Chapter Fifteen My Name Is Caleb Graham #2
"It's a strange story," he said. "I don't know what you'll think of me once you've heard it — call me a blunderer, a fool, even a criminal, if you like, and you may well be right.
But I need you to know this much before I say another word: I would rather die this minute than cause you one more hour of suffering. "
Something bright and hopeful lit her eyes, tears springing up through it like sun through rain.
"Please," she said softly, "go on. I believe you."
Even with her words still warm in his ears, the beginning did not come easily. Graham drew a long breath and made himself start.
"I am not the man you believe me to be," he said, watching her face for the first sign of what this would cost him. "My name isn't Gregory Hostetler. It's Caleb Graham."
He said it the way a man might loose an arrow at someone he loved, praying against all sense that it would somehow miss its mark, and waited, holding his breath, for whatever came next.
"Oh," she breathed — softly, wonderingly, as though some stubborn puzzle had suddenly resolved itself. "Oh." Not shock, he realized, watching her closely. Something closer to relief. She looked at him, waiting for more, and he pressed on before his nerve could fail him.
"I work for the Secret Service — headquarters here in Washington.
Two days ago I was sent to New York on urgent business.
A coded message of real national importance had been stolen from one of our men, and my orders were to recover it, under an assumed name, telling no one — not even you, not even anyone I might meet along the way — what my true business was.
I was told, in no uncertain terms, that nothing was to stand in the way of getting that message home.
I understood going in that it might cost me my life. "
Calie sat wide-eyed, hands clasped tight at her throat.
He hurried on, not wanting to draw out her fear any longer than necessary.
"I won't trouble you with every detail — there were a great many small disasters along the way that frayed my nerves considerably, but I did manage to recover the message and get clear of the house where it had been stolen to.
As I shut that door behind me, I knew I had perhaps seconds before six furious men came after me, and I saw a carriage waiting almost directly in front of the house.
The driver mistook me for whoever he was actually waiting for, and I let the mistake stand — climbed in, told him to drive fast, meant to redirect him the moment we were clear of danger.
Only he already had his instructions from someone else, and before I understood what was happening, I realized a car and a motorcycle were both following us — one of the men in that car I recognized from Halifax's own dinner table.
I spent the ride securing the message and putting on the small disguise the Director had provided — nothing elaborate, just enough to change my face at a glance.
Then, without warning, the carriage stopped in front of a large stone building, and for one terrible moment I believed I'd been delivered straight into a prison, with my pursuers pulling up right behind me. "
Calie made a low, pained sound, and Graham, not daring to look at her directly, pressed on.
"You know most of what happened after that already.
It turned out to be a church, not a prison, and everything that followed was simple, cowardly panic on my part — I can't account for it any other way.
I had no way to explain myself without risking the whole mission, which I couldn't reveal even in confidence, whatever it cost me personally.
My only real thought, when that carriage stopped, was how to escape the men behind me, and that fear crowded out every ordinary instinct I might otherwise have trusted.
The moment the door opened, someone called out asking where the best man was, and another voice answered that I'd arrived.
I assumed they'd realize their mistake the instant they saw me clearly, and meant to slip away the first chance I got — but there wasn't a chance.
They swept me up entirely, certain I was exactly who they expected.
Your pursuers — I'm now certain they're the very ones responsible for that dreadful ride in Pittsburgh — stood close by, watching me the whole time.
I gathered quickly that the man I was mistaken for had been away ten years, which explained why no one questioned my face too closely.
I tried twice to say there'd been some mistake, and both times they misheard me entirely, thought I meant I hadn't rehearsed my part properly.
I don't fully understand, even now, how I let it go as far as it did — it should have been the simplest thing in the world to say I'd climbed into the wrong carriage and needed to be excused.
But they gave me no room at all to think, or speak, or correct anything — just passed me from one pair of hands to the next, and I reasoned, God forgive me, that there'd be no real harm in playing best man for one delayed wedding, that I could simply vanish the moment the ceremony ended and no one the wiser.
The real man would surely turn up eventually, and I'd be long gone by then, and it seemed, in that moment, as good a hiding place as any while my pursuers searched elsewhere.
I see now what a grave mistake it was to let even that much deception stand — but at the time it felt harmless, and everyone around me was in such genuine distress for the ceremony to proceed.
And underneath all of it, the only thing that truly mattered to me was keeping that message safe until I could deliver it.
They introduced me to your brother — Jefferson.
I believed, right up until they placed your hand in mine, that he was the actual groom. "
"Oh," Calie moaned, and both hands rose to cover her face.
"I knew you'd feel exactly that," Graham said, low and bitter. "I don't blame you for it — not one bit. I was a fool, a coward, whatever you want to call me. You can't begin to know how I've suffered over this since it happened, how thoroughly I've blamed myself for every part of it."
He rose abruptly and crossed to the window, staring down at the ordinary, hurrying street below, marveling that the whole world could go on so carelessly about its business when his own life had come, in this one small room, to a complete and terrible standstill.