Cold Glory

by B. Kent Anderson

  “So this is where it ended,” Tolman said.

  “Someone,” Journey said, “and I’m guessing it was one of Marvin Colbert’s ancestors, buried Williams here. I don’t know what happened to him, and I don’t know how he came to know the Indians. But Williams died here. The pages were safe, and the Chickasaw gave him a place among their people and made him a marker, even though they didn’t mark their own graves.”

  “Back in Arkansas, in the car, you said Williams was brilliant. Other than the things we’d already found, what did you mean?”

  “He was brilliant,” said a third voice.

  They turned. The frail old man in the gray pants and sport coat, and the huge man wearing a dark suit, were a few yards behind them.

  “You’ve answered a long-standing question, Professor Journey,” the Judge said. “The Glory Warriors never knew his real name. To us, he was Edward Hiram.”

  CHAPTER

  57

  The old bathroom smelled bad, and Ray Tolman found himself wondering if someone had died in here at some point. In this neighborhood, it was a possibility. If he’d been thirty years younger, the thought might have spooked him a bit.

  The media started to arrive on Valley Place. The Service, both uniformed and plainclothes, and the Metro Police were very much in evidence. Technicians began doing sound checks at the podium where President Harwell would speak. Tolman waited and listened and wondered if Pat Moore was cursing him from the closet a few feet away.

  The floor creaked below. The footsteps turned toward the stairs and started upward. Tolman flattened himself against the bathroom wall. He held his breath when the burly form of Agent Jay Clare came into view. He saw Clare looking around the landing, then moving toward the window that overlooked Valley Place and the community center.

  Clare stopped when he saw the rifle. He knelt beside it, looked up and all around him. He raised his wrist radio.

  Ray Tolman stepped out of the bathroom. “Agent Clare, put your arm down.”

  Clare whipped his head around. “What?”

  “You’re not going to call anyone on the radio, and you’re not going to cause a commotion about that rifle.”

  “I have to—”

  Moore came out of the closet, his own weapon held straight out in front of him.

  “What is this?” Clare said.

  “Listen to me,” Ray Tolman said. “If you care about protecting the president, then you’re not going to do anything right this minute. There’s not going to be any quick movement in this window, and if anyone looks up here, they’re not going to see a lot of hubbub. You’re not going to call John Canton on the radio and say, ‘Gun.’ That rifle is unloaded, and both you and it are going to stay right where you are, as if everything was normal. We’re going to keep the president safe, but you have to trust me and not cause a commotion up here.”

  The presidential motorcade was arriving, the police motorcycles and black Cadillac Escalades and the presidential limousine coming to a stop in front of the community center. Ray Tolman could see the ring of agents around the president, and then there was Harwell’s silver hair. He was moving, smiling, waving, giving the requisite thumbs-up signs.

  Ray Tolman looked out the window. He could see the men on the roof of the community center, sunglasses on, movements smooth and practiced. He moved his gaze a little to the left of the center and saw what he expected to see.

  “Agent Clare, this is Special Agent Moore of the FBI, ” Tolman said. “Pat, you stay here with Agent Clare. Don’t move quickly, don’t make a lot of noise. I’m going across the street.”

  As quietly as he could, Tolman crept down the stairs and toward the back of the house. He walked through the gutted kitchen and out through a screen door into the high grass and weeds. A uniformed officer was on patrol there. The uniform checked his supervisory ID, which Tolman had hung from his shirt pocket, and nodded at him.

  An alley ran along the back of the house, and Tolman found more men in it. He walked three doors down, then cut through the backyard of another vacant house. At the edge of the house, before stepping into view of the street, he checked his pistol and made sure the safety was off.

  * * *

  On Washington One’s television, HNC tracked the motorcade along Valley Place. Ordinarily, this type of short speech wouldn’t have warranted live coverage, but since the assassinations of Vandermeer and Darlington, and given the ongoing investigations, all the media were following the president’s every move, hanging on his every word.

  Which works to our advantage, Washington One thought.

  As soon as he saw Harwell step out of the limousine, Washington One pulled his computer’s microphone to him and pressed the button. The Web signal was already live, all the bases on standby, just waiting for his word.

  “Glory Warriors,” he said into the microphone. “You are now active.”

  * * *

  The Glory Warriors swung into action in the four Washington-area staging centers. They had their body armor on in less than one minute. They checked their firepower and began to move as one toward their transportation—Humvees and choppers. At the Miller Exploration compound in Silver Spring, and at the other centers, pilots settled into their Sea Stallions and opened the side doors in anticipation of the troops coming aboard.

  At points along the Potomac, the fleet of twenty-five-foot response boats, very much like the Coast Guard’s Defender Class, powered up their engines. Their .50-caliber M2HB machine guns had been inspected and were fully operational.

  They all awaited the single word—“Go!”—from Washington One, and the invasion would begin.

  CHAPTER

  58

  “Edward Hiram,” Journey said. “He would have appreciated the cleverness of it, Edward being Lee’s middle name and Hiram being Grant’s real first name.”

  The Judge smiled and tilted his head toward Hudson. “Mr. Hudson, if you please.”

