Cold Glory

by B. Kent Anderson

  “I wasn’t sure that was you making that noise,” Sharp said.

  “You could hear me? I’m sorry.” Journey swung his legs to the floor.

  Sharp stood between Journey and the back of the house, unmoving, silent.

  “Could I—?” Journey swallowed, looking down at the gun in the man’s hand. “Could I just get a glass of water or something?”

  “Yeah.”

  Uncomfortable with Sharp’s brooding presence—not to mention the gun in his hand—Journey edged past him to the kitchen, fumbled for a light switch, and dug in cabinets until he found a glass. He ran some water over his hands, splashed his face, then drank some from the glass.

  When he turned back toward the living room, he saw that Sharp was bare-chested and wearing only gray sweatpants. An inch-wide tangle of scar tissue ran horizontally across his stomach, just above the navel.

  “I was in the hospital a while back,” Sharp said. “Meg was the only person who came to see me when I was there.”

  Journey nodded, not sure if he should acknowledge how much of Sharp’s story he knew.

  “She tells me you killed a man,” Sharp said.

  “Yes,” Journey said. “He was shooting at me.”

  “How did it feel?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that he was shooting at me.”

  “Yeah,” Sharp said. “I guess that’s about all any of us really knows. You don’t know how you feel until a lot later, and then sometimes you still don’t.”

  Sharp turned around and walked down the hall, the gun still in his hand.

  * * *

  Journey showered in Sharp’s small, square bathroom, then dressed again in the clothes the woman in Clarksville had given him. When he came out of the bathroom, he heard the piano.

  It was a strange and incongruous sight, the elegant Steinway in a tiny room of a house deep in the Arkansas woods, a house owned by a gun-toting man who painted on china. It took a few moments for Journey to reconcile the picture he had of Meg Tolman as well, the woman who carried a gun and cursed a lot and mined databases, with this petite figure at the keyboard.

  She stopped when he came in. “I had to play,” she said.

  Journey gestured at the instrument. “The same piano?”

  “Same one. He gets a tuner from Little Rock to come out and make sure it’s tuned every now and then.”

  “But he doesn’t play.”

  “Not a bit.”

  “You play well.”

  Tolman tilted her head dismissively.

  “I’m glad you got to play some,” Journey said. “What was that piece you were playing?”

  “A Rachmaninov prelude, number eleven, opus thirty-two.” She smiled. “That probably doesn’t mean a damn thing to you. Sorry. It’s not Rachmaninov’s most famous prelude, but I love it. B-major is an interesting key.” She looked embarrassed. “You don’t want a musicology lecture. We have work to do. But we should be safe here, to get some time to think.”

  “I liked the piece. It sounded … I don’t know, hopeful, maybe?”

  “Maybe. Maybe so.”

  In the living room, Tolman said, “Darrell, we need your phone and your computer.”

  “My phone’s secure,” Sharp said, then turned and disappeared into the back of the house. A moment later, a door slammed.

  Journey stared after the man, and Tolman said, “This is who he is. Don’t worry about him. Why don’t you check your message board and see if there’s anything from Sandra? Darrell said the computer is already on. You’ll just have to open the Web browser.”

  Journey navigated to the Civil War Geeks Web site, logged in, and found a single message from the screen name “Radical Redhead.” He smiled a little at that, but the smile faded quickly.

  ON A JOURNEY: AJ IS OK. AB SAYS AN INTERESTING CAR IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. AB CRANKY. YOU OK?

  Journey read it again.

  AB SAYS AN INTERESTING CAR IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

  So they were watching Amelia’s house. They knew where Andrew was, and just like before, they didn’t care who knew it. Journey felt the anger begin to rise again. “They know where Andrew is,” he said. He mashed his knuckles together, then interlaced his fingers, looking at the floor.

  “Nick?” Tolman said.

  He said nothing. The feelings tumbled through him like dice, as he thought of the way Andrew smiled at him in the mornings, pulling his blanket up to hide his face. A toddler in a twelve-year-old’s body, playing peekaboo. Journey closed his eyes.

