“I’ll take care of this,” I said peremptorily, and he sat back down.
With our backs to him, I briefly scanned the first file folder. It was page after page of routing manifests for gun carriages. They included the names of each manufacturer as well as the artillery units to which each gun carriage was shipped, and on what date. Most important, there were notations from inspectors identifying those manufacturers whose carriages had not passed initial inspection. All Sam would have to do was contact the batteries that had received the defective carriages and make sure all of them were replaced before the attack.
“I think you know what you have to do now, Sergeant,” I said, giving him back the folders along with a private wink.
Billy grinned at me and began walking toward the outer office door. We had already agreed that if he was successful in locating the files, he was to head straight for the waiting packet boat at the navy yard.
“What does he have to do? Where is he going?” whined Major Broo, suddenly alarmed.
I gave him an icy stare.
“You may have read about the sergeant’s exploits at Antietam,” I said, beginning to enjoy myself, “when he single-handedly killed five Rebels with his bare hands. He just told me that he needed to relieve himself. Do you have a problem with it?”
“No,” replied the major in a small voice.
I waited five minutes to make sure that Billy was clear of the building and then pulled my watch from my pocket.
“I didn’t expect it to take this long,” I said. “I need to go back over to the mansion to tell them the information is on the way. As soon as you have completed things here, bring the files to the president’s private office on the second floor.
He gave me an apologetic frown.
“What is it now?” I said.
“I don’t have authorization to enter the mansion,” he said meekly.
“I’ll take care of that right now. Hand me your order book.”
In the order book I wrote, “Captain Nevins hereby authorizes Major Broo of the Quartermaster Corps to forthwith present himself to the president.”
I ripped the order form out of the book and handed it to him.
“I will see you shortly, Major,” I said, standing up.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Walking down the stairs, I felt like giving out with a Rebel yell. In my mind’s eye, I saw Major Broo arriving at the mansion with the Ohio and Kentucky personnel records at around four that morning and demanding to see the president. Emerging at the side entrance, I glanced up and down Seventeenth Street. Billy was gone. The manifests were on their way back to Falmouth.
The black sky was clear of rain as I started toward Pennsylvania Avenue. I decided to walk to Mrs. Warden’s, get a good night’s sleep, and then begin my search for the girl in the morning.
I was crossing the avenue when a large black brougham bore down on me and stopped in the middle of the roadway, blocking my path. The passenger door swung open, and a man stepped down. In the murky darkness, I saw that he had an Asiatic face.
“Get in, please,” he said, holding the door open for me. He was short and squat but very powerful looking.
It was too much of a coincidence, considering where I had just been. I looked toward the president’s mansion, where I knew that sentries were still standing guard along the sidewalk. A second later I felt pressure against my ribs. Looking down, I saw a small-caliber revolver in his hand.
“Get in, please,” he said again.
The interior of the brougham was lit with two small side lamps. It had tufted leather seats and thick carpeting on the floor. An enormous man with a milky right eye was sitting in the seat facing backward. Opposite him was a man dressed in formal evening clothes. I immediately recognized him as the leonine stranger who had threatened me at the Silbernagel trial. In the pallid light of the coach lamps, his amber eyes and chalk white skin lent him the aspect of a living corpse.
As I sat down next to the man with the milky eye, the Asian closed the door behind me and then began loping toward the side entrance of the War Office. The man in evening clothes tapped his knuckles loudly against the mahogany-paneled ceiling, and the brougham swung around on the avenue, before moving slowly back in the direction I had just come.
“I suppose I should introduce myself,” he said. “My name is Laird Hawkinshield.”
Even I had heard of him. Everyone in Washington had. He was a congressman from Ohio and a powerful member of the Committee on the Conduct of the War. Harold Tubshawe thought he walked on water.
“Where are those shipping manifests?” he asked me politely.
I looked back at him but said nothing as the brougham came to a halt in front of the War Department at almost precisely the same place that our carriage had stopped just thirty minutes earlier.
“You should know that when Major Duval was released from custody, he immediately informed General Nevins that someone would be coming for the files,” he said. “I must now assume you already have them.”
Through the coach window, I saw the Asian returning on the run from the entrance to the War Office. Major Broo lagged behind him, desperately trying to keep up. He ran with his legs wide apart, as if his crotch was sore.
The Asian leapt agilely up to the box with the driver. Major Broo came straight to the open door. As soon as he spotted Laird Hawkinshield in the back, he began groveling.
“Congressman, I tried to tell your man that no procurement files have gone out of the office since I came in tonight,” he said, wringing his hands. “I’m fully aware of General Nevins’s orders.”
When he looked over and saw me in the other seat, his face relaxed into a relieved smile.
“Why, Captain Nevins here can tell you. He was right in the office with me part of the time.”
“You’re a stupid imbecile,” said Hawkinshield, narrowly missing the major’s face as he slammed the door shut. He tapped the ceiling with his knuckles again, and the brougham moved off, leaving Major Broo on the sidewalk.
