The Blue and the Gray Undercover

by Ed Gorman

  He put his walking stick down forcefully, tried not to lean on it too hard, and made his way toward her.

  The conversation stopped as he approached, the women staring up at him as if he were a curiosity. He could see only her. Eyes usually faded, got watery, lost their color and intensity with age and rime, but hers had not. They still had a fire in them, a life force so intense he could feel it.

  “Good afternoon, ladies,” he said, bowing as he had done the first time he had seen her. He smiled as he stood, knowing he still had some of the old charm. “Forgive my interruption, but I would like to speak with Serena alone.”

  She could have denied it, he supposed, and would have tried if she had been alone. But the other women turned toward her, looking surprised, as if they should have known all of her friends.

  Her skin seemed paler than it had a moment ago, and up close, he could see the fine wrinkles, like flaws in parchment. “It’s all right,” she said. There was still a trace of Maryland in her voice. Like home, he used to think. Like home.

  The women got up, gave him another glance, and then walked away. The stoutest of them, an imposing matron with the kind of power women of a certain age gained, patted a gloved hand on hers.

  “If you need us, my dear, we’ll be on the deck chairs.” Then the woman looked at him as if warning him of all sorts of dire problems should he assault their friend.

  He slipped into the chair the woman had just vacated, and after a moment, she left them alone. He hung his walking stick on the arm, using the movement to think about what he would say, what he would do.

  He wondered if he could get the captain to place her under house arrest, if the United States Government would pursue a forty-eight-year-old case. War crimes, perhaps; treason of the highest order. Could he actually prove she had caused all those deaths, done all those things? Most of the witnesses were dead now, but he was still alive. Himself and a handful of others.

  She was looking at him as if she couldn’t quite place him. He hoped it wasn’t an act. He had thought of her daily for the last fifty years. The first two with a love so fierce he thought he would die from it, and the last with a hopelessness that seared him to his very soul.

  He had never loved like that again, never trusted anyone again. He had held several women, almost brought two to wife, but could not bear the thought of letting them in his home, in his bed for an entire night. In the end, he had channeled his energies into his businesses, except for the time he made for his nieces and nephews, treating them as if they were his own. She had taken so much from him, more than the war ever could.

  “You wished to speak to me?” she said, so impersonal, so formal, as if they had just met.

  “Serena Freneau Garrison,” he said softly. “I saw your name on a grave in Washington, D.C.”

  She stared at him for a long time, her eyes running over his face as if she were searching her memory, looking at portraits. Then tears came to her eyes. “Nathaniel.”

  She said his name as she had when he loved her, half a whisper, filled with promises. His heart lurched again.

  “They told me you died at Chancellorsville.”

  “They told me you betrayed us two days before.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “I know it all,” he said. “The way you pulled information from me. The way you sent it all to Beauregard, who then used it to slaughter our men. Tell me, Serena, who died for you that day in 1864? A servant? A life you considered less valuable than your own?”

  “It was all a mistake,” she said. “And the rumors were so terrible, I decided to let Serena Garrison go. I thought it better—”

  He put a finger over her lips and she closed her eyes, the movement of a lover. She tilted her head into his touch ever so slightly, and he remembered how she had let him hold her fingers so improperly that day on Mrs. Cunliffe’s lawn fifty years before.

  “No more lies, Serena,” he said, and let his finger drop.

  She opened her eyes. The tears were still in them. “It was a long time ago,” she said. “I was young and stupid—”

  “Serena. No lies. I spent two years in Andersonville before I got exchanged out. You owe me the truth.”

  She let out a small breath of air, glanced at the deck chairs where her friends sat. “I asked you to go away with me. I fell in love with you, Nathaniel. I mourned when they told me you were dead.”

  “By your hand.”

  She raised her chin slightly. So familiar. The gestures, the movements. He had remembered them perfectly. “We were at war.”

  “You and I? Funny, I thought we were in love.”

  A tear fell, glistening like a diamond as it hovered, caught on her cheek. He saw her more clearly now, how she had acted for him as if she were playing a part on the stage. But the young man inside him, the man who had hoped and believed her to be a part of him, he still wanted to believe her.

