Spy in a Little Black Dress

IV



Jackie stood above the battle. From her vantage point, she could see the soldiers in blue crouched behind boulders and fallen tree limbs or inside depressions dug into the ground with their entrenching tools. They were poised, muskets raised and pointed at the soldiers in gray as they came charging up the hill with barely any cover to protect them. As she observed the scene, Jackie was only too glad that she was a woman and very unlikely to ever find herself in this kind of predicament.

A voice from behind her left shoulder startled her out of her reverie.

“It’s Thursday, July second, the second day of the battle of Gettysburg. About five o’clock in the afternoon. The Twentieth Maine, under the command of Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, is taking a stand here at Little Round Top.” The speaker pointed to where the men in blue were hunkered down about halfway down the slope of the hill. “And the Confederate forces, the Fifteenth Alabama, under the command of Colonel William C. Oates, are charging up the hill. But instead of defending his position, Colonel Chamberlain [0]orders his men to fix bayonets and counterattacks down the hill. The result is a complete rout of the Johnny Reb.”

The narrator of this description was tall and reed thin and wore a suit that seemed permanently wilted from the heat. Curly haired and bearded, he spoke with a thick Brooklyn accent that seemed foreign in this southern setting. His name was Charles Grimsby, and he was Tulane University’s resident expert on William Walker. He was also, judging from the tabletop battlefield set up in his dining room, a Civil War buff.

Here, the entire Battle of Little Round Top was being replayed with cast-lead soldiers placed on an immaculate miniature landscape in which every tree, bush, stream, and rock seemed to have been magically shrunk down to scale and transported from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to Professor Grimsby’s dining room.

As Grimsby moved around Jackie and began repositioning some soldiers on the field of battle, she thought back on the whirlwind forty-eight hours that had preceded her presence here.

From M Street, after excitedly phoning Dulles to tell him of her discovery of the diary and the map, she had returned to Merrywood, where she made a series of other calls. First, when she found out that Grimsby was the curator of the Walker Collection at Tulane, she phoned him and made an appointment to meet the professor at his home on Sunday.

Then, much as she hated to do it, she called Jack Kennedy and canceled their Saturday night date, pleading a highly infectious virus in a whispery, near-death voice punctuated with a simulated hacking cough. (She prayed that this unplanned thwarting of Jack’s notorious libidinous drive would, like the random appearance of John Husted, make Jack only more eager to pursue her.)

On Saturday, through the auspices of the CIA’s travel department and with Dulles himself to cut through red tape, Jackie flew to New Orleans and checked into a B and B on stately St. Charles Avenue, across from the Tulane campus and next to Audubon Park.

This morning, Jackie woke up early and, without nearly enough sleep, went to the B and B’s high-ceilinged dining room and had a quick but fortifying southern breakfast of biscuits and gravy, hash browns, and the best chicory coffee that she had ever tasted. After that, she took a cab to Professor Grimsby’s house, a matchbox affair located on the far side of Magazine Street, the major shopping district for the university’s Uptown neighborhood. And here she was, smack in the middle of an uncannily faithful reproduction of a Civil War battle.

The professor picked up a cast-lead soldier in blue and held it up in front of Jackie. “Say hello to Colonel Chamberlain,” he said to her. “He commanded the left flank. Most historians would say that Chamberlain’s decision to charge downhill and take the battle to the Rebs was the turning point in the Battle of Little Round Top. They would also probably agree that the Battle of Little Round Top was the turning point in the Battle of Gettysburg. And that the Battle of Gettysburg was the turning point in the Civil War, paving the way for the Union victory over the Confederacy two years later. So you might say,” Professor Grimsby went on with a slight catch in his throat, “that this man, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, not a professional military man but a minister and a history professor at Bowdoin College in New Hampshire—a scholar who defied his school superiors by enlisting in the army—was responsible for the North’s ultimate victory in the Civil War.”

Carefully, gingerly, with something approaching reverence, Professor Grimsby put the miniature Colonel Chamberlain back in place on the battlefield, surrounded by the Union troops he commanded. Jackie understood that for the professor, history was far from something that had happened a long time in the past. In describing the colonel’s heroic action at Gettysburg, it was as though he were talking about an event that had taken place yesterday.

“Did my man fight here?” Jackie asked, trying tactfully to ease the professor back to the reason she had come to see him in the first place.

Professor Grimsby looked down at the diary pages Jackie had sent to him and said, “No, I believe he died elsewhere.”

“So you’ve had time to read the diary?”

“Yes, and thank you for allowing me to see it.”

