Dreams of Glory (31 page)

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Authors: Thomas Fleming

BOOK: Dreams of Glory
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In a few minutes they reached the white-columned Morris mansion. The black-uniformed Hessian sentry ran down the steps to lead their horses to the barn. In the house, General von Knyphausen greeted them and declared himself pleased with his portrait, even in its semi-finished state. Beckford quickly translated this good news for Paul. It was encouraging to see the general in such a jovial humor. Knyphausen sat his aide behind his desk and assumed the sitter's pose in front of the parlor window. While Paul painted, Beckford plowed briskly through the usual business—courts-martial and European correspondence, commissary and police reports. New York was under martial law, which meant the commander in chief was responsible for its internal order as well as for its defense.
Beckford stuffed the routine papers into his portfolio and with a small flourish produced another document. “You've asked me several times about Colonel Simcoe's projected attack on White Plains,” he said in German. “I've finally extracted a plan from him.”
“Read it to me,” Knyphausen said, staring uncomprehendingly
at Simcoe's beautifully inscribed sentences. The colonel had had his plan copied by a professional clerk; it must have cost him several pounds.
“I don't think it's necessary, General. It's a rather impertinent document. After outlining his plan, for which he says he will need a regiment in support, Colonel Simcoe argues most aggressively that the attack is unnecessary. He says he's consulted one of the English generals—he declines to name him—and the officer agrees. He ends by implying that if you don't give him permission to strike at Morristown immediately, he'll rely on the English general's approval.”
Knyphausen's pale eyebrows rose. “You mean launch an unauthorized attack?”
For a moment Beckford savored the German word for unauthorized:
unbefugt.
It had an explosion of outrage in it.
“Not only would it be insulting to you—it would demoralize and endanger the men I've placed in the American camp—with your encouragement and advice.”
“Of course.” Actually, Beckford had developed his intelligence network entirely on his own. But Knyphausen, was complacently willing to accept the credit for it.
“We're close to accomplishing a feat that could end the war, General. I don't want to see you deprived of your just share of the honors you so richly deserve,” Beckford continued.
“I think you had better arrange to watch Simcoe and his friends a bit more closely,” Knyphausen said. Then he nibbled at the bait Beckford was dangling in front of him. “Is there some way we could make the attempt without this fellow Simcoe?”
“We could use cavalry,” Beckford said.
“Why don't you talk to Brigadier Birch about it?” Knyphausen said.
“An excellent idea, General.”
Eine ausgezeichnete Idee, mein General
. The German words echoed triumphantly around the high-ceilinged room.
Paul Stapleton looked up from his palette and paints. “I
marvel at your skill with that dreadful language,” he said. “What were you talking about just now?”
For a moment suspicion coiled in Walter Beckford's mind. He dismissed it. Where could Paul have learned German? “We were discussing your work. The general likes it so much he's commissioned you to do that portrait of me.”
“Lovely,” Paul said.
FLICKERING LANTERNS THREW SHADOWY LIGHT across the hospital's crowded floor. The sick men tossed on their straw mattresses; several called feebly for water. A fat orderly dozed on a chair tipped against the wall. Major Benjamin Stallworth kicked the chair out from under him. He crashed to the floor, arms and legs flailing like some species of stupid bug. “Get off your ass and give these men a drink,” Stallworth said.
While the orderly scrambled to obey his order, Stallworth took one of the lanterns and stepped through a rear door into a room permeated by a cold dramatically different from the wind-whipped winter outside the hospital. This cold was silent, still. Around him were tiers of raw pine coffins. The hospital's dead waited here to be buried in a common grave as soon as the ground thawed.
Stallworth sat down on a coffin. He cocked his pistol, blew out the lantern, and waited in the frigid darkness. In spite of the cold his eyes began to droop. He pressed the icy gun barrel against his forehead. Using one of the letters Caesar Muzzey had passed, Stallworth had spent the last forty-eight hours trying to break Walter Beckford's code—without success. Two days ago he had received a message from the network assigned to watch Major Beckford's safe house on Bowrie Lane. The Reverend Caleb Chandler, looking somewhat the worse for wear after spending a week on the prison ship Jersey, had been seen entering the house with Beckford.
