A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History (8 page)

Seward said, "And the British have a very small army, half of which
is in India or scattered in penny packets across the rest of their empire.
Sharpe's analysis of the strength of the British on land and sea did much
to assist our negotiations."

"Indeed, Mr. President," the baron responded, "the good general
has been most helpful in supplying valuable information. I have already
sent it off by pouch to St. Petersburg, where I am sure it will be a valuable addition to our own efforts along these lines."

Lincoln stood up to lean one long arm against the mantle. "Canada
and India, of course, Baron. Your logic is sound, but it is like serving ten
years in prison; easy to say but harder to do."

"That goes without saying, Your Excellency," the baron replied
dryly.

"But what about Ireland, Baron? If we wanted to detach something
from the British Empire, I can think of nothing better than Ireland to
cause them infinite pain."

Seward jumped in, "That attacks the integrity of the United Kingdom as profoundly as the British support of the rebellion attacks the
integrity of the United States. Two can play that game." He positively
relished the idea.

The baron shrugged, an act of tactful patience. "Yes, it would, but
remember Archimedes's statement that he could move the earth if he
had a lever long enough and firm place to stand. I am afraid that neither
the United States nor Russia has the lever or the ground to make such
a threat. With their superior fleet, there is no way that we can seriously
threaten English control of Ireland."

The baron thought that Lincoln had accepted the obvious and
moved on, though Seward, who knew him far better, was not so sure.
"We are both great land powers, Mr. President, with armies of a million men, and it is with these armies that we must apply our power.
You against Canada and we against India and England's friends in the
Balkans."

"Of course, Baron, of course," Lincoln replied.19

HEADQUARTERS, CENTRAL INFORMATION BUREAU (CIB), LAFAYETTE
SQUARE, WASHINGTON, D.C., 7:50 PM, OCTOBER 15, 1863

Brig. Gen. George H. Sharpe heard the familiar rap on his office door
and looked up. It was Sgt. Mike Wilmoth, the young Hoosier who had
become a combination secretary and the chief of his new order-of-battle
office. He had come to look on him in a proud paternal way, the way a
father looks on an able son with a bright future. The young man might
have been lost in the dark blue mass of the Army had not an illness sent
him to a Washington hospital and then to light convalescent duty with
Sharpe. He quickly had brought administrative order to the new office
and absorbed like a sponge the skills of an order-of-battle analyst from
John C. Babcock, the man who had founded the art in the Army of the
Potomac.21

"Sir," Wilmoth said softly, "the president desires you attend him at
the White House."

Sharpe put down his papers and left immediately through the
bustle of his outer offices. The CIB did not keep regular hours. He passed
his deputy, Jim McPhail, in the hallway and said, "Off to see the president, Jim." McPhail just nodded and went on down the hall intent on his
own business. This was no great event. Lincoln called Sharpe almost on a
daily basis.

It was certainly not that Sharpe cut a Napoleonic figure. Lincoln had
had enough of that type of officer. If anything, he was much the opposite -a thirty-five-year-old man of medium height, round-shouldered,
with short, dark hair and a drooping mustache. What Lincoln found in
Sharpe was a man with an unusually keen brain, fertile imagination, and
a sly boldness in getting things done. As soon as he engaged this nondescript colonel of infantry in conversation, the man seemed to transform
himself. He was sharp as an obsidian razor, it was clear from the first
words. He knew his business like the best lawyer knew his brief, and
the fact that both Lincoln and he were lawyers may have had something
to do in the way they connected. The way Sharpe could express himself
in speech and writing in the clean and direct style of a fine legal brief
impressed Lincoln. There was charm there, as well - the art of winning
arguments and men without making enemies-and a wit and gift for
telling stories that came close to Lincoln's legendary penchant. Lincoln
joked that he kept Sharpe on just to mine his stories.

Lincoln had pondered deeply over the implications of Sharpe's
hand in the victory at Gettysburg and contrasted that with the confusion
and lack of central control of intelligence matters at the national level. He
ordered him to Washington and laid before him the offer to create for
the entire U.S. government the same sort of intelligence operation under
the same single guiding hand that Sharpe had done for the Army of the
Potomac when he had put together the BMI, the country's first all-source
intelligence entity.

