For Annie

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PROLOGUE

The Wilderness

May 1864

"Follow me, sir. I’ll show you the way."

Major Stephen Talbridge spurred his Appaloosa pony forward and trailed after the seventeen-year-old sergeant. As they rode along the creek bottom, Talbridge slumped, bone-weary, in the saddle. All he wanted was one hour’s sleep and a hot cup of coffee. Even that God-awful chicory-and-grain coffee would do this morning. Not too much to ask for, he thought. Not much at all.

But neither was to be. Not today. He knew that. A few miles northwest of their encampment near the Rapidan River, if the scouting reports were accurate, was Grant, and with him the 115,000-strong Army of the Potomac.

The Appaloosa whimpered, and Talbridge gently stroked the pony’s neck. Faint dawn light filtered down like broken fingers through the thick Virginia trees and bushes around them. The heavy fog stood rooftop-high. He wished that the darkness and fog would remain. They had patrolled the area yesterday in daylight—the landscape was unnerving.

A year ago, they had fought the Union Army for four days on this very same patch of ground; the winter rains had unearthed the shallow graves of the Confederate and Union dead. Pale skulls, moss-cloaked shoes filled with bones and twisted skeletons littered the ground among the leaves. How soon, he wondered, would someone be treading over his bones?

As they continued along the creek bottom, he studied their surroundings. The fog was not yet lifting. A Yankee patrol could be within spitting distance, and they wouldn’t see one another.

Good Lord, why was he here? Why was he risking his life again? He’d never owned a slave, never considered owning one. Before the war, he had been a gunsmith, and all the work he did himself with his own two hands. His shop in Charleston had been frequented by august gentlemen from the South and the North. He had been told that Napoleon III of France and Leopold of Belgium had Talbridge pistols in their royal collections. He was an artist and craftsman, not a soldier. He hated no one.

So why was he risking his life again?

The answer was simple. He was here because the Yankees were down here. He would protect his state and home and family from any invaders, even fellow Americans.

Ain’t much further, sir, the sergeant said quietly.

You haven’t lost me yet, Reilly, he answered.

Wouldn’t do that to you, sir.

He knew that. The sergeant and he had both joined the Fifth South Carolina Cavaliers shortly after the war began in the spring of ‘61. He had been a lieutenant then, and Reilly a drummer. The Fifth, led by the Preacher General LaFontaine, was considered a charmed command among Marse Robert’s corps. They had fought at First and Second Manassas, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville with only minor casualties.

Then they followed Marse Robert to Gettysburg. On the third day of battle, the Fifth, personally selected by Marse Robert himself, joined Pickett’s Virginians and marched up Cemetery Ridge toward the center of the Union lines.

Satan is behind the wall on that the hill, gentlemen, the Preacher General had said. Mr. Lee has asked us to smite him, and we shall not fail.

The Preacher General was shot to rags within fifty yards of the wall, along with three-quarters of the command.

Then, suddenly, as they started to fall back, Stonewall Jackson and his boys, who had decimated Buford’s and Reynolds’s troops on the first day, attacked from the rear, surprising the Yankees. The Fifth surged forward into the Union line. Reilly had his right arm, from the elbow down, sheared off by a Yankee bayonet. Talbridge was shot through the side and the hip. They, along with eleven others, were the only members of the Fifth to survive.

Still, the Charge—Pickett’s glorious Charge—succeeded, and the Union Army was severed in half. The next day, the Yankees were driven, skedaddling with their blue tails between their legs, from the Pennsylvania farmlands. The Confederacy had captured the day. They had beaten the Yankees on their own soil. God bless Marse Robert.

Reilly headed his mule across the shallow creek. Up ahead, barely visible in the fog, several shadows moved stiffly. Talbridge touched his pony’s flank with his spur and followed. After a half-day’s rest, Marse Robert had ordered a forced march south. The command was disheartened. Why were they retreating? They didn’t understand.

