The Crescent Spy (26 page)

Josephine pulled the blanket up about her head as if to smother the thoughts and memories that kept churning through her mind. She forced herself to calm down and to bend her thoughts to getting Franklin out of New Orleans. She’d wasted Monday trying to send a telegram to summon help. Tomorrow was Tuesday, New Year’s Eve. On Wednesday, Francesca would arrive at the Paris Hotel, expecting $6,000 and prepared to betray Josephine if she didn’t get it.

T
he next morning, Josephine handed Solomon Fein her story about the arsenal fire and waited nervously while he sat at his desk and read it. A frown creased his brow, and he ran his fingers through his curly black hair. The noise and turmoil of the newsroom swirled around them. When he’d finished, he took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt.

“Something wrong with my story?”

“It’s fine, I suppose.”

“There wasn’t much to work with. Eyewitnesses in the city heard an explosion at the hospital and saw a column of fire. Windows blew out. Buildings shook. Some large quantity of powder, cartridges, and shell were destroyed. The army won’t say how much.”

“Nor should they, with the saboteur still at large.”

“Everything else is conjecture.”

“It’s not the conjecture that’s a problem. The prose is workmanlike, adequate. But it doesn’t shine. I was hoping for more.”

“I know,” she admitted. “I wrote it quickly.”

“You always write quickly. This time you seem distracted. Are you burned out? I’ve been riding you for months, throwing everything your way. Maybe it’s too much. Wait, you’re not still sore because I put Keller on the story first, and this is your way of punishing me?”

“I’m not punishing you, I swear.”

“Then what is it? Why is this story . . . mediocre?”

“I don’t know. Maybe my enthusiasm waned coming to it so late and already having to flog Keller’s dead dog.”

He set down the pages on his desk. “I’ll run it, of course. It’s not front-page material, though, not two days after the blast. What else have you got?”

This was the opening she needed. She glanced around to make sure nobody was close enough to overhear, and pulled up a chair. “That’s the other thing. There’s a big story I’m working on, and it’s distracting me.”

He perked up. “I like the sound of that. How big?”

“I’ve got to travel downriver for a few days.”

“It’s not Major Dunbar, is it? I hear he’s sweet on you. If you’re going to the forts so he can woo you . . .”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Then he’s
not
sweet on you?”

“I don’t care if he is or isn’t—that has nothing to do with me or my work. It’s not the forts that are drawing my attention, or their officers, for that matter.”

“Then what is it?”

She pushed past his question. “I’ll need your help. Can you get me a blockade-runner? Someone clever, someone who isn’t overly attached to the cause. Someone who won’t ask questions, who will deal with Confederates and Yankees alike.”

“Why?”

“Because I need to be smuggled to the Gulf. I have a contact in the fleet, a Union officer who really was, as you put it, sweet on me. Back when I was in Washington. He has information. Something big is happening.”

“Good Lord. It’s an attack on New Orleans, isn’t it?”

“I believe so.”

“From the Gulf?”

“I can’t see how they’d get past the forts,” Josephine said. “They couldn’t in October, and General Lovell has been hard at work strengthening our defenses. It might be the enemy ironclads upriver. Rumor has it they’re on the move.”

“How sure are you of this information?”

“I’m not sure of anything. That’s why I need to get downriver. Can you get me someone?”

“It won’t be cheap.”

“Of course not,” she said. “But it will be worth it.”

“I don’t know. Seems risky. I can’t have you arrested by the Yanks.”

“I won’t be. Trust me.” This was the truest thing Josephine had said during the whole conversation. “I have plenty of tricks, and my gentleman friend and I have a rendezvous planned.”

“Have you thought he might be playing you? That he might have nothing, has told you whatever he thinks you want to hear so he can seduce you?”

“Oh, come now,” Josephine scoffed. “Who do you think I am? Nobody will play me, and I won’t be seduced. Can I have the transport or not?”

“I don’t know. It’s dangerous business you’re about.”

“Listen to me,” she said. “I swear this to you. Even if I don’t return with the entire battle plan of the Union army, I will bring back all manner of useful information about the enemy’s intent for naval actions on the Gulf and in the Mississippi.”

Fein ran his fingers through his hair again. “Very well. I’ll find a runner. When do you need it?”

“This evening,” she said without hesitation. “Your man can’t know it’s me. He can’t know it’s a reporter, or anything at all about the passenger, for that matter, not even whether he’s waiting for a woman or a man.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. I never speak directly to this man, and he never speaks directly to me. Safer that way.”

Even better. That made it unlikely that word would get back to Fein that she had deceived him about traveling to the Gulf.

“And I can’t be challenged or seen in any way at the forts,” she added. “Can he manage?”

“I’m sure he can, but it will be expensive.”

“You already said that. Pay whatever he asks. If I don’t deliver, you can deduct it from my pay.”

Josephine reached into the satchel at her feet and retrieved the pocket watch with the gilt cover and the Persian-looking crescent and star. She set it on the desk next to her and made a quick sketch of it on a pad.

