Текст книги "Cradle of Solitude"
Автор книги: Алекс Арчер
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
She shifted the bodies one at a time and put them in the net. She then attached the hooks on the sides of the net to a sling and tied the sling off to the rope she’d threaded through the pulley earlier. She gave all the connections a few tugs, and found that they were secure.
Satisfied, she moved over to the other end of the rope, sat down on the deck with her back to the gunwale and, taking the rope between, began to heave it backward. It went easily at first, for all they were doing was taking up the slack. But after that, when the weight of the two bodies was pulling against her, she was thankful that she had the pulley or it would have been all over before it began.
Annja managed to lift the net a few inches off the ground, then used the tip of her foot to maneuver it out over the open doors to the hold. The moment it was she let the rope slip through her hands and the bodies of the two men disappeared into the hold with nary a sound.
After that all the equipment, including the tarps and the pulley itself, were tossed down beside the bodies. She used the high-pressure hose to spray down the deck, flushing the bloodstains out as best she could and sending the water over the side into the river. She then turned the hose on herself. She changed the setting to low and rinsed every inch of herself. Satisfied that there was no blood on her, she flushed the deck of the boat a final time. She stripped out of her gloves and wetsuit, tossing them into the fish locker with everything else. Last but not least, she closed the hatch and locked it up tight with a padlock she found in the toolbox.
If somebody wanted into the fish locker, they were going to have to work at it.
Having already dug a change of clothing out of her backpack, Annja got dressed. Just being back in her jeans and sweatshirt made her feel better, made her feel more ready to take on the challenge ahead of her.
With the clock ticking down, she didn’t have time to waste. She fired up Kelly May’s engines and maneuvered her back into the main river channel. Once there, Annja opened up the throttle and headed for the marina as fast as she dared.
By the time she drove the boat into the narrow tributary that marked the only entrance to the marina where Mitchell had a slip, she was feeling fairly competent with the controls.
That was a good thing, because there was a lot more activity around the marina than there had been on the way out that morning.
Or you’re just paying more attention to it, she told herself.
Either way, she was thankful that the wheelhouse was enclosed. Several folks recognized the boat and waved as she went past and their inability to see her clearly meant she didn’t have to explain why she was at the controls instead of Jimmy.
Or where Jimmy was, for that matter.
She carefully maneuvered the boat into its slip and then shut down the engine. She watched the activity going on around her through the darkened wheelhouse windows, waited for her chance and then made a break for it, leaving the boat tied up behind her.
31
Blaine Michaels had given Annja just seventy-two hours to solve the final clues and find the treasure. That wasn’t a lot of time to begin with and she’d wasted several hours of it getting the boat back to dock. Annja was feeling the pressure as she got inside the rental car and pulled out of the marina.
She recited the third clue again to herself as she drove.
“‘Take the rifle to the place of Lee’s greatest failure, where the Peacock freely roamed. Find the spot where my doppelgänger rests eternal, deep beneath the loam.’”
Now that she’d gotten a sense for how Parker had constructed the verses, she was fairly confident that she knew how to decipher this one.
The Lee in “Lee’s greatest failure” was most likely Robert E. Lee. No other Lee held greater significance for the South. Parker would have known that his executive officer, Sykes, would understand who he was referring to immediately. That meant in order to locate her next destination, she had to figure out the place and time where Lee had failed more spectacularly than at any other.
That it was most likely a battlefield went without saying. While Lee had his share of troubles as a young man, none of his personal failures would have meant as much to Captain Parker as the events that unfurled in the closing days of the war. Lee’s actions and choices had significance at that point that went far beyond his own person. He was the symbol of a nation, the iconic presence who could rally the Rebels just by passing through camp, and his greatest failure, she reasoned, would have had national significance, as well.
Annja considered the major battles where Lee had been defeated. There was Cheat Mountain. He’d earned the nickname “Granny Lee” when his vastly superior Confederate force of fifteen thousand men had been unable to defeat two thousand Union soldiers. Seven Days, South Mountain and Antietam in 1862. Gettysburg in 1863, of course, followed by the tactical draws of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. The final defeat of the Army of Northern Virginia, the backbone of the Confederate armed forces, at Appomattox in 1865.
