“You can’t rent another car without a credit card. If they’re that good, they’ll have both of our credit card numbers.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Mine’s at the bottom of the Ohio, but they don’t know that.”
“We’ll buy something cheap along the road somewhere. For a few hundred dollars cash, you can buy a used car at almost any time, in almost any town in America. It should buy us some time, and I made sure I had emergency cash before I left D.C.”
“Where are we going?”
“The middle of nowhere,” Tolman said, and didn’t elaborate.
* * *
An hour later, passing signs for Fort Knox, they exited the highway in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. After driving around the town for ten minutes, they found a twelve-year-old Toyota Camry with a FOR SALE sign parked at the end of a small shopping center. Tolman called the number scrawled on the sign and offered the car’s owner an extra two hundred dollars if he would come immediately to finish the transaction. A few minutes and seven hundred dollars later, she had the Camry’s keys in hand. As soon as the owner, a white-bearded man in his sixties, had gone, they left the Focus at the other end of the shopping center parking lot.
“Can you drive?” Tolman asked.
“As long as it’s not a manual transmission and I don’t need my left foot to do any acrobatics, I can drive,” Journey said. “And I’ll drive the speed limit, since I don’t have a driver’s license. Are you sure it wouldn’t be safe for me to call Amelia and check on Andrew?”
Tolman waited, then said, “I’m worried that they might have her under surveillance, which means they might have access to her phones. If I were doing the surveillance, the ex-wife would be a natural.”
“If they’re watching her, then they know Andrew’s with her!”
“You said it yourself,” Tolman said. “They’re not going to do anything to you until they know for certain what they do and don’t have. We have a little window of time where everyone is safe for a while. By the time that window closes, we have to make sure we have what we need, and by then, I should be able to get backup anywhere in the country, even people to protect your ex-wife and your son.”
Journey tapped his finger three times on the leg of the too-large jeans, looking out at the lights of the parking lot. “I just need to know he’s all right.”
“You’re a very stubborn man.”
“You don’t have kids, do you?”
Tolman exhaled. “You know what? It irritates the crap out of me when people who have kids say that to people who don’t. You act as if we live on different planets because we don’t have children, and that we can’t possibly understand, and so on and so on. And frankly, Nick, it’s a crock of shit. I’m a human being, and I care and I have morals and ethics and all that. Just because I haven’t birthed a baby doesn’t mean I don’t. I understand where you are coming from, and I even understand your very unique situation with your son. Don’t think that I don’t.”
Journey leaned forward a little. “I’m sorry. I probably deserved that. But I just—I can’t explain it. I don’t always know the right things to do as a parent, but I don’t like to depend on other people very much when it comes to Andrew.”
“We’re talking about him staying with his own mother. She’s that bad?”
Journey shook his head. “No, it’s not that his mother’s bad. Andrew bonds well with her. In fact, if Andrew sees the two of us in a room, he’ll run to Amelia every time. Even the last couple of years we were married, when it was clear she didn’t want to be there anymore, he would run to her. I’m the one who feeds him and changes him and dresses him and always goes to school when he has a meltdown. I’m the one who gets scratches up and down my arms when he gets aggressive. I do all that every day, fifty weeks out of the year. And you know what, Meg? Just once I’d like to have him run to me the way he runs to his mother.” He leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes again. “None of that has anything to do with what you asked, does it?”
“Actually, it does. It tells me quite a bit. It tells me that because your boy chooses his mother every time, she probably figures she’s doing everything right, even if she sees him only two weeks a year. You do all the heavy lifting of being a parent and she gets the credit, so to speak. There’s some sexism there, too—I bet a lot of people think that because you have a penis, you can’t possibly be as good a parent as the mother.”
“You always talk this way to people you’ve just met?”
“Pretty much. Am I right?”
Journey turned to look at her. “Yes.”
Tolman nodded.
“Your father,” Journey said. “What was he like after your mother … after the car wreck?”
“He tried,” Tolman said. “He really, really tried. Most of the time, he didn’t have a clue, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.”
“I feel that way a lot.”
“Yeah, and I was just a normal mouthy, smart-ass teenager. Your kid has a severe disability that may or may not ever change. I think you have the tougher job.” She glanced at him. “Maybe he’ll run to you instead of her one of these days.”
“Doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I just want him to be safe.”
“I know. For that matter, Nick, so do I.” Tolman was quiet for a long time, then said, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“You let me see a little bit of yourself, something beyond what I can find out from databases and official documents.”
Journey looked away. “I guess my guard is down.”
“You think?” They each got out of the car and changed places. “You want something to eat? Getting shot at and knocked in the head has made me hungry, now that I’ve had a few minutes to breathe.”
“I could eat,” Journey said.
“Let’s go back to the highway and find something. Then we need to talk some more. We have a long night ahead of us.”
* * *
Journey drove to a Plaza 94 truck stop on I-65. Eighteen-wheelers idled in the huge parking lot, belching exhaust. Tolman paid cash in advance for gasoline, and Journey filled the tank. Then Tolman grabbed her laptop bag and they went into the restaurant. They ordered cheeseburgers with thick-cut french fries, and Journey said, “Hmm,” when his arrived at the table.