He sat down on a dining room chair and motioned for Jackie to seat herself in the one across from him. She assumed that the professor was a bachelor since what wife would have put up with her eccentric husband transforming their dining room into a Civil War battle scene?

He picked up a pipe from the sideboard, filled the bowl with tobacco, tamped it down, and lit it, puffing on it as he looked over the pages. Thinking about her boss, Allen Dulles, and his beloved Kaywoodie, she wondered what it was about men of a certain age and their pipes.

Once he got the pipe going, the professor continued. “There’s not a lot of detail to go on. But there are just enough clues so that not only can I tell you where he died, but I can also furnish you with his name.”

Jackie couldn’t believe it. This was more than she had expected to hear. “Professor Grimsby, you’re amazing,” Jackie said with twin notes of admiration and gratitude in her voice.

“Don’t thank me,” Mr. Grimsby said, pointing to the stacks of official-looking papers making tall piles on the neighboring sideboard. “Thank the U.S. Army for keeping such thorough records.”

Jackie waited for the professor to tell her the man’s name. But from the way he sat back in his chair, she knew that she was in for a little lecture. Well, if that was the fee he was charging for giving her the information, then it was a small price to pay.

“I started by trying to get a fix on his unit. I based my findings on certain dates in the diary entries. For instance, September 12, 1862: That’s the date of the Union attack on Harpers Ferry. That’s confirmed by this reference to John Brown’s body, since he was the abolitionist who tried to take over the armory there back in 1859. Next comes this date, May 15, 1864, the Battle of New Market. During that battle, the Confederates were so undermanned that they were forced to conscript cadets from the nearby Virginia Military Institute. Beardless fifteen-year-olds were sent into battle that day; can you imagine?” The professor sounded indignant. “That’s why your man was horrified that the enemy he faced was children. Finally, this last date, July 29, 1864, corresponds with the eve of the Battle of Petersburg. The Union forces dug a tunnel under the Confederate lines—it’s referred to in the diary entry—and blew up the enemy’s powder magazines, causing instant slaughter on an unprecedented scale. Since the entries stop there, your man must’ve died during the attack that followed the explosion.”

The professor paused and looked at Jackie. Like the schoolteacher he was, he asked, “Any questions?”

Jackie shook her head no. Grimsby took this as a sign to continue.

“The only unit,” he went on, “that fought at all three engagements was the Sixty-Fourth Rhode Island Volunteers. It was very simple then for me to take its casualty list from Petersburg and compare it to the list of volunteers who fought with William Walker as a filibuster.”

Jackie interrupted. “Professor, before you go on, could you explain—who was William Walker? And what’s a filibuster? I thought that’s what Jimmy Stewart did at the end of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

Grimsby sighed, as though trying to decide how he could condense Walker’s life in a way that would be immediately comprehensible to her.

“Let’s see. Walker fancied himself an American Napoléon. He tried to set up an independent Republic of Sonora in Mexico in 1853 but got himself kicked out of the country. Then two years later, Cornelius Vanderbilt—the railroad tycoon—hired him to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, which had seized his property there. Walker conquered the country with a band of sixty volunteers known as filibusters. He named himself the new ruler of Nicaragua and changed the name of the country to Walkeragua. But he let the power go to his head and wouldn’t release Vanderbilt’s property, leaving the tycoon with no choice but to petition the U.S. government to arrest his rogue agent. In 1857, Walker was removed from office. The year 1860 found him back at his old stand, trying to overthrow the legitimate government of Honduras. But he was arrested by U.S. authorities and handed over to the Hondurans, who executed him by firing squad later that same year. He was only thirty-six years old.” The professor shook his head. “It’s amazing that he managed to cram so much misadventure into such a short life span.”

The history lesson at an end, Jackie inquired, “Is there any mention of a young woman named Maria Consuela in your collection?”

“No, but I’m not surprised. The history of Walker in Nicaragua is rather sketchy.”

“And what about the man who wrote the diary?”

The professor paused before speaking, like a magician milking the climax of a particularly dazzling illusion. “His name was James Metzger. Not all that much is known about him. He was born in Berlin, Germany, where, as a young man, he apprenticed as a silversmith. Then he and his sister moved to the U.S. and settled down here in New Orleans, where William Walker studied medicine and published a newspaper. The young German was an early convert to his cause.

“Metzger was a bachelor, but his married sister, Harriet Saunders, lived here too. She inherited all his property, including this treasure map, which her descendants eventually bequeathed to our collection here. Unfortunately, we had no contextual resources”—he held up the diary pages—“to know that it was a treasure map.”

This was the moment Jackie had been waiting for. She hesitated before asking her next question out of fear that she wouldn’t receive the answer she so desperately wanted to hear.

