Dixie's Land 9.4

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[Concluding chapter nine]

Grant set his shoulders square and approached the door. He dreaded this confrontation, but he’d run out of excuses for delaying it. He knocked, hoping against hope that there’d be no answer and he could go back to trying to settle the situation on his own.

“What is it?” Colonel Van Doncken asked from behind the door, and Grant felt himself droop a little. He opened the door and stepped into the colonel’s office. “We have a serious problem,” he said.

“It can’t be so serious that you need to interrupt my work,” Van Doncken said. “This report has to be on the five o’clock packet to Cairo, Captain Grant, and you’re going to prevent me from meeting that deadline.”

“With all due respect, sir, I think this is a bit more serious than a routine report.” Van Doncken bristled and flushed, but Grant didn’t let him speak. “Major Brown and Captain Connell have kidnapped a Confederate soldier, sir. They’re hiding him here. In the ministry.”

“Are you mad?” Van Doncken got to his feet, his face turning a richer shade of red and his ragged eyebrows furrowing. “I can’t believe that even you would make such an accusation.”

“The major and captain told you several days ago that they had a plan to disrupt the negotiations between the Confederates, the British, and the Canadians,” Grant said. “The plan would appear to involve violating Canadian law by using Irish criminals to ambush and seize a member of the Confederate commission’s military staff.” With some regret he refrained from adding, I tried to warn you something like this would happen. “According to the servants, the Confederate is in the kitchen. Would you like to accompany me and see for yourself?”

As seemed to be his standard response to an unfamiliar situation, Colonel Van Doncken grasped immediately onto the most irrelevant of the facts he’d just been presented. “Why,” he asked, “are you using the servants to spy on your fellow-officers?”

For a moment, all Grant could do was stare at the man. Evidently his response was sufficient to unnerve the colonel, because after a few uncomfortable seconds Van Doncken made a sort of dismissal gesture with his hand—the one holding the pen, which scattered ink onto both his uniform and his report. “God damn it,” he said.

The door opened—without a knock, Grant noted—and one of the servants poked a head into the office. “Colonel, you’re wanted in Mr. Bancroft’s office. Oh, and you, too, Captain Grant.” The servant was Irish, Grant noted. He was beginning to suspect every Hibernian he met now. That’s not a healthy approach to take.

As he followed the colonel, Grant hoped that the reason for this summons was that Bancroft had just discovered what Major Brown and Captain Connell were doing with the Confederate officer. If so, he hoped the minister would respond more actively than the colonel had.

He couldn’t see how any information could be gained from such a junior officer. Patton appeared, by all that he’d been able to learn this morning, to be his closest equivalent on the Confederate treaty staff: the one man pretty much everyone could do without.

It seemed that the ambassador agreed with Grant’s unspoken opinion. “Who is that man in the coal-shed?” he asked when they’d all gathered in his office. His voice took on a whining quality. “What in the world is he doing behind our kitchen?”

“He’s a Confederate officer,” Brown admitted, after a moment’s awkward silence. “He was reported to us to be in possession of information concerning the Kentucky plan. We had to take him, to prevent him from reporting to his superiors.”

Any information Captain Patton possessed had been given to him by Brown’s criminal associates, through a woman of the streets, immediately before the Irish gang had jumped the Confederate and beaten him senseless. Grant had been horrified to see that Brown and Connell had watched—and evidently approved of—the entire nasty business. Given the look of disgust on Bancroft’s face, Grant decided he might not have to reveal this information to the minister—yet.

“A Confederate officer?” Bancroft spluttered. “Good God, man, what have you done? Do you have any idea of what will happen should anyone learn about this?”

“We didn’t do anything,” Major Brown said. “This officer was actually seized by anti-British Irish patriots, who delivered him to us. I don’t believe we’ve committed any crime.” That was at best misleading, Grant thought, and the truth will be easily uncovered the moment the local authorities got their hands on any of those Irishmen. He himself had no doubt that whatever the Irishmen had done, they’d done at Brown’s instigation.

“We can’t have him here,” Bancroft said. “The neighbors are bound to notice, and I do not want the cursed city watch going through our coal-tip.”

Van Doncken—having waited until the minister’s gaze was directed elsewhere—cast a scowl Bancroft’s way. “What have you learned?” he asked the spies.

“He’s a very strong man, our Patton,” Brown said. “He continues to insist that he knows nothing about Confederate plans for the Mississippi, in spite of my attempts to persuade him to be more open.” He smiled that bland, infuriatingly assured smile that Grant had come to hate.

“It is possible that Captain Patton really is ignorant,” Grant found himself saying, “because there’s nothing for him to know. There’s no evidence whatever to support the idea that the Confederates are going to invade Illinois this summer.”

“There you go again,” Connell snapped. “Sticking your nose in where it’s not required.”