  “They know exactly where my son is,” Journey said, “and they could just go in there and take him at any moment. That’s what scares me the most. He wouldn’t understand what was happening to him. He wouldn’t even know to be afraid. He doesn’t know danger—it’s a completely foreign concept to him. The only thing the kid’s afraid of is dogs.”

  Tolman looked at the computer screen. “You’ll see him again soon, Nick. We’re not going to let anything happen to Andrew—or even to your ex-wife. I’m calling the office now.” She pulled one of the rough-hewn kitchen chairs to the desk. Outside the window, Sharp walked past, glancing toward the house every few seconds.

  Sharp’s telephone was an old-fashioned desk model, square and boxy with a curly cord. Tolman punched numbers and waited. “Come on, come on,” she said under her breath. She looked at Journey while the phone rang. “Think about Mark Twain’s nephew, about where we might find those pages.” In her ear, the phone connected.

  “You have reached Russell Hudson…,” the voice mail message began.

  “Dammit! Where the hell are you now, Rusty?” Tolman gripped the phone, made as if she were going to throw the receiver, then pulled it back to her ear. After the tone, she said, “Rusty, I’m on a secure landline phone. Journey and I are okay. A little banged up, but all right. Call me back—I can’t tell you everything in a voice mail. Here’s the number. It’s a secure line.… Call me, Rusty. Now!”

  She hung up. “Jesus, where is that man? Probably at the fucking Hoover Building dealing with the Fucking Bureau of Investigation. The FBI doesn’t acknowledge RIO’s existence for years, and all of a sudden they want us at the table. Probably so they can blame us for Darlington. Shit!” She rapped on the desk with her knuckles, then rubbed the back of her head. Her hand touched the bandage. “Shit, my head. I need to take some Tylenol.” She waved her hand toward Journey. “See if you can find anything about Twain’s nephew. Maybe the publishing company had some kind of archives that were passed down. Or maybe some of the family has it.”

  “Like Evan Lovell’s dad.”

  “We can hope,” Tolman said.

  She looked at the antique clock that hung above the computer and calculated time zone differences. It would be nearly noon in D.C. That was good—she knew her father would be at his desk, and his Secret Service phone was secure. She punched in his number, and in a moment, his voice was on the line—the voice that had always pushed her, nudged her, yelled at her, cheered her and, ultimately, comforted her.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said. “Is your office door closed?”

  There was a pause; then Ray Tolman said, “It is. What’s up?”

  “Two things, Dad. Number one, I hope you’ve been feeding the cat. Number two, I need your help.”

  CHAPTER

  46

  Ray Tolman trusted his daughter.

  Meg had turned out surprisingly well, he often thought, despite his wife’s long illness, her bizarre death, and his own long absences when he was building a career with the Service.

  When Meg was very small, they’d moved every year from one posting to another: from Philadelphia to Portland, Maine to Boston to St. Paul to San Francisco, back to Philadelphia, then on to Washington when he’d been assigned his first protective detail. It had been a hard way for a young girl to live, and being away as much as he was, Ray Tolman did not realize the extent of his wife’s bipolar disorder until it was too late.

  He’d hospitalized her three times, and e
ach time she came out with new medication, a good therapist, and a commitment to stay on the meds so she could control the disease instead of the other way around. But Janet could never seem to stay on the meds, and when she went off, she would swing from violent, screeching rages to periods where she wouldn’t get out of bed for a week at a time.

  So Meg was left alone with her mother much of the time. But Ray Tolman always paid for the piano lessons. He’d seen her talent, knew it was something remarkable, but also knew she could never make a living at it. So he’d gently—at least he thought it was gently, but Meg seemed to think he’d hammered her over the head with it—steered her toward law enforcement. She had the analytical mind and the computer savvy that the new generation of cops needed. RIO was a disappointment—he’d actually hoped she might join the Service—but she seemed happy.

  And he trusted her. How could he not?

