The Mountain: An Event Group Thriller (6 page)

“I believe you gave me all I needed to know, General, that both sides are so maddened by bloodlust that they will send American boys off to die in a foreign land that they only read about in Sunday school.”

Lee ignored Seward’s anger. “I am obviously curious, Mr. Secretary—what Union officer has the president chosen to lead this impossible sortie into the unknown?”

Seward looked up at the dwindling rain and then back at Lee. “I believe he is an officer you may know very well, General.”

Lee stepped out onto the porch and waited. Colonel Freemantle pretended as though he were wool-gathering by looking away.

“He’s an officer that fell out of favor with General McClellan after the Peninsula campaign when this officer accused the general of cowardice. The president ordered Secretary of War Stanton to hide this man away from McClellan by sending him out west to count red savages or something to that effect.”

“His name and rank, sir?” Lee persisted.

“Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Thomas.” Seward turned and made his way back to the carriage.

At that same moment Colonel Freemantle, the British observer, slipped away off the porch and into the rainy night. The colonel had his own communiqués to write to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria regarding the most unusual meeting in the annals of modern warfare. He was sure to remember the name that he overheard on this rainy night in Virginia. That would be the starting point where Her Majesty’s government would start to unravel this strange development in the American destiny.

General Lee turned and entered the house. He walked to the rocker and then eased himself down. His aide came in and placed a blanket over his legs and then waited for the general to speak. Lee only sat and stared at the fire.

“I wish I were going with them,” Lee mumbled under his breath.

“Sir?” Taylor asked.

“It is nothing, Major, just gathering wool.” Lee seemed to come awake as he forced the strange meeting from his thoughts and quickly returned them to where they desperately needed to be—the conduct of what remained of the war and how he could make the Army of Northern Virginia hang on long enough to get peace negotiations started.

The aide was about to ask the general his meaning, but Lee stopped him with his quiet voice.

“Send for General Longstreet. We move the army south before midnight.”

*   *   *

With the most unusual meeting of the Civil War concluded, the United States of America was about to embark on the most dangerous international excursion in its short history—the invasion of the Ottoman Empire.

BUCKINGHAM PALACE, LONDON, ENGLAND

JULY 30, 1863

The dawn skies broke open with bright sunshine only a few hours after the heavy rains had washed the British capitol clean with their fury. The palace was all bustle this morning in preparation for the queen to meet with the French ambassador. All who worked within the confines of the palace knew only too well that if Victoria was anything she was a stern hater of French politics. Today she would harangue the French representative about their massive ship-building program that had begun to worry the queen’s admirals.

The prime minister of the United Kingdom sat patiently in the long and richly appointed hallway awaiting the call that would see him into the queen’s drawing room, where she sat eating a hastily prepared breakfast. As servants hustled from one end of the hallway to the other he watched the faces of those who worked closely with the queen and he could tell they were all on edge. Hushed whispers that would represent shouts in other parts of the country were heard coming from the head butler to all of his minions.

The telegram from Portsmouth had arrived at his offices at three thirty that morning and the prime minister had informed the palace that he needed an immediate audience with the queen as soon as humanly possible. He had been granted the time and now he sat waiting on Her Majesty to finish her toast and tea.

Prime Minister Henry John Temple, the third Viscount Palmerston, or as the queen herself liked to call him, Pam, was a humorless man who found the shortcomings of others far more irritating than a man in his position was allowed to feel, or, voice.

“Excuse me, sir, but Her Majesty will see you now,” the queen’s attendant said, clearing his throat as an interruption of the thoughts of the sour man.

Lord Palmerston nodded once and then reached for the leather satchel at his side, which contained the information he had received from Portsmouth that morning. He stood, fussed with his coat, and then followed the assistant into the queen’s private quarters.

The news would soon be delivered to Her Majesty that the Americans were once more raising their ugly heads.

