The Bloody Ground - Starbuck 04 (10 page)

"I know of him, sir."

"The less you know, the better,"
Thorne
growled. "Pinkerton isn't even a soldier! But McClellan swears by him, and even as you and I stand here talking Pinkerton is being given command of all the army's intelligence once more. He had that same command in the peninsula, and what did he do with it? He summoned rebel soldiers out of thin air. He told the Young Napoleon that there were hundreds of thousands of men where there was nothing but a huddle of hungry rogues. Pinkerton will do the same again, Faulconer, mark my words. Within one week we shall be told that Lee has two hundred thousand men and that little McClellan dare not attack for fear of being beat. We shall haver again, we shall dither, and while we piss our collective pants Robert Lee will attack. Do you wonder that Europe laughs at us?"

"Do they, sir?" Adam, confused by the tirade, asked the question feebly.

"Oh they do, Faulconer, they do. American pride is being humbled by a rebellion we seem powerless to defeat and Europe takes pleasure in that. They pretend not, but if Robert Lee destroys McClellan then I daresay we'll see European troops in the South. The French would love to join in, but they won't jump till Britain decides, and Britain won't join the game until they know which side is winning. Which is why Lee will attack us, Faulconer. Look!"
Thorne
strode to a map of the eastern seaboard that hung behind his desk. "We've made three efforts to capture Richmond. Three! And all have been defeated. Lee now controls all of northern Virginia, so what's to stop him coming further north? Here, Faulconer, into Maryland, and maybe farther north still, into Pennsylvania." The Colonel demonstrated these threats by sweeping his hand across the map. "He'll grab our good harvest for his starving men and beat up little McClellan and so demonstrate to the Europeans that we can't even defend our own territory. By next spring, Faulconer, there could be a hundred thousand European troops marching for the Confederacy, and what will we do then? Treat for peace, of course, and so the Republic of Washington and Jefferson will have lasted a mere eighty years and North America, Faulconer, will be fatally weakened for the next eighty years." Thorne leaned over his desk and glared at Adam. "Lee cannot be allowed to win, Faulconer. He cannot," the Colonel said in a grave voice, almost as if he were charging Adam with the personal responsibility for saving the Republic.

"No, sir," Adam said, and felt it was a weak response, but he was being swamped by the sheer force of Lyman
Thorne
's personality. Sweat trickled down Adam's face. The night was oppressive, and the rain had not diminished the humidity at all, while the gasoliers' flaring mantles only added to the room's stifling heat.

The Colonel waved Adam toward a chair, then sat down himself and lit a cigar from a gas flame that burned from a tabletop gas jet connected to a long rubber extension cord that snaked down from the nearest gasolier. Once the cigar was lit he pushed the gas jet and papers aside, then leaned back and rubbed his face as though he was suddenly tired. "You're a scalawag, right?" he demanded.

"Yes, sir," Adam said. A scalawag was a Southerner who fought for the North, the opposite of a Copperhead.

"And three months ago," Thorne went on, "you were a rebel on Johnston's staff, am I right?"

"Yes, sir."

"And back then, Faulconer, our Young Napoleon was marching on Richmond. No, that is the wrong verb. He was crawling toward R
ichmond, while Detective Pinker
ton,"
Thorne
mocked the description with his tone, "was convincing little George that the rebels had two hundred thousand troops. You sent information that would have corrected that misapprehension, only the news never got through. Some clever bastard on the other side replaced your dispatch with one of their own devising and so Richmond survived. I almost stopped that clever bastard, Faulconer, indeed I broke a leg trying, but I failed." He grimaced, then sucked on his cigar. The smoke hung in the room like the lingering skein of a rifle shot.

"Back then, Faulconer," Thorne continued, "I was working for the Inspector General's Department. I did the jobs no one else wanted. Now I am more exalted, but still no more popular with this army than I was when I inspected their damned latrines or wondered why they needed so many clerks. But now, Faulconer, I have a measure of power. It is not mine, but belongs to my master and he lives in that house there." He jerked the cigar toward the White House. "You follow me?"

