Sam didn't know if the rumor was true. If it was, he didn't know if it was connected to the reminder. But, when he got the news, he said only one word: "Good."
Through the coffeehouse's front window, Nellie Jacobs watched a tweedy man come out of the cobbler's shop across the street. The fellow's long, lean face bore an unhappy expression. She wasn't surprised; the shop had gone to the dogs in the more than three years since her husband, who'd had charge of it from not long after the turn of the century, passed away.
The tweedy man crossed the street, heading her way. He almost walked in front of an auto; the horn's angry bray pierced the plate glass. Nellie wasn't sure the man even realized the horn had been aimed at him. Once safe on the sidewalk again, he took a notebook out of a jacket pocket, consulted it, and then headed for her door.
She brightened. Business hadn't been brisk this morning. Business hadn't been brisk a lot of mornings lately, or afternoons, either. The man pulled at the door when he should have pushed. Realizing his mistake, he tried again. The bell over the door rang.
"What can I get you, sir?" Nellie asked from behind the counter.
"Oh." By the surprise in his voice, he hadn't thought of ordering anything. Then he nodded to himself, deciding he would. "A… a cup of coffee, please." He set a dime in front of Nellie. Tiny and shiny in silver, Theodore Roosevelt's toothy grin stared up at her.
"Here you are." She gave him the cup. "Cream and sugar right there." She didn't bother pointing them out to most people, but he might not have noticed without help.
"Thank you," he said, and used them. After a sudden, pleased smile at the coffee, he asked, "Excuse me, but were you acquainted with the gentleman who used to run the cobbler's shop across the street, Mr., uh"-he paused to check that little notebook again-"Harold Jacobs?"
"Was I acquainted with him?" Nellie echoed, scorn in her voice. "I should hope I was! Aren't I the mother of his daughter?"
"Oh!" The tweedy man brightened. "Is that why he wasn't there, then? Is he here? May I speak with him, please?"
She eyed him with even more scorn than she'd used while speaking. "Good luck, pal. I wish I could. He died in 1933. Who the devil are you, anyway?"
"My name is Maynard G. Ferguson, Mrs. Jacobs." Ferguson used the title with some hesitation, as if unsure she deserved it. She gave him a dirty look. He hurried on: "I am a professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. I'm studying the way the United States gathered intelligence in Confederate-occupied Washington. Would you know anything about that?"
"I hope I would," Nellie answered. "Haven't I got my own Order of Remembrance, First Class, put on me by Teddy Roosevelt his own self, for the help I gave Hal during the war? What do you need to know?"
"Order of Remembrance, First Class?" Out came the notebook again. After peering into it, Maynard Ferguson said, "Then you would be… Nellie Semphroch?"
"Not now," she said, as if to an idiot. "You said it yourself-I'm Nellie Jacobs."
"Yes. Of course." Ferguson scribbled in the little book. "Then you would know how information was smuggled out of the city and over to the U.S. lines?"
"I know pigeons were a part of it," Nellie said. "There was a fellow named… Oh, what was his name? Lou Pfeiffer, that was it! A fellow named Lou Pfeiffer who used to keep them. You could ask him about the details."
"Mr. Pfeiffer, unfortunately, is deceased. He died in…" Professor Ferguson flipped through the pages of the notebook. "In 1927. In any case, I am not chiefly concerned with the pigeons. I am interested in the man to whom Mr. Jacobs-and every other man in the Washington spy ring-reported, a Mr. William Reach. Were you by any chance acquainted with him?"
Ice ran through Nellie. "With Bill Reach?" she said, through lips suddenly numb. "I knew him a little bit, but only a little bit." And you can't prove anything else, God damn it, not now you can't. "Why do you want to know about him in particular?"
"Primarily because he's such a man of mystery," Maynard Ferguson replied. "He conducted such an important intelligence campaign throughout the occupation, then disappeared without a trace just before U.S. soldiers retook Washington, D.C. I've been on the trail of that mystery for more than ten years now, ever since I started doing research on this topic, and I'm still hoping to get to the bottom of it."
