Black River (Sean O'Brien Book 6)

by Tom Lowe

  And he swam toward the hope of the South.

  British Prime Minister Duncan Hannes decided he wouldn’t tell the Queen. At least he wouldn’t tell her immediately. The less she knew about a ghost from the past, the better. There was no sense worrying the Royal Family when these matters could be handled by others. But never in Hannes’ political career had he been faced with such a dilemma. He paced the hardwood floor behind his desk at 10 Downing Street in London and thought about the two emails he’d received.

  Hannes, a fleshy man with a trimmed gray moustache and ruddy cheeks, looked through his bifocals and read the latest email again. He rubbed his temples, his face drooping from fatigue, and looked out the window at the Tower of London. He punched five buttons on his desk phone and his call was answered on the first ring. “Good morning, Prime Minister Hannes.”

  “I wish it was a good morning. That anonymous email I received last week…”

  “Yes, we’re still pursuing it, sir. Highly encrypted. Channeled through at least seven servers around the world. We’re still working on its point of origin. However, we may have isolated it.”

  “Well, now you have more to work with, Justin.”

  “I take it you received another one.”

  “Indeed. Now the sender wants money to remain quiet. Who is making this threat, and where is the bloody bastard? You need to get your very best operative there at M15 to find this person. Do it with speed and utmost discretion, obviously.”

  “I have a cyber-team coming to your office. They’ll begin tracking immediately.”

  “You said you might have isolated it. What do you mean?

  “We believe the point of origin is in the states. Possibly Florida.”

  “That makes sense because that’s where they found it. This person is threatening to send the information to the news media. That cannot happen.”

  “I understand Prime Minister Hannes. We’re working around the clock on it.”

  “This threat is unprecedented. If what this blackmailer says is accurate, it could very well open a Pandora’s Box between Britain and India. He or she—whoever sent this demand—this utter blackmail, they alleged to have tangible evidence that could make the Royal Family complicit in the tragedy and horror of something that remains controversial to this very day. The Queen and her family will not be held hostage to their ancestors on my watch.”

  “We’ll begin chasing up the latest correspondence immediately.”

  “Correspondence? Justin, correspondence is a letter, perhaps a telephone call, even a damn text message. This is a strong-arm blackmail of the worst kind. It involves three nations and has the potential to drag the Royal Family into the dark terrors of something better left buried.”

  “Sir, could you read the email to me?”

  “Most of it reiterates what was previously stated. The new addendum threatens to release everything to the news media unless ten million pounds is wired into a Cayman Islands account, attached to a letter of impunity from pursuit and prosecution and signed by a member of the Royal Family. Justin…”

  “Yes sir?”

  “I’m looking out the window across the River Thames to the Tower of London in the distance. And, at this moment in time, I’m not certain whether one of the most famous of the Crown Jewels is authentic.”

  Sean O’Brien turned to Max and said, “Let’s pull your head back inside the Jeep. We’ll park, unload groceries, and go to work. At least I’ll go to work. You might find old Joe the cat to play a hard-fought game of hide n’ seek. On second thought, maybe not.” O’Brien’s ten-pound dachshund, Max, balanced herself, hind legs on the passenger seat, head out the open widow, hound dog ears flapping in the wind. Her nose tested the air as O’Brien drove across the parking lot adjacent to the Tiki Bar at the Ponce Marina, oyster shells cracking under the tires.

  He got out of the Jeep and stretched his 210-pound, six-two frame. Max scampered across his seat, diving from the floorboard to the parking lot like a paratrooper on a mission. She could smell the scent of blackened redfish, garlic shrimp, and hushpuppies, all coming from the Tiki Bar. O’Brien laughed. “Whoa, if Kim’s on duty, you’ll be fed.” He unloaded a bag of groceries, two cans of boat wax, and followed Max and her nose into an open-air dining experience that blended the smells of sunblock with deep-fried mullet.

