Sion Crossing (31 page)

The youth blinked at Latimer, and then at the wide empty lawn, and then frowned at Joe. “Ah saw you, Joe.”

It suddenly came to Latimer why they were all wearing uniforms. Kingston had said something about “the parade”, and Joe had referred to “playing soldiers in the town” and “flag-waving”. And, of course, the legend of the Old South and the Lost Cause was still cherished by the descendants of the Confederates—and Americans loved parades, even more than Frenchmen did.

“Ah saw you, Joe,” repeated the youth.

Something else came to Latimer, quite unbidden. Long ago, with all the men away at war in Virginia and Tennessee, there would only have been old men and young boys like this one to defend Sion Crossing from Sherman—

“You see
anyone
—you ring the bell, sonny,” said Joe. “So you go ring it now, like ah said.”

But …
to hell with Sherman and fancy-dress Confederates
—
that was not what all this was about
—
it couldn’t be
—

“Okay, fella—go on up,” ordered Joe.

The big white door opened for them before Latimer had reached the top of the steps. Under the verandah it was hardly less oppressive, but only a few steps took him into the doorway and a blissful air-conditioned coolness—if there was a heaven, it was air-conditioned.

It wasn’t dark inside the house, but for a moment it seemed so, until his eyes accustomed themselves to deliverance from the glare outside. But it was chiefly the wonderful chill: he was still bathed in sweat under his coat, but at least he could think again.

There was a man on his left—a man who was not an
ersatz
Confederate, but a twentieth century civilian, in twentieth century shirt-and-tie.

“Mr. Latimer?”

Dr Livingstone, I presume?
he might just as well have said.

“Yes.” The thought-processes were accelerating. Whatever was happening, he had one thing going for him: he was not here on official business, so he had nothing to hide and nothing to protect, and nothing whatsoever to risk his skin for. In fact …
whatever was happening, he was an innocent bystander!

“I believe you have a passport?” The twentieth century man resolved himself into a middle-aged, medium-sized American. “May I see it please?”

American? If an American, from a long way north and east of Sion Crossing. But, from wherever, at least polite.

“Of course.” There would be time for protest, but it was not yet come, with Joe still at his back.

“Close the door.” As the man took his passport he addressed Joe more curtly. “Thank you, Mr Latimer.” The voice readjusted itself for Latimer.

He couldn’t place the accent at all: it was neither the Queen’s English nor the President’s American—it was statelessly educated.

Rimless spectacles—hair without a trace of grey, but maybe dyed: chief accountant in a middle-sized multi-national, rather than a civil servant, Latimer estimated, speculating a little wildly … a civil servant might have spoken as politely, but there would not have been an extra edge of menace deep down, which this man had.

“Thank you.” The passport was not returned with the thanks. “You have a map, I think?”

Was this the moment to protest?

No.

“I have a map—yes.” Latimer felt in his pockets, unsure where Willy had replaced the map. “And I have a wallet and four hundred and fifty dollars—do you want them too?”

“Just the map, Mr. Latimer, if you please.”

Having taken in the man, Latimer used his next ration of time to take in the man’s setting.

It wasn’t quite Tara—the staircase fell short of a Scarlett O’Hara sweep … But, although it must have been built in the generation after the original Sion Crossing house had gone up in flames, it owed nothing to Victorian gothic taste: it had a pleasing style of its own which he couldn’t identify at all, except that it seemed to lean more to the eighteenth century than the nineteenth … Only, that didn’t fit at all with his brief reading of post-Civil War Georgia—the Georgia of Reconstruction, in which the vulgar Carpetbaggers had displaced the old families … the old families like the Alexanders of Sion Crossing, which had been extinguished by the war.

“Would you come this way, Mr. Latimer?” The man gestured towards the staircase which Latimer had been admiring only a moment before.

Latimer just managed to take in the rest of the entrance hall, which filled the centre of the house. There were packing cases to his left—but they gave no hint of arrival or departure—

“This way, Mr. Latimer.” The second time there was an edge of command to the politeness.