“I must assume that someone is already on his way back to Falmouth with the files,” he said, as the coach gathered speed. “Well, setbacks are inevitable. It just means that I will have to schedule a public hearing tomorrow to expose the corrupt manufacturers of the gun carriages myself.”
“A true man of the people,” I said.
“I would like you to join me for a nightcap back at the Willard Hotel, Captain McKittredge,” he said.
“I don’t drink,” I said.
“Oh … that’s right. You’re an opium eater, aren’t you? Don’t worry … I can accommodate your tastes.”
I was unable to conceal my surprise.
“We know more about you than you think,” he said.
A few minutes later, we rolled up to the carriage park at the rear of the Willard Hotel. The man with the milky eye swung the door open and motioned me to step down. The Asian was already waiting for me on the sidewalk. Together they led me inside the vestibule. Laird Hawkinshield followed, keeping ten feet of distance between us.
The hotel was lavishly decorated for the Christmas holidays, and its corridors were festooned with aromatic wreaths of evergreens and lifesize papier mâché religious figures. A crowd of people in formal dress emerged from one of the ballrooms and drifted toward us down the corridor. I was immediately alert to the possibility of using their presence to effect an escape. Again I felt the pressure of the pistol in my ribs.
As soon as the party goers saw Hawkinshield coming along behind us, they became as animated as children, whispering to one another as if a conquering hero was suddenly in their midst. He doffed his top hat to them as he went by, all the while smiling and murmuring inanities such as, “It’s an honor,” and, “A vast pleasure, I’m sure,” as their faces lit up in admiration.
His suite was on the seventh floor and faced onto Pennsylvania Avenue. Hawkinshield put down his top hat and gloves on a marble top stand in the foyer and led me inside. The sittin
g room was filled with rosewood furniture. Two gaslit crystal chandeliers illuminated a collection of old oil paintings. Thick Persian carpets covered the polished hardwood floors. Comfortable armchairs and couches were grouped together underneath the tall windows.
A tall blonde woman was standing next to one of the windows, looking down at the avenue below. She looked like she had just come from church and had on a silk gown of sapphire blue, with an overdress of pale pink. It rose up to her neck in a prim lace collar, which was set off by a small gold locket. Her hair was adorned with a garland of tiny red roses.
“Captain McKittredge, I would like you to meet Miss Ginevra Hale,” said Hawkinshield. “Ginevra, Captain McKittredge is one of your father’s constituents. He comes from a small island off the coast, I believe.”
I immediately recognized her name, too. She was the daughter of our senator, Charles Hale, and widely considered to be the most beautiful and elegant young woman in Washington society.
She held out her white-gloved hand and said, “It is always a pleasure to meet a fellow down-easter here in the capital.”
She had a fragile smile and lovely violet eyes.
“Ginevra, I wonder if you would make me a whiskey and soda,” said Hawkinshield. “I don’t believe the captain imbibes spirits … perhaps a glass of laudanum would be more to his taste.”
“Nothing for me, thank you,” I said.
Appearing to take no notice of his sarcasm, she walked over to a sideboard against the far wall and poured his drink from an array of bottles that stood in formation on a silver tray.
He waved me into a chair and sat down in the one opposite.
“I would like to retain your services, Kit,” he said, using my family name as if he had known me all my life.
“I already have a job,” I said.
“Yes, I know,” he said, giving me a pained expression. “You work for the great wooly mammoth or mastodon or whatever it is he was called back in Illinois. Personally, I see him as more of a porcupine.… At any rate, he has proved quite nettlesome, which is why I would like to retain you.”
“I’m not interested.”
“Not for a thousand dollars a month? That would seem generous for a twenty-one-year-old captain.”
I stared at him, stunned.
“How about two thousand?” he asked.
“Not for any amount of money.”
“Really … well, I’m not surprised,” he said, with an amused grin.
Ginevra Hale brought his drink across the room.
“I could also be a very good friend to you, you know,” he said next, cocking his leonine head to catch himself in the mirror on the wall behind me. “Loyalty goes both ways with me.”
“It sounds like you should have been born a dog,” I said.
Miss Hale was standing directly behind him. He did not see her smile.
“Since money seems to hold no allure, and you apparently don’t need friends, what is your pleasure?” he said.
“Just what is it you do, Congressman,” I asked, “when you’re not serving the people?”
“Quite candidly, I am interested in anything that makes a profit,” he said. “Today it is this blessed war. Tomorrow it may be cotton or shipbuilding.”
“You sound like you want the war to go on.”
“I can’t deny that it has been good for business,” he said. “However, your Colonel Burdette has not been good for business. I need to have a better idea of what he learns and when he learns it. That’s why I need you.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said.
“Now as for your opium addiction,” he said next. “I can arrange a lifetime supply of the finest quality … Or how about a promotion? Perhaps you would you like to be a colonel next month … a general if the war goes on for another year.”
I glanced up at Miss Hale. She was looking at me with the sympathy one feels for a helpless victim. What could possibly be her connection to him? I wondered.
