The New York Public Library was no longer a sanctuary of silence. It was a coliseum.
The massive Rose Main Reading Room had been stripped. The long oak tables were pushed to the walls, stacked like barricades.
In the center of the room, beneath the soaring painted ceiling, sat a single wooden chair.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. sat in it.
He looked small. His expensive suit was torn at the shoulder. His face was bruised purple and yellow. His hands were bound with rough twine.
Surrounding him, filling the floor and hanging over the balconies, were three thousand people.
Strikers. Soldiers. Angry mothers.
They weren't quiet. They were buzzing like a hive of hornets.
At the front of the room, standing on the Librarian's desk, was Adolf.
He wore a simple worker's shirt and suspenders. He looked calm. Reasonable.
"We are not savages," Adolf said. His voice was amplified by the library's acoustics, echoing perfectly. "We are judges."
He held up a ledger. A Standard Oil account book.
"We do not execute men for who they are," Adolf said. "We punish them for what they have done."
He opened the book.
"The Ludlow Massacre," Adolf read. "Machine guns used on mining families. Approved by the board."
"Guilty!" the crowd screamed.
"The Ford Sabotage," Adolf continued. "Four hundred engines destroyed to drive up the price of oil." (A lie, but a beautiful one).
"Guilty!"
"The Great Freeze," Adolf pointed to the window, where the city lay frozen. "Withholding coal to break the will of the people."
"Death!" a man shouted from the balcony. "Hang him!"
Adolf looked down at Junior.
"John D. Rockefeller Junior," Adolf said softly. "Do you have anything to say before the sentence is passed?"
Junior slowly raised his head. His lip was split. He looked at the crowd.
He didn't look afraid. He looked sad.
High above the reading room, inside the ventilation shaft, Jason lay on his stomach.
He was looking through a brass grate. The dust tickled his nose.
Next to him was O'Malley, sweating in the cramped space. Behind them were four dockworkers armed with Thompson guns and crowbars.
"He's going to kill him," O'Malley whispered. "Look at the crowd. They want blood."
Jason adjusted the earpiece of the prototype listening device—a parabolic microphone aimed at the floor below.
"Wait," Jason signaled. "We can't shoot three thousand people. We need a diversion."
Jason looked at the schematics Sarah had drawn from memory.
"The pneumatic tubes," Jason whispered. "The library uses compressed air to send book requests to the basement."
"So?"
"So the boiler room is directly below us. If we over-pressurize the system... every tube station in that room becomes a pipe bomb."
Jason pointed to the dockworkers. "Find the pressure valves. Crank them to red. Then break the safety release."
"It'll blow the pipes," O'Malley warned. "Steam everywhere."
"Exactly," Jason said. "Fog of war."
On the floor, Junior stood up.
The crowd quieted. They expected him to beg. They expected him to offer money.
"I am a sinner," Junior said. His voice was weak, but clear.
He looked at Adolf.
"You are right," Junior said.
A gasp went through the room.
"My family has hoarded gold while the children of God went hungry," Junior continued, tears streaming down his face. "I tried to be a good man. But I profited from evil. I took the dividends of blood."
He looked up at the ceiling, right at the grate where Jason was hiding.
"I deserve to die," Junior whispered. "Let my death cleanse the ledger."
The crowd was stunned.
Adolf frowned. This wasn't the script. He needed a monster, not a martyr. If Junior died apologizing, he became a saint.
Adolf realized he was losing the room.
He pulled a Luger pistol from his waistband.
"Then accept your penance," Adolf shouted.
He aimed the gun at Junior's forehead.
"NOW!" Jason screamed into the radio.
BOOM.
It sounded like a cannon shot.
The pneumatic tube station on the east wall exploded. Brass canisters shot out like shrapnel, smashing into the crowd.
HISSSSSS.
A massive steam pipe burst behind the desk, sending a jet of scalding white fog into the air.
The room erupted in panic.
"It's a bomb!" someone screamed.
"Move! Move!"
Jason kicked out the ventilation grate. It fell sixty feet, crashing onto a table.
He grabbed the chandelier chain.
"For the love of God, don't miss," Jason muttered.
He jumped.
He swung down from the ceiling like a demented pirate in a three-piece suit. He landed hard on the Librarian's desk, knocking over a stack of books.
Adolf spun around, raising his pistol.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
O'Malley opened fire from the balcony. He aimed high, shredding the plaster ceiling, raining dust and debris onto the crowd.
The noise was deafening in the enclosed space. The crowd stampeded toward the doors.
Jason tackled Junior.
"Get up!" Jason screamed, dragging him by the collar.
"Let me die!" Junior wept, trying to pull away. "I must atone!"
"You can atone later!" Jason shouted, slapping him across the face. "Right now, you're the only one who knows the Swiss bank codes!"
Jason hauled him up. They ran.
Adolf fired blindly into the steam. Bang! Bang!
A bullet whizzed past Jason's ear, shattering a bust of Aristotle.
"Back door! Into the stacks!" Jason yelled.
They sprinted into the labyrinth of bookshelves. It was a maze of steel and paper.
"Cut them off!" Adolf screamed from the fog.
Men with red armbands chased them down the aisles of History and Philosophy.
Jason pulled a shelf of encyclopedias down behind him. Crash. It blocked the path.
They burst through the emergency exit into the alley.
A laundry truck was waiting, engine idling. Alta was in the driver's seat, grinding the gears.
"Get in!" she screamed.
They dove into the back, landing on piles of dirty linens.
The truck tires screeched as Alta floored it, swerving onto 42nd Street just as Adolf's men burst out the door, firing useless shots at the retreating bumper.
Jason lay on his back, panting. The smell of bleach and sweat filled the truck.
He looked over at Junior.
Junior was curled up in a ball, clutching his stomach.
"Are you hit?" Jason asked, crawling over.
Junior moved his hand. His white shirt was soaked in red.
"Just a scratch," Junior wheezed. His face was gray.
It wasn't a scratch. It was a gut shot. Probably from the crossfire.
Jason grabbed a dirty tablecloth and pressed it against the wound.
"Hold this," Jason ordered. "Hard."
Junior looked at him. His eyes were glassy.
"Why?" Junior whispered. "You hate me. I tried to destroy you."
"I don't hate you, Junior," Jason said, pressing down on the wound as the truck hit a pothole. "I just hate your timing."
"You saved me," Junior murmured. "Is there... good in you, Ezra?"
Jason looked at the dying man. He thought about the lie he had told himself—that he only needed the bank codes.
But the truth was simpler. Junior was the last piece of the old world. If Junior died, Jason was alone in the dark with Alta and Adolf.
"Don't read into it," Jason said gruffly. "You owe me money."
The truck slowed down. O'Malley banged on the partition.
"Boss! Look at the newsstand!"
Jason peered out the back window as they passed a corner kiosk.
A newspaper boy was holding up the evening edition.
The headline wasn't about the riot. It wasn't about the trial.
It was in bold, black letters four inches high.
GERMANY DECLARES BANKRUPTCY.
REPARATIONS DEFAULT.
MARKET CRASHES.
Jason stared at the retreating headline.
He had leveraged everything to buy Germany. He had poured millions into stabilizing the Mark.
And now, Germany had defaulted.
"It's gone," Jason whispered. "The money. The assets. Standard Oil Europe."
He looked down at his blood-soaked hands.
He had saved the heir, but he had lost the empire.
He was broke. He was hunted. And the only thing he owned was a stolen laundry truck and a bleeding man who thought he was Jesus.
Jason started to laugh. It was a hysterical, jagged sound.
"Drive, Alta!" Jason shouted. "Just drive!"