Was this
The Man
? If he was, he didn’t fit this Sion Crossing any better than the Carpetbaggers fitted it: he was an
organization man
of some sort—a professional very different from Joe, but nonetheless professional.

But … on balance, not
The Man
—?

Latimer ascended the staircase. At the second turn there was a window which gave him a brief view of an avenue of trees at the front of the house, to the end of which the half-witted Ronnie had been despatched. Then the final stairs and the landing were ahead of him, with a choice of passages and doors.

“Straight ahead, Mr. Latimer.”

There was a door ahead, pale oak like the other doors and the panelling: it looked as though some vandal had once painted it all, and then it had all been decently stripped down to reveal the original fine grain by some later owner whose taste matched his wealth.

“Go on in.”

Latimer opened the door. They were at the back of the house again after that double-turn on the staircase: over the first-storey verandah he could see the lawn across which Joe had so recently marched him at gunpoint. But it wasn’t a bedroom, for there was a fine walnut desk with a comfortable leather chair behind it to his left, and … and there was a matching chair to his right, out of which a white-haired man was staring at him.

The Man?

Latimer decided to break first. Having come here with an Ingram at his back he could by no stretch of the imagination consider this a friendly meeting. But, even though he well knew the fate of innocent bystanders in the barbarous twentieth century, that was the only rôle he could play, because that was what he actually was.

“Good afternoon,” he said to the white-haired man.

“Sit down, Mr. Latimer,” said the polite man. “There is a chair to your left.”

Latimer allowed the white-haired man some more time in which to react, but received only a blank look of unrecognition. Curiously, although the man in no way resembled Senator Cookridge either in features or physique, he was reminded of the Senator without knowing why. Perhaps there was a
type
of American, beyond a certain age, and well-groomed and expensively-suited, just as there was a
class
of Englishman—?

The eyes left Latimer’s face for an instant, shifting to the polite man.

“No.” The slightest shake of the head. “No.”

He had not been identified—any more than he could make an identification: Latimer himself agreed with that conclusion.

“Sit down, Mr Latimer.”

Latimer moved the chair. There was nowhere for it which would give him a simultaneous view of them: either by accident, or more likely by design, they had achieved the classic interrogation positioning.

And, more than that, he was already in two minds about them and slightly disorientated, no longer certain as to which of them—was
The Man.
In fact …
in fact
(and the fact was very disconcerting), he had never been caught so exactly in the rôle of nut between the nutcrackers: in the last ten years he had always been part of the nutcracker itself—in the last five he himself had been something like
The Man
!

But he
mustn’t
let himself be disconcerted.

He sat down meekly.

“What sort of … ‘civil servant’, Mr Latimer?” The polite man arranged his passport and the map neatly on the desk.

So there was going to be no mercy: it was
First Service
on the centre court at Wimbledon on the last day.

Latimer looked deliberately at the white-haired man. “In so far as it’s anyone’s business … I’m an economist, actually.”

“An economist?” The polite man was still polite. “You have economic business here?”

Latimer looked at him. “I have no business here. I was looking at the ruins of the old Sion Crossing house, and a man threatened me with a gun. And then another man threatened me—and that’s why I’m here, Mr—?” He cocked his head. “Mr—?”

“Economists do not read notices, then?” The question wasn’t shrugged off, it was ignored.

Notices?

“They do when they see them.” Play for time. “What notices?” But even as he played, the beginnings of a very nasty suspicion started to form in Latimer’s mind. “What notices?”

The rimless spectacles gave nothing away. “There are notices at all the entrances to Sion land—to all this property—warning unauthorized persons to keep out, Mr Latimer. They are large notices—they are most explicit.”

The nasty suspicion was becoming as large as the notices, and almost as explicit. “I didn’t see any notices.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

So did Latimer. “I found a path—”
Kingston must have known
“—and I followed it. I didn’t see a notice.”

So he was here because Kingston intended him to be here
—

“Yes.” The polite man smoothed out the map in front of him. “But then … you must have passed the church, Mr Latimer.”

He had carefully been routed on to a path which did not pass the church. He had been set up.