  The Tiki Bar was a restaurant on stilts, a place that appealed to bikers, babes, fishermen and vacationing families. Beyond the food and drinks, it evoked a 1950’s picture postcard atmosphere addressed from a Florida of simpler times. Fifty percent of the customers came from the marina neighborhood of live-a-boards and transients, mariners with seafaring gypsy blood in restless genes. Many were men who worked the shrimp boats for a paycheck and the distance the sea could place between them and their troubles anchored to land-bound conflicts. The Tiki Bar’s hardwood floors were stained into a piebald splatter of spilled beer, grease, and more than a few drops of blood. Bar art.

  This Saturday morning, all the isinglass windows were rolled up, the sea breeze delivering the smell of grilled fish across the marina. One person sat at the rustic bar. A dozen sunburnt tourists and charter boat deckhands were seated at the tables made from large wooden spools that, in a former life, were used to wrap telephone cables around them. The big spools were shellacked and turned on their sides. Three chairs to each spool. The hole in the center—a great place for tossing peanut shells.

  Kim Davis beamed when O’Brien and Max approached. Kim’s chestnut hair was pinned up. Her caramel-colored eyes were bright, like morning sunlight shining through amber stained glass. She stood behind the bar, rinsing a beer mug and timing a slow-pour of a draft Guinness.

  “Sean, you ever notice Miss Max is always leading you? She’s the only female that can get away with it.” Kim smiled, dimples appearing on her tanned face. She handed the Guinness to a charter boat captain who sipped it before returning to his table. “Hold on, Max” she said, picking up a small, chilled shrimp and walking around the end of the bar. She knelt down, Max almost jumped in her lap. “Hi, baby. Here’s one of your favorites.” Max took the treat, tail wagging, and sat to eat.

  O’Brien said, “She’ll be back for cocktail sauce.”

  Kim smiled, standing, pressing her open palms against the blue jeans that accentuated her hips. “I heard you were coming to the marina today. Nick said you called. Are you getting a little lonely out there on the river?”

  “Sometimes,” O’Brien smiled. “My old cabin is a lot like owning an old boat. It’s always in need of a coat of paint or wax.” He held up a tin of boat wax.

  “I’m off at four, if you’re still at it, I’ll ice down a few Corona’s for you.”

  “Sounds good, but you’d first have to sneak them by Nick’s boat.” O’Brien could feel someone staring at him. He glanced over his shoulder and locked eyes with an older man sitting by himself at the very end of the bar. The man wore his white hair neatly parted on the left, ruddy thin face, polo shirt, and khaki pants.

  Kim said, “He’s been waiting for you.”

  “Who is he, and how did he know I was coming here today?”

  “I didn’t get his name. He’s been sipping black coffee for two hours, and guarding that folder in front of him like a hawk. He asked at the marina office whether or not you lived aboard. Nick was in the office paying his rent and overheard the man. Nick told him he knew you and that you had plans to work on your boat today. So the gent’s been waiting your arrival.”

  “I wonder what he wants.”

  “Maybe you should find out. On second thought…oh, what the hell, Sean. He’s just a harmless, elderly gentleman, right? But what if something in that folder isn’t so harmless? I’ll keep an eye on Max for you.”

  Jack Jordan felt as if he’d prepared for this exact moment most of his life. After all of the research, after all of the long weekends of heat and rain—and mosquitoes, after the hundreds of battlefield reenactments, this felt about as real as it gets. He prou
dly wore a Confederate uniform, authentic from the gray slouch hat down to the black cavalry boots. A week’s worth of burgundy whiskers sprouted from his tanned, lanky face. He felt his pulse quicken, waiting for the director to start the scene.

  Jack glanced down at the replica of the Smithfield rifle he held in his hands. He looked up across the landscape of pine trees and scrub oak and took a deep breath. A mockingbird called out from a dead, leafless cypress tree. Jack could smell the wood smoke beyond the pines, hear the snort of the horses behind him, and almost see the Union soldiers slipping through the forest.

  A young private looked up at Jack and whispered, “You ready, Sergeant?” the private’s cheekbones smeared with charcoal dust, his Confederate cap pulled down to his blond eyebrows.

