Clive Cussler - The Striker

“Days.”

“Astonishing. Buying up a controlling interest takes time, particularly when trying to mask your intention. And buying from grieving heirs who are battling each other for the spoils takes even longer. Even if the deceased’s will was rammed through probate. Which is not impossible. If there is a more corrupt breed of judge than probate, I’ve never heard of them. Interesting, though, unless it was already in the works. Has it occurred to you that whoever bought Gleason had advance notice the shares would come to market?”

“I wondered if you would ask,” said Bell. “Fact is, whoever blew up Gleason’s yacht would know precisely when.”

After an hour, during which time Isaac Bell concluded that the Boss had made a brilliant decision to invest in a research department, and doubly brilliant to hire Grady Forrer, a weedy young man sidled into the Normandie Bar and spoke urgently to Forrer.

“Himself has gone to supper and won’t return ’til morning. Our boys are back at work.”

“Come on, Isaac! Now’s our chance.”

Forrer’s office was a collection of shabby rooms that connected by a narrow hall to the lavish Van Dorn suite. It was a windowless warren, unlike the agency’s big open front office. Cabinets, chairs, and tables were stacked with newspapers from towns and cities around the country, and, as Bell and Grady entered, a mailman staggered in under a canvas sack, which contained, he announced, three hundred subscription newspapers, none more than a week old. Clattering ceaselessly in one corner was the research division’s own telegraph key, presided over by an operator sending and receiving the Morse alphabet with a lightning-fast fist. A telephonist with a listening piece pressed to his ear was taking notes in another corner. A typewriter banged away, printing catalog cards, and the rooms echoed with shouts of “Boy!” as file boys were sent scampering to the ever-growing stacks.

Forrer explained that at this early stage he was devoting all his energy to collecting a library of information. He had hired students part-time from Columbia College and the seminaries to clip stories from the thousands of newspapers published around the country.

Bell asked, “How will you keep track?”

“I’m adapting the Dewey decimal system to Van Dorn requirements,” Grady explained. “All the information in the world is worth nothing if we can’t find it.”

Isaac Bell worked at a desk deep in clippings of newspaper headlines, features, cartoons, and pen-and-ink sketches about coal interests in Wall Street. The railroads had a powerful hand in the mineral, as he had seen in Pittsburgh. But Kenny’s father was only one of several line presidents depicted as grasping for controlling interests in the transport and sale of coal.

The western railroad builder Osgood Hennessy had attracted far more cartoonists’ ire than Mr. Bloom. Bell found the titan drawn in the images of an anaconda, an octopus, and a spider, all with more teeth than such creatures possessed in their natural state. Wall Street financiers — especially Judge James Congdon, founder of U.S. Steel; John Pierpont Morgan, consolidator of General Electric and lender of gold to the U.S. Treasury; and the lamp oil magnate John D. Rockefeller — received similar treatment, portrayed as sharks and alligators and rampaging grizzly bears.

In contrast on the Society pages, Congdon and Hennessy and Rockefeller assumed human form in staff-artist sketches, Congdon with young brides on his arm, Rockefeller attending his Fifth Avenue church, the widowed Hennessy escorting a pretty daughter of thirteen. Much attention was paid to Congdon’s art collection, much more to Hennessy’s private train.

Black Jack Gleason’s obituaries touted the coal combine he had put together, mansions he had built in West Virginia, and the shooting estate he had bought in Ireland. Bell read an editorial written before his death that lauded Gleason’s oft-stated opinion that labor organizers were “vampires that fatten on the honest labor of the coal miners of the country.”

The New York World charged Gleason with exacting tribute from the people by illegally banding the Coal Trust into “the most powerful, grasping and grinding trusts in existence, beyond any question, not even second to J. P. Morgan’s Great Fuel Octopus that limits supply and fixes prices.” A Nebraska paper excoriated Gleason as “a coal baron who got fat on the honest labor of the coal miners, and rich through overcharging the coal consumers of the country.”

Grady Forrer arrived with a pot of coffee.

“You’ve been here all night.”

“Grady, you know many things.”

“I know how to find many things.”

“Have you ever seen amber-colored eyes?”

“They are unusual,” said Grady. “Very rare. And amber is something of a misnomer. I would describe them as solid yellow or gold. Except in sunlight they will likely appear coppery, even orange. Why do you ask?”

“My provocateur might have them. Or might not.”

Grady looked troubled. “Based on the enmity already existing between labor and owners, you wouldn’t necessarily need a provocateur to provoke a war in the coalfields.”

“I would only agree that you would not need a provocateur to merely foment violence in the coalfields. There’s plenty of bitterness for that. But you would need a provocateur to set off a real, ongoing war.”

“To what purpose?!” roared a voice in Bell’s ear.

“Mr. Van Dorn!” cried Grady Forrer. The telegrapher, the telephonist, the typist shot to their feet, and the file boys froze in their tracks.

Isaac Bell stood up and offered his hand.

“Good morning, sir,” he greeted Van Dorn and answered the Boss with the main thought on his mind. “To the purpose of drawing attention.”

Joseph Van Dorn said, “Come with me!”

Bell winked reassuringly at Grady Forrer and glided alongside Van Dorn, confident he had discovered the answer.

Van Dorn’s private office was fitted out with up-to-date telephones, speaking tubes, and its own telegraph key. He sat at a mahogany desk and indicated a tufted leather chair for Bell.

“Whose attention?”

“The President’s, the Congress’s, and, most important, the nation’s.”

Van Dorn nodded. “I’ve been watching Prince Henry operate and I’ve been thinking along the same lines you are. By the time the Prince completes his tour, half the continent will be in love with him and all things German — despite his brother the Kaiser’s dismal record as a bloodthirsty despot. It’s a new world, Isaac. If you get in the newspapers, people will love you as long as the reporters spell your name right.”

“Or hate you,” said Bell.

“Tell me who wants to be loved.”

“They all do. But I don’t see the union having the talent for it.”

“How can you say that? The papers are on their side. The front pages are full of cartoons of tycoons in top hats abusing workingmen.”

“Not all,” said Bell. “Half I saw in the train stations depicted fresh-faced soldiers set upon by unshaven mobs. The same with those I read last night.”

“So it could be either side, could it not?”

Bell hesitated.

Van Dorn said, “Let me remind you that taking sides is no way to keep a clear eye.”

“But the unionists aren’t capable of a precision attack like the one I saw on the Monongahela. The timing was exquisite — two vessels dynamited within ten minutes and the barge fleet set adrift at the right moment to do the most damage. The union fellows I’ve encountered are brave men, but not all that practical, nor disciplined. Nor, frankly, trained in the dark arts. What I saw demanded military precision by someone who’s devoted his life to destruction.”