The Mountain: An Event Group Thriller (12 page)

The man stood six-foot-three. Most of the weight he had been able to maintain through the early yea rs of the war had long since departed. Confederate Lieutenant Colonel Jessop Taylor stood over Lieutenant Giles Pentecost, a boy of only twenty, who stared up at him from the ragged cot where he lay dying. It had been six days since the four nurses and the constantly drunk country doctor had been to the camp to treat the sick. That left most of the care and healing to the other prisoners of the camp, and they were losing a battle with the elements, the food, the lack of cold-weather clothing, and the biggest killer of all, typhoid fever. This was what young Pentecost and over a thousand other prisoners were dying from. The rest were sick with malnutrition, trench foot, and the filth of living in such close quarters.

“We tried, didn’t we, Colonel?” the boy said as his eyes stared at a spot to his right where Jessy Taylor wasn’t standing. Taylor stepped to the side, hoping the boy could see him better. He didn’t. The eyes were covered in white film and the face was drawn. Taylor reached down and took the boy’s hand. He had to pry the filthy blanket from his fingers to do so.

“We gave them hell, Giles, old boy.”

The young lieutenant went into a fit of shivers as another prisoner stepped to the cot and handed Colonel Taylor a wet cloth. He nodded to the other thin prisoner, who was starting to suffer the chills of the early onset of the same illness. Taylor used his free hand to apply the cloth to the boy’s forehead. Thankfully Pentecost closed his milky eyes as the coolness touched his burning skin.

Suddenly the young lieutenant’s eyes opened and seemed to fix on Taylor.

“Why didn’t General Stuart come back for us?”

Taylor didn’t know how to answer. They had performed a rearguard action to stall and make time for Jeb Stuart’s cavalry to escape from the Virginia countryside more than a year past. The action had caused the surrender of Taylor’s regiment, which never received orders to fall back after Jeb Stuart’s escape. They had been in a series of camps since their capture and had finally arrived in New York and Fort Lafayette last fall. Since that time Taylor had lost more than three hundred men to disease and starvation.

Taylor recalled that dark, rainy night on the outskirts of Antietam. General Robert E. Lee had praised Taylor in the Richmond newspapers, saying it was a classic textbook example of a rearguard action. Taylor thought differently. The heroic James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart had escaped the trap but had never sent word back to Taylor to break off the action and return to the Army of Northern Virginia. Taylor knew Stuart to be a brilliant commander, but that night he had fallen far short of his reputation, just as he had at Gettysburg in July the previous year when he became a missing element in Lee’s attack in Pennsylvania.

He finally looked back at the boy with his customary answer to that infernal question. The boy was staring at nothing. He had died. Taylor gazed at the face of the young man who had been barely old enough to shave, and then angrily tossed the now-dry cloth into a corner.

“We’ll take care of the lieutenant.”

Taylor finally stood on shaky legs and faced the man he had been with since the start. Sergeant Major Ezekiel McCandless nodded that he too was saddened at the loss of the brave boy. Taylor brushed a hand through his dirty brown hair. He felt the lice crawling on his fingers when he lowered his hand but made no move to shake off the pests.

“That’s eight just this morning. We have to plant them now; the heat’s going to turn them fast, I reckon.”

Jessy Taylor angrily pushed past his sergeant major and stepped outside into the hot sun. His gray undershirt was already soaked through with sweat and it was only eight in the morning. He looked toward the high fence and the guards who patrolled it. One was eating an apple and staring at him, and was soon joined by the commandant of the camp, Major Nelson Freeman, a Boston abolitionist’s son who held no love for the Confederacy or the men who fought for her. Taylor saw a cruel smile cross the major’s features. He actually nodded his head in greeting at Taylor and then moved off with his hands behind his back as if he was pleased another Rebel was on his way to hell. Colonel Taylor knew he would kill that man someday for his cruelty at Lafayette.

McCandless ordered two men to carry the body away to join the others who had died that morning and the previous night. The sergeant major used the tattered remnants of his uniform jacket to wipe sweat from the sides of his thickly bearded face.

