Harbor of Spies

by Robin Lloyd

“I know you were trying to tell me something.”

  Her eyebrows lifted slightly. She paused and pursed her lips.

  “What I wanted to tell you is that a letter came from London for Mr. Abbott. It was from Mrs. Backhouse.” She pulled a letter out of a pocket in her dress. “My mother didn’t want to open it, but I did anyway. I wanted to get your opinion.”

  “Of course.”

  “Clearly Mrs. Backhouse has heard nothing from Abbott. In her letter, she writes she hopes he is making progress, and mentions she received another note from Cuba enclosed. See for yourself.”

  Emma handed him the piece of rough brown paper. Townsend began reading silently. It was dated January 15, 1863.

  Dear Mistress Backhouse,

  Like I wrote before, tell the man you sendin’ to wear a black top hat with a red feather. That way I gon’ know who he deh. He must come to Matanzas. I am on a plantation that uses English speaking slaves. That is where he will find me. Twenty-four years I been a slave now. I was a free man in Jamaica. Then they kidnapped me. I knew your husband. He was a good man. He wanted to see justice done. He said he would get me freed. Now I fear I have been forgotten.

  Townsend looked up at her with a furrowed brow.

  “No name, and no signature. I am afraid there is little to be done,” Townsend replied with a resigned sigh. “Maybe write Mrs. Backhouse to get more information about this man?”

  “But it will take weeks to get a response,” she said. “I think we should go to the US Consulate here. My mother knows the acting consul general. He and his wife know me as well. He would talk to us.”

  “I’m not sure I want to go to the US Consulate,” Townsend said nervously.

  “Because you’re a blockade runner?”

  Townsend looked at her with surprise.

  “Yes, my mother told me. She suspected it all along. You weren’t honest enough to tell us yourself. That doesn’t speak highly of you, Captain.”

  Emma’s expression was dark.

  “Whatever your principles, I need your help. I think we should pursue this. At the very least we should try to find this poor unfortunate man who is enslaved.”

  Townsend just shook his head. “It would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. And not just any haystack, I might add, but one filled with sharp pitchforks and crawling with poisonous snakes. It would just lead to more trouble, Miss Carpenter.”

  “Perhaps we should go to the Church of St. Augustine then . . . didn’t he have a contact?”

  “I don’t think that would be wise,” Townsend replied. “Look, I helped Abbott, that is true, but that doesn’t mean his cause is mine. Perhaps the best thing you could do is to write Mrs. Backhouse and tell her Mr. Abbott may have been killed on the streets of Havana. I do not see what else can be done, not here on this island.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she shot back angrily, making no effort to hide her scorn.

  Townsend replied softly. “Abbott knew the risks he was taking. I think we need to accept the fact Michael Abbott is probably dead, and so is his investigation of the Backhouse murder.”

  “We do not know Abbott is dead!” she snapped, her eyes filling. “We’ve got to find Abbott and help Grace Backhouse discover who killed her husband.”

  “I’m afraid what you suggest would be too dangerous, Miss Carpenter. Our efforts would most likely lead nowhere, and get us into trouble—you are too naïve about the reality of the situation. Your mother is right. Abbott’s cause is a danger. You are too young—”

  She interrupted him. “And you are too young to be without hope and so easily scared off! When you helped Abbott that night I thought I was looking at a true Samaritan. I thought I could trust you. You were a good person. Now I see I was wrong. It seems your new life as a blockade runner has changed you. You told my mother you were against slavery, but how do you really feel supplying the Confederacy with guns and supplies, funding their war effort by bringing out their cotton. That makes you a supporter of this hateful institution of slavery.”

  Townsend squirmed in his seat and looked away into another room to avoid her contemptuous stare. “No, I don’t believe so.”

  “Then why are you helping to supply the South?”

  “You know I am not a blockade runner by choice.”

  “Then what are you, Mr. Townsend?” she asked bitterly. “What would you like to be called? I understand you tried and failed at your endeavor to become a naval officer. A man’s principles don’t drop off all at once. They creep, slide and slip like mud on a riverbank. What’s apparent to me is that you are not the man I thought you were.”