“Professor, is this map still in your collection?”

“Unfortunately not,” Grimsby answered gently, like a man breaking bad news to a loved one. “It was stolen from the collection in the early thirties. By Malachi Simon, a supposed scholar who turned out to be a professional map thief.”

Jackie could see Grimsby react to the surprised expression on her face.

“There’s a lot of money to be made in antique maps,” he explained. “Many of them can be worth a fortune.”

“And what happened to this Simon? What did he do with the map?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry to say that I have no idea.” He paused and looked wistfully into the middle distance beyond the dining room window. “I wish I had known that Metzger’s map was the key to a treasure.”

“Why is that?” Jackie asked.

“Because then I would have quit this job and gone to Cuba to search for it. Whatever it was worth then, can you imagine how many times more than that it must be worth today? Hell, do you know how many Civil War soldiers I could have bought with that money? Enough to reproduce the entire Union and Confederate armies, I reckon.”

“Do you think anyone has found it by now?” Jackie wondered.

“I doubt it,” the professor said. He shook his head and smiled. “If they had, the whole world would have heard about a find like that.”


They were waiting for her in her room.

A disappointed Jackie had returned to the B and B. To come all this way and have nothing to show for it rankled her like a toothache. As she walked into the room and turned on the ceiling fan to cool the stifling air, she was shocked to see that she was not alone. There were three men grouped around her bed. They all wore baggy suits that looked like they had been manufactured in the 1940s for the cast of Guys and Dolls. One of them was as bald as a roc’s egg; another had wiry, receding hair; and the third looked like his mother had cut his hair using a bowl as a guide. They reminded her of the Three Stooges, the low-rent comedy team from the movie shorts.

But what they did next was far from funny. As a single unit, they rushed Jackie, grabbed hold of her, and forced her out of the room, down the stairs, and out the side door of the B and B, where they wouldn’t be spotted by any of the other guests. Curly had his hand over Jackie’s mouth so she couldn’t scream and gave orders to the other two, Moe and Larry, in a language that Jackie identified as German. She assumed that they were not European visitors in search of a young American wife to bring back home. No, these must be Stasi agents, spies for the East German intelligence network. But what they were doing here in New Orleans or wanted with her, she had no clue.

On the side street between the B and B and the western edge of Audubon Park, there was a tan sedan parked at the curb. Jackie knew that the men were planning to hustle her into the car and spirit her off. But to where and to what purpose? She knew if this happened, she would never been seen or heard from again. She had to prevent the men from getting her into the vehicle. But how?

Then two things happened almost simultaneously. The first was that the man Jackie chose to think of as Larry, being more intent on holding on to her than on watching where he was going, tripped over a section of pavement that had been buckled by an oversized, gnarled tree root growing out of the ground. Jackie had previously noted that this phenomenon was common in New Orleans, where rain and flooding encouraged trees planted along the city’s various thoroughfares to shoot right up out of the sidewalk.

As soon as she felt Larry let go of her arm, Jackie immediately went into action and bit down on the hand that was covering her mouth. She was gratified when Curly let out a yelp of surprise and released her. That only left Moe on her other side to deal with. She handled him with one of the deadliest weapons ever designed—a woman’s stiletto-heeled shoe. A quick and expertly placed kick to the shin was enough to neutralize Moe momentarily and force him to let go of her.

Jackie made a run for St. Charles Avenue. Unfortunately, these same heels were not made for running, making it difficult for her to race to safety. She noticed a streetcar stopped up in the middle of the street to pick up passengers and decided that this would be the best way to put distance between herself and the three East German spies. Not daring to look behind her to see if they had recovered enough to give chase, she put on a burst of speed, dodging in and out of passing cars, and made it to the streetcar a second before it closed its doors.

Rooting around in her handbag, Jackie handed the driver a dollar bill, waited while he gave her change from his coin belt, then walked swiftly down the center aisle of the streetcar and took a seat in the back so she could look out the rear window to see where the Three Stooges were. Despite the fact that all of its windows were lowered, it felt close and hot inside the confines of the streetcar. As she watched, huffing and puffing from her dash, she saw that the East Germans had gotten into their tan sedan, pulled away from the curb, made a left turn, and were now tailing the streetcar on the right-hand side down St. Charles. Damn, Jackie cursed to herself, what was she going to do now?

She suddenly got the impression that she was being stared at. She looked up and saw that every face at the back of the streetcar, all of them black, was looking at her. One black woman, wearing a purple dress and clutching a brown paper grocery bag overstuffed with food, leaned over and said, “Sorry, miss, but you don’t belong back here.” She and the other black passengers looked on nervously, wondering what kind of trouble they might be in for having this young white woman riding back here with them.