“This is all I want your man to know,” she said. “A passenger will arrive at the levee outside Jackson Square at eight o’clock. This passenger will be carrying this watch and will be beneath one of the gas lamps, continually checking the time.” She put away the watch and folded the sketch and put it in Fein’s hand. “With nothing more than that, can your man be relied on to get me downriver?”

Fein nodded.

“You won’t regret this,” she said. “This is information that will change the course of the war.”

“If you’re right, Richmond will need to know about this.”

“And they’ll get it,” she said. “Just as soon as it appears in the
New Orleans Daily Crescent
under my byline.”

At this, his uncertainty faded, replaced by a grin. “Now that’s my girl. You had me worried there for a minute.”

J
osephine planned the evening like a military expedition. First, she hired a cab to be waiting on the next street over from Nellie’s house at seven. Then she went home to get Franklin out of bed and dressed, with a bag holding a change of clothing, a pistol, and other personal effects. After dinner, she went downstairs, prepared to lead Nellie outside with some nonsense about a strange animal she’d spotted snuffling through the flower bed. It proved unnecessary, as the woman was already on the porch with the rest of the neighborhood, watching the militia march down the street on its way to the parade ground.

Josephine hurried upstairs. It was a struggle getting Franklin down the back stairs and into the garden by the side gate. She’d stashed a pair of crutches in the garden shed, and once he had them, they were able to make better time down the side street. With a hat pulled low over his head and the daylight already gone, only the crutches would draw attention on the darkened side street, but none of the handful of passersby challenged them.

There were a few tense moments waiting for the cab, which arrived ten minutes late, but then they were inside, Franklin’s bag at their feet, and the driver up front leading the horse down the cobbled street.

Franklin wheezed and clutched his ribs. She took out a vial of laudanum, but he waved it away, saying he needed to keep his wits about him.

“Why does it hurt more now than three days ago?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s your body telling you to go back to bed and let it mend.”

“Doesn’t seem such a bad idea, if you ask me.”

“Everything is arranged. You’ll be safely in the Gulf in two days.”

She wasn’t confident about this assertion. Fein’s man must be a scoundrel or he wouldn’t have agreed to smuggle a passenger past the forts, a request that would arouse suspicion in any smuggler sharp enough to thrive in the present circumstances. If the smuggler saw the injured man, spotted the wound on his forehead, he might figure out the game. A quick glance at the cards in his hand would reveal more profit to be made handing over a spy for a hundred dollars in gold than whatever Fein was paying him.

Traffic was light, and the cab driver’s horse young, not like some of the nags that dragged their tired, bony bodies up and down the streets, and they arrived at the levee barely twenty minutes later. They stood in the shadows on the edge of a brick warehouse, Franklin leaning on his crutches.

“What now?” he asked.

She pointed in the direction they needed to travel. “Can you manage?”

He nodded.

She had dressed him in the butternut jacket with captain’s bars at the house, and now she removed a forage cap purchased in the city and placed it on his head.

“There. Now you look like a proper soldier. You took a wound and came downriver to recover under your wife’s tender care, who is staying with her sister in New Orleans. That story should be easy enough for both of us to remember.”

“I hope you’re the wife, and not the sister.”

“Hah!”

“I beg your pardon, it was a poor jest. After the stupid things I said last night, I should be more careful.”

“I know how you meant it,” she reassured him. “And I know you had no ill intentions last night, either. My pride got the better of me, and my behavior was wretched. I’m the one who should be begging forgiveness.”

“We’ll make a pact,” he said. “I’ll forgive your pride if you will forgive my clumsy tongue.”

“Done.”

F
ifteen minutes later, they were sitting on a downed sycamore log that had been half buried in the levee with its top skimmed off to serve as a crude bench. They’d tucked the crutches into the shadows behind the log, and Franklin put the watch in his breast pocket, prepared to pull it out and check anytime someone walked by close enough to see. A gaslight flickered above them, lighting the docks. The sound of cornets and saxophones drifted from Jackson Square to their rear. It was New Year’s Eve, and the celebrations were beginning in front of the cathedral. In a couple of hours they would spread throughout the Quarter and move up to the levee as well. But at the moment, the levee was nearly empty.

In past years, the riverfront had been swarming with stevedores, both free and slave, day and night. New Year’s Eve would have been no exception. They would be unloading flour, vegetables, and beef from upriver, and molasses, sugar, salt, and manufactures from the Gulf. But river traffic had choked to a near standstill. Tonight, the Mississippi in front of the levee was nearly empty, except for a single barge preparing to depart downstream with a pair of long, dark cannons lashed on its deck, surrounded by crates of guns and foodstuff for the forts. A good twenty soldiers milled about smoking and talking. The main group stood forty or fifty feet away from Josephine and Franklin, and one would glance in their direction every minute or two. She worried that the blockade-runner would take one look at the military traffic and renege on his promise to Solomon Fein.

Franklin took Josephine’s hands and leaned in as if he were her husband and they’d come up to the levee to get away from the crowds at Jackson Square. Her hands felt small and frail in his big ones, a sensation that gave her a peculiar feeling in her belly.