Then the word spread through the ranks—Jubal Early’s troops were riding, hellbent-for-leather, north through the Shenandoah Valley to join them. In between Marse Robert and Jubal Early was the city of Washington.

The pitched battle lasted two days, and when it was over, the Confederate colors flew over the city. The remaining members of the Yankee Congress met in Philadelphia. Abe Lincoln was forced to resign as president. The Senate and House of Representatives were in chaos as their leaders maneuvered for authority positions. No one, thus far, had risen to oversee all.

But still the North refused to allow the Southern states to leave the Union. One man, one hard son of a bitch, maintained his resolve in the matter.

Ulysses S. Grant.

The former store clerk from Ohio was unstoppable. His command had won victory after victory in Tennessee and along the Mississippi River, including the capture of Vicksburg. Now, he was advancing on Richmond and today—tomorrow at the latest, Talbridge knew—the Yankee store clerk and Marse Robert would collide, and the fate of their nations would be decided for all time.

Reilly’s mule trotted up into the clearing, and the sergeant hopped down. Talbridge stopped beside him and dismounted. A root-thin, barefoot corporal took the reins of his pony.

Over here, sir, Reilly said, walking toward a knotted pine.

Talbridge saw three Confederate soldiers, their Fayetteville rifles cocked and aimed, standing in a semicircle around the tree. Two more men sat on the ground at the base. They were Union officers.

Talbridge shook his head, amazed. Reilly had not exaggerated. The patrol had captured a Yankee general and captain. The general clutched a bloody bandage around his left arm.

Sergeant, said Talbridge, why didn’t you bring them into camp?

Reilly massaged the stub of his arm, embarrassed.

I was afeared we might lose ‘em in the fog, sir. I was afeared to leave ‘em, too, ‘cause I figgered some more Yanks might come lookin’ for ‘em. Didn’t know what to do. So I came and got you.

Talbridge nodded and stepped in front of the officers.

I’m Major Stephen Talbridge of the Fifth South Carolina Cavaliers, he said. Currently I am assigned to General Lee’s command. You are our prisoners, gentlemen. You will be fairly treated.

The captain covered his face with his hands and wept.

The general glared at him.

Your name, sir? Talbridge asked.

The general tightened the bloody kerchief around his wound.

It would be a kindness, major, if you finished the task your men started.

What appellation shall we carve on the headstone?

William Tecumseh Sherman, Union Army.

Talbridge stood motionless. My God. Think.

More Yankees would surely be along searching for the general—Reilly had been right about that. They had to move out, and quickly. They had to get the prisoners back to camp, back to Marse Robert.

Major, Reilly said, there’s one more.

What? Talbridge turned toward the sergeant. What did you say, Reilly?

There’s one more. He motioned with his stub at a still form a few yards from the tree. We kinda stumbled upon each other in the fog. The po’ dunk captain there panicked when he seen us, and when he yanked out his pistol, he accident’ly shot his own general. Wasn’t one of us, dammit. This other fella’s horse bolted, and he got pitched off. Landed on his head and busted his neck. Dead, sir.

Talbridge walked over to the body. A private. He shook his head. The man’s boots and pistol had been removed—the war had turned them into robbers of the dead. Shoes should not be a luxury. He turned back toward the Yankee officers then stopped.

Something was wrong. He looked at the private again, at the man’s bare feet and empty holster. Why was a private carrying a sidearm?

Mother of God, sobbed the Union captain.

Talbridge squatted beside the private. He was definitely dead, his thick neck snapped like dry kindling. A shattered bottle of bourbon whiskey stained the man’s shirt and trousers. Broken in the fall, Talbridge noted as he pulled a letter from the private’s inside jacket pocket. The letter was from the man’s wife.

What do we do, Major? asked Reilly, moving behind him.

The war is almost over, Talbridge whispered to himself. We will have our own country.

I cain’t hear you, Major, said Reilly.

Talbridge slipped the letter back into the man’s jacket pocket.

I want his boots and pistol returned, and I want it done immediately.

