The professor slurped his coffee. ‘But I digress. In the event, as we know, the superior numbers and industrialised power of the Union began to prevail against those early Confederate successes. By early 1864, the tide had very much turned against the South. The Union had gained a formidable new commander-in-chief in General Ulysses S. Grant, in whom they had great confidence that he would lead them to victory. Our forces were demoralised and in disarray, underequipped, underfed and ripe for defeat. The South’s long-held hopes of aid from their allies in France were bitterly dashed and they now found themselves alone in a desperate situation, as their cities burned, their citizens starved and the dead lay heaped by the tens of thousands in the cornfields. Clearly, something had to be done. And it was felt, in certain circles, that desperate times called for desperate measures.
‘Many covert plots and conspiracies were hatched during the war,’ Abellard went on. ‘The assassination of Abraham Lincoln, for example, was on the cards long before it actually happened. But of all the schemes dreamed up to reverse the tide of defeat in the South’s favour, none was as nefarious as that conceived in secret by a small group of Confederate commanders and a prominent Louisiana landowner, a Texan by the name of Dr Leonidas Wilbanks Garrett, whose vast plantation estate just so happened to be right here in Clovis Parish.’
The instant Ben heard the name Garrett, he was certain he’d heard it before, and recently. Unable to recall, he went on listening.
‘Now Dr Garrett was an interesting character, by all accounts,’ Abellard said. ‘His ambition and flair as a businessman had amassed him a fortune that in today’s money would be equivalent to hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps even billions. But it was his expertise in science and medicine that led him to become the architect of this conspiracy, which, had it been successful in its objective, could have inflicted untold damage to the Union. Needless to say, this was not a military strategy of which the Confederate high command would have officially approved, however dire their predicament. In those days of warfare, before gentlemanly codes of conduct became extinct, the ends were not always taken to justify the means.’
The professor’s coffee mug was empty and he was twirling it on the tabletop as he spoke. He coughed. ‘Excuse me. I haven’t done this much talking in years and my throat’s parched drier than sawdust sauce.’
‘You want me to fetch you a glass of water, Professor?’ Keisha asked sweetly.
Abellard pulled a face as if she’d offered him poison. ‘Bless your heart, but what I need is in that cupboard over there.’ He pointed.
Keisha stood and went over to it. To nobody’s surprise it was crammed with full whiskey bottles. Abellard held out his mug, and kept it held out until she’d reluctantly filled it up with liquor. ‘Helps keep me focused,’ he explained, taking his first gulp. ‘Ahhh. That’s better. Now where was I?’
‘A conspiracy that could have done untold damage to the Union,’ Ben reminded him. He was sure the professor’s narrative was leading somewhere. Where exactly, and how long it would take him to get there, was anyone’s guess. Especially now that the crazy old coot was back on the whiskey.
Abellard nodded. ‘Mr West, how much do you know about the history of biological warfare?’
Ben stared at him. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Oh, yes. And so were Garrett and his co-conspirators. This was total war, in their way of seeing things. The time for fair and decent tactics had been and gone. Now, this form of warfare was by no means a new invention, even in 1864. As far back as antiquity, armies would drive hordes of infected sick onto enemy lands with the desire of causing epidemics. The water supplies of besieged cities were often spiked with hellebore and other toxic plant substances. During the Middle Ages it was not uncommon practice to use catapults to hurl the corpses and excrement of plague victims over the walls of enemy castles, for the same unpleasant reason. More recently, and perhaps more pertinently for Leonidas Garrett, it had been widely suspected that British military leaders in pre-revolutionary colonial North America deliberately supplied blankets infected with smallpox to Native American tribes. As one English lord by the name of Baron Jeffery Amherst, British Commander-in-Chief and one-time Governor General of the Province of Quebec, put it in a letter to a subordinate charged with the task, their intention was very openly to “extirpate this execrable race”. The resulting outbreak of the disease was the first of several that would ultimately claim the lives of some half a million or so Native American Indians.’
‘But that’s genocide,’ Keisha said, aghast.
