Clive Cussler: The Assassin

A breeze stirred. The smoke thinned.

His head crystallized in the powerful glass.

Schooled in anatomy, the assassin pictured bone and connecting fibers of tendon and muscle and nerve under his target’s skin. The brain stem was an inch wide. To sever it was to drop a man instantly.

Spike Hopewell moved abruptly. He turned toward the ladder that rose from the derrick floor. The assassin switched to binoculars to inspect the intruder in their wider field of vision.

A man in a white suit cleared the top rung and bounded onto the cornice. The assassin recognized the lithe, supple-yet-contained fluid grace that could only belong to another predator — a deadly peer — and every nerve jumped to high alert.

Instinct, logic, and horse sense were in perfect agreement. Shoot the threat first.

Reckless pride revolted. No one— no one! — interferes with my kill. I shoot who I want, when I want.

Isaac Bell vaulted from the ladder, landed lightly on the derrick cornice, and introduced himself to Spike Hopewell with an engaging smile and a powerful hand.

“Bell. Van Dorn Detective Agency.”

Spike grinned. “Detecting incognito in a red Locomobile? Thought you were the fire department.”

Isaac Bell took an instant liking to the vigorous independent, by all reports a man as openhearted as he was combative. With a knowing glance at the source of Spike’s troubles — a mammoth gasoline storage tank on the far side of the refinery, eighty feet wide and twenty high — Bell answered with a straight face.

“Having ‘detected’ that you’re awash in gasoline, I traded my horse for an auto.”

Hopewell laughed. “You got me there. Biggest glut since the auto was invented… Whatcha doing here, son? What do you want?”

Bell said, “The government’s Corporations Commission is investigating Standard Oil for violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.”

“Do tell,” said Hopewell, his manner cooling.

“The commission hired the Van Dorn Agency to gather evidence of the Standard busting up rivals’ businesses.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“Fifty thousand gallons of gasoline you can’t ship to market is the sort of evidence I’m looking for.”

“It’s sitting there in that tank. Look all you want.”

“Can you tell me how your glut filled it?”

“Nope. And I won’t testify either.”

Isaac Bell had expected resistance. Hopewell had a reputation for being tough as a gamecock and scrappy as a one-eyed tom. But the success of the Van Dorn investigation hinged on persuading the independent to talk, both in confidence and in public testimony. Few oil men alive had more experience fighting the monopoly.

Age hadn’t slowed him a bit. Instead of cashing in and retiring when he struck enormous oil finds in Kansas, Spike Hopewell had built a modern refinery next to the fields to process crude oil for his fellow independent drillers. Now he was in the fight of his life, laying a tidewater pipe line to ship their gasoline and kerosene to tank steamers at Port Arthur, Texas.

Standard Oil was fighting just as hard to stop him.

“Won’t testify? The Standard flooded the courts with lawyers to block your line to the Gulf of Mexico.”

Spike was no slouch in the influence department. “I’m fighting ’em in the State House. The lawmakers in Topeka know darned well that Kansas producers and Kansas refineries are dead unless I can ship their product to European markets that Standard Oil don’t control.”

“Is that why the railroad untied your siding?”

There were no tank cars on the refinery siding. A forlorn-looking 0-6-0 switch engine had steam up, but it had nowhere to go and nothing to do except shuttle material around the refinery. A quarter mile of grass and sagebrush separated Hopewell’s tracks from the main line to Kansas City. The roadbed was graded, and gravel ballast laid, and telegraph wire strung. But the connecting spur for the carloads of material to build the refinery had been uprooted. Switches, rails, and crossties were scattered on the ground as if angry giants had kicked it to pieces.

Hopewell said, “My lawyers just got an injunction ordering the railroad to hook me up again.”

“You won a hollow victory. Standard Oil tied up every railroad tank car in the region. The commission wants to know how.”

“Tell ’em to take it up with the railroad.”

A wintery light grayed the detective’s eyes. His smile grew cool. Pussyfooting was getting him nowhere. “Other Van Dorn operatives are working on the railroad. My particular interest is how the Standard is blocking your tidewater pipe line.”

“I told you, son, I ain’t testifying.”

“With no pipe line,” Bell shot back, “and no railroad to transport your products to market, your wells and refinery are worthless. Everything you built here will be forced to the wall.”

“I’ve been bankrupt before — before you were born, sonny — but this time, I just might have another trick up my sleeve.”

“If you’re afraid,” Bell said, “the Van Dorn Agency will protect you.”

Spike’s manner softened slightly. “I appreciate that, Mr. Bell. And I don’t doubt you can give an account of yourself.” He nodded down at the Locomobile eighty feet below. “That you think to pack a towrope to cross open country tells me you’re a capable hand.”

“And enough extra parts to build a new one to pull the old one out of a ditch,” Bell smiled back, thinking they were getting somewhere at last.

“But you underestimate Standard Oil. They don’t murder the competition.”

“You underestimate the danger.”

“They don’t have to kill us. You yourself just said it. They’ve got lobbyists to trip us up in the legislature and lawyers to crush us in court.”

“Do you know Big Pete Straub?” Bell asked, watching for Hopewell’s reaction.

“Pete Straub is employed by Standard Oil’s industrial service firm. That’s their fancy name for refinery cops, strikebreakers, and labor spies. He smashed my pipe line back in Pennsylvania.”

“I bumped into Straub only yesterday in Kansas City.”

The older man shrugged, as if monumentally unconcerned. “Standard Oil has no monopoly on private cops and strikebreakers. You’ll find Big Pete’s bulldozing union labor in coal mines, railroads, and steel mills. For all you know, he’s on his way to Colorado to bust up the miners union. Heck, Rockefeller owns half the mines out there.”

“He’s not in Colorado. He’s in Kansas. Last time Straub visited Kansas, independent refiners bucking the Standard turned up dead in Fort Scott and Coffeyville.”

“Accidents,” Spike Hopewell scoffed. “Reed Riggs fell under a locomotive — drunk, if he held to pattern — and poor Albert Hill was repairing an agitator when he tumbled into a tank.” Hopewell shot Bell a challenging look. “You know what an agitator is, Mr. Detective?”

“The agitator treats crude gasoline distillate with sulfuric acid, washes away the acid with water, neutralizes it with caustic soda, and separates the water.”

Hopewell nodded. “You’ve done your homework. In that case, you know that the fumes’ll make you light-headed if you’re not careful. Albert tended not to be.”

“I’m not one hundred percent sure both were accidents.”

“I’m sure,” Hopewell fired back.

Bell turned on him suddenly. “If you’re not afraid, why won’t you testify?”

Hopewell folded his ample arms across his chest. “Tattling goes against my grain.”

“ Tattling? Come on, Spike, we’re not schoolboys. Your work’s at grave risk, everything you built, and maybe even your life.”