Clive Cussler - The Striker

Both men were clutching highball glasses. Kenny raised his in salute.

“The man of the hour. Gentlemen, I give you Isaac Bell, the hero engineer who saved the lives of a worthless plutocrat and his worthy cook. Whatever you want shall be yours.”

Bell said, “It’s not all on me, I’ve got you gents. Here’s what I want— Wally, Mack, I want you two to keep trying to track down Henry Clay.”

“I’ll track Clay,” growled Joseph Van Dorn.

“No,” said Isaac Bell, “you can do better than track Clay.”

“Clay is my fault. He’s my monster. I created him. I’ll kill him.”

“No. If you fail — if Clay eludes you even for a moment — ten thousand people’s lives are at risk. You have to do more— You met the President.”

“TR. What about him?”

“Can you meet him again?”

“Not easily. I’d have to go to Washington. It could take a week. What for?”

“Go to Washington. We have to keep the strikers and the strikebreakers from killing each other until someone persuades cooler heads to negotiate. If we can’t stop Henry Clay, the President will be the only one who can even try.”

“You want me to organize a fallback?”

“If all else fails.”

Before Van Dorn could formulate an answer, Bell whirled on Kenny and his cook.

“Cook! I want a big breakfast laid on for twenty men. Kenny! I want a fresh locomotive and train crew.”

“What for?”

“I’m highballing your special back to Cincinnati.”

“Why?”

“We have only two days. There isn’t a moment to lose.”

Mary Higgins tipped a nickle-plated flask to her lips and tossed her head back. Her glossy black hair rippled in the thin sun that penetrated the smoke.

“I was not aware you drank,” said Henry Clay.

She was amazed how a man who could be so brutal was so prim. “My father had a saloon. I learned how when I was young.”

“At his knee?” Clay smiled. She looked lovely, he thought, wearing a long coat she had borrowed from her new landlady and a wide-brimmed feathered hat that he had persuaded her to accept after most of her belongings had burned in the union hall. They had ridden the cable-powered incline up Mount Washington and were sitting in a little park with a murky view of the Golden Triangle and the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio rivers. He was in business attire: frock coat, homburg, and a walking stick that concealed a sword.

“Father always said a girl should learn to hold her whiskey.”

“Didn’t you say he had a tugboat?”

“The saloon was another time, in another city. He was always changing jobs.”

“A jack-of-all-trades?”

“He could master anything. Except people. Just like my brother, Jim. It broke his heart that evil people exist.” She touched the flask to her lips again. “He also said, ‘Never drink alone.’ Would you like some?”

“It’s barely noon.”

“Don’t put off ’til tonight what you can do today. Here.”

She handed it to him with a smile. Henry Clay weighed the flask tentatively in his hand. “Pass it back if you’re not going to use it,” said Mary, her gray eyes warming as she teased him.

Clay tilted it toward her in a toast, “Don’t put off ’til tonight…” and raised it to his lips. He handed it back.

Mary said, “See you on the other side,” and drank deeply.

When the flask was empty, Henry Clay said, “I’ll run and get us a refill.”

Mary Higgins pressed her fingers to her temples. “Oh, my poor head. This was a terrible idea.”

“What do you mean?”

“I need coffee. I need gallons of coffee.” She sprang to her feet, swayed a little, and said, “Come on, I’ll make some at my place.”

They rode down on the incline and then took a horse cab across the Smithfield Bridge to her latest temporary digs. It was a small furnished apartment, more expensive than a rooming house but worth it for the extra privacy. She had begged the rent from her brother’s strike fund. She brewed strong coffee in the tiny kitchen and brought it to Clay in the sitting room. She was betting that the combination of the whiskey she had persuaded him to drink and the strong, heavily sugared coffee would mask the taste of the chloral hydrate.

Not only did Clay not notice the knockout drops, he asked for a second cup, half of which he spilled on his trousers when he suddenly passed out with a mildly incredulous expression on his face.

She searched his billfold and his pockets but found absolutely no clue about the man who paid him to provoke violence so the owners and the government could destroy the union. In disappointment and disbelief, she went through everything again. Again, nothing. She riffled through his business cards, thinking maybe he had slipped one he had been given among his own.

She found a sheet of paper that had been folded over and over until it fit between the cards. She unfolded it. It was a private-wire telegram to his John Claggart alias from a New York broker. She slammed it down on the couch. Every word of it was in cipher. Useless.

She could go to New York to the broker. But then what? Persuade them to decipher it for her? If they knew who he was, they would not tell.

Clay’s hand closed around her boot.

She looked down. He had awakened and was watching her through slitted eyes.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Searching your pockets,” she said. What could she say, with his billfold sitting in her lap and his private wire next to her?

“Why?”

“Because you still won’t tell me who is paying for everything. Did he send you this telegram?”

“Why do you care so much?”

“Because he is trying to destroy us.”

Clay mumbled, “Oh, Mary, for God’s sake,” and that was when she realized that the knockout drops had put him in a half-delirious state.

She sat on the floor beside him and took his hand in both of hers.

“What is his name?”

“You don’t understand.”

“I’m trying to.”

She looked into his strange eyes. The chloral had turned him inside out. The pharmacist had warned her. Reactions varied. The drug could put a man to sleep, or make him delirious, or writhing in agony. Did Clay know he was awake? Did he know his own name? He knew her. He stared, his mouth working. “Mary, when I’m done, perhaps you and I… I would fund progressive impulses.”

“What do you mean?”

“Important men, men of means, do that for their wives…” His voice drifted.

Mary said, “What for their wives?” She had to keep him talking.

“Reformers’ husbands pay the bills. When I am done, I will do that.”

“Done with what?”

“Mary. I’m doing something very important.”

“Yes, yes, I know.”

“I want you to understand that.”

“I’m trying to… I do.”

“I will be a made man.”

“Of course.”

“I will have so much to offer you.”

“You do already,” she said. “You are quite remarkable.”

For once, he ignored praise, saying, “But I couldn’t do this without him.”

In a flash of insight into his strange mind, she said, “But he couldn’t do it without you.”

“That’s right. That’s right. You know. As powerful as he is — the most powerful man in the country — he could not do it without me.”

“Does he know that?” she asked.

“He doesn’t want to know it,” Clay said bitterly. “He thinks he doesn’t need me.”

“But he does!”

“Yes. Even he needs me. The most important man in the world. Mary, it’s James Congdon. The most powerful man in Wall Street. The most powerful man in steel and coal and railroads. But he needs me.”