Silver Cross

by B. Kent Anderson

  “I’m guessing it would have made a huge difference if the French and the Brits were involved in the war.”

  “Of course. Especially after Gettysburg and Vicksburg in the summer of 1863, things began to look bad for the rebels. They were always outnumbered, but they began to have supply problems, and they were increasingly cut off from the things they needed to outfit the army. If France and Britain—or even one of them—had committed resources to the Confederacy, it could have tipped the whole thing on its side. It could have changed the outcome of the war.”

  Tolman sat up straight. “You’re saying that if Napoleon III somehow acquired this Silver Cross from Davis, and he brought troops in, the South would have won?”

  “I’m not saying they would have won. I’m saying it’s possible. I’m saying everything would have been different. And think about it—a foreign power, committing troops on American soil, intervening in an internal conflict. It could have meant a world war, years before anyone thought of that term.”

  “Jesus, Nick. Let me see that again.” Journey handed the paper to her. She read it again. “If all that had happened, the world map could look a lot different than it does now.”

  “Yes.” Journey spread his hands apart. “And while it’s an interesting exercise to contemplate that, it didn’t happen.” He pointed at the paper. “But no one has ever had any conclusive evidence that the French were seriously considering it. Moral support was one thing—committing money and an army quite another.”

  “Dammit,” Tolman muttered, then said it again, louder. “What does this have to do with Dana? And why shoot at me?”

  Journey nodded. “Let’s look—”

  He turned as he heard the sound of a door opening and a heavy step, followed by an ammonia smell. Andrew came into the room, eyes wide, body tensed. He stood by the chair and made a hooting sound. He stamped a foot. He glanced toward Tolman, then looked at the floor.

  “What’s the matter, Andrew?” Journey said, getting up. He saw the wet spot around the boy’s groin area. “Wet already. I’ll change you, then back to bed.”

  “Did I wake him up?” Tolman said. She looked at him. “Hey, Andrew.” She glanced at his father. “You’re right, he’s grown a lot.”

  “He’s not used to hearing another voice in the house after he goes to bed,” Journey said, reaching for his son’s arm. “Come on, Andrew, let’s go to the bathroom.”

  Andrew jerked away from Journey’s touch, then reached out as if to push his father away. “No, no, son, we don’t do that,” Journey said.

  “Hey!” Tolman said, and her tone was sharp.

  Andrew stamped both feet hard on the wood floor, then arched his fingers toward his father’s arm.

  “Keep your voice down,” Journey said. “Loud, angry voices set him off and he responds with aggression.” He turned to Andrew. “Andrew, put your hands down.” The boy reached for his father. “No … no scratching.”

  Andrew made a noise deep in his throat and whipped his head from side to side, clawing for Journey’s arm. Journey grabbed both his wrists. Andrew continued trying to scratch. He dug a thumb into his father’s wrist, but Journey had trimmed his nails since the incident on the square and he wasn’t able to break the skin.

  “Andrew, no.…” The boy kept fighting him.

  “What can I do?” Tolman said, behind him.

  “I’ll handle it. Andrew … Andrew, no!” His voice rose, and he seemed powerless to stop it. Andrew kept struggling. The boy tried to head-butt Journey. Journey dodged, still holding Andrew’s arms, and lost his balance. Together they tumbled to the floor beside the chair, Journey breaking Andrew’s fall with his body. The boy stopped struggling and was quiet.

  Journey lay there with him, thinking of the beautiful child he had rocked and sung to and read to and walked with for the last thirteen years. Then he caught sight of the fresh scratches on his arm. He tried to be still, so that Andrew could see that it was safe, it was okay to be quiet.

  After a long moment, Andrew rolled off him. Journey let out a breath. He caught the smell of urine again. Andrew whistled a few notes.

  Journey helped him to his feet, then guided Andrew to the bathroom. Ten minutes later, he returned to the living room. The sounds of soft piano music drifted out behind him.