While the obvious choice might be Appomattox, something about it just didn’t feel right to Annja. It hadn’t been a failure in the sense that Lee had done something tactically wrong; he’d simply run out of the food, ammunition and the men he needed to keep the war effort going. That wasn’t so much Lee’s failure, she knew, as a failure of the nation.
Scratch off Appomattox, she thought.
Likewise, she could forget about the battles in the early part of the war, as well. Cheat Mountain, South Mountain, the Seven Days—none of them had any major impact on the success or failure of the war overall. Both sides had been feeling each other out, getting a sense of this thing called civil war.
That left her with two choices.
Antietam and Gettysburg.
Gettysburg might be better known to the average American, she thought, but it was Antietam that held the most significance for the war effort. Lee had chosen to ignore his advisers and push north, into Union territory, rather than try to defend Vicksburg. His immediate goal had been to secure desperately needed supplies from the rich farm country of Pennsylvania, but his decision proved to be a monumental error. Antietam proved to be the bloodiest single-day battle in the entire Civil War, with more than twenty-five thousand casualties. It was the first major battle fought on Union soil, but it did not turn out the way Lee had hoped. The Confederacy lost control of its western region and Lee himself nearly lost his army. He’d been forced to fight his way clear at Gettysburg and the Antietam campaign had been the last time Lee invaded northern territory. From that point on, it had all been downhill.
There wouldn’t have even been a Gettysburg if Lee hadn’t lost the fight at Antietam.
Lee’s greatest failure, Annja reasoned, was therefore Antietam.
That was where she had to go next.
It was all well and good, except for the fact that Sharpsburg, Maryland, was more than four hundred miles from her current location in northern Georgia. She was looking at seven, maybe eight hours of driving time and that was without any major stops.
There had to be an easier way.
Annja drove a bit farther until she saw a fast-food restaurant ahead of her. She pulled into the lot and found a place to park. Taking her laptop out of her backpack, she fired it up and connected to the restaurant’s free Wi-Fi service. Just a few moments later she connected to an online travel site and was looking to find the fastest and easiest way to get to Pennsylvania.
As it turned out, Antietam was only fifty miles or so away from Washington, DC. If she could catch a flight into Washington from either Atlanta or Savannah and rent a car on the other end, she could save herself several hours.
And if you rest on the plane, you might actually start to feel like a human being again, she told herself.
She checked the flight schedules. Atlanta sounded like the more logical choice, as it was the bigger airport, but as it turned out, a flight leaving Savannah at 5:20 p.m. not only got her into Washington sooner, but it saved her additional driving time as she was closer to that airport.
She booked the flight and then took a moment to check her email. There were several messages from Commissaire Laroche, first asking and then demanding that she get in touch. She didn’t have time to deal with him, so she simply deleted the messages, telling herself she’d get in touch when this was all said and done. Right now, she needed to focus on finding the treasure and freeing Garin.
Realizing it had been hours since she’d eaten, Annja went to the drive-through, picking up a soda and a few cheeseburgers for the ride. As she was waiting for her order, three police cars went roaring past the restaurant, sirens blaring, heading in the direction of the marina.
The police could have been going anywhere, responding to a hundred different calls, but upon seeing them Annja was convinced that the bodies aboard the Kelly Mayhad been found and that any minute now they’d realize where she was and come looking for her.
The sooner she got out of there, the better.
The food server handed over her order and Annja drove off, getting on the highway and heading south toward Savannah as quickly as she dared.
32
The Savannah airport was larger than she’d expected, but not by much. She found the car rental return, dropped the keys and the rental agreement, unsigned since it was in Garin’s name, into the slot and headed into the terminal. She checked in at one of the self-service kiosks and then quickly made her way toward security.
While she was standing in line at the security checkpoint, she noticed a man in a dark windbreaker and jeans a few lines over. Something about him looked familiar, but she couldn’t place where she had seen him before. He glanced in her direction, his gaze sliding over her without showing any sign of recognition, and Annja decided that he was just another traveler waiting to get through security.
No big deal.