  And the rest of him wanted to carry her to the rail and toss her over, let her drown for real.

  This time, he was the one who glanced at her friends. The stout woman was glaring at him, her eyes accusing.

  Serena followed his gaze.

  “They’re making me uncomfortable,” he said. “Walk with me.”

  She rose quicker than he did. He grabbed his walking stick, used it to lever himself up, then switched it to the other hand so that he could offer her his arm. She took it, her hand light and delicate against his coat. He felt absurdly like asking her if she wanted punch or perhaps to waltz.

  They walked to the railing. He led her behind one of the lifeboats, roped in and covered at the edge of the deck. He had stopped shaking. He felt stronger than he had in weeks.

  This would be his only chance, here, out of the sight of those women. He would still have to lift her, but only a little. And then a toss that might wrench his back and she would be falling, a scream floating up at him before she hit the froth below.

  She was studying him, those dark foxlike eyes probably seeing all the emotions on his face.

  “There are people who will miss me,” she said. “Are you still such a terrible liar, Nathaniel?”

  “No,” he said.

  A small shudder went through her then. She hadn’t expected that, although she had seen in his face what he meant to do. He would be able to toss her over and lie about what he had done. Another of her legacies.

  Garrison looked over the railing at the gray Atlantic. The vast ocean of nothingness, the place that was supposed to have claimed her, when in fact it hadn’t.

  “I’m sorry, Nathaniel—” she started, but he didn’t let her finish.

  He dropped his walking stick, grabbed her waist—not as small as it had once been—and hoisted her up. She didn’t scream, but she grabbed the railing and hung on, her body tense.

  It wouldn’t be easy. Nothing with her was ever easy.

  “My husband is a rich man,” she said. “We can pay you, Nathaniel. You could be rich.”

  His hands tightened on her waist. “Who’s your husband?” he asked softly, as if he were intrigued by the notion of another man’s money.

  “Lord Reginald Seton. Please, Nathaniel. Let me down.”

  He let go so quickly that she nearly fell overboard anyway. Her body collapsed against the rail, her heels kicking against the side. She eased herself down and for a brief moment, he saw fear in her eyes.

  “Does he know of your past life?” Garrison asked.

  She raised that sharp chin. “I met him in London. During the war.”

  One of the collaborators. One of the men who had hoped to fund the South.

  “And how long have you been married?” Garrison asked.

  She stepped away from him, the movement small but noticeable. “I thought you were dead.”

  Forty-seven years. They had married while Garrison was starving in a camp she had sent him to. The camp she had condemned him to.

  She had spent forty-seven years in London society under a different name, and no one
had been the wiser. Forty-seven years in a marriage that obviously had worked, with a man who had a reputation to protect. A man, by the very nature of the peerage to which he belonged, could suffer no hint of impropriety.

  “Where is he now?” Garrison asked.

  “The smoking room, I believe,” she said.

  “This early in the day?”

  “He enjoys cards,” she said. And cards offended many of the women. The smoking room had become a replacement for some of the men’s clubs.

  “Let’s go there.”

  “I can’t.”

  “But I can.” He took her arm, dragged her forward, then slipped her hand in his elbow again. “Walk normally,” he said softly, “and smile.”

  She did. They were halfway across the deck when he realized he’d left his walking stick behind. He was functioning on something purer than energy now, something deeper. He would go through with this if it killed him.

  Fortunately, they weren’t far from the smoking room. He pushed open the doors and saw, as he had hoped, the reporters the White Star Line had hired to glorify the Olympic’s first trip.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, as he dragged Serena forward. “Come with me.”

  They did, of course. No one said no to Nathaniel Garrison. How ironic that he needed them—them and their scandal sheets—to get the only revenge possible now.

  He would destroy her place in society. Once he revealed her identity, everyone would know who she was, who she had been. His story was familiar enough.

  It was time to make that story hers as well.

  He would ruin her life as she had once ruined his.

  Garrison walked across the checked carpet, past rows of empty tables flanked by green leather chairs, to the center of the room.

