Silver Cross

by B. Kent Anderson

  * * *

  Gray hadn’t had much time to recon the area, but the fact that the cemetery was so small and the road beside it narrow meant it took less than three minutes to get into position. The hilly terrain worked to her advantage as well. A gravel path led upward less than fifty yards from the cemetery gate, across the street. A stone wall ran for some length as a property line, and it looked down toward the cemetery. She had the high ground.

  She pulled the CZ 75 Tactical Sport from her overnight bag, then got out of the car, hidden by a copse of trees. She easily climbed over the low stone wall, then moved in a crouch from behind the cover of the trees. Still, the wall was perfect, and the Tactical Sport with its six-inch barrel made a pistol shot from this distance possible. An impossible shot, some would say. But they didn’t know Ann Gray.

  She crawled along the base of the wall, periodically poking her head up to calculate how far she was from the cemetery gate. When she was directly across from it, she stopped, raising the pistol and propping it on the wall. Meg Tolman and the minister were in her field of vision.

  * * *

  Tolman turned over the paper in its plastic sleeve and started to read.

  28 July 1864

  My dear President Davis,

  Your emissary, Mrs. Greenhow, is most charming, felicitous, and persuasive. You must know that the French people have supported in spirit your noble battle in the matter at hand. It is, I believe, to the advantage of both commerce and culture that our peoples work in friendship. Do not be disheartened by our public acknowledgements in this matter. The business of nations must needs be conducted in the shadows at times.

  The unlimited financial and military support of the French nation is at your disposal, sir. We wish an enduring friendship with the Confederacy, and Mrs. Greenhow is to deliver this missive to you along with a token of our friendship. We will endeavor to assist you by all feasible means, upon being granted legal possession of the Silver Cross. Mrs. Greenhow is to provide you with the details, and if you agree, I will send further documentation via duly appointed agents of my government.

  I, and the French nation, await your reply. May God grant you wisdom in your decision.

  Tolman looked at the signature at the bottom of the page.

  Napoleon III

  Napoleon III?

  … legal possession of the Silver Cross …

  Tolman remembered what Dana Cable had said to tell her: “the rose and the silver cross…”

  Rose Greenhow.

  The Silver Cross.

  “I’ll be damned,” she said.

  Davison frowned at her. Tolman slid the paper into its envelope and took two quick steps toward Davison’s car.

  A gunshot exploded into the ground where Tolman had been standing a second ago.

  She dove to the ground, the knees of her pants scraping the grass. Another shot cracked, kicking up a spray of earth two feet to the other side of her.

  Davison turned to Tolman, then looked across the road and said, “What—”

  Tolman’s mind raced. Her SIG Sauer 9mm was in her travel bag. She’d had it in the hearse ride from Springfield. Presumably the funeral director had taken it out before leaving the cemetery. She inched along the ground beside Davison’s car. There!

  She spotted the bag, in the open on the other side of the minister’s car.

  The shots were coming from across the narrow road that ran beside the cemetery. It was up a small slope, giving the shooter a perfect vantage point. As soon as she emerged from the protection of the car, she would be exposed.

  Davison had ducked into the driver’s seat. Tolman heard the engine start. Shit!

  “Get in!” the minister shouted. “Get in the car!”

  A few more inches …

  Tolman reached the bumper. The bag was five feet away.

  “Where are you?” Davison was yelling.

  Shut up! Tolman thought.

  She turned the corner of the car’s rear bumper and flattened herself out on her stomach. Inching along, under cover of the bumper, feeling the exhaust vibrating inches from her head, she stayed out of sight.

  She reached the other edge of the car. The bag was inches away. If she could only get to her SIG …

  She snaked a hand from under the bumper, fingers reaching toward the bag.

  * * *

  Gray watched the movement, saw the woman under the car’s bumper, and knew what she was doing. She probably had a weapon of her own packed away in the luggage. Gray wasn’t concerned. Her work was almost finished.

  She saw Meg Tolman’s hand as it inched from below the Plymouth. She glanced to the left, saw the old minister cowering in the front seat, screaming incoherently for Tolman to get in the car with him.

  Gray adjusted her aim by a few inches and sighted the CZ 75. She squeezed off two more rounds. One of them thudded into Meg Tolman’s suitcase. The other sprayed gravel less than six inches from Tolman’s hand.

  Gray let out a slow breath. She’d taken three sets of shots. She carefully pulled the pistol from the top of the rock wall, lowered it, and crept along the wall to her car. She put the CZ 75 away, zipped up the overnight bag, and slid behind the wheel of the rental.

  Five miles outside of Cassville, she made a phone call. “I couldn’t finish it now,” she said.

  “I thought that sort of thing never happened with you,” the man said.

  “It can happen with anyone,” Gray said. “Circumstances change. I took several shots, but the target moved. Also, there was a bystander, and I have no interest in bystanders here.”

  “But this Research and Investigations woman knows something is going on. She was a friend of Cable’s, and she’s alerted to our presence.”

  Yes, Gray thought. “Don’t worry,” she said, pointedly not responding to the man’s statement. “I will tie this up.”

  “When?”

  “When I can.”

