CHAPTER

48

 

“It’s a mistake,” Tolman said.

“It’s not a mistake,” Voss said.

“It’s a common enough name—”

“Don’t you think I thought of that? We traced the computer that originated the first of the money transfers. It was part of the Wi-Fi network at the coffee shop on the corner, Around the Ground. You know the one I’m talking about?”

Tolman squeezed her eyes closed. Hudson bought coffee there almost every morning, and she and other people in the office had lunch with him there from time to time. “I know it,” she said.

“And the bank branch is in Silver Spring,” Voss said. “I checked the employee directory. Hudson’s home address is four blocks from the bank.”

Tolman looked up. Journey had come out of the house, Sharp towering in the doorway behind him, a silent sentinel.

“What is this all about?” Voss said. “Meg, tell me what this is about. What’s Hudson doing?”

Tolman’s mind was trying to shut down. One of the few friends she had … Hudson, always allowing her time off to do piano gigs and then asking how they went … Hudson, following his losing baseball team … Hudson, her confidant …

Hudson. Glory Warrior.

She made writing motions with her free hand and gestured at Journey. He disappeared into the house and came out with a pen and paper.

“Kerry,” Tolman said. “I can’t—”

I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it.

“What’s he doing?” Voss said. “Where are you, Meg?”

Tolman shook her head. Journey was staring at her with a questioning look on his face.

“I can’t—” she said, and the sentence died again.

She thought of the last time she’d talked to Hudson.

“Talk to no one but me, Meg.… Don’t trust anyone you don’t know well.”

But I know you well, Rusty, she thought. I’ve known you for five years. You hired me. You brought me into RIO. You listen to me when I need to talk.

“You are very, very good at your job, Meg.”

The Glory Warriors would need a person like Rusty Hudson. He was an accountant. He had a law degree. He was low profile, but understood the workings of government like no one Tolman had ever seen. He knew money and budgets and infrastructure. He knew personnel and logistics and details. He was the consummate bureaucrat. He knew everyone, and how to do everything, yet no one knew his name. Through RIO, he had access to incredible amounts of information from several different tentacles of the federal government. He was perfect for the Glory Warriors.

“Meg?” Voss said.

“I’m here.” Tolman’s voice was very quiet.

“Why?”

“I can’t explain it. Not yet. Don’t go to the office. Don’t go back to work. Call in sick until you hear from me again.”

Hudson refused to call in backup until she presented him with written evidence. It hadn’t seemed right at the time, though she’d cursed him for being such a bureaucrat, back in Louisville. But now it made sense. The “evidence” he’d wanted was the rest of the Fort Washita document.

Tolman kicked gravel. Dust rose around her like a shroud.

She’d just left him a message. A message with Sharp’s number to call back. A number that could be traced to a name and an address.

“Sweet Jesus,” she said. “Kerry, what’s that other name? The other one on the account.”

“Jackson McMartin.”

“I know that name,” she said. “Why do I know that name?” She repeated it aloud and pointed at Journey—write that down. She watched as he wrote the name. “Kerry, I have to go. Stay away from the office.”

She hung up, still dazed. Sharp had come into the clearing and stood between the two cars. “Darrell, I’m sorry,” she said.

Sharp looked down at her.

“We have to get out of here. This place isn’t safe. The Glory Warriors know we’re here.”

“What?” Journey said. “How—?”

“My boss,” Tolman said, and the bitterness crept into her voice. “My fucking boss who lets me take time off work to play piano whenever I want. He’s one of them. He’s a fucking Glory Warrior.”

“How did you—?”

“I was tracking the guys who attacked you at the college. Turns out they were Army Rangers who were supposedly killed in action in Iraq in 2006.” She leaned against the Jeep, closing her eyes. “And that explains why Rusty was so hesitant for me to dig around DOD looking for them. Son of a bitch! Who knows how long he’s been one of them, managing their money, quietly taking care of all the little details so they could do this. God damn him!”

She hadn’t even realized she was crying until the tears were coursing down her face. She balled both fists and struck the side of the Jeep, her hands hitting hot metal over and over again. Sharp looked alarmed, but didn’t move.