Yes, sir. Reilly motioned harshly to a soldier standing near the Appaloosa.

Talbridge stood. I want a messenger sent ahead to General Lee.

I’ll go myself, sir.

Take my horse. He’s faster and in better condition than your mule.

Yes, sir.

Report to General Lee personally and to no one else.

Marse Robert hisself, sir?

No one else, Sergeant.

Yes, sir. Reilly glanced at the other Confederate soldiers, confused; then he snapped to attention. What is the message to General Lee, sir?

Report to him… Talbridge hesitated, looking at the dead Yankee then over at the two officers. Report to him that we are close behind with William Tecumseh Sherman as prisoner. Further inform the general that we also have with us the mortal remains of Ulysses Grant.

Book One

THE BEGINNING

1

Thirty years ago

Northeast of Natchez

As he had for the past four hours, Jardine sat in the dog-eared pickup truck and listened to the rain sluicing off the roof and hood. His hammer-toed left foot tingled inside his shoe. He wiggled his leg then kneaded the thigh, attempting to keep the entire limb from going numb.

He couldn’t move much, though; his massive body filled the driver’s side of the cab, his balding head grazed the ceiling and, while the seat was all the way back, the bottom half of the steering wheel speared his gut. There’d be a thin, fingernail-shaped bruise around his navel tomorrow.

He felt invisible. The pickup, with borrowed license plates, was parked near a turnabout in the one-lane road and sheltered by a thick ring of magnolia trees and weeping willows. The moon was hidden behind the storm clouds, and no light reflected off the pickup’s dull primer. Since he’d arrived, a solitary Ford coupe had chugged down the mud road; and an hour later, three skinny Negro boys had raced through the woods. He had not been seen either time. The pickup had become part of the landscape.

From this position, however, even without his camera’s zoom lens, he could plainly see the old church.

The church was called the Blood of the Natchez Lamb Baptist Congress. The name was bigger than the one-room building. Jardine had walked the church earlier from front door to pulpit and back. Then he scouted the cemetery abutting it, and the shotgun shack out back.

The church had been built for the local coloreds in 1882, a year after the Confederacy abolished slavery. The building had no electricity and only a pot-bellied stove for heat. The steeple had no bell. The cemetery was well maintained and held six dozen grave markers; half had the same last name. The shack was used by migrant farm laborers passing through the area.

The latest occupants, however, were neither planters nor pickers.

Jardine knew the four visitors from police reports and newspaper stories. Three were Confederate-born, the other a Yankee. All had done jail time. All were considered dangerous to the state and the nation. They were almost as well known as Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers and Simon Adam Quade. They called themselves civil rights activists, but they weren’t. They were agitators and militants, stirring up the Negro populace with false promises of equality.

They were idiots. If the laws were changed this instant in all thirteen states, minorities would still not be equal. That was the way it was, and the way it would always be. All a body had to do was look at Oklahoma. The Indians there had supported the Confederacy during the War of Secession and had been able to vote and hold public office since. Their lives had not been improved. Most, anyway.

Jardine watched as lightning splintered between the clouds. For nearly a week now, the December storm had whip-hammered southwestern Mississippi from Greenville to the Louisiana border, from Vicksburg to the Bienville Forest. The news said the Big Black and Pearl would crest their banks tomorrow but that the real worry was the Big Muddy. If the Mississippi River flooded, it would affect the economy of the entire region. On the plus side, Jardine decided, the state needed a good warsh.

Wash, not warsh. Jardine tapped his gloved fist against the dashboard. After all the private diction lessons, after all the classes and books, he still occasionally added Rs and esses to some words and dropped Gs from others. He had eliminated ain’t from his vocabulary but sumbitch continued to pop out when he wasn’t careful.

Never again, he swore, would he sound like some white trash, peckerwood sharecropper. Never again would some superior listen to him then ask for a translation. He had been embarrassed by his speech in the army and humiliated by it in college. He would not allow that to happen again. He was, after five years, a top investigator for the state bombing unit; and he would dress, act and talk in a manner appropriate for the position.

