“Right again,” replied Severson. “Specifically, Blaylock ran a cell that was focused on a ship called the Sea King-later known as the CSS Shenandoah.”“The one that got away,” Sam said. “Not only that but got away and spent the next nine months wreaking havoc with Union shipping until after the end of the war.”
Severson continued: “For Blaylock it was a personal and professional disaster.”
“Professionally?” Sam repeated. “Was he reprimanded? Relieved of duty?” “I found no evidence of that. In fact, quite the opposite. Thomas Haines Dudley was an avid supporter of Blaylock’s. He wrote several glowing evaluations of him. In an 1864 letter to the chief of the Secret Service, William Wood, he called Blaylock ‘one of the finest agents I have had the pleasure to have in my employ.’ I suspect Blaylock simply took the failure so personally that it impacted his work. Two weeks later he boarded a ship in London for the return voyage home. When he got there he discovered that his wife, Ophelia, had died while he was in transit. In a bit of tragic irony, she’d been killed during a raid by a Confederate guerrilla band known as Mosby’s Rangers-one of the very units Blaylock had fought against during his time in the Loudoun Rangers.”“My God,” Remi whispered. “That poor man. Do we know whether Ophelia had been the target? Did Mosby and his men seek her out because of her husband?”
“It doesn’t appear so. By all accounts she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“So not only did Blaylock come home in disgrace, but he came home to find the love of his life snuffed out,” Sam said. “Remi, I’m starting to think the malaria was only part of his mental problems.”“I agree. It’s understandable.”
“As is his obsessive personality,” Severson added. “Selma e-mailed me the ship sketch he did. To rename a ship after a woman . . .That’s true love.”
Remi asked, “Julianne, did they have children?”
“No.”
“What happened after he got home?”
“There’s not much to tell. I found only one record of him. In 1865 he was hired by a newly founded school called the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It appears Blaylock settled back into civilian life as a math teacher.”“Until March 1872, when he resurfaced in Bagamoyo.”
“And four years after the Shenandoah was sold to the Sultan of Zanzibar,” Remi said, then added wryly, “a mother of all coincidences. Unless Blaylock’s grief had turned to rage. The Shenandoah got away on his watch and his wife died in the process. If he was actually insane, he may have somehow come to blame the Shenandoah for his loss. It’s a stretch, but the human mind is a mysterious thing.” “You may be right. Only Blaylock could answer that,” Severson said. “But I can tell you this much: I don’t think he went to Africa on a whim. I think he was sent there.”“By whom?” Sam asked.
“Secretary of War William Belknap.”
REMI AND SAM WERE SILENT for several seconds as they absorbed this information. Finally Sam said, “How do you know this?”
“I don’t know, with certainty,” Severson replied. “At this point my case is circumstantial and based on private letters between Belknap, Secretary of the Navy George Robeson, and the director of the Secret Service, Herman Whitley.
“In a November 1871 letter to both Belknap and Robeson, Whitley cites a recently received intelligence report. He doesn’t mention the source, but there were three lines that jumped out at me. First, intelligence reports that ‘suggest apostles of Captain Jim following in his footsteps’; second, ‘our man in Zanzibar playing us for the fool’; and third, ‘I have it on good authority the anchorage in question is frequently empty.’”Remi said, “‘Our man in Zanzibar’ could be Sultan Majid II.”
“And ‘Captain Jim’ could be the Shenandoah’s captain, James Waddell,” replied Sam. “Whitley’s choice of language is interesting: ‘apostles. ’ A man like him wouldn’t have risen to his position without a firm grasp of language. An apostle is a firm believer, someone dedicated to following a leader’s example. As for the empty anchorage . . .”
“That could refer to where the Sultan had supposedly abandoned the newly renamed El Majidi,” said Remi.“I agree.”
