The Assassin Read online

  The little guy with the rifle was one of those. He seemed rich. Or rich enough. He paid generously, ten times what Pete earned from the Standard’s industrial service firm. In gold, the minute the job was done. He spoke rarely and never loudly—one whispered word instead of two—and never if a gesture would do. He was as alert as a wolf, intensely aware of what was going on around him. He was patient; he could sit all day waiting for a shot. And when things flew apart, he never lost his nerve.

  But what made the assassin so special to the hulking Standard Oil thug was that he was something to watch. In his hands, the sleek, hammerless Savage 99 looked deadly as a rattlesnake. There were times, Big Pete thought, you could not tell where his fingers stopped and the blue steel began. He wore gloves, black gloves, tight as a second skin, with a tiny patch cut out where his finger touched the trigger. He wore a hat with a slightly abbreviated brim, which Straub was sure he had had specially made so it would shade the eyepiece of the telescope but not get in his way. He wore a dark scarf, like a cowboy bandanna, around his throat that covered his neck and his chin.

  And could the guy shoot! He could kill people Straub couldn’t even see. Sure, he had a telescope, but it was more than the powerful glass, more like something out of a magic show. When his bullet left the gun, it traveled sure as a flier on the rails, a certain connection between his trigger finger and his target’s head.

  The assassin gestured for Big Pete to fire first. His eyes were empty, his rifle steady.

  This was the first time Big Pete had fired alongside the marksman. In the past he had covered the escape route to throw off pursuit, if there was any, and draw fire as he had when the Van Dorns chased him in Hopewell, Kansas. But here in Southeast Texas, in the boomtown of Humble, they were crouching side by side on a flat roof behind the false front of a tall saloon. Planning step-by-step as always, the assassin had chosen shooting holes in the curlicue-carved top of the ornate front.

  Straub’s job was to fire first to break a window. His hands were steady, but he could feel his palms getting wet. He was a decent shot. The bolt action Springfield ’03 was a good weapon. And his target was fully two feet square.

  C. C. Gustafson—editor of the Humble Clarion, who’d been making a career of criticizing Standard Oil practices in Texas and provoking the legislature to expel the trust from the state—was standing behind the window setting type.

  Big Pete aimed at the blood-red dot of his bow tie.

  “Don’t try to hit him,” whispered the assassin.

  “I know,” said Straub. “Just break the glass.” How had the assassin known where he was aiming? The guy missed nothing. Straub shifted the rifle and sighted dead center in the window. He heard the assassin take a shallow breath and hold it.

  “Now!”

  Big Pete squeezed his trigger.

  The Springfield boomed.

  Glass flew.

  The editor looked up, wasted a half breath staring, then tried to dive behind the press.

  The assassin’s Savage gave a sharp crack. The editor tumbled backward. Then, to Straub’s surprise, the assassin fired again. Next second, they were running, crouched, across the roof, then down the ladder to the alley behind the saloon.

  “Good shot!” Straub exulted.

  “Missed,” said the assassin, his voice emotionless.

  A man stepped around the corner. He had unbuttoned his fly as if about to urinate on the wall. Squinting around for the source of the gunshots, he saw two men running toward him with rifles.

  “Kill him,” said the assassin.

  Straub broke his neck.

  The assassin gestured.

  Straub slung the body over his shoulder and they ran, following the escape route they had rehearsed. After they had put distance between them and the saloon, the assassin gestured to drop the dead man beside a rain barrel on top of Straub’s Springfield.

  —

  Grady Forrer of Van Dorn Research sent Isaac Bell a telegram to alert him to a shooting in far-off Texas that might possibly pertain to his investigation. Bell had known Forrer since Joseph Van Dorn had hired him to establish the Research Department and trusted his judgment. He immediately wired Texas Walt Hatfield, the formidable Van Dorn detective—a former Ranger, raised by the Comanche—who operated as a one-man field office for the biggest state in the Union.

  REPORT EDITOR SHOOTING HUMBLE

  OIL?

