“Yes, she is well, praise be to God—I saw her. Your own loss—” Davis looked uncommonly grim. “We shall have a reckoning for this day, and hang these wretches higher than Haman—a better end than they merit, too.”
Lee’s sons, big men like himself, forced their way through the guards to him. Blood splashed Custis and Rob; by the way they ignored it, it was not their own. Lee’s mouth twisted when he saw Roonie cradling a wounded hand against his other arm. For a moment, he could not help being father rather than leader. “Your sisters, your wives?” he demanded harshly.
“None of them hurt,” Custis said, and Lee’s shoulders slumped in thanks. Then Custis went on, “But sir, is Mother—?” Tears cut clean tracks through the crimson stains on his cheeks.
“Yes, my dear boys, she—” Lee again checked himself before he dissolved in sorrow with his sons. Just then, a congressman and a fellow in the ragged clothes of a day laborer dragged Konrad de Buys up to him. He knew a crazy kind of relief; duty always pulled him out of his private concerns. How often Mary had taken him to task for that. Mary—He scowled and focused his attention on de Buys.
The Rivington man’s face, usually bold and boyish, was pale and twisted with pain. He’d been shot in the right wrist and left shoulder; blood soaked hastily—and no doubt grudgingly—applied bandages. His eyes widened, just for an instant, when he saw Lee. Then, as best he could through the torment of his wounds, he set his features to reveal nothing. He even managed an ironic nod of greeting.
Lee had always admired de Buys’s gallantry; to find it still displayed under such circumstances wrung from him a cry almost of despair: “Why, sir, why? What did we ever do to merit such treatment at your hands?”
“You know the answer to that,” de Buys said, and Lee remembered Andries Rhoodie’s voice, tolling like an iron belclass="underline" I do not threaten. I promise. Now the Rivington man permitted himself an expression: self-reproach. “Who would have thought we could bugger up this operation against the likes of you?”
“You mind your mouth, you son of a bitch,” the day laborer snarled, shaking de Buys like a rat. The Rivington man set his teeth against the agony that must have shot through him—then lashed out with a foot and caught his captor right between the legs. The day laborer collapsed with a groan, clutching at his privates. De Buys did not even try to run. He managed a haggard smile for Lee and another nod, as if inviting him to ask the next question.
Before Lee could speak, gunfire crackled in front of the building that had sheltered America Will Break since 1864. More screams and shouts arose from the civilians still milling about in Capitol Square. Konrad de Buys’s smile got wider. “You will not find us easy meat for your slaughter.”
“Nor did you find us so,” Lee said, which sobered the Rivington man.
Jefferson Davis said, “The snakes in their nest will presently discover, as this one has, that their plot against you miscarried, Mr. President. Again I urge you to repair to a location out of rifle range from that nest.”
Lee was about to refuse. Then he glanced at Konrad de Buys, saw the Rivington man watching him in turn. The intensity of de Buys’s gaze made him stop and think hard. The offices of America Will Break looked across Franklin Street to Mechanic’s Hall, not back toward Capitol Square. As Davis said, whatever Rivington men remained at their headquarters might well have thought their attack successful until armed men approached the building. If he stayed where he was, he gratuitously offered them a second chance to make it so.
“Very well, sir,” he said quietly. “Let us return to the Capitol, then, a building easily secured against anything short of artillery.” Davis’s nod was grateful Konrad de Buys’s face once more revealed nothing save pain and indifference. Most of the Rivington men were good at secreting away their thoughts, but Lee judged from the very blankness of the mask that de Buys concealed disappointment, not delight.
The plan had been for Sion Rogers to escort him from Capitol Square to the Presidential residence after the inaugural address, and for some other member of the Joint Committee on Arrangements to conduct Albert Gallatin Brown back to his rented house. The plan, thanks to the Rivington men, lay messily dead. So did Albert Gallatin Brown. Rogers, Lee thought, was only wounded…
Back at the Capitol, Lee sent urgent orders down to the armory and the powder works. There, if anywhere in Richmond, he would be able to lay hands on a decent number of properly trained soldiers. The Confederate capital was a city at peace; who would have imagined it needed garrisoning against its own? Lee stood surrounded by his country’s highest commanders, but they had no men to lead.
James Longstreet was saying something to the same effect, an old Indian-fighter’s joke about too many chiefs. Lee only half heard him; he was considering the extent of Konrad de Buys’s injuries. Shaking his head, he said, “You will need to see a surgeon.” Only when the words were out of his mouth did he realize he had been contemplating the best way to preserve the life of the man who, regardless of whether he had actually fired the fatal shot, had just killed his wife.
“A surgeon?” de Buys scoffed. “D’you think I care to live without my arms? That’s what he’d do to me, you know.”
“There is no other way to prevent the inevitable suppuration of your wounds—” Lee faltered. His surgeons—his time—knew no such way. The Rivington men might well.
But de Buys said,” Hang me and have done. You’ll get round to it soon enough, at all odds.” The hungry growls from everyone who heard him attested to the truth of that.
Someone tapped Lee on the back. He spun round. It was Colonel Dimmock, but for the bandsmen one of the lowest-ranking soldiers present. A bullet had clipped off the bottom of his right ear; though that side of his tunic was covered with blood, he seemed unaware he’d been wounded. He held out a weapon to Lee. “ ‘This was what those murdering swine were shooting with, sir.”
Lee took the—rifle? Even as his mind formed the word, he rejected it. The firearm was too short and stubby to merit the name. It reminded him of nothing so much as an AK-47 that had somehow been washed and left on the line to shrink. Even the metal stock, he discovered, folded around against the body of the piece to save space. The gun weighed next to nothing. He supposed de Buys and his henchmen had carried such weapons exactly because they were easy to conceal until needed.
Though de Buys was seriously injured, he held the gun well away from the Rivington man as he asked, “What do you call this thing?”
“Why should I tell you anything?” de Buys said. Then he spat out a short, sharp fragment of laughter. “But what the hell difference does a name make? It’s an—” Lee heard the name as “Oozie.” Seeing him frown in perplexity, de Buys amplified, “U-Z-I, named after Uziel Gal, the Israeli who designed it.”
“Israeli?” Lee frowned again. “Does that mean Israelite? No, never mind, you needn’t answer.” He turned to the men who had hold of de Buys. “Take him to jail. Make certain he is securely guarded. If he will not see the surgeon, do not compel him to do so; he will, after all, soon stand trial.” The soldiers nodded. Like Lee, they knew de Buys would go up on the gallows shortly after the trial was over.
They turned the Rivington man around and started to march him out of the Hall of Delegates. Only then did Lee see the four or five bullet holes in the back of de Buys’s jacket. The man had no business being on his feet, not if he’d taken those hits along with—along with the two that had actually wounded him, Lee thought uneasily; “Wait!” he said.