"In fact, he is the last," the baron added. "He has no children, and there are no other men with the name."
"I will ask you, Henri," the minister said addressing his aide. "Is he loyal?"
The baron hesitated a moment. "He will do whatever he tells you he will do. When he accepted a commission in the army, it was a personal commitment. He will not betray a trust."
"You don't like him, do you?" the minister asked softly.
The baron looked away in silence.
"And you know him well after all this digging," the minister commented thoughtfully. He turned to Druot. "Is he competent for this task?"
The general grimaced. "Do you imagine that we have given him a battalion of the Imperial Guard Zouave Regiment because we think otherwise? No! This officer spent 15 years in the Kabyle Mountains with his precious Arab riflemen. He was responsible for the pacification of a group of Berber villages that no one else could approach! In the Crimea, he was on the staff for a while. He did very well there, but escaped to rejoin his Algerians in time for Magenta. At Solferino.., but you see how it is with him."
"You have asked him if he will go?"
"No! One does not ask a man like him such a question. He would be offended. You tell him that he will go."
The minister looked weary. "Our observer must be willing. He will have none of the protection offered by our uniform."
Druot held up a hand. "He will do anything to escape from Paris. In my opinion he will go mad here. If this had not come up, I would have sent him back to Africa."
"Very well. Henri, bring him in."
A minute later the massive form appeared in the doorway. He bowed slightly, his red-topped kepi under one arm, the saber scabbard clutched in the opposite hand. "Minister! General! Good morning."
The foreign minister rose to his feet to come forward, a broad smile on his face, his right hand extended. "D'Orgueil, how good of you to join us! Do come in! I believe you know General Druot?"
Druot nodded, unsmiling.
"We have a proposal for you," the minister continued. "I think you will find it attractive.”
Chapter 5
The New World
- 25 September, 1863 (New York)
Standing at the rail, D'Orgueil searched among the faces on the quay for someone. He was not sure there would be anyone. There had been very little time. The foreign ministry assured him that a letter preceded him in the diplomatic bag. To improve the odds, he had written his cousins, but nevertheless there had not been much time. He was aware of the ease with which such communications go astray when they are most needed. None of the upturned faces looked promising.
The harbor smell and litter of the pier were familiar, but the city behind was like nothing he had seen before. There was a raw quality about the place, a look of not being quite completed. The buildings looked wrong. There was something alien in them.
While the tugs moved the ship up the channel and against the pier, he searched the skyline for reassurance. It had not been there. Paris, Rome, and London were large cities, but this was something different, something new, something gigantic.
A steward brought up the bags, struggling with them. He was followed by a helper with yet more bags. The Frenchman smiled and raised a hand, halting the steward's progress toward the rail for a moment to give him an envelope. The young man felt it discreetly, murmuring his thanks. The vessel's master waited at the head of the gangway for goodbyes with his passengers. His ship had cabins for only a few and he believed he had made friends of them all during the passage.
D'Orgueil started down the gangway, following the steward toward the customs and immigration officials at the bottom. A uniformed policeman stood to one side, a few feet from them. He was engaged in conversation with a short, sandy haired man. This second man was dressed plainly, but well. D'Orgueil imagined that he might be the policeman's superior.
"Good Mornin', Sir" beamed a portly man with "U.S. Customs" in brass on his cap.
"Good Afternoon." d'Orgueil replied without any particular expression in his face. He handed a second blue suited figure his passport in the belief that the usual distribution of labors must prevail. This man thumbed through the pages in the customary way, searching for a visa. Finding it, he turned back to the first page. "Mister Balthazar?"
"Yes," d'Orgueil answered. "Jean Balthazar."
"You sound English, Mister Balthazar," the customs agent said. "Why is that?"
D'Orgueil knew at once from the tone that this was not an advantage. He looked at the two officials. They had the map of Ireland in their faces. "I am not English,” he said. “I was educated in England." He saw hostility and suspicion begin to gather in their faces. "I have never come to this country before this. The English speak this way. I am French."
The two uniformed men whispered together. "Why does your bag there have the letter "O" in the leather?" the customs agent asked.
"Are you sure you're this Balthazar?" the immigration inspector asked. He was looking at the largest of the cases; the one his late wife’s mother had given for Christmas five years before.
"I am not English," he repeated, “not at all.” He considered a bribe, and rejected the thought as too risky. He thought of bringing out his various letters of credit. Perhaps the fraudulent papers naming him North American representative for his brother-in-law's wine business might help. None of these seemed good ideas. He began to think of the embarrassment of returning to France on the ship.
The two policemen approached.
"Whut's the trouble, Flaherty?" the uniformed one inquired helpfully.
"This gentleman may not be what he seems," the customs man laughed.
"Are you Balthazar?" the man in plain clothes demanded after looking at his passport..
"Yes."
"This is the man we are seeking," he said.
The immigration inspector shrugged, stamped the passport, and handed it to d'Orgueil without looking up.
The customs agent chalked a strange little mark on the bags. "Welcome to America," he said.
A carriage waited. Inside, they spoke for the first time. "Claude sent you?" d'Orgueil asked coolly, unsure of his ground in the wake of the scene in the wharf shed, but careful not to show emotion.