She handed her ID and boarding pass to the security agent, waiting a moment for him to review it, and then moved on and dealt with the X-ray machine. After collecting her things on the other side, she headed for her gate.
She saw the man again a few minutes later, walking along behind her as part of a crowd of other passengers. He didn’t have any luggage with him, which she thought was odd, though in and of itself it didn’t prove anything, for he could have easily checked it at the ticket counter. But he seemed to be doing everything he could not to look in her direction and that sent warning signs flashing through her brain.
Something just wasn’t right.
She’d seen a ladies’ room down a short side hallway a few minutes earlier and decided it was time to see if she was imagining things or not. Without looking at him, Annja slowed, pretended to change her mind and headed back in the direction that she had come. She kept her head down and angled to the side so that she could see him out of the corner of her eye as she moved away.
Just as she’d suspected, he waited a moment for her to move ahead and then quickly broke ranks with the other passengers and headed back in the same direction she was going.
Now convinced that she was being followed, she began to be curious just who it was and what he wanted.
Her decision to come to Savannah had been impulsive, as well. If someone had been expecting her to go through an airport, the logical choice would have been Atlanta. After all, that’s where she had been headed until she’d double-checked the times of the flights she’d needed.
There wasn’t any reason for Savannah to be on anyone’s radar.
She considered the possibility that he might be a fan of the show and was simply too shy to approach her directly, but dismissed the notion as soon as it occurred to her. A fan would be openly staring. Even a shy fan would be trying to get closer, rather than hanging back and attempting to blend into the peoplescape.
No, whoever he was, he was up to no good. She could feel it in her bones. And she fully intended to confront him and to teach him the error of his ways.
The bathroom she was headed toward was at the end of a corridor that made two quick dogleg turns. She passed the first and kept walking, her ears straining to pick up the sounds of his feet on the tile as he followed behind her.
For a minute she thought he’d decided against leaving the protection of the crowd, but then she caught the sound of the soles of his shoes catching on the freshly mopped tile floor and knew he was still with her.
When she got around the second dogleg she flattened herself against the wall and waited. She’d had enough playing the mouse; it was time to be the cat, and this cat, at least, had sharp claws.
She could hear him coming toward her and she set her feet firmly where she wanted them, prepping them for the test of balance that was about to come.
As he came around the corner she grabbed him by the front of the coat and shoved him into the door of the ladies’ room just beyond. It bounced open, sending him sprawling to the floor.
She followed him in and when he moved to get back to his feet she stuck the point of her sword against his throat and waited to see if he could take a hint.
He froze in place, his hands held out in a defensive posture.
“What do you want?” she demanded in a low voice, not wanting to attract undue attention by yelling, but needing to release the anger she felt building inside her.
“Easy now,” he said. “No need for trouble.”
“You got trouble the minute you decided to muck about in my business,” she told him, pushing the tip of her sword forward slightly to prove her point. A tiny drop of blood spilled out where her sword met the skin of his throat.
He swallowed hard and Annja could see the pulse in his neck start to beat harder.
“Who sent you?”
His reply was immediate. Clearly, he wanted to be seen as cooperating. “Mr. Michaels.”
No surprise, that.
“How did you know where to find me? Have you been following me since the river?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what you are talking about. Mr. Michaels told me that you were on your way here and that I was to keep an eye on you.”
What? How did Michaels know where she was headed? She hadn’t called anyone, hadn’t told anyone what she was up to.
Her gaze fell on the cell phone sticking out of the man’s pocket and the pieces suddenly fell into place.
How could she have been so stupid?
“When you see Michaels, you tell him to stay the hell away from me until I get in touch. You got that?” He nodded.
She pulled the point away from his throat and took a step back.
A look of relief crossed his face.
Annja quickly knocked it off his face when she brought the hand holding the sword down sharply, hitting him on the head with the blunt end of the pommel.
Her would-be tracker fell over unconscious.
Releasing her sword to vanish back into the otherwhere, Annja quickly frisked him, removing his wallet and cell phone. She then grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him into a nearby stall, leaving him propped up next to the toilet with his back to the wall.
Annja stepped out of the bathroom and retraced her steps, headed back toward her gate.