By now Chandler was back in Morristown, supposedly returned from a visit to his sick father in Lebanon, Connecticut. A message had already been left at his quarters that one of the soldiers in his brigade was ill. He would come to the hospital like a dutiful chaplain, pray beside the soldier, and then meet
Stallworth here in the burial shed. If anyone from Twenty-six's network was watching him, they would conclude only that Chandler was making good use of his chaplain's cover.
Fifteen minutes later, the mortuary door opened, then swiftly closed. “I have a gun aimed at your middle,” Stallworth said. “What's the password?”
“Mercury,” Caleb Chandler said.
Three clicks of Stallworth's flint and the lantern glowed. He motioned and Chandler sat down on another coffin, clutching his cloak around him. He looked haggard, ill. His eyes were as blank as nailheads. For a moment Stallworth felt sorry for him. He suppressed the emotion. The would-be prophet was getting just what he deserved. “Did you stop to comfort a few of the sick?” Stallworth said.
“Yes. I obeyed your orders, Major, down to the most minute detail.”
“They're designed to keep you alive, Chandler. Remember what happened to Caesar Muzzey.”
“How well I remember.”
“Are you carrying a message?”
“Yes.”
He drew a sealed letter from a pocket of his cloak. “Beckford told me to leave this at a drop in the woods within twenty-four hours of my arrival here or I would be a dead man.”
“You'll leave it, tomorrow morning,” Stallworth said, taking the letter. “We'll copy it tonight and reseal it. Thanks to Muzzey, we've got a perfect duplicate of the seal they use.”
“You'll follow me into the woods and arrest the man who collects it?”
“Don't be ridiculous. He's only a courier, like you. Arresting him would drive the big game to cover. We'll let him deliver it, on schedule.”
“And use the information to arrest the whole network?”
“Hardly. We haven't been able to break their code.”
Chandler sprang up, trembling. “Then what's the point of all this? I've gone through hell for nothing.”
“It's not your job to think about the point of it all, Chandler. And you aren't out of hell yet. What about Mrs. Kuyper? Have you mounted her ramparts?”
“I—I refuse to talk of her that way. I respect—and pity her. She's politically innocent. In fact—innocent in almost every way. She—she has an excellent heart.”
“An excellent cunt is more like it. Grow up, Chandler.”
“I've grown up considerably. Enough to tell you I'll quit this business right now unless you agree to protect that woman. Beckford will destroy her unless—”
“Who else is she pleasuring that has you so upset—Congressman Stapleton?”
“Yes. He plans to quit the country and take her with him to Holland.”
“Oh? Now, that kind of news would earn you a commendation if we could give one to a spy. Well done, Chandler.”
“Well done?” Chandler said. “I tell you that a beautiful woman is being forced to give herself to a man she despises, that one of our congressmen has compromised himself with the enemy and is ready to desert our cause—”
“Think of it as a battle, Chandler,” Stallworth said. “Every item we learn is like a well-aimed bullet that brings down one of their men. Already you're advancing in wisdom and age and grace with me, Chandler.”
“Delightful news, Major. I wish I could say the same for you.”
“Your opinion is a matter of utter indifference to me.”
“Good. I won't hesitate to express it.”
For a moment Stallworth wanted to smash his fist into Caleb Chandler's face, beat the last shreds of idealism out of this young fool. “Judge not, lest you be judged, Chandler,” he said.
“Sometimes, Major, you're almost amusing.”
“What else did Mrs. Kuyper tell you?”
“She told me the story of her life—which I'm sure is of no interest to you. It's a sad story, Major. It stirs pity in the normal heart. You'd probably find it boring.”
“Tell it to me.”
“The whole thing? It could take half the night.”