Well, you won't, not from me. You've just come to the end of the trail. Nellie could have told what she knew, or at least some of it. It was safe enough now, with Hal dead. But she'd been keeping the secret so long, hugging it so tightly to herself, that letting go of it never once crossed her mind. She said, "My best guess is, he was killed in the shelling. An awful lot of people were."
Ferguson looked disappointed. "It could be, I suppose. Somehow, though, I want to believe he had a more dramatic end, and that someone still living knows what it was. He doesn't strike me as the type who would have gone quietly."
A more dramatic end? He did. Nellie still remembered the feel of the knife as she drove it into Bill Reach's chest. And somebody does know, sure enough. But you never will.
"If you don't know what happened to him, could you at least speak to what he was like?" the man from Pittsburgh asked.
"I didn't like him. He wasn't a gentleman, and he drank too much," Nellie said, and every word of that was true. "I have no idea how he got to be a spy. He was a reporter, wasn't he, back in the days before the war?"
"Yes, that's correct, with the Star-News,'" Ferguson said. "How did you know? You are the first person with whom I have spoken who did."
"I… used to know him back then," Nellie answered unwillingly. "I've lived in Washington all my life. I was here-I think I was five, or maybe seven-when the Confederates shelled us during the Second Mexican War."
"It was in 1881," Maynard Ferguson said. Maybe he was expecting her to tell him how old she'd been then, from which he could figure out exactly how old she was now. She wondered if he'd ever had anything to do with women before. After a moment, realizing she wasn't going to do anything of the sort, he asked, "Were you… romantically involved with Mr. Reach?"
"No," Nellie said at once, with great firmness. There hadn't been anything romantic about what passed between them in one hotel room or another. He'd laid his money on the dresser, and then she'd done what he paid for. Later, during the war, he'd decided that meant there was something between the two of them. Nellie knew better. She added, "He drank too much even way back then."
"Did he? How interesting!" By the way Professor Ferguson said it, the news really did interest him. "Impressive how he ran and organized a sophisticate spy ring while at the same time battling his drunkenness."
"I don't know what's so impressive about it," Nellie said with a sniff. "I saw him sitting right where you are when he was too drunk to know who I was even though he'd… known me before." She didn't want to put that pause there, but couldn't help herself. "You can't make me believe that was good for what he was doing."
"But information from Washington kept right on getting to Philadelphia even so," the professor said.
"Yes, and it kept right on getting to Philadelphia even when your precious Bill Reach spent time in jail on account of he stole something or other, or at least the Confederates thought he did," Nellie said.
Ferguson scribbled furiously. "That's fascinating," he said. "It's something else I hadn't heard of, too. I wonder if Confederate records survive to confirm your statement. Hard to guess; much was destroyed in the bombardment, and Reach also might have used an alias with them. But it's another avenue to explore. How do you suppose the ring continued to function with Reach in custody?"
"I'll tell you how-through my Hal, that's how," Nellie answered proudly. "You know TR gave him a Distinguished Service Cross, I expect. He didn't win that for playing tiddlywinks."
"I'm sure he didn't," Ferguson said. "I wish he were alive today so I could ask him about this entire important period."
"I wish he was alive today because I loved him and I miss him." When she first said she'd marry Hal
, there at the end of the Great War, she hadn't dreamt how true that would be. What occasionally passed in their bedroom had next to nothing to do with it-with the large exception of causing Clara, who was the biggest surprise (and one of the most pleasant) Nellie had ever got. What made it true was that Hal had been a good man, and even Nellie, who had no use for the male half of the human race, couldn't possibly have had a different opinion.
"I'm sorry," the professor said. He was just being polite, though; Nellie could tell. He asked, "Is there anyone else who could possibly shed light on the way William Reach met his end in 1917, if that is what happened to him?"
"I can't think of anybody else," Nellie answered, which, again, was nothing but the truth. No one had been anywhere close by when Reach tried to rape her and she killed him.
But Professor Ferguson had ideas of his own. "What about your daughter, Edna"-flip, flip, flip went the notebook pages-"Semphroch?"
