Unholy Fire (37 page)

The door to the corridor opened, and Lieutenant Hanks and Major Donovan came into the room. As if previously summoned, they moved without a word to take seats in the chairs behind me.

Hawkinshield removed a thin silver flask from his suit coat. Unscrewing the cap, he took a long swallow and recapped it. Then he sat down again in the high-backed easy chair.

“May I make a suggestion, General?” he said, waving a long, elegant finger toward the heights across the river. “I would like to share with you an idea that I have already proposed to the Committee on the Conduct of the War. Of course they are not professional military men and did not give it the serious consideration it deserves. Now that we have enjoyed another debacle like this one, however, they might come to agree with me. I would add that a word or two of encouragement from a decorated combat soldier like yourself might hasten its acceptance.”

Still at the window, Sam turned his chair around to face him. Hawkinshield took it as an invitation to continue.

“Take no prisoners,” he said.

Sam's eyes reflected no immediate reaction.

“No more code of chivalry … no more surrendering of swords after a valiant charge … no more exchanges of prisoners.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” said Sam.

“What I am proposing is simply this,” came back Hawkinshield, warming to the task with another sip of whiskey. “We would set a day certain for announcing the new policy, after which all Confederate prisoners would be executed upon capture or surrender. They would be summarily shot.”

I wasn't sure that I had heard him correctly. From the looks on the other men's faces, it was clear I wasn't alone.

“It sounds extreme, but think about how many lives might be saved in the long run. Right now, Southern women are sitting in their parlors all over Dixie watching their niggers toiling in the sun and dreaming of their men coming home after the Yankee invaders have been destroyed. Just imagine the change in their attitude if they knew that their men would never be coming home … that from now on they would be executed without mercy as traitors. Why the war would be over in six months … maybe three.”

“You're not serious” said Major Donovan from his chair behind me.

“Hardly,” replied Hawkinshield, looking up at him, “I'm simply being pragmatic. Otherwise we can look back on today's bloodletting as a small appetizer to the bloody repast that is coming … which incidentally would be good for my business interests, but then I'm first and foremost a patriot.”

“A man of true democratic principles,” said Val. “However, you weren't brought here to discuss battlefield etiquette, Congressman. You have been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States government for your own personal financial gain. It would behoove you to cooperate with us by revealing which other high government officials are involved with you.”

Hawkinshield smiled and shook his head again.

“How far do you think these charges will carry once I am back in Washington?” he said. “I have four congressional colleagues waiting across the river for me to continue our inspection tour. So if you have no more questions …”

“I no longer have time for you,” said Sam, rolling his chair back toward his field desk.

“Finally, a cooler head prevails,” said Hawkinshield.

Opening the top drawer of his desk, Sam removed his Colt service revolver and placed it on his lap. Val and I had seen him do exactly the same thing before he successfully extracted the confession from Major Duval only a few days earlier. Apparently he was planning to try the same ploy with Hawkinshield.

As Sam started back toward him, Hawkinshield burst out laughing.

“I am already familiar with this gambit, General Hathaway,” said Hawkinshield. “Major Duval informed us of just how you convinced him to reveal the whereabouts of those shipping manifests.”

Sam stopped his chair a foot in front of Hawkinshield. Behind the rimless spectacles, he no longer looked like a college professor; His eyes were as cold as blue-veined ice.

“You sit here guilty of crimes that would get you hung if you weren't a powerful member of Congress. In your arrogance, you scoff at the laws you swore to obey. You do not even deny complicity in these crimes … blithely confident that your power and your position will make it impossible for any court to convict you.”

Hawkinshield sat there with the same smirk I had seen on his face while he was humiliating Ginevra Hale.

“And you may well be right,” Sam added.

“What I have done has been a cherished part of the way our government has functioned since the glorious War of Independence,” said Hawkinshield. “Just take a look at George Washington's expense vouchers sometime.”

“Congressman, I have watched hundreds of noble young men sacrifice their lives today while bastards like you go on destroying the basic values they are fighting for.”

“I'm sorry you feel that way, General,” Hawkinshield said, glancing down at Sam's withered legs. “I can fully understand your frustration.”

“By the powers invested in me by the provost marshal general, I sentence you to death,” said Sam, raising the revolver from his lap and placing it against Hawkinshield's temple.

“This is absurd,” said Hawkinshield, turning toward Val and me with another mocking smile. At the last moment, he looked back into Sam's eyes and went as pale as wood smoke.

The smile was still frozen on his arrogant face when the gun exploded in Sam's hand and blew Hawkinshield's brains out. His body convulsed once before it slid down from the chair and fell in a heap to the floor.

Sam lay the revolver back on his lap and looked up at us.

“No more code of chivalry,” he said.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-TWO

The door to the corridor burst open and the two provost guards who were posted in the hallway rushed into the library. Lieutenant Hanks quickly moved to block their view of the congressman's body on the floor.

“We have things under control here,” he said calmly. Stepping forward, he herded them back out into the hallway and closed the door.

“Well, that is resolved,” said Sam, rolling his wheelchair back to the field desk and putting the revolver down on top of it.

“Sam,” began Val, “you didn't give the man …”

“He would have escaped justice,” General Hathaway said without pause.

“Maybe,” replied Val, his voice hoarse with emotion, “but we could have publicly exposed him in a way that …”

“I put him down like the rabid dog he was,” interrupted Sam, as if he was late for an appointment. He removed a batch of papers from his desk and began sorting through them. One file went into an open satchel that was sitting on the floor next to his field desk. The others he threw into the fire.

“I am truly sorry, Sam,” Val said, “but you know there will have to be a full inquest on this … execution.”

Completely unruffled, Sam nodded in reply as he continued adding papers from the field desk into the fire.