Wash, wash, wash.

His captain at the state capital had been surprised, and a little curious, when he’d asked for some vacation time. In all the years with the unit, Jardine had not missed a single day. He was on the job every day, including his scheduled days off and holidays.

He’d felt obliged to tell the captain he was feeling a bit fatigued and spent. The ball-busting Gulfport trial was finally over, and the others in the unit could handle the Chewalla Lake investigation without him. He was thinking, he said, about visiting his family up near Tupelo and, maybe, going to see an old army buddy who was making a minor name for himself on the stock-car racing circuit.

The captain smiled his good ol’ boy grin and added that maybe there was a lady Jardine could spend some vacation time with. He had stood in front of the captain’s desk, blushing with intent, and said nothing. The captain chuckled and said as long as he was back for the Carthage trial he could take however much time he needed. He had earned it and then some.

Jardine had no intention of visiting his sharecropping relations back in Tupelo, and he had no friends from his old army demolition team. He had no time for lazy, ignorant idiots with no more ambition than acquiring an extra six-pack of beer and a twenty-five-inch color TV.

There was a lady. She wasn’t an acquaintance like his captain had obscenely suggested, though. He had no lady friends. Never would. Sex organs were the body parts that urine came from, and the dual purpose of those specific organs, he felt, explained a lot about the human race.

The lady he’d accidentally been seen with, and the one who had started the rumors around the office, was not a lady friend. She was the honorable Mrs. Amanda Talbridge-Davis, heir to the Talbridge Firearms fortune, and this field trip was a personal favor for her. Jardine had been as honored to do it as he was on the occasions he had done favors for her mother.

A station wagon topped the hill on the other side of the church. Jardine raised his camera as the car turned into the parking lot. He clicked off three quick pictures. Two men jumped from the car and dashed up the porch steps out of the rain. The others wouldn’t be far behind.

The two who had just arrived were the Yankee law student from Boston and the Negro carpenter whose uncle was the pastor of the church. A wandering light—the lantern Jardine had seen earlier—flared on inside the building.

Jardine wasn’t interested in these two, because Mrs. Talbridge-Davis was not. It was the other two, the lady’s husband, Peyton Davis, and the woman Frannie Shepherd he was hunting.

The whole situation was half-witted. Davis, a rich white boy from Atlanta, should have been home with his wife and babies. Shepherd, the self-schooled activist from Birmingham, should have been with her fiancé, Simon Adam Quade. Instead, they, along with the other two, were canvassing the states planning protests and marches.

Half-witted idiots. One and all.

When Jardine met with Mrs. Talbridge-Davis, he could see she was deeply distressed. There had been persistent rumors, she explained, about her husband and this civil rights agitator. She had to know the truth, and once she did, she would know the appropriate course of action.

Jardine knew one thing immediately—Mrs. Talbridge-Davis was in no condition to be traveling. But still she had traveled all the way to Mississippi to meet with him. She was pale and weak and having a difficult time controlling the five-year-old boy scampering around the hotel suite. He later learned that she had another child—a month-old boy—who was under twenty-four-hour doctor’s care.

No, this delicate lady should not be out chasing after some adulterous dog of a husband.

Jardine glanced at his watch. Davis and Shepherd had to be here soon, and he would be done with this. He had found them three days ago at a march in Savannah and followed them to Natchez, then to here. They were planning a rally in Mobile for the weekend. The four were leaving for there in the morning.

A second car, its left headlight burned out, coursed down the hill and into the church lot. Jardine focused his camera. It was them. Davis climbed out of the car and zipped up his leather jacket against the rain. Shepherd stepped out of the passenger side.

The woman was pregnant. About eight or nine months along, Jardine guessed from the doctor’s report he’d acquired two days ago. She concealed her condition well—only a handful of people knew. Jardine adjusted the camera lens and finished the roll of film. Sumbitch. If a body didn’t know Shepherd was Negro, she could have passed for white without any trouble.

