Dreams of Glory (33 page)

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Authors: Thomas Fleming

BOOK: Dreams of Glory
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Caleb could not believe his own voice. It was a lash. It might have belonged to Stallworth.
“That was—war. The Americans offered Caesar a hundred guineas to betray William. I never thought Caesar could find him. I never gave him any help. I even begged him—not to try.”
“Will you help me? Will you give me that token? I don't want to find William Coleman for money. I want to do it for your sake—and Caesar's sake.”
He took the token from her paralyzed hand. Something in her look—an edge of puzzlement—tempted him to tell her the whole truth. But he had come too far. There was too much at stake. There were too many deaths that had to be justified. It was infinitely better to find Twenty-six, destroy the monster and his mutiny, and then reveal himself.
Someone kicked the front door. Caleb knew who it was even before Cato appeared in the parlor with John Nelson and his huge shadow, Wiert Bogert, behind him. They wore their hooded white greatcoats, making them look like evil spirits out of some ancient saga.
“Good evenin', Reverend,” Nelson said. “Major Beckford sends his compliments. He's eager to have you preach him a little sermon on the odor of turncoat sanctity and the like at his church in the Bowrie Lane.”
Caleb nodded. “I'm ready.”
He put the token in his pocket, his eyes on Flora. Now was
the moment when she could stop him. All she had to do was tell these two killers that Caleb Chandler had become the hunter of William Coleman, agent Twenty-six, and he would be dead. But Flora only rang for Cato and told him to fetch Mr. Chandler's greatcoat, boots, and snowshoes. “It was very nice to see you again, Mr. Chandler,” she said. “I hope you have a safe swift journey to New York.”
IN HIS DARKENED STUDY ON Jane Street, Walter Beckford finished decoding the message that the Reverend Caleb Chandler had brought him from Morristown.
We can do what you propose, though I don't see its necessity. We have the men in Washington's guard, as I told you in my last message. Beginning midnight, Sunday, and every seventh night thereafter, the watch will consist entirely of our men. I presume from the urgency of your last message that the attempt will be made immediately. We will expect you this Sunday unless we hear to the contrary. I am glad that this body-snatching expedition does not supersede our mutiny. But it worries me. If your scheme fails, it could stifle the mutiny by arousing solicitude for Washington. We have been laboring night and day to break down the men's devotion to him, and in many brigades have partly succeeded. I distrust the new courier Flora recruited. I no longer trust her as an agent, although she remains at the center of my plans for the future. Without her this miserable ordeal could never have been borne. I told you when it began that it was not worthy of a gentleman. Now, with success so near, don't deprive me of my just reward, or you will make me an enemy for life.
William Coleman was as arrogant as ever. In spite of the humiliations that had forced him to assume his present role, he still considered himself the equal of Walter Beckford and every other Englishman of wealth and station—including titled lords. Major Beckford was unbothered by his threat.
More to the point was the information that Coleman's men were in place. The moment of decision had arrived.
Pulling on his fur-lined boots, Beckford went out the back door of his house to the barn. There, as he expected, he found Major Henry Whittlesey at work. Since his escape via the Liberty turnpike six weeks ago, Whittlesey had been toiling in Walter Beckford's barn eighteen hours a day, dismantling and studying a curious machine. Basically it was a barrel of gunpowder. Inside it were a clock and a device that struck a spark when the clock had run a set number of seconds or minutes, detonating the whole thing with lethal effect. In 1777 the Americans had sent a number of these time bombs floating down the Delaware in an attempt to sink the British fleet. This one had failed to explode.
A spy had identified the wizardy thing as essentially the same weapon a Connecticut tinkerer, David Bushnell, had used in conjunction with something even more fiendish, a submarine, to attack the British fleet in New York in 1776. Bad luck had frustrated Bushnell's attack, but his mine had detonated when he released it during his retreat from New York harbor. A British agent in Connecticut had obtained a sketch of the mine from Bushnell's papers. Major Beckford had presented it to Major Whittlesey with instructions to produce a smaller version that could be carried on horseback and detonated where and when its owner chose.