Behind her, a woman began screaming and Annja knew the thug had just been discovered.
He was going to have a hard time explaining what he was doing in the ladies’ room and his lack of identification wasn’t going to make things easier.
Too bad, Annja thought as she tossed his wallet into a nearby trash can.
When she reached her gate, she took a seat away from the rest of the crowd and took out the cell phone she’d been given by Michaels. Accessing the call history, she wrote down the last number called, knowing she was going to need it later. Once she had done that, she carefully pried open the phone’s battery compartment.
She didn’t know all that much about how cell phones operated, but she was savvy enough to recognize that the small black chip that was taped to the front of the battery shouldn’t be there.
Michaels had been following her every move from the moment she left the Kelly May. He must have been afraid she’d just take the money and run when she found it, rather than going back for Garin.
Oh, ye of little faith.
Unwilling to let Michaels keep tabs on her every move, Annja was preparing to smash the phone beneath the heel of her hiking boots when another idea occurred to her. She replaced the top of the battery compartment and turned the phone back on. A nearby snack cart selling ice-cream cones had a small crowd standing in front of it so Annja headed in that direction. She got close to a woman carrying three bags while at the same time trying to deal with two squalling children under the age of five.
When the woman’s attention was elsewhere, Annja dropped the cell phone into the opening of her handbag.
With any luck, the woman would be headed for Argentina.
She checked the battery compartment of the phone she’d taken from her would-be pursuer, saw that it was clean and then programmed the number she’d memorized into that phone instead.
Fifteen minutes later, Annja boarded her own plane, content that she now held the upper hand.
33
Night had fallen by the time she deplaned in Washington, which meant the Antietam Battlefield Park would be closed. In one sense it was a blessing; Annja was exhausted. In the past twenty-four hours she’d faced off against a hungry alligator, gun-wielding psychopaths and overenthusiastic henchmen, never mind running from the police and expecting to be arrested for murder at any moment. It was too much for anyone, sword-bearer or not. She needed to get some sleep if she was going to be any use to herself or to Garin in the morning.
She decided against picking up her rental car and instead strode across the street from the terminal and walked to the hotel just beyond. She got a room for the night, arranged for an early wake-up call and was asleep within thirty seconds of her head hitting the pillow.
The alarm woke her early the next morning and she didn’t waste any time. She showered, dressed and was out the door inside of ten minutes. She walked back across the street to the airport and took the shuttle bus over to the rental car facility, where she picked up the car she’d neglected to get the night before.
She got on the highway and headed south. Antietam was less than seventy miles away and, with the traffic headed into the city instead of out, she made good time on the road. It was just after eight-thirty when she drove into the town of Sharpsburg, population 692. The battle had been fought near Antietam Creek, hence the name, and the majority of the land on which the battle had taken place was now part of Antietam National Battlefield.
She drove around town for a few minutes, wanting the park to be open for a while before she arrived so she wouldn’t appear too eager to any of the employees. The last thing she wanted was to arouse suspicion. If her hunch was correct, she was going to need her anonymity later, so it was better to be overprotective now than risk not having it when she needed it.
She parked in the parking lot outside the visitor center and then spent a few minutes just standing outside, staring off into the distance. It was hard to look out on these grassy fields and rolling hills and realize that one of the bloodiest battles ever fought on U.S. soil took place here. Annja closed her eyes, listening, and slowly the sounds of the conflict fell over her—the neighing of the horses, the cries of the men, the crack of the muskets and the boom of the cannons. The shouts of the Yankees in those hard Northern accents were eclipsed by the ululating cry that was the famed Rebel yell.
A hand gripped her shoulder, pulling her out of her reverie.
“You all right, miss?” a kindly voice asked, and Annja opened her eyes to find an elderly park ranger standing at her elbow. “You seemed to be lost there for a moment.”
“Oh, yes,” she replied, smiling genuinely for the first time in days. “I was just trying to imagine what it would have been like.”
He glanced out over the field and the same wistful look that Annja was certain was in her own eyes crept into his. She realized she had found a kindred spirit. The ranger knew what she was talking about; she didn’t need to specify that she’d been trying to imagine what it would have been like on the day of the battle.
