“Nobel’s lubricating oil factory is destroyed. The low specific gravity of Baku crude makes Russian lubricating oil the best in the world, so the Nobels had a nice melon to cut all these years. The best we’ve got is refined at the Winfield plant in Humble, Texas. Not as good as the Russian lubricating oil, but a lot better than no lubricating oil.”
Clearly, thought Bell, John D. Rockefeller could keep his head when all others were losing theirs. Juggling two balls in the air — the Baku refineries and the Persian pipe line — suddenly he tossed up a third, seizing his chance to profit by the fires. But as Spike Hopewell had said about his old partner Bill Matters, somewhere along the line he had gotten his moral trolley wires crossed.
Isaac Bell shook the magnate like a terrier. “You are risking our lives to cable New York to buy the Winfield refinery?”
“Russia will never get that market back from me.”
“Done, sir,” said the telegrapher, jumping from the key.
Wish and the Matters sisters pushed in the door as the telegrapher ran out, and Rockefeller shut his mouth like a bear trap. Wish dropped the heavy Maxim on the telegraph counter and the women put down their bags. Though still calm, they looked frightened, a tribute, thought Bell, to their common sense.
Wish coolly shifted the gun muzzle toward the door and drew his revolver.
“Isaac, old son. We need a plan.”
“First,” said Bell, addressing Rockefeller, “get this straight. I am running this like a military operation. There is one leader. Me. Wish is second-in-command. Whatever we say, goes. Is that clear, Mr. Rockefeller? No more dashing off on your own. You’ll get us all killed.”
“O.K.,” said the richest man in America. “I accept your terms. But not before we resolve another question.” He leveled a long finger at Edna. “I will not allow this woman newspaperman to report my business like public news.”
Edna Matters answered in a voice as cold as it was determined.
“John D. Rockefeller controls half the oil in the world. He is trapped in the burning city of Baku, which produces the other half. That is extraordinary news. This ‘woman newspaperman’ reports the news.”
“I have news for both of you,” said Isaac Bell.
26
Our only hope of getting out of this city alive is to pull together. I am not asking you to team up. I am laying down rules. The first rule is, Mr. Rockefeller is not here.”
“Not here?” Edna looked at him, eyes wide and angry. “What do you mean, not here?”
“You can report on anything that happens, provided we survive. But not his presence.”
“I cannot agree to that.”
“You must. To make it out of here alive, we have to pull together.”
“How will you stop me?”
“I will ask for your word.”
“And if I don’t give you my word?”
“Looters are robbing shops,” Isaac Bell answered without the trace of a smile. “I will join them. I will steal a Persian carpet and roll you up in it. I will unroll you when I have delivered you safely back to Newspaper Row.”
“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 Tonneau car.”
“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 Tonneau cars shipped ahead.”
“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 planned far ahead for his journey toward “the sun rising over the beautiful Mediterranean Sea” where “the days pass pleasantly and profitably.”
“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 manned by a crew of four, would be a cumbersome handful for two, or were afraid to test how cumbersome. The hotel was not on fire, the Tatars having concentrated their fury on the nearby neighborhood of the Armenians, whose burning mansions were lighting the night sky.
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.