Tolman hit the car again. “Goddamn son of a bitch bastard,” she muttered through the tears. She struck the car, this time with an open palm. The tears gradually slowed, then stopped, and she said, “I never fucking cry. Never.”

“No, you curse,” Journey said.

Tolman laughed and wiped her face with the back of her arm. “No shit.” The smile faded. “I’m sorry, Darrell. We need to get our things and get out of here. They’ll be coming. You can go with us and we can take you—”

“No,” Sharp said.

“Darrell, I know you don’t like leaving your place, but these are dangerous people.”

“So am I,” Sharp said.

*   *   *

They tried for the better part of an hour to persuade Sharp to leave, but he insisted he would be ready for whatever came over the horizon. He gave them the keys to his second vehicle, a ten-year-old Dodge Dakota truck—the same kind Rusty Hudson drove, Tolman thought. He also gave each of them a clean, prepaid cell phone and a SIG Sauer 9-millimeter pistol.

“I try to stay ready for anything,” he said with a shrug, then looked at Journey. “You know how to shoot?”

“No,” Journey said.

“Better learn fast,” Sharp said, then looked at Tolman. “I remember how you like the SIG. You were always a pretty good shot.”

“I can still hold my own,” Tolman said.

“Just get the truck back to me when you can,” he said.

“I will,” Tolman said. “I bought that car in Kentucky. I guess you can drive it free.”

Sharp almost smiled, his mustache moving around a bit. “Where will you go?”

Tolman and Journey looked at each other. “I don’t know yet,” Tolman said.

Sharp nodded. “I wish you’d played the piano some more.”

“So do I.”

They parted without touching. Journey thought about a handshake, but settled for a small wave. Sharp nodded in his direction. Tolman got behind the wheel of the Dakota and pulled it from its parking spot behind the house, pointing it toward the road. As they topped the little rise, Journey looked back once. Darrell Sharp was standing in front of his house, still watching them.

*   *   *

Tolman stopped the car at Highway 28, idling as a pickup truck drove past. “Where do we go?” Journey asked.

“I’m not sure,” Tolman said. “Maybe back toward Little Rock for now. We can regroup in a city. I tell you, I’d rather walk through the worst parts of D.C. at night, unarmed, than spend too much time out here in the woods.” She turned left.

They rode in silence for an hour. Radio reception and cell phone signals were spotty in the hills. Journey, in the passenger seat, stared out at the green that surrounded them, his mind playing over all that had happened: a backhoe breaking ground for a new museum at Fort Washita, and the swiftness of all that had come since. The Glory Warriors were well organized, and they had people within the government already working for their cause. Journey glanced at Tolman—the heavy betrayal sat on her face as if painted on, even as she drove the winding road.

Journey turned the thoughts over and over. As soon as the guns and the document had been found at Fort Washita, and plastered all over the media, the Glory Warriors had swung into action, as if …

As if they’d been waiting.

But if the pages had really been lost since 1865, why did the Glory Warriors even exist in the modern era?

“You were right,” he said aloud.

Tolman jumped, as if she’d forgotten he was there. The truck veered a little into the left-hand lane. It didn’t matter—only one car had passed them since they left Gravelly. “What?” she said.

History was about the small details that add up to major events, Journey thought. He preached that to his students constantly: Look beyond “shots heard ’round the world” and find the shots that were barely heard at all. That’s where history really begins, with small things like a casual comment, or one throwaway sentence in the midst of thousands of pages, or the way a person’s face looks when something unexpected is suddenly placed in front of them.…

“You were right,” he said again. “Those pages—the pages Grant wrote about the Glory Warriors and then asked Mark Twain to leave out of his book. They did wind up in someone’s hands.”

Then he had it, the thoughts that had fled when he woke up on Darrell Sharp’s sofa a few hours ago. He remembered words on a page, a page that didn’t seem near as important as others he’d seen recently. And he saw it, unfolding in front of him, just as the Fourche Mountains rose outside the window of the truck.

Tolman alternated her glance between Journey and the road. She raised her hands from the wheel for a moment, asking him the question without words.

“I know where the missing pages from Grant’s book are,” Journey said. “And here’s another thing—Samuel Williams was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. I know where to find the signature page, too.”