“Are we ready, Major?”
“Virtually, virtually,” Whittlesey said. “There are only a few minor defects, but they can be corrected in a day or two, by amputating some parts from a musket and having a blacksmith shape them per my directions.”
“Good.”
“What do you plan to do with this weapon, Major?”
“I can't tell you that, my dear sir,” Beckford replied. “But rest assured, it will, as I promised you, help to end the war.”
“Nothing else will recompense me for the rheumatism I've
acquired from sleeping in those unheated barns along Liberty Turnpike.”
“There will be other rewards, Major, when you return to London.”
Back in the house, Beckford studied another decoded message, this one from an agent in Philadelphia.
There is a report abroad that Robert Morris has proposed founding a bank to finance the army's purchases. He is soliciting hard money from other leading merchants. Congress continues to quarrel along the usual lines. The Yankees are accused of preparing to abandon the Southern states and vice versa. Massachusetts has banned the export of food beyond its borders. A special committee has been appointed to go to Morristown and confer with Washington. Its members are Schuyler, Mathews, Peabody, and Stapleton.
That last sentence had made Beckford's pulse leap when he had read it earlier in the day. How convenient of Congress to put Hugh Stapleton within easy reach. Was there need for more proof that Fortuna, the goddess who guided the destiny of nations, was beside him, a reassuring hand on his shoulder?
For a moment Beckford remembered standing in the smoky tension of Boodles, watching gamblers like Lord Lyttleton and Charles James Fox risk ten thousand pounds on a single card. It was where he had watched William Coleman challenge fate, to his ultimate ruin. Fools, all of them. They misunderstood the value of patience, the steady accumulation of power and money. Another of history's lessons.
Beckford strapped a pistol to his waist. No one went out in New York after dark without a weapon. He strode down Broadway past staggering soldiers and equally drunken civilians. On a side street, a man cried for help in German. The cry was quickly smothered by English curses. Another brawl between
soldiers of the supposedly allied armies. Beckford paid no attention to such trivialities. Petty murders were the bailiwick of Major General James Pattison, the commandant of the city's police.
Across Pearl Street the major strode, ignoring numerous invitations from wandering prostitutes. Soon he was on the east side of the city, in a neighborhood of three- and four-story warehouses. He knocked on the side door of one of them. The door opened a wary crack, and a lantern glowed in his face. A relieved voice whispered, “Ah, Major Beckford. Come in.”
Beckford stepped into a warm office; a fire crackled in the grate. In one corner a plump blond girl with a plain, pale face labored over a ledger. Another ledger lay open on the table; beside it stood lean, spindle-shanked Abraham Fowler, once the most prosperous merchant in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. He had fled to New York in 1776, a stowaway on one of his own ships. The rebels had driven his family into the British lines a month later. Fowler had run out of money in 1778. Reduced to living in a cellar, he had watched his wife die of exposure and discouragement. His two sons had enlisted in the British army. He was close to suicide when Beckford had made him his secret partner in the business of London trading.
In two years, using secret-service funds for capital, Fowler had sold thousands of dresses and pairs of stockings and gloves to rebel women in East Jersey and Connecticut and New York. He doubled his profits by selling the meat and vegetables their husbands traded to the British army at prices that Beckford, on excellent terms with the commissary general, made sure were doubled and sometimes redoubled. After all, the commissary general was making a hundred thousand pounds a year renting wagons on a per-diem basis to the army—wagons he had bought for a fraction of that price in 1776. If a secret-service director did not know the secrets of his own army, what good was he?
“How are you, my friend?” Beckford said. “And how is my dear girl?”
He bowed to the blond girl, who smiled shyly. Beckford had asked Abraham Fowler for permission to marry his daughter. Fowler had all but thrust her into the major's arms, so eager was he to solidify their partnership. Alice Fowler, wholly submissive to her father, had made no objection. But Beckford preferred to wait until the war was won; then he would decide whether it was advantageous (as he suspected it would be) for a proconsul to have an American wife. In the meantime, Alice was a convenient companion at the numerous dinners to which he was invited in the course of garrison life.
