In that instant, Bill Matters had to restrain himself from lunging across the table to kiss Lapham’s wrinkled hand. The looney old man had done him a huge favor and ripped the scales from his eyes. He had been thinking too small. Way too small. He suddenly saw the world as Rockefeller did.
That it was definitely code galvanized Matters. He made an educated guess based in part on the six years he’d been circling the rim of the inner circle of the Standard Oil Gang and based in part on a perceptive analysis by the assassin who speculated that Rockefeller sensed an opportunity to break the stranglehold that his overseas enemies—the Nobel and Rothschild families and Sir Marcus Samuel—had on Russian oil.
How could Rockefeller not be tempted by the spoils? Fighting and destruction in Baku would shut down half the world supply and the price of oil would double or triple to two, to three, to four dollars a barrel, prices that hadn’t been seen in decades. American oil men would cheer. But John D. Rockefeller was no ordinary oil man.
Wouldn’t he imagine much-richer spoils than a temporary jump in price? Wouldn’t he see the chaos of civil war as an opportunity to displace the Rothschilds, overthrow the Nobels, sink Shell, and own it all?
Bill Matters knew in his gut that this was the chance he had been working for. Something this big would never come again. Whatever Rockefeller was scheming in the east, Matters had to make himself part of it.
His success thus far, since joining the Standard—his growing wealth and power within the corporation, though still not in the inner circle—proved he had been right to bank on the secrecy that pervaded the trust. Secrets had given him room to operate, as had the madcap distraction of everyone from Rockefeller on down who were busy getting richer.
Business was roaring. New markets were enormous: fuel for ships and power plants, gasoline to feed the automobile boom. But supply, too, was growing; vast new oil fields in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Mexico, and California surpassed the old Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana fields. It was becoming impossible for the Standard to control production to keep prices high. Competing producers—Gulf Oil and the Texas Company—were springing to life even as the monopoly came under increasing fire from Progressive reformers determined to break up the trust. Rockefeller himself was distracted by the government prosecution and equally by his attempts to repair his reputation by becoming a philanthropist.
The pressure was on the old president to do something.
Thus the Baku push.
—
Bill Matters approached white-haired Averell Comstock, a charter member of the “gang” who often profited from private deals. “I have a scheme for a joint adventure.”
“What sort of scheme?”
“A private partnership with you and Mr. Rockefeller to persuade the Russian government to let Standard Oil build new, modern refineries and refurbish the old ones owned by Rothschild and Nobel.”
Comstock was immediately suspicious.
“Where did you get that idea, Bill? It’s as if you read our minds.”
Matters felt his spirits soar. He had guessed right about a lot of things.
He answered modestly, “I’m an old wildcat driller. Good at guessing. Besides, I recall that in ’03 Mr. Rockefeller considered roping in St. Petersburg banks to buy Baku oil fields.”
“Are you sure you haven’t been eavesdropping on telephone calls?”
“Quite sure, Mr. Comstock.” According to Clyde Lapham, this was not the first time Rockefeller had set sights on the Caucasus. Back in ’98, Standard Oil sent geologists to survey for commercial oil reserves in Azerbaijan.
“Or tapping wires?”
“I wouldn’t know how to begin to tap wires,” Matters lied.
“What else have you ‘guessed’?”
Matters took his best shot. “What if I were to propose to you a plan to beat Sir Marcus Samuel at shipping case oil to Asia?”
Comstock glared. So-called case oil was kerosene shipped in gallon tins packed in wooden boxes. The Asian market was enormous. Chinese and Indians burned the oil in their lamps and used the wood and tin to build their huts, shingle their roofs, make cooking pots and pitchers. Sir Marcus Samuel, the all-powerful English distributor of case oil to India and China, had visited these offices in great secrecy in 1901 to negotiate some sort of partnership. Matters was gambling that Rockefeller and Comstock wished their talks had panned out.
“Mr. Rockefeller prefers knowing to guessing,” said Comstock.
Bill Matters stood his ground. “I am not guessing.”
Comstock was scornful. “Let me remind you that Standard Oil has not managed to beat Samuel in fifteen years. The conniving Englishman parlayed preferential treatment from the Suez Canal into the biggest tank steamer fleet to Asia.”
“I know how to beat Samuel,” Bill Matters shot back.
“How?”
“Bypass the Suez Canal.”
“Bypass the Suez?” Comstock turned more scornful. “Have you any idea how long it takes a tank ship to steam around Africa? Why do you suppose they dug a canal?”
“Bypass the Transcaucasus Railroad, too,” Matters shot back. “And Batum. And the Black Sea. And the Dardanelles, Constantinople, and the Mediterranean.”
“Poppycock! How the devil could we ship kerosene to India and China?”
“Build a pipe line from Baku to the Persian Gulf.”
“A pipe line? . . .” Comstock’s face was a mask. But his eyes grew busy. “Too ambitious. Persia is mountainous and bedeviled by warlords and revolutionaries.”
“No more ambitious than our pipe lines across Pennsylvania’s mountains to the Atlantic seaboard,” Matters answered, choosing his words carefully. His hated rivals had never built an inch of pipe line, themselves, but stolen his.
Comstock shook his head. “Great Britain will fight a Russian link to the Gulf every inch of the way.”
“Don’t you think Standard Oil should fight back for half the oil in the world and all the markets of Asia?”
Comstock’s face remained a mask. Eventually, he closed his hands in a double fist and gazed at Matters over his interlocked knuckles. “Were Mr. Rockefeller to approve