  8

  Bill Matters read and reread a dozen newspaper reports about a transatlantic cable John D. Rockefeller had sent from Cannes, France, to his Fifth Avenue Baptist Church Sunday school class. The New York and Cleveland papers had published the cable back in January when he was abroad, and it had been printed and reprinted through the spring as paper after paper used the great man’s wisdom to inspire the devout and fill space.

  “Delightful breezes. I enjoy watching the fishermen with their nets on the beach, and gazing upon the sun rising over the beautiful Mediterranean Sea. The days pass pleasantly and profitably.”

  It was an open secret at Standard Oil headquarters that publicists scheming to furbish up Rockefeller’s reputation planted stories in the newspapers. But Matters suspected there was much more to this cable than polishing the public image of a greedy tycoon into a glowing example of the pleasant old age everyone looked forward to. A deep feeling gnawed his gut that Rockefeller had transmitted coded messages to his elderly partners about a secret deal he was negotiating overseas under the cloak of a retiree traveling around Europe.

  Whatever the pirate was up to, Matters wanted in on it.

  Matters himself was no stranger to coded messages. He communicated with his assassin with cryptic instructions in the want ads of daily newspapers. He felt so strongly that this cable was big—something huge, the sort of deal the supposedly retired president had time to pursue thanks to underlings like him taking over day-to-day operations—that he decided to risk consulting a clandestine partner he had cultivated among his fellow managers.

  Old Clyde Lapham, an early Standard Oil partner, was losing his grip to dementia. When the others realized he was no longer striking a high batting average, they had begun excluding him from private deals. Lapham knew, or sensed enough of what was happening to accept, warily, the kindness and respect that the much-younger, vigorous Matters pretended to offer.

  Lapham said he suspected a secret deal, too, when Matters broached the subject. Stung that he had not been invited to partake, he translated the basics of the message over a supper Matters invited him to at Mcdonald’s Oyster House up by Bleecker on the Bowery, where no one would recognize them. Matters ordered wine to loosen him up. Lapham’s vague eyes kept locking on the empty littleneck clamshells as if they held some secret. He had a thin voice.

  “‘Delightful breezes’ means big changes are under way,” he reported matter-of-factly. “‘I enjoy watching the fishermen with their nets on the beach’ means that Mr. Rockefeller is spying on competitors.”

  But the old man was baffled by “gazing upon the sun rising over the beautiful Mediterranean Sea.” Pawing purposefully across the table, he picked up an empty clamshell and examined it closely.

  “Sir Marcus Samuel’s father got his start selling these.”

  “Selling what?”

  “Seashells. Old Marcus Senior imported oriental seashells, sold them to people decorating their houses. Where did you think Junior got the money to invent his goddamned oil tankers?”

  Sir Marcus Samuel, who had pioneered a fleet of bulk-oil-carrying steamers, commanded their powerful English competitor, Shell Transport and Trading. The richest distributor of refined oil, in cans packed in wooden cases, to India and China, Samuel had run circles around the mighty Standard for more than a decade and had recently increased his sales force by forming the Asiatic Petroleum Company with the Royal Dutch Company.

  Matters regained Lapham’s attention, with some effort, and coaxed him to concentrate on “The days pass pleasantly and profitably.”

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p; Lapham finally said that he believed that “The days pass pleasantly and profitably” meant that Rockefeller was laying groundwork for his next move. He picked up another shell.

  “What move?” Matters asked.

  Lapham shrugged. “The sun rising over the beautiful Mediterranean Sea rises in the east.”

  Of course! The rich Baku oil fields on the Caspian Sea that pumped half the world’s oil were in the east. Chaos threatened Baku. January’s Bloody Sunday massacre at the Russian czar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg had inflamed revolutionary unrest and Muslim–Christian hatred simultaneously. Civil war threatened the oil fields.

  In that instant, Bill Matters had to restrain himself from lunging across the table to kiss Lapham’s wrinkled hand. The looney old man had done him a huge favor and ripped the scales from his eyes. He had been thinking too small. Way too small. He suddenly saw the world as Rockefeller did.

  That it was definitely code galvanized Matters. He made an educated guess based in part on the six years he’d been circling the rim of the inner circle of the Standard Oil Gang and based in part on a perceptive analysis by the assassin who speculated that Rockefeller sensed an opportunity to break the stranglehold that his overseas enemies—the Nobel and Rothschild families and Sir Marcus Samuel—had on Russian oil.

