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Regarding the notes of Venita “Mercy” Lynch, nurse formerly of the Robertson Hospital in Richmond, Virginia: Approximately three hundred pages of letters about the northwestern port city of Seattle, where a heavy, poisonous gas has decimated the city, causing it to be largely abandoned. …
She kept writing until she’d revealed it all: the gas, the city in the Northwest, and the connection between the drug manufactured there … and the weapon proposed by Katharine Haymes.
In conclusion …
Maria heard Henry’s feet on the stairs, returning with the promised paper and twine. She thought hard and fast, and gave up on formalities.
In conclusion, gas weaponry is a dangerous, poorly understood can of worms we can’t afford to open.
It took four sheets of paper. When Henry let himself inside, she folded them in half and stuffed them into an envelope, then began stacking the nurse’s letters in a tidy pile before wrapping them up.
Henry took her pencil and reached for the envelope. “I don’t suppose you know the address for the Lincoln estate off the top of your head, do you?”
“I know it well enough. But let’s not write anything down until we get to the shipping office,” she urged.
“You’re right, you’re right. I wasn’t thinking. ”
The war had made mail problematic between the dueling nations, and although the Union still used the United States Postal Service, the Confederacy relied upon independent carriers. If you wanted to pass notes back and forth across the Mason-Dixon line, you either used Western Union or you smuggled the messages yourself. Since everyone knew Western Union was the most reliable way to communicate with the other side, it was watched, and tracked. If you had to use it, you didn’t talk to anyone except the officer who took your money and stamped your package, and even he couldn’t be trusted.
When both packages had been successfully—if surreptitiously—shipped, Maria and Henry left the Western Union office and stepped back into the chilly afternoon. It was crisp and clear, in the way of such places with brutally cold winters but not much snow. Maria’s breath was cold in her chest and warm in the air, where it crystallized and hung in a satisfying fog that reminded her she was still alive.
She tucked her hands into her jacket pockets and wormed her chin deeper into her scarf, until only her eyes and nose poked out.
“And now,” she said, the words warming her lips against the wool. “We need to find … a porter, you said?”
“Ah. Yes. ” Henry checked his pocket watch and nodded. “Down at the landing, in an hour. He’ll meet us there, and perhaps we’ll talk him into a late lunch. Have you ever had catfish fried right out of the river?”
“I don’t think so…?”
“That means ‘no,’ because if you’d ever tasted it, you’d never forget it. Come on now, this way. We’ll have better luck finding a cab on the next street over, where the army vehicles don’t block up all the roads. It’s only a short walk to the landing, but you look like you’re half frozen to death already, and we’ve only been outside a minute. I swear, you must be a little icicle all the time, up there in … in your new hometown,” he caught himself. He ducked quickly aside as two soldiers carrying a steamer trunk between them begged his pardon.
He was right, so Maria played along. Keep the public chatter friendly. Let the city hear their accents and know they were local enough, and here on friendly business, and not anyone to be given a second glance. Maria attracted a second glance or two, but she’d become adept at hiding behind her hair, her hat, and now—conveniently enough—her scarf.
True to his guess, Henry found them a carriage to hasten the ride to Ross’s Landing, a wide dock on the river that had developed into its own small neighborhood, serving the merchants who came and went in the steamboats, riverboats, paddlers, flat-bottom barges, and military freighters alike. It was a rougher part of the city—if roughness might be gauged by how few women were present, and how many men were out of uniform.
She saw boat workers and army boys on leave, dockhands and shipping magnates, laboring men, and white and colored men in big wool coats and boots caked with riverbank mud. She scanned the labels stenciled on crates as they were stacked and loaded by big-armed fellows on the curb, under the watchful eyes of an occasional officer or overseer. They seemed to hold mostly munitions and military necessities: tents, blankets, uniforms, horse tack, diesel fuel, motor parts, tools, engine grease, satchels, mess kits, bulk bags of flour and corn, and heaven only knew what else.
Down by the river’s edge where the boats docked close, the piers were shiny and scrubbed, painted and repainted to rebuff the elements and rust. Street vendors offered newspapers, coffee, and fried fish wrapped in paper; they quietly hawked black-market passes for rations, and sold information by the scrap.
Maria and Henry stopped at a boat called the Memphis Queen, which was moored permanently at the edge of the landing and served as a saloon and meeting place on the water. The gangplank swayed under Maria’s feet, bobbing with the slap and fall of short waves against the boat’s sides, left over from the wakes of the big CSA crafts that puttered down the river’s center. Once on board, the motion was minimal. She was glad—after spending the night on the rails, she wouldn’t have ruled out a minor case of seasickness, even with the sea a thousand miles away.
“This was our contact’s suggestion,” Henry explained. “He likes this place. ”
Out of date and out of service, the Memphis Queen was nonetheless a pretty thing, with gingerbread rails and a cheerful blue-and-white paint job that called to mind the Bonnie Blue Flag. An old-fashioned paddler, it had been retired in favor of the diesel models that had become more popular, courtesy of Texas. Best of all, the ship felt private. Full of nooks and crannies, doors that locked, and shades that were easily drawn.
So bright on the outside. So shadowed within.
Henry promised the barkeep a fee if he’d leave them alone, then he and Maria took a seat in a back corner without any windows, and only a low-slung coffee table between them.
The porter was right on time.
He didn’t so much enter the darkened room as appear within it, standing beside Henry’s seat as if he never walked anywhere, only manifested wherever he wished to be.
Maria managed to not look startled, but it took some effort. One minute he wasn’t there, and the next minute … a smallish white man in a brown hat stood next to Henry, near enough that he might’ve stabbed him and walked away without anyone ever noticing. Probably an inch or two shorter than Maria herself, the porter wore woven tweed pants and boots so clean that they reflected what little light came around the window shades. Everything fit him as if it’d been made for him, even the leather gloves and workmanlike gray coat. He was neither attractive nor unattractive, with brown hair and dark eyes. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about him in the slightest.
Just like the men who’d been following her.
For one nervous split second, she racked her brain trying to remember the two men in Richmond … but swiftly concluded that, no, he hadn’t been one of them. It was just something about the breed, about a man who can be present without attracting attention. Maria had spent a lifetime trying to play up her appearance. This phenomenon, or trait, or knack for being invisible was something she’d only noticed—and attempted to cultivate—since starting to work for the Pinkertons.
