The Clockwork Century: Fiddlehead Part 18

Gideon didn't argue, but he worried all the same. Troost was one of a kind, but he already had one mission on deck: bringing the Bardsleys to safety on the northern side of the line. He could swing the impossible, yes, absolutely. But how many impossible things could he juggle at once?

Grimly, he warned, "We can count on Kirby Troost to do his job, and more. But right now, we need a plan. We need to get our story straight and our actions in order before Haymes makes her next move." He straightened the bookcase he'd knocked ajar in his moment of anger, nudging it back into place and setting two books aright. "We need to send word to our operatives before the police find their way back here, as they inevitably shall. And when Troost finishes evacuating my family, he'll be back. We must be certain that we are ready for him."

Fifteen.

On Monday morning, Maria awoke to a knock on her hotel room door. She threw her coat over her dressing gown and fished around on the cold wood floor for her slippers, but couldn't find them, so she gave up and tiptoed from rug to rug, turning up the heat as she pa.s.sed the radiator. "I'm coming," she called sleepily. She wondered what time it was, but could see through the crack in the curtains that it must be an hour past dawn at least. She hadn't meant to sleep so late.

Henry Epperson was staying right across the hall, so she a.s.sumed that it must be him, but when she opened the door, she found an errand boy of perhaps ten or eleven years old with a stack of telegrams in his fist. "Are you Miss Boyd?" he asked. She nodded. He thrust the loose papers forward. "Here."

"Thank you," she said, rubbing her eyes. Seeing that the boy lingered, she added, "One moment, dear." Her bag was sitting next to the washbasin. She stuffed her fingers into the side pocket and pulled out some pennies. "Here you go."

She closed the door behind him and sorted the messages by the time they'd been sent-which was trickier than it should've been, as they were entirely out of order. But once she'd corrected the situation, she knew she needed to rouse Henry immediately.

She located her slippers, which had been kicked beneath the bed. She pulled on a pair of socks before donning them, not caring how silly it looked and doubting that anyone would notice. Across the hall she went, where she rapped her fist heartily, repeatedly on Henry's door. "Henry? Are you up yet?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said through the door, then opened it with a smile. "I've got some coffee in here. Can I talk you into sharing?"

"Coffee sounds wonderful." She stepped past him as he held the door ajar. "But there's no time to dillydally!"

He looked confused. "Not even for coffee?"

"An errand boy brought me these." She showed him the notes. "They've been piling up overnight, apparently. One in particular is marked for urgent, immediate delivery, but it would seem that the taps aren't manned as thoroughly as one might wish."

Henry shook his head. "The military missives get first handling. Civilian messages get processed whenever the intake officer feels like sorting them out."

"That's a b.u.m deal if you need to send a note in a hurry," she complained.

"Far be it from me to argue with you. So what's the rush?"

She fed him the telegrams one by one.

SUMMARY OF NURSING NOTES RECEIVED STOP AGREE ON ALL POINTS REGARDING GAS AND WEAPONS PROJECT DESIGNATED MAYNARD STOP WILL EXPECT REPORT ON ROBERTSON UPON YOUR RETURN FRIDAY STOP UNCLE A.

MAYNARD IS ON THE MOVE STOP AUTHORIZATION GIVEN SANS UNCLE G STOP TARGETS CIVILIAN NOT MILITARY STOP ALERT OUR COUSIN KT TO WITHDRAW TO OTHER SIDE OF MD IMMEDIATELY STOP YOURS DR W ON AUTHORITY AND APPROVAL OF UNCLE A.

"MD?" Henry frowned.

"Mason-Dixon, I should think," she replied. "But Project Maynard ... if Troost was right, now's the time to really worry."

Oh, I'm already worried plenty," he said, and fiddled with the small slip of paper. "Civilian targets. That's not good."

"It's not a surprise, either. Everything I've heard of Haymes suggests she's utterly soulless. But it doesn't stop there. Look, here's the next one."

DO NOT RETURN TO DC STOP FIND OUR COUSIN KT FOR a.s.sISTANCE STOP MOST LIKELY TARGETS LARGE CITIES STOP MAYNARD COULD CLEAR A SQUARE MILE STOP RESULTING CLOUD MAY TRAVEL MILES FURTHER STOP WILL SEND WHATEVER HELP WE CAN MANAGE STOP.

"I don't even know who sent this one," she said in a whisper. "Dr. Wellers, I expect, though it might be Dr. Bardsley."

Henry didn't dwell on that part. "Oh, G.o.d," he said again.