  He hung up the phone. His heart didn’t pound; he didn’t break into a sweat. Ray Tolman had been around far too long and experienced far too much to let anything faze him. He’d protected three presidents personally, and now worked in threat assessment, driving a desk.

  Threats against the president of the United States were made on a daily basis, sometimes dozens in a single day. Ninety-five percent of them were nothing at all, pure fantasy. Another 4-plus percent were actually followed up with some investigation, and eventually determined not to be credible. Less than 1 percent were actually serious and became the subject of an ongoing investigation.

  Ray Tolman thought he’d just glimpsed a bit of that 1 percent, and it had come from his own daughter. She hadn’t elaborated. She hadn’t talked about her evidence.

  “Are you okay?” he had asked her. “Are you safe? At least tell me that.”

  “For the moment,” Meg had said, and the words chilled him.

  Meg Tolman did not overreact, did not see things that weren’t there. Sometimes she could draw conclusions from a small amount of data, and her father knew she had proved to have an uncanny knack for drawing the right conclusions.

  He did not doubt her. He listened and made notes.

  “Dad, don’t trust anyone. It could be someone you think you know well, someone you’ve served with. But they’re going after the president, and they’ll have someone inside who can get close to him.”

  He asked her only one question: “In your best judgment, Meg—as a professional now, not as Ray Tolman’s daughter—is this a credible threat against the president?”

  “Absolutely. Dad, there are only two people I trust on this, you and Rusty Hudson, and I can’t reach him.”

  “Then I’ll get to work on it,” Ray Tolman told his daughter. “Take care. Be safe. Keep your eyes open.”

  There was no I love you at the end of the phone call. They didn’t do that. It seemed trite, given the places they had both been. She just gave him the phone number where she was and hung up. The real expression of Ray Tolman’s love for his daughter came when he logged on to his computer and pulled up the complete list of personnel on President Harwell’s protective detail.

  One by one, he started to read the confidential file on every single one of them. Tolman settled in. He turned his little desk radio to an oldies station, keeping the volume low. This was going to take some time.

  * * *

  The Judge was sweeping his floor, of all things, when Washington Four called. The Judge had sought to cleanse his mind of both Dallas Four’s failure and his overreaction to it, the fact that a history professor and a government researcher had eluded the Glory Warriors, and that Grant and Lee’s signatures—the final piece that would ensure their legitimacy at the head of the government—were still missing.

  The Judge ran his hand across the round gold pin and answered the phone in his study.

  “We know where they are,” Washington Four said.

  “Yes?”

  “Rural Arkansas, a remote area. The phone number is in the name of a man named Darrell Sharp.”

  “Arkansas, you say? Then Memphis will be the closest base. I’ll have Memphis One take them. Send the location to Memphis Base. We’ll get them today. Good work.”

  The Judge hung up the phone. He was satisfied that the Glory Warriors were back on track to catch Journey and Tolman and get the signatures, and Washington Three was moving into position to do the ultimate job. He opened his desk drawer and read through the first two pages of the document again. Just reading them left him a little breathless. Then he reached farther into the drawer and took out a clear plastic bag that contained more paper. The pages were thick, some smudged, creased by age and handling.

  He read the old words again, a different handwriting than that of the pages from Oklahoma and Kentucky. Some of the words were disturbing to him, as they had been to earlier generations, but he possessed a deeper understanding of their meaning. He understood even more than his father had, or his grandfather, perhaps more even than the original Glory Warriors. The fact that he’d sent Washington Three on the final mission proved it. He understood more than any of them.

  * * *

  Washington One rarely drove. In his “official” life, he had a driver at his disposal, but he dared not use the driver when he was on Glory Warriors business. So he drove his Town Car himself, along Columbia Pike in Silver Spring, Maryland. He exited the highway at Industrial Parkway, turned on Tech Road, and drove through the Montgomery Industrial Park to the spot where the road dead-ended.

