However, the embarrassing defeat of the Union army at Bull Run had been his first and last taste of war. His wound had put him out of the army for good. Greer had happily returned to his old job on the railroad. He had been a brakeman and engineer before the war broke out, and his war service, brief though it had been, had soon brought him a promotion to conductor.
"Tickets, please!" he repeated. Greer was friendly in an officious way as he passed through the car. He puffed out his chest as he paraded the aisles in his blue conductor's uniform with its bright, brass buttons. It was as fancy as any general's uniform. He nodded at the men, tipped his hat to the women.
His eye lingered longer than usual on the couple who occupied the last seat. The two had come aboard at Mount Clare Station in Baltimore with tickets for Cumberland, a tall, muscular man with a pretty young woman on his arm. They wore flashy clothes — the man a bowler hat with a red silk tie at his neck, the woman wearing a wide hoop skirt that rustled with expensive crinoline petticoats. The front of the dress was cut low enough to reveal the milky white tops of her breasts, and the silk fabric was a bright, racy green — hardly the sort of clothes most women wore for traveling. They had the look of people who had worn their best clothes and were flaunting their finery like peacocks. Greer sensed they were trouble as soon as he laid eyes on them.
The man caught Greer studying him and returned the look with a taunting stare. He had a tough face, Greer decided, hard black eyes and oiled, dark hair. Everything about him was cocky. Greer had seen his kind often enough in the gangs of toughs known as Plug Uglies who hung around the wharves in Baltimore. Troublemakers. The city was full of thieves and copperheads who sympathized with the Confederate cause.
"Do you have your ticket, sir?" Greer asked. He could have moved on, but he didn't like the way the man was sneering at him.
"You ought to know," the man muttered. "You checked it yourself back in Baltimore.”
Greer didn't like surly passengers. He wasn't having any nonsense on his train. He did not move, but stood waiting in the aisle, and the passenger knew well enough it was the conductor's right to check tickets because the train stopped at every station and new people were constantly coming aboard. He thrust the ticket at the conductor.
Greer gave the piece of paper a long look, then handed it back. "Thank you, sir."
He walked on, feeling the man's eyes boring into his back. Greer wasn't afraid of anybody, but he also knew it wasn't his job to pick fights with the passengers. The B&O didn't pay him for that. Still, it didn't mean he couldn't put an uppity passenger in his place.
He opened the back door of the car and stepped out onto the platform where the wind blew with sudden force. Clamping his round conductor's cap onto his head with one hand, he crossed to the next car and went in. As soon as the conductor shut the door behind him, the woman in the green dress whispered harshly to her companion, "Charlie, what are you trying to do, ruin the whole plan?"
"The son of a bitch was giving me a hard look, Nellie."
The woman shook her head angrily. "We're here to ride the train, Charlie Gilmore. That's all. We want to get a feel for it. We need to learn the routine. Next time we ride this train you can shoot that conductor if you want, but for now you'd better smile at him. Don't cause trouble."
"Don't tell me what to do," the man said, raising his voice just enough that he attracted the attention of the other passengers. He glared at them until they looked away.
Nellie leaned close so that only he could hear what she said. She smiled as she spoke, although her low voice was cold and steely. "Behave or I'll put a knife in your ribs and save that conductor the trouble of putting you off at the next station."
"You'd do it, too, wouldn't you, Nell?"
In answer, he felt the sharp point of a blade between his ribs. One thrust and the steel would bury itself deep in his heart. He held himself very still. A man could never be sure what Nellie Jones would do next. She was a dangerous woman. Crazy, some said. At the moment, he had to agree.
Just as quickly as it had appeared, the knife vanished into the sleeve of her dress. No one else had seen because Nellie was pressed up close against him. Anyone watching would think they were lovers.
He forced a laugh to show he hadn't been afraid. "You wouldn't stab me, now would you, Nell?"
"I want to be rich," she whispered. "And you're not going to stop me. Now sit up straight and act proper."
The door to the car opened again and the conductor reappeared. He gave the couple from Baltimore a quick glance and continued down the aisle.
Gilmore watched the conductor closely. "He's damn full of himself," he grumbled. "The man runs a train and acts like he owns the world. He must think he’s a general instead of a two-bit railroad conductor.”
Beside him, Nellie squeezed his arm. "You just wait," she said. "If we pull this off you can buy your own goddamn train."
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.