‘You’re rightly shocked, Ma’am,’ Abellard replied. ‘Dr Garrett, however, took such heinous crimes as his inspiration. Through a medical contact who had been working to alleviate a terrible cholera outbreak in Bermuda, he arranged to collect a large quantity of infected clothing of the dead and have it sealed in specially-made airtight casks. These casks were then to be shipped to the Port of Galveston, in Garrett’s native state of Texas, aboard a Confederate blockade runner. Such vessels often stopped in Bermuda to stock up on arms and ammunition for the war effort, and were adept at slipping by the Union fleet that patrolled Southern waters. Once in his possession, the casks would have been separately smuggled north to New York, Boston, Chicago and Washington D.C., where they would be opened and the contaminants released into the public water supplies of those cities.’
Chapter 28
Abellard paused for effect, and a long, thirsty gulp of whiskey. ‘Now, I’m sure you can imagine the ravages of such a deadly disease breaking out simultaneously across the major population centres of the North. Cholera was a major killer in those times, and could spread like wildfire. The effect of Garrett’s manufactured pandemic might easily have been several times greater than the damage the British had managed to inflict on the Indian tribal population in the previous century. It could have utterly devastated those Union strongholds, perhaps even struck at the heart of the government itself. Potentially weakening the Union war effort enough for the South to rally round and regain the upper hand, thereby changing the entire course of US history. That, we will never know.’
The enormity of what Abellard was describing had both Tyler and Keisha shaking their heads. Even Caleb looked horrified. Ben had got the picture and wanted to move on.
‘Where does Peggy Iron Bar come into all of this?’ he asked.
‘I was just coming to that. She was an ordinary slave girl who had worked on Garrett’s cotton plantation estate, Athenian Oaks, since the age of nine. It’s thought that her mother had died of diphtheria, her father of tetanus. Life expectancy was short for plantation slaves, who were forced to live in appalling conditions. Peggy’s only surviving relative was her sister.’
‘Mildred,’ Ben said. ‘Her twin.’
Abellard nodded. ‘Multiple birth was highly unusual among the slave population, as malnutrition was so rife, but yes. When the girls reached the age of fifteen or sixteen, Mildred remained on the plantation while Peggy was promoted to performing duties within the mansion itself. Cooking, cleaning, maid chores, serving at table, and whatnot. There’s no indication that Garrett had any ulterior motives in employing her, although again that is something we cannot know for sure. From what little historians can glean she appears to have been a smart and capable girl, diligent, reliable and obedient as all masters liked their slaves to be. Unbeknownst to Garrett, however, young Peggy also happened to possess the rare ability to memorise entire conversations and repeat them verbatim later on. In modern neuroscience this form of exceptional recall is called mnemonic memory. A gift that came into its own when, purely by chance in the course of her duties, she was privy to the secretive discussions between Garrett and his would-be partners in crime. It’s hard for us to imagine now, but such was the arrogance of many of the slave-owning class that they barely regarded these people as sentient human beings. Still less would Garrett and his ilk have imagined that this silent young girl going about her servant tasks in the background was in fac
t recording every detail of their plans.’
Abellard gently pushed aside a cat that had hopped up onto the table, and refilled his mug. The level in the whiskey bottle was dropping fast. He went on:
‘This gifted young lady was also admirably brave. Realising the terrible import of what she had overheard, she knew she must somehow find a way to pass this information to those who could act upon it before it was too late. It’s still unclear exactly how, but in the weeks that followed she was able to make contact with undercover agents of the legendary Pinkerton detective firm, who at the behest of Abraham Lincoln had infiltrated the entire South in their attempts to uncover such intelligence information. Espionage was endemic to the Civil War, as to all wars. The South had their own spies, like the infamous Belle Boyd, and the North had invested heavily in forming intelligence networks for the Union.