“We have to get the men out of here, Colonel. Anything is better than dying like pigs in a filthy pen.”

Taylor glanced back up at the smiling guard on the wall, who tossed his half-eaten apple down into the muddy yard where six men immediately started fighting for it.

“The last that I heard, Ezra, most people feed their pigs.” Taylor’s eyes never left the corporal, who was now laughing at the winner of the fight for the apple core. The man was covered in mud, as was his trophy, yet he ate the apple without concern for the filth.

“And yes, it is time for us to take what’s left of our boys and get the hell out of here.”

“’Bout damn time too.”

Taylor looked at the sergeant major, who had lost more than seventy pounds himself, and nodded. “I want officers’ call at sixteen hundred; all noncoms will attend. We have to start gathering information, as much as we can get. I need to know what harbor is the closest. We’ll never be able to get anywhere overland; we have to make our escape by sea. That means the Yank guards who are known to be loose-tongued have to be handled right to get what information we need.”

While Taylor spoke he continued to spy the retreating form of the camp commandant as he made his way around the stone battlements.

The most renowned Confederate cavalry officer outside of Jeb Stuart, a classmate at West Point, had made up his mind to get his men out of Lafayette or die trying.

CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK CITY

Professor Lars Ollafson waited patiently, tossing bread crumbs to the pigeons that walked around his bench. He held the satchel between his feet as his eyes scanned the area around him. The people of the city avoided the park for the most part, since the army had taken it over for training. Several Union soldiers walked past, laughing as they made their way from the Sheep Meadow at the center of Central Park. Ollafson watched the soldiers leave, and then as his eyes moved he spied the man he had been waiting for. The young student walked to the bench and sat. He unfolded a
New York Herald
and started to read.

“I have the lockbox secured, Professor. The artifacts will be well guarded.”

Ollafson didn’t respond as he tossed the last of the bread onto the ground. He carefully used his shoe to slide the satchel toward his student.

“Is that everything, Professor?”

“All except for the two planks. I still need them for the president’s meeting with the war department.”

“I thought you were not to be included on the expedition. I was under the impression the president refused to let you go.”

Ollafson stood. “With the ace I have up my sleeve, young man, I don’t see how Mr. Lincoln can leave me out of it.” He finally looked down and spared the boy a brief smile. “I mean, he does not know what is really there, does he? The expedition has taken far too long to plan and coordinate. If the president’s chosen officer does not arrive from the west soon, all will be lost.”

“I don’t understand,” the boy said as he finally lowered the newspaper to look at his former Harvard professor.

“It has taken me more than a year to get the expert translation of the symbols, and now I will explain the real reasons we must get to our find before anyone else.” The smile grew on Ollafson’s face as he turned and started to walk away. “The president cannot refuse me when he’s informed. There is too much at stake.”

“What, Professor? What is more important than the artifact?”

“God, young Simon. God.”

*   *   *

Fifteen minutes later the student carried the heavy satchel toward the New York Bank and Trust Company in Times Square. There he would deposit the satchel in a safe where no one could access the material except Ollafson himself. He smiled as the doorman opened the glass door for him.

“Deposit vaults?” he asked.

“Second floor, sir,” the doorman said. The former student in Ollafson’s Harvard religious studies course nodded and moved toward the stairs.

Just as he stepped onto the marble-tiled second-floor landing, he was confronted by two uniformed New York City policemen. They deftly grabbed the young man by the arms and steered him toward a room where another man in civilian attire was waiting with the door opened. The student started to say something, but that was when the club silenced him and he went limp in the two men’s hands. The satchel fell to the floor and the man holding the door smiled and retrieved it, following the three inside the empty office.

The two men dumped the boy unceremoniously on the wooden floor. The one on the left knelt over the young student.

“Ah, we must have hit him too damn hard. He’s not breathing.”