"We need to find Kirby Troost, unless you think *KT' stands for anybody else. But it's his job to get Gideon's family out of the South. I'm not sure how much a.s.sistance he can be to us until he does."

He smiled weakly. "Only because you don't know Kirby. He can handle more than one task at a time, and you can bet he'll have some ideas and some connections. He always does. Come on-get yourself dressed, and I'll get us a carriage. A clean carriage," he emphasized, meaning one that wouldn't need a driver.

"Five minutes, and I'll meet you downstairs."

In five minutes she dressed herself, threw on her boots, and lit a tiny fire in the enamel basin to destroy the telegrams. When they were reduced entirely to ashes, she grabbed her tapestry cloth bag and dashed down the stairs to find Henry standing beside a tiny cabriolet with a puttering, sputtering engine that shook the whole frame as it idled.

"After you, ma'am," he said, holding the door open and offering his hand for her to climb up inside. She took it and ascended into the narrow cab, adjusting her skirts so he could shut the door. He crawled up into the other side, shut his own door, and adjusted the levers and wheel. He wrenched the vehicle into gear and it rambled forward, then he hit the brakes to avoid hitting a newspaper seller who'd dropped something in the road. "Sorry!" he shouted out the window. "Sorry," he said again, and set the car moving forward, more carefully this time.

"It's a shame there's no gla.s.s in these windows, don't you think?" Maria asked with a shudder. She tightened her coat and twisted her gloved hands up in her scarf, but that wasn't enough to make her comfortable, not with the wind rushing inside the cab.

"Not such a shame if you're keen to keep breathing. The exhaust creeps up from the engine-that's why the windows are fixed this way. It'll warm up a bit as we go, I promise. Heat also creeps inside, especially at your feet."

They drove a few blocks east, which was not at all in the direction of Lookout Mountain-a fact that Maria knew because she could see its craggy, winter-bald point off to the south. She was on the verge of asking why they were taking this path when Henry explained, "We have to get past the wall, and the nearest gate is over here. Under different circ.u.mstances, I'd take the long way around to cover our tracks ... but we're short on time, and I don't know about you, but I haven't seen anyone following us."

"No, we've been fortunate so far," she said, with more confidence than she felt.

Before long, the wall loomed up close.

It was a sheer, flat, inscrutable thing-a vast construction designed with traditional military precision and lack of finer detail. A ma.s.sive half-moon over a hundred feet high, it was painted Confederate gray, partly as a patriotic statement, partly to protect it from the elements, and partly because gray paint was cheap. A wide double gate hung open, with one lane of traffic spilling slowly inward, and one lane of traffic proceeding outward at a somewhat faster pace.

Maria reached into her bag for the papers identifying her as a nurse, but Henry told her not to bother. "They check you coming in, not going out."

"They didn't check me coming in."

"You came in on the train."

"Ah." That was true-and her papers on the far end had been carefully scrutinized, now that she was awake enough to remember the process.

Henry waved to the guard, who waved back in a casual, unconcerned manner. Then they were outside, in the poorer suburbs that had been chopped off from the urban military center. Off in one direction, Maria saw Missionary Ridge curving gently around the valley; and to the right, she could barely see the leaning tip of the mountain peeking over the wall. It all felt very medieval to her, like a castle surrounded by serfs.

Henry guided the car to an overgrown side road, where they could watch travelers come and go through the gate without being easily observed. Several minutes pa.s.sed without anything suspicious happening, so he and Maria concluded that they hadn't been followed, and were on their way with a somewhat greater sense of security.

Outside the wall, the roads were not made for horseless travel. They took it slowly because the engine was quieter in a lower gear, and because the brick-paved streets were rough on the hard-rubber wheels of the car, never mind its occupants. Horses came and went, sometimes ridden, and sometimes pulling loads; children dashed out into the slow-moving traffic, chasing dogs, toys, or one another. Potholes abounded, for bricks were sometimes pulled from the street and used to patch, repair, restore, and rebuild outhouses, sheds, and crumbling foundations. Intersections did not always meet at the correct angles, and no signs indicated which way traffic was expected to flow.

Big trees stood seasonally naked on corners and in yards, and their brittle branches reached high overhead, throwing scattered shadows around these outlying places. The houses were small and fiercely guarded, or else they were large and in uncertain repair. The people were overwhelmingly poor and not in the military-Maria did not spy a single uniform. And the closer they came to the mountain, the more colored families she saw.

"I feel ... conspicuous," she whispered as softly as she could, while still making herself heard above the engine.