  Hudson stared at Tolman. “Meg, you should not have done this,” he said. “How can you possibly think you have a way out now?”

  “You fucking traitor, you’re one to talk,” Tolman said. “All of this constitutes conspiracy to commit treason. I won’t even mention the murders of Vandermeer and Darlington.”

  “To the contrary,” the Judge said. “We’re doing what General Lee and General Grant intended to be done for this country.”

  Hudson stepped forward. “Give me your bag, Meg.”

  “Why don’t you take it from me, Rusty?”

  “Let him have it,” Journey said. “Each of us has something the other wants.”

  The Judge laughed. “You overestimate your position, Professor.”

  Her eyes blazing, Tolman handed her purse to Hudson. He pulled the SIG Sauer pistol from it. “Were you planning to shoot me?”

  “Give it back to me and maybe you’ll find out,” Tolman said.

  “You’ve created quite a little tableau here,” the Judge said. “The Indian burial ground, the open grave. A bit like dressing a stage, isn’t it?”

  “The pages from Grant’s book,” Journey said. “You have them. Somewhere along the way, you people got hold of them, even though Twain didn’t publish them. You stirred up this whole damn thing, this whole bloody coup, based on those pages. Pages Grant regretted writing and never intended to be read.”

  The Judge smiled again. “Samuel Langhorne Clemens wrote a letter to a friend in which he mentioned the Glory Warriors and the missing pages to Grant’s book. Clemens died before the letter was sent, but shortly thereafter, a man named Alexander Madden came across it. He was a newspaper editor from Connecticut, and an acquaintance of the Clemens family. He was curious about what the letter meant. No doubt he decided it would be worth money to find the ‘lost pages’ of General Grant’s memoir. He found them—we don’t know how—but instead of selling them to the highest bidder, he was captivated by what he read, by the ideas. Madden resurrected the Glory Warriors and dedicated his life to finding the treaty,
the document that would put the Glory Warriors into power.”

  “And he recruited others to the cause,” Tolman said.

  “Yes,” the Judge said. “One of them was my grandfather, who became leader after Madden died. It passed to my father, and then to me.”

  “And then there were people like Layton Detheridge, a jeweler from New York City,” Journey said.

  “Hiram was a brilliant man,” the Judge said. He touched the pin on his collar. “Rather than trust an outsider to create our insignia, he found a way to, shall we say, keep it in the family. He recruited others of like mind. When Madden resurrected the Glory Warriors, he went to New York and found the Detheridge family still in the jewelry business. They’ve been with us since the beginning. The first Glory Warriors were those in the military who were dissatisfied with the way the civilian politicians ran the country. As time went by, my grandfather expanded the focus. Our family had been very successful in land with the westward expansion after the Civil War, and by the time Madden died and my grandfather took over the Glory Warriors, we were billionaires. We McMartins had the money and the influence to organize. My grandfather, and then my father, were well connected. My father knew this country’s elected leaders were corrupt and immoral and inept, and he knew we would someday replace them, but he cultivated them. It’s quite an irony, isn’t it? Becoming connected to those we would replace when Grant and Lee’s vision was fulfilled. I, of course, as you know, expanded the universe even further, buying into the media industry. Over time, we realized that it would be to our advantage to have both military and civilian personnel involved, to broaden our influence. I expanded my father’s vision.” The Judge’s eyes seemed to lose focus for a moment. “He spent his life waiting. Just waiting.”

  A breeze kicked up dirt around them. The Judge turned his head, as if hearing something on the wind. When he looked at them again, his eyes were clear. “I took action. Yes, we had to wait to find the documents that gave us our authority. But I wanted to make sure we were ready when this day came.”

  “So you kept on recruiting, year after year,” Journey said, “and searching for the document all the time.”

  “Yes. We put cells in place in major cities, created teams of members with different areas of expertise. Bankers, accountants, information technology specialists, educators, in addition to our military and operational people. We refined our mission, our tactical focus.”

  “When you wanted someone,” Tolman said, “you could create a paper trail to show that they were dead, just wipe them off the face of the earth. Like the ones you sent to attack Nick. But you still paid them, and that money trail had to lead somewhere. Like Kevin Lane—his money went to his wife. That’s how we found you. That’s how I knew that their deaths in Iraq were faked.” She looked at Hudson. “How did they get you into this, Rusty?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Hudson said. “In any organization, there is a person like me. You should understand that, Meg.”

  “Oh, yes. You know contracts and budgets and accounts and all those things. You’re perfect for this, aren’t you?”

  Hudson dropped his eyes from Tolman’s. He held her pistol loosely in his hand.

  “The pages,” Journey said. “Show me the pages Grant wrote.”

  The Judge gestured toward the mound of earth. “Hiram was buried with the signature page. Interesting. He sent us on quite an odyssey, only to have it lead right back here. This seems to be a place of both beginnings and endings, doesn’t it?” The old man’s hand touched his chest, then reached in his pocket and withdrew the plastic bag with the papers inside.