  It was a cruel, biting remark and she knew it. Townsend stared at Emma with a forlorn look.

  “Miss Carpenter, I just—”

  “I have nothing more to say to you. Please show yourself out.”

  Dejected, Townsend stumbled along on the streets. He cursed Emma. He was angry with her, but also angry with himself. It was over. Whatever spark there had been, it had gone. He would probably never see her again. And it had been his fault. But he saw nothing to be gained in pursuing a dead man’s dangerous mission. He had already faced enough misfortunes trying to help that Englishman. But her barbed remarks about his identity had found their mark, and his mind was filled with dark thoughts.

  The pungent smell of dried fish and garlic wafted out the open windows of some of the bodegas even as the rank smell of urine assaulted his nose on the street corners. He passed some drunken sailors staggering and cursing, drowning their sorrows with their rum bottles, lost in their self-pity. At that moment he felt a certain kinship, lost as he was in his own world of shame and regret. All he wanted to do is forget what Emma had said, and forget the situation he was in.

  When he got to Las Ninfas de Oro and walked through the doors, Townsend was greeted by the sound of wooden sandals called chancletas clacking like gunshots. A Spanish girl was dancing on stage, her arms over her head, her dress provocatively slit down the middle. He could see the cubicles wallpapered with old newspapers on either side of the bar. Girls were slipping in and out of there with their companions with some frequency. The place was filled with a familiar mix of boozy sailors and gamy land sharks, who were all there for the same thing—drink, song, and women. He looked around the bar for his crewmembers, but he didn’t see them.

  The music suddenly changed to a slower tempo. Townsend gave the dancer on stage a lingering look when she started to sing with a surprisingly hoarse and raspy voice, deep and earthy. Like so much of this Cuban music, the words were often about pain, lover’s grief, and sexual innuendo. He watched her face contort with emotion as she sang the words about her lover, the watchmaker. “Whenever he comes to see me, Ay, se le para el minutero, the minute hand goes up.” Townsend smiled at the not-too-subtle lyrics.

  The bartender asked what he was drinking.

  “Un ron blanco,” Townsend replied. “Uno doble.”

  The bartender poured him a generous glass of the new distilled clear Bacardí rum from Santiago de Cuba. Townsend downed it in one gulp, and then asked for another. He could now feel the strong undertow of the sensual music carry him along. As the bartender poured, Townsend felt a gentle touch on his arm, the smell of perfume, and then heard a tantalizing, sultry voice whisper in his ear.

  “¿Festejando algo, marinero? Are you celebrating something, sailor?”

  Townsend turned to come face-to-face with a dark-haired smiling temptress who was smoking a cigar. “¿O ahogando las penas? Or just drowning your sorrows?” She moved closer so that her body leaned into his. He felt her hand touch his side.

  Just then, he heard his name being shouted. It was Red Beard calling him to the back of the tavern. Townsend turned around to look at the girl, but she was already talking with another sailor. Red Beard introduced him to a hulking man with powerful shoulders, a bushy beard,
and tangled hair. He looked to be in his thirties.

  “Higgins here is on the run from the blue bellies,” explained Red Beard. “He’s an assistant engineer who jumped off the USS Huntsville. Seems they wouldn’t give him shore leave so he took it anyway. You should talk to him.”

  The man’s full name was Ezra Higgins. Townsend decided he liked him immediately because of the straightforward way he looked him in the eye.

  “I reckon Higgins here chews his own tobacco, as we say in Texas,” Red Beard said. “An independent man.”

  The Texas sailor laughed and took a bite off a plug of tobacco and began chewing vigorously. They were drinking a mixture of molasses, rum, lime, and ginger, and Townsend called out to the bar maid to bring over another round.

  “Higgins has been telling me he wants to set sail with some real sailors,” Red Beard said. “Wants to join the chase across the Gulf. Make some money from running the blockade.”

  Townsend studied the man as he lit one of the cigars Don Pedro had given him.

  “How did you become a Navy man?” Townsend asked.