“I want to hear every word you can remember.”
Chandler told the story in a voice that grew more and more leaden. Flora Kuyper's life was sad. It would stir a normal heart to pity. But Stallworth ordered himself to listen with his head, not his heart. As the chronicle of deception and degradation wound to its close Stallworth heard another voice in his mind. It belonged to George Washington. He was sitting in his office wearily musing:
Whoever killed Caesar Muzzey wanted us—or someone else—to know about it. Even to implicate us in the crime
. Stallworth heard himself saying,
I can't imagine who that someone else might be.
That someone else, he saw now, had to be Flora Kuyper.
“Chandler,” Stallworth said as the chaplain finished the story, “you're a good spy in spite of yourself. You've just explained Caesar Muzzey's murder. Twenty-six killed him, to prevent him from debouching to New Orleans with Mrs. Kuyper. He took the risk of killing Caesar more or less in front of our eyes to guarantee her hatred of Americans and her dependence on him and Beckford.”
“How did Twenty-six find out about Caesar's plans? He wouldn't be stupid enough to tell him.”
“Muzzey never got any closer to discovering Twenty-six's identity than we have. But standing at the bar at Red Peggy's or talking in his hut in Jockey Hollow, he may have been face to face with him without realizing it.”
“What can we do about all this?”
“You can do a great deal, Chandler. You can—in fact, you must—convince Mrs. Kuyper that Twenty-six is Caesar Muzzey's murderer and persuade her to come to Morristown to expose him.”
“Do you believe women have souls, Stallworth?”
“I only believe in this war. When it's over I'll sort out what else I believe. I advise you to do the same.”
“I love this woman. Do you understand what that means?”
“She's a whore, Chandler. You're telling me a man with a Yale education, a minister of the church, is in love with a whore?”
“I knew the idea would be beyond you. Loving anything or anyone is beyond you.”
“You son of a bitch!” Stallworth grabbed Caleb Chandler by the throat and hoisted him off his feet. “I love this country! I love the men who died for it! I'm not going to let those deaths go to waste even if Congress and most of the supposedly virtuous American people have lost interest in winning this war. We're going to win it, Chandler. If that means the loss of Mrs. Kuyper's soul or your own precious soul, I don't care. Do you understand me, Chandler? I don't care.”
Caleb Chandler was gasping and gurgling like a fish with a hook in his throat. Stallworth realized he was close to asphyxiating his most valuable spy. He flung him into the darkness beyond the lantern's light. “Get out of here,” he said. “You desecrate this place.”
“I'll—talk to Mrs. Kuyper,” Chandler gasped. “I'll do what I can.”
He was gone. Stallworth sat alone with the dead. Was that how he was going to spend the rest of his life? he wondered. He was appalled by what he had just done. He rode numbly back to headquarters, where he found George Washington at his desk, writing the usual midnight letters. “Your Excellency,” he said, “I want to be relieved.”
“For God's sake, Stallworth, why?”
“My nerves are gone, General. I can't handle the strain of this work.”
“Stallworth, I'd sooner lose this,” Washington said, holding up his right hand. “What's happened?”
Stallworth described his assault on Caleb Chandler. Washington
shook his head. “Flint against flint. When two Yankees disagree, there's bound to be sparks.”
“It's more than that, General. The boy exasperates me in some way that threatens my self-respect, my—my sanity. I can't explain it. What else can it be but my nerves?”
“Perhaps you don't like tampering with souls any more than I do, Major.”
“That may be.”
“But we have to see the business through now,” Washington said. “When it's over, we'll try to repair the damage if it's in our power.”
“And if we can't, I'll have to live with it, somehow.”
“Both us will, my friend.”
Tears welled in Stallworth's throat. He realized how much he had wanted to hear those words. “Your Excellency,” he said, “I've loved only two men in my life. One of them was Nathan Hale. I think you know the other one.”
“Get some sleep, Stallworth,” Washington said.

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