  “Jesus, Nick,” Tolman said. “Now I know what those scratches on your arm are.”

  “We’re working through it,” Journey said. “Nonverbal adolescents go through all the same physical changes that typical kids do, but they don’t have words and they don’t understand how they feel, so sometimes they lash out. It doesn’t happen all the time.”

  “Will he go to sleep now?”

  “Maybe. Or it might take him a while.”

  “Does he wake up wet like that every night?”

  “Every night,” Journey said.

  Tolman stared at him.

  “But we’re working on it,” Journey said. “Look, it’s over for now. You came a long way to talk about this paper, and Napoleon, and Rose Greenhow and Fort Fisher and this Silver Cross.” He leaned forward. “So let’s talk.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  In the foothills of the Berkshires, along Route 23 at the east edge of the town of Hillsdale, New York, a few miles west of the Massachusetts line, a prim, colonial revival–style building sat to the side of the winding highway. It was an unassuming and unremarkable structure, red brick with white trim and forest green shutters, designed to blend in to the landscape. A small wooden sign near the front door read: THE ASSOCIATES. Beneath the words, in smaller print: International Business Consultants. The print below that was smaller still: Established 1900.

  Inside, the building was comfortable but ordinary: a reception area and sitting room, and offices with computers, copiers, fax machines. Generic art dotted the walls. Unremarkable.

  On the second floor, at the northeast corner, Victor Zale sat staring out the window at the shadow of the Berkshires and thinking that his country was coming apart at the seams. The sun was long down, the night full dark, and he watched moths bump against the screen of the open window. It was almost cool outside, even in early August. The radio had been giving heat advisories through the afternoon, since temperatures had topped ninety for three consecutive days. Zale had sneered at that. He was from north Georgia, where temperatures in the summer topped ninety for ninety consecutive days. They didn’t know what heat was up here.

  He’d finally had to turn off the television. The protests were getting out of hand—it was worse than the sixties, and that was saying something. On the left, the anti-big-business group, young and intellectual and fired up, was protesting everywhere. In the last few months, a group on the right—older and white and middle class—had sprouted to counter them, and they seemed to shadow them across the country. A few times the clashes had turned violent. A few times the cops had gotten out of hand. It was utter insanity, and to Zale, the upshot was that neither of them was accomplishing a damned thing. The Mendoza administration—the “accidental presidency,” Zale thought with disdain—was determined to remain above the fray, and so the protests went on and on.

  The latest news was that the group on the left was organizing a huge rally in a few days, at Grant Park in downtown Chicago. The largest of the right-wing groups was assembling a counterprotest. Within a few days, a hundred thousand or more protesters were expected to descend on Grant Park. It would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous.

  If only, Zale mused, I could do something about these ridiculous protests and “His Accidency” President Mendoza could be blamed for it.…

  But Zale turned away from the thought. First things first … other things to think about.

  The door to his office opened, but Zale didn’t turn. Only one person came into this room without knocking. Zale swiveled around and looked at his partner, Terrence Landon.

  “I want the bitch dead,” Zale said. “We have to send the message that she can’t fuck with us this
way.”

  Landon winced. He fancied himself cosmopolitan and genteel and didn’t approve of Zale’s language. “Now, Victor—”

  Zale leaned forward, rapping the stumps of his fingers against his mahogany desk. “No, goddammit! This is several times now that Gray’s screwed us over. She gets on her moral high horse and starts to say what she will and won’t do, and she forgets that she’s an employee. She works for us, not the other way around.”

  Landon looked down, his eyes drawn, as always, to Zale’s right hand with its three missing fingers. “It’s true that some of her choices have been … troubling.”

  Zale snorted. “Troubling, my ass. She’s making decisions she has no business making, and she’s putting all of us at risk because of it. We’ve had to send cleaners in behind her because of her ‘choices.’”