  “Not too sure,” Higgins replied. “Someone in a South Street grog shop in New York doped me up. The next thing I knew I woke up on a Navy gunboat headed for the Gulf.”

  “He may not be a cotton man who knows the Gulf waters, Cap’n, but he knows all about the Navy’s tricks,” Red Beard said enthusiastically. “He could be useful to us.”

  Higgins began talking about life on board ship. He described everything from the boredom to the horrible diet of salt meat, hard tack, and dishwater coffee. “The only reason the Navy doesn’t have more desertions is the prize bounties,” he said. “It’s a powerful lure. Each time they capture a blockade runner, the shipmasters, officers and crew, they all get some of the money from the prize court.”

  Townsend got a sense that something was wrong when Higgins suddenly slouched over, grabbed Red Beard’s floppy hat, and pulled it down over his own head. He turned around to see a group of six or eight US Navy men walk in through the bar. Judging from the double-breasted coats, there were several officers, including a master at arms, a warrant officer, and a couple of junior officers off the two Navy ships in port. They went to the bar and asked the bartender questions. It was quite clear they were looking for someone. Townsend told Higgins to slip out the back. Without thinking of the consequences, he then jumped up on stage.

  “Vamos a bailar,” he told the woman singing. “Let’s dance.” He started clapping his hands, and surprisingly the musicians continued playing. Soon he was dancing with the woman, her wooden sandals clacking away, and the entire tavern was cheering him on. Out of the corner of his eye, Townsend caught a glimpse of Higgins slipping out the back door. He started to make a quick exit himself when he heard his name.

  “Everett Townsend! Well, if that don’t cap all. A butternut hiding out in this rum-soaked hellhole. Looks like you got yourself a new job as a Spanish fandango dancer.” Townsend knew that voice. It was Angus Van Cortland, the source of his troubles. “What are you a blockade runner now?”

  Townsend turned to look squarely at the man addressing him.

  “Or are you just a lowly trading skipper?”

  Van Cortland still had that look of an arrogant New York patrician. A big, clean-shaven face, curly yellow hair with bushy sideburns and a large thin nose, all set on a short round neck. Townsend’s head pounded at the sight of this man, and he stood stock still. The musicians stopped playing and an awkward silence hovered over the bar. Van Cortland signaled to two of the Navy men. They jumped up on the stage and marched toward Townsend. Townsend was taller than Van Cortland, so he looked down at the man’s large head, stocky chest, and thick legs in blue uniform trousers.

  “So you are a cotton runner then,” Van Cortland hissed. “A filthy grayback, just as I suspected.”

  Townsend stepped closer to Van Cortland, but then he shook his head and stepped back.

  “I am not going to fight you, Van Cortland.”

  “No, I imagine you wouldn’t. Afraid to get yourself bloodied up.” He turned to his fellow officers. “I want you to know that this is one of the Rebel traitors who got expelled from the Naval Academy. He was a spy in our ranks, a traitor. His brother was a Reb too.”

  “Van Cortland, you better shut your trap.”

  Townsend noticed Van Cortland’s blue officer coat, and he could see his shoulder patches with a silver anchor in the center and two gold bars at each end.

  Van Cortland noticed where he was looking.

  “That’s right, Townsend. You can call me Lieutenant Van Cortland now. I am no longer on the USS De Soto. I have my first command, the gunship Leopard here in Havana, a captured Rebel brig. Most of my graduating class skipped the grade of master to become lieutenants. It’s a shame you will never have that privilege.”

  At that point, the Spanish proprietor intervened, and approached them on stage.

  “¡Fuera, Yanquis sinvergüenzas!” the man shouted to Van Cortland and the other Navy men. “¡A la puta calle como lo que sois, perros! Worthless Yankees, get out of here. Go to the fucking streets like what you are, dogs.”

  Van Cortland waved the man off. “Keep to yourself, Sancho Panza. This man and me got unfinished business.” He then turned back to face Townsend.

  “Townsend, I want you to know nothing would give me more pleasure than to seize your ship as a prize and send you north to Elmira Prison in New York along with the other Confederate prisoners.”

