The Devil's Path (An Alexander Scott Novel Book 1) Page 3

  “Me?” said Scott incredulously.

  “Yes, Alex, it makes perfect sense,” said Brown. “You are an exceedingly well-traveled man. You speak several languages fluently. Your war record is exemplary and your activity behind Confederate lines over the past year has truly become the stuff of legend. Remarkably brave stuff,” beamed Brown.

  “Sir, I am due to take command of a regiment next week,” protested Scott.

  “That, unfortunately, was only a ruse to bring you here to Washington without drawing suspicion. Orders have already been cut giving the regiment to another officer,” explained General Clinton as if he were talking about the weather.

  Scott instantly bit his tongue and tasted his own blood. He was known for his hair-trigger temper, but not today, not in his godfather’s home. He would never embarrass him. Scott sat there as if he had just been punched in the stomach…another man was getting his command. The thought of some lazy political appointee getting a command made Scott’s blood pressure skyrocket. Amateurs got men killed, and he was sick and tired of bumbling fools leading men to their deaths by the thousands. With a restrained look on his face, Scott turned to look General Clinton in the eye.

  “General, am I to assume that I have been moved to your office in the War Department?” said Scott, struggling to stay civil.

  “Yes, but that won’t matter as you are due to sail from Boston for England the day-after-tomorrow,” Clinton replied dryly.

  “Alex, please don’t take this too harshly,” said Brown, trying to console him. “This task that you have been selected for goes far beyond simply finding one man.”

  Scott sat back and took a deep breath. “Sir, with all due respect, you’re back to speaking in riddles again.”

  “President Lincoln obviously wants this man found because he is a personal friend, but below the surface, it is so much more than that,” said Brown. “The President is very much a pragmatist. The writing is on the wall. Even if they won’t admit it, the Confederacy is finished. With Grant pushing Lee steadily back towards Richmond, it is only a matter of months before this awful war is over. The President wants to be able to show that we can work with our former foes to build an even stronger union. By finding and safely returning Professor O’Sullivan to the United States, it will demonstrate that the President just doesn’t care about the Northerners. It will be a tangible sign that he was willing to help all Americans in their time of need,” explained Brown passionately.

  Scott sat there taking it all in; he genuinely did not know what to say.

  “I hope this information lessens the blow of losing your chance to command a regiment…for now,” said General Clinton, knowing how much Scott had lobbied his superiors for his own command.

  “Sir, I am a soldier and will do whatever my country asks of me,” said Scott honestly.

  “Very well then,” said General Clinton, standing to leave. “I shan’t impose on you or Mister Brown any longer. I wish you good luck and God’s speed, Mister Scott.” With that, he shook everyone’s hands and made his own way out.

  Colonel Girard dug into his jacket and produced a letter, handing it to Scott. He said, “Your orders are in here. Read them and then destroy them by fire. Leave no trace of your orders behind.”

  Scott took the orders, placed them inside his tunic, and nodded his understanding.

  “Thank you for your hospitality, Mister Brown,” said Girard, who, like his boss, saw himself out.

  Left alone with his godfather, Scott let out a deep sigh and then slumped back down into his chair.

  “Oh, how I envy you, Alexander,” said Brown with a devilish grin.

  Scott looked over, a less-than-impressed look on his face. “Oddly, sir, I don’t share your sentiments,” Scott said bluntly.

  “Why is that?”

  “For one, I was brought up here on false pretenses. Secondly, we do not even know if Professor O’Sullivan is still alive. Hell, he could have run off to avoid money lenders or is hiding in a brothel in Paris until the war ends for all we know about the man.”

  Brown shook his head at Scott’s pessimism and then stood. Walking over to his book cabinet, he ran his finger along his extensive selection before pulling out three books from the shelf. Returning, he handed Scott the books.

  Looking at them, Scott saw that Professor O’Sullivan had written them all.

  “Read these on your journey to England. It will give you better insight into the man’s beliefs, and it will show you that he would not have run away and hidden in a bordello.”

