The Clockwork Century: Fiddlehead Part 14

So bright on the outside. So shadowed within.

Henry promised the barkeep a fee if he'd leave them alone, then he and Maria took a seat in a back corner without any windows, and only a low-slung coffee table between them.

The porter was right on time.

He didn't so much enter the darkened room as appear within it, standing beside Henry's seat as if he never walked anywhere, only manifested wherever he wished to be.

Maria managed to not look startled, but it took some effort. One minute he wasn't there, and the next minute ... a smallish white man in a brown hat stood next to Henry, near enough that he might've stabbed him and walked away without anyone ever noticing. Probably an inch or two shorter than Maria herself, the porter wore woven tweed pants and boots so clean that they reflected what little light came around the window shades. Everything fit him as if it'd been made for him, even the leather gloves and workmanlike gray coat. He was neither attractive nor unattractive, with brown hair and dark eyes. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about him in the slightest.

Just like the men who'd been following her.

For one nervous split second, she racked her brain trying to remember the two men in Richmond ... but swiftly concluded that, no, he hadn't been one of them. It was just something about the breed, about a man who can be present without attracting attention. Maria had spent a lifetime trying to play up her appearance. This phenomenon, or trait, or knack for being invisible was something she'd only noticed-and attempted to cultivate-since starting to work for the Pinkertons.

If Henry was surprised to find himself suddenly accompanied, he didn't show it. Without looking, he put up one hand and punched the newcomer gently in the shoulder. "Ha!" he exclaimed, and then grinned up at the man who stood beside him. "Not even a minute late. A man could set his watch by you, Mr. Troost."

"And some men do," he smiled, cataloging Maria from the ground up as he responded to Henry. "h.e.l.lo there, ma'am. My name's Kirby Troost. I'd give you a fake one, but that don't seem fair, since he knows mine already, and I know who you are." He reached behind himself and drew up a seat, then removed his gloves and rolled himself a cigarette from a pouch he kept in his left breast pocket. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Is it?"

He shrugged. "I meet a lot of shady customers. Not many are women of your stature. Or caliber."

"I'm not sure if I should take that as a compliment or not."

"Take it however you like; I meant only what I said. I've heard great things about you, from a surprising source or two."

"Oh, really? Care to name your sources?"

"A certain Captain Hainey sends his regards."

She was pleased, but did her best to keep from letting on. Besides the fact that she didn't wish to admit he'd surprised her, she didn't feel like recounting her old adventures to Henry. It'd take too much explaining, and he'd have too many questions.

While she calculated a response, Troost continued, sparing her the trouble. "I must say, I never would've pegged you for a pirate queen ... but if Hainey says you're all right, I'll take his word for it. Now, Henry," he changed the subject, then paused while he lit his tobacco. "I understand you've got something for me."

Henry looked back and forth between Kirby and Belle with no small measure of confusion, but when no one seemed ready to fill him in on the secret, he produced a thick envelope. "This is everything you ought to need. Next stop's ... well, won't be Oak Grove, I don't expect."

Troost shook his head. "Not doing Indiana. Shooting for Middlesboro instead. It'll put us up closer to our favorite uncle."

"How long you think it'll take?"

Troost considered this while he took a long draw on the handmade cigarette. The paper crinkled, burned, and flicked away to ash. "To Middlesboro? No more than a night or two, a.s.suming nothing goes wrong with the travel arrangements. The rest of the way? Another couple of days. Shouldn't be too bad, once we're past the bluegra.s.s."

"Travel arrangements?" Maria was perplexed. "Middlesboro ... Are you going by air?"

"Unless you know a better way to get there in less than a week. The train lines don't run that way, not since Sherman went barreling through the place in the seventies. But I've got a small rig set up on the Georgia side of Lookout. Would've rather come with my own crew, but the summons didn't give them time to make arrangements. So I'm here on my own."

Henry's left eyebrow lifted. "Your own crew? You're not an air captain these days, are you?"

"Captain? Who wants that kind of responsibility? Not me. I ride with a good bunch, though. The kind who don't mind if I keep my head down."

"Pirates," Maria said flatly.

"Unincorporated merchants," he corrected her. "n.o.body worse than anyone you already know, madam. And the Naamah Darling's gone about as straight as possible, these days. Her captain wants out of the nasty side of the business. Got a lady to impress, and she ain't impressed with what he was running before."

"So what's he running now?"

"Supplies," he said vaguely. "Now, Henry, where will we put our cargo when it arrives? Are we headed for the Land of Lincoln, or does the uncle have other ideas?"

Henry knew he meant D.C. Softly, he said, "Baltimore for now. Details are in the packet. So's the money and their free papers. Get 'em there safe, and there's another fifty percent waiting for you. Our good uncle knows you really bent over backwards to get here."