“Gentlemen,” Van Doncken said. “That’s enough. I’ve warned both of you before that I won’t tolerate this sort of bickering.” Van Doncken turned to Brown. “I assume, Major, that you have collected more evidence supporting your theory that the British and Canadians plan to arm a guerrilla invasion this spring.”

“Yes, sir,” Brown said. “There’s a man in town who calls himself Hopkins. He seems to be the leader of the band. I’m pretty sure that the name is false, but anyone I’ve asked about him has been too scared to tell me his real name. Quite a character, I gather.” Brown showed his teeth, as it to demonstrate that he could be as much a villain as this Hopkins.

“There are at least fifty of Hopkins’s men heading north-west from the city this week,” he went on. “There are probably more already out there somewhere. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that Hopkins has at least two hundred men ready to move north.”

“Do you have any evidence?” Bancroft asked, scowling. “Or is this sort of speculation how you and your associate amuse yourselves?”

Brown looked stricken—Grant was sure this was an act—and Van Doncken rushed to his subordinate’s defense. “Mister Minister,” he said, “Major Brown does not presume to speak to the way you conduct diplomacy. I would think you should show the same courtesy where military matters are concerned.”

“It’s all right, Colonel,” Brown said. “I do have evidence, Mister Minister. I’ve learned that Hopkins has ordered a large quantity of arms from a Canadian manufacturer. It would be most unusual for the Confederate government to use someone such as Hopkins to make these purchases when there is a general officer of the Confederate Army resident in New Orleans –- unless, that is, these arms were meant to be used for some purpose contrary to the accepted practices of war, and the intent was to keep Confederate involvement a secret.”

“What do you mean by ‘large’?” Van Doncken asked. “A hundred stand? A thousand?”

“At least two hundred,” Brown said. “And they’re repeaters. Imagine the damage two hundred mounted men could do if they were armed that way.”

“How, exactly, does the man in the coal-shed fit into this?” Bancroft asked. “He’s an officer, not a guerrillero.”

“Hopkins has been meeting with two junior members of the treaty commission,” Brown said. Grant suddenly found himself paying more attention. This was the stuff of which good spying was made. “One is our man Patton,” Brown said. “We’re still not completely sure what his role in this conspiracy is.

“The other contact is Grant’s friend Captain Stewart. Stewart is the man who got Hopkins his papers and entry into the arms factory. In addition to meeting Captain Grant at Harper’s Ferry, Stewart worked in the Confederate War Department before coming here.”

Bancroft shook his head slowly from side to side as he absorbed this information. For a moment nobody spoke, as if by mutual agreement the minister was to be left to cogitate a course of action. “You can continue to question Captain Patton if you think it necessary,” Bancroft eventually said, “but you’ll have to do it elsewhere, gentlemen. There will be a search underway very soon –- if it hasn’t begun already –- and I don’t want that man found here. Captain Grant will obtain for you a wagon and horses; you will remove from this city to the north as soon as possible.”

“I think it would be best,” Van Doncken said, evidently scrambling to stay abreast of events, “for you to make your way up the Mississippi, either by wagon or by steamer, until you can deliver the captive to General Kearny’s staff at Cairo.”

“There’s a policy of regular searches of all foreign-owned boats coming into and leaving New Orleans,” Grant said. “That means our boats and those of the Confederacy, mostly. But you could probably safely join one of our riverboats if you met it further up-river, say at Vidalia. That would get you back to Cairo faster.” Anything to get you out of here, he thought.

“I’d rather stay a bit longer and try to infiltrate this band that Hopkins has put together,” Brown said. “That or try to grab his other contact, Stewart. I know that there’s more information available to us if we can just have a few more days.” So much for the fiction that it was the Irish who grabbed Patton, Grant thought. Neither Bancroft nor Van Doncken seemed to have noticed the contradiction.

“You can be sure that this Captain Stewart is now watching out for himself,” Bancroft said. “And as I understand it, there’s no band for you to infiltrate in the city proper. It’s time for you to go, gentlemen. Now.” Van Doncken made as if to speak, but Bancroft dismissed him with a wave, pushing back his chair as he stood. “Colonel, my position here is extremely delicate. I don’t think I’m revealing any deep secret in saying that the Secretary of State has warned Great Britain that war between us will be the likely result of any official recognition of the Confederacy. I simply can’t afford to take risks that will make things any more awkward than they already are.”

Brown and Connell left Bancroft’s office first, their heads together and only a low sort of hum indicating that they were speaking to one another. Grant watched them go, and knew instantly that he didn’t have to worry about providing that wagon. The spies, he was willing to bet, weren’t going to wait to remove Captain Patton from the legation.

They weren’t going to take him north, either.

Next    Chapter One     Chapter Two     Chapter Three    Chapter Four    Chapter Five    Chapter Six
Chapter Seven    Chapter Eight    Chapter Nine