Even with his fancy research, he still got things wrong. "She's been Edna Grimes for a long time now," Nellie said, "and I guarantee she doesn't know anything about that." She did know about Nellie's scandalous background, though. Would she tell some professor what she knew? Nellie didn't think so, but wasn't a hundred percent sure. Edna had a mean streak in her that came out now and again.
"Didn't she receive a"-flip, flip, flip-"an Order of Remembrance, Second Class, at the same time as you were given your decoration?" Ferguson asked. "How can she be ignorant with that background?"
Nellie laughed in his face. "Easy as pie, that's how. She worked here with me, and sometimes I'd pass on things she told me, things she heard and I didn't. That's what she got her medal for. She would've married a Confederate officer, you know, if an artillery bombardment hadn't killed him on the way to the altar."
"Oh." Ferguson sounded faintly disappointed-and more than faintly revolted. He was old enough to have fought in the Great War. Like most men who were, he had no love for the Confederate States. He also seemed to have little understanding for what the people of Washington, who'd lived under Confederate occupation for more than two years, had gone through during that time. Nellie wasn't surprised. Few who hadn't lived here then did understand.
"You see?" Any which way, Nellie didn't want Ferguson talking to Edna. "Nobody knows nothing about Bill Reach."
Maynard Ferguson sighed. "I suppose not. I hope you realize how frustrating this is for me."
"I'm sorry," said Nellie, who was anything but. "Nothing I can do about it, though." Nothing I will do about it, anyway.
The professor left the coffeehouse, head down, shoulders slumped. Nellie put his cup in the sink. She'd never dreamt anybody would come poking after Bill Reach. But it didn't matter. In the end, it truly didn't. Only she knew the answer-only she knew, literally enough, where the body was buried-and she wasn't talking. Not now, not ever.
An aeroplane buzzed over the Charles XI as the French liner approached the Confederate coast. Anne Colleton glanced up at the machine, which roared past low enough for her to make out the words confederate citrus company painted on the fuselage in big, bright orange letters. The lines of the aeroplane suggested falcon much more than grouse. She wondered why a citrus company needed such a swift, deadly-looking aircraft.
Beside her, Colonel Jean-Henri Jusserand watched the aeroplane speed back toward the Virginia coast. The Frenchman said, "I suspect it would not be too very difficult to fit this aeroplane with weapons. Would you not agree, Mademoiselle Colleton?"
"I would agree that am I an idiot," Anne replied, also in French. "I should have seen that for myself." She kicked at the decking, angry at missing something so obvious.
"But-" Colonel Jusserand stopped, just in time. Anne sent him a sour look. He'd been about to say something like, But you are only a woman, Mademoiselle Colleton, so how could you be expected to notice such a thing? Then, fortunately, he'd remembered Anne had spent the last two years in Paris, dickering with some of the more prominent people in Action Franзaise-not always the people with fancy titles, but those who could promise results and mean it.
With wry amusement, Anne thought, But you are only a boy, Colonel Jusserand, so how could you be expected to know anything? Jusserand was in his mid-thirties, as young as he could be and still have fought in the Great War. He paid attention to Anne as a negotiator, but never once to her as a woman. She had fifteen years on him, give or take a couple. Most of the officers with whom she'd dealt were close contemporaries of the boyish colonel. Action Franзaise had, so far, done a better job of pruning deadwood from the French Army than the Freedom Party had of purging the Confederate Army.
The Charles XI pressed on toward Norfolk. More aeroplanes buzzed by to examine the liner. All of them said confederate citrus company. They shared the same sleek, dangerous look.
Colonel Jusserand asked, "Will there be an open display of these machines at the Olympic Games?"
"I don't know," Anne said. "I'm a stranger here myself." That held more truth than she felt comfortable admitting. She'd enjoyed her two years in France. She thought she'd helped her country while she was there. But, with Virginia in sight once more, she had to remember what she'd worked so hard to forget: that her time out of the CSA had also been an exile of sorts.