“Hell on earth, I suspect, miss—hell on earth.”
That was as good a description as any, she supposed.
He shook himself, as if clearing away the vision, and turned back to her with a smile. “Charlie Connolly,” he said, extending his hand.
She shook. “Annja Creed.”
“I thought I recognized you. Planning on doing a show on the ghosts of Antietam?”
The question caught her off guard and the only thing she could think to say in response was to ask, “You’ve got ghosts?”
“Even if we didn’t, would that stop that show of yours?” he asked, and then laughed aloud at his wittiness.
Annja had to admit that he had her there.
After laughing with him for a moment, Annja asked, “Can you tell me where I can find a listing of all the graves in the park?”
“Looking for someone in particular or just doing research?” he wanted to know, once he stopped chuckling and had wiped the tears of merriment out of his eyes.
“Does it make a difference?”
He shrugged. “If you’re looking for general information, I can probably help you out myself, but if you’re looking for a certain grave, you’ll have to use the computers in the main wing of the visitor’s center.
He took a map out of his back pocket, opened it so Annja could see the small jumble of buildings at the west entrance and then circled one of them with a felt-tip pen he took out of his pocket.
“That there’s the visitor’s center and it should have what you need.”
Annja thanked him for his kindness and headed in that direction.
The visitor’s center was a granite-fronted single-story steel-and-glass building. Inside were historical exhibits, a theater, a series of public computers for learning more about the site and a park store. Annja paid for a half hour of time on the computer and went right to work.
The records system was straightforward and easy to use. All she had to do was put the soldier’s name into the system and it would tell her if, indeed, he was buried at the park and what section and row his marker could be found in if he were.
Eager to get on with finding the treasure, Annja typed William Parker, Captaininto the search field.
The machine clanked and whirred for a second and then spit out a reply.
No information found.
That’s strange, she thought.
She tried again, this time typing slowly and being certain she’d spelled things correctly.
Still nothing.
She tried without the captain. And finally another time with the last name first, followed by the first name.
The computer just didn’t want to take it.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said to herself.
The clue instructed her to find Parker’s doppelgänger’s grave. That seemed straightforward enough. A doppelgänger was a German word that meant, literally, body double. A mystical creature that looked precisely like the original and had a tendency to try and take over the other’s life.
Obviously mystical creatures didn’t exist, which meant the word needed to be read in a more realistic sense. To Annja’s way of thought, that meant someone with the same name.
But she’d been through the database a couple of times and there wasn’t anyone buried in Antietam National Cemetery with the name William Parker. There was a Corey Parker, and a Parker Blue, but no William Parker.
She didn’t understand. The grave should be here!
Unless you’re in the wrong place.
The thought loomed up suddenly from the depths of her mind, but once it had surfaced she couldn’t dismiss it as easily as it had arrived.
Was that it? Had she chosen the wrong place?
Annja sat back and mentally reviewed the choices she’d made to arrive at this particular place over some other. She felt like her reasoning was sound. Antietam had been a major turning point for Lee and for the South, as well. Some historians even called it the beginning of the end. Never again would Lee’s precious Army of Northern Virginia invade Union soil. Never again would Lee have the chance to disrupt the organization of the North on such a grand scale. By failing at Antietam, Lee had determined the final course of the war. It had just taken a few more years for that course to play out.
So what had she missed?
She took a moment and wrote out the clue on the piece of scrap paper she had in front of her.
The minute she did so, she saw her mistake.
In deciding that Antietam was the right place, she’d skipped an entire line of the verse.
“‘Where the Peacock freely roamed…’” she said softly.
What the hell does that mean?
It had to be significant; it wouldn’t be there otherwise.
She got up from her seat and wandered over to the information desk, where the fussy secretary had been replaced by the kind old park ranger who’d asked over her welfare earlier.
Seeing her, he asked, “Find what you was lookin’ for, miss?”
“Not quite. Does the name ‘the Peacock’ mean anything to you?”
He laughed, “You mean other than the name of the bar I used to frequent in Bangkok during the war?”
Annja smiled. “While I’d love to hear your reminiscences, and it sounds like a fascinating place, I was thinking more in direct relation to the Civil War.”