Sharpe had accepted immediately. In a few months, he had replicated his old organization to serve the entire war effort. It was headquartered in the house he had rented for his family earlier on Lafayette
Square right across from the White House. Luckily, his wife, May, had
fled with their three children from the Washington summer back to
their home in Kingston, New York, just south of Albany on the Hudson.
He set up shop in the empty house. Its location had been a priceless ad-
vantage.21

One of his first priorities was to obey Lincoln's order, "Get me
my balloons back." Lincoln had personally authorized the creation of
the Army Balloon Corps after a brilliant demonstration of the capability of the wonder at the hands of the country's foremost aeronaut, Dr.
Thaddeus Lowe. Lowe's balloons had done invaluable service from the
Peninsula through Chancellorsville. A telegrapher and his device had
been placed in the balloons, allowing the army commander to receive
real-time intelligence. Unfortunately, jealous officers had harassed Lowe
to the point where he went home in disgust after serving without pay
at Chancellorsville. After that the corps had simply disappeared, its
balloons worn out, and none of its personnel able to replace Lowe.
Sharpe brought him back with the rank of colonel and command of the
reconstituted Balloon Corps, and he had Lincoln's approval to subordinate it directly to his own CIB. Sharpe now added aerial reconnaissance
to the growing assets of his new bureau.22

At the same time, he had raced to replicate the BMI in each of the
other field armies of the Union. Unfortunately, the new intelligence
staff of Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland was not able to identify
the arrival of Longstreet's First Corps, which had been sent by Lee to
reinforce Bragg's Army of Tennessee, even though Sharpe was able to
inform them that the reinforcement was on the way. The result had been
the Union disaster at Chickamauga, the retreat of the Army of the Cumberland to a wasting siege at Chattanooga, which Grant was trying with
meager forces to relieve.

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C., 8:09 PM, OCTOBER 15, 1863

John Nicolay, the president's secretary, was a tired man. The president
had been keeping late hours ever since the British attack, and Nicolay had been his faithful shadow. He brightened when he saw George
Sharpe enter. Lincoln had come to rely on him, and the president's small
but devoted staff appreciated anyone who could lighten his load.

"The president is expecting you, General. Stoeckl and Seward were
with him until just now. Alliance business." Although there had been
intense speculation in the press and the public assumption of a RussoAmerican alliance, nothing had been announced by either government.
Nicolay knew Sharpe was fully privy to negotiations. "The president said to go right in, but I'd wait a few minutes. Mrs. Lincoln just beat you
in, and from the sound of it-"

The door slammed open and out stormed Mary Todd Lincoln. She
was a small, stout woman, a contrast to her tall, gangly husband, which
brought to everyone's mind Jack Spratt and wife. Now her small mouth
was pursed so tight as to almost disappear into her round face. Her dark
eyes flashed. She stormed past Nicolay and Sharpe without a word. Then
a voice from inside the president's study said, "Is Sharpe out there? Send
him in."

Sharpe glided in quietly. Lincoln was sitting with his feet on his
desk. He was wearing worn slippers, and his socks were darned. Sharpe
was used to Lincoln's informality. He looked more tired than Nicolay.
He said, "I've distressed Mrs. Lincoln again, Sharpe. Missed supperagain, I'm afraid."

Part of Sharpe's talent was a natural empathy. It was a talent that
made him a master interrogator as well. "Our duty is hard on the ladies,
sir. My own wife wants to join me here, but I have insisted she stay in
Kingston. I tell her she would see almost as much of me there as if she
were here.

Lincoln sighed, "I'm afraid the ladies will have to put up with a lot
more." He got up and motioned Sharpe over to one of the chairs around
the fireplace, where a ruby bed of coals warmed the room from the fall's
early chill.

"Seward and I were just ironing out the last details of the treaty. I
expect you know all about them."

"Yes, sir."

"That's why I hired you," Lincoln said. "The treaty is an absolute
necessity at this time. That reminds me of two boys out in Illinois who
took a short cut across an orchard. When they were in the middle of the
field, they saw a vicious dog bounding toward them. One of the boys
was sly enough to climb a tree, but the other ran around the tree, with
the dog following. He kept running until, by making smaller circles than
it was possible for his pursuer to make, he gained upon the dog sufficiently to grasp his tail. Held on to the tail with a desperate grip until
nearly exhausted, then he called to the boy up the tree to come down
and help.