Not wanting to cause any trouble, Jackie said, “I’m sorry. Excuse me.” Feeling chastened for reasons that she didn’t totally comprehend and had no time to examine in depth, she got up and moved forward to the “whites only” section of the bus, where she took a seat at the right-hand window in order to keep track of the tan sedan as it unnervingly kept pace with the streetcar. Burying her face in her hand, Jackie had no idea how she was going to get shut of these three East German spies.

Her breathing finally back to normal, Jackie decided to stay on the streetcar as long as possible. She saw that the vehicle was headed in the direction of downtown. As it passed Lee Circle, she knew the time was nearing for her to make her move. She would wait until the pedestrian traffic was as thick as possible, then jump off the streetcar with the intention of losing herself in the crowd. Unfortunately, the volume of people she hoped to see never materialized, and then a view of the twin gleaming white spires of the St. Louis Cathedral in the near distance told her that the streetcar was rapidly approaching the French Quarter and the end of its route. She looked out the side window and was dismayed to see the tan sedan still keeping pace in light traffic, pulling even with the front of the streetcar.

At the next stop, Poydras Street, Jackie abruptly rose and bolted off the streetcar, using its middle doors to exit and hoping that the men in the tan sedan wouldn’t notice her among the black passengers disembarking. She looked around to get her bearings. Like the good spy trainee that she was, she had spent time on the plane familiarizing herself with a map of New Orleans and the layout of the city, so she knew that the Mississippi River was on her right and the French Quarter on her left.

Jackie headed down the first street that she came to, not looking to see if the tan sedan was following her. She walked down the street as briskly as possible but found her way blocked by a funeral procession stretching from sidewalk to sidewalk. At the head of the procession was a coffin on a horse-drawn cart. Following the horse-drawn cart was a dense assembly of slow-walking black mourners. And behind them came a brass band, its members swaying as they walked and performing a funeral dirge that seemed to set the mournful pace of the procession. Damn, Jackie thought, there was no possible way she could interrupt this funeral and make her way through the crowd.

For the first time, she looked back and saw that the Three Stooges had ditched their car and were coming after her on foot. They shambled forward in a way that wouldn’t call attention to themselves or make their intentions known to any police officers who might be in the vicinity. Jackie took advantage of their restrained gait to quicken her pace until she found herself at the very edge of the procession, with no way to broach the wall of mourners.

Suddenly, the brass band switched musical gears, and the funeral dirge was transformed into a sprightly version of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” At the same time, the mourners broke rank and the previously impermeable crowd suddenly became porous, allowing Jackie to intermingle with the throng. Parasols and handkerchiefs sprouted as the mourners began to dance around in time to the music, an ecstatic combination of joy mingled with grief. Jackie tried to blend in with the mourners by joining in their cakewalk. She saw an elderly black woman, wearing her Sunday best, who was having trouble opening her parasol and asked, “Would you like me to help?”

“Yes,” said the woman, who surrendered her parasol to Jackie. Jackie had no trouble opening it and held it over herself and the elderly woman, using it to shield her features from the Three Stooges, who were gaining on the procession. She saw that they were having trouble pushing their way through the high-spirited crowd of gyrating mourners as they danced down the street.

Sashaying arm in arm with the elderly woman, Jackie walked her to the leading edge of the procession, which was approaching the intersection at Canal Street.

“Thank you,” Jackie said to the woman, handing the parasol back to her.

“You’re welcome,” the puzzled woman said in return, but by this time Jackie was gone, breaking for Canal Street.

There was a brick wall at the corner—the edge of the aboveground cemetery the mourners were approaching—and Jackie hoped that it would block her from view as she sought to lose the Three Stooges once and for all.

She found herself headed back toward the Mississippi River, with the St. Louis Cathedral now on her left. She ran past shop after shop selling pralines, souvenirs, antiques, and daiquiris, and turned onto Decatur Street, barely having the time to note that she was passing that jewel-like, vest-pocket park known as Jackson Square on her left.

Coming up was some kind of restaurant that seemed to be doing land-office business based on the crowd lined up outside, where a street musician was entertaining the tourists with his own accordion version of “When the Saints,” which seemed to be the unofficial theme song of New Orleans.

Heedless of the calls from those waiting on line, Jackie defied the crowd and entered the restaurant. Normally, she would never think of doing such an impolite thing as cutting a line, but this was an emergency. She was running for her life, and there was no time to offer any apologies for her actions.

