Norris had known for some time that the Yankee president, Abraham Lincoln, planned to take part in the ceremony dedicating the new cemetery for the Union dead at the Gettysburg battlefield. That information was hardly news because a president took part in similar public events on a regular basis. But Norris had anticipated an opportunity. He had sent a small band of saboteurs to ambush Lincoln's train on its way to Gettysburg.
There were many in the Confederacy who opposed such means of winning the war. But if Norris had learned anything in nearly three years of war, it was that the South had to exploit every Union weakness it could find if the Confederacy was to survive.
However, the dispatch he had just read changed everything. That Scottish zealot Alan Pinkerton, who ran the Union's network of spies, had rooted out the saboteurs. Still, to avoid any further danger to the president the Yankees proposed to do something quite daring and extraordinary. It also presented Norris with a great opportunity. He could make the Yankees' cleverness work against them.
Norris paused to light another cigar. He puffed a blue cloud of tobacco smoke toward the ceiling, thinking. Several minutes passed before he suddenly called out in annoyance, "Fletcher! Where the hell are you?"
The captain hurried back in. "No mistakes, sir. The dispatch is accurate. I would stake my life on it."
Leaning back in his chair, Norris kept his eyes focused on the ceiling. "Would you? I'll keep that in mind. Now tell me, is that fellow Arthur Percy still in Richmond? Or has the general shot him?"
"Percy?" Fletcher didn't want to show that he listened to common gossip, so he pretended not to know the name, even though the whole city had heard the scandal.
"Don't be difficult, Fletcher. I'm talking about the one who was philandering with the general's wife."
"Oh. I suppose just about everyone has heard of that Colonel Percy." Fletcher sneered. "Not a very respectable sort, from what I understand."
"He's just the one I want," Norris said. "He's a good cavalry officer and a very brave man, no matter what else is being said about him. Find him and bring him here, Fletcher. He's about to undertake a mission for me."
Fletcher saluted and began to leave. Norris called him back. "While you're at it, Fletcher, find Tom Flynn as well."
"Flynn, sir?" Fletcher made no pretense about not knowing that name. He curled a disdainful upper lip in disgust. "The Irishman."
"I take it you don't like him, Captain?"
"No, sir. He's a lowborn immigrant."
"Why don't you point that out to him, the next time you see him?"
Fletcher cleared his throat nervously, plainly uncomfortable. "Flynn isn't worth the effort, sir."
"Go find them for me, Fletcher. Find Colonel Percy and the Irishman. They're just the men for the job I have in mind."
“Yes, sir.”
Norris smiled again with a grin that could freeze water, not to mention the blood in Fletcher’s veins. “Who knows? There might even be something in it for you, Captain.”
Chapter 4
“Forbes has got to be here somewhere," Colonel Arthur Percy said.
"Last time I seen him was on this street with that woman," Bill Hazlett replied, then leaned over to spit tobacco juice. "Ugly bitch. Tits like a goat."
"You see, boys, I told you women are nothing but trouble," Percy said, lecturing the small band of soldiers who walked with him down one of Richmond's most wretched streets.
"You would know, wouldn't you, Colonel?" asked Hazlett, a tall, evil-looking man with a nasty scar under his right cheekbone. He smiled, revealing long, unevenly spaced teeth that resembled fangs. Sergeant's stripes slashed across the arm of his tattered Confederate uniform.
The others laughed and Percy joined in, even though Hazlett’s comments irritated him. Hazlett had a way of making salty remarks that marched right up to the edge of blatant. Most officers would not have tolerated insubordinate talk from a mere sergeant, but Hazlett was family, more or less. He was capable enough as a sergeant, but the real reason he wore stripes was because he was married — badly — to one of Percy's cousins. Twice the poor woman had shown up at the Percys' big house with bruises and a black eye. There might even have been trouble between Percy and Hazlett if the war hadn't broken out.
It was hard to pull rank on your cousin-in-law. Most of the time, Percy tried to treat Hazlett like an equal. The last thing he needed was a feud from back home to haunt them now. Still, he suspected that Hazlett despised him behind his back.
It did not help that Percy's recently ended affair with a prominent general's young wife was still feeding the gossip mills of Richmond. Everyone expected a duel as soon as the hot-headed general returned to the capital. The colonel had a nonchalant attitude toward all the talk. A Yankee bullet or the general's— it was all the same to him.
"Do as I say, but not as I do," Percy added in a fatherly tone when the laughter died away. "A truly wise man — wiser than any of you, at least — learns from the mistakes of others, not his own."
"Hell, Colonel, a wise man would have made damn sure her husband didn't find out," a soldier named John Cook said, and once more the group erupted in laughter.
Percy laughed with them. Even though he was an officer, he had been with these men too long for anything but an easy familiarity. He had even grown up with a few of them. They would all be neighbors again back home, if they survived the war.
Percy was thirty-five years old, sandy haired and blue-eyed. Every inch of his lean, six-foot frame looked the part of Southern hero. He was one of those dashing men the South had a gift for producing: a cavalier at home on horseback, who rode with a sword in one hand and a revolver in the other. He could shoot, he could ride, and he wasn't afraid of anything or anyone — especially not the Yankees who had invaded his homeland.
Percy didn't like regular soldiering with its "Yes sirs" and "No sirs" and gallant charges into the mouths of cannons. Percy liked playing the fox. Outsmarting Yankees. Beating the odds. His raids behind Yankee lines had made him famous when accounts of his deeds had appeared in newspapers in the North and South. Then his luck began to run out. A Yankee bullet had put him in a Richmond hospital.
It was in the Confederate capital that Percy had met the general's wife. She had been his undoing, a raven-haired, green-eyed beauty too young to be safely left alone while her older and esteemed husband was off leading his troops in Mississippi. The general was a violent and jealous man, and society as a whole did not approve of men who seduced wives while their husbands were away doing their duty and serving the Confederacy.
Percy had already been threatened by several of the general's friends in Richmond, and was almost shot outright by one of them, until his lover had interfered. Percy expected he would have to fight a duel when the general returned to Richmond, and it was a duel Percy might not win because the general was known as a particularly vengeful bastard.
Not that Percy gave a damn either way. What really mattered was that few general officers wanted him in their units after such a scandal, including his old commander, who had already sent Percy a terse note declining his services. Percy waited to be reassigned to some unit, somewhere. Meanwhile, he found there was never a dull moment for a soldier on leave in Richmond.