Sion Crossing (32 page)

“Is there any word from Smithsville?”

It was Joe who looked at Latimer.

“Is there any word from Smithsville?” The bespectacled man repeated the question sharply.

Joe shrugged. “We only got a coupla boys there ’fore we got word about him—” he jerked his head at Latimer “—an’ less’n we got the others in there’s no way we can cover the town worth a damn.” His face twisted. “Not that ah’d set any store on any of those useless little bastards out there.”

A nerve in the bespectacled man’s cheek twitched. “They know strangers when they see them.”

“Strangers—hell! The whole goddam’ town’s crawlin’ with strangers … f’ the parade.” Joe shook his head. “Mebbe if ah wuz there … an’ mebbe Jack—he knows what t’look for … But ah got him on the bridge, ’cause we need a good man there—” He looked at Latimer suddenly. “Ain’t he strangers enough for you, for chrissake?”

The bespectacled man himself looked at Latimer at last, and his lack of expression was not reassuring. “You have all the approach roads covered?”

“Damn right, ah have!” Joe accepted the question. “But ah wouldn’t count on boys t’do man’s work, if that’s what you want—huh?” He gave Latimer another look, coldly appraising, and then came back to his master. “He’s the one, then?”

The bespectacled man stopped looking at Latimer. “We will bring the departure plan forward, as a precaution.”

“To when?”

“To … immediately, shall we say?” The man watched Joe, and so did Latimer.

Nothing changed in Joe’s face except his eyes, which went as blank as if a light had been turned off behind them. “That’ll be mebbe an hour—” Joe looked at his watch “—if that’s the way it is—?”

The bespectacled man seemed satisfied. “Yes.”

Joe looked at Latimer. “And him?”

“We have matters to discuss … Mr Latimer and I.”

Latimer didn’t like the sound of that. And, from the way the white-haired man had stirred and sat up during the exchange, and now from the look of apprehension on his face, neither did he. In fact … although it must be a trick of light, or maybe it was a reflection of his own fear … but in fact the man seemed to have aged shockingly in the last minute. The lines on his face seemed deeper, and there was a hint of silver stubble on his cheeks; his well-cut suit hung on him as though it was too big—or as though he had crumpled inside it under the pressure of a world which had suddenly become a size too small for him.

“My friend—” The bespectacled man also seemed to have caught the change in his colleague “—of course, you will have things to do? But we have an hour … and you are not unprepared.”

The elderly man levered himself out of the chair and stood up slowly.

The bespectacled man glanced at Joe. “What are you waiting for?” he snapped. “You know what to do.”

“Sure.” Joe looked at Latimer.
“And him?”

“I told you. I will ring when I want you.” The man—
The Man
—waited for Joe to withdraw. Then he turned back to the old man. “Do not despair. He is competent, and we are well-prepared—we are efficient … as you have cause to know.” He projected calm confidence at the old man. “And you know also that we have talked of this moment, my friend … It is not a time of shame and defeat—it is a time of victory, and of honour and recognition to come.”

The old man’s face was grey. He stared at The Man for a moment, and then at Latimer. He no longer appeared to be frightened, but Latimer saw that he was on the far and darker side of fear, beyond hope, for which there was no word in the dictionary.

“I have things to do,” the old man said to himself.

“And we have things to do,” said The Man.

Latimer waited.

“So, Mr Latimer …” The Man collected Latimer’s belongings into a neat pile on top of the paper Joe had delivered. “So you are here because … long ago Sion Crossing burned—yes?”

The trouble with that was that it was true, more or less if not quite, thought Latimer.

“Yes.”

And the trouble with that—
the trouble even with the exact truth
—was that it was not going to be good enough. And that was a far greater trouble. In fact, it was the last and greatest trouble of all here and now. Because, although he didn’t know who this man was, he knew
what
he was now—he knew the type as well as he knew Joe’s type. So he knew, even more surely than he had known with Joe, that he was fighting for his life.

And he had one hour in which to fight for it—

Or maybe less than that—

He shook his head, and tried to smile disarmingly. There was the desk between them, and he was no fighting man anyway. And then there was an armed Confederate on the verandah below, never mind Joe somewhere in the house behind him; and the woods were crawling with other armed men. And he was half a world away from any help.