  “Poor choice of words, I apologize,” said Scott, realizing that he had said the wrong thing around his very devout family friend. “Thank you for these books. I’ll read them from cover to cover.”

  “That will be a first,” chided Brown.

  The grandfather clock in the corner of the room chimed. It was midnight.

  “Well, sir, I thank you for your hospitality, but it’s getting late. I should take my leave if I am to pack and make it to Boston to catch my ship,” said Scott.

  Brown stepped close and placed both his hands on Scott’s arms. “Look after yourself my boy. Your mother would kill me if anything ever happened to you and she found out I was involved.”

  Scott had no doubt of that. His temper came from her Gallic heritage.

  A minute later, with his kepi firmly placed on his head, Scott stepped outside. It was dark, more so since the clouds, like a thick woolen blanket, still lingered above the city. He was happy to see that it had stopped raining. Rather than try to flag down a carriage, Scott decided to walk for a while to clear his mind.

  Across the street, hidden in the shadows, a man watched intently as Scott strode away from his godfather’s home. Closing his mini-binoculars, the man waited until Scott had turned the corner before stepping out from the dark. He was dressed in a dark-blue woolen suit; in his hand was a long walking cane with a golden wolf’s head on it. His eyes were dark brown, almost black. His face was ordinary; he could have blended in anywhere. After looking around to make sure no one was watching, the man slowly started to walk down the street, thinking to himself. He did not recognize the last man to leave the house, but he was sure that this man would be the one the Americans would send to track down O’Sullivan. He hurried to send his report. He needed to warn his superiors. They needed to know that things had changed; that a professional had entered the game.

  Chapter 5

  The Steamship Victoria

  The sun began to dip below the horizon, painting the sky a deep pinkish color. Several gulls squawked noisily and dove for fish stirred up by the steamship’s white frothy wake as it sailed over the gray-green waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

  Alexander Scott stood there, his hands resting on the aft railing of the ship, watching peacefully as the sun finally disappeared from view. It had become somewhat of a ritual for the past week at sea. Having ditched his uniform back in Washington, Scott was dressed in a plain, form-fitting light gray suit with a white shirt and black tie. On his feet, he wore a pair of highly polished black leather shoes.

  The voyage so far had been quiet and uneventful. Scott’s orders had arranged for him to be met in Boston by another secret service agent, who handed Scott his ticket, his papers and several thousand dollars in gold. His cover for the trip to England was as a railroad entrepreneur seeking new clients in Europe for a line he was proposing to build across the U.S. to California. Considering his upbringing, it was not much of a stretch for Scott to pull it off and make everyone on board the ship believe that he was a wealthy businessman. Although he shunned his father’s wealth, his family was one of the richest in the country.

  The Steamship Victoria had been built in Southampton, to carry mail and goods across the Atlantic as fast as she could and then once its holds were filled, sail quickly back again. It had room for a dozen first-class passengers, of which Scott was one, and fifty-four second-class passengers, who lived in cramped communal rooms below deck.

  Each ni
ght after watching the sun disappear Scott would walk the deck of the ship for about an hour to work off his meal and to think through what he was going to do when he arrived in England in only a couple of days’ time. Later, when he was certain that the other first-class passengers had already started drinking, he would join them in the stateroom to drink and play cards until well-past midnight. Scott never considered himself a particularly good card player, but so far, he was up several hundred dollars. He was about to head inside when he saw a slender, petit young woman with the most-radiant red hair he had ever seen in his life walking about on the main deck alone. She wore a long dark-blue dress that buttoned up around her slender neck. Her face was narrow, with a small up-turned nose. The woman’s deep emerald-green eyes instantly captivated Scott. He was surprised that he had not noticed this stunningly beautiful young woman before. He stood there for a moment taking in her beauty, wondering to himself who she was. Deciding that cards could wait, Scott was about to go over and say something, when she suddenly turned and walked away towards the wooden stairs at mid-deck, leading down to the second-class cabins.

