Methodically, Perlmutter began expanding his search from April 2, 1865, the date the Texas cast off from the pier below Richmond. He had his own system for research investigations and there were few who were better at scratching out leads than him. He used dogged persistence along with instinctive reasoning to narrow down the deadwood from the consequential.
He started with official reports of the battle. When he exhausted those, he went on to eyewitness accounts by civilians who watched along the banks of the James River and crewmen on the Union warships. Within two hours, he had scanned the pertinent contents of nearly sixty letters and fifteen diaries. He transcribed notes on a large legal pad, all the while under the watchful gaze of Frank Moore, who trusted Perlmutter but had caught too many certified researchers trying to steal historical papers and letters not to be conscientious.
Once Perlmutter found the thread, he began to unravel it as one offhand description, one seemingly insignificant bit of information led to revelation after revelation of a story that seemed too incredible to believe. Finally, when he could go no further, he motioned to Moore.
"How much time do I have?"
"Two hours and ten minutes."
"I'm ready to move on."
"Where do you wish to look?"
"Any private correspondence or documents you might have of Edwin McMasters Stanton."
Moore nodded. "Lincoln's crusty old Secretary of War. I've no idea what we have on him. His papers have never been fully cataloged. But it would be upstairs on the U.S. government documents floor."
The Stanton files were voluminous, ten file cabinets full. Perlmutter worked steadily, stopping only once to go to the nearest bathroom. He waded through the documents as swiftly as he could, finding surprisingly little on Stanton's relationship with Lincoln near the end of the war. It was a well-known bit of history that the Secretary of War did not like his President and had destroyed a number of pages from the diary of Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, including a number of papers relating to Booth's co-conspirators. To the frustration of historians Stanton had purposely left many unanswered questions swirling around the assassination at Ford's Theater.
Then, with only forty minutes left on his deadline, Perlmutter struck pay dirt.
Hidden in the extreme back of a cabinet, Perlmutter found a packet yellowed with age that still had an unbroken wax seal on it. He stared at the brown inked writing that gave the date as July 9, 1865, two days after Booth's fellow conspirators, Mary Surratt, Lewis Paine, David Herold, and George Atzerodt, were hanged in the Washington Arsenal's prison yard. Under the date were the words "Not to be opened until one hundred years after my death." It was signed Edwin M. Stanton.
Perlmutter sat down at a study table, broke the seal, opened the packet, and began reading the papers inside with thirty-one years leeway on Stanton's instructions.
As he read he felt as if he was transported back in time. Despite the coolness of the underground facility, beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. When he finished forty minutes later and set the final paper aside, his hands were trembling. He exhaled his breath in a long silent sigh, and shook his head very slowly.
"My God," Perlmutter whispered.
Moore looked across the table at him. "Find something interesting?"
Perlmutter did not answer. He simply stared at the pile of old papers and muttered, "My God," over and over.
They lay together behind the crest of a dune, staring at the empty tracks that stretched across the sand like ghost rails to oblivion. The only signs of life to pierce the predawn darkness were the distant lights of the Fort Foureau hazardous waste site. Across the tracks, less than a kilometer west, the black shadow of the abandoned Foreign Legion fort rose against an ivory black sky like a gloomy castle out of a horror movie.
The mad race across the desert had gone smoothly without detection or mechanical problems. The captives had suffered from the hard springs of the trucks but were too happy to be free to complain. Fairweather accurately guided them over the ancient camel trail that traveled between the old salt mines at Taoudenni south to Timbuktu. He had laid the convoy on the railroad within sight of the fort using only his knowledge of the terrain and a borrowed compass.
Once during their journey, Pitt and Levant had stopped, listening as they detected the engine sounds of an unseen helicopter task force escorted by jet fighters. The aircraft were flying north toward Tebezza and the Algerian border. As Pitt had predicted, the Malian air force pilots flew over the convoy, blissfully unaware their quarry was sitting directly below them.
"Fine work, Mr. Fairweather," complimented Levant. "As good a job of navigating as I've ever seen. You put us right on target."
"Instinct," Fairweather smiled. "Pure instinct mixed with a bleedin' bit of luck."
"Better move out across the tracks and into the fort," said Pitt. "We have less than an hour before daylight to hide the vehicles:
Like strange creatures of the night, the dune buggy and personnel carriers drove on the track bed, bouncing over the concrete ties, until they came even with the fort. Pitt turned past the wreck of the Renault truck, the same one he and Giordino used for cover when they hopped the train to Fort Four eau, and came to a stop at the gate. The high wooden doors were still slightly ajar just as they had left them over a week before. Levant called up a squad of men who pushed them open wide enough to allow the convoy to enter the parade ground.
"If I may suggest, Colonel," Pitt said tactfully, "there's just enough time for a detail of your people to brush away our tire tracks leading from the railroad to the fort. To an inquiring mind it should look like a convoy of Malian military vehicles rolled out of the desert and then continued along the track bed into the waste disposal project."'
"Sound idea," said Levant. "Make them think it was one of their own patrols."
Pembroke-Smythe, tailed by Giordino and Levant's other officers, gathered around their commander for orders.
"Our first priority is to camouflage the trucks and find some sort of shelter for the women and children," said Levant. "Then prepare the fort for attack should the Malians decide they're chasing ghosts and look for any sign of our tracks the wind hasn't covered."
"When do you plan to withdraw from here, sir?" asked an officer with a Swedish accent.
Levant turned to Pitt. "How say you, Mr. Pitt?"
"We stop the first outward-bound train that passes by here after dark," Pitt answered, "and borrow it."
"Trains have communication systems," said Pembroke-Smythe. "The engineer will scream bloody murder if you attempt to abscond with his train."
"Once alerted, the Malians will block the track down the line," finished the Swedish officer.
"Don't give it another thought," Pitt said reproachfully. "Just leave it to old Jesse James Pitt and Butch Cassidy Giordino. We've been practicing the old-fashioned art of silent train hijacking for at least…" He looked at Giordino. "Al?"
"At least a week from last Thursday," Giordino responded.
Pembroke-Smythe looked at Levant forlornly. "One might be advised to increase our insurance premiums."
"Too late for that now," said Levant, surveying the darkened interior of the fort. "These walls were never built to stand up against air-to-ground missiles or heavy artillery. Kazim's forces can reduce this place to rubble in half an hour. So to prevent problems, we have to maintain it's abandoned look."
"The Malians won't be going up against helpless civilians this time," Pembroke-Smythe said resolutely. "The ground is level as a cricket field for 2 kilometers in every direction. No cover for attacking forces. Those of us who survive any air assault will make Kazim pay a heavy price in blood before he takes this place."