The Secret City of the Sun

Author's Note: What if Confederate plans for a new nation and base of operations in South America had been a success? Confederate Rebels, Union Officers, a young Englishman and a Confederate spy, and a treasured Inca Temple sought by an archaeologist, feature in this action adventure novel set after the America Civil War.

Chapter One:

Her Majesty's Secret Service, 1870.

Confederate Colonel and famed explorer Doctor Jebediah Dane was soon to be dead. Of this much my uncle assured me. Though I knew nothing of the man at the time, I was not happy at the prospect of being his nursemaid, or of witnessing his slow death. On the other hand, I was pleased to realize that this small duty for my uncle was to not be an overly long one.

Reaching the age of majority, for any young man, is a milestone, no doubt, but in my case, the occasion was enhanced by the news from my guardians that I had become heir to a considerable fortune. Taking full advantage of my new circumstances, I decided immediately upon a course of seeing the world that I might better determine a career in it. My intention was initially to visit a dear uncle of mine who had many years before migrated to Maryland, in the Americas. He had ideas for me to undertake a particular assignment on his behalf that would also satisfy my desire for travel. I considered this to be a reasonable request, and one that would cause no more than a short delay, before my intended circumnavigation of the globe.

But, as is the fate of all great plans, and before my departure to Baltimore, I received a last minute request from some obscure bureau in Her Majesty’s Government, from a Mr. Justin Prestwicke. Perhaps I should not have been surprised, as one of my guardians had long served the British Government in a variety of important, albeit mysterious, roles. A note was delivered to my guardian’s house on London’s Crescent, informing me of a meeting the following day with some minor official, who wished to meet me in somewhat clandestine circumstances. For some obscure reason, the meeting was to take place in a chandlery store, not far from Shaftesbury Avenue. The store was Beale’s, an establishment that laid claim to having served London’s seagoing community since 1454 at the same location on a small tributary of the Thames.

At the appointed time, I presented myself at Beale’s and requested of the owner, as stated in the note, that I be shown a particular maker’s clasp knife. This was a code word, and I was immediately taken to the back of the store, a rat’s nest of a place, with passages and corridors strewn with merchandise; huge coils of rope, rolls of canvass and barrels smelling of pitch pine. Mr. Prestwicke proved to be a small man, dressed in a dark brown topcoat of Harris Tweed. A full round face peered out from under a large deerstalker hat. The face’s only remarkable feature was an impeccably trimmed black moustache, with heavily waxed points. He stood looking me over with raised eyebrows, legs apart, both hands resting upon a silver topped, ebony cane. He began by making me fully aware of my junior position.

“My dear young Walker, Her Majesty’s Government is, on rare occasion, in need of the assistance of those of its subjects who plan to travel in certain areas. From sources, I understand that you are shortly to traverse the great Atlantic Ocean. My department would be well served if you were to discreetly contact a lady by the name of Miss Belle Boyd, when in the United States. She is now a resident of Charleston, where your uncle, who is known to us, may well have occasion to send you. She has information of a sensitive nature with respect to the late Confederate Government, details concerning something that Her Majesty would be gratified to possess. One of my representatives will arrange to relieve you of said information, shortly thereafter.”

I was immediately annoyed at his condescending manner, and his lack of clarity. “Surely, there are official channels for such things, Mr. Prestwicke.”

“If this were an official matter, normal diplomatic communication would most surely be employed, but the information we talk of is not in the hands of the Federal Government of the United States. It concerns matters of a secret, technical nature, which our Government is most anxious to acquire.”

“Am I to be a spy then?”

“Not at all, Walker. The Federal Government is aware that Miss Belle Boyd is attempting to pass information on to us. They are watching her, as we speak. A young traveller, taking several years to roam the world, will not be suspected as a courier. That’s all.”

This was to say that I was, indeed, to be a spy. I wanted to say as much in view of this strange request, but my guardian had a fine record of service to his country, and it was out of my respect for him that I simply agreed to Mr. Prestwicke’s little mission. I was given some brief directions, and a password phrase.

As I left, Prestwicke shook my hand, then pressed his ebony walking stick into it. “These are useful little things. Examine it when you have a moment.”

He turned and disappeared behind a stack of monstrous tackle blocks, before I had a chance to refuse the gift. In truth, I was rather pleased to have such an accoutrement. I felt quite the young gentleman, strolling back down Shaftsbury Avenue with it swinging in my hand. Little did I know that it was soon to save my life, and that Prestwicke had just recruited me into a most exclusive gentlemen’s club, known as Her Britannic Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service.

***

And so it came to pass that a short time later I sat in the waterfront offices of my uncle’s firm in Baltimore’s inner harbour. It was here that I learned the details of my uncle’s original plans to satisfy my desires for travel. My uncle Patrick was a large man, with a florid face resulting from a passion for fine brandy. His desk was an enormous roll top, carpentered from exotic woods brought in to Baltimore from distant ports. It loomed behind him now, as he sat facing me in a leather swivel chair, his plump legs just not quite reaching the floor.

“As I understand it, lad, a good friend of mine, Doctor Jebediah Dane, Confederate Colonel and famed explorer, needs an assistant who can bring back to these shores the results of his latest expedition to South America. That would be your job, if you agree. You wanted to see the world, well here’s your chance to see a part of it few of us ever have. I can’t see the expedition being overly long, or arduous, as old Dane, unfortunately, does not have the prospect of much more time on this earth. Agreed then?” I looked out over the harbour to where a large steamship was being loaded. I certainly liked the idea of South America, but not as a nurse to an ageing academic who clearly knew he was about to die.