  The low complex of buildings at the end of the road stood behind razor wire fencing. A single, simple sign of black letters on white wood announced MILLER EXPLORATION. It was another of the Glory Warriors’ front companies, part of the carefully screened corporate maze.

  He passed through three security checkpoints—it was a testament to the operation that even he was required to pass scrutiny—and drove to the main headquarters building. He conferred with the base commander, and together they walked to the converted factories and warehouses where the troops were preparing for the operation to begin.

  They were readying their equipment: M4 carbines for the assault, XM107 long-range rifles for the snipers, the H&K MK 23 assault pistols for closer work. Some of the Glory Warriors were simply ready for action—many had waited a long time. Others craved power. Others were bitter, angry that the corruption of the U.S. government had forced the action they were about to take. Some were motivated by history, by Lee and Grant’s vision. All were committed.

  Washington One and the base commander walked past the last building to the helipads. The concrete clearing was ringed by trees and shielded from the highway and other commercial developments in the area. Half a dozen CH 53-E Sea Stallion choppers with no insignia sat parked on the pads. They were the same type the marines used for troop transportation and assault support.

  “How long?” Washington One asked the commander.

  “Loaded and in the air within two minutes of your signal, sir.”

  “Shave that to ninety seconds. Once Harwell is dead, we have to use the immediate advantage of the chaos. The old government can’t have the chance to react.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ten minutes later, Washington One was back on Columbia Pike. He still needed to inspect the other staging areas and call all the regional commanders from Boston to San Diego, Miami to Seattle, then check in with the second wave of the Washington invasion, mobilizing in the Blue Ridge.

  The nation belongs to us, he thought, as soon as the president is dead.

  CHAPTER

  47

  Sharp came and went, rarely speaking but making a great deal of noise. Tolman watched him, watched his haunted eyes as they checked out all corners of a room whenever he walked into it.

  When he painted, she watched in silence as he worked with his miniature brushes. When she emerged into the living room after a few minutes, she found Journey standing, pacing in front of the computer. “Tell me,” she said.

  “Charles L. Webster was married to Twain’s sister’s
daughter,” Journey said. “When Twain decided he was going to publish Grant’s memoirs, he put Webster in charge of the publishing house. In fact, it was even called Charles L. Webster and Company. Everyone knew who was behind it, but Webster was the front man. Some sources even think it was he and not his uncle who convinced Grant to write the book.”

  “Is that true?”

  Journey shrugged. “Hard to tell. Twain had been friends with Grant for years. It makes sense that he would have had the pull to convince Grant. But Webster ran the publishing company. They published Huckleberry Finn, but nothing else was near as successful as Grant’s memoir. Then Webster’s health started to fail. He’d always had some health problems, but Twain essentially fired him in 1888 when it was apparent that he couldn’t keep up with the company any longer. Webster died in 1891. He wasn’t even forty.”

  “So what happened to the papers from the publishing company?”

  “It folded a few years later. It wasn’t sold to anyone else, it didn’t consolidate, it just died. There’s no Webster family archive, there’s no listing of his letters or papers. I suppose the papers could have gone back to Twain, but if that had happened, surely he would have said so in the Leon letter.”

  “What about Webster’s family?”

  Journey tapped his finger three times on the desk. “I confirmed one of his descendants, a J. T. Webster, who lives in Vermont. He would be Charles Webster’s great-great-great-grandson.”

  Tolman rolled her eyes. “Which would make him—let’s see, now—Mark Twain’s great-great-great-great-nephew.”

  Journey smiled. “Or something. I was getting ready to call him.”

  “By all means.”

  Journey picked up Sharp’s heavy phone and called the number he’d found on a genealogy Web site. In a moment, a male voice answered.

  “Hello, is this Mr. Webster? J. T. Webster?”

  “That’s Dr. Webster, and this is he.”

  Journey nodded. “M.D. or Ph.D.?”

  “Ph.D. Who’s calling, please?”

  “Dr. Webster, this is Dr. Nick Journey. I’m a professor of history at South Central College of Oklahoma.”