[Concluding chapter thirteen]
“Get under the dock,” Grant whispered, as loudly as he dared. He tried to push Byron with his bad hand while using his good one to hold the struggling Irishman under water. The greasy water and the impossibility of gaining any purchase told him that he wouldn’t succeed. Byron had to disappear into the darkness under the dock if he was going to survive.
“Help!” Byron shouted.
Someone overhead fired a pistol. Grant was sure he heard the ball sizzle as it passed his head, and that the water splashed into his eyes came from its impact with the river.
The governor-general was thrashing about with astonishing vigor, given both his age and the fact that his arms were bound tightly to his side. From the edge of his tear-smudged vision Grant could see that Byron was making his way away from the dock—to where any Irishman with a weapon couldn’t fail to kill him.
“God damn it, George!” he shouted. “Get back under the dock!”
The plank followed, just missing Grant but distracting his Irish opponent for long enough that Grant got in one relatively solid punch to the man’s nose. Making a blubbery, sputtering sound, the man sank beneath the surface. Grant, not caring whether the man ever resurfaced, swam to safety under the dock. There he found the governor-general of Canada, bobbing serenely between two pilings, his ivory-toothed grin seeming to glow in the dark. “Much obliged to you, sir,” Byron said.
Beyond them, the boat drifted out into the Mississippi. The current took hold of it, and it slowly moved downstream, a strange magic-lantern show of ripples and waves being projected on its tattered sail by the lantern the Garda had left burning on the dock.
* * * *
They found Major Brown’s body beside the theater from which Lord Byron had been kidnapped by the Garda. He had been shot in the chest at close range. Two of Lord Byron’s escort had been shot down in front of the theater, and Brown’s body carefully placed to look as if he’d been killed in an exchange of fire with them.
“I wonder how they’re going to describe this to Brown’s family,” Sherman said as a pair of soldiers put Brown’s body onto a stretcher.
“How are we going to explain this to Lord Byron?” Grant asked. “None of this would have happened if Brown hadn’t been so determined to destroy the treaty and keep Canada and the Confederacy apart.”
“However you’re going to explain it,” Captain Gale said, coming up to them, “you’re going to have to be quick about it. When I left him, Governor-General Lord Byron was talking—rather animatedly—about waking the relevant ministers and clerks and sending for your Ambassador Bancroft right away.”
“Dear God,” said Grant. “Bancroft won’t stand a chance. I’d better get back to the legation. Sherman, can I ask you to stay behind in case Captain Gale has any other questions? You know as much about what Brown was up to as I do.”
“Sure,” Sherman said. “But I’d much rather come with you. I want to see the look on old Bancroft’s face when you tell him about tonight.”
“You probably don’t,” Grant said, knowing what the minister’s reaction was likely to be.
* * * *
The big clock at the foot of the stairs in the legation showed a few minutes of one when Grant paused to look at himself in the mirror beside the front door. He had dried himself as best he could, but had been able to do little to make himself appear any less than like a vagabond. Perhaps I should grow a beard, he thought. Make me look more distinguished. The preposterousness of the thought made him laugh, though he was able to stifle most of the noise.
The minister was not happy to see him.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Captain,” Bancroft said, wiping his eyes as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Go and wake Colonel Van Doncken,” he added to the servant Grant had sent in to rouse him. “If I’m to be awakened in the middle of the night, I want that man to suffer as well. You are his responsibility, Captain Grant.”
“You can chastise me later,” Grant said. “Right now you need to get dressed and fixed up as best as you can. You’re about to be ordered to a meeting with Lord Byron.”
“Have you been drinking again?” Bancroft shook his head so that his jowls wobbled. “This really is too much.”
“I have been doing my duty,” Grant said. “And trying to prevent a catastrophe. Major Brown and Captain Connell got themselves mixed up with Irish revolutionaries. Tonight they tried to kidnap—or possibly kill—Lord Byron. The United States are in danger of being implicated in this plot. Lord Byron is not a happy man right now.”
Bancroft stood, mouth hanging moistly open and eyes staring at some undefined point behind Grant’s head. After a long moment he seemed to collect himself, and his gaze returned to Grant. “You are confused. Or drunk. You must be.”
“You are welcome to test my breath,” Grant said. “Though I’d advise against it. I swallowed some of the river trying to save Lord Byron from those Irishmen. I apologize for my appearance, Mr. Minister, but it couldn’t be helped.”
“You saved—? Then what of Brown? Connell?”
“Dead,” Grant said. “Both of them.”
“What has happened?” Colonel Van Doncken stood in the doorway to Bancroft’s suite, his face illuminated and made sallow by a small lamp held in one hand. “Major Brown dead?”
“Killed by the Irish revolutionaries he thought he was using in his scheming against the Confederates,” Grant said. “Turned out Brown was being used by the Irishmen.”
“This can’t be true,” Van Doncken said. “Major Brown was an officer. He wouldn’t be mixed up in something as criminal as you suggest.”
“Major Brown was an idiot,” Grant said. “Who paid for his inability to see beyond the end of his nose.”
Van Doncken slid into the room—it was hard, Grant noted, to stride purposefully when wearing old slippers—and came face-to-face with Grant. “You had best be careful, Captain.” he said.
“I would imagine,” Grant said, keeping his voice as calm and level as he could, “that the surviving members of the Garda are being interrogated right now. Since it was their plan to have Major Brown be blamed for the attack on Lord Byron, I can’t imagine they would want to deny his involvement. In fact, they’ll likely make him out to have been more involved than he was.”
“Good God.” Bancroft was suddenly in motion. “Morgan!” he shouted to his servant. “I must dress! Immediately, damn you!”
“What is the matter with him?” Van Doncken asked, staring at the fluttering minister.
“He’s just realized the impact of what I told him five minutes ago,” Grant said. “He’s about to be summoned to a meeting with Lord Byron, who will want to know why officers of the United States Army were conspiring against the Canadian representative of King William.”
At the mention of the word “Army” Van Doncken’s eyes widened in much the same way as Bancroft’s had earlier. “Why didn’t you come to me first, you idiot?” he shouted over his shoulder as he fled to his room.
A few minutes later the front door shivered under a series of heavy, measured blows. The servant who opened the door admitted two men, both soldiers.
A few minutes later Grant watched Bancroft and Van Doncken depart, followed by their grim-faced escorts. I would not want to be you for all the cotton in Mississippi, he thought.
Van Doncken had left without giving him orders. That provided Grant with a small degree of freedom, which he was pretty sure would be taken away from him as soon as the colonel was released from Lord Byron’s presence. Tired as he was, Grant forced himself to write as complete a report of the incident as he could with the energy he had left. He sealed the report in one of Bancroft’s ministerial envelopes, addressed to the State Department in Washington, and put the envelope in the diplomatic bag scheduled to be sent north on the next available ship.
Then he allowed himself the luxury of a collapse onto Bancroft’s soft, massive bed, and sleep.
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