He nodded. “I reckon you’re talking about General Stuart, then.”
“Stuart?” She was familiar with most of the war’s central figures, and while she recognized the name, she couldn’t put a finger on who he was or why he might have been called the Peacock.
“General James Ewell Brown Stuart. Commander of the cavalry under Robert E. Lee. Known as ‘the eyes of the Army’ as well as ‘the Peacock.’”
Now she could place him. Here at Antietam he’d ridden completely around General George McClellan’s Union Army undetected, not a small feat for a force of that size on horseback.
“I understand the ‘eyes of the Army’ reference, but why ‘the Peacock’?”
“Stuart had a habit of dressing, shall we say, a bit flamboyantly. One of his favorite outfits consisted of a bright red cape, a yellow sash and a jaunty little cap with a peacock feather stuffed in the hatband. Because of that feather, and his tendency to puff up over his accomplishments whenever he had the opportunity to talk about them, his many detractors labeled him the Peacock.”
The Peacock. How funny, she thought, and how fitting.
Stuart had been here. “The Peacock” had roamed free at Antietam. It seemed as if her decision to come here had been correct. So what was she missing?
“One more question for you. What battle would you label General Lee’s greatest error?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Gettysburg.”
“Gettysburg? Really?” She was surprised. She’d fully expected him to say Antietam. “Why, if I may ask?”
It was as if Annja had just said the magic words. Charlie’s face lit up, like a junior scholar who’d just been asked by the king for his opinion on an important matter of state.
“Lee shouldn’t have lost at Gettysburg. He had the Union Army in retreat to the north and west of town on the first day of battle. He understood the tactical advantage of taking the high ground and, had he done so, the Rebels most certainly would have won the day.”
“So why didn’t he?” Annja asked.
“Well, that’s where folks’ opinions tend to differ a bit. Lee did order General Ewell and Second Corps to take Cemetery Hill that first day, but he did so in the form of a discretionary order. Take the hill if its practical, you see. Lee was used to relaying orders like that to Stonewall Jackson, Second Corps prior commander. The discretionary nature of the orders allowed Jackson great flexibility, increasing his usefulness in the overall command. Lee always knew he could count on Jackson to attack, so even if an order was discretionary, more often than not it was carried out with aplomb.”
Charlie sighed. “Unfortunately, while a good general, Ewell was no Stonewall Jackson. The heights looked difficult to take and the orders had given him leeway not to risk his men if he didn’t have to, so he made the decision to stay put, never realizing that he was dooming his men to a suicidal attack the next day, long after the Union troops had dug in.”
“Where was General Stuart during all this?”
Charlie grimaced. “Now there’s the true culprit of the battle, if you ask me. The Peacock was out and about with his three cavalry brigades, “roaming around the Rebels,” as he called it. He didn’t arrive at Gettysburg until midafternoon of the second day and his men didn’t even see action until day three. It was a travesty.”
Charlie’s turn of phrase echoed in her ear. Stuart had been roaming around.
Where the Peacock freely roamed…
She was in the wrong place.
A glance at her watch told her it was almost eleven. She’d been there for almost two hours.
Two hours wasted.
Two hours closer to Garin’s execution.
She had to hurry.
“You’ve been very helpful. Thanks, Charlie!” she said as she turned and headed for the door, leaving the park ranger standing there, shaking his head and wondering just what it was that he had said.
Ten minutes later Annja was back behind the wheel headed toward Pennsylvania and Gettysburg National Military Park. Thankfully, the two battlefields were less than an hour away from each other. She could be in Gettysburg just after lunch. That should give her time to locate the doppelgänger’s grave and figure out what to do from there.
She wondered how Garin was doing and if he was all right. He was tough—of that there wasn’t any doubt—so she wasn’t as concerned as she’d been when Bernard was in the hands of that madman Michaels.
When she first realized that Garin had been taken, she’d thought about calling in Griggs and the rest of the Dragontech Security team. No doubt there was some rapid-response system worked out if Garin ever went missing, but she’d ultimately rejected the idea because she realized she didn’t know how to get in touch with Griggs directly. She’d never had reason to, until now.