‘Anyhow, things moved swiftly after that. Even as Garrett’s blockade runner vessel lay at anchor off the Bermuda coast and the tainted caskets were loaded aboard, the Pinkertons’ news reached the elephantine ears of President Lincoln who, duly alarmed, immediately despatched a squadron of Union navy frigates with orders to find, sink or burn her. Garrett’s ship was intercepted before it reached the Bahamas, and destroyed. Meanwhile, under cover of the Union army’s Red River Campaign which carved deep into Louisiana during late May 1864, a large detachment of crack troops was deployed to Garrett’s estate in Clovis Parish to quietly assassinate the good doctor, since no Union court martial could condemn a Confederate citizen. The same afternoon that the town of Villeneuve was torched by Yankee soldiers, the special unit descended on the Athenian Oaks estate and began bombarding the mansion with artillery fire. Several of Garrett’s staff and foremen were killed in the attack. But when the troops entered the smoking ruins of the house they discovered that Garrett himself had managed to escape. As reprisal for his evil plot they now carried out their orders to raze every inch of his estate and plantation to the ground.’
‘I’ve seen the place,’ Tyler said. ‘Or what’s left of it, which ain’t much except a big ol’ patch of wasteland, even now.’
‘What about Peggy?’ Ben asked.
Abellard replied, ‘The story goes that Lincoln himself had expressly wanted her to be taken away to the safety of the North and recompensed for her bravery, but that she refused and remained in Clovis Parish with her sister. A noble decision, but one she would soon come to regret. As for Leonidas Garrett, he had gone into hiding after the attack, crippled by a Yankee shell that had brought down a ceiling of his home and almost crushed him to death.
‘Immediately upon the cessation of hostilities and the establishment of the new government, his remaining assets were seized by the authorities and his business empire was scattered to the winds. Even the most loyal Southerners held him in disgrace upon hearing of the vileness of his scheme to murder countless innocent civilians. A broken man, Garrett disappeared. It was thought that he holed up in the Kisatchie Hills wilderness, where he later married and had a son. There were rumours that he had surrounded himself with a gang of disenfranchised former rebels, violent cutthroats and marauders, and that he had sworn an oath on the Dixie flag to take revenge against the negro bitch’ – Abellard glanced at Keisha – ‘excuse my language, Ma’am, no offence meant.’
‘None taken,’ Keisha replied graciously.
‘– against the negro bitch who caused his downfall, and all her line.’
‘All her line?’ Ben said. Everything was falling into place now, or almost.
‘This was a villainous rogue who had lost everything except the burning desire for retribution,’ Abellard answered. ‘It’s easy to imagine that such a man wouldn’t rest until vengeance was his.’
‘Peggy was murdered in 1873,’ Ben said. ‘With a sabre.’
‘The sword was thought to have been a gift from one of his accomplices. If indeed Garrett was responsible for the crime. No charges were ever brought, despite all her widower’s attempts to pin blame on him and his gang.’
‘Peggy had married?’
‘To a freed slave, like herself, a man named Frederick Miller. They had two children.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘Who knows?’ Abellard replied. ‘If Frederick and the children went on to suffer a similar fate, it’s not recorded by history. Likewise, the story of Leonidas Garrett fades into obscurity at this point. Nobody ever saw him again.’
The professor, too, was beginning to fade. The bottle was nearly finished. His voice was thickening and his eyelids were beginning to droop. As Ben and the others sat in silence, still stunned by what they’d heard, Abellard poured the last dregs from the bottle and down his throat. He hiccupped.
‘At least,’ he slurred, ‘that’s the legend. What do I know? I’m just a burned-out old fart.’ And with those words, he rested his head on the table and went to sleep.
Chapter 29
‘Well, there you have it,’ Tyler grunted. ‘Interestin’ times we live in.’
‘Is he still alive?’ Caleb asked, poking the professor’s arm with a finger and getting no response.
Keisha frowned sadly down at the comatose heap on the table. ‘Won’t be for much longer, if he keeps this up. Ben? What’re you thinkin’?’
Ben leaned back in his chair and said, ‘I’m thinking that the name Garrett is ringing a bell. Someone mentioned it to me, here in Louisiana, before all this mess began. But I’m damned if I can remember who or why.’
‘Could’ve been anyone in Clovis Parish,’ Tyler said. ‘Everybody knows that name. Garretts are bad news around here. Always were, always will be.’