“Not exactly.” No other interpretation was possible:
he had been set up.
“I saw the church through the trees. I think I must have taken a short cut, somehow … If I’ve trespassed, then I’m sorry.” He had to get away from the notices. “I only wanted to see the ruins.”

“Why? There is nothing to see, Mr Latimer.”

That was better. Latimer smiled from one to the other. “If you’re interested in the American Civil War there’s a lot to see.” He spread the smile on the white-haired man. “I didn’t know it was still going on, though … Those men in the Confederate uniforms—is that something to do with the parade in Smithsville today?”

The white-haired man did not resemble the Senator in more ways than features and physique, he decided. Where the Senator had exuded bonhomie and confidence, almost like an actor giving his audience what they expected, this man cared nothing for his audience. Rather, he was hostile and he was so full of doubt that he almost looked frightened.

So he was not The Man!

“And you are interested in the American Civil War?” The polite man’s disbelief was not quite so polite this time.

“That’s why I’m here.” Latimer grimaced suddenly. “Or … that’s why I was
there
—at the ruins—yes!”

“So?” The not-so-polite man touched the passport. “English economists are interested in the American Civil War?”

“I don’t know about economists … but you obviously haven’t read Henderson’s book on Stonewall Jackson—” But he could do better than that! “—or Sir Winston Churchill’s
History of the English-Speaking Peoples
—?” The bastard might not know Colonel G. F. R. Henderson from a stone in Stonewall Jackson’s wall, but he could hardly shrug off Winston Spencer Churchill, by God!

“Ssso?” Behind that hiss the politeness was wafer-thin now. “Sir Winston Churchill was interested in Sion Crossing?”

“No.” Latimer wished he could remember what Winston had written in the American chapters of Volume Four, which he had long ago skipped through more as an act of piety than from either interest or need. “But he wrote about General Sherman in Georgia—” That had to be safe! “—and Sherman’s men burnt Sion Crossing, as I’m sure you must know—”

But the look on the man’s cold accountant’s face suggested quite the opposite. So he turned to the white-haired man. “He burnt Sion Crossing—” Sherman himself had no more burnt Sion Crossing than King George III had burnt Washington, but the guilt was about the same “—as you know.”

At least there was something there, in the look the-man-who-wasn’t-The-Man gave to the-man-who-might-be. And if it wasn’t recognition, it at least had a hint of doubt in it.

“As you know—” If that was the way it was, then he must capitalize on their greater ignorance: he must encourage them to dismiss him as an enthusiastic idiot “—though, of course, the Sion Crossing episode isn’t historically important in itself, I admit …”

He felt himself suspended midway between their doubts. So, at all costs, he mustn’t lose momentum—he must flannel convincingly—as he had once done in Oxford tutorials—

“Geographically …
geographically
, it was on the very edge of Sherman’s line of march, although the house was burnt.” Another more recent memory surfaced. “But … Catton—Bruce Catton … he described the march as a nineteenth century equivalent of a twentieth century bombing offensive—” The memory opened up an even more promising line of bullshit “—and, as an economist, I’m interested in the economic effects of such calculated destruction … the devastation not only of the Atlanta industrial complex, but also of the agricultural heartland of the Confederacy—”

The opening of the door behind him was half welcome and half unwelcome. He didn’t really know whether Georgia had been the agricultural heartland of the Confederacy. It had grown cotton in Scarlett O’Hara’s time, for the mills of Lancashire in England; but, with the Northern blockade, cotton would have been useless … and … could corn be grown in cotton-fields?

He felt he was running out of his inadequate stock of knowledge far too quickly for comfort. On the other hand, they both still looked slightly bemused.

But then Joe appeared on his left, seeming ridiculously out of place in his crumpled Confederate uniform beside the bespectacled man’s neat city suit.

“Yes?” the man frowned slightly.

Without a word Joe placed a piece of paper on the desk, beside the passport.

The bespectacled man studied the paper for a long moment. Latimer waited, expecting to receive the next glance, but was disappointed when the man studiously avoided him in preference for Joe.