Clive Cussler - The Assassin

“Stop asking silly questions, Isaac. Ask something important.”

“How did you learn to shoot?”

Nellie answered as if telling a story she had read in a book. “I ran away from home when I was fourteen. Like you. I joined a circus. Like you.”

“Your father told me the same story. The sheriff drove off his mother’s pigs and cows. What’s your excuse?”

She ignored the question. “By the time Father found me, the trick shootist had taught me everything she knew. I had a talent for guns — steady hands and a keen eye. I can see farther than any human being. And I can concentrate; most people can’t.”

“A natural?”

“As natural as breathing.”

“And lashing out to banish fear?”

“I’m never afraid,” said Nellie. “By the way, I see you gathering your legs to jump… Don’t!”

Bell made a show of relaxing his legs. “Is that your rifle in the bag?”

“I’m at my absolute best with the rifle.”

“Loaded with explosive bullets?”

“Stop showing off, Isaac. Everyone knows you’re a crack detective.”

“Who’s it for?”

“Who do you think it’s for?”

“Rockefeller.”

“For what he has done to my father, John D. Rockefeller will pay with much, much more than his life.”

“What could be more than life, Nellie?”

“What Rockefeller loves most. Do you have any other questions, Isaac?”

He had to keep her talking. “A young soldier was commended by the President of the United States for winning the highest shooting metal in the nation. Why would he desert the Army?”

“ She saw no future in the Army.”

“There is a long, brave history of women serving their country disguised as men.”

Suddenly she was bitter, her cheeks taut, her voice harsh. “I had no choice. How else could a girl win the President’s Medal? I knew I was the best shot, better than any man. How else could I prove it?”

“But how hard it must have been fooling men in their barracks. How did you do it, Nellie?”

She was all too ready to boast and the bitterness dissolved. But she never took her eyes from him. Nor did her derringer waver as she demonstrated planting her legs apart, lowering her voice to mock him and the people she fooled: “Manly tones; theater tricks like skullcap and wig, trousers, boots. A detective must know that men believe what they assume is true.”

“But why did this young sharpshooter desert?”

“She won the medal. Why stay? It was time to move on. I always move on.”

“Or was she afraid they would find her out? Just as she feared she would be found out when her brother was murdered and she joined the Army disguised as a boy?”

“She was never afraid.”

“After she learned that her father loved her so much, he would forgive her of anything…?”

“Or refuse to believe his worst fear,” Nellie replied coldly. “Even when he saw it with his own eyes, all he could say was how much he loved my mother.”

The derringer remained rock-steady as she hiked herself up to sit on the rounded edge of the wicker basket while clutching her carpetbag under her arm. “Billy was only Father’s stepson.”

“And your half brother, your own mother’s child.”

“I never knew my ‘own mother.’ She died when I was a baby.”

“But why did you kill Billy?”

Nellie’s eyes bored into Bell’s. “Lots of reasons, Isaac. He was such a coward. I was trying to get rid of his silly drowning fear. I made the mistake of confiding in him. I told him I was running away to join the Army… I loved him, Isaac. I loved him very much. But he would have ruined everything if he told. And I couldn’t stand him being afraid.”

“How did you kill him?” Bell kept waiting for her to look away, but her eyes were fixed on his.

Suddenly the women in the nearest balloon called, “Nellie! We’re almost ready.”

She waved to them, the gun tucked to her side, neither turning her head nor taking her eyes from Bell.

“How could a girl drown a boy as big as she? Didn’t he fight back?”

“He was groggy.”

“You poisoned him.”

“I didn’t poison him,” Nellie said indignantly, “I gave him a little chloral hydrate.”

“Chloral hydrate? That’s knockout drops.”

“Just to calm him down. Not poison.”

“Calm him to kill him?”

“I was helping him beat his fear. I knew if he swam once, he could swim forever. But it didn’t work. He was a hopeless coward.”

“Did he pass out? Is that how he drowned?”

“Aren’t you listening, Isaac? He was groggy. He didn’t pass out.”

“You drowned him.”

“He was a hopeless coward.”

“You drowned him.”

“Let’s just say the chloral hydrate created an opportunity.”

“Was that how you drugged the old man who fell from the Washington Monument? Slipped him knockout drops?”

“Chloroform.”

“What did you feed Comstock?”

“Arsenic.”

“Where did you learn—?”

“I worked as a pharmacist once. I’ve done lots of things, Isaac. I love different things. I was an actress for a bit. Every time I ran away, I found a fascinating job. I went back to the circus and became an acrobat. For a while. I was a medical student, one of the first girls at Johns Hopkins. I didn’t stay long.”

“Long enough to know your poisons.”

“And anatomy,” she smiled, reaching to touch the back of her neck.

Bell’s hat flew from his head. Before it touched his shoulder his derringer filled his right hand, the barrel aimed at her face. He saw shock in Nellie’s eyes but no fear even though she knew he would fire before she could. Still, she was lightning fast.

There was a part of Isaac Bell, the part that beat deepest in his soul, that held innocents sacred. Until this moment, that part could never have imagined triggering a gun at a woman. He knew full well that Nellie Matters was no innocent but a cold-blooded murderer trying to kill him. He pulled the trigger. He was not entirely surprised when his bullet missed her head by a full inch and broke a control wire that parted with a musical twang.

The close call caused Nellie to flinch and her shot whizzed past Bell’s ear.

For a microsecond that stretched like an eternity, they stared at each other. His gun was empty. Her two-shot had one bullet left. He gathered himself to charge, reasoning that a wild shot would more likely wound than kill him. Nellie aimed the derringer directly at his face. Then she gave him a big “Nellie smile.”

“I guess you missed because Van Dorn detectives bring their suspects in alive? Or are you just a lousy shot?”

“You missed, too,” said Bell. “Again. So if you can’t shoot me and I’m not about to swallow poison for you, how will you stop me from taking that gun away from you?”

“Gas!”

She jerked the red emergency lever and held tight. The tanks spewed their compressed loads of hydrogen. The gas roared up the mouth of the already full envelope and the balloon lurched like a rogue elephant breaking its chains. Then Nellie pulled the ballast lever, releasing the total weight of the sand all at once, and somersaulted backward to the grass.

Isaac Bell sprang to his feet. Halfway out of the basket, he saw the ground vanish beneath him as if he were suddenly peering down the wrong end of a telescope.

The balloon was fifty feet in the air, five stories high, too high to jump, and soaring toward the clouds.