  “I’ve been ready for this all my life. Feels damn good. Let’s defend the South.”

  “Quiet on the set!” came the command through a loud speaker. “And roll cameras.”

  “Speeding,” came a voice through a walkie-talkie held by an assistant director standing below a motion picture camera, one of five, mounted on a crane.

  “Action!”

  Platoons of men, both Union and Confederate soldiers, all wearing sweat-stained Civil War uniforms, charged. Cannons fired. Stuntmen, dressed as soldiers, fell and tumbled near the ground where the earth exploded in dirt, fire, and dust. Men ran through the smoke. Trumpets sounded. Soldiers on horseback cut through the smoldering battlefield, firing pistols.

  Jack, and three dozen of his men, ran forward, rifles firing blanks, white smoke billing from the end of the barrels. “Let’s move!” Jack yelled, the troops picking up speed—shooting and reloading. A seventeen-year-old recruit ran behind the first flank, gripping a wooden pole carrying the Confederate flag as the southern forces advanced closer to the Union army.

  Jack reloaded, packing the black powder into the barrel of his rifle. His young private looked up and nodded. “This one’s for Shiloh!”

  “Atta boy, Johnny. Keep shooting! Advance men!” Jack held his rifle in both his hands, moving stealth-like, stepping around the wounded men, blood capsules oozing red dye through the ragtag uniforms. He fired his rifle and stood to reload powder and paper. He stared through the smoldering battlefield, remembering the instructions the director had given him and the other actors. Jack wondered if he could hear the director yell “cut” over the noise of gunfire.

  That was Jack Jordan’s last thought.

  A Minié ball slammed through the center of his forehead, the heavy lead bullet blowing the back of his skull off. Blood and brain tissue splattered across the horrified face and chest of the young soldier carrying the Confederate flag. Directly in front of him, Jack Jordan fell dead.

  “And cut! Brilliant! Great scene. Let’s reset cameras.”

  The young soldier looked up and vomited in the muddy field.

  An assistant director stared through the rising smoke. “Oh my God,” he said running around the film crew and actors. “Somebody call nine-one-one!”

  O’Brien set the bag of groceries on an empty barstool and approached the man. “I understand you’re looking for me.”

  “Are you Mr. O’Brien?”

  “Sean will work fine.”

  “Good, Sean. My name’s Gus Louden.”

  “What can I do for you, Gus?”

  The old man looked down at the manila file folder on the bar, and he sat straighter, raising his eyes to meet O’Brien. “I saw your face on the TV news a while back. It was after those terrorists were caught. If the news is to be believed, it seems like you, Mr. O’Brien, were the main fella who found the terrorists. They said you had flushed out that spy who thought he got away with what, in my book, is absolute treason.”

  O’Brien was silent, closely watching the man’s liquid blue eyes behind the glasses.

  Louden cleared his throat. “I spent four years in service to our country. After the Army, I used the GI Bill for college and eventually started my own company. When I sold it, we had more than a thousand employees. Been retired ten years now. I was born in Summerville, South Carolina. But I call Charleston home.”

  “What brings you to Florida?”

  “You do, Sean. I was watching CNN the other day and they aired a story about an old photograph that had recently been donated to the Confederate War Museum in Virginia. The photograph is in a small frame. It’s a picture of a beautiful woman in the prime of her life. It was taken either before or during the Civil War. The picture was found in an attic as part of an estate sale. It’d been there a long time. The donor said her grandmother had kept it for years, finally giving up trying to identify the woman in the picture. She tried hard because the story of where and how the photograph was found had deeply touched her heart. The picture was originally found in a battlefield near Chickamauga, Georgia. As the story goes, the photograph was found in the mud and blood between a Confederate and Union soldier. There was no ID on the bodies, and no one knew for sure which man had been carrying the photo. The man carrying it probably looked at it as he lay dying.”

  O’Brien was silent, letting the old man continue when he was ready.

