Clive Cussler - The Striker

He called on the intercom, spoke her name, and listened.

“He wants to know who you are.”

“A friend of Mr. Clay.”

“He says bring you up.”

The elevator delivered her to a small foyer with a reception desk. A middle-aged woman at the desk pointed toward a series of rooms that spilled one into another. “Through there. Close each door behind you, please.”

Mary Higgins went through the first door, closed it, and in through a second. Each room was quieter than the last. In the third she found a closed door and knocked.

A strong male voice shouted, “Enter!”

She pushed through the door, closed it behind her, and gasped.

“My sculpture is Auguste Rodin’s The Kiss . Do you like it?”

“It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

She tore her eyes from the white marble to look across the room at Congdon, who was standing at his desk. He looked older than in the newspaper sketches but more vigorous. He was very tall and stood well.

“Go on. You can look at it. Touch it. It feels wonderful.”

She approached reverentially. The confident way the woman’s left arm pulled her lover toward her was the most erotic sight she had ever seen.

“What do you want?”

“I want a world where everyone can see this beautiful statue.”

“Not in this life,” Congdon said coldly.

His office had double windows. No sound from the street penetrated. The walls were hung with paintings, most of thinly veiled naked women in the French Academy style. On his desk Mary saw a bronze statuette, another naked woman.

“My wife,” said Congdon, stroking it. “Go on, you can touch it, if you like. I find the marble draws me close.”

Mary laid her hand on the woman’s arm.

“What else do you want?” Congdon asked. “What did you come for?”

“I want you to stand aside and let the coal miners organize, and I want you to pay them a fair wage.”

“Higgins? Yes, of course. You’re Jim Higgins’s sister, aren’t you? The unionist.”

Mary nodded.

Congdon said, “Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, you’re talking to the wrong man. I don’t own coal mines.”

“You control them by the prices you pay for the coal the miners dig and for what your railroads charge to ship it. And please don’t insult my intelligence. If you don’t ‘officially’ own those railroads, you control them by their purse strings. If there is only one person in the country who can allow a union and pay the miners a fair wage, it is you.”

“Assume, for a moment, I could. What would I get out of it?”

“The well-being gained when equality spawns justice.”

“Equality spawns mediocrity at best, the mob at worst.”

“If you refuse, I will expose your scheme to foment violence in the coalfields.”

“And how will you do that?”

“I will persuade Henry Clay to confess everything you two have done and everything you plan to do next.”

James Congdon regarded her with a thoughtful smile. At last, he said, “I’ll be damned… You know, I have no doubt you could do that. I suspect you are an extraordinary young woman. I would not be at all surprised if you’ve established insights into Clay that would allow you to command his frail emotions.”

“You and I are similar,” said Mary Higgins.

“In what way?”

“Clear-eyed and quick.”

“I take that as a compliment. But we are dissimilar in more important ways. I would build — you would tear down. You love mankind — I can’t abide it. I am old — you are young. And very, very beautiful.” He roved his eyes over her. “Have I insulted you by observing that?”

Mary let her own eyes rove around his paintings again. They settled on the statuette. He was rubbing its breasts with his thumb.

“Well? Have I?”

Mary draped her arms around the marble couple. “Considering your penchant for women in the altogether, I’d have been insulted if you hadn’t at least noticed me.”

“Good! Let’s get right to it. I will make you an offer, young lady. I won’t ask you to even pretend that you find a man three times your age attractive. I don’t care about being ‘attractive’ to you or anyone. I care about possession. And I have no objection to paying for possession. It is the most tangible reward for success. In return, you will live lavishly in comparison to the vast, vast majority of other women. Whether I decide to keep you or not. If not, you will receive a generous pension, based, of course, on how long I’ve kept you.”

“How large a pension compared to your regular employees?”

“There’s no comparison. Few receive pensions. The handful who do do not discover themselves rolling in wealth they didn’t earn.”

“If you decided to keep me, how much?”

“You’ll want for nothing.”

“An automobile?”

“Of course.”

“An apartment on Fifth Avenue?”

“For as long as I have the only key.”

“Could I come and see this statue?”

“Every night.”

“Could I have a yacht?”

“A yacht would require extra effort on your part.”

“I hoped you would say that.”

A broad smile uncreased Congdon’s face. “That suggests we understand each other perfectly. And let me put your mind to ease on one score. I can pretty much guarantee that when you find yourself on silk sheets, an older man might surprise you more than you imagine.”

“I’ve been surprised only once in my life and it wasn’t on silk sheets.”

“Where was that?”

“On a freight train. Go to hell, Congdon.”

Congdon, visibly surprised, fumbled around his desk and laid a hand on the bronze statuette of his naked wife. “But you just said you were hoping—”

“I was hoping you would say something that would give me enough courage, or enough hatred, to shoot you. And you did, thank you.” She took Henry Clay’s revolver from her bag and braced it on The Kiss .

The veins in the back of Congdon’s hand bulged as he gripped his statuette with sudden intensity. “Did the yacht do it?”

She tried to answer but couldn’t. Finally, she whispered, “I guess we all have our limits.”

“What do you mean?”

“I cannot kill another human being, even the worst one in the world.” She lowered the gun. “I can’t do it.”

“I can,” he said, and slammed the statuette down and jumped back — just in case a twenty-foot separation was not enough — and watched from afar.

Steam roared. Hot, needle-sharp jets spewed down from the ceiling and up from the floor and enveloped Mary Higgins in a scalding white cloud. She screamed only once. Congdon was surprised. He had expected it to take longer with a strong young woman. But she had died in a flash. So much for pain, he thought. She had died in the space of a single breath. Probably never knew what hit her.

He edged back to his desk and lifted the lever gingerly. It was actually cool to the touch, so tightly focused were the jets. The steam stopped gushing. The windows were fogged, and he felt dampness on his cheeks and saw a layer of dew on his polished desk. But the cloud that had enveloped Mary and The Kiss had already dissipated. Congdon wished he had planned ahead. He usually did; he could usually imagine consequences. But he had not thought to keep a sheet nearby — something, anything, to throw over the corpse.

The White Lady careened through a sharp bend in the river at mile marker 25 and pounded toward Pittsburgh belching black columns from her chimneys and churning a white wake behind her.

“She smells the barn!” said the Ohio River pilot — one of two Isaac Bell had hired in Cincinnati — along with a chief engineer famously reckless in the pursuit of hotter steam.