The Pinkerton Files Five-Book Bundle (21 page)

Baker got us no closer to stopping the fire. We knew that whoever
started the blaze would not put it out. We might have guessed as much without
exploding a pig.

Lafayette Baker is the sort of cretin that finds a perch in wartime. I
ought to have seen right away that my operatives were not equipped to collide
with men like that. Instead, I thought we could outwit them. I made so many
wrong choices.

My first decision was the worst. I should never have sent Kate Warne
into the Confederate south.

After she and Robert intervened at Bull Run, Kate Warne was accused of
treason. This was an insane over-reach from military lawyers but the accusation
stuck in Washington. The charges were a blessing in disguise. Or so I thought.
They gave her a reason to flee to rebel territory, and gave me an excuse to
send her.

Kate Warne was to be my informant. At the time, we had an open case in
Wilmington, Carolina. The plan was simple. She was to pose as an exile fleeing
from the Union government, which was true enough. She would contact our client
and solve the murder of a man named George Gordon. With her credibility
established, Kate would then begin providing me with information from the
south. 

I had misgivings about the case, of course. Our Agency was contacted
about the murder while still dealing with William Hunt and the plot to bring
down Lincoln. The timing seemed dubious. I told Kate to be on guard.

There was also a political angle. The murder victim, George Gordon, had
campaigned against slavery. The case would surely be more than it appeared at
first.

I did not trouble her with stories about the oddball mysticism that
remains so prominent among southerners. She did not need me to fill her head
with such nonsense.    

She left for Wilmington just as I prepared to meet with President
Lincoln and his advisors. To no one's surprise, the President asked me what I
would do if Kate Warne were arrested and brought to court on the charge of
treason. It was a test.

I lied and told the President that she would have to face justice like
any other American. In truth, she was already on her way to Confederate
territory.

I thought I had been so clever. Instead, I played straight into the
hands of our enemies. I lied to the President and now New York City is burning
to the ground. Those two facts are connected even if I cannot see how.

What in the world is happening?

Black smoke outside the laboratory window is swirling. A platform has
taken shape, made entirely of steam, like a drawbridge reaching toward the
city. An aircraft is emerging from the Protocol. It is flat and round. The hull
appears to be made of woven steel. It spins on the platform as though someone
threw a dinner plate at the fire.

Robert is inside that flyer. I am sure of it. Some part of me has come
to expect this sort of thing from my son.

Dr. Lowe. I know you are listening to me. I am alone in this module but
you are listening, aren't you? Robert gave me this audio device. Surely you
make use of similar contraptions throughout the Protocol. Tell me what I am
seeing.

Thaddeus!

“Your son had an interesting idea, Allan.”

You guessed the location of the turbines, then?

“No. We have something a bit different in mind.”

Robert is not safe in that flimsy aircraft. If he drifts beyond the
platform, he will tip into the fire. Follow him.

“That will not help.”

Follow him, I say! We have to keep the steam platform under him. We can
offer cover, at least, until you pull Robert back onto the Protocol. There must
be a real gun somewhere in this weapons laboratory.

“Cover him from what? We cannot tell friend from foe down there.”

Just stay behind him, professor. Whoever shoots at us, we'll shoot
back.

*   *   *

Kate Warne, Detective
November, 1861

I crossed into Confederate territory at Knoxville in Tennessee, looking
every bit like a desperate outcast on the run. Any semblance of normal train
service, such as we are accustomed to seeing in the north, disappeared
entirely. Rusted tracks staked into wooden ties communicated more clearly than
words that I was in a different sort of America.

From Knoxville, I fell in with a shuffling crowd of refugee families
and slavery enthusiasts moving south on foot. We were a pitiful group. Half the
men were draftees running scared. Half the women were widows. It would have
been faster for me to travel by water but the naval route ran past Chesapeake
Bay. That was out of the question.

