Rebel Train: A Civil War Novel

Chapter 3

Colonel William Norris worked through the pile of dispatches on his desk. Most contained routine intelligence and he glanced at the messages, then put them aside. It wasn't until he was nearly at the bottom of the pile that he came across a report that made him sit up very straight at his desk and begin giving the message a close second look. He stared at the words on the page, scarcely able to believe what he was reading. Was it possible?

"Fletcher!"

Boots sounded in the hall and a young captain in an immaculately tailored uniform entered the office. He snapped to attention.

"Sir?"

Norris handed him the sheet of paper. "Who sent this dispatch?"

"One of our agents in Pennsylvania. He has always been highly reliable in the past."

Norris smiled. He had the sort of grin that seemed to make the air in the room grow cold. Fletcher shifted uneasily from foot to foot, making the leather of his highly polished boots squeak.

"We need to be very sure of what this says, Captain Fletcher. I want you to make certain there were no mistakes in decoding the cipher."

"Yes, sir."

Fletcher hurried out as Norris lit a cigar and tried to make some sense of the spy's report.

The Confederate Secret Service in Richmond was virtually unknown to most people, except those with some stake in the war fought over information, far beyond the battlefield. Officially, Norris was chief of the Confederate Signal Bureau. On paper, the Secret Service he directed did not even exist.

Norris was a West Point graduate who had resigned from the United States Army to fight for his native Virginia. Early in the war, he had developed the system known as "semaphore," which enabled military units to communicate over long distances using signal flags. Once the equipment had been developed and men trained, Norris had turned his attention to an altogether different kind of communication.

To all appearances, he was a quiet and intelligent man whom few would have suspected of directing the Confederacy's vast network of spies. Norris was also ruthless, and more than one of the bloated bodies found in the James River or in the stinking wastelands surrounding the Tredegar Iron Works was a result of his long reach.

The work was not nearly as exciting as it might seem. Most of what Norris did was collect dispatches from various spies scattered from Virginia to Canada. Some of what he received was quite useless or even inaccurate. He thought of it as a process not unlike distilling sour mash into whiskey. Norris did his best to sort through it all and then pass the information along to the appropriate commanders and political leaders. When necessary, he took matters into his own hands.

Norris had known for some time that the Yankee president, Abraham Lincoln, planned to take part in the ceremony dedicating the new cemetery for the Union dead at the Gettysburg battlefield. That information was hardly news because a president took part in similar public events on a regular basis. But Norris had anticipated an opportunity. He had sent a small band of saboteurs to ambush Lincoln's train on its way to Gettysburg.

There were many in the Confederacy who opposed such means of winning the war. But if Norris had learned anything in nearly three years of war, it was that the South had to exploit every Union weakness it could find if the Confederacy was to survive.

However, the dispatch he had just read changed everything. That Scottish zealot Alan Pinkerton, who ran the Union's network of spies, had rooted out the saboteurs. Still, to avoid any further danger to the president the Yankees proposed to do something quite daring and extraordinary. It also presented Norris with a great opportunity. He could make the Yankees' cleverness work against them.

Norris paused to light another cigar. He puffed a blue cloud of tobacco smoke toward the ceiling, thinking. Several minutes passed before he suddenly called out in annoyance, "Fletcher! Where the hell are you?"

The captain hurried back in. "No mistakes, sir. The dispatch is accurate. I would stake my life on it."

Leaning back in his chair, Norris kept his eyes focused on the ceiling. "Would you? I'll keep that in mind. Now tell me, is that fellow Arthur Percy still in Richmond? Or has the general shot him?"

"Percy?" Fletcher didn't want to show that he listened to common gossip, so he pretended not to know the name, even though the whole city had heard the scandal.

"Don't be difficult, Fletcher. I'm talking about the one who was philandering with the general's wife."

"Oh. I suppose just about everyone has heard of that Colonel Percy." Fletcher sneered. "Not a very respectable sort, from what I understand."

"He's just the one I want," Norris said. "He's a good cavalry officer and a very brave man, no matter what else is being said about him. Find him and bring him here, Fletcher. He's about to undertake a mission for me."

Fletcher saluted and began to leave. Norris called him back. "While you're at it, Fletcher, find Tom Flynn as well."

"Flynn, sir?" Fletcher made no pretense about not knowing that name. He curled a disdainful upper lip in disgust. "The Irishman."

"I take it you don't like him, Captain?"

"No, sir. He's a lowborn immigrant."

"Why don't you point that out to him, the next time you see him?"

Fletcher cleared his throat nervously, plainly uncomfortable. "Flynn isn't worth the effort, sir."

"Go find them for me, Fletcher. Find Colonel Percy and the Irishman. They're just the men for the job I have in mind."

“Yes, sir.”

Norris smiled again with a grin that could freeze water, not to mention the blood in Fletcher’s veins. “Who knows? There might even be something in it for you, Captain.”