  “We’re watching, Ann.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Gray said, and ended the call.

  She pointed the car toward Springfield. She had a plane to catch. She missed her husband and her son.

  * * *

  Tolman heard the car, somewhere on the other side of the road. But from under the bumper, she couldn’t see it. She waited two minutes, sweating, exhaust fumes breathing down her back. Then she reached out a hand. No shots.

  She put her entire arm into the open, hooking the bag’s handle. No shots.

  She dragged the bag under the car, then inched back the way she had come, nearly burning herself on the exhaust pipe. On the other side, she opened the front passenger door of the Plymouth and fell into the seat beside Davison.

  “My Lord,” Davison said. “What was that? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Forgive me for my language, but what the hell is going on here?”

  Tolman gripped the envelope with the 1864 letter from Napoleon III. She thought of Dana, Barry, and Jimmy Cable, all in their thirties, all dead within a few months of each other, all buried in this little country cemetery.

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  6

  Tolman spent an interminable time giving a statement to the Cassville police, who took her contact information and looked at her as if she were from outer space when she presented her RIO credentials. The officer who took her statement had graduated high school with Barry Cable. It was a small town.

  Reverend Davison drove her to Springfield and dropped her at Springfield-Branson Airport. In the small terminal, she pulled out her phone and called Nick Journey. “What do you know about Napoleon III?” she said when he answered.

  Journey sighed. “Hello, Meg, I’m fine.”

  “No time to screw around,” Tolman said. “I’ve been shot at today, and I’m a tad grumpy. Napoleon III. What would he have to do with the Civil War?”

  Tolman heard Andrew Journey whistling in the background, then Journey said, “The Confeder
acy wanted the French to help them in the war, and Napoleon was with them in spirit, but he couldn’t commit troops. He had problems of his own. Why all this talk about Napoleon?”

  Tolman started moving down the row of airline counters, searching the arrival and departure monitors. “This is the same Napoleon? Short guy, hand in his coat?”

  “No, no, Napoleon III was his nephew. He ruled France years later. Why do you—”

  “This Rose woman you mentioned? The spy? It looks like she met with Napoleon and he was going to help the South.”

  There was a long silence. In the background, Andrew screeched, then laughed loudly. Soon he was whistling again. “Meg, where are you getting your information?”

  “A letter. Napoleon wrote a letter and sent it with this Rose Greenhow. In it, he said the French were going to help the South if they gave him the Silver Cross. The ‘silver cross’ again.”

  “No, Meg,” Journey said. “I mean, yes, Rose Greenhow went to both Britain and France to ask for their help with the Confederate cause. She was Jefferson Davis’s personal emissary. But they wouldn’t budge. They wanted Southern cotton, and they hated the Union naval blockade of the Southern ports, but they weren’t about to commit troops. It’s well documented. And besides, Napoleon—”

  “I have the letter!” Tolman shouted. “A letter from Napoleon III to Jefferson Davis, promising French military assistance to the South. Apparently it went with Rose Greenhow. And it has something to do with Dana’s death. And both her brothers have died in the last few months, too.”

  “If the French were going to help the Confederacy … I mean, there have been stories, legends, but nothing that could be—”

  “Yeah, well, I have it. I think you need to tell me some of these stories and legends.”

  “The letter,” Journey said. “Where did you get it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What?”

  “A woman came up and gave it to me after Dana’s funeral. Five minutes later, someone was shooting at me.” She scanned the screens again. “How do I get to where you are?”

  “What? Where are you?”

  “Springfield, Missouri. That’s not far from you, right? I should be able to get a flight. There are no flights to Oklahoma City.”

  “Try Dallas. Carpenter Center is closer to Dallas than to Oklahoma City.”

  Tolman read the screens. “There—American has a flight into Dallas. It leaves in an hour, gets into Dallas at about seven-thirty P.M. I’ll get a car—more fucking driving—and come to you. How far are you from Dallas?”

  She slid into line at the American counter, cradling the phone against her shoulder, digging in her bag for a credit card.

  “About two hours from the airport to Carpenter Center. Get a map when you rent the car.”

  “I’ll get one with a GPS.”

  “Meg,” Journey said. “This letter. We’ll have to be sure. If it’s real—the historic ramifications would be staggering.”

  “I want to find out who killed Dana and why. Those are my ramifications.”

  “We’ll have to be sure,” Journey said again.

  “That’s why I keep you around,” Tolman said. “See you in a few hours.”

  * * *

  After dinner and a short walk around their neighborhood, which was equidistant from the SCCOK campus and Lake Texoma, Journey turned on the TV for Andrew. Within a few minutes, Andrew lost interest in Animal Planet and went off in search of a straw and a pencil, which he used to stimulate himself—or “stimming,” as the teachers and therapists called it. Andrew was working with a new therapist this summer who was of the opinion that the stimming made him withdraw further from the real world, and she asked Journey to gradually ease Andrew away from the behavior. He was trying, with mixed results. Andrew had been doing it for so long that it seemed part of him, and he was always trying to find a way to locate the straw and the pencil. Some of his bouts of aggression in the last two months had been in response to their absence.

