Clive cussler the heist, p.1
Clive Cussler The Heist, page 1
part #14 of Isaac Bell Series
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Odessa Sea (with Dirk Cussler)
Havana Storm (with Dirk Cussler)
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The Tombs (with Thomas Perry)
The Kingdom (with Grant Blackwood)
Lost Empire (with Grant Blackwood)
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Clive Cussler The Heist (by Jack Du Brul)
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Mirage (with Jack Du Brul)
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Built for Adventure: The Classic Automobiles of Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Du Brul, Jack B., author. | Cussler, Clive.
Title: The heist / Jack Du Brul.
Other titles: At head of title: Clive Cussler
Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2024. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2024000529 (print) | LCCN 2024000530 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593713587 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593713594 (e-pub)
Subjects: LCGFT: Detective and mystery fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3554.U223 H45 2024 (print) | LCC PS3554.U223 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23/eng/20240117
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024000529
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024000530
Ebook ISBN 9780593713594
Cover illustration: Mike Heath
Interior design adapted for ebook by Maggie Hunt
Title page photograph by Vladimir Mulder/Shutterstock.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
pid_prh_6.3_146974704_c0_r0
Contents
Cast of Characters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
About the Authors
_146974704_
CAST OF CHARACTERS
The Agents
Joseph Van Dorn Legendary founder of the Van Dorn Detective Agency
Isaac Bell Chief investigator of the Van Dorn Agency
Archibald Abbott Van Dorn detective and Bell’s best friend and frequent partner
James Dashwood Van Dorn detective and Bell’s former protégé
Clint Slocomb Van Dorn detective in the Philadelphia office
Telford Jones Van Dorn detective in the Baltimore office
Bernard Arseneaux Van Dorn detective in the New Orleans office
Others
Marion Bell Isaac’s wife and a filmmaker
Ebenezer Bell Boston banker and Isaac’s father
Lillian Abbott Archie’s wife and best friend to Marion
Christoff Tamerlane Marion’s go-to assistant
William McADOO Secretary of the Treasury
Rex Smith Aircraft owner in Maryland
Tony Jannus Aircraft pilot
Charley Briggs Contractor
Harvey Wanamaker Philadelphia locksmith
Reggie Hauser Railroad executive
C. Frederick Lawson Head of security at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing building
Philip Findley Head of the Atlanta Reserve bank
Vic Carver Treasury agent
Paul Haygarth Treasury agent
Jackson Pickett Newport, Rhode Island, socialite
Fedora Scarsworth-Pickett Wife of Jackson Pickett
Isidor Steinem Pickett’s attorney
Thomas Lassiter Newport police detective
Ray Burns Newport police detective and Lassiter’s protégé
Flynn and Sean O’Conner Leaders of a Baltimore harbor gang
Michaleen Riordan Irish assassin
Jose Louisiana boatman
1
Washington, D.C.
August 1914
When Woodrow Wilson entered the lavish dining room aboard the presidential yacht, Mayflower, the men seated around the conference table got to their feet and turned to him in silent reverence. The slender President was dressed in a fashionable mocha-colored lounge suit that seemed to add to his tall stature. He had a long, some said horsey, face, while his stance and expression were that of a stern schoolmaster. But when his lips parted, a velvety voice laced with humility and intelligence enraptured all within earshot.
“Gentlemen, please take a seat before a Potomac River crosscurrent forces the issue.”
A ripple of laughter reverberated through the room as the men visibly relaxed and retook their seats with the President. A white-gloved steward closed the doors behind the chief executive while two Secret Service agents took up station just outside the room.
“Thank you all for joining me today,” Wilson said as he settled at the head of the table. “The captain informed me that we will cast off shortly. We will head down river to our planned lunch at Mount Vernon, although I’m sure there are some in this town who would prefer that we keep on sailing, all the way to South America,” he added, to a flourish of grins. “While this would be a prime opportunity for a few hands of poker and a good cigar among new friends, we do have a bit of business to conduct.” He tilted his head a moment, then turned to the steward. “On second thought, there’s no reason we can’t enjoy a smoke and a drink in the process.”
Wilson was relatively new to politics, having won the White House only two years after being elected the governor of New Jersey, but he’d been a college dean for many years prior and knew how to lead. And having garnered nearly fifty percent of the popular vote in a three-candidate race, he enjoyed a strong mandate to do so.
The twenty-eighth President of the United States was given a rosewood box of cigars and he handed it to the man on his left. As the cigars were passed around the room, the steward returned with a tray of shot glasses and a bottle of amber liquid with a label so old it was peeling away.