  There Lord Seton was already standing, his cards turned down in his large arthritic hands. He was a big man who did not stoop with age, with a large white mustache that seemed to have stolen all the hair from his head. His eyes were faded, so faded it took Garrison a moment to see their color.

  “Serena,” Seton said, “what is the meaning of this?”

  Garrison glanced at his side, made certain the reporters were there, saw Serena, her eyes wide, the fear evident now.

  “Lord Seton,” Garrison said, letting Serena’s hand drop and placing his own on the small of her back. “My name is Nathaniel Garrison. I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you. Please allow me to introduce you to my wife.”

  He paused for a half a moment and saw the horror plain on Seton’s face. The reporters gasped. Serena looked as if she was about to faint.

  Garrison stared at her one last time, saw how years of good living had softened her, and knew the publicity, the scandal, the trial would be her Andersonville.

  He nodded to her once, an acknowledgment that finally the tables had turned. There was nowhere for her to go, no escape possible. She couldn’t even handle the lifeboats by herself.

  Then he turned and left her there, surrounded by reporters and a scandalized man who had thought he was her only husband for forty-seven years. Garrison, her real husband, left her to face her future alone—her bleak future—as she had once left him.

  Fifty years to the day it began, the war was finally over.

  Loren D. Estleman has distinguished himself in a number of literary fields including mainstream, western, private eye and thriller. He has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won a couple of shelves of literary awards, including four Western Writers of America Spur awards, three Private Eye Writers of America Shamus awards, and the American Mystery Award. He is the author of more than forty novels, including the Amos Walker detective series, a number of westerns, and his Detroit historical mystery series, which includes Whiskey River, Motown, King of the Corner, and Thunder City.

  The Civil War was host to roving bands of vigilantes on both sides, men ostensibly charged by the government to hunt down the enemy, but whom often looted and killed more for revenge than for military reasons. Collingwood’s Raiders is one such unit. In this tale, lacking the niceties of war, they inflict a swift and harsh punishment on those they call spies.

  SOUTH GEORGIA CROSSING

  Loren D. Estleman

  His brother was the better killer.

  At twelve, Oscar was the more accomplished shooter of the pair. His reflexes were faster, and invariably his old side-by-side boomed half a second ahead of Jacob’s newer single-barrel, sending a woodcock, plummeting in a vertical drop as straight as a blade of wheat. From that point on he deferred to fifteen-year-old Jacob.

  When neither the pellets nor the fall managed to kill the unfortunate bird, it became necessary to wring its neck. Oscar was seldom immediately successful; he would hesitate a split second, or fail to exert the force necessary, and the creature’s heart would continue to flutter and one of its elliptical eyes would catch his with an expression of accusation and pain, disturbingly human. Jacob would then seize the bird by its head and snap its neck with a single one-handed twirl, like a muleskinner cracking his whip. On those occasions when two birds fell close together and Jacob got to them first, he would do both at once, whirling them above his head with a flourish Oscar thought unnecessary, showing off. The younger Stone disapproved, but he had come to dread that look of silent condemnation between bird and boy so much that he purposely lagged behind in order that Jacob might be first on the scene. They were both aware that Oscar’s slowness was deliberate, but the knowledge was never spoken, and so remained a thing of shame between them.

  That was in the late Pennsylvania fall, when their father’s potatoes were dug and the hay was in the barn. The next year, Jacob ran away to join the Bucktails, to be counted among the fifty thousand dead at Gettysburg, three years later and less than twenty miles from the stone house where he was born. Their father was gone soon after, buried at forty-seven along with his broken dreams of a son in the medical profession. Ernst Stein himself had wanted to be a doctor like his father in Munich, but had never managed more than two dozen words in English, and Oscar, who could not end the misery of an unthinking bird, had by his comportment in general demonstrated an equal lack of potential to relieve human suffering. He buried his father on a hillside next to his mother, dead eight years of a neglected infection, and three siblings who had expired in swaddling, placed the farm up for sale with the bank in York, and joined the 150th Pennsylvania there. The recruiting sergeant, a veteran since First Manassas with one empty sleeve pinned to his shoulder, never looked up from his sheet to verify Oscar’s age; the bloody draw at Gettysburg had rammed a hole through the federal reserves and the recruiters were filling it with old men and children and scarecrows from the fields.