"I think so, sir."

"The president, Faulconer, believes as I do that this army is largely commanded by cretins. The army, of course, believes that the country is ruled by fools, and perhaps both are right, but for the moment, Faulconer, I'd put my money on the fools rather than the cretins. Officially I am a mere liaison officer between the fools and the cretins, but in reality, Faulconer, I am the president's creature in the army. My job is to prevent the cretins from being more than usually cretinous. I want your help."

Adam said nothing, not because he was reluctant to help, but because he was astonished by Thorne and his words. He was also cheered by them. The North, for all its power, seemed to be wallowing helplessly in the face of the rebellion's energy and that made no sense to Adam, but here, at last, was a man who had a vigor to match the enemy's defiance.

"Did you know, Faulconer, that your father has become Deputy Secretary of War for the Confederacy?"
Thorne
asked.

"No, sir, I didn't."

"Well, he is. In time, maybe, that will be useful, but not now." Thorne pulled a sheet of paper toward him and in so doing toppled another pile that spilt close to the gas jet. A corner of paper burst into flames that Thorne slapped out with the air of a man forever extinguishing such accidental fires. "You left the Confederacy three months ago and joined Galloway's Horse?" he asked, taking the facts from the paper he had selected.

"Yes, sir."

"He was a good man, Galloway. He had some bright ideas, which is why, of course, this army starved him of men and resources. But it was still a damn fool idea for Galloway to get mixed up in battle. You were supposed to be scouts, not shock troops. Galloway died, yes?"

"I'm afraid so, sir."

"And his second in command is missing, maybe dead, maybe captured. What was his name?"

"Blythe, sir," Adam said bitterly. He had never liked, much less trusted, Billy Blythe.

"So Galloway's Horse, so far as I can see, is a dead beast," Thorne said. "No employment for you there, Faulconer. Are you married?"

The sudden question surprised Adam. He shook his head. "No, sir."

"Quite right, too. A mistake to marry early." Thorne went silent for a moment. "I'm making you a major," he said abruptly, then waved Adam's embarrassed thanks to silence. "I'm not promoting you because you deserve it, I don't know if you do, but because if you work for me you'll be constantly harassed by brainless staff officers and the higher your rank the less obnoxious that harassment will be." "Yes, sir," Adam said.

Thorne drew on his cigar and stared at Adam. He liked what he saw. Major Adam Faulconer was a young man, fair haired and bearded, with a square, trustworthy face. He was, Thorne knew, an instinctive Unionist and an honest man, but maybe, Thorne reflected, those were the wrong qualities for this job. Maybe he needed a rogue, but the choice had not belonged to Thorne. "So what are you to do, Faulconer? I shall tell you." He stood again and began pacing up and down behind his desk. "We have hundreds of sympathizers behind the enemy lines and most of them are no damn good. They see a rebel regiment march past and they're so overawed by the col-umn's length that they report ten thousand men where in truth they've only seen a thousand. They send their messages and Detective Pinkerton multiplies their figure by three and Little George quakes in his fighting boots and begs Halleck to send him another army corps, and that, Faulconer, is how we've been conducting this war."

"Yes, sir," Adam said.

Thorne tugged up a window sash to let some of the cigar smoke out of the room. The city's sewage stench wafted in with a flutter of moths that flew suicidally toward the yellow-blue flames of the gas jets. Thorne turned back to Adam. "But I have a handful of agents of my own, and one of them is of particular value. He's a lazy man and I doubt that his allegiance to the North is anything other than a cynical calculation as to the war's outcome, but he has the possibility of revealing the rebels' strategy to us, everything! How many? Where? Why? The same kind of thing you tried to reveal on the peninsula. But he's also a timid man. His patriotism is not so strong that he fancies a hempen rope round his neck on a rebel gallows, and for that reason he is a cautious man. He will send us dispatches, but he will not use any means except those of his own devising. He won't risk his neck trying to ride through the lines, but said I could provide a courier who could run that risk, but he insisted it would have to be someone he could trust." Thorne paused to draw on his cigar, then jabbed it toward Adam. "He named you."

