just may ask him to join forces.”
“Right there! Not while he serves E. M. Hock!”
“Of course not. In the future, after we’re all safely back home.”
24
My daughter is reporting for the New York Sun!” Bill Matters exulted to John D. Rockefeller. “It’s a big feather in her cap. A wonderful step up!”
“Does she know I am in Baku?”
“Absolutely not!”
“What makes you so sure? How do you know she didn’t follow me here?”
“They sent her to cover the riots.”
“There aren’t any riots.”
“That could change in a flash, Mr. Rockefeller. You can feel it in the streets. And my daughter told me that the officials she’s interviewed sound deeply worried . . . Now, sir, I know that you can’t abide the Sun. Neither can I, but—”
Rockefeller stopped him with a gesture. “Right there! The Sun is nonsense. Newspapers are all nonsense. The less they know is all that’s important to me.”
“She doesn’t know you’re here.”
Rockefeller stared. “All right. I will have to take your word for it.”
“It’s not only my word, Mr. Rockefeller. It is my judgment. And I guarantee you, sir, if she had told me that she knew you were here, I would inform you immediately.”
Rockefeller shook his head and whispered, “She would never tell you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“All right! I’m sending you to Moscow.”
“Moscow?” Matters was stunned. How could he work on the Persian pipe line from Moscow? “Why?”
“We need those refinery contracts. You have done all you can with the local officials. Now you must convince Moscow that the Standard’s thoroughgoing, able administration will do much better for Russia’s oil business than these old, good-for-nothing, rusted-out refineries. And if you can’t find the right officials in Moscow, you’ll go on to St. Petersburg.”
“But what about the pipe line?”
“First the refineries.”
—
Isaac Bell met Aloysius Clarke on the Baku waterfront. The oily, smoky air had been cleared by a sharp wind blowing across the bay from the Caspian. Lights were visible for miles along the great crescent harbor, and Bell saw stars in the sky for the first time since he had arrived in Baku.
Bell thought his old partner looked pretty good, all things considered. He was a big, powerful man who carried his extra weight well. His face was getting fleshy from drink, his mouth had a softness associated with indulgence, and his nose had taken on the rosy hue beloved by painters portraying lushes, but his eyes were still hard and sharp. It was difficult to tell what he was thinking, or if he was thinking at all, unless you caught an unguarded glimpse of his eyes, which was not likely. Besides, Bell told himself, a private detective mistaken for a drunkard bought the extra seconds required to get his foot in a door.
Wish wrapped his tongue around the English language with a self-taught reader’s love. “Best job I can remember. Sumptuous feasts and the finest wines shared nightly with a pair of lookers. And Joe Van Dorn pays the piper . . . How bad’s that arm?”
“Healing fast,” said Bell. He flicked open his coat to reveal a Colt Bisley single-action revolver where he usually holstered his automatic, and Wish nodded. Since Bell could not yet rely on the strength in his hand to work the slide to load a round into his automatic’s chamber, the special target pistol version of the Colt .45 was an accurate, hard-hitting substitute.
“How’d you get your paws on a Bisley?”
“You can buy anything in Baku.”
A sudden gust buffeted the sidewalk. Wish said, “I read somewhere that ‘Baku’ is Persian for ‘windbeaten.’”
They walked until they found a saloon that catered to sea captains who could afford decent food and genuine whiskey. They ate and drank and got comfortable reminiscing. Finally, Bell asked, “What do you think of the lookers?”
Wish had been his partner on tough cases. The two detectives trusted each other as only men could who had been stabbed in each other’s company and shot in each other’s company. Having solved every crime they tackled, they trusted each other’s instincts. Each was the other’s best devil’s advocate—roles they could bat back and forth like competition tennis players.
“Edna is a very serious young lady,” said Wish. “Angrier than you would think, at first, about the way Rockefeller’s ridden roughshod over her father. Nellie’s a show-off. She’d make a great actress. Or a politician. She’ll make a heck of a splash if she can pull off her New Woman’s Flyover stunt.”
He gave Bell an inquiring glance. “Which one did you fall for?”
“Haven’t made up my mind.”
Wish chuckled. “That sounds very much like both.”
“It is confusing,” Bell admitted. “There is something about Edna . . . But, then, there is something about Nellie . . .”
“What?”
“Edna’s deep as the ocean. Nellie dazzles like a kaleidoscope.”
“I don’t see either making a wife anytime soon.”
“I’m not rushing.”
A gust of wind stronger than the others shook the building. Sand blown across the bay rattled the windowpanes like hail.
“Let’s ge
t to the real question,” said Wish. “Who’s the assassin shooting for?”
Bell said, “You know how they call Standard Oil the octopus?”
“Aptly,” said Wish.
“I’m thinking our mastermind is more like a shark. Hanging around this monster-size octopus, thinking if he can just sink his teeth into one or two arms, he’ll have himself the meal of a lifetime. He’s shifting the blame for his crimes to the Standard. If he can pull it off, he reckons to pick up some pieces. If it really goes his way, he figures he’ll control the second-biggest trust in oil.”
Wish nodded. “I’d call that basis for a mighty strong hunch.”