"I work for him,” the blond little man said. “They all sent me. Your aunt wants to see you."
"And, you are?"
"Frederick Kennedy. Colonel Devereux wanted me to collect you, sir. He was afraid there might be some trouble."
"Why did that happen, back there?" d'Orgueil asked, puzzled and worried at his inability to deal with something as simple as a border crossing.
Kennedy sat looking at him for a moment, and then he grinned. "It's your voice,” he said. “These Paddies hate that voice. If you think they would have put you back on the boat if they could, you're right."
"You are a banker?"
"What?" Kennedy was visibly startled by the question.
"You said you work for my cousin."
"Oh!" He threw his head back and laughed so loudly that conversation on the driver's bench halted momentarily. "No, I own a livery stable in Alexandria, but I've known Claude all my life. It's not the bank I help him with." He fell silent, staring out the window at the passing scene. He frowned.
D'Orgueil looked out to see rows of burned buildings standing together, their shattered walls and windowless openings gaping into the street. "What is this?" he asked.
Kennedy laughed again, this time with a touch of regret. "This, sir, is what's left of a nigger neighborhood, burned out in July in the riots against the draft. I was here. Where was it? Somewhere along here? It was somewhere along here, somewhere...
How do you want to be called?" he asked suddenly. "Not very many of our people are going to be able to say your name." He was smiling again.
"I will use the name on my passport. Actually, I will begin to think of it as my true name from this moment."
"John Balthazar?"
"Certainl
y. Now tell me where we are going."
"We have one hour to cross this damned city. A train leaves for Washington at 3:00 P.M.
"You were here during the, the revolt?" Balthazar asked.
"Yes." Kennedy was still looking out at the widespread destruction. "Claude sent me up here after Gettysburg. I saw all this."
These streets were worse than Gettysburg.
He remembered the bodies hanging from lamp posts. He remembered a black man running down a street with a howling mob in pursuit. He looked at Balthazar. "I believe you've come to be with our army."
"You are a soldier, I think," the Frenchman remarked still looking at the ruined buildings. "You did this?" he demanded. The tone of voice was unreadable. He saw with satisfaction that Kennedy's eyes came around from the window to blaze with outrage at the idea. The fire subsided after a moment. "No, no, this isn't my work. I wouldn't mind killing a few of these folks, but, we don't do this down home, not like this."
"Which folks?"
"Oh, bankers, lawyers, maybe a few ministers, the people who won't leave us alone."
"No priests?"
"No, no priests. We have no reason to kill priests."
Balthazar thought about that. "Are you Catholic?"
Kennedy was somewhat taken aback at this. Questions about religion were not asked this way in his world, but, then he remembered that the Fenian killers had done the same. "Yes."
"That is why you know the Devereux family so well?"
"No. Is Europe like that?"
Balthazar nodded.
Kennedy shook his head. "Alexandria is a small place. There are not many Catholics. Religion don't mean all that much, not in that way. Just about all the real Alexandrians are for the South, including the priest."
"But, you are a soldier?"
"No. I own a livery stable." He looked stubborn about his answer, but then changed his mind. "Yes, I'm a soldier, for the last three years in fact."
"And you would not do this?" A grey gloved hand waved compellingly at the desolation.
Unhappiness showed in Kennedy's face. "I was sent here to talk to those who wanted to resist the draft and to help them.” He did not think he wanted to tell this stranger of his mission of murder, not yet. “The Micks got completely out of hand. They have their own leaders," he concluded bitterly.
"What did they do?" The elegant, stocky figure examined him closely.
"They fought the police,"
"To be expected," murmured Balthazar.
"They fought the army, the Union Army," Kennedy said. "To be expected, I know. Then they killed, or tried to kill every civil official they could find." He looked at Balthazar.
“How many?”
“A few hundred.”
"Still acceptable."
"They caught a few volunteer Irish officers in the streets, men home on leave, one just back from Gettysburg. They beat them. Two died."
Balthazar shrugged. "And, what, exactly, was their objection to the conscription, merely a dislike of military service?" He fished around in a vest pocket, and retrieved a rosary of blood colored beads with a red silk tassel at one end.
"What is that?" Kennedy inquired.
"I've given up smoking. It is bad for the heart. My Mussulman friends find this comforting." The beads clicked. "You did not answer my question."
The cab rumbled along. Loud talk penetrated the carriage from above. Kennedy listened.
"Who is the second man, the big one who waited with the cab?" Balthazar asked.
"One of ours, John Quick." Kennedy wanted to get out of the enemy city. The place always made him uncomfortable in its sprawling, ordered, enormity. The Frenchman worried him. No one should be this self possessed in the aftermath of a near disaster like the one on the pier. He searched for the thread of the conversation, and found it. "Ah!” he exclaimed. "The Irish have discovered that this is not their war."
Balthazar looked puzzled.
"They now think the Yankee war against us is the same old war against them, the war of the English, and their money. The priests told them this first, and their leaders in Ireland took up the same song."
"You believe this also, Mister Kennedy?"
"Yes, it's true. The bastards drove my grandfather off his land in Meath, but I have a home here, something new, something I am not going to lose."