Adam said nothing. Instead he was trying to think of someone who matched
Thorne
's description, someone he obviously knew well in his native Virginia, but he could pluck no name or face out of his tangled memories. For a few wild seconds he wondered if it was his father, then he dismissed that thought. His father would never betray Virginia as Adam had done. "Might I ask—" Adam began.

"No,"
Thorne
interrupted. "I'm not giving you his name. You don't need his name. If a message reaches you then you'll probably realize who he is, but it won't help you to know now. To be frank, Faulconer, I don't know what will help you. All I know is that one weak man in the Confederacy has told me he'll address his dispatches to you, but beyond that all is mystery."
Thorne
spread his arms in a gesture that expressed his own dissatisfaction with the clumsy and imprecise arrangements he was describing. "How my man will reach you, I don't know. How you will reach him, I cannot guess. He won't take risks, so you'll have to. All I can tell you is this. Just over a week ago I sent this man a message demanding that he find an excuse, any excuse, to attach himself to Lee's headquarters and I have no reason to think he will disobey. He won't like it, but he will do as I ask. He will stay close to Lee's headquarters and you will stay close to

McClellan's. Little George will think you're a nuisance, but you'll have papers saying that you work for the Inspector General and are preparing a report on the efficacy of the army's signaling systems. If Little George does try to hobble you, tell me and I'll rescue you." For a moment
Thorne
faltered, suddenly beset by the hopelessness of what he tried to do. He had told Adam the truth, but he had not revealed how ramshackle the whole arrangement was. His man in Richmond had provided Adam's name weeks before, not in connection with this scheme, but as a messenger who could be trusted and now, in utter desperation,
Thorne
was recruiting Adam in the hope that somehow his reluctant Southern agent could discover Lee's strategy and communicate it to Adam. The chances of success were slender, but something had to be done to neutralize Pinkerton's defeatist intelligence and to ward off the dreadful prospect of a Southern victory that would invite the damned Europeans to come and dance on America's carcass.

"You've got a good horse?"
Thorne
asked Adam.

"Very good, sir."

"You'll need money. Here." He took a bag of coins from his desk drawer. "United States gold, Faulconer, enough to bribe rebels and maybe get you out of trouble. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that my man will send you a message saying where he will leave his dispatches. That place will be behind enemy lines, Faulconer, so you'll need a good horse and the ability to bribe any rebel scum who give you trouble. Tomorrow morning you go to the camp on Analostin Island to meet a Captain Bidwell. He'll tell you all you need to know about the signals system so that you can talk intelligently to Little
George about telegraphs and wig
waggers. After that you follow Little George and wait for a message. Take the gold with you. That's all."

Adam, so summarily dismissed, hesitated. He had a score of questions, but
Thorne
's brusqueness discouraged him from asking any of them. The Colonel had uncapped an inkwell and had begun writing, so Adam just went to the desk and lifted the heavy bag, and it was not until he had reached the hallway downstairs and was buckling on his sword belt that it occurred to him that Thorne had never once asked him whether he was willing to risk his life by riding behind the rebel lines.

But maybe Thorne had already known the answer. Adam was a patriot, and for his country that he loved so passionately, any risk was worth taking and so, at a spy's bidding, he would ride into treachery and pray for victory.

Starbuck carried the brandy back to the office, locked the door, and lay down with the fully loaded Adams beside him. He heard Holborrow return, and later he heard the four captains go to their beds upstairs, and sometime after that he slept, but he was wary of Captain Dennison's revenge and so his sleep was fitful, though he was dreaming by the time Camp Lee's bugles called a raucous reveille to startle him awake. The sight of the undrunk brandy bottle reminded him of the previous night's confrontation and he took care to strap his revolver about his waist before he went through the house to the backyard, where he pumped himself a bucket of water. A mutinous Lucifer glared at him from the kitchen door. "We'll be leaving here in an hour or so," Starbuck told him. "We're going back to the city." "Heaven be praised."