  “But I don’t know that killing her makes a difference,” Landon said. “We have to tread very, very carefully, Victor. She’s known all over the world, she’s worked for everyone at one time or another. And yet—”

  “And yet she’s got this goddamned worldwide rep, but no one knows who she is or where she lives. She’s either married with a bunch of kids or she’s a lesbian. She lives in a little town in the Midwest or a villa in Spain. She was born in Canada or South Africa. Take your pick of the stories. Doesn’t care about the ‘why’ of anything. Only when and where and how much.”

  “She’s managed the project well,” Landon said, hands fidgeting in his lap. “We’ve accomplished a lot of what we set out to do.”

  “Sure we have,” Zale said. “We’ve made more money than ever before, and that means more leverage. But never forget what we’re supposed to be doing, Terry—every dollar we put in to that account is about control. Every penny is about influence. It’s why we’re here.” He shook his head. “But we could have done more. When Ann started deciding for herself that she didn’t want to do some things for us, she became a problem, and now the problem’s getting worse.”

  Landon was silent, then said, “What do you think happened in Missouri?”

  Zale’s face reddened. “I don’t think for one goddamned second that she missed. Ann Gray doesn’t miss. Not like that.”

  They fell silent for a long time, both men listening through the open window.

  “Maybe it’s time to shut the project down,” Landon said, then looked at the floor, as if he were afraid Zale would hit him.

  Zale said nothing, leaning back in his chair and running a hand through the frizz of his gray buzz cut. He stared across the desk at the small, neat, former banker.

  “I mean,” Landon said, “we’re starting to have more risks involved. The business with the Cables hasn’t gone away, and now with the Tolman woman from RIO interested in the Cables, the risks have increased. I don’t have to tell you what it means if it comes out. Everything we’ve worked for … all of us.”

  “All of us?” Zale echoed. “You’re not threatening me, are you, Terry? I know you’re not threatening me.” He lapsed into an exaggerated Georgia drawl. “That dog won’t hunt, son. You best think long and hard before you go threatening old Victor Zale, you hear?”

  Landon flinched. “Don’t insult me, Victor.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Terry,” Zale said, returning to his normal, softer accent. “But you might be right. Shut it all down and look for the next opportunity. This one has paid off more than any of us imagined, and there’s enough money to keep our influence strong until the next project comes along.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think the time may be right to go with your idea on this one. Let’s shut it down and tie up all the loose ends. Hide the money somewhere else for a while.”

  “Loose ends.” It was a statement, not a question, from Landon.

  “Loose ends. If you’d ever run anything operational before, Terry, you’d know what I mean.”

  “I handle money, Victor. You handle operations. But I still think going after Gray is a mistake.”

  “Well now, didn’t you just say that you handle money and I handle operations? Yes, sir, you said that just now. So you count the money, tie off the accounts, and let me handle the operations.”

  Landon crossed his legs at the knee. “You won’t find Gray if she doesn’t want to be found.”

  “I’ve had someone on her for a long time.”

  “Really?”

  “For nearly a year. I have a lot of people outside of this one project. I always cover my ass, Terry, and I don’t trust anyone.”

  “I suspect you don’t have anyone who is as good as Gray.”

  Zale turned his back to Landon, looking out the window toward the Berkshires. “Maybe not,” he said. “But she shouldn’t have fucked with us. I’ll deal with her. And I’ll deal with this RIO.”

  Landon left the room, closing the door very quietly behind him. After Zale heard Landon’s footsteps going down the stairs, he turned around and faced his desk. “I’ll deal with all of it,” he said to himself.

  He’d been dealing with the hard issues for over forty years, trying to make his country a better place, trying to protect it from those who had no idea of the things that must be done in the name of freedom. “The protected,” as the army referred to civilians, could not comprehend what was done for them on a daily basis. Things that were done by men like Victor Zale, who knew what America was, and knew what it should be … unlike idiot protesters who naively thought they understood how the world worked. He’d known, even as he lay in a field hospital in Vietnam in 1969, staring at the bandages covering the stumps where his middle, ring, and little fingers used to be, that he would do whatever it took. Zale felt he’d actually gained something else when the shrapnel from the land mine sliced off his fingers. He’d gained understanding while he lay in the field hospital. Even then, watching the men on the ground being hamstrung by politicians in Washington and even worse, their uniformed lap dogs at the Pentagon, Zale had known that he would make a different choice, that he would leave the hospital a different man, that he would live the rest of his life in the shadows so that others could stand in the light.