“I hope you're not keeping two sets of books,” Beckford said, glancing at the ledger on the table.
“By no means,” Fowler said, almost cringing at the suggestion. “Alice is balancing out the old year. This is the account for the current year.”
“I trust things still stand in our favor.”
“Handsomely. What is the balance for '79, Alice?”
“One hundred and twenty thousand,” Alice said.
“Excellent.”
In 1778 they had cleared eighty thousand. Allowing twenty-five percent to Fowler, this left Beckford with a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. A good beginning for an independent fortune. In the imperial scheme of things, money was as essential to keep power as power was necessary to get money.
“Has anything of interest arrived from London—something that one of my particular friends in the garrison might like to see first?”
“At your suggestion, Major, we've made a beginning in the jewelry line. Let me show you.”
He seized the lantern and led Beckford through an inner door into the well of the warehouse. Boxes and chests were stacked in neat numbered rows. Fowler was an extremely competent businessman. He led Beckford to the rear of the first row and opened a chest from a ring of keys at his waist. The
lantern's glow revealed pearl necklaces, diamond and emerald brooches. Beckford lifted a particularly fine pearl necklace from the pile. “Governor Robertson would love this for one of his young ladies. Send it to him with my compliments.”
“Certainly, Major.”
Beckford took a pearl brooch, considerably less costly. “Give this to my dear Alice, and debit my account accordingly.”
“If there is to be a debit, Major, it will be on my account,” Fowler said.
“Out of the question, my dear sir.”
“I insist.”
“Very well,” Beckford said.
Back in the office, Fowler displayed the brooch like a trophy. “Look at this, daughter. Major Beckford wants you to have it.”
“Oh, thank you,” Alice said. Beckford noticed that her eyes strayed to the pearl necklace; obviously she wondered who was getting that.
“And this,” Beckford said, taking the necklace out of Fowler's hand. “I pretended I was going to give it to Governor Robertson because I knew your father would forbid it as too extravagant.”
“What can I say?” Fowler murmured as Alice gasped with delight.
“Let us hope she can soon wear it at the happy event we all anticipate.”
Alice blushed. With the necklace and brooch enhancing her complexion, she looked almost pretty. For once Beckford had no difficulty imagining her as a reasonably satisfying wife.
“We civilians hear a thousand rumors a day, Major. Is it possible that our prayers will soon be answered?”
“Quite possible, Mr. Fowler. Did you see the poem by the Reverend Odell in the
Royal Gazette
the other day?”
Striking an actor's pose, Beckford recited it:
Seen or unseen, on earth, above, below,
All things conspire to give the final blow.
Myriads of swords are ready for the field;
Myriads of lurking daggers are concealed;
In injured bosoms dark revenge is nursed.
Yet but a moment and the storm shall burst.
Well pleased with his performance, Major Beckford said good night to his wide-eyed audience and strolled into the wintry darkness. He strode north, feeling colossal, a giant looking down on the shrouded city, the frozen continent. The cold was incredible. The frigid air seemed almost ready to condense into black sheets of ice. It pressed relentlessly against Beckford's fur-lined greatcoat. He exulted in resisting it.
By the time he reached Brigadier Samuel Birch's quarters on the Bloomingdale Road, it was dawn. Beckford kicked the front door and roared, “To arms, to arms. Dragoons, turn out.”
Much thrashing and clattering. The door was flung open by Birch in his nightshirt, saber in hand. He flung his weapon into a corner when he saw Beckford. “What the devil do you think you're doing, Major?” he said.
“Testing you, Brigadier,” Beckford said. “Testing your capacity to act on a moment's notice.”
“You're drunk. Come in and have breakfast. It will clear your head.”
“I'm not drunk,” Beckford said. “I'm merely ebullient. We've received our orders from General Knyphausen. You've been entrusted with the greatest opportunity given a British officer in this war.”

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