  “I called the museum and told them I thought the picture was my great, great grandmother. The reason I believe this is because I remember my grandmother had an oil painting that was painted from a picture. And the painting looked identical to the woman in the photograph found between the bodies.”

  Louden rested his arms on the bar, fingers splayed. O’Brien noticed something different about the man’s fingernails. The crescent moon shaped lunula, at the base of each nail, was the largest he’d ever seen on anyone’s hands. O’Brien cut his eyes up to Louden. “Did you tell the museum you could identify the woman in the photo?”

  “They listened and were very kind. But, when they asked me how I knew it was the image of my great, great grandmother, I could only say I remembered the painting hanging in the living room of my grandmother’s house in Jacksonville, Florida. My grandmother told me that the woman in the painting was her mother.”

  “What happened to the painting?”

  “After about age thirteen, I never saw it again. My grandparents both died in a horrific car accident. Their possessions were sold to cover the cost of the two funerals and the mortgage. My parents are dead, and I have two older sisters and a younger brother. My family has a long heritage in the South. And that’s one of the reasons I’m here.”

  Louden reached for the file folder, opened it, and handed O’Brien a picture of a woman wearing a formal dress. She had long brown hair, high cheekbones, dark eyebrows, and she was smiling, something O’Brien rarely saw in photographs from the Civil War era. The woman was photographed standing near a river. Louden nodded. “I think the lady in the picture was my great, great, grandmother. This is a copy made from the original photograph donated to the museum. The story of the finding was in USA Today, too.”

  O’Brien looked closely at the woman’s face. “Where was the picture taken?”

  “I never knew. Looks to be here in Florida, the palms and river in the background.”

  “Why is it so important for you to prove that the woman in the framed photo is related to you?”

  “I mentioned that I was raised in the South, in and around Charleston. Families and their reputations go way back. Honor, commitment, bravery…they are all traits we believe in and don’t take lightly. It’s a handed-down heritage.” Louden, his face filled with concealed thoughts, stared at an open space over O’Brien’s shoulder. He exhaled a deep sigh and met O’Brien’s eyes. “My great, great grandfather was said to have been someone General Robert E. Lee had taken under his wing. My father once told me that he’d heard General Lee so trusted my great, great grandfather that the general assigned him a very important mission. We don’t know whether he succeeded or failed.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because no one ever saw him again. He became absent-without-leave. And, if he was killed in action, his body was never ident
ified. The whispers in the South, in Charleston in particular, grew louder, especially the first fifty years after the war ended. For generations of southerners, they believed he was a coward. A man who ran away, someone who hid, retreated rather than face his sworn duties and the enemy. They believe he was one of the biggest cowards to have ever put on a gray uniform. Some of the elders said he ran from the Confederate Army the night before a battle and hid, finally making his way out West, leaving his young wife and children behind. He was never seen again.”

  O’Brien nodded. “So, if this copy of a photo currently housed in the Confederate Museum is your great, great grandmother, it will prove that one of the men found dead on the battlefield was carrying it. And the man carrying it was her husband—a soldier who did not run away but was, instead, a brave man because he fought until his death. Most likely, since the photograph was found next to his body, the last thing he saw was the image of his wife, which he probably pulled from his rucksack as he lay dying.”

  The old man’s eyes widened, color blossoming in his pallid cheeks. “Yes sir. It would indeed prove that.”

  “Why come to me?”

  “Because I hear you find things, you find people. If you can find that painting, I remember there was writing on the back, written by my grandfather. Although I was only thirteen, it struck me so profoundly, I memorized what he wrote, and hoped one day I’d find a wife like he had.” The old man closed his eyes briefly searching the archives of his memory, and then he said in a whisper, “He wrote, ‘My Dearest Angelina, I had this painting commissioned from the photograph that I so treasure of you. We shall display the painting prominently in our home for all to see…as your beautiful face is always displayed privately in my heart.’” He turned to O’Brien. “Will you help me? If the painting survived, it will match this photo, more importantly, will correct history and right a terrible wrong, a bad reputation that my great, great grandfather did not deserve, and a stigma his family had to endure.”