  From Vietnam to Baghdad, to this unobtrusive little office in the Berkshires, he had done what he had to do, to save America from itself. He’d had his revelation as a soldier, but he had spent most of the rest of his life as a civilian doing what civilians and soldiers alike were afraid to do.

  And he would not be stopped.

  Zale opened his desk drawer and took out one of several clean cell phones. Time to clean up, Zale thought, and he started making phone calls.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Journey made Tolman another Bloody Mary, took her bag, and tossed it into the spare bedroom. He jokingly called it the “clean room,” since it was rarely used. The last time the futon had been slept on was three years ago, when an old friend from Journey’s baseball days had passed through the area. He checked on Andrew. The boy was already asleep, and he looked at perfect peace. Journey was thankful he could sleep—many kids with autism had sleep problems, but it had never been an issue for Andrew.

  Journey returned to the living room to find Tolman sprawling on the couch. “Long day,” he said.

  “Long day.”

  “You want to go on to bed? There’s nothing in the other room but a futon, but at least it’s clean. We can talk more in the morning.”

  “No, tell me what you have. Then we can find your friend the Napoleon guy in the morning.”

  Journey grabbed his legal pad from the desk. “He’s not really my friend, but he is a colleague. Knows his stuff, though.” He settled into the chair. “Every other year I teach a class called Spies and Espionage in the Civil War. Very popular, as you might imagine, even with nonhistory majors. So I’m more than a little familiar with Rose O’Neale Greenhow. But I brushed up a bit after your call.”

  Tolman sipped her drink. “You make a damn good Bloody Mary, Professor.” She raised her glass to him. “Tell me about this Rose, and the connect
ion to Wilmington and Fort Fisher.”

  “Her only real connection to Fort Fisher was that she drowned within sight of it. But we need to back up a bit and explain who she was and why she was on that ship at all.”

  “Can we have the abridged version? I’m sure it’s a brilliant lecture, but let’s skip the stuff like what color dress she wore and all that. I need facts that relate to why Dana mentioned her when she was dying, and how it relates to this letter.”

  Journey smiled a little. “You’ve been shot at today, so I’ll give you a break. I’ll stick to the highlights.”

  “Eternally grateful.” Tolman crossed her legs at the ankles, leaned her head against the cushion of the sofa, and closed her eyes.

  “Rose O’Neale Greenhow,” Journey said. “I’ll skip everything up to the beginning of the war, except to say that she was born in Maryland, and her father was a slave owner who was supposedly murdered by one of his own slaves. By the time of the war, Rose was a widow in her forties, one of Washington’s leading hostesses, and strongly in favor of secession. She was what we would call today a Washington insider, having lived in the city for many years and knowing most of the powerful men.”

  “Knowing powerful men,” Tolman said, eyes still closed. “What kind of ‘knowing’ are we talking about here?”

  “Hard to tell. She may have had a few lovers, but she was discreet. Thought you didn’t want irrelevant details.”

  “I don’t. But if there’s any sex in the story, that livens things up a bit.”

  “Uh-huh. Anyway, Rose knew everyone in D.C. and they all knew where she stood on secession. So after the hostilities started, she was in a position to know things. The first real battle of the war was at Manassas, or Bull Run, in July of 1861. In the days leading up to it, Rose used her contacts in Washington to find out the movements of the Union army. She passed that to General Beauregard, who was in command of the Confederate troops in the area. The battle turned into a rout, and it shocked the North. People had thought this thing would be over in a matter of days or weeks, but Manassas showed them the Confederates were serious, and weren’t going away.”