“He could be inside the company or an outsider, an oil man, or a railroad man, or in coal or steel. Even a corporation lawyer.”
“A valuable man,” said Wish, “a man on his way up . . . Say, where are you going? Have another.”
Bell had stood up and was reaching for money. “My ‘boss,’ Mr. Rockefeller, is waiting for me to confirm that Detective Aloysius Clarke is no longer a Van Dorn but a freelance bodyguard for Nellie Matters and E. M. Hock, who are traveling together for safety. And that Detective Clarke gave no hint to me that either knows that Mr. Rockefeller is in Baku.”
“Rockefeller? Never heard of him,” grinned Wish. He glanced at the bottle they were sharing. His gaze shifted to Bell’s arm in his sling. “Hold on,” he said, “I’ll walk you back.”
“Stay there. I’m O.K.”
“In the event you get in a gunfight of such duration that you have to reload, I would never forgive myself if I didn’t give your one hand a hand.”
Outside, the sharp north wind that had cleared the sky of smoke earlier was blowing a gale. The stars had disappeared again, obscured now by the sand that the harsh gusts were sucking into the air. The harbor lights were barely visible. A caustic blast rattled pebbles against walls.
“Look there!”
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.
Nellie burst into the room, color high, eyes bright.
Wish Clarke was right behind her, his expression grim. “Big gunfight on Millionnaya and a riot at the train station,” he reported. “Nellie spotted a way across Vokzalnaya if we want the harbor.”
“We want it,” said Bell. “Let’s go.”
—
The Hotel de l’Europe was guarded by nervous plainclothes police. Europeans paced the lobby shouting at frightened staff. The hotel pianist began playing a Schubert serenade as if, Isaac Bell thought fleetingly, he hoped to help the world right itself. Bell ran to get his carpetbag. Rockefeller’s suite, adjoining his room, was empty. Bell searched it and ran back down to the lobby. Wish was standing on the stairs, where he could watch the doors. Edna and Nellie stood behind him. Both women were eerily calm.
“Did you see Rockefeller?”
“No.”
“There!” said Edna.
The oil magnate was exiting the hotel manager’s office. He looked like he was headed to a garden party in his dandy’s costume, but Edna had seen through the wig disguise in a flash. Bell saw her beautiful face harden. Her lips were pressed tightly, dots of color flushed on her cheekbones, and her eyes settled on Rockefeller with an intensity stoked by hatred.
He glanced at Nellie. Every trace of the big smile usually ready on her lips had extinguished like a burning coal plunged in cold water. The color of her eyes, like Edna’s, shed every soft vestige of green and turned gray as ash.
Wish muttered, as they plunged across the crowded lobby to intercept Rockefeller, “Are you still sure you want to run together? The young ladies are primed to claw his eyes out.”
“Not my first choice,” said Bell. “But it’s our only choice.”
Rockefeller saw them hurrying toward him and said, “There you are. I was just paying our hotel bill.”
“Bill?” echoed Wish. “The town’s blowing up.”
“I pay my debts.”
The manager ran from his office and put the lie to that.
“Envoy Stone! If they reply to your cables, where shall I forward the answers?”
“New York.”
“Envoy Stone!” Isaac Bell said with the ice of cold steel in his voice. “We’re going—now. Stick close.”
—
The situation on Vokzalnaya deteriorated radically before they were halfway to the harbor. Here, too, the trolley had stopped. Suddenly Tatars were running up the middle of the street shooting pistols at well-dressed Armenians huddled in groups.
Russian Army soldiers wheeled up a Maxim gun on a heavy Sokolov mount. As the machine gunners propped it on its legs, the Tatars fled around the corner. The Armenians ran toward the station, mothers dragging children, young men and women helping their elders.
Pistol fire rained down on the Russian soldiers from above. The gunners tilted the water-jacketed barrel upward. The Maxim churned, and a stream of slugs blasted second-story windows.
From one of those windows flew a baseball-size sphere with a glittering tail of a burning fuse. Still in the air, it exploded with a flash and a sharp bang, and the street and sidewalks w
ere suddenly littered with bodies. Wounded were reeling away when a second bomb exploded prematurely still inside the window. No one remained alive in the circle of the two explosions, not the Tatars, Armenians, or the Russian gun crew sprawled around the Maxim.
Isaac Bell and Aloysius Clarke charged straight at it. A Maxim gun and a thousand .303 rounds in trained hands would be their ticket aboard any ship running from the harbor. Wish heaved one hundred forty pounds of Maxim and Sokolov mount over his shoulder. Bell scooped up four canvas ammunition belts in his good arm and looped them around his neck.
“Go!”
They staggered toward the harbor, closely trailed by Nellie and Edna and Rockefeller. At the foot of Vokzalnaya, a mob of people was storming the passenger steamer pier fighting to get up the gangway of the one remaining ship. Ships that had already fled were far across the bay, lights fading in the sand haze as they steamed for the safety of the open sea.
“Mr. Bell!” cried Rockefeller. “Is that the Nobel lubricating oil refinery afire?”
The Standard Oil president’s eyes locked on the sight of a huge fire miles up the coast at Black Town. From the white-hot heart of it, flames leaped a thousand feet into the air.
“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.
The Assassin Page 18