“What?” Tolman asked.
“Oh,” Journey said, “I was just remembering the last burger I had. It was at Uncle Charley’s, a little campus place in Carpenter Center. It was lunch with Sandra, a few hours before those guys came after me on campus. Sandra’s a vegetarian and I remember I’d made some crack about it being double cheeseburger special day. She had a salad.”
“Sandra again,” Tolman said.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not. All I do is listen to what you say.”
“I wish you’d stop trying to get into my head, Meg.”
“Why?”
“There’s nothing—” Journey sat back and laughed, lightly at first, then a full-throated, deep laughter. Tolman smiled a little, the smile of someone who can’t maintain a straight face while another person is laughing, even if they don’t get the joke.
“I’m sorry,” Journey said after a minute. “I just—I was about to say that there was nothing in my head, and it struck me as ridiculous.”
Tolman smiled again. “Oh, no, there’s definitely a lot in your head. No doubt about that.”
Journey let the smile stay on his face a little longer. Then he rubbed both sides of his neck with his hands. “Sometimes, when you’re faced with total insanity on all sides of you, all you can do is laugh.”
“That’s true. Except I usually play piano. But I’ll deal with that when I can.” Tolman ate a french fry. “We still have something we need to talk about, but I have an idea first. It sounds kind of strange and convoluted, but then, that goes right along with everything else, right?”
Journey raised his eyebrows at her.
“You could probably use a pa
y phone here,” Tolman said.
Journey put down his burger. “I thought you said they might have access to Amelia’s phone.”
“They might. But I’ve been thinking about it, and it would be a stretch for them to be on Sandra’s phone, too. She’s just a colleague, a coworker … The Glory Warriors couldn’t possibly tap the phone of every single one of your coworkers. You could call Sandra and ask her to get in touch with Amelia to check on Andrew. Have her call Amelia at work, but not her direct, personal line, in case they are on that one, too. Then have Sandra do something like leaving you a message on an online bulletin board.”
Journey looked hard at her. Her face was open, her eyes very large. He remembered the gun in her hand back at the Ohio, the way the two had communicated without speaking. They’d fallen into a wary rapport, understanding how each other moved, how they reacted.
“I know you want to see if Andrew is okay,” Tolman said. “Don’t you think Sandra’s wondering how you are, too?”
“I don’t know,” Journey said, but he stood up anyway. Tolman gave him three dollars in coins, and he went to the row of pay phones in the hallway that led to the restrooms. The hallway smelled of disinfectant and too many human bodies coming and going. He pulled Sandra’s number off his cell’s address book, then dropped coins in the slot and made the call.
“It’s Nick,” he said when she answered.
There was silence; then Sandra finally said, “Are you all right?”
“More or less.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means it’s a very long story, and I’ll be glad to tell you at Uncle Charley’s one of these days. I’ll buy you an extra-large salad. Look, Sandra, I don’t have much time—”
“Where are you?”
“I think it’s better if you don’t know. This thing we found is big. Much bigger than we thought. I’m with an investigator from Washington, and we’re trying to put some things together.”
“How—?”
“Listen, I’m sorry about what happened back at my house.” Journey felt a coldness in his stomach. He opened his mouth to say something else, but wasn’t sure what. He wanted to talk to her, but he didn’t want to talk to her.
“I was upset,” Sandra said. “You’re right, there are boundaries. I crossed one.”
Journey shook his head. “No, I—” He swallowed. “We’ll talk again, all right? But may I ask you a favor? I’m sorry to—”
“What do you need?”
“Andrew is with his mother. I can’t call her. I’m afraid they may be watching her house. But I want to check on Andrew. I just need to know that he’s all right.”
“God, Nick. What do you want me to do?”
“Call her. I know this is a strange request—”
“What’s the number?”
Journey gave it to her. “That’s the main number at her office. I just want to know that Andrew’s doing all right.”
Sandra hesitated. “I’ll do this, Nick. But you’ll tell me about it when you get back.”
When I get back. Journey had trouble thinking that far ahead. “Yes, I will. After you talk to her, leave me a message on the Civil War Geeks online message board.”
“Civil War Geeks?”
“What can I say? My screen name there is ‘On A Journey.’”
“Okay, I’ll get on it.”
“I have to go, Sandra.” He felt an awkward silence. “Thanks.”
“Of course. Nick … take care.”
“You, too.”
Journey hung up and went back to the booth. “I won’t ask you how it went,” Tolman said.
“It went fine.”
“Mmm-hmm. Finish your food. I have something to show you.”
When they had both finished eating, Tolman opened her laptop and put it on the table between them. She found the link from the search she’d done in the morning. “When I was waiting for you to show up at Falls of the Ohio,” Tolman said, “I did a search for the Glory Warriors. Then we got a bit sidetracked.”
“There’s nothing online,” Journey said.
“Not in ordinary search engines.”