Balthazar looked like he wanted to say something.
Kennedy held up a hand, wishing to continue. "The Yankee draft allows commutation."
Balthazar looked blank.
"You can buy your way out."
"How much?"
"Too much."
"And what is it that your Irish friends did here, in these houses?"
"They burned these people out, the colored people. They hung the men from the trees all along here. The worst was the coloreds orphanage about four blocks from here. The mob torched the building, and then shot the children as they ran out."
And I shot Johnston Mitchell as he tried to stop the rioters. God help me. The Micks knew that he would come to this place and they walked me up to his back… God damn you, Claude. God damn you. When I went home you told me maybe it wasn’t a good idea to kill him. God damn you. Your wife heard that. You said that to me in front of her. She wept. Maybe it was me she cried for. Damn you…
The Frenchman's chin dropped to his chest. "No. That is not acceptable. You are an officer?"
"Lieutenant."
"Ah, yes. You seem the infantry type to me. Is this so?"
"Used to be. Signal Corps now."
"Is this Signals work?"
"It is in our army."
"I see. What sort of leaders would send them against orphans?"
Kennedy nearly choked with emotion. He leaned out the window to hide his feelings. He could now see the railroad station. He sat back on his seat and faced the Frenchman. "You met one."
"Who?"
"The policeman on the pier, the man who saved you... Here we are. Stay in the cab, sir. We'll handle the bags."
Balthazar enjoyed the ride south. He had much to think about, and the train itself was an object of curiosity.
The passenger car conductor clearly found his accent to be interesting, but in this case it seemed to inspire a kind of reverence which was almost as disturbing as the enmity of the two Irishmen in New York.
The furnishings of the cars were roughly what Balthazar would have expected in Europe, but there were subtle differences in design, textiles and color. The car was filled with blue uniformed men, and their families. Mixed among them were well dressed citizens whom Kennedy explained to him as commercial travelers. He watched Kennedy closely. The man was unconcerned, chatting amiably with their fellow travelers. In particular, he seemed to find fascinating a youthful engineer lieutenant colonel seated across from them. The young man was newly appointed to command a battalion of that arm. He was "en route" to his regiment who were somewhere in Virginia. Listening to the chatter, Balthazar was lured at first into assuming that Kennedy had seized an opportunity to drum up business for his stable from this officer. Slowly, as he half listened, half watched the countryside slip by, he changed his opinion. With amused admiration, he heard Kennedy skillfully extract from the young man the strength, location, and history of the 2nd Massachusetts Engineers.
A Negro waiter walked the length of the car ringing a chime in a universal signal which announced that lunchtime had come. The young officer asked them to join him in the dining car. They begged off, pleading a late breakfast.
"What do you eat for breakfast?" the Frenchman asked after he left, wanting to know if this, at least, was predictable. Kennedy thought Balthazar distractingly homely. The big nose, walrus mustache, and brown eyes framed a face which was warmly pink under the tan. He grinned in spite himself, wondering if the man knew how much he looked like a caricature of a Frenchman. "Eggs, generally fried,” Kennedy answered, “ but sometimes boiled, bacon, ham, the like, potatoes, also fried, maybe grits, stewed apples, things such as
that, that's what we eat."
Balthazar had been reassured at the start of this list, finding it to be English. As Kennedy rattled on, his heart sank.
"What's the matter?" the lieutenant asked, alarmed at the expression on his charge's face.
"What are 'grits'?"
Kennedy explained.
"And, you eat potatoes with this?"
"No, usually either grits or potatoes, and then we cook the spuds in the same skillet the bacon was in. You can throw in some onions if you have any."
The heavy head bobbed on its massive support. "That sounds tasty; this is something one could cook in the field?" The brown eyes looked hopeful.
Kennedy began to feel good about this man, seeing in the foreigner a welcome figure, the kind of officer who liked to sit by a wood fire, watching while other men ate. "It sure is! Snake Davis, and Jim make the best home fries in the whole army. My mother don't make better."
"Snake Davis?"
Kennedy chuckled. "Our cooks in my old company, they're two black men from Alexandria."
"Slaves?"
Kennedy stared at him, and then searched his memory. "It's been a long time now that I've known them as free. Oh, I guess they were once, but not for years. They work for the army."
"The Confederate Army?"
Kennedy looked around to be sure no one had heard. "For Christ's sake, Major!" he snapped.
Balthazar held up a hand. "I am sorry! I am seduced into carelessness by your mastery of this situation. I must say that I am a little startled to learn that there are black men with you of their own will, but then, we have many Algerians who take our side against their own. They think we are their own," he said reflectively.
Kennedy shook his head. "I don't know about all that, but Snake, Jim and Bill belong to us, to the regiment I mean."
Balthazar waited. When it was evident that there would be nothing else, he started to speak.
Two Union naval officers passed, chatting and laughing over the promotion of an acquaintance. He hesitated long enough for them to pass.
"Which regiment?"
Kennedy was now irritated, fearful of the risk run by talking too much. He began to look sullen.
Death Piled Hard: A Tale of the Confederate Secret Services Page 4