Clive Cussler - The Assassin

“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.”

“Presumptuous of you.”

“Not at all. I am modeling my business on yours.”

“I am an old man and beyond the influence of flattery. But I do wonder how you would compare a gumshoe to an oil man?”

“E. M. Hock wrote that you achieved your great success in the oil business by being ruthlessly efficient. I heard with my own ears your boast of efficiency to Mr. Van Dorn. In order to be the best ‘gumshoe’ in the private detective business, I had better be efficient.”

Rockefeller replied without a hint of expression, and Bell could not for the life of him tell if the man had a sense of humor. “You’ll know you’re efficient, Detective Bell, when they call you a monster.”

Bell said, “I will make the travel arrangements.”

“I have a man who handles them.”

“Not on this trip. I will decide the safest route.”

Rockefeller nodded agreement. “Of course, none of this is to be repeated. I want no one to know I have business in Baku. We must travel in the utmost secrecy.”

“That will make my job a lot easier,” said Bell. “When do you want to arrive?”

At Grand Central Station, which was being simultaneously demolished and expanded into an electrified Grand Central Terminal, the sidings reserved for private railcars offered connections to city telephone systems.

“I need another rifle,” said the assassin.

“Another 99?” asked the gunsmith.

“Have you anything better?”

“I always make you the best.”

“Then more of the best! 99 it is.”

“With telescope?”

“Only the mounting. But I want different bullets.”

“Is there a problem with my loads?”

Picturing the gunsmith’s fussy hands and the desperate-to-please eyes of a genius who didn’t believe he was a genius, the assassin reassured him, “Your loads are wonderfully consistent. I trust my life with them. But I’ve been thinking, have you ever made a bullet that explodes?”

“A dumdum bullet?”

“No. Not a hollow-point. A bullet that detonates on impact.”

“Like an artillery shell?”

“Precisely. A miniature artillery shell.”

“It’s hard to imagine stuffing an impact fuse and explosive into such a small projectile.”

“But you have a wonderful imagination.”

“I am intrigued,” said the gunsmith. “You are as stimulating as ever.”

Back from Pocantico Hills, Isaac Bell wired Joseph Van Dorn in agency cipher:

BAKU VIA CLEVELAND.

And with very little time to set the murder and Corporations Commission investigations in productive motion before he was stuck incommunicado on the high seas, he fired off three more telegrams.

To Detective Archie Abbott in Washington:

WHY PERSIA? ON THE JUMP.

To Detective Wally Kisley and Detective Mack Fulton still in Kansas:

HOPEWELL TRICKS UP SLEEVE? ON THE JUMP.

To Detective Aloysius “Wish” Clarke, who was about to receive the plummiest assignment of his checkered career:

COME NEW YORK. ON THE JUMP.

Bell himself went to the Sage Gun Company on West 43rd Street.

He walked in carrying a carpetbag and shook hands with Dave McCoart, a hard-muscled gunsmith with long, thin fingers and a ruddy Irish complexion.

“I was just thinking about you,” McCoart greeted him. “Are you familiar with the FN outfit in Belgium?”

“ Fabrique Nationale. Firearms manufacturer in the Liège district.”

“Mr. Browning gave FN a contract to manufacture a 9mm variant of a new design. I am told it’s a beautiful pistol. I’m thinking I can modify it with a chamber bushing to fire an American .380 caliber cartridge. It would be considerably lighter than that brick in your shoulder holster.”

“I like my gun’s stopping power. It’s served me well.”

“What the Number 2 lacks in stopping power — and you are right to be concerned — will be made up with outstanding accuracy.”

“How outstanding?”

“Compared to your Colt? Like a rifle.”

“O.K., make me one. Now, I have a question. Have you ever seen a breakdown model of a Savage 99?”

“No.”

“Could you convert a factory piece to a breakdown?”

“I could.”

“How many gunsmiths could do such a conversion?”

McCoart grinned. “That depends on whether the accuracy of the weapon is high on your list of expectations.”

“At the top.”

“Then I would shop very carefully to get the right man. Look for one who has a top-notch machine shop and several pints of artist in his bloodstream.”

“How many such men do you know?”

“With a top-notch machine shop?”

“Or access to one.”

“… A few, I suppose.”

“How many more would be out there that you don’t know personally?”

“Around the country? Quite a few.”

“How many would be known to gunsmiths who you know?”

“There are cities where the best congregate. They settle near where they learned the craft and can turn to each other to make specialty items. Around the Winchester works in New Haven, Connecticut, or Savage’s factory upstate in Utica. Springfield in Springfield, Massachusetts. Remington in Bridgeport, Colt in Hartford. Do you mind me asking what the rifle is used for?”

“I was about to warn you. It’s being used for murder.”

“Reckoned as much.”

“So ask carefully. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of this guy.”

McCoart asked, “Do you suppose the smith knows what his customer is up to?”

It was a good question, and Bell thought on it before he answered. “The smith could believe his customer is a target shooter.”