  Journey sat down at his cluttered desk in one corner of the living room and booted up his computer. Meg Tolman was on her way here—he expected her around ten o’clock. And she was bringing a letter she believed to be from Napoleon III to Jefferson Davis.

  Journey drummed his fingers on the desktop, tapping his left index finger three times in rapid succession, then again. He was an American Civil War historian. He only knew nineteenth-century France peripherally. But there were legends. There were always legends, mostly the domain of treasure hunters and conspiracy theorists. No one had ever seriously suggested that France was on the verge of militarily supporting the Confederacy. They were spread too thin already, with a bad economy and many other commitments.

  Still, although Napoleon III was not as well known as his famous uncle and namesake, he usually got what he wanted. If he wanted something badly enough …

  Journey started scanning history sites on the Web. Then he went to his bedroom and pulled down three volumes from his bookshelf. With a highlighter and a legal pad, he sat down to read.

  * * *

  Tolman arrived just before ten. When Journey opened the door, the first thing he noticed were the streaks of dirt on her face and grass stains on her black jeans and light blue blouse. “You don’t look so good,” Journey said, then smiled at her.

  “Well, I started the day in North Carolina, was shot at in Missouri, then had to drive through at least twenty-seven construction zones between DFW Airport and this town. Is there any part of Texas or Oklahoma that isn’t under construction?” She came through the door and tossed her bag onto Journey’s couch.

  The smile widened. “It’s good to see you, Meg.”

  Tolman looked around at the clutter, the mismatched furniture, the books and magazines and papers. “First time I’ve been inside your house,” she said.

  “I didn’t have much time to clean up,” Journey said.

  Tolman looked at him. Her gaze locked on his arm. “What the hell happened to your arm?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  Tolman looked from his arm to his eyes. “There you go again, holding yourself in. So where’s the little guy?”

  “In bed. And not so little anymore. He’s gone through a serious growth spurt, gained four inches since you last saw him. He’s only two inches shorter than I am now.”

  “How is he otherwise?”

  Journey shrugged. “He had a pretty good school year. But you didn’t come here to talk about parenting. What about this letter?”

  Tolman eased herself onto the couch next to her travel bag and laptop. “Dr. Journey, you are an unusual man.”

  “Yes, I am. You want a drink?”

  Tolman closed her eyes. “I never took you for a drinking man, Nick.”

  “What, your databases never told you that about me? I’m surprised you don’t know what my favorite beer is.”

  “Let me guess. I’ll say Guinness Stout.”

  “I’m more a lager guy. Keep trying. What do you want?”

  “You really have booze in the house?”

  “I keep it in a locked cabinet that Andrew can’t get to.”

  “Bloody Mary, extra spicy,” Tolman said.

  He made the drink and brought it to her. She drank off almost half of it immediately. Journey watched her. “Tell me what happened,” he said.

  She told him all of it, from the phone call that sent her to Wilmington, to the deaths of the three Cable siblings and the shooting in Cassville.

  “The letter,” Journey said. “Let me see the letter.”

  “You’re such a document guy,” Tolman said. “I’ve never seen anyone get such a historical hard-on for old papers.”

  Journey smiled. “Let me see it.”

  Tolman dug in her bag, pulled out the plastic sleeve, and passed it to Journey. He adjusted the lamp and stared at it.

  “And this was it?” he said after a time. “A woman just walked up and handed this to you?”

  “She said I
might find enlightenment there. That’s the word she used, ‘enlightenment.’”

  “Let’s not jump the gun. The paper seems right for the period. As for the handwriting, I have no idea. I’m not a Napoleon III expert. But I have a colleague who specializes in nineteenth-century Europe. I’ll call him in the morning.” Journey settled into the armchair beside the couch. “But two nonhistoric questions come to mind. Who was the woman who gave you this, and who shot at you after she gave it to you?”

  Tolman ran her hand over the surface of her travel bag, felt the bullet hole there. “And how did she get the letter? And what the hell is the Silver Cross?” She rubbed her eyes and drank some more, this time slowly. “So what about this Rose, and old Napoleon? What does this mean?”

  “I don’t know how any of this is possibly connected to your friend, but I’ll tell you some of what I do know from the historical side.” He tapped the paper. “And keep in mind that even if this is authentic, it’s incomplete. It mentions ‘further documentation.’”

  “I know you’re not going to tell me we are going on another wild-document chase.”

  Journey smiled. “A good bit of history is about finding those documents. They’re what tells us if things are real or fantasy.”

  “You said there were stories and legends.”

  “There are always stories and legends. Treasure hunters love them. People have spent decades searching for Civil War treasures. Books have been written about them, movies made about them. The Silver Cross? Never heard of it. But that doesn’t mean anything either. Things are being unearthed about that era all the time.”

  Tolman rubbed her eyes and set down her glass. “So would the French really have helped the South?”

  Journey shrugged. “There were rumors—see, more legends—from the beginning of the war that both the British and French would come in on the side of the Confederacy. The Union navy had blockaded all the Southern ports so they couldn’t export goods. That meant the cotton trade with countries like Britain and France suffered. Plus, a lot of the aristocratic classes in Europe identified with the Southern culture and were on that side on principle.”