The Assassin

“How Cleopatric!” said Nellie.

To Bell’s immense relief, her joke made Edna smile. She looked at the others who were watching closely. “O.K.! If Mr. Rockefeller promises not to slow us down stopping to cable orders to his head office, I promise not to write about him.”

“Done,” said Rockefeller.

“But when he breaks that promise—which he surely will—he must tell me the contents of the cable.” She extended her hand to Rockefeller. “I give you my word. Is it a deal?”

“You’re a good negotiator, young lady. It’s a deal.”

She turned to Isaac Bell. “You, sir, will find some way to make this up to me.”

“It’s a deal.”

A bullet ricocheted off a lamppost and smashed a window.

“The question remains,” said Wish Clarke, “how are we getting out of here if we can’t take a ship or a train?”

“We can drive by auto back to Batum,” Rockefeller ventured. “Then a Black Sea steamer to Constantinople.”

“What auto?” asked Bell, intending to get Rockefeller to reveal how the Peerlesses he had hidden in the hotel stables served his scheme.

“My Peerless To

“Impossible. Batum is six hundred miles over hard country.”

“Tiflis is halfway to Batum, and trains are safer in Georgia.”

Bell shook his head emphatically. “We can barely all squeeze in the car, much less stow the gasoline, oil, food, water, tools, and spares for crossing open country.”

“And let us not forget Mr. Maxim,” said Wish, patting the weapon he had propped on the telegrapher’s desk, “without whom no one in their right mind would venture on the so-called roads to Tiflis.”

“We would need three autos as sturdy as a Peerless,” said Bell.

“We have three,” said Rockefeller.

“Three?”

“I had three Peerless To

“Why?”

Rockefeller hesitated before he answered, “Gifts.”

“For whom?” Bell pressed.

Rockefeller clamped his mouth shut.

Bell said, “Mr. Rockefeller, Miss Matters agreed not to reveal your business. You, in turn, agreed—fairly and squarely and aboveboard, sir—that we’re all in this together.”

Rockefeller’s jaw worked. His piercing eyes, rarely readable, turned opaque.

Gunfire roared, and it did the trick.

“Very well! The English presented the Shah of Persia with gifts of autos. I would outdo their gifts with solid, Cleveland-built American autos. Show him who needs Rolls-Royce? Who needs England? Who needs Russia?”

Isaac Bell exchanged a fast grin with Edna Matters and another with Nellie: yet another reminder that John D. Rockefeller heard the rumors first. The secretive magnate had pla

“Where are they?”

“In our hotel stables.”

“Let’s see if they’re not on fire yet.”

—

At a fast pace in tight single file, they headed back to the Baku Hotel.

Bell led, with the ammunition belts draped around his neck and his Bisley in his good hand. He put Rockefeller between Edna and Nellie so the fit young women could keep an eye on the much-older man. Wish marched rear guard, with his Maxim gun over his shoulder and a single-action Colt Army revolver in his fist.

The many who might have wished them harm gave them a wide berth, perhaps unaware that the Maxim, ordinarily ma

Bell led his people past the hotel and down the driveway to the stables. The watchmen, who were gripping old Russian Army rifles, recognized him and “Envoy Stone.” Bell tipped them lavishly and closed the barn doors. It was not much quieter. Despite thick stone walls and the surrounding buildings, they could still hear the shooting in the streets, while, inside, nervous horses were banging in their stalls.

Equally nervous chauffeurs watched the new arrivals warily. A few were tinkering with limousine motors. Most were slumped behind their steering wheels with hopeless expressions as if dreading orders to drive to their employers’ mansions and brave the mobs.

Bell looked for Josef, the English-speaking chauffeur who had driven the Peerless and who could be valuable as a relief driver, mechanic, and translator. When he didn’t see him, he asked the other chauffeurs if he was around.

“No, sir.”

“No, sir.”

They muttered among themselves. One man who spoke a little English whispered, “Revolutionary.”

“Josef?”

“Maybe revolutionary. Maybe police.”

“Police?”

The chauffeur shook his head. “Agent.”

“Provocateur?”

“Informer.”

That Josef was a police spy, Bell had guessed. But a revolutionary, too? On the verge of hiring this man as driver and translator, Bell changed his mind and decided to trust no one. Better to go it alone.

—

The bullet-smashed windshield of the Peerless attacked at the Black Town refinery had not been replaced. The missing glass offered a clear field of fire, and Wish Clarke got busy mounting the Maxim gun on the Peerless’s backseat.

The other two autos were as Bell had seen them last, still in wooden crates.

“Hammers and bars,” said Bell, wrenching boards loose with his hand.

Edna Matters returned with a blacksmith’s hammer. John D. Rockefeller found a crowbar. Nellie Matters pried boards loose skillfully with it, saying to Bell, “Don’t look surprised. Who do you think fixes balloons in the air?”

Rockefeller swung the hammer like a man who had grown up chopping wood on a farm.

Edna said, “I can’t fix anything. What shall I do?”

Bell sent her in search of gasoline and oil and cans to carry it in. He gave her money to buy any cans and tools the chauffeurs would sell her. She came back with cans and tools and several maps.

As the packing crates fell away, Bell was glad to see the autos were equipped with straight-side tires on detachable rims. Stony, wagon-rutted roads and camel tracks guaranteed many punctures. Up-to-date straight-side tires were easily removed from the wheel, reducing the holdup for patching them from an hour to a few minutes.

Edna Matters had gathered cans to hold one hundred fifty gallons of gasoline and oil. Bell sent her, accompanied by Rockefeller and Nellie, across the stable yard to the hotel kitchen to buy ti

Wish Clarke mounted the Maxim, fed in a fresh ammunition belt, filled its barrel-cooling sleeve with horse trough water. After he cleared his line of fire by removing the empty windshield frame, he gave Bell a hand cranking the Peerlesses’ motors. One of the new ones started easily. The other was balky, but eventually Bell coaxed it alive. The car Wish had commandeered for the Maxim gun coughed and smoked. They unscrewed the spark plugs, cleaned the electrodes, and filed them to sharper points.

Outside, bursts of gunfire grew loud. A woman screamed. The chauffeurs stared fearfully at the doors. A man wept. From the hotel came the sound of the pianist still playing.

By one o’clock in the morning, they had all three Peerlesses fueled and oiled and provisions stowed. Bell spread a map on the hood of the lead car to show everyone their route from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea. They were heading west across Transcaucasia, between Russia’s Greater Caucasus mountain range to the north and Persia’s Lesser Caucasus range to the south.

Their sixty-mile slot of river valleys between the mountains comprised the restive regions of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, “where,” the tall detective said, “they are actively trying to kill each other. First stop, Shemaha. About seventy-five miles. Any luck, we’ll make it before nightfall tomorrow.