"We are conspicuous. But we are relatively safe."

"What if someone comes along behind us and asks if anyone has seen a carriage like ours?"

He shrugged. "The locals will say they've seen no such thing. No one who asks them questions has their best interests in mind. It's safer for them to see nothing, and say nothing. But they won't hand us over, because they know what we're doing."

"They can't possibly. We barely know what we're doing."

"They know we're going to the Church. Pretty much any white people who come out this way ... that's where they're headed. And most of the people who live out here keep themselves blind and quiet, because it's the only way to help without putting themselves in danger."

Up to the long, narrow mountain's ridge they rode, rattling past the edge of the river's bend and along a packed dirt road that led under the railroad overpa.s.s that took all the trains around Lookout. The arch was overgrown with the dead trees left behind by winter-long branches, stripped roots, and a dangling lattice of j.a.panese weed, gone brown from the dry and chill. Along the arch's top a train crept slowly, its wheels churning, its cars hauling coal or timber from east to west, or farther down south.

Under the arch, a horse appeared, galloping quickly toward them. Its rider almost lost his hat as he rode beneath the train, but he held it fast-and he drew his horse up short when he reached their car. Its hooves scattered bits of brick and pebbles, which clanged against the car's metal plating, and the animal shifted nervously from foot to foot.

"Henry, don't tell me that's you...?" the rider called. He firmly reined the horse up to Henry's window, and leaned his head down low. "Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned. My luck ain't usually this good."

Maria leaned over, c.o.c.king her head to the side a bit so she could look up at him. "Mr. Troost! Just the man we were coming to see."

He spit a gob of tobacco to the side of the horse, away from the car. "I should d.a.m.n well hope so. Can't imagine why else you'd be out this way. Anyway, I'm glad to see you've saved me a trip downtown. We got problems."

"We got telegrams," Maria agreed.

"And I got another one just now," he said. His eyes were hard, and his hands were tight on the reins of the unhappy horse. "Follow me back to the Church and I'll give you what I know. And jack that thing a little faster. We haven't got all day. s.h.i.t, we might not have all morning."

He nudged the horse back the way he came, and kicked it into a gallop once more.

Henry urged the car through first gear and into second, which had Maria clinging to the door and wondering if she might be sick. The vehicle tumbled over the lumpy roads, shuddering like it might come apart at any moment, but it stayed intact as it trailed Kirby Troost's horse through an overgrown neighborhood of small, cheaply built bungalows with rickety porches and crooked steps. They gave friendly chase down a narrow street, Maria praying at every moment that they wouldn't meet anyone or anything coming the opposite direction.

They pa.s.sed one church on the left, a tall, flat-faced wooden structure painted white, but apparently this wasn't the Station. They kept going until they found a st.u.r.dy stone African Methodist Episcopal church a few blocks farther down and partway up a steep embankment that disappeared into the mountain itself. Kirby Troost disappeared behind this church, down two scuffed ruts that pa.s.sed for an alley. Henry followed him as far as he dared, until the winter-dead foliage threatened to bog down the car and stop it for good.

He pushed his foot down on the brake and hopped out.

Maria waited for him to open her door, then took his hand as she descended into the gra.s.s.

Kirby tied his horse to a post beside the church steps and then joined them. "Y'all'd better come inside."

Inside, everything was dark except for the colored light that trickled through the tinted gla.s.s windows. The place was wired for electricity and gas lamps, and she could see how old fixtures had been refitted for the newer technology. But nothing was turned on, and the place was cold. There was certainly a furnace, but no one had lit it. The church looked deserted. Maybe that was the intent.

They marched past straight-backed wooden pews in tidy rows with Bibles and the occasional dog-eared hymnal scattered here and there. Then they climbed straight down into the baptismal font. Maria felt strange about it, but she stood aside and smiled when a false bottom opened up and a secret staircase was revealed below.

"Ladies first," Kirby Troost said.

Henry elbowed him in the ribs. "Don't be an a.s.s, Kirby. You have a light?"

"Right here." He pulled an electric torch out of his coat and offered it to Henry.

But Maria s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of his hand and pulled the switch to turn it on. "Ladies first," she reminded them, then sidled past them down the stairs. At the bottom she found a landing and a door, and Kirby Troost was beside her, though she'd never heard him join her. Only a superhuman effort kept her from flinching as he reached past her face and pressed a b.u.t.ton once, twice, and three times ... then paused and hit it once more.

