Clive Cussler: The Assassin

Matters watched with helpless fury. The hundred-ton crane lowered an excavator bucket. Its jutting spike teeth bit into the freshly dug soil like the jaws of Tyrannosaurus rex . Steam hissed. The jaws crushed shut. The crane clawed pipes out of the ground and dropped them in a welter of bent and broken metal.

A pair of dim lights bounced slowly across the starlit field. The county sheriff pulled up in a Pittsburgh gasoline runabout. A scared-looking deputy was seated beside him.

Bill Matters and Spike Hopewell demanded protection for their workmen. Matters shouted that they had a legal right to route an independent pipe line under the railroad’s right-of-way because they had bought this low-lying farm where the elevated tracks crossed on tall trestles.

“The railroad can’t block us! We own this land free and clear.”

Here was their deed.

Matters shook the parchment in the dim glow of the runabout’s headlamp.

The sheriff glanced down from his steering tiller. He answered too quickly, like a man who had been ordered to read a copy days ago. “Says on your deed that the Pennsylvania Railroad leased their right-of-way across this farm.”

“Only for track and trestles.”

“Lease says you mustn’t damage their roadbed.”

“We’re not hurting their road. We’re trenching between the trestle piers.”

Matters shoved more paper into the light. See their engineer’s report! See their attorney’s brief asserting their case! See this court case precedent!

“I’m no lawyer,” said the sheriff, “but everybody knows that Mr. Rockefeller has a mighty big say in how they run the Pennsylvania Railroad.”

“But we own—”

The sheriff laughed. “What made you think you can fight Standard Oil?”

A coal-black Pittsburgh sky mirrored Bill Matters’ despair.

“Business is business,” his banker was droning. Mortgaged to the hilt to build a pipe line they could not finish, they had to sell for pennies on the dollar to Standard Oil. “No one else will make an offer. My advice is to accept theirs and walk away clean.”

“They tricked us into building it for them,” Matters whispered.

“What about the Hook?” asked Spike.

“Constable Hook?” asked the banker. “Part of the package.”

“It is the most modern refinery in the world,” said Matters.

“There’s no deal without the refinery. I believe Standard Oil intends to expand it.”

“It’s made to grow. We bought the entire hill and every foot of waterfront.”

“The Standard wants it.”

“At least we won’t owe much,” said Spike.

“We planted,” said Matters. “They’ll reap.”

The banker’s voice tube whistled. He put it by his ear. He jumped to his feet. “Mr. Comstock is here.”

The door flew open. In strode white-haired Averell Comstock, one of John D. Rockefeller’s first partners from back in their Cleveland refinery days. Comstock was a member of the trust’s innermost circle, the privileged few that the newspapers called the Standard Oil Gang.

“Excuse us,” he said to the banker.

Without a word, the man scuttled from his office.

“Mr. Rockefeller has asked me to invite you gentlemen to join the company.”

“What?” said Spike Hopewell. He looked incredulously at Matters.

Comstock said, “It is Mr. Rockefeller’s wish that you start as co-directors of the Pipe Line Committee.”

Matters turned pale with anger. His hands trembled. He clenched them into fists and still they shook. “Managing the pipe line monopoly we tried to beat? Bankrupting wildcatter drillers? Busting independent refiners out of business?”

The tall, vigorous Comstock returned a steely gaze. “Standard Oil wastes nothing . We make full use of every resource, including — especially including — smart, ambitious, hard-driving oil men. Are you with us?”

“I’d join Satan first,” said Spike Hopewell.

He jammed his hat on his head and barreled out the door. “Let’s go, Bill. We’ll start fresh in Kansas. Wildcat the new fields before the octopus wraps its arms around them, too.”

Bill Matters went home to Oil City, Pennsylvania.

His modest three-story mansion stood on a tree-lined street cheek by jowl with similar stuccoed and shingled houses built by independents like him who had prospered in the early “oil fever” years before the Standard clamped down. The rolltop desk he used for an office shared the back parlor with his daughters’ books and toy theaters.

The paper models of London and New York stage sets that the girls had preferred to dollhouses occupied every flat surface. Rendered in brightly colored miniature, Juliet loved Romeo from her balcony. Hamlet walked the parapet with his father’s ghost. Richard III handed the death warrant to murderers.

Nellie and Edna found him there with tears in his eyes. He was cradling the Remington he had bought from a Civil War vet. The “faithful friend” had won shoot-outs with teamsters who had gathered in mobs at night to smash his first pipe line — a four-miler to Oil Creek — that put their wagons out of business.

The two young women acted as one.

Nellie threw her arms around him and planted a kiss on his cheek. Edna wrested the gun from his hands. He did not resist. He would die himself before he let harm come to either of them. Edna, his adopted stepdaughter, a cub reporter for the Oil City Derrick who had just graduated from Allegheny College, was the quiet one. The younger, outgoing Nellie usually did the talking. She did now, cloaking urgency with good-humored teasing.

“Whom do you intend to shoot, Father?” she joshed in a strong voice. “Do burglars lurk?”

“I came so close,” he muttered. “So close.”

“You’ll do better next time.”

Matters lifted his head from his hands and raised his gaze to the clear-eyed, slender young women. The half sisters looked nearly alike, having inherited their mother’s silky chestnut hair and strong, regular features, but there the similarity ended. One was an open book. One a vault of secrets.

“Do you know what Rockefeller did?” he asked.

“If he drowned in the river, they’d find his body upstream,” said Edna. “JDR is the master of the unexpected.”

“I wish he would drown in the river,” said Nellie.

“So do I,” said Matters. “More than ever.” He told them about Rockefeller’s invitation to join Standard Oil. “Head of the Pipe Line Committee, no less.”

Nellie and Edna looked at the pistol that Edna was still holding, then locked eyes. They were terrified he would kill himself. But would giving up his lifelong fight for independence kill him, too? Only more slowly.

“Maybe you should take it,” said Nellie.

“Father is better than that,” said Edna.

His glistening eyes flickered from their faces to the toy theaters and settled on the gun. Edna drew it closer to her body. A queer smile crossed Matters’ grim face. “Maybe I could be better than that.”

“You are,” they chorused. “You are.”

Their helpless expressions tore him to pieces. “Go,” he said. “Leave me. Keep the gun. Ease your silly minds.”

“Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

“Give me until morning to get used to getting beat.”

He ushered them out and closed the door. Wild thoughts were racing through his mind. He could not sit still. Father is better than that?

He prowled his office. Now and then he paused to peer into the toy theaters. Twice a year he would take the girls on the train to plays in New York. And after the Oil City skating rink was converted to an opera house, they attended every touring company that performed. Shakespeare was their favorite. Romeo loving Juliet. Hamlet promising his father’s ghost revenge. Richard III instructing his henchmen. Secret promises. Secret revenge. Secret plots.