The queen of Great Britain and her colonies turned her head and faced the prime minister as he began the established procedure for greeting the queen. She wore an intricate woven bathrobe and her thinning hair was hidden under a white nightcap. She said nothing but swished her hand through the air toward the small table at which she sat. Palmerston finished his bow anyway and then came forward.

Victoria an the aura about her that she was destined to be the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, and she knew it—current state of dress notwithstanding.

“Pam, what brings you out of that little hovel of an office at this hour?”

“Your Majesty, I have received a communiqué wired from Portsmouth this morning. The message was relayed from the HMS
Slaughter
as soon as she docked.”

Victoria sat stoically and with her delicate right hand shoved a small piece of leftover bread from one end of her empty plate to the other as Palmerston opened his case.

“It seems I remember that my ship
Slaughter
was attempting to run the American blockade outside of Charleston. Am I correct in this or is my memory failing?”

“Your memory is as sharp as ever, Your Majesty. She was indeed and she did manage to break into the harbor and deliver the war materiel we promised the Confederacy.”

“Not that it will do our American southern friends any good at this point. It seems their setback in Pennsylvania early last month may have written the final chapter in their rather short history,” Victoria said as she sadly shook her head.

“From the reports I received, their General Lee is quite capable of reversing the current trend of defeat.”

“A flood is a flood, Pam, you know that. Once the waters of defeat gain a sloping ground there is no stopping it from inundating your house, and the southern house is taking on water at an alarming rate, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, Majesty,” Lord Palmerston said as he nodded and then held forth the cable from Portsmouth. “It took some time for HMS
Slaughter
to sneak out of Charleston, but she finally managed to get past the Union blockade in a thick bank of fog. She carried back far more than cotton mercantile on the return trip.” He handed Victoria the yellow paper. She took the offered telegram and then held up a small pair of reading glasses to her gray eyes as she read.

“Our Colonel Freemantle has spied more than war in America. What do you make of this meeting between Secretary of State Seward and General Lee? I would think that any surrender request would have been forwarded through to Richmond and President Davis.”

“Normally yes, but my people suspect it is more than that.” Palmerston again reached into the satchel and brought out another flimsy telegram delivered by ship. “Our man at the White House has passed along a report of a seemingly benign meeting between President Lincoln and Professor Lars Ollafson. He’s a theology professor at Harvard University. A rather brilliant scholar, so much so that he had accompanied our own Professor James Kensington, of Oxford, and three other Englishmen and four American scholars on a field expedition.”

“Pam, why exactly are you telling me this?” Victoria asked as she stood from the small table and gestured to her ladies in waiting that she was ready to get dressed.

Palmerston averted his eyes as the queen maneuvered to a large silk screen.

“I’ll refresh your memory,” he said as he placed the satchel down. “Professor James Kensington was the man who had an audience with you more than four years ago to ask for funding for an expedition.”

Queen Victoria stuck her head around the screen and looked at the prime minister. “Not that silly old wives’ tale again?”

“It seems our esteemed Professor Kensington received outside assistance after you curtly dismissed his expedition as”—he lowered his head—“folly.”

“So I did,” she said as she again vanished behind the screen. “So, what have we, Pam?”

“Professor Kensington is dead, along with six others, and the entirety of the expedition’s personnel have vanished with the exception of one man—Professor Ollafson. He escaped Turkey with a large parcel and then made his way back to the United States where he took the meeting with Mr. Lincoln and most of his cabinet, and after this meeting there was great dissention, as reported by our man in the White House. After that the professor vanished. Where? We do not yet know.”

Victoria reappeared from behind the dressing screen still wearing her robe. Her hair was now exposed and brushed, but the prime minister could see her aging was progressing quickly with the strain of her rule.

“Mr. Lincoln is reputed to be an extremely smart man. You are not telling me he will choose to go after this rather dubious prize that has exactly zero percent of a return on investment?”