  Realizing that today was not going to be his day Scott shrugged his shoulders, turned about, and started to walk towards the stateroom when a cool breeze blew across the deck. Scott felt a chill crawl down his spine.

  “Gonna be a cold night tonight,” said a passing elderly crewman dressed in the ship’s distinctive white linen uniform.

  “Think so?” said Scott, looking out over the still tranquil-looking cool waters of the Atlantic.

  “Aye, sir, of that I have no doubt,” replied the crewman. “Fog too.”

  “Fog?”

  “Yes sir, plenty of it. It’ll come in from the north sometime later tonight and be with us until the sun comes up.”

  “Thanks,” said Scott. “I’ll dress warmer in the morning then.” The two men went their separate ways.

  Scott opened the door and walked into the smoke-filled stateroom. With a smile on his face, he saw the usual trio of gentlemen sitting at a table in the middle of the room playing cards. Grabbing a chair, Scott greeted his fellow travelers and joined the game. Within an hour, Scott was up two hundred dollars, much to the chagrin of a foul-mouthed Scotsman, whose wife sat in the corner gossiping loudly with the other wives.

  “Christ, Mister Scott, you’ve got the luck of the devil himself,” complained Munro, a boisterous Scotsman. “If I didn’t know better I would accuse you of being a professional gambler, the kind yah used to see on yer riverboats in the south before the war.”

  “Just lucky, I guess,” replied Scott, shuffling the cards.

  “Well, your luck has cost me over a hundred dollars on this trip,” said Roder, a bald-headed Prussian Colonel on his way back home after serving for two years as a military observer with the Union Army.

  “Me too,” added the third at the table, a diminutive Bostonian businessman fidgeting away in an ill-fitting black suit.

  Scott dealt out the next hand and then said, “Gentlemen I don’t know what to say….I have beginner’s luck I guess.”

  “Beginners luck my arse,” said Munro loudly.

  “James Munro,” bellowed Munro's wife from the other side of the room.

  “Sorry, my angel,” said Munro with a disingenuous smile on his face.

  Scott guessed that this was a nightly routine for the Munros.

  “Mister Scott, did you serve?” asked Roder, looking over at Scott.

  Scott adjusted his cards in his hand. “Why yes I did. I was wounded at Chickamauga…why do you ask?”

  “Just curious, nothing more,” said Roder, asking for two new cards while discarding the others from his hand. “It says a lot about a man’s character, if he serves his country.”

  “Balderdash, such nonsense,” piped up the Bostonian. “I paid a man to take my spot. The poor need a job and I gave it to them, we can’t have the better part of society killing one another off. What will we have then? Anarchy that is what we would be left with,” said the man emphatically.

  Scott ground his teeth. Another overly rich and pompous buffoon who thought liberty was something that could be bought and traded like cattle thought Scott.

  “Quit the chit chat you lot,” admonished Munro. “I want to earn my money back or there will be hell to pay with my Penney if I come away from the table empty handed again.”

  “My wife won’t be too happy either,” said the businessman, looking over his shoulder at his wife and Munro’s sharing a laugh at someone’s expense.

  After his last quip of paying a man to fight and die for him, Scott lost all interest in playing cards; instead, he decided to take the arrogant toad of a businessman’s money, and then some, if his luck held. At the chime of midnight, the game ended with Scott richer to the tune of five hundred dollars, most of it from the self-important Boston businessman who left the room being loudly berated by his wife for his stupidity. Scott tucked away his winnings in his wallet, took his leave of the two remaining card players, and then stepped outside onto the wooden deck to clear his mind and to get some fresh air after inhaling cigar smoke for the past few hours.

  As predicted, the ship was engulfed in a thick white fog. Scott felt a chill go down his back. The air was cool and damp. In the distance, on the stern of the ship, a bell sounded. Tucking his hands in his pockets, Scott decided to do one last walk of the deck, to clear his mind and stretch his legs before settling down for the night with one of Professor O’Sullivan’s books. The books were clearly written for fellow biblical scholars. Scott never got past ten pages before falling asleep. Strolling along, Scott stopped and looked over the side of the railing. He could hear the water lapping up against the side of the ship, but because of the thick fog, he couldn’t see it. A sailor emerged out of the fog, just as surprised to see Scott as he was. Both men chuckled at almost scaring one another, tipped their heads in acknowledgement and then kept walking in opposite directions, both soon consumed by the eerie mist.