Past the front door, the restaurant featured an outdoor terrace with a giant green awning. It was here that Jackie went to try to hide herself from the Three Stooges. As she looked around, she saw that the diners’ clothes were sprinkled with white sugar. The sugar was coming from the beignets that were to be seen on every table. Jackie realized that this must be the Café du Monde, which, for many, was the center of New Orleans society, an egalitarian institution open twenty-four hours a day, where everyone—rich, poor, white, black, native, and tourist—came to enjoy beignets and café au lait. It was considered a badge of honor to leave the café with one’s clothes covered with powdered sugar from the deep fried doughnuts.

The only guest who didn’t seem to be covered in sugar was a young man in a white suit holding court at a table of young male acolytes in one corner of the terrace. The young man looked somehow familiar to her, and after jogging her memory, Jackie realized that he was the young playwright Tennessee Williams, whose productions The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire—the latter set in his native New Orleans—had caused such a big fuss on Broadway. He closely resembled his newspaper photographs. He was also, she knew, a friend of her novelist cousin, Gore Vidal.

But before Jackie even had the chance to consider going over and introducing herself, the Three Stooges burst onto the terrace in search of her, and she was forced to slip out through the side entrance, where she found herself back on Decatur Street.

She looked around and tried to figure out where to go next. She could either cross the street to Jackson Square and try to lose them there or take the set of steps to the left that led to the levee overlooking the Mississippi River. Jackie decided on the latter course of action and took the steps as fast as her legs would carry her. She glanced down and saw the Three Stooges just exiting the Café du Monde and looking around to see where she had gone.

Arriving at the levee, the first thing Jackie saw was an antique steamboat at the dock, the Natchez, looking for all the world like something out of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It was obviously a tourist attraction, and Jackie bought herself a ticket at the booth on the levee and joined the rest of the tourists as they boarded the boat. She went from deck to deck, looking for someplace to hide, and was lucky to find a ladies’ room, which she entered and locked behind her, not planning on coming out until enough time had passed to feel safe.

A short while later, she heard the sound of twin steam whistles and guessed this was the signal telling the visitors to the attraction that it was time to disembark. This, however, was followed by a jolting movement that threw Jackie forward. Then came a powerful vibration from below, and Jackie knew that this came from the steamboat’s twin paddlewheels slowly beginning to turn. To her chagrin, she realized that this was no stationary tourist attraction. This was a working steamboat taking tourists on a cruise up and down the Mighty Mississip.

Opening the door slowly, Jackie cautiously peeked her head out and saw the levee, Jackson Square, and the St. Louis Cathedral gliding slowly past them. She also saw, standing among the passengers who thronged the railings to look out, the Three Stooges. Before she could duck back into the relative safety of the ladies’ room, she was spotted by Curly, who pointed her out to his fellow Stooges.

Without thinking, Jackie went up the nearest stairway until she arrived at the top deck, right abaft of the wheelhouse and the twin smokestacks. The companionway leading to the rear deck was blocked by a roped-off sign that read NO ADMITTANCE / CONSTRUCTION UNDER WAY / DANGER. Jackie ignored the sign, hopped over the rope, and found herself entirely alone on the top deck of the steamboat.

She heard three sets of footsteps from the stairway and knew, with a sinking feeling, that the three East German spies were on their way. And now here they were, clambering over the rope one at a time and heading right for her. They walked slowly as though not to spook their prey, and they had all the time in the world to deal with her. Jackie backpedaled as far as she could and found herself up against the boat’s stern railing, with something pushing against her back—a life preserver. She looked briefly over her shoulder and saw a tugboat trailing the Natchez in the distance. As the men continued their inexorable approach, she knew what she had to do.

“Don’t come any closer,” she shouted to the Three Stooges, her voice quavering with fright. “Stay right there or I’ll jump.”

But the three East German spies just kept on coming. They either didn’t believe Jackie or didn’t speak English well enough to understand what she was saying.

“I mean it. I’m going to jump,” Jackie warned them in a voice that rang out with fear.

Just in case they didn’t understand English, Jackie hiked up her skirt and put one leg over the railing.

Unfortunately, that did nothing to dissuade the implacable men, who moved slowly, inexorably forward.

Jackie knew that she had no choice. Planting one foot on the outermost part of the deck, she then eased her other leg over the railing so that she was now perched with nothing standing between her and the river below. She looked down and saw the steamboat’s white, boiling wake. Before the sight of it could turn her nauseous, Jackie raised her eyes and looked at the Three Stooges as they approached. Their faces telegraphed their desire to do her grave harm.

And so, with a deep gulp of breath and praying for the best possible outcome, Jackie grabbed the life preserver and leaped off the boat, down into the roiling, dark waters of the Mississippi.