I am not superstitious. I don't believe in vengeful spirits from beyond
the grave. I just know, in the way a bare knuckler knows not to get up once a
fight is lost, that I am not welcome at Chesapeake Bay.

I was there when Major Robert Anderson declared his personal war on all
things decent and civilized in the United States. Anderson had been Commander
at Fort Sumter where he was cooked alive, seared by a steam explosion set off
by Confederate troops. Sumter was destroyed and every soldier inside died. All
but Anderson, that is. He survived, flung clear by the blast. His skin was
fused into a thick mutilated scab. Whatever dignity and honor the man knew
before was also wiped away, erased like the features of his face. His ideas and
morals are as mangled as his body.

Anderson put himself above the President, and valued his whims above
the lives of every person living on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. The day he
launched his private militia, he detonated the engines of every boat in a Union
shipyard and turned Chesapeake to rubble. Homes became crypts. Villages became
graveyards.

Given the choice between sailing past Chesapeake Bay and ambling amid
the cold and shelter-less refuges of this war, I chose to travel by land. That
was an easy decision.

Our caravan made slow progress. We had to stop to search for strays who
wandered into the dense forest. Sometimes we found them, sometimes not. The
group gradually thinned as we pressed further into rebel territory.

We crossed paths with soldiers from both Union and Confederate armies.
They marched in lines but had no sense of where they were going. Groups were
too small to be full military units. They camped in huddled cliques. Formations
crossed without firing. In some cases, they mixed to fill ranks. These were
Major Anderson's new hopefuls. They deserted their posts in the Union and
Confederate armies, hoping to join his rogue militia. All over America,
soldiers like these were trying to find him.

The troops were of no interest to me. Let them fight or let them
desert. It is all the same, so long as this war claims the life of Robert
Anderson before it ends.

Our rabble finally stopped, along with hundreds of other refugees, at a
line of checkpoints on the Tennessee border. We saw the signal fires from a
mile away. Actual fires. These were not gas-flame projectors looming over
treetops such as you would find up north. Real wood burned on the forest floor
charring the checkpoint stations.

Confederate soldiers pulled the helpless out of their wagons. Old
people were pushed down. Chests full of cherished items were thrown open. A low
ranking officer, a Corporal, pulled me aside. His face was so cratered he could
have passed as a smallpox survivor.

I felt a panic in my gut. Robert's audio device was hidden inside a box
marked with apothecary stamps. If the soldier caught me with Union technology,
I might never get to Wilmington to pursue the investigation I was sent to
conduct.

I did not bring much in the way of specialized equipment. Other than
Robert's recorder, there were only a few pieces of mining gear.

The clapper is little more than a telescoping baton. With a flick of
the wrist, it extends to full length, thick as rolled newspaper. The shell is
hollow with a heavy iron rod set inside. When the baton is swung forward,
firing pins pull back and then release on impact. The iron rod hammers against
the inside of the shell and delivers quite a blow.

I also brought the tent shield. It is an emergency tool to protect
underground miners from a ceiling collapse. The shield comes in a pouch clipped
onto a belt buckle. When the pin is pulled, thin structural tubes spray out and
snap into position forming triangles that link together into a half-dome. A
huge amount of weight can be carried on top. When the last pieces snap into
place, the user is thrust inside.

These were minor precautions on my part but, if discovered, the tools
would ruin everything. I handed over my papers. Agency credentials were plainly
visible in the bundle along with my pistol. There was no reason to hide my name
or occupation. The idea was to infiltrate the south as myself.

The soldier lifted my apothecary box. He scratched the stamps and saw
they were recently applied, surely fake. He turned the box over, listening for
the jingle of little bottles. It made no sound but engaged the sound recorder.

“Where to, Miss Detective?”

“To Wilmington. On business.”

 “What sort?”

“Murder.”

“Ain't there enough dead Yankees to keep you busy up north?”

The Corporal wrote a note but never opened the apothecary box. He knew
it was contraband but left it alone for reasons I could not explain.

