Love and War

Quincy.'

111

So infernally simple, Orry thought as he slipped across the field, following the same route he had taken the first time. Ever since his conversation with Pilbeam, he had marveled at the beauty of the obvious — effective because it was almost always overlooked. The investigator from Winder's office had found no evidence of a plot because he was part of it.

The evening was moonless and still. Orry's broadcloth felt heavy with dampness; his shirt was already soaked through. Half­way to the implement building, he paused to survey the field by the fitful pulses of red light accompanying the federal bombard­ment to the south.

The earth around him had lately been subjected to digging and trampling. He cast his mind back. His first night here, he remembered, the field was weedy. Then he had ridden out a second time and discovered —

What? He cudgeled his tired mind while sniffing through his dripping nose. He choked off an unexpected sneeze with his hand clapped over his face. He distinctly remembered plowed soil on his second visit. Curious that someone would work the field of an abandoned —

'Stupid. Stupid!' The obvious again, and he had missed it. He knew how the Whitworth rifles and ammunition had disappeared. They had been hidden right under everyone's nose.

'Feet,' he corrected in a whisper. The trick came straight from Edgar Poe's famous detective tale of the stolen letter. As a Poe fancier, he was doubly humiliated. And I'll wager Mr. Quincy took charge of inspecting this part of the farm. Mr. Quincy strolled over the newly plowed field and noticed nothing unusual.

Had Powell himself hidden somewhere on the property all the time? With Quincy involved, it was certainly possible. Orry rubbed his nose with his damp handkerchief while red light ran around the southern horizon and the artillery storm muttered again. He put the handkerchief away, reached across beneath his coat, and drew the navy Colt from the bulky holster tied to his left leg. He pulled the hammer back to half-cock and resumed his cautious advance.

He approached the same light crack through which he had spied before. When close to the building, he discerned a buggy and two saddle horses near the main house. He pressed his cheek to the wood and bit down on his lower lip in a flash of rage. There, perched on one of the dirt-covered Whitworth crates resurrected from the field, James Huntoon.

Gaps showed between the buttons of Huntoon's bulging waist­coat. He had removed his outer coat, rolled up his sleeves, and was holding a large piece of paper by the edges. Some sort of plan or diagram. He tilted it forward, resting it on his paunch so others could see it.

'May I have your attention?' someone else said. 'This is the device Mr. Powell described before he was called away for a few days to attend to other details of our campaign.' Orry frowned; the speaker was out of his line of sight, but the voice was maddeningly familiar.

He knelt to change position and his angle of vision. Beside Huntoon on the rifle case he now saw a bright lantern. To the right of that, lounging against a beam and picking his teeth with a straw, the benign Mr. Quincy. Orry seethed.

He heard his sister's voice next. 'Are you sure it will work, Captain Bellingham?'

Bellingham? Had he found the man who had shown her the painting —?

'My dear Mrs. Huntoon, infernal devices invented by General Rains at the Torpedo Bureau have a notable success record.'

A corpulent man waddled into view. Only his back was visible, but something about the shape of his head tantalized Orry as much as his voice did. The man extended his right hand; Orry saw a large lump of coal in his palm. If this was indeed the Bellingham responsible for Madeline's humiliation and flight, Orry was tempted to shoot him in the back.

Lifting his hand slightly to call attention to the coal, the man said, 'A device similar to this was placed in the coal bunker of the captured blockade-runner Greyhound when she lay at anchor farther down the James. A stoker shoveled it into the boiler with his coal scoop, and if Ben Butler and Admiral Porter had been standing in slightly different locations when the device exploded, there would be two more Yankees in hell.'

Orry identified the voice. That is, he put a name to it — the right name — though he could hardly believe it. To the bubbling stew of his anger, the recognition added memories going all the way back to his first summer at the Academy; memories involving George and, later, Charles in Texas, when Charles wrote to express surprise and dismay at the unexplained vendetta of a senior officer of the Second Cavalry.

Israel Quincy made a sucking sound. 'Sure is a fooler, Captain. Nobody could tell it from real coal.'

'Not unless they handled it.' He gave the device to Quincy, whose hands sagged beneath the weight. 'Examine the casting. The shape, the texture, the perfect pigmentation of the iron — genius.'

That was the moment Orry saw the profile of the former Union officer who had somehow become involved in a Confederate conspiracy. To be positive, he scrutinized the three chins, the receding hair, the one small, dark eye visible to him. There was no doubt. He was looking at Elkanah Bent — alias Bellingham.

If Orry hadn't seen Bent, made the identification, the rest might not have happened as it did; he might have crept away and ridden back to Richmond to turn out a full company of the provost's men, before the Whitworths could be buried again. But the life­long vendetta of Elkanah Bent of Ohio — a vendetta that had continued down to the present, with the revelation to Ashton — twisted some key in Orry's head. A door that should have remained locked burst open.

There were just three men inside, but in his state of mind it wouldn't have mattered had there been thirty. He stood and strode around the corner of the building. He had the navy Colt on full cock when he booted the door inward.

'Everyone stand still.'

Ashton clapped hands over her mouth. Huntoon dropped the diagram and slid sideways along the edge of the crate. As for Bent — no mistake as to who it was, none — his face was full of bewilderment that swiftly melted into terrified recognition.

'Orry Main —?'

'I'll be a son of a bitch,' said the calmly professional Quincy, shooting his right hand beneath his parson's coat. Orry twisted toward him and fired. The bullet flung Quincy backward against the beam. Orry heard his head smack as he dragged out his pepperbox, trigger finger jerking and jerking even as he slid down to land on his rump. The barrels discharged one after another; the last shot blew off the toe of Quincy's left boot as he toppled sideways.

Bent was juggling the coal bomb, shaking like a child caught with a stolen cookie. Orry saw Ashton warn her husband with her eyes. Attack him, or he'll get us all. Cringing, Huntoon shook his head. The image was reflected in one of the dirty windows overlooking the river.

'Captain Bellingham, is it?' Orry said in a raw voice. 'I sure as hell don't know how you got here, but I know where you're bound, you and your friends. You're going to prison for plotting the murder of the President.'

Bent was recovering; his eyes had a sly look. Like Orry, he didn't understand how the astonishing confrontation had come about. But he understood the potential consequences.

Huntoon pressed a fist into his groin and squealed. 'Dear God — he knows. He knows everything!'

'So does Secretary Seddon,' Orry said, 'and the President himself. They've been anxious to catch the culprits with the evidence. You're done for, James. You, too, my dear, treacherous slut of a sist —'

Huntoon snatched the lantern by its bail and threw it.

Orry ducked. The lantern struck the siding behind him, shattering. Droplets of oil splattered the wall and dirt floor. Strewn pieces of straw began to smoke.

Orry had a swift impression of Huntoon passing him, Ashton dragging him by the hand like a child. He could give them no attention because Bent was rushing at him, raising the black iron casting with both hands. My God, he'll blow us up —