"'What for?' said the boy.

"'I want you to help me let this dog go."'23

He smiled and went on. "That's just it, Sharpe. We need Russia to
help us let go of the British and French that are chasing us around the
tree. And they need us to crop to help England's ambitions. If they didn't
seize this opportunity, they knew they would never get another chance."

"Necessity, sir- the iron law of necessity."

"Yes, but what of the consequences down the road, Sharpe?" He
picked up a copy of the New York Herald. "Now the Herald is not our
friend, and for that reason bears reading. Listen to this:

If Russia equally resents and punishes the interference of Europe
in the affairs of Poland, she may he mistress of the Old World,
as we shall he of the New, and then perhaps in a hundred years
hence, these two immense Powers may meet upon the Pacific
Ocean and, differing upon some question of the possession of
Australia or New Zealand, may enter upon that Titanic contest
which will forever decide the destinies of mankind.24

Australia and New Zealand -nonsense, but the prophecy in general may
have something in it."

He got up and poked at the fire. "Now, so far, so good. Seward's
got his ears open all over Europe. Finally, the expense of all those embassies might show a profit. I told him to share everything with you. How's
it going?"

"Secretary Seward has been extremely cooperative, sir. Of course,
he expects it to be a two-way street, so we have set up a small committee. That also includes Secretary Welles's Navy Department, too. I have
determined that the motto of the Bureau will he'We Share Intelligence'!"

"Good luck there. People tend to get mighty protective of their little
hen yards. But the reason I wanted to see you was to tell you that I think
the Rooshans will bear watching, too, and to suggest that you might
want to pick up the slack over in Europe. The State Department people
are fine at sifting all the gossip of Europe, but they don't know much
about fighting. The exception was Tom Dudley, our consul in Liverpool.
If it hadn't been for him, we wouldn't have a clear picture of how the
Confederates were building their commerce-raiders -with the conniv ance of the British government. Do you think you might have work for
him over there?"

"I'm way ahead of you, sir. We are planning to stand up a European
office. I was going to send over Jim McPhail. But he could use someone
like Dudley to direct operations against the British Isles. The problem
right now is getting there. The British blockade is tightening, and with
Mexico in French hands, we don't have a friendly neutral through which
to pass our people and communications. It's going to make the alliance
communications damned difficult, as well."

Lincoln looked at him over his reading spectacles. He had chosen
Sharpe because the man had the knack of solving the very problems he
identified. He said, "I think, sir, our Irish friends just might he the key
that unlocks this door. It is said of them that they are welcome in every
country but their own. I think we can make use of that misfortune."25

THE WINTER PALACE, ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA,
3:15 Ann, OCTOBER 16, 1863

The awestruck naval courier bowed himself out of the presence of the
czar of all the Russias, Alexander II. He had ridden at a gallop from the
large Russian naval base at Kronstadt, just outside the capital, to bring
news that Russian forces had fought a battle in the Upper Bay of New
York with the hated British.

Alexander Nikolayevich was forty-five years old and in his prime.
He had inherited the Crimean War from his late father Nicholas I in 1855
and spent the first year of his reign unable to stave off a humiliating defeat at the hands of the British and French. An ardent reformer, he had
freed the serfs from their landlords, abolished the death penalty, and initiated a score of reforms to bring Russia out of its backwardness.

Yet in one vital respect, Alexander was a man captivated by an
ancient dream woven into his soul: Constantinople-the once "Godguarded city" and the mystical root of Russia's Orthodox Christian
civilization. The niece of the last Byzantine emperor had married Ivan
III and from that union had been born the idea of the Third Rome. After
Constantinople inherited the mantle of Rome and then fell to the vile
Turk, Moscow took up the legacy as the mother of Orthodoxy. Moscow
was the Third Rome, and there would be no other. No Westerner could understand the determination of every Russian to plant the cross once
again on the dome of the Hagia Sophia, Justinian's great cathedral.