  How could Rockefeller not be tempted by the spoils? Fighting and destruction in Baku would shut down half the world supply and the price of oil would double or triple to two, to three, to four dollars a barrel, prices that hadn’t been seen in decades. American oil men would cheer. But John D. Rockefeller was no ordinary oil man.

  Wouldn’t he imagine much-richer spoils than a temporary jump in price? Wouldn’t he see the chaos of civil war as an opportunity to displace the Rothschilds, overthrow the Nobels, sink Shell, and own it all?

  Bill Matters knew in his gut that this was the chance he had been working for. Something this big would never come again. Whatever Rockefeller was scheming in the east, Matters had to make himself part of it.

  His success thus far, since joining the Standard—his growing wealth and power within the corporation, though still not in the inner circle—proved he had been right to bank on the secrecy that pervaded the trust. Secrets had given him room to operate, as had the madcap distraction of everyone from Rockefeller on down who were busy getting richer.

  Business was roaring. New markets were enormous: fuel for ships and power plants, gasoline to feed the automobile boom. But supply, too, was growing; vast new oil fields in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Mexico, and California surpassed the old Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana fields. It was becoming impossible for the Standard to control production to keep prices high. Competing producers—Gulf Oil and the Texas Company—were springing to life even as the monopoly came under increasing fire from Progressive reformers determined to break up the trust. Rockefeller himself was distracted by the government prosecution and equally by his attempts to repair his reputation by becoming a philanthropist.

  The pressure was on the old president to do something.

  Thus the Baku push.

  —

  Bill Matters approached white-haired Averell Comstock, a charter member of the “gang” who often profited from private deals. “I have a scheme for a joint adventure.”

  “What sort of scheme?”

  “A private partnership with you and Mr. Rockefeller to persuade the Russian government to let Standard Oil build new, modern refineries and refurbish the old ones owned by Rothschild and Nobel.”

  Comstock was immediately suspicious.

  “Where did you get that idea, Bill? It’s as if you read our minds.”

  Matters felt his spirits soar. He had guessed right about a lot of things.

  He answered modestly, “I’m an old wildcat driller. Good at guessing. Besides, I recall that in ’03 Mr. Rockefeller considered roping in St. Petersburg banks to buy Baku oil fields.”

  “Are you sure you haven’t been eavesdropping on telephone calls?”

  “Quite sure, Mr. Comstock.” According to Clyde Lapham, this was not the first time Rockefeller had set sights on the Caucasus. Back in ’98, Standard Oil sent geologists to survey for commercial oil reserves in Azerbaijan.

  “Or tapping wires?”

  “I wouldn’t know how to begin to tap wires,” Matters lied.

  “What else have you ‘guessed’?”

  Matters took his best shot. “What if I were to propose to you a plan to beat Sir Marcus Samuel at shipping case oil to Asia?”

  Comstock glared. So-called case oil was kerosene shipped in gallon tins packed in wooden boxes. The Asian market was enormous. Chinese and Indians burned the oil in their lamps and used the wood and tin to build their huts, shingle their roofs, make cooking pots and pitchers. Sir Marcus Samuel, the all-powerful English distributor of case oil to India and China, had visited these offices in great secrecy in 1901 to negotiate some sort of partnership. Matters was gambling that Rockefeller and Comstock wished their talks had panned out.

  “Mr. Rockefeller prefers knowing to guessing,” said Comstock.

  Bill Matters stood his ground. “I am not guessing.”

  Comstock was scornful. “Let me remind you that Standard Oil has not managed to beat Samuel in fifteen years. The conniving Englishman parlayed preferential treatment from the Suez Canal into the biggest tank steamer fleet to Asia.”

  “I know how to beat Samuel,” Bill Matters shot back.

  “How?”

  “Bypass the Suez Canal.”

  “Bypass the Suez?” Comstock turned more scornful. “Have you any idea how long it takes a tank ship to steam around Africa? Why do you suppose they dug a canal?”