“This is our first meeting together and it must be one of celebration. This bottle of scotch was a congratulatory gift from H. H. Asquith, England’s prime minister, upon my inauguration. I’m told it was aged in a barrel for fifty years and has been in this bottle another fifty.”
Shots were poured and the room was soon wreathed in aromatic smoke. The consensus was the whiskey was the finest any had ever enjoyed. “I might just be compelled to run for reelection if Asquith will promise another bottle for a second inauguration,” Wilson said to more laughter.
The meeting on the yacht was the culmination of years of work and careful negotiations across party lines and involving all three branches of the government. The President, knowing he had his audience, began his speech.
“If I were to claim the absolute brain trust of American banking was assembled before me today, there wouldn’t be a dissenting voice in all the nation. Each of you have dozens of years of experience running some of our most successful banks and now each of you has agreed to head one of the twelve newly created Federal Reserve Banks and finally give the country the centralized monetary system it needs as we forge ahead.
“I need not tell this august group that the United States is growing or that the budding twentieth century will be our time to shine among the nations of the world. But in order for us to reach our fullest potential, we must come together in a more centralized fashion.”
He was greeted by murmurs of agreement.
“We saw less than twenty-five years ago how the states and even individual counties set their own time standards. Efficient railroad scheduling was nigh impossible as a result, and fatal accidents occurred with regularity. It took all the railroad owners coming together to codify the system of regulated time zones we use today.
“That is but one example of how our nation’s needs have outstripped our ability to meet them at a state or local level. The devastating bank runs we endure on a cyclical basis are another example of how America is falling behind the rest of the civilized world. The Panic of 1907 nearly ruined many of us and left countless businesses and individuals destroyed in its wake. I imagine each of you had at least one acquaintance or close friend end his life because of his ruination.”
Heads nodded around the table.
“The individual states will maintain all of the rights laid out in our Constitution, but the federal government must take a stronger leadership role and that begins with a private, centralized banking system overseen by the board I have appointed.”
The men in the room hung on Wilson’s every word. All but one man. Peering out a side porthole in boredom, Isaac Bell, lead detective for the Van Dorn Agency, found few topics less appealing than banking.
“And this, gentlemen, shall be our new banner.” Wilson opened a slim leather case he’d just been given by the man seated next to him and withdrew a neat stack of green paper cut in a rectangular shape about the size of an invitation envelope. In a somewhat theatrical display, he shoved the notes down the table so they fanned out enough for the men to get a couple for themselves. “This is the freshly minted Federal Reserve hundred-dollar bill.”
Bell had been standing by the wall with some of the aides, and his disinterest vanished as he reached over an unknown banker’s shoulder for one of the bills. He felt the motor yacht begin to pull away from the dock at the Washington Navy Yard and into the lazy current of the Anacostia River just north of where it joined the Potomac. Outside the bank of beveled glass windows and beyond the motor yacht’s rail, the massive brick buildings of one of the nation’s premier military shipyards slid past in silent majesty.
Bell turned his attention to the hundred-dollar bill, which represented an average worker’s monthly pay, give or take. The bill was done in dark green ink and ornately styled. It took him a moment to recognize that the profile figure in the center of the note was none other than Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the cleverest and most forward thinking of the Founding Fathers. To the right of the portrait was a red fleurette surrounded by a Latin phrase Bell’s schoolboy tutoring translated roughly as the “Seal of the Treasury of North America.” The back of the note was printed in a lighter green and showed five robed figures out of Greek or Roman mythology. The paper and ink had a curious texture unlike anything Bell had felt before. Very tactile, he thought.
A few of the bankers asked their neighbors if they understood the tableau on the back of the bill and Wilson read the room perfectly. “I’m told those characters are Labor, Commerce, Plenty, and Peace. The figure in the middle represents America. A little fancy for my taste, but what’s a President’s opinion really worth?”
Wilson got some chuckles. The man immediately to Wilson’s right was William McAdoo, the secretary of the treasury, and as of earlier this year, the President’s son-in-law. He was a tall, lean man with a face that resembled a beardless Abraham Lincoln. There had been some scandal, as he was twice Eleanor Wilson’s age and a senior member of the administration, but it had now passed. McAdoo said, “I must ask for all the bills to be returned to me. Some notes have already shipped, but we’re trying to keep the design a secret until they go into full circulation.”
The mostly gray-bearded bankers passed the notes up the table for McAdoo to place back into the satchel.
Bell used sleight of hand to replace the note he’d examined with a similarly sized Manhattan Bank hundred-dollar bill that he sandwiched between two of the new bills being passed from hand to hand to the treasury secretary. He hid the new hundred in his wallet.