The soldier let me through. Not everyone in our group was so lucky.

From Knoxville, I took a train toward the coast. Trains move so much
slower in the south. Coal smoke belches from engines that grind over single
tracks. Delays are to be expected. Breakdowns are common. Track widths have not
even been standardized. It baffles the mind. Trains from different states, even
neighboring towns, cannot travel onto connecting lines. First they are too
wide, then too narrow.

Southern towns are sprawling and tranquil. Carriageways wind between
plantations with no factories to be seen. To the Confederate mind, a factory is
an eye sore. The dignity of men is offended by the shame of manual labor. They
pay for these ideals with the blood of slaves.

I expected to find Wilmington buzzing with action. This city played a
crucial role in the Confederate war plan. With Lincoln's naval blockade still
in effect, few large ports were open. Blockade runners needed somewhere to
deliver goods. That place was Wilmington.

I believed it would be alive with tradesmen, privateers and the like.
Ten thousand people were reputed to live there. When I arrived, fewer than a
hundred remained. The old town retained its coastal charm. Buildings were
intact. The foundries were stocked. Lumber mills were piled with wood. There
were just no people.

Not knowing what else to do in the almost empty town, I set about my work.
The murder victim, George Gordon, was killed at his father's bank, which I
easily located near the water. Only a burned husk remained of the Gordon Bank.

Much of the block where it stood was burned as well but only the
buildings on that specific block. It was odd. Amid so much damage, there was
only one fatality, one victim. That was peculiar as well.

The murder itself was a macabre affair. George Gordon was viciously
attacked. Police have been unable to solve the crime. George was a night
teller. He was no rich man's brat. He balanced deposits and withdrawals against
cash in the vault. He allowed select clients to conduct business after regular
hours. He worked late. Someone sunk a cancelling hammer into George's head then
left him to burn.

George's father was distraught. He offered to pay any fee. It was a
sign of desperation but Wilmington is Confederate territory. Mr. Pinkerton is a
Union man. The Agency declined the contract, allowing me to pick it up when I
fled. I came to Wilmington posing as an able detective with nowhere to turn. It
was more or less true.

Herbert Gordon, the victim's father, kept a new office near the ruined
bank, close to the water's edge. I pulled the bell and waited at his door. A
faint voice answered from the window above.

“Get away.”

“I am Kate Warne of the Pinkerton Agency.”

A face emerged. The man's skin was yellow. His lips were crusted black.
That was the first time I laid eyes on the sickness gripping Wilmington. The
town is rotting. The smell of decay is a ripe cloud. What few residents remain
burn a kind of incense, day and night. I smell it everywhere. They are covering
the horrible stench of this place.

I climbed the stairs to Gordon's waterfront office. He sat alone at a
crooked angle behind an empty desk. His skin seemed clownish from street level.
Up close it was grotesque. The color was deepest, almost brown, on the left
side of his face. A dark hue ran from his collar over his eye, as though a
shadow was overtaking him.

Gordon bit at his lip. Black crust broke away. I did not offer to shake
his hand.

“I am here about your son.”

“George.”

Footsteps echoed in the stairwell, bounding up two at a time. I tensed,
ready for the situation to turn violent, but the man who pushed through the
door was as happy as anyone I have seen since leaving the north.

This was the bank's co-owner, Louis Bannan. He showed no sign of
sickness. His face was flushed from running, healthy. Bannan stood tall. His
broad shoulders were pulled back in the upright manner shared by all men with
money.

“Our prayers have been answered.”

I explained my circumstance. I was a fugitive, no longer employed by
the Agency. The Pinkertons did not intend to take the case. Gordon and Bannan
could turn it over to me or continue on their own.

“Whatever brought you to Wilmington, you are welcome,” Bannan said.

I asked to see the crime scene. This brought Gordon out of his stupor.
He held out a yellow hand and swallowed air as he tried to speak. Bannan
settled him down.