“No?” The Man correctly interpreted the smile as surrender.

“Not exactly.” He had to play the cards in his hands, but he had only one trump. And in this game instinct inclined him to lead with it. “Do you know Senator Cookridge?”

God! It was a high trump—he could see that from the surprise in The Man’s face. Had he played it too soon?

“I know …
of
him—yes?”

That was something to be built on. “I’ve known him for years. Tom and I are old friends—we share the American Civil War as a hobby, you see.” The lies came to him like old friends repaying long-forgotten debts. “He was in London just recently, and he asked me to do him a favour.” The more he could hint at his own importance, the more The Man might be inhibited. “I first met him when I was over here as the Prime Minister’s economic adviser in ’75 … and then, after that, when I was with the embassy—that was when I got to know his family.” He shrugged, self-deprecating. “I’d never have met the President, but for him … so I owe him a favour or two, even apart from friendship—and apart from how jolly interesting this Sion Crossing business is, you know …” He gestured vaguely, as though to something they shared.

“What favour?” The Man had recovered a little too quickly for comfort, in spite of all his name-dropping.

“Well … you know the Sion Crossing story—?”

“Tell me, Mr. Latimer.”

Latimer frowned. “But you must know—? Surely—”

“
Tell me
, Mr Latimer—if you please.” The steel glinted through a hole in the velvet.

“Well … there was the gold shipment from Atlanta, in ’64—you really don’t know?” Latimer feigned incredulity.

The Man’s face became implacably hostile.

“Very well—all right!” Latimer couldn’t pretend not to have seen that anger, with the seconds ticking away. “There was this shipment of valuables from the Atlanta bank, when Sherman’s army started to encircle the town … But it wasn’t very big—most of it was worthless paper, in fact … And it only got as far as here—at Sion Crossing, anyway.”

The Man seemed to be holding himself in check. “Continue.”

“Well …” He had to get Lucy Cookridge’s father’s facts right “… then some of Sherman’s bummers came here, when his army was marching to the sea—”

“
Bummers
?”

“Foragers.” For the first time Latimer really believed that The Man knew less about the Civil War than he did. “Their job was to sweep up all the supplies for the army, and then to burn what they couldn’t take with them.” He searched for an analogy. “Like the Germans retreating through Russia in the last war—‘scorched earth’, I think it’s called … But it’s an old military tactic—the Romans were experts at it … Latin
vastare
, ‘to lay waste’—”

“Come to the point, Mr Latimer.”

“That is the point. A party of Sherman’s men came here to take the food and burn the house.” He blinked at the man. “You’ve seen the ruins in the woods?”

A single nod. “So they burnt the house. So?”

“Ah … well, you see, it wasn’t quite as simple as that. You see … Tom Cookridge has been doing this research—Tom and I, that is.”

“On Sion Crossing?”

“No … At least, not to start with. He—we … have been following this Iowan regiment, which fought all the way from Chattanooga to Atlanta, and then from Atlanta to the sea. And these foragers were from that regiment. And … we’ve been collecting original material—letters and diaries, and such like. And stories that have been handed down … And we’ve got this particular letter, which contains the real story of what happened at Sion Crossing.”

“The real story?” There was a curious expression on The Man’s face. “What story?”

“About the Sion Crossing treasure. They’d buried it in the garden, for safety. But when the soldiers came … There was only this one woman in the house, and two negro servants—the men were away at the war, the slaves had all run off … But she couldn’t bear for them to burn the house, so she offered them the treasure instead—to show them where it was in exchange for sparing the house.”

“But they did burn the house, Mr Latimer.” The Man looked at his watch.

“Yes. But that was because one of the servants had gone to get help—there was a Confederate militia company that had just passed through, and wasn’t far away. And they arrived just as the Iowans had recovered the box. So there was a fight—that was when the house burnt.” Latimer nodded. “It was a running fight. The Iowans were outnumbered, and they had to get back across the river—the creek—where their comrades were. And the box was too heavy, so they broke it open, and shared out the gold coins … Or rather … they just grabbed what they could, and ran like hell.”

The Man nodded slowly. “And—?”

“The Confederates killed several of them, with the gold on them … In fact, they probably got the ones who tried to take the most gold.” Latimer shrugged.