  Fifteen minutes later, Scott was on his way back from his nightly visit to the duty officer on the stern of the ship, when he heard the terrified scream of a woman somewhere in the fog. He instantly froze in his tracks. The sound seemed to be coming from the main deck. The blood-curdling scream pierced the night once more. Scott took off running as fast as he could in the direction of the screams. Jumping down the wooden stairs two at a time, Scott ran towards the main deck, his mind and body racing, ready to fight.

  The sound of scuffling and several different voices seemed to be coming from just in front of him, but Scott just could not tell where exactly. Reaching into his jacket pocket, Scott pulled out a small two-shot derringer. Pulling back on the firing lever, Scott advanced cautiously into the fog. The sound of the scuffling got louder. Scott took a deep breath and readied himself. Out of the gloom, like spectral images, three men suddenly appeared. They were dressed in sailors’ uniforms, but none like Scott had ever seen on the ship. Dressed in blue woolen jackets and dark knit caps, the men stopped in their tracks when they saw Scott standing there with a derringer in his hand, pointed at them.

  Scott looked at the men and saw that they seemed to be carrying something large in a canvas haversack between them. A moan came from inside the sack. It suddenly moved slightly. The closest man to Scott, a broad-shouldered ruffian with a crooked nose, let go of the sack and took a step forward.

  “Don’t,” warned Scott as he took careful aim at the man’s head, barely two arm’s length away. “Take my word for it, I’m a good shot, but from this distance I’ll have no problem putting a bullet straight through your right eye.”

  “Put it down,” threatened the man with the crooked nose; his voice had a thick Irish accent.

  Scott watched warily as the man’s accomplices, a pair of tough-looking Asian men, gently placed the haversack down onto the deck.

  “I suggest you let us pass friend,” said the Irish thug. “This is none of your business. Just go back to your cabin and forget you ever
saw us.”

  “And why would I do that, friend?” Scott replied.

  “Because you have a Remington, two-shot derringer in your hand,” said the thug. “You may shoot me and perhaps one other, if your quick enough, but the third man will most certainly kill you. So why don’t you do the smart thing and move aside and mind your own bloody business.”

  Scott was not surprised to see that the man knew his weapons.

  Another moan escaped the haversack.

  Scott’s eyes narrowed. “I think it’s a bit late for me to mind my own business, so why don’t you open the sack and let whoever you have in there out.”

  “No,” said the thug, defiantly crossing his arms. “You’ll have to shoot me first.”

  “Have it your way,” said Scott as he quickly adjusted aim and pulled the trigger of his derringer. A loud bang echoed across the deck as the Irish thug cursed and fell to the hard wooden deck grasping his leg with a bloody hole shot straight through his thigh.

  Instantly, the ship’s crew sprang to life and began yelling all around them in the fog, trying to find out where the shot came from.

  Scott heard the commotion all around him.

  Seeing the man rolling about the deck in agony, the closest Asian cursed and threw himself straight at Scott. Switching aim in the blink of an eye, Scott pulled the trigger. The gun spat flames as it went off. The bullet struck the hapless man in the throat, blasting a hole straight through his neck. The assailant staggered forward for a few steps. With a stunned look in his eyes, his hands clutched around his bloody throat. He keeled over and collapsed onto the deck with wet gurgling noises coming from his throat.

  Scott saw the man fall, just as the last thug still standing, with a loud cry, charged straight at Scott, hitting him with his head in the mid-section. The empty derringer flew out of Scott’s hand and disappeared over the side of the ship. Both men went tumbling backwards like a pair of circus acrobats. Scott landed on his back while his foe kept rolling into the fog.