Davis and Shepherd walked, hand-in-hand, into the church.

Jardine started the pickup engine. In less than two hours, he’d be in Natchez. The pickup would soon be at a junkyard and headed for its new life as soda cans or trailer siding. He would be seated inside a warm cafe sipping Irish coffee and eating ribeye steak and crawfish, pecan wild rice, red beans and cherry cobbler. Then he’d go to sleep in a king-sized bed with clean sheets and soft pillows. The day after tomorrow, early, he would be back at work.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. Giant raindrops peppered the ground. Jardine reloaded the camera quickly and set the lens to take in most of the church. Looked good.

A tall shadow moved near a side window. He set the timer on the camera and placed it perfectly on the dashboard. Then he picked up a small generator box lying on the passenger seat. Thick black wiring ran from the box out the wing of the passenger window and toward the church.

Laughter came from inside the building. As the camera began to automatically click off pictures, he twisted the generator handle.

The old church fireballed outward, its ancient walls evaporating in huge orange-black flames. The steeple with no bell quivered suspended in mid-air for a full second then crashed into the burning rubble below.

Jardine hoped he’d caught the moment on film.

Book Two

TODAY

2

McKenna Alexander watched—stunned, powerless—as the CS marshal hustled her handcuffed attorney from the judge’s chamber.

Damnation, the judge growled. He pressed a handful of yellow tissues to his bleeding nose and tilted his head back. Give me a moment, people.

As McKenna sat with the others in the office, she counted the crimson periods dotting the judge’s crisp white shirt. Four. No, five. Blood had also dripped onto the judge’s striped bow tie. Oh, God. She had been confident that the charges against her would be dismissed, convinced of her vindication. Had been. Until one minute ago. Now, however, the only question left unanswered was how much jail time would she receive before she was run out of the country.

Excuse me, the judge said, rising awkwardly from his black leather chair. He edged his head farther back and pinched the nostrils harder. Then he walked into the office bathroom. The dark walnut door remained open.

From the hall corridor, a second marshal stepped inside.

All in the chamber were quiet.

McKenna twisted the delicate gold chain on her wrist. She should have accepted the NBC anchor job. Landry had offered the network position twice. He had flattered her unmercifully with the proposals each time. Not only, he’d said in his coarse Texas drawl, would she be the first female anchor on any of the television networks in the South but, at thirty-four, she would also be the youngest.

The ratings for the network evening news were up, and even the suits in New York credited her with the increase. The latest viewer surveys showed that people liked and, more important, trusted her. Plus, she had proven herself time and time again with the hard news stories and interviews she delivered.

She’d noted that Landry had tactfully avoided mention of the disasters she had been involved with. He also didn’t mention all the mail the network had received when he first brought her to Richmond four years ago. It was bad enough, most of the letters and e-mail said, that the network was owned by Yankees. They could live with that, since they had to. But they definitely didn’t want some blond Yankee bitch telling them the news each night. If it hadn’t been for Cullen’s encouragement, she didn’t know whether or not she would have survived the first year.

She’d said no to the anchor position. Both times. She told Landry she loved Richmond—she had made her home here, after all. The city on the James River was the Confederate nation’s capitol, and this was where national policy and agenda were decided. But Richmond was not the entire Confederacy, and she enjoyed living out of a duffel bag and not knowing in which of the thirteen states she would be each week. On Monday she could be in Tennessee and by Friday in the Carolinas and the following Tuesday in New Mexico. She would have missed the road and the adventure. And she hated the idea of being locked behind a desk introducing other reporters who would be doing the assignments she wanted.

This morning that decision was moot.

The Confederate Attorney General had decided she did not want McKenna covering any news stories. Even events like the cotton harvest in the Texas Panhandle and fishing conditions in the Louisiana Bayou were too much for her. She wanted McKenna a vague memory.