“What?”
“Look, my job is mining data, finding people and things that in a lot of cases aren’t meant to be found. The programs RIO uses can go a lot of places, can search places most people can’t. I can get to millions of pages of scanned documents that might not be readily available.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I got a hit on the Glory Warriors, and I’m saying it confused the hell out of me. I kept thinking, ‘This can’t be right.’”
“Are you talking historical data or contemporary?”
Tolman thumped her computer. “Historical. But I don’t get it.”
Journey leaned toward the screen. “What? Is it something connected to Grant or Lee? I’ve read most of what’s out there, but—”
“No, not Grant or Lee.”
“Then what? Samuel Williams?”
“No.”
“Then who, for God’s sake?”
“You’re not going to believe this. I don’t believe this, and it’s right in front of me.”
“Just tell me!”
“Mark Twain,” Tolman said. “The Glory Warriors are mentioned in some of the private papers of Mark Twain.”
CHAPTER
41
Journey sat back against the booth, closed his eyes, and nodded.
Tolman looked at him in disbelief. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“You know that Ulysses S. Grant was elected president, right? He was elected in 1868, three years after the war ended. He was an international hero, practically worshipped by much of the country. Even the South respected him because the terms he offered Lee at Appomattox were so generous. Grant was a rock star. Then he became president.”
“And this has what to do with Mark Twain?”
“Stay with me here, Meg,” Journey said. “Grant was one of the most honest men in America, but he surrounded himself with corrupt, unscrupulous, and often stupid people. He was a terrible president. Corruption, bribery … you name it and it happened during his two terms in office. By the time he left office in 1877, he’d squandered all his fame and popularity.”
“What did he do then?”
“He traveled, went into business, did a lot of different things. But remember, there was no presidential pension then, and he’d given up his military pension when he became president. Within a few years, he was completely destitute, and then he was diagnosed with throat cancer. After all the years of smoking, it was already in an advanced state, nothing that could be done for him.”
“But I still don’t get—”
“Sam Clemens, aka Mark Twain, had been an admirer of Grant’s for years. When Twain saw that Grant was dying, he told Grant to write his memoirs and that he—Twain—would publish them. Grant saw that it was the only way he could provide for his family after he was gone. He and his wife, Julia, moved to Mount McGregor, New York, and he started writing.”
“Did he finish? Did Twain actually publish the memoirs?”
“Oh, yes. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant was a great success. Grant finished writing the book in the summer of 1885, and he died a few days after sending the manuscript to Twain. Twain had just started a publishing company with Charles Webster, who was his nephew by marriage, and it was the first book they published. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies, which was huge. And it did provide an income for Julia Grant until the day she died.” Journey stopped and leaned toward the computer. “And you found a connection between the Glory Warriors and Mark Twain?”
“Here,” Tolman said, manipulating the thumb bar. “One hit. It’s a document that’s been scanned as part of an archiving project at the University of California at Berkeley.”
“Berkeley,” Journey said. “Seems like I remember seeing a while back that a lot of Twain’s later letters and some scattered obscure papers had been donated to Berk
eley. But you say this isn’t online? Then how can you get to it?”
“I use a program called RACER, which can go anywhere and find pretty much anything in the digital world. Part of its function searches out computer networks. If there’s a network, and if somewhere in it, the network is linked to the Internet, we can find it. This document isn’t posted online, but it’s scanned into a computer on a network that has an online connection. You see what I mean?”
“So you can read my e-mail. Or, say, the president’s e-mail.”
“It’s a research tool.”
“There’s really no such thing as privacy anymore, is there?”
“Look, that’s not for me to decide. Someone way above my pay grade makes those policies. For me, it’s a technology that lets me do my job. Do you want to have an academic debate about the government’s research methods or do you want to see what this document is?” She opened the file and angled the screen so both of them could see.
The scanned document seemed to be a letter from Mark Twain to someone named Leon, and was headed with the date April 8, 1910, and Redding, CT.
“I don’t know exactly when he died,” Journey said, “but I think this was very late in his life.”
The document was in a thick, heavy handwriting, with the look of a letter that had been written slowly. Tolman and Journey read through two pages of Samuel Clemens’s ramblings, talking about family, how he still terribly missed his two daughters who had died, even years after their deaths. He went on to describe the spring flowers in Connecticut, and the certainty that he would never see spring flowers again. Halley’s Comet would soon be visible to Earth, he wrote, and he expected his own death as it passed, just as he had been born in 1835, the last time the famed comet passed close to Earth.
Tolman and Journey kept reading. Journey drew in a hard breath on the third page.
And so, good man, one of the most rewarding—and I daresay the most confounding—experiences of this long and occasionally ill-lived life, was my association with General Grant.
The man saved our Union, and yet at life’s end found himself penniless. Once I persuaded him that his life’s story could be sold to the American people, that it was indeed a story worthy of recounting, thereby providing for his dear wife, Julia, and family, he threw himself fairly into the task. A fine writer he proved to be, one with more style and a sense of economy of words than yours truly!
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