  He served for twenty months, including five weeks when he was laid up with a shattered shinbone after falling from a flatbed car on the tracks outside Chattanooga. He was on his feet too soon, so that the bones knitted poorly, and for the rest of his life limped whenever he was tired or forgot himself. The reason he got up was the 150th was pulling out for Atlanta and he didn’t want to be left behind by men he’d marched, slept, and eaten with since training. War was less hideous when faced in familiar company.

  He missed out anyway. He was hobbling along the Atlanta road on a crutch he’d cut from a forked limb when he heard hoofbeats coming fast behind him and, without turning to look, withdrew into the trees at the side of the road. The area was crawling with Confederate cavalry and bands of guerrillas and ragged deserters who preyed upon stragglers from both armies.

  “You! Soldier! What is your regiment?”

  The demand was bawled in the honking bray of the East Coast Northerner, and belonged to a corpulent major in a blue uniform corded with gold braid, aboard a fat gray round-muscled horse, a rarity among the gaunt mounts living off that burned-Over land. He wore a felt hat with the brim pinned up on one side and a white plume curling out behind. The dozen men he had with him were mounted equally well, in uniforms less elaborate. All were armed with Henry repeaters, the fi
rst Oscar had seen, although he had heard all about them from envious fellow troops weary of recharging their muzzleloaders in the sting of battle; and all were aiming at him.

  Oscar remained in the shadows, supporting himself against a tree with his Springfield rifle in both hands. But he gave the major the information he wanted.

  “The One-fifty is halfway to Savannah by now,” said the other. “You’ll never catch them. I’ve a saddle needs filling. Can you ride?”

  “Yes, sir.” In fact he had been astraddle a horse rarely; his father would not have his plowhorses used for any purpose other than the work to which they’d been broken. However, he was not so anxious to rejoin his regiment that he would pass up an opportunity to relieve his injured leg of its burden.

  “Name and rank.”

  “Oscar Stone, private.”

  “Squarehead?”

  “No, sir, I am American.”

  “It matters not. Harney.”

  One of the men at the rear moved out of line and trotted to the front, leading a riderless gray.

  “Mount up, Private,” said the major. “You’re one of Collingwood’s Raiders now.

  In 1861, John Quincy Adams Collingwood had closed the bank he owned in Rhode Island, had uniforms made for himself and those of his staff who volunteered to follow him, and struck off south to make war on the Confederacy, armed with new Henry rifles ordered to his specifications from the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company in New Haven, Connecticut. He’d had the foresight to invite along a journalist from the Providence paper, who coined the name “Collingwood’s Raiders” and wired back dispatches reporting details of daring skirmishes with the Rebel army and enemy courthouses captured. In reality the band wandered along the broad swath carved by the Army of the Potomac, picking off stranded wretches in threadbare gray uniforms and billeting in hotels and mortar-blasted plantation houses while patrols scoured the country around for edible crops and livestock. Below Mason-Dixon the major was best known for his table, maintained by his personal chef from his estate in Newport, and the cases of pre-Revolution wine he had managed to scrounge from abandoned cellars already picked over by the hundreds of troops who had preceded him. This he had done by seeking out the slaves of the departed owners and paying them to tell where the stores had been hidden to await their return; whereupon he would declare those slaves emancipated and leave them to savor the sweet fruit of freedom in the drafty and roofless cabins where he’d made their acquaintance. Regular officers who came to dine with him and proclaim the excellence of the claret were only too happy to report his humanitarian actions to their superiors, who mentioned them in dispatches when there were no new victories to declare. “‘An army travels on its stomach’”—the major was fond of quoting his hero, Napoléon—and his had been growing since Fort Henry. The assistance of a lieutenant was required to hoist him into the saddle, and most days he suffered from gout, which he excused to visitors who found him with his foot elevated and bound as the recurring misery of a saber wound contracted at Fredericksburg.