“Of course,” he said, “but first I have one final task to perform on behalf of those men across the river. Have you made the arrangements, Frank?”

Major Donovan nodded in reply.

“A packet boat is fueled and ready at Aquia Creek,” he said. “There is a coach waiting outside.”

“Very well,” said Sam, placing the revolver in the kit bag and clasping the top buckle.

Without being sure exactly why, I suddenly knew that what Sam was about to do was directly related to the murder of the prostitute. Turning to Billy, I said, “Why did you kill Anya Hagel?”

Val stared at me, speechless. It was the first and only time I ever saw him at a loss for words.

Billy looked away as if struck, saying nothing in reply.

“I am solely responsible for her death, Kit,” said General Hathaway. “I ordered Billy to do it. Unfortunately, she was attempting to blackmail him after he made the mistake of confiding some things to her that he should not have. Because of the importance of that information and the sensitivity of it to our plans, I could not allow her to live and possibly compromise them. Billy reluctantly obeyed my order.”

“What plans, Sam?” asked Val, although by then I was confident he had already divined the answer.

“You at least deserve to know, my friend. I am leaving now for Washington. Along with some far more deserving officers and men, the president is awarding me a commendation for valor.”

“And you will return that honor by killing him,” said Val.

“His life to save the many,” said Sam. “Like our dead congressman here, I, too, have a plan for bringing this war to an end. Mine is less complicated than his and will hopefully be more effective.”

As he spoke those words, Major Donovan stepped behind me and removed my revolver from its holster. I stood dumbfounded at the implications of what Sam was saying. Even then it was impossible for me to believe that he was actually planning to kill Abraham Lincoln.

“Why the president?” said Val.

“He alone is prosecuting this war with the single-minded determination to see it through to the end, regardless of the cost,” he said. “And the cost is too high. If President Lincoln is removed, then Hannibal Hamlin becomes president.”

“But he is an ineffectual fool,” said Val.

“Yes, exactly,” replied Sam, “but my friends tell me that he is as appalled at the bloodletting as we are. We have every reason to believe that, as president, Hamlin would seek to end the war on honorable terms. Even if that isn't the case, the death of Lincoln will bring immediate recognition of the Confederacy from Great Britain. As you know, their prime minister was already prepared to do so if Lee's Maryland campaign had achieved success.”

“You fought for the Union, Sam,” said Val, with a deep sigh. “You paid a heavy price for doing so. What you are now planning to do will leave the nation divided, perhaps forever.”

“I was never a fervent Unionist, Val,” he said. “It was for the rights of the black man that I fought … but now that cost is too high to bear.”

“But we are winning the war, Sam,” said Val. “Look what Grant is doing in the West. With one or two more victories here …”

“One more life is too many,” came back Sam, turning to stare through the window toward the heights across the river. “You didn't witness what happened over there today, Val. God knows how many more eighteen-year-old boys Burnside will kill before he is finished. And to know that while they are dying, men like Hawkinshield are profiting on their sacrifice … it cannot stand.”

In death, Hawkinshield continued to make his presence known to us. The stench that accompanied his loss of bodily functions began to fill the room.

“But we have made progress in stopping men like him, and you are responsible for much of it.”

“Pitifully small progress, I'm afraid. If Mr. Lincoln wasn't our commander-in-chief, I might think differently about this; but look what he has done … appointing Cameron as secreteary of war, elevating men like Banks, Baker, Pope, Fremont, and now Burnside to important commands. The list goes on and on. Incompetent men, corrupt men, feeding on the army as we fight and die. Bastards like him,” he said, pointing to the heap on the floor.

I must confess that one part of me was glad Sam had shot him. I even found myself agreeing with the fundamental truth of his argument about the president's misjudgments. But having met President Lincoln, I knew that General Hathaway was underestimating his capacity to learn from his mistakes and to take control of the war. I hoped that Val could still convince him to change his mind.

“So you are not in this alone,” Val said, glancing at Major Donovan and Lieutenant Hanks.

“There are a few of us who recognize that extreme measures are necessary to end the waste,” said Sam, “men who are willing to sacrifice themselves to bring the insanity to an end.”

He put the satchel bag in his lap and rolled his chair toward us.

“Will you and Kit give me your word that you will not attempt to prevent our plans?”

“I cannot, Sam,” said Val. When Sam moved his eyes to me, I nodded in agreement.

“Of course. I completely understand,” said Sam. “Lieutenant Hanks … please escort them to a secure place until it is done.”

The younger officer nodded.

“And please see that Miss Devereaux is brought there from the stables, Billy.”

“Yes, sir,” he said.

Obviously, my attempts at secrecy had failed miserably. At the same time, I knew that there was no longer any reason for them to harm her.

“Val, I know that you and Kit are only doing your best in the cause we once shared,” he said, heading swiftly toward the door. “I am sorry that we can no longer work for it together.”

Billy opened it for him, and they went out together.

“Good luck and God speed, General,” called out Major Donovan.

When he was gone, Lieutenant Hanks brought in the two guards who were standing in the hallway and told them that Val and I were under arrest for shooting Congressman Hawkinshield. Val's atrocious appearance did nothing to quell their suspicions that we were assassins, or worse. They took up positions behind us as Lieutenant Hanks headed down the hall.

“I have never shot a brother officer,” Lieutenant Hanks said quietly, as we made our way across the grounds in the darkness. “But you must know that I will not hesitate to do so if you try to run or call out for help.”

“I do not doubt your intrepidity, young man,” said Val, “not after your heroism at the overseer's cottage. It is just unfortunate that you are so sadly misguided.”

“General Hathaway is the finest man I have ever known,” Hanks said, as if that was sufficient reason for him to participate in a plot to kill the president of the United States.