  “See there now, the only place you and your ship are going to end up, Van Cortland,” Townsend shot back, “is pitched up high and dry on a reef in the Tortugas.”

  This comment set off large guffaws of laughter in the bar, and then some cheering. “Hear, hear!”

  “You’re just like your dead brother, Townsend,” Van Cortland shouted. “Nothing but a filthy Rebel traitor!”

  “I don’t need to fight you, Van Cortland. Let’s save it for the open sea.”

  There were more boos and catcalls from the barroom floor, and cries to “send the blue belly lubbers back to their ship.” Townsend breathed deeply to contain his anger. Van Cortland, who had clearly been drinking heavily, seemed to enjoy making the crowd of Southern sympathizers even more rowdy.

  “And this grog house of low-life, rum-bud Rebels is probably where your father met your mother. No doubt this is where your father first grabbed her cat-heads.”

  Van Cortland never saw it coming. Townsend’s right fist found Van Cortland’s eye and a second later his left fist came up under his jaw. He soon had him on the floor. Navy officers started clubbing Townsend from behind, and the young captain might have been in trouble if Red Beard and Bertrand hadn’t hurled themselves up on the stage and joined the fight. A full brawl ensued. The small contingent of Yankee officers might have paid a costly price if not for the sound of the police whistles. Sailors scattered, and moments later the police along with a small force of the Guardia Civil led by a saber-wielding Captain Vásquez marched into the fracas. Soon the Spanish police had surrounded and corralled the entire bar, including Townsend, his crew, and all the Navy officers and had begun making arrests.

  Townsend was shaking he was so angry, and Red Beard had to restrain him from taking another swipe at Van Cortland’s battered face. It was then he saw Salazar and Nolo speaking with Captain Vásquez and the next thing he knew he and his crewmembers were being released. He never thought he would say it, but he was glad to see the faces of his watchdogs. He hoped Higgins had managed to get out. It was with some satisfaction that he watched the US Navy officers being dragged off to jail, although he knew they wouldn’t be kept there long. Even though Van Cortland was under arrest, he hissed a farewell as he was led away.

  “I’ll be looking for you, Townsend. I will find you and haul you and your ship into Key West. You’re going to end up in chains.”

 
Part Two

  Blockade running was not regarded as either unlawful or dishonorable, but rather as a bold and daring enterprise . . . those who attempted to brave it, did so at their own risk, subject by the laws of war to be fired upon . . . killed or wounded in the course of the capture.

  —William Watson

  The Civil War Adventures of a Blockade Runner

  13

  March 15, 1863

  With the winds gusting as they were, Townsend was restless to get underway. He picked up his telescope and scanned the rain-swept harbor. The normally calm bay was churned up with angry whitecaps, causing the boats at anchor to bounce and heave like a herd of bucking horses. Wild gusts of winds caused the crowns of palm fronds on the coconut trees along the coast to wave like angry windmills. Over at the docks at Regla, a few of the larger blockade-running steamships like the 250-foot Cuba were loading crates and boxes of arms and ammunition with the help of a large metal crane. There was no sign of the distinctive sharply raked masts of the USS Leopard. She had left days earlier, presumably with Van Cortland as her shipmaster.

  Van Cortland’s words had seared into Townsend’s skin, burning like a red-hot branding iron, steeling his resolve to run the blockade. Before the barroom fight, he had been conflicted, pondering Emma’s words, but once he felt the sting of Van Cortland’s accusations, he knew what he wanted to do. He would show those Navy gunship captains what seamanship really was. But even as his mind was made up, he couldn’t rid himself of a gnawing unease. He could hear his father now, principled, fixed in his opinions and blunt in his criticism. He would say blockade running was trading with the enemy. Townsend put the image of his father out of his mind, or at least tried to.

  In the pelting rain, the young captain helped direct the cargo into the dry sections of the hold. He was glad he’d put his oilskins on early. He and his four rain-soaked crewmembers were using the foremast halyard with a large eight-inch-long three-sheaved block and tackle to hoist the heavier cargo aboard ship. Red Beard showed off his singing skills, teaching the others some of the chantey-man songs he had learned as a young man in the Gulf.