But McKenna would not go gently. Not for the Attorney General, not for anyone.

The ticking of the judge’s wall clock echoed through the silent room. She glanced at the others.

Billy Dean Poe, the forty-two-year-old deputy prosecutor for the Attorney General, sat perched in a narrow chair beside her. He white-knuckled the case folder on top of the briefcase in his lap and chewed on his already-raw lower lip. Orange and purple crayon streaks rainbowed across his briefcase surface. McKenna smiled. His three-year-old daughter had decorated Daddy’s case. Just as obvious was that Daddy hadn’t had time to clean it off before the hearing.

She had known Poe since she first arrived in the CS. She’d had several dinners with him and his wife at their home near Cold Harbor. He had, on more than one occasion, given her information—off the record, of course—about stories she was investigating.

Today, however, he hadn’t looked at her once.

In the corner, McKenna noted, the judge’s court reporter meticulously adjusted the video camera recording the hearing. The replacement marshal stood at attention next to the locked hall door. Stainless handcuffs dangled from the belt hook behind his holstered .45. McKenna glanced down at her wrists.

I lead, and you follow, the judge said, his voice muffled behind a wad of tissues as he emerged from the bathroom. Freedom of speech exists outside my courtroom and chambers. Do not assume what I want, and do not jump ahead on me. Do not attack this court and these proceedings. Do not speak at all unless I direct a question to you.

McKenna had never met the judge before today, but she had heard of him. He was Walter W. Beauchamp, Justice of the Sixth District CS Court. He pronounced his name Bo-champ. Around Greater Richmond, however, by friends and foes alike, he was called Bloody Walt. The courthouse story was that, when provoked, the judge’s face would turn the color of pale granite, and blood would leak from his nostrils. Immediate retribution from the bench would then be forthcoming.

Convicted defendants received the maximum in this court. Attorneys were not spared, either—McKenna knew one who had antagonized the judge and earned more jail time than his convicted client. It was also well known that, even more than attorneys, the Appalachian-born judge despised reporters and Yankees.

She had cautioned her attorney about the judge’s reputation. The man, supplied to her by the network, flown in on the corporate jet from New York, told her not to worry. His name was listed at the top of his law firm’s marquee. He had defended journalists in the US, Canada and Mexico as well as the Confederate States. He had established three precedents in US law. He had written two best-selling books. He had a network mini-series beginning production. After most trials, he’d added, judges and the opposition team asked for his autograph.

He went on the offensive immediately. He attacked the CS Attorney General’s case, the A.G.’s motivation and the A.G.’s womanhood. He swiftly rammed home point after point. His US colleagues would have been proud. Billy Dean Poe was shocked.

As the judge listened, the tight smile etching his lips vanished with the color in his cheeks; then blood seeped from his nose. Seven minutes after the attorney entered the judge’s chambers, the judge ordered him arrested for contempt and taken to jail. McKenna wondered if the seven minutes was a record.

The judge sat down behind his desk.

"People, you are guests in my domain, and be assured that this is my domain. You will act properly at all times in my presence or suffer the consequences, as one member of our little gathering has already discovered. Any question or debate on this?"

No, sir, answered Poe.

McKenna shook her head and twisted another loop in her gold chain. Somehow, some way, she would have to get word out that she wouldn’t make the meeting tonight in Norfolk. The urgent news there would have to wait. Maybe for a long, long time. And Landry would have to send someone else to Oklahoma City to interview the governor tomorrow. God, she hated losing that story. The outspoken governor had promised her an exclusive announcement regarding his position on the Civil Rights Amendment vote.

The judge examined his crimson-spotted tissue before dropping it into the wastebasket. He selected a fresh one from the box on his desk and folded it into a neat square.

My alma mater is playing Alabama this weekend, he said. "It is my hope to attend the game. To do so, I must clear a few cases from my docket. I called this pretrial hearing because I believe we can avoid a court trial, but I am prepared to begin formal proceedings within the hour.

"People, if I miss the