  “Bypass the Transcaucasus Railroad, too,” Matters shot back. “And Batum. And the Black Sea. And the Dardanelles, Constantinople, and the Mediterranean.”

  “Poppycock! How the devil could we ship kerosene to India and China?”

  “Build a pipe line from Baku to the Persian Gulf.”

  “A pipe line? . . .” Comstock’s face was a mask. But his eyes grew busy. “Too ambitious. Persia is mountainous and bedeviled by warlords and revolutionaries.”

  “No more ambitious than our pipe lines across Pennsylvania’s mountains to the Atlantic seaboard,” Matters answered, choosing his words carefully. His hated rivals had never built an inch of pipe line, themselves, but stolen his.

  Comstock shook his head. “Great Britain will fight a Russian link to the Gulf every inch of the way.”

  “Don’t you think Standard Oil should fight back for half the oil in the world and all the markets of Asia?”

  Comstock’s face remained a mask. Eventually, he closed his hands in a double fist and gazed at Matters over his interlocked knuckles. “Were Mr. Rockefeller to approve a pipe line, he might invite you to join as a junior partner in the enterprise.”

  Averell Comstock would of course be a full partner. Matters had braced himself to pretend humble acquiescence and he said, “I would be deeply honored.”

  In fact, he was thrilled—not for a junior partnership but for the access he would gain to the president. Comstock may have his doubts, but he also sensed that the pipe line was a bold idea that Rockefeller would seize upon. In which case, Comstock feared the idea would get to the president from someone else unless he moved quickly.

  Matters reminded himself not to get cocky. Older Standard Oil directors, who jealously guarded their power, were the smartest in American industry. There were wise men among them who might intuit Matters’ plot, might guess that for Bill Matters the pipe line was only the beginning.

  As the assassin had proclaimed after shooting Spike Hopewell, those who get too close will be killed.

  —

  Bill Matters summoned the assassin to his private rail car.

  “Word’s come from Texas that C. C. Gustafson did not die.”

  “I’m not surprised. He was quick as lightning. I struck him twice, but neither shot felt right.”

  �
�What happened?”

  “Fate intervened,” the assassin said blithely, but, unable to abide a deep sense of failure, added in a voice suddenly dark, “I am mortified . . . I promise you that such a failure will never again occur. Never.”

  “Don’t worry about Gustafson. The effect of the attack is the same as if he had died. They’ll blame Standard Oil.”

  The assassin’s spirits continued to fall. “I have promised myself on my mother’s grave that I will never miss again. Never.”

  Matters said, “I need something new from you. Something quite different.”

  The assassin leaned closer, intrigued. “How different?”

  “Some old ones must die.”

  “Comstock?”

  “Yes. He’s bringing my pipe line scheme to Rockefeller. After he does, I need him out of my way.”

  “And old Lapham?”

  “No, not Lapham.”

  “God knows what Clyde Lapham remembers,” the assassin warned darkly. “But whatever he does remember will be too much.”

  “Not yet! I need Lapham.”

  “O.K. Only Comstock. For the moment. What is different?”

  “His death must appear to be natural. No sniping. No suspicion of murder.”

  “Miles ahead of you,” the assassin crowed—spirits soaring as suddenly high as a skyrocket—and whipped out of a vest pocket a red vial.

  —

  From Humble, Texas, Walt Hatfield wired Isaac Bell at the Washington field office.

  C. C. GUSTAFSON VEXED STANDARD

  WINGED NOT DEAD YET

  SHERIFF’S SUSPECT DEAD

  Isaac Bell raced to Central Station. The Washington & Southwestern Limited was fully booked, but a pass given him by a prep school classmate’s railroad president father got Bell into a seat reserved for friends of the company. Everyone, the conductor told him, seemed to be going to Texas.

  In the smoker, he drank a Manhattan cocktail that was exactly the color of Edna Matters’ fine, wispy hair. And from what he had glimpsed of Nellie, hers too. He ordered another and raised the glass to salute Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, which the train passed by in the dying daylight. He ate a grilled rockfish in the dining car, and slept in a Pullman Palace sleeper that the Limited picked up in Danville, Virginia.