The civilian looked unconcerned as he stepped over the boy’s dead body, removed an envelope from his jacket pocket, and handed it over to the corrupt policeman. He opened it, saw the bills inside, and then nodded and the two policemen left the room. The man waited until their footsteps retreated, and then he dropped to a knee and opened the satchel.

He was shocked to discover it filled with papers. Old paper, new paper, a few rocks, but no artifacts. He angrily emptied the bag and then tossed the satchel as he searched in vain for the material he had been hired to retrieve. Frustrated, he pushed at the gathered papers, knowing he had just wasted a thousand dollars and would have to face the people who had hired him for the job, and they were far more unforgiving of failure than even himself.

He cursed his luck, realizing that Professor Ollafson had removed all evidence of the artifact from his satchel before handing it over. As he was about to stand, something caught his eye. He reached out and turned over a large and very thick paper and studied the design upon it. His brow furrowed and he reached up and removed his top hat, then took the paper to a window so he could see in the dim lighting of the room. He held the paper up as the light revealed strange designs on its surface. It looked to be copied from something. A rubbing, perhaps—he wasn’t sure. He decided that maybe he wasn’t left empty-handed after all.

When the well-dressed man with satchel in hand stepped from the bank building, ignoring the pleasantries of the doorman, he could not help but see the strange drawings and writings on the pages he had recovered. They were burned into his retinas and he could not shake them free from his brain.

*   *   *

An hour later the man with the satchel crossed over Seventh Avenue and headed for the Knickerbocker Hotel. Throughout the long city blocks, he had not noticed the other passersby, or even the women’s temperance group as they serenaded him against the evils of drink. He roughly pushed past them without hesitation.

As the doorman opened the hotel’s front door, two men immediately fell in beside him as they approached the staircase. There were no words exchanged as the three made their way to the sixth floor and into room 602. The man gave his top hat and coat over to one of the men who had escorted him up, who carefully placed it on the coat rack in the fancy suite. The man removed a set of handcuffs and then placed the satchel on a large table in the center of the living area. He stared at the old beaten-leather case for a full minute. He took a deep breath and then held out a hand to the gruff-looking gentleman in an ill-fitting suit, who laid a padlock into his palm and then stepped back just as a knock sounded on the door. The man nodded his head toward the door. The second withdrew a revolver and this action elicited a frown from their boss. He quickly holstered the weapon underneath his coat.

“We do not have gunfights in the Knickerbocker Hotel,” the man said with a heavy French accent.

The second brute opened the door and stepped back as a woman in an elegant violet dress with matching hat walked briskly into the suite. The man with the satchel and handcuffs did not turn to see who it was; he already knew. The man who had opened the door returned to the table as the woman nodded her head and then sat quietly on the love seat as she daintily removed her light gloves.

“Was there any trouble?” the woman asked as the man padlocked the satchel. He finally acknowledged the woman as he turned to face her.

“No, not after the foolish constabulary accidentally killed the courier, no trouble at all.” The man raised his left brow, waiting for his employer to say something about his methods. It didn’t take long.

“That was just a boy,” she said, her accented English also hinting at the South of France.

“One that will never become a man. Sometimes, Madame Richelieu, bad things have to happen to innocents, as I am sure you are aware in your business.”

“Murder can become quite expensive in our line of employment, Mr. Renaud. You should have taken the satchel and made it look as if he was robbed by one of these American thugs roaming New York.”

The tall man shrugged and then used his left hand to indicate the man who had opened the door should raise his right hand. When he did, Renaud placed the handcuff on his wrist and then snapped the other cuff through the leather-and-steel-wire handle of the large satchel.

“If you arrive without the satchel, your hand had better be missing also. Is that most clear?” Renaud said as his brown eyes glared at the courier.

“Yes, sir, very clear.”

“When at sea, you are to deposit the satchel in the captain’s safe and leave it until you arrive in France. Is that also clear?”

“Clear, sir.”

“Good. Madame Richelieu has your passage voucher.”

The woman rose and handed the man two tickets purchased that very morning. “I’m afraid you have very little time. I suggest you and your partner leave this minute. American merchant ships do not dally leaving the harbor.”