“And that is the real story?” The Man stirred behind the desk.

“
No
—that’s the
official
story,” said Latimer hastily. “That’s the story everyone knows, you see.”

The Man looked at him. “It is not true?”

Latimer saw that he was not really very interested in the question, or in the story itself, true or false, and felt a pang of despair.

“Yes—I mean,
no
…” If he couldn’t appeal to The Man’s greed to support the big names he had dropped then he had nothing left at all.

“Yes … or no?” The Man seemed slightly amused. “Are you trying to delay me, as the lady of Sion Crossing tried to delay the … the bummers, Mr Latimer?”

“What?” Latimer fought his despair.

“Come to the point, Mr Latimer. The real story?”

“Yes.” The real story was all he had. “The letter we had … it was from a farmer in Iowa. It was a story he had from his grandfather, who’d had it from his father.”

“His father?” The Man was playing with him. “His grandfather’s father—?”

“His father’s grandfather—”
Damn!
“—he was the soldier who carried the box. He was there when they broke it open—he saw what was inside.”

The man nodded. “He saw the gold—so?”

“There was the gold, and a lot of paper money—useless Confederate money … and documents … he didn’t know what they were, and he didn’t care.” Latimer remembered Lucy Cookridge’s father’s conclusion. “He was seventeen years old, and he was straight off his father’s farm at Cedar Rapids—he was probably barely literate.”

The Man raised an eyebrow. “And these documents were important?”

Latimer drew a breath. “He didn’t care about the documents. But there was a small tin box full of beads, and he had a little sister back in Iowa. So he took a handful of gold coins and the tin box. And … they were trying to get to the bridge, by the church, but the Confederates had it covered, so they had to swim the river … So he stuffed the tin box between the roots of a tree down by the creek, because he couldn’t get it into any of his pockets, and there wasn’t room in his knapsack—he had his spare shirt in it, wrapped round a big piece of bacon he’d taken from the house.”

“A prudent soldier!” The Man looked at his watch again.

So they had come to it at last.

Latimer drew another breath. “The woman who tried to trade the treasure for the house was Marie-Louise Alexander of Sion Crossing. She had three brothers—Simon was killed at Antietam in 1862, Richard died in a POW camp on Rock Island in ’64, and James was killed in the trenches of Petersburg in ’65—he was the eldest. And Marie-Louise died of small-pox in Savannah in ’66, at her grandparents’ home.”

“A tragic story.”

“Their parents both died before the war.”

“Then they were fortunate. Your time is almost up, Mr Latimer.”

“Their parents were James Alexander, of Sion Crossing, and Marie-Louise de Brissac, of Charleston. And Marie-Louise de Brissac’s dowry chiefly consisted in the de Brissac pearls, which were brought out of Haiti in 1798. They were also known as the
Stupor Mundi
pearls, because they were so perfect. There’s a description of them in Samuel Tracey’s
Southern Aristocracy
, and the word he uses is ‘breath-taking’. And they were last seen in public at the christening of Simon Alexander in 1844 … After that, there’s no recorded sighting. But Professor Tracey thought they’d been sold in aid of the Confederate war effort.”

The Man nodded again, but very slowly. “But you think that is not the case?”

“I think …” But it was what Lucy Cookridge’s father had thought. But that didn’t matter! “… I think Professor Tracey didn’t do his homework properly. Or … let’s say, I don’t think Colonel James Alexander loved the Confederacy enough to give his pearls to it—even though he died for it.” It was good, sound research, after all, even though it was all secondhand, to be taken on trust. “And I also think that an Iowa farm-boy might not know pearls from child’s beads when he saw them.” Latimer sat back in his chair. “That is what I think.”

The Man reached under the table. “So … the child’s beads are still in their box, somewhere down by the stream?”

They had come to the very last card. “No.”

“No?” The Man frowned.

Latimer pretended a sly confidence which he certainly didn’t feel. “I said ‘down by the creek’. But I’m not quite as foolish as that.” He smiled. “I’d say … I’d say that, without me to guide you, you’ve got no chance of finding them. Or … say, given about ten years, and the right equipment, and enough men … maybe you could, at that. But maybe not even then.”