The Bookman's Promise by John Dunning

Author:John Dunning
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781585474554
Publisher: Center Point Pub
Published: 2003-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

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All the next day we were like tourists, walking the streets, talking to people we met, probing the babble of the marketplace not far from our door, strolling along the Battery. The Battery is a walled promenade around the tip of the city with a green behind it and some of the town’s finest old houses in the background. The view of the harbor is spectacular. One elderly gentleman offered the pompous opinion that this was where the Cooper and Ashley rivers met to form the Atlantic Ocean. We should all have shared a hearty laugh except that the old bird seemed absolutely serious and might have been offended. Richard listened politely but I knew he was far more interested in the geography than in any local silliness advancing this city, as lovely as it was, as the center of the Western world. From any point on the Battery we could see Fort Sumter, that brick fortress sitting on its man-made shoal in the mouth of the harbor. On both sides the land curved in tight, with Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island to our left and Fort Johnson on James Island to the right, giving Sumter the appearance of a cork in a bottle. “Exactly right,” Burton said when I put it that way. “It’s a cork in a bottle.”

“When it’s finished it will make the city pretty much impregnable,” I said.

“If they finish it. And if they get the guns mounted, and if all three forts are controlled by the same side.”

“A lot of ifs.”

“Indeed. And if the wrong side had it, speaking from their viewpoint, its guns could easily be turned on the city it was built to protect.”

The fort was just a speck from there and I doubted that even the most powerful guns could reach that far. But Richard looked askance and said, “You don’t know much about modern warfare, my friend,” and I had to admit the truth of that.

We walked around the point and back again. The sun was warm and bright, a blessed relief from the miseries of the road, and again I was so delighted I had come. I was in the company of an extraordinary man and he liked me: what else mattered? But then as I stood watching the waterbound fortress, Richard moved away, and when I looked around for him he was standing off at a distance, scribbling in that damned notebook. All my suspicion came back in a gush. What was he doing? If he wanted to spy, why bring me along? That part made no sense. But my doubt magnified and doubled again, and abruptly I walked up to him, quickly enough that I could see he was not making notes but a sketch of some kind.

“What are you doing there?” I asked, making the question sound as much as possible like idle curiosity.

“Just drawing a picture.” He snapped his book shut. “To remember the day.”

Again this was so plausible that it had to be real.

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