"I guess he knows how I feel about the District, too."

Henry cleared his throat. "You might-could talk an extra bonus out of him, considering."

"Nah. This is what we agreed, and it's enough. This one's important."

Maria asked, "Because of the scientist?"

Troost nodded. "That man's got a bigger brain than anybody I ever met, and if you knew the crew I run with, you'd know that's saying something. If it's true what he says about his toy, and what it's told him..." His voice trailed off like he was thinking of something else, and he wasn't very happy about it.

"You know about his machine?" Maria asked. "I thought it was of the utmost secrecy."

He laughed, and a puff of smoke flowed down his chin. "Secrets ain't a thing to me, Cleopatra. I collect them like some men collect b.u.t.terflies, except I don't put 'em in a case for show. I live on them. They keep me alive."

"You must have some good ones."

"I do at that."

She pushed. "The kind that have kept you away from the District?"

"That kind, yes." For a moment he looked irritated, but it quickly pa.s.sed. "And this kind, too. On the house, all right?" he said to Henry, in a voice dripping with conspiracy. "I understand you've got Miss Haymes involved in the situation."

Henry's eyes narrowed. "You understand correctly."

"She's trouble, that one. Worse trouble than this one." He c.o.c.ked his thumb toward Maria, who very nearly took it personally. "Chatting up your Secretary of State in a real friendly way."

"She wants a pardon," Henry said. "That's what our uncle told me. And she's offering some new toys from her daddy's workshops in exchange."

Troost snorted, not quite a laugh but definitely a sound of derision. "That's not why she's sniffing around the District. It's just an excuse."

"Why, then?" Maria asked. "I thought she was wanted for murder."

"Murder, war crimes, what have you. She's got enough money to shake it off. No, that's not what she wants. She's gunning for a Union weapons contract. Give the war another five years, and she'll have more money than G.o.d."

"But the war won't last another five years," Henry argued. "Everybody knows it-and I thought that was the whole point of letting her come play up north: wrapping up this whole thing all the sooner."

"Oh, who knows how long it'll last," Troost said, coming to the end of his cigarette. He dropped the last coal to the floor and crushed it with his boot. "All she has to do is give the South something to get good and mad about, something they can take the moral high ground on, since they lost that the day they fired on Sumter. Then she can drag out the war indefinitely."

"And how do you think she's going to do that?" Maria asked. She thought of the hungry dead who never stop chewing, but she said nothing of it.

Troost rose from his seat and slipped his fingers back into his glove. "I don't know for certain," he said. A new stab of fear went jolting through Maria's heart. This was not a man accustomed to uncertainty. "But it will be big, it will be bad, and the whole world will see it. Right now the South is an international object of pity. G.o.d help the Union if Europe stops feeling sorry for the CSA, and becomes outraged on its behalf."

He turned to go, but Henry stopped him. "Wait. Don't go like that. What else have you got?"

He leaned down to whisper, just loud enough for Maria to hear him, too. "I'm told they're calling the project *Maynard.' So keep your ears open. When you hear the big heads talking about it ... that's when you really need to worry."

Twelve.

Grant sat alone in the yellow oval, a drink in his hand, but only his second of the afternoon. His second of the late afternoon. And he wouldn't allow himself another until sundown; that was the bargain he'd made with Julia. Espionage required clarity.

Again he considered if he were even capable of espionage within his own cabinet. Breach of privacy? Absolutely. Breaking and entering? You could make a case for it.

But the maid at the congressional office had a key.

And she had arrived.

Grant heard his elderly but reliable butler Andrews, who had been warned that the girl must be brought to the formal office whenever she appeared, and to lead her up through the back stairs. She'd come through the kitchen, he guessed. Even if the president didn't mind a more direct approach, the rest of the staff would never have tolerated the impertinence; and it likely wouldn't have occurred to the girl to wander up to the White House and knock anyway.

This teenage girl being ushered quietly in to see the commander in chief might've provoked gossip, if not for the fact that Julia was with him now, seated behind the oversized desk with her sewing and paying the needle and thread just enough attention to keep from sticking herself or ruining the piece.

Grant hadn't planned to involve Julia. No one would've dreamed that he'd bring her into the fray of secrets. But that was the point: should anyone look askance at the arrangement, this was a maid, being brought to interview with his wife.

An utter fabrication, of course. It wouldn't have withstood even a moment's scrutiny by anyone the ruse needed to fool. Katharine Haymes, for example, would've spotted it in an instant-that this was the girl who worked the halls of the Capitol building, who cleaned Desmond Fowler's office, who had accidentally interrupted her conversation with the president. Even Fowler himself might have taken a second look. But the president had a suspicion that, in general, girls like Betsey Frye were largely beneath the concern of men and women like Katharine and Desmond.