  Journey took the bag, opened it, and pulled out the pages. The plastic bag fell to the ground at his feet. Tolman edged a few steps closer to him. Journey smoothed the paper. On top was the seal of the Glory Warriors. He turned the page and began to read the words of the dying Ulysses S. Grant.

  CHAPTER

  59

  It is with much deliberation and some hesitation that I approach the subject of the Glory Warriors, but the matter weighs most heavily on my mind and I feel that in the interest of a true unburdening, it should be addressed. I have spent many years considering whether the people should know of this episode, and am by no means certain of the prudence of revealing it even now.

  It was around 1 November 1864, that the man first approached me. The troops were in winter camps, and I had made my headquarters in the cabin of Dr. Eppes in City Point. It was late at night, with considerable chill in the air, when one of my staff woke me with the news of a man proceeding through the picket lines and requesting an interview with me. I tried to put them off, but the staff insisted the man would not leave without speaking to me.

  My first impression, of course, was that he was a spy, and I treated the first meeting as such. I ushered him into the cabin and asked the staff to wait outside. I had no fear of my life, as both my sword and pistol were close at hand. When I inquired as to his name, he replied with a smile, “Edward Hiram.”

  I confess, these many years after the fact, that I first believed him to be mad. This was not his name, of course, as he had made a clever conjunction of General Lee’s and my names, but he would give no other. When I inquired as to his purpose, he said directly, “General, the war is ending. Victory is at hand, is it not?”

  He hastily informed me that he had served in Mexico with Major McCulloch’s company of scouts. I queried him for details, and he was knowledgeable about the engagements at both Monterrey and Buena Vista. He spoke as a man who was there, with some specific authority and understanding of the situations. I did not believe he could have gained such insights from newspapers. I suspended judgment for the moment. As a brother officer from Mexico, I could at least offer him a few moments of my attention. He said that he was now a man of some means and influence, and that he found himself in an attitude of unease concerning the state of the country, both North and South, in the wake of this conflict. He affirmed that while in fact the Union may emerge victorious on the battlefield, that matters may well be acrimonious into the next century if provisions are not made for the postwar government.

  My own thoughts had lately been oriented this way as well. How would North and South reunite after a conflict of this type? How would we be governed? Would the civil government have the authority and capacity to direct national affairs? There would be many unstable elements in the time to come. There would be those who would do the government ill, in order to foster further instability, to fight another war, perhaps one more dangerous than the military conflict.

  I entertained all these thoughts as the man stood before me, and he suggested a course of action. When I inquired as to why I should heed any thoughts of his on the matter, as he no longer wore a uniform, he replied, “Because I do not wear the uniform of either side, General, is precisely why you should hear what I have to say.”

  I bade him go then, as I needed rest. But I did not rest that night, nor for many of those nights to come. Through the autumn I thought of “Edward Hiram.” I did not know his true name, I did not know where to find him, I did not know from where he came. Yet I could never quite leave off the notions he had articulated.

  Three days before Christmas, he appeared again during a cold rain, and again late at night. When we were alone, he inquired as to whether I had considered his words. I asked him what he proposed.

  “To reclaim the glory of America,” he replied.

  He envisioned a plan after the war had reached its conclusion, one that would be enacted if the Washington government was rendered without a leader in each of the three branches in short order. Such circumstances would naturally constitute a time of crisis. Hiram insisted that there would be no need for the plan to be enacted unless the leaders of all three branches were removed by force. Then and only then would action be taken.

  He proposed a group to be named the Glory Warriors, who would act in governance of the nation in such time of political crisis until the crisis abated and the civil gover
nment could be restored. This group would comprise men from both Union and Confederacy, so as to ensure that it was seen neither as a Northern solution or a Southern solution, but rather a national solution.

  Hiram’s proposals gave me much pause, and I considered them duly. I am a soldier, and as such I am sworn to protect the civil government of the United States of America. Yet, I confess that I did not know at that time what lay ahead, and I feared the uncertainty of the coming years.

  When Hiram told me that he would move between General Lee’s camp and my own, and would speak to General Lee just as he had spoken to me, I was inclined to hear what General Lee might say on the matter. I knew him to be an honorable man, misguided though his cause might be. If Hiram could gain access to me, he could no doubt accomplish the same with General Lee. Of course, General Lee had been in Mexico as well, in the days when we all wore the same uniform. I informed Hiram that I would hear what General Lee might have to say on the subject.

  At the same time, and unbeknownst to Hiram, I began to communicate with Lee as well, without benefit of his intermediary. We shared a concern for the future, and likewise shared a mistrust of Hiram. In the end, Lee and I agreed that no matter the outcome of the fighting in the spring, that a gesture of unity from North and South that allowed for control of the civil government was in order.

  Through my own intelligence network, I discovered a number of men willing to take on the mantle of the Glory Warriors. Lee did the same. Small numbers of weapons began to be removed from arsenals in the various theaters of the war, and they were routed to the frontier, where little note would be taken. A pair of brothers from Missouri, one who fought in engagements for the Union and one who served the Confederacy, were discharged and sent to the frontier for the purposes of managing the arsenal. They in turn made contact with one of the local natives who would serve to guide Hiram at the appropriate time.