‘Are we talking about the same family? Descendants of Leonidas Garrett?’
‘This is the Deep South, Ben. Most everyone’s related to each other, if you go back just a little ways. Why’d you suppose all the Cajun women have them gerbil front teeth?’
‘They do not,’ Keisha said. ‘That’s a disgraceful thing to say.’
‘It’s a fact that our gene pool ain’t exactly diverse,’ Tyler said. ‘Diseases and mutations tend to run in the same certain blood lines. Craziness and what they call nowadays “learnin’ difficulties” run in others. In the case of the Garrett clan, the genetic trait each and every one of those worthless dirtbags shares in common is a propensity for lawlessness and psychopathic violence. Yup, goin’ by what the good professor here just told us, I’d say that ol’ sabre-totin’ Leonidas came from the same illustrious stock as our dear present-day Garrett brothers. And I’d also say that another piece of your puzzle just popped right into place, my friend.’
Ben leaned forward in his chair and looked hard at Tyler. ‘I think you’d better tell me more about the Garrett brothers.’
‘There’s three of ’em,’ Tyler said. ‘The worst goof I ever made in my lawyer days was to get hooked up as defence attorney for the youngest of the bunch, Logan. That was some years ago. He’d be about thirty now, but I don’t suppose he’ll ever learn the lesson of his ways. Logan’s what you’d call a deeply unpleasant character. Gets his kicks settin’ dogs on fire. You get the picture. He was arrested by Sheriff Roque’s boys for possession of half an ounce of methamphetamine with intent to sell. That’s a Class B felony that carries a sentence of one to nine years in jail. The more I found out about what the Garretts were into, the more I regretted takin’ the case. If the cops had landed on Logan just the day before, they’d have found a heap more than half an ounce of meth on him. That was just his personal reserve, all he had left over after the deal he’d done that mornin’. Fact was, they were movin’ truckloads of it, and no doubt still are. But by the time I discovered all this, it was too late to back out. His elder brother Seth pretty much told me they’d blow my brains out if I didn’t get Logan off scot-free. So that’s exactly what I did, by squeezin’ the little skunk through the door of unlawful search and seizure. That’s another reason Sheriff Roque loves me so much.’
‘I’m glad you ain’t a lawyer no more
,’ Keisha said.
‘Me too, honey. Two weeks after he walked away from that one a free man, he tried to rape an eighty-year-old lady in Shreveport. Sentenced to eight years in the state penitentiary, which then got reduced to five, on account of the Garretts produced some doctor who could testify Logan was mentally ill. Makes me sick to think about it, even now.’
Ben had a sudden flash of memory. ‘I’ve just remembered where I heard the name Garrett before today. It was the night of the holdup at Elmo’s Liquor Locker in Villeneuve. Sheriff Roque was talking about Billy Bob Lafleur and all the unsavoury company he keeps.’
Tyler said, ‘That’d make sense. Unsavoury characters are drawn to the Garrett boys like flies to a turd.’
‘Except he didn’t mention the Garrett boys, per se,’ Ben said, casting his mind back to the scene. So much had happened since then. ‘He talked about an island. Garrett Island. I’m sure of it.’
Tyler looked blank. ‘I never heard of any Garrett Island, and I’ve lived here all my life.’
‘Nor me,’ Keisha said.
Ben was silent for a while, thinking. ‘You said there were three brothers. Logan and Seth and who else?’
‘You don’t want to know, trust me.’
‘Who else, Tyler?’
With reluctance Tyler replied, ‘Jayce Garrett. The eldest, by a few years. The smartest, because he’s the only one of the bunch who’s never been arrested. And the worst, because he makes Logan and Seth look like Buddhists. Seth told me that Jayce worked for a spell as a hitter for the mob in New Orleans. Killed a whole bunch of people, never pulled so much as a parkin’ ticket. He’s also reputed to have associated with the Dixie Mafia and a variety of neo-Nazi white supremacist terror groups in Tennessee and Mississippi. The swastika tattoo on his hand, that ain’t just to look cool.’
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