“I would wager that your mother would be very excited to see you come home wearing a colonel’s uniform,” he went on. “Or perhaps, your sweetheart … oh, that’s right … you have no sweetheart. Well, that can be arranged, too.”
“Your constituents must love you,” I said.
“In fact, they do,” he said. “So what is your answer?”
“No,” I repeated.
Glancing out one of the windows into the darkness, I imagined the army preparing for its attack at Fredericksburg, an attack that could end in disaster because of the greed and manipulations of men like Hawkinshield. I thought of the dead he had already left in his wake and the many more who might meet the same fate. As Hawkinshield stood there grinning down at me, I felt the familiar anger rising inside me like an old friend.
“Methinks, you are about to mount your charger, sir knight,” he said, caustically. “That’s your problem, you know. You suffer from a permanent case of white knight’s disease.”
“I’m no white knight.”
“Then, perhaps, you don’t even know it,” he said. “Have you ever read the fable of the white knight rescuing the beautiful damsel in distress?”
I turned around in my chair. The man with the milky eye had his back against the door to the suite. The Asian was standing a few steps behind me.
“Did you ever read about the damsel in distress, Kit?” he repeated.
I ignored the question, staring straight ahead, and waiting for a chance to strike back at him.
“Well, here she is,” he said, with a wave of his hand at Miss Hale. “Aren’t you, Ginevra?”
She said nothing in response.
“You know, in just two weeks Ginevra is to marry one of my most distinguished congressional colleagues,” said Hawkinshield. “It will be the society event of the season.”
He turned back to face me.
“Kit, I bet you’re the kind of knight who puts every young woman on a pedestal. Well, let me tell you something about women.… They are not made out of marble. Are you, Ginevra?”
I had no idea what game he was playing, but it was now obvious she was a reluctant partner in it, just as I was.
“Do you think Ginevra is beautiful?”
She was starting to look as uncomfortable as I felt.
“Surely, you can answer that question,” said Hawkinshield, his voice rising. “Is she beautiful? Yes or no?”
I felt the Asian move up behind my chair.
“Well, of course she is,” said Hawkinshield, without waiting for my answer.
Her hands were touching the back of the ornate armchair next to his. I saw her fingers begin to coil around its carved walnut fretwork.
“You’ll find that I’m quite good at plumbing the weaknesses in the human soul, Kit … that and fulfilling people’s desires,” he added. “I fully expect to discover your own.… Now, let me give you a case in point. During my first term in the House of Representatives, back when I possessed the same noble personality you have now, I partook of that charming Washington society custom called open house. In case you are not familiar with the ritual, there is one day each year when the important denizens of Washington society deign to open their houses to the great unwashed … when the lesser lights are permitted to make a courtesy call on them. It occurs on New Year’s Day.”
He paused to give her a seemingly affectionate smile.
“So, hearing about the lovely Miss Hale, I decided to call on her at the home of her father, the august Senator Hale. It was then that the lovely creature now standing before you chose to treat me as if I had just crawled out of the noisome Washington canal.”
He got up from his chair and stepped to her side.
“Didn’t you, Ginevra?” he said.
“After the things you said you wanted to do with me …”
“Didn’t you, Ginevra?” he said, interrupting her.
“Yes,” she said, turning away.
“Well, Kit, just as I know there is a way to discover your own deepest needs an
d desires, I set about finding those of Miss Hale.”
He walked slowly around her, his face just inches from her’s.
“And I did.… And now, here you are, Kit, with those noble brown eyes … the perfect white knight.”
He reached for the garland of tiny red roses that circled the crown of her hair and tossed it to the floor. Loosening her hair at the back, he pulled it free. The blonde curls fell in waves from the natural part in her hair.
“Ginevra has a weakness for noble brown eyes, don’t you?” he said to her then, taking her arm in his hand.
This time she did not reply.
“You know, Kit, everyone has a breaking point,” he said next. “You believe that, don’t you?”
From behind her back, he began to unfasten the top button of her dress. I felt my stomach turn over.
“Just to prove to you that everyone has a breaking point, Kit, I want you to see Ginevra as she really is,” he said.
She winced as another button came free.
Stepping away from her, he said, “Go ahead, Ginevra. Show him how beautiful you are.”
She looked up at him one last time, her eyes making a silent plea.
“Captain McKittredge is waiting,” he said, his voice merciless.
With a soft rustling sound, she slowly reached up and pulled the unbuttoned pink overdress above her shoulders and head. Hawkinshield walked over and took it out of her hands.
“Stop,” I said. As I attempted to stand up, the Asian’s powerful hands gripped my shoulders and held me in place.
“Oh, not just now,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to spoil her pleasure.”
Without pause, she slid the blue silk gown down her chest and stomach, stepping out of it when the top of the dress reached the floor.
“Is that color I see rising in your cheeks, Kit?” he said. “I once read that resisting temptation is the true test of character. Thankfully, I have none.”
“That’s enough,” I said, leaping to my feet.
Before I could move, the Asian’s left arm circled my chest. His right hand was at my neck holding a long, thin-bladed knife.
Unholy Fire Page 19