"That's so n.o.body shoots when we walk inside," he told her as he retrieved the light. "This time, we'll have to set chivalry aside. They know me, and there's a chance they might know you, so stand back."

The door opened a crack. Around the corner peeked a colored woman about Maria's age with a lantern in her hand and a wary look in her eye. "Mr. Troost," she said levelly. "And you're not alone."

"No, ma'am, and the cat's not in the tree, either."

She nodded and withdrew, taking the lantern with her. Its glow illuminated the interior of a large, comfortable living area with three other people in it: an older woman and a boy of maybe eight or nine, both colored; and a white man with a gun who nodded at Troost and said, "Back so soon?"

"They were on their way to meet me, so I found them faster than expected," he said. "Everyone, this is Mary and Hank. They're here to help. Or, from another angle, they're here so I can help them, but that's how it goes. Mary, Hank, that's Dr. Bardsley's mum and nephew right there, Sally and Caleb."

"You know my son?" Sally asked quickly.

"I met him once," Maria said.

Henry added, "I know him; he's a great man. He might end the war and save the world, and we're trying to give him a hand."

This satisfied her, enough to release her death grip on her grandson. "All right then. Mr. Troost, if you say they're with you..."

"They are, so don't fret-not even for a moment. I'm going to take these nice folks back to the quiet taps. We've got some talking to do." He cast a sharp glance at the white man, who hadn't been identified.

"Go on back," he said. "I'll stick it out up here and see if the ship shows up."

"Good deal. Come on, you two, this way," Troost said to Maria and Henry. He led them back through the underground apartment with its hard wood chairs and two low beds, and out a door at the back end. As he went, he explained, "We have a telegraph line here. Runs underground, like the railroad, and it works just fine, so long as n.o.body messes with it. Not a whole lot of people know its signal, so don't go running off at the mouth. I probably don't have to warn you about such things, but don't take it personal. Caution is the grease that keeps this railroad running smooth."

"I understand," Maria said quietly, following him along a corridor and past a couple of doors.

"Maybe you do, and maybe you don't. If anybody gets a whiff of what goes on out here, dozens of people will get shot before word even makes it to the city. This whole block is floating on high treason, and everyone who knows about it is a suspect."

"I really do understand. Believe me, I was a spy for years."

"For this side, yes. You only know what the Grays will do to protect a body. You don't know what they'll do to destroy one. In here." He opened a door and guided them through. "I don't mean any disrespect, ma'am, but I'm thanking Christ Almighty that no one recognized you back there. Having you set foot in this place is sacrilege, so far as they would figure it."

"I never-"

He cut her off. "You want to tell me what you really think? How you really feel about slavery? Save your breath. If you want to help, and you don't want to make any trouble for these people, then you'll keep your past and everything else to yourself."

He stopped and faced her. Maria didn't flinch, but she didn't press forward, either, even though she had the extra height on him and-if she was honest with herself-a few pounds on him, to boot.

He said to her, a little more gently, "Your silence is the only thing that can prove you here. Hold your tongue, hide your name, and don't tell a soul about where you came from, or what brought you-unless you tell 'em it's the Pinks, because that's what I said already. Anything more than that and you start a panic and put us all in danger. You got it?"

"I ... I got it."

"Now, here are the ... facilities," he said, picking a word for the rigged-up taps system that filled the bulk of the room. Wires ran to and fro, and tap receivers were set up across a table, some of them quivering with a signal freshly sent or received. No one monitored them at the moment, though the white man from the living area showed up shortly to poke his head in the door.

"Holler if anything starts signaling through if it's longer than you want to read."

"Will do," Troost said, then returned his attention to his guests. "I can take the script, but I'm slower than he is." He c.o.c.ked a thumb toward the door. "And, anyway, right now I've got other things to attend to. Most recent word from D.C. says we've got worse problems than we knew. How much have you heard?"

Henry said, "Maynard is apparently on the move. Could kill hundreds of thousands before it's finished. And it's pointed at civilian targets, not military ones, except maybe Danville."

"It's not headed for Danville," Troost said firmly. "Not enough of a population center. It would be more convenient to send it to a bigger city."

"Atlanta?" Maria guessed. It was the biggest city of all, outside New York.

"That's the word on the wires. At present, it ought to be someplace south of Dalton, but north of Marietta. That's as close as anyone could pin it down. The taps are having trouble between here and there, but I don't know if it's a conspiracy, or just an inconvenience. You can rest a.s.sured I'll keep trying to rouse the Rebs, though. They'll sure as s.h.i.t want to know about it, and might even be able to help. You never know."