“General James Ewell Brown Stuart. Commander of the cavalry under Robert E. Lee. Known as ‘the eyes of the Army’ as well as ‘the Peacock.’”

Now she could place him. Here at Antietam he’d ridden completely around General George McClellan’s Union Army undetected, not a small feat for a force of that size on horseback.

“I understand the ‘eyes of the Army’ reference, but why ‘the Peacock’?”

“Stuart had a habit of dressing, shall we say, a bit flamboyantly. One of his favorite outfits consisted of a bright red cape, a yellow sash and a jaunty little cap with a peacock feather stuffed in the hatband. Because of that feather, and his tendency to puff up over his accomplishments whenever he had the opportunity to talk about them, his many detractors labeled him the Peacock.”

The Peacock. How funny, she thought, and how fitting.

Stuart had been here. “The Peacock” had roamed free at Antietam. It seemed as if her decision to come here had been correct. So what was she missing?

“One more question for you. What battle would you label General Lee’s greatest error?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Gettysburg.”

“Gettysburg? Really?” She was surprised. She’d fully expected him to say Antietam. “Why, if I may ask?”

It was as if Annja had just said the magic words. Charlie’s face lit up, like a junior scholar who’d just been asked by the king for his opinion on an important matter of state.

“Lee shouldn’t have lost at Gettysburg. He had the Union Army in retreat to the north and west of town on the first day of battle. He understood the tactical advantage of taking the high ground and, had he done so, the Rebels most certainly would have won the day.”

“So why didn’t he?” Annja asked.

“Well, that’s where folks’ opinions tend to differ a bit. Lee did order General Ewell and Second Corps to take Cemetery Hill that first day, but he did so in the form of a discretionary order. Take the hill if its practical, you see. Lee was used to relaying orders like that to Stonewall Jackson, Second Corps prior commander. The discretionary nature of the orders allowed Jackson great flexibility, increasing his usefulness in the overall command. Lee always knew he could count on Jackson to attack, so even if an order was discretionary, more often than not it was carried out with aplomb.”

Charlie sighed. “Unfortunately, while a good general, Ewell was no Stonewall Jackson. The heights looked difficult to take and the orders had given him leeway not to risk his men if he didn’t have to, so he made the decision to stay put, never realizing that he was dooming his men to a suicidal attack the next day, long after the Union troops had dug in.”

“Where was General Stuart during all this?”

Charlie grimaced. “Now there’s the true culprit of the battle, if you ask me. The Peacock was out and about with his three cavalry brigades, “roaming around the Rebels,” as he called it. He didn’t arrive at Gettysburg until midafternoon of the second day and his men didn’t even see action until day three. It was a travesty.”

Charlie’s turn of phrase echoed in her ear. Stuart had been roaming around.

Where the Peacock freely roamed…

She was in the wrong place.

A glance at her watch told her it was almost eleven. She’d been there for almost two hours.

Two hours wasted.

Two hours closer to Garin’s execution.

She had to hurry.

“You’ve been very helpful. Thanks, Charlie!” she said as she turned and headed for the door, leaving the park ranger standing there, shaking his head and wondering just what it was that he had said.

Ten minutes later Annja was back behind the wheel headed toward Pennsylvania and Gettysburg National Military Park. Thankfully, the two battlefields were less than an hour away from each other. She could be in Gettysburg just after lunch. That should give her time to locate the doppelgänger’s grave and figure out what to do from there.

She wondered how Garin was doing and if he was all right. He was tough—of that there wasn’t any doubt—so she wasn’t as concerned as she’d been when Bernard was in the hands of that madman Michaels.

When she first realized that Garin had been taken, she’d thought about calling in Griggs and the rest of the Dragontech Security team. No doubt there was some rapid-response system worked out if Garin ever went missing, but she’d ultimately rejected the idea because she realized she didn’t know how to get in touch with Griggs directly. She’d never had reason to, until now.

Sure, she could call the company and ask for him, but if Dragontech was run anything like the other security firms she’d had the dubious pleasure of dealing with in the past, they wouldn’t even acknowledge that he worked there, never mind connect her call to him. By the time she patiently worked her way through the various layers of security that isolated frontline men like Griggs, her deadline would be up and it would be too late to try and rescue Garin, anyway.

She was going to have to handle this one on her own.

34

Just as was the case at Antietam, the visitor’s center at Gettysburg National Military Park had a room containing a series of public computers that could be used to learn more information about the battlefield and the monuments that now marked it. Annja immediately called up the catalog of the more than six thousand souls interred in Gettysburg National Cemetery.

This time, the name came up on the first try.

Captain William Parker, Thirteenth Massachusetts.

She printed out directions to the grave marker and drove over to the site. The cemetery had started atop Cemetery Hill, the site of the Union’s fierce resistance against Pickett’s Charge, and slowly spread down the slopes of the hill until it almost reached the road that wound its way slowly through the rest of the park.

Annja parked in the designated area and then climbed the hill, wandering amid the markers until she found the section she wanted. The graves had been grouped by units, so that made it easier to find the individual grave marker she was searching for.

It was set off slightly from the others, resting in the shade of a nearby maple tree on the downward slope of Cemetery Hill. It was a simple granite marker, like many of the others, but where so many of those were rectangular with rounded tops, this one was in the shape of a cross.

The words William Parker, Captainwere etched into its surface, but that was all. No birth or death dates. No epitaph.

It was almost as if someone wanted to be certain that it wasn’t confused with any of the other gravestones.

She looked closely at the marker, but did not see anywhere that the metal “key” from the Mariettacould be inserted or used in any fashion. Not that she expected some hidden trigger to reveal a secret passage as in the movie National Treasure,but it would have been nice to have some indication as to what it was used for.

I’m going to have to do it the hard way, as usual, she thought.

The final verse of the puzzle Parker had left told her to “Disburb him in his slumber, wake him from his rest; To find that which you are seeking, use the key to unlock the chest.”

Unless she was recalling it incorrectly, it was telling her to disinter the grave and open the casket. She didn’t see any other way of interpreting the need to “disturb him in his slumber.”

So she got to add grave robbing to the list of things she’d had to do to try and unravel this mystery and save Garin’s life. Her critics would have a field day with that one if it ever got out.

Even worse, Doug would probably want to have an episode revolve around it.

Annja turned in a slow circle, making note of the surrounding landmarks and firmly setting the location of the marker in her mind. She was going to have to find it again later in the dark and didn’t want to be stumbling about, which would increase her chances of being caught.