Seahawk Burning by Randall Peffer

Author:Randall Peffer [Peffer, Randall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-3175-0
Publisher: Tyrus Books
Published: 2012-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

34

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Early November, 1863

“As we speak, I believe my boys may be putting the pinch on a boatman who can help us,” Major E. J. Allen says.

He and Welles are meeting at their usual spot, the grove in the woods along Rock Creek where Welles takes his exercise on horseback each morning. The morning dew is still on the tall grass where the men’s horses are grazing. The weather has finally turned coolish in Washington. This morning is downright chilly beneath the canopy of trees. The secretary and the detective are dressed in heavy tweed riding jackets, but to keep warm they are skipping stones across the creek like a couple of boys.

“What boatman?”

“A Negro named Plowdon. He’s an army scout in Carolina for us.”

“I don’t understand what …”

“It seems this Plowdon helped Semmes’s flame-haired hussy escape.”

“To where?”

“That’s what I aim to find out.”

“Do you truly think she could be any use to the nation’s cause?” Welles winds up, tosses a small, flat stone. It skips twice on the water then sinks short of the far bank.

“Wouldn’t you like to get your hands on that bleeding wench again after all the trouble she caused you and me back in …”

“Don’t tell me this is about settling an old debt?”

Allen asks if Welles remembers that a year ago the major was interrogating Maude Galway in a barracks outside Frederick, Maryland. For weeks. It was shortly after the battle of Antietam. Federal troops caught Maude and her tomboy girlfriend Fiona O’Hare posing as nurses for the South. O’Hare had a page from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar secreted in her corset, folded over and addressed to someone with the initials “J.W.B.”

“Those initials didn’t mean anything to me then,” says Allen as he reaches down for a throwing stone of his own. “But now I believe the script was meant for the actor.”

“What actor?”

“Booth. John Wilkes Booth.”

“The fellow you once said you thought was involved with Senator Hale’s daughter?”

“Exactly.”

“And Booth you say was named for an ancestor of our old friend Rear Admiral Charles Wilkes.”

“Booth, Hale, Wilkes, Seward. I believe they are all peas in a pod. All arms of the Secret Line or the Knights of the Golden Circle and Iago.”

If Allen is so sure, Welles asks, then why bother trying to track down Semmes’s strumpet? She and her girlfriend were at most lowly spies and couriers for the Rebs. Besides, hasn’t Allen had his men watching Hale, Wilkes, and Seward for months?

“These are clever people we are dealing with. They know how to cover themselves, Welles.”

“I think tracking down the tart is wasting our time and resources, if you want to know the truth. I think you would be better off putting your energy into developing a better network overseas.”

Allen gives him a glaring look.

Welles says that from what he hears from the consuls and his private sources, England, France, and Ireland are all thick with Confederate agents up to no end of mischief. The Rebs have become virtual street gangs in Liverpool … and possibly the ports of southern Ireland.

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