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Rockefeller turned to Bell. “Wait here.”
“I have to inspect the room where you are going,” said Bell.
“It is perfectly safe,” said the secretary.
“I still want to see it,” said Bell.
“It is all right,” said Rockefeller, “I trust our hosts.”
Bell said, “If I cannot see where you are going, I must insist that I wait directly outside. At the door in the next room.”
“Insist?” The secretary’s eyebrows arched above a mocking smile.
Bell ignored him. To Rockefeller he said, “By the terms of our contract, our agreement is voided if, in my opinion, you place me in a position that I cannot protect you. Under those conditions, the severance fee is calculated on the time it will take me to return to New York. The purpose of that clause is to make you think twice about straying too far from my protection.”
“I recall,” said Rockefeller. He addressed the secretary, “Take us to the room where we are to meet. Mr. Bell will wait outside the door.”
They put him in the foyer, which was exactly where Isaac Bell wanted to be. He waited until he was alone, closed the outer door, pulled a rubber stop from his pocket, and wedged it under the door. Then he untangled the stethoscope he had borrowed from Dr. Alexey Irineivoich Virovets, inserted the ear tubes, and pressed the chest piece against the thinnest of the wooden panels.
The secretary was acting as translator for a Persian of very high rank, guessing by the secretary’s obsequious manner of speaking to him. Bell heard a round of elaborate greetings. Then Rockefeller got down to business.
“Tell His Excellency that I have a gift for the shah waiting in my hotel stables.”
This was translated and the answer translated back. “The shah is a great lover of horses.”
“Tell him that this gift for the shah has many horses.”
The translation back was a puzzled “How many horses?”
Rockefeller, clearly enjoying himself, said, “Tell him many, many, bright red and shiny brass.”
“Motors?”
“The finest autos that Cleveland builds,” answered Rockefeller. “They’ll ride circles around Rolls-Royce. Now, tell him, let’s get down to brass tacks—that expression means ‘business,’ young fellow. Tell him the pipe line will cost the shah not one penny. I will pay for every foot of pipe from Rasht to the Persian Gulf. And I will build the tanker piers and a breakwater to protect the harbor.”
The answer in Persian was long, and it took the translator a long time to craft a halting, vague reply.
“By the terms . . . of certain . . . understandings . . . In the name of the most merciful and compassionate God, His Majesty the shah . . . prefers . . . to secure, please God, the agreement of certain . . . neighbors.”
Isaac Bell gleaned from Rockefeller’s blunt reply that his “correspondents” had laid a lot of groundwork to get to this meeting with a personage who had the shah’s ear. The old man did not sound one bit surprised. Nor did he hesitate.
“Tell him to tell the shah that I am prepared to pay off the neighbor’s loan.”
After translation, there was a long silence. Finally, the Persian spoke. The secretary translated, “How much of it?”
“Every ruble.”
—
On their way out, they had emerged from the service elevator and were halfway along the edge of the lobby when Isaac Bell suddenly shouldered Rockefeller toward a corridor that entered from the side.
“What is it?” asked Rockefeller, resisting with his full weight. Pain shot through Bell’s wound.
“Keep walking. Turn your face toward me.”
Bell steered him down the corridor and into the first shop, a florist filled with giant sprays of out-of-season tulips and elaborate concoctions of roses. Before the door had closed behind them, he heard familiar ringing laughter.
“Good lord. They make Pittsburgh look positively genteel.”