“Evidently, Your Majesty, Mr. Lincoln was shown something from Ollafson’s venture to Turkey that may have changed his mind.”

Queen Victoria closed her eyes and then stepped back to continue dressing. “Right now we have our own troubles with the French, and now we receive word that hostilities could break out at any time in Africa. The Province of Natal’s a little nervous about the Zulus across the Buffalo River. And here we are, using resources we cannot afford to be wasting, to examine if the American president has gone completely insane. With the problems he faces, even if the war is truly coming to a close, he has no time for foolishness such as this. So, from this point forward, Lord Palmerston, we take a wait-and-see attitude toward this preposterous theory that seems to have taken hold of every theologian in all of Europe. We wait, we see what our very-puzzling Mr. Lincoln will do. Instruct your man at the White House that his queen is curious as to the details of the plan”—she again stuck her head out from behind the dressing screen—“if there is a plan. If there is, then we will deal with the Americans accordingly. If they make a run for the Aegean Sea and the Strait of Constantinople beyond, we will know Mr. Lincoln has fallen for this rather dubious fairy tale. If the Americans think they can get into Europe, we’ll be there to remind them who rules the world’s oceans.”

Palmerston gathered his satchel and bowed even though the queen couldn’t see him. He stopped and faced the dressing screen again.

“Your Majesty, if this is a fairy tale, as you believe—”

“You did not hear that from me, Pam,” she said as she stuck her head out again. “My beliefs in that regard wouldn’t go over too well with my subjects.”

“But, if you believe that, why would we worry about Lincoln and what he believes may be there?”

Finally the queen emerged from behind the screen fully dressed. Her gown was rigid, but sparkling. She looked well, and now a far better match for the French ambassador.

“Because, Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. Lincoln is as much an agnostic as myself. However, if the president of the United States sponsors this expedition, then whatever this Professor Ollafson passed on to the president makes the British Empire somewhat nervous. Thus”—she looked into the mirror that was held in front of her—“if Mr. Lincoln sees advantage in this foray then we must show just as much enthusiasm and fortitude. Clear?”

“Not at all, Majesty.”

“Good, then I have not lost my ambiguous touch.”

As Prime Minister Palmerston left the palace he suspected that he might soon be witness to a confused race to find out what the real truth was in Eastern Turkey.

PART ONE

GHOSTS OF DAYS GONE BY

Thou shalt be killed if thee can’t find

the demon lurking in thou mind.

So off I ventured, to quench my thirst

of corpses piled with hearts-a-burst.

And on that quest what did I see?

The Wicked Path of Destiny.

—Joseph Clifford

1

CAPITOL HILL, WASHINGTON, D.C.

SEPTEMBER 16, 2005

The eight members of the Senate Oversight Committee were stunned to silence. The same could be said for the press seated inside the crowded room. Even military officers were visibly shocked at the comment uttered moments before by the United States Army officer seated before the panel. As the room burst into chatter, several of the higher-ranking military men, mostly army officers, glared at the man seated at the table with his JAG attorneys and then angrily left the chamber. The U.S. Army lawyers were all still shaking their heads at his statement as the men implicated in the cover-up stormed out. After all, it wasn’t every day that one of the official wunderkinds of the U.S. military so readily committed career suicide in front of the entire nation.

Senator James Kellum, head of the Joint Armed Services Committee, hammered the gavel several times to quiet the observers and guests.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I will clear this chamber if there is one more outburst like that. This is not a soap opera with good guys and bad guys. This is an investigation into the charges of misconduct by supreme command authority in a combat area. People’s lives and careers are on the line here and I will not let these proceedings devolve into anarchy.”

The C-SPAN cameras seemed to be locked on the tired and scarred face of the young army major sitting beside his JAG counsel at the table. The man didn’t seem to hear the commotion that his last statement had unleashed. The major pursed his lips and shook his head as he must have been feeling his career slipping out from underneath the polished chair he was sitting in.