BioShock: Rapture

“And what talents are those? Not that I discount a gift for plumbing. But—is that what you mean?”

“No sir. Not as such. I’m by way of being an engineer. In a simple way, mind. Could be I’ll start me own… my own… building operation. Not so young anymore, but still—I see things in my mind I’d like to build…” He broke off, embarrassed at being so personal with this man. But there was something about Ryan that made you want to open up and talk.

“You’re British. Not one of the… the gentry types, certainly.”

“Right as rain, sir.” Bill wondered if he’d get the brush-off now. There was a touch of defensiveness when he added, “Grew up ’round Cheapside, like.”

Ryan chuckled dryly. “You’re touchy about your origins. I know the feeling. I too am an immigrant. I was very young when I came here from Russia. I have learned to control my speech—reinvented myself. A man must make of his life a ladder that he never ceases to climb—if you’re not rising, you are slipping down the rungs, my friend.

“But by ascending,” Ryan went on, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets and taking a pensive turn about the room, “one makes one’s own class, do you see? Eh? One classes oneself!”

Bill had been about to make his excuses and walk out—but that stopped him. Ryan had articulated something he fiercely believed.

“Couldn’t agree more, sir!” Bill blurted. “That’s why I’ve come to the USA. Anyone can rise up, here. Right to the top!”

Ryan grunted skeptically. “Yes, and no. There are some who don’t have the stuff. But it’s not the ‘class’ or race or creed that they were born into that decides it. It’s something inside a man. And that’s something you have. You’re a true mugwump, a real individual. We’ll talk again, you and I…”

Bill nodded good-bye, not believing for a second that they’d speak again. He figured a rich bloke took it into his mind to have a natter with “the little people,” patronizing a chap to prove to themselves how fair and kindly they could be.

He headed to check on Pablo and Roy before he made his way to the lobby and went about his business. This had been an interesting encounter—it’d be a story to tell in the pub, though no one would likely believe him. Andrew Ryan? Who else did you hobnob with—Howard Hughes? Yer ol’ pal William Randolph Hearst?

* * *

Bill McDonagh’s head was only moderately sore the next morning, and he answered his flat’s clangorous telephone readily enough, hoping for work. A good sweat always cleared his head.

“This Bill McDonagh?” said a gruff, unfamiliar voice.

“Right enough.”

“My name’s Sullivan. Head of Security for Andrew Ryan.”

“Security? What’s ’e say I’ve done, then? Look here, mate, I’m no crook—”

“No no, it’s nothing like that—he just set me to find you. Chinowski didn’t want to give up the number. Claimed he lost it. Tried taking the job himself. I had to get it from our friends at the phone company.”

“What job?”

“Why, if you want it, Andrew Ryan’s offering you a job as his new building engineer… Starting immediately.”

2

The Docks, New York City 1946

Sullivan sometimes wished he were back working the Meatball Beat in Little Italy. Ryan paid him well, sure, but having to dodge G-men on the docks was not his idea of a good time.

It was a bracing, misty evening, supposed to be spring but didn’t feel much like it. The waves were choppy and the gulls were huddled on the pylons with their beaks under their wings, their feathers ruffled in the cold northeast wind. Three hulking great ships were tied up at the beat-up old dock, all freighters. This was not one of the fashionable wharfs, with passenger liners and pretty girls waving hankies. Just a couple of red-faced, sour-looking salts in pea jackets tramping by, trailing cigarette smoke, boots crunching on old gull droppings.

Sullivan walked up to the gangplank of the Olympian, the largest of the three ships in the fleet Ryan had bought for his secretive North Atlantic project. He waved at the armed guard, Pinelli, huddled into a big coat on the top deck. Pinelli glanced down at him and nodded.

Ruben Greavy, head engineer for the Wales brothers, was waiting on the lower deck at the top of the gangplank. Greavy was a fussy, pinch-mouthed, bespectacled little man in a rather showy cream-colored overcoat.

Sullivan hesitated, glancing back down the dock—just making out the dark figure of the man who’d been following him. The guy in the slouch hat and trench coat was about seventy yards down the wharf, pretending to be interested in the ships creaking at their moorings. Sullivan had hoped he’d dodged the son of a bitch earlier, but there he was, lighting a pipe for a bit of realistic spycraft.