July in Norfolk brought memory flooding back. Though she was close to two hundred miles north of St. Matthews, the heat and humidity reminded her all too much of home. She'd never known weather like this in Paris. She wouldn't have been sorry not to renew acquaintance, either.
When the customs men saw her passport and Colonel Jusserand's, they very quickly became very respectful. "You're on our list, sir, ma'am," one of them said, touching the brim of his cap. He wore a snappier uniform than he would have when she left the Confederate States, one that made him look like a soldier rather than a functionary. "Our good list, I mean-we've got train tickets to Richmond waiting for both of you, and we'll get you to the station fast as we can."
He kept his promise, too. Anne wondered what sort of treatment she would have got had her name been on a different sort of list. She was just as glad not to have to find out.
Sweating in his brown wool uniform, Colonel Jusserand let out a sigh of relief when their railroad car proved air-conditioned. Anne found herself less delighted; too cold seemed as unpleasant as too hot. But she could add clothes for more warmth. She couldn't take them off outside, not if she wanted to stay decent.
With a cloud of coal smoke erupting from the stack, the locomotive began to roll. Jusserand stared at the countryside, which he was seeing for the first time. "How very many tractors and other farm machines there are," he remarked.
Anne nodded. "More than I remember seeing before I went to France," she said. "A lot more, as a matter of fact. Then there would have been nothing but sharecroppers working the land." Sharecroppers had come out in English. She thought for a moment before coming up with a French equivalent: "Tenant farmers."
"With so many machines, who needs men?" Colonel Jusserand said. "Where do you suppose the tenant farmers have gone?"
That was a good question. Anne answered it with no more than a shrug, for she didn't know, either. She did know most of the displaced sharecroppers were colored. Was it like this all over the CSA, or just in this stretch of Virginia? She couldn't guess. If this went on nationwide, what would the Confederacy do with all the displaced Negroes? One more question she couldn't answer. But, remembering what Negroes had done to the Marshlands plantation, remembering what they'd almost done to her, she hoped they got everything they deserved.
Night was falling when the train pulled into Richmond from the south. As soon as Anne descended to the platform, someone called her name. All she had to do was answer. As before, uniformed men whisked her and Colonel Jusserand away. She barely had time to note how many people in the station spoke with Yankee accents-men and women down from the USA to see the Olympic Games-before she and the Frenchman were in a motorcar bound for the Gray House.
No waiting in the waiti
ng room this time, either. Jake Featherston saw them right away. "Congratulations," he told Anne. "I've read every report you sent. You did a first-rate job over there. First-rate, I tell you." He stuck out his hand and gave Colonel Jusserand a big, friendly smile. "And I'm damned pleased to meet you, Colonel. Action Franзaise"-he didn't butcher the French too badly-"is doing the same thing for your country that the Freedom Party is for this one."
"Yes, I think so, too." Jusserand spoke good English, though Anne's French was even better. "Revenge is a sweet word, is it not?"
He couldn't have said anything better calculated to hit the Confederate president where he lived. "Oh, yes," Featherston said softly. "Oh, yes, indeed. None sweeter. So we will be able to count on France when the day comes?"
"That depends," Jusserand answered. "Can we count on the CSA if we first find that day?"
Here was something Anne hadn't seen before: someone hustling Jake Featherston. "Like you said, that depends." The president spoke carefully. "You start a fight with the Germans tomorrow afternoon, we'll have to sit out-we aren't ready yet. You give us the chance to get ready, we'll back you all the way."
In Paris, Anne and the Frenchmen with whom she'd dealt had gone round and round over that. The Kaiser's government watched the French as carefully as the United States watched the Confederate States, maybe more carefully. Colonel Jusserand thought so. He said, "You have the advantage over us. You are a large country, with more room to hide what you do not want your neighbors to see. With us, les Boches could be anywhere at any time."
"Since we've been good little boys, I don't know what you're talking about," Featherston answered. Even his grin didn't make those long, bony features handsome. But a smiling Jake Featherston made handsomer men seem insipid. Anne had thought so since the first time she met him, back in the days when she thought she could control him. She wasn't wrong very often. When she was, she wasn't wrong in a small way.
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