“There’s more,” Severson replied. “In a letter that followed a few days later, both Belknap and Robeson encouraged Whitley to contact ‘our Quaker friend’-Thomas Haines Dudley, I’m guessing-and ask if he might have any agents that could investigate the ‘vessel in question.’ Six weeks later Whitley replied. According to ‘the Quaker’s sources,’ the vessel in question was spotted, but not at its anchorage. It was in Dar es Salaam, returning to port-and I quote-‘fully-rigged for sail, steam, and cannon, and crewed by skilled sailors of Caucasian descent.’”
Sam and Remi were silent for ten seconds. Finally Sam said, “Unless I’m seeing something that’s not there, I’d say Captain Waddell’s ‘apostles’ remanned the Shenandoah for war.”
“The best part’s yet to come,” Severson said, “In that same letter Whitley informs Belknap and Robeson that he’s ordered the Quaker-Dudley-to dispatch his best man to investigate the situation in Dar es Salaam.”“And we know who Dudley considered his best agent-Blaylock.”
“Who arrives in Bagamoyo a couple months later,” Remi added.
“It seems to fit, but you said it yourself, Julianne: It’s all circumstantial at this point.”
“I haven’t finished cataloging all the letters, but in the interim I think I know someone who can help. How do you two feel about a trip down to Georgia?”
CHAPTER 25
SAVANNAH, GEORGIA
AFTER LISTENING TO THE REMAINDER OF JULIANNE SEVERSON’S presentation and her hunch about where they might unravel the next portion of Blaylock’s story, Sam and Remi booked an early-afternoon flight out of Dulles. They touched down in Savannah shortly before three.While Sam stood at the Hertz counter and made arrangements for a car, Remi checked her voice mail. Car keys in hand, Sam walked up to her.
“Selma got the bell this morning,” Remi announced.
Sam smiled and let out an exaggerated sigh. “I have to admit, after all we went through to get that thing, I had visions of it falling off the plane and dropping into the ocean.”“Me, too. She says it’s in great condition. She called Dobo; he’s coming to pick it up.”
Alexandru Dobo-who preferred to be addressed only by his last name-was a full-time surfer/beach bum, part-time restoration expert, and their go-to guy for projects beyond their expertise. As the former curator of Romania’s Ovidius University’s Architecture, Restoration and Conservation Department and the primary consultant for Constanta’s Romanian Navy Museum and the National History and Archaeology Museum, Dobo had yet to encounter an artifact he couldn’t restore.As Selma was herself from Romania’s next-door neighbor, Hungary, she and Dobo liked to both reminisce and quarrel about the “old country.”
“She said he’s going to work on it throughout the night,” Remi added.
“What, the surf’s bad?”
“Terrible.”
“How’re they doing on the journal?”
“All she said was ‘still working.’”
In Selmaspeak that meant slow but steady progress that could be imperiled by any further questions.
“She also mentioned the spiral and the Fibonacci sequence. They’re finding both of them repeated everywhere. Like a mantra. What an interesting man, Blaylock.”
Sam jingled the keys and said, “Let’s get moving.”
“What did you get?”
“Cadillac Escalade.”
“Sam . . .”
“Hybrid.”
“Okay.”
FOR SAM AND REMI, Savannah epitomized Southern charm and history-it was in every turn of her shaded oak- and Spanish moss- lined streets; in her cherry blossom-filled squares and around her well-tended monuments; dripping from balconies and stone walls in the form of hydrangea and honeysuckle; and in the facades of the pillared Greek Revival plantation houses and the sprawling neoclassical estates. Even the buzz of cicadas was part of Savannah’s charm. In fact, it was their love of Savannah that led them to accept Severson’s travel suggestion without question. When pushed for a hint, the librarian had merely smiled and said, “I think you’ll find something familiar there.” DESPITE THE HEAT, they kept the Escalade’s tinted windows rolled down so they could admire the scenery. With one hand on her fluttering beach hat, Remi asked, “Where exactly are we going?”“Whitaker Street, near Forsyth Park. Very close to the Heyward House, I think.”