Girls like Betsey were the foot soldiers of the world, after a fashion. First to go in, last to leave, little respected, largely interchangeable, and virtually invisible ... but indispensable if you needed someone with good eyes and ears and a willingness to follow orders. She kept her head down and did her job, unless you required something else of her. She was a lesser Andrews.

Ephraim Andrews himself was a stately, mannered colored man who must've been old enough to be Grant's father, and who'd worked at the White House since he'd been a boy barely big enough to hold a coin. If Andrews couldn't be trusted, then the whole d.a.m.n world might as well burn.

It had been Andrews who learned the girl's name and address, and who had tracked her down that very same evening. He'd delivered the president's message and made the invitation without any telltale notes to haunt them later; and made the arrangements to see the girl and her mother moved to more comfortable quarters, in payment and grat.i.tude for her service to the nation.

That was how Grant put it, anyway. He didn't know how, precisely, Andrews had phrased it. He hadn't been there. Maybe Andrews told her she'd answer to the president or be drawn up on charges; maybe he told her nothing except to appear, or else. Whatever the old man had said, it worked.

And here she was.

Still wearing her plain linen uniform, but covered with a winter cloak and a bag slung across her chest, Betsey stood before him. Eyes downcast, but flickering surrept.i.tiously around the office. Back and forth between Julia and Grant, the rows of books, and the shimmering fixtures. Back and forth between the door and the windows, and at Andrews, until he left them there alone.

Julia, always the savior of such moments, set her sewing aside. "Betsey-that's your name, isn't it, dear?"

"Yes, ma'am," she said clearly, but quietly.

"We appreciate you coming, and we know that it's a risky thing you've done," Julia warmly a.s.sured her. "I understand that your employers might look askance at this, even with the president's permission."

"Insistence, really," he corrected his wife. "Do you have the folders I asked for?"

The girl nodded, pulled the bag's strap up over her head, and stepped forward to deliver it into his hands. "I picked up the two with that name on it-the one you told me, I mean. And another one I found nearby. I thought it might be important."

"Hmm." He opened the bag and saw the neatly bundled papers, only a little mussed from the covert trip. "Thank you," he said, even though he wasn't altogether pleased that she'd read the files. He hadn't even known she was literate, but she must be, if she'd realized any other material was pertinent. But there was nothing he could've done to stop her, and if he couldn't rely on her silence now, he was d.a.m.ned regardless.

He'd relied on plenty of politicians over the last decade and change, and it had never worked out very well. Now he'd try his luck with another cla.s.s-a better cla.s.s, if you asked him, though he might change his mind when he considered the sentiment sober. People were only people, and some were more easily compelled by power than others.

Fine, then. He'd use his power where it actually worked, instead of boardrooms and war rooms where he was treated as a friendly p.a.w.n, and see if that panned out any better.

When Betsey had been sent on her way, Ulysses Grant carried her clandestinely delivered package toward the liquor cabinet out of pure habit.

"It isn't dark yet," his wife noted.

"She was early. And if ever any reading on earth required a drink, I believe this might be it."

Fresh drink in hand, he dropped himself heavily into the chair Katharine Haymes had taken the week before. He retrieved the first file-MAYNARD-and opened it up, taking a hearty swallow from the beverage before he began to read.

"It can't be that bad, can it, dear?" Julia asked. She didn't pick up her sewing again, instead stuffing it into her kit and folding her hands.

"That bad and worse. There's nothing I'd put past this woman," he said, skimming for the important words. He saw mostly things he already knew on the first page. "She's a regular Lilith. Put her and Fowler together, and they'd end the world for giggles on a weekend."

"You don't really believe that."

"You haven't met her. It's like sitting across the table from a snake."

Julia frowned, very faintly. "Would you say she's any worse than any of the men you've dealt with?"

"Worse," he said firmly, eyes still fixed on the pages in his lap.

"Truly your greatest adversary yet? Or worst simply because she's a woman?"

"A little of both," he murmured.

She sighed. "You're making her sound like a monster."

"You haven't met her," he repeated.

"She's not a witch or a demon; she's a person. She's only different from what you commonly see, and the people you commonly fight."

"Dearest," he said, fluttering the pages in a pointed fashion, "now is not the time."

But Julia persisted. "You behave as if you can't possibly comprehend her motives. When I asked last night what she wanted, you said it must be blood, souls, or a spot at the devil's right hand."

"Anything's possible."

"No." She shook her head. "Only the usual things are possible. She wants a long life, power and money, freedom and respect. Just like any man you ever met. She's only beyond your ken because you allow her to be."

"I believe we're finished here. I'll have Andrews bring the carriage around. You should return to your mother's estate tonight."

"You can't dismiss me like I'm some naughty child."