Clive Cussler - The Assassin

The locomotive hauling the oil train to Batum rounded the curve under a massive crown of thick black smoke. She was an oil burner, all right — no self-respecting fireman would allow such smoke from a coal furnace — a modern, ten-drive-wheeled, Pennsylvania-built “decapod,” moving faster than Bell would have liked for the first attempt by novice hobos. But they weren’t likely to get a second chance to hop a freight before the authorities started searching even oil trains for the bank robbers and the money.

The powerful Baldwin approached where they hid on the ballast slope, accelerating as it threw off the eight-hundred-ton inertia of thirty heavily laden tank cars. The locomotive passed them, trailed by its fuel-and-water tender. Then came the first car, which was comprised of a long, cylindrical, six-thousand-gallon tank laid horizontally on a flatbed. Bell pointed out the niches where the tube-shaped tank was braced on the flatbed and shouted over the thunder, “Get inside that brace where they can’t see you.”

He looked Edna in the eyes and saw a healthy mix of fear and determination. Nellie, by contrast, showed no fear. When he gauged Rockefeller’s ability to take the chance, the magnate said sternly, “I am counting on you, Mr. Bell, that one day I may relate this incident to disbelieving great-grandchildren.”

The locomotive disappeared around the bend in the tracks.

“Go!” Bell said to Edna.

Edna Matters scrambled up the embankment. Nellie followed, overtaking her and reaching back to help her up. They clasped hands, attained the flat roadbed, and ran along the crossties beside the moving train.

Isaac Bell took John D. Rockefeller’s arm. “Wish and I have you, sir. Just do what we tell you to.”

The Van Dorn detectives heaved the two-hundred-pound Rockefeller between them like a scarecrow stuffed with straw and sprang up the embankment.

Nellie Matters vaulted nimbly onto the flatbed of the rolling car. She grabbed a strut that braced the tank and, as Edna jumped, reached to join hands with her. Edna stumbled. For a second she dangled from Nellie’s hand, her feet frantically trying to push off as she ran along the stone ballast and wooden ties. She planted one foot and tried to jump again. Bell saw his two-shot derringer fall from her pocket and bounce on a crosstie and under a wheel.

Nellie screamed with effort and lifted her aboard. The women rolled under the tank, out of sight, which was Bell and Wish’s signal to hoist Rockefeller onto the next car.

Wish, with two working arms, went first.

The train had come down from the final mountain pass to a switching yard, where they stopped to uncouple the pusher engine, and Bell began to believe their luck would hold all the way to Batum when a lone brakeman walked slowly beside the car, shining a bull’s-eye lantern at the trucks. They had, all five, shifted by then to one car, the second back from the tender. Suddenly the brakeman straightened up with a cry and began stomping at the ground. He stopped, breathing hard, and picked up a dead snake in his glove. He tossed it away and his lantern beam hit John D. Rockefeller full in the face.

Isaac Bell and Wish Clarke reached toward him with both hands. Each held a pistol in one and gold in the other.

The brakeman blinked. Then he jerked off his heavy glove, snatched the coins, and ran into the dark.

Wish held tight to his gun. “Think he’ll come back?”

“Not if he’s an honest man,” Bell answered, still holding his. They waited, ears straining for the sound of the brakeman coming back with reinforcements and praying for the train to start. The locomotive whistled. Then it huffed. It was moving. The couplers clanked as the cars took up the slack. Suddenly they heard footsteps pounding, overtaking them, as the train began to roll.

The brakeman ran alongside, spotted them again. His face lit with a triumphant grin. He was carrying something and he thrust it at them. It quivered like something alive. For a second Bell thought it was an animal or a baby. Wish Clarke recognized it for what it was and held on tight. “Gracias, amigo!” he called to the Georgian.

He held it up for the rest to see. “Wineskin!”

Down from the mountains at last, the oil train raced west, stopping only once for fuel and water. The day dawned bright and sunny. The air grew humid as the train descended toward the river delta from which had been carved the harbor of Batum. Wish, who had put a sizable dent in the wineskin, thrust it at Rockefeller. “Have a snort?”

“I don’t drink.”

“You’ll love it,” said Wish. “They sealed the skin with naphtha. The wine tastes like oil.”

Bell leaned out from the tank car to look ahead. He spotted the Black Sea.

The Constantinople steamer blew its whistle as Bell herded his people out of their phaetons.

“There’s Father,” cried Nellie.

Bill Matters was on the dock, heading for the gangway. When he saw his daughters, his grim features melted in a smile of relief and he scooped Edna and Nellie into his big arms like they were little girls.

“How did you make out in Moscow?” Rockefeller greeted him.

Matters’ expression hardened. “I was doing fine until they suddenly clammed up. Next day, they refused to see me at all. I pressed an official I had given a lot of money to. He claimed they were angry. They told him they had been betrayed — by you, Mr. Rockefeller.”

“How?”

“They wouldn’t tell me. Any idea why?”

“None at all,” said Rockefeller.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. Don’t you understand? They threw dust in your eyes.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You gave up. You left Moscow too soon.”

“Do you want me to go back?”

“Wait until the disturbances settle down. For now, we’re going home.”

At Budapest, Isaac Bell surprised the party and he hoped the assassin, if he were nearby, by unexpectedly transferring everyone onto the Orient Express’s new section to Berlin.

“Berlin? You’re taking us the long way to Paris,” complained Rockefeller, who had insisted again on carrying his own bags to save European luggage fees when they boarded the Orient Express in Constantinople.

Bell took the heaviest from him. “We are not going to Paris. We’re joining SS Kaiser Wilhelm II at Bremen. There’s a boat train in Berlin.”

“Much better,” said Rockefeller, happily mollified. The North German Lloyd passenger liner held the Blue Riband for the fastest time across the Atlantic Ocean.

The boat train to Bremen steamed out of the German capital on Monday night, gathered speed through the suburbs, and highballed into the dark at sixty miles an hour.

Isaac Bell, Wish Clarke, Edna and Nellie Matters, and John D. Rockefeller gathered in the dining room that occupied the front half of the observation car. They were studying menus and discussing, longingly, the prospect of soon eating American food again when Bill Matters burst into the car. He stormed past the club chairs and stopped short at their tables. His eyes were wild, his jaw clenched.

Bell saw he had crumpled a yellow telegram in his fist.

“Father!” said Nellie. “We wondered where you had gotten to.”

Edna asked, “Are you quite well?”

Matters ignored them both. “Mr. Rockefeller! We must speak.” He lowered his voice. “In private.”

“It is rather late to discuss business. Why don’t you sit down and have some supper with the rest of us?”

Matters said, “It is not too late to discuss the Peerless autos you brought for the shah.”