“Of course, uncle. How could I refuse?”

Patrick McCoy grunted, fluffed his ample sideburns, swung on his chair and reached into one of the pigeonholes at the back of the roll top. He swung around again, and handed me a calling card. ‘Jebediah Dane, Archaeologist’ was printed in fine copperplate, on an otherwise blank white background.

“Show him that with my compliments. He is lodging on Edgefield Street, above the harbour, at the home of Emmett Winthrop, his friend and physician. Better see him immediately, Walker, time is of the essence. Now, I have a shipment of coal to send down to Castle Island in the Bahamas.” He swung back to his desk, and I was obviously dismissed.

I turned over the card. On the back, my uncle had written, “Presenting Walker McCoy Esquire, with the recommendation of McCoy, Little & James, Mrchnts.”

There had obviously not been much doubt in his mind that I would accept the assignment. I walked up the hill from the port towards Edgefield Street. Doctor Winthrop’s residence was a tall four-storey brownstone, in an area favoured by many of the City’s richer merchants. I rang an imposing bronze doorbell, expecting a maid to receive me. Instead, a tall, broad shouldered man in his mid-forties opened the door. He had a powerful face, a fine chiselled nose, and high cheekbones, beneath a labourer’s dark suntan, and bright, energetic eyes that glinted blue below thick black eyebrows. His hair was mostly grey, streaked with black, long and tied back in a tail; not at all what I imagined Doctor Winthrop would look like.

The eyebrows arched, as he looked me over. I was dressed in a long topcoat, with an Astrakhan collar, black leather dress gloves and Prestwicke’s silver topped cane.

“My Lord! Now here’s a fine young dandy. To see Jebediah Dane, no doubt?”

I was taken aback, stuttered a reply of some kind, and reached into my breast pocket for the Carte de Visite my uncle had annotated.

“Walker McCoy Esquire. What fancy manners you young English have? Step into the parlour Mister Esquire, and we’ll see about Jebediah Dane.”

I decided to ignore the verbal dig in the ribs, and followed him into the front parlour. The room was comfortable, panelled in dark mahogany. The daylight filtered in through heavy lace curtains and was augmented by the glow of gaslights on large brass sconces. The walls were covered with portraits, both of ships and of delicate ivory skinned women, all in gilt frames, and glowing with the smoky patina of time long past.

My host tugged on a bell pull and a maid noiselessly appeared. She relieved me of my coat and gloves and just as silently disappeared. He sat down in a soft easy chair, covered in black leather, and motioned me to its companion.

“I’m not so sure you’d be cut out for this.” He looked directly at me, those eyebrows again raised, challenging me. I stared back into the fierce gaze of his blue eyes.

“And why is that, Sir?”

“Well, Dane, I am afraid, would prove to be a hard task master, irascible even at the best of times, mean spirited, certainly selfish and egocentric. The journey that is to be undertaken will be into a little travelled region of Peru, on the east side of the Andes range; everything from mind numbing cold mountain passes to steaming jungles infested with every manner of vile insect nature can concoct, not to mention fierce natives, who would regard you more as their next meal, rather than a godlike harbinger of a beneficent and civilized way of life.”

I began to detect a hint of amusement in the man’s voice and eyes. “My uncle deems it important for me to render this service, Sir. I have given him my word I would make every effort to prove myself worthy of the task to Professor Dane.”

The eyebrows rose again. He leaned forward, motioning to my cane. “May I?”

I handed it to him. “Do tell me, young Walker McCoy Esquire, what recommends you to playing nurse to a dying man in the jungles of South America?”

I began to answer, when the parlour door opened. The man who walked through it looked every bit as healthy as my inquisitor. He was of middling height, with dark short cropped hair, a round, pallid face above a black silk cravat, and an immense watch chain that shook noisily as it rested uneasily upon a quivering stomach of no small proportions. The stomach headed in my direction, an outstretched hand ahead of it.

“I’m Winthrop, Mister McCoy. I see you have already met Dane then?” I should have guessed, from the tanned face, if nothing else.

“No sir, we have not been formally introduced that is.”

“Oh, I see, Dane has been playing games with you, I suppose. Well, Mr. Walker McCoy, meet Professor Jebediah Dane, archaeologist, explorer and whatever….”

Dane flipped my cane into his left hand, extended his right, and formally shook hands.

“And my question, young McCoy?”

I was still smarting from being called a ‘young dandy’ and the little subterfuge he had employed. Despite my inner feelings, I looked him steadily in the eye and spoke evenly.

“I have never undertaken such a task before, Sir. I have never been to South America. Despite my youth, I have not been without hardship or trial, and I count on a sense of duty, service, and the worth of my word among the more worthwhile legacies of my parents.”

Dane’s expression changed to one of surprise. “As my appearance must have deceived you, McCoy, so perhaps has yours deceived me”. He took my cane in both hands, and twisted its silver cap. A small six-inch long blade sprang from the very bottom of the cane. He then gave the handle a quarter twist more, and it snapped apart. An inner spring forced the shaft of the cane away from the silver head, revealing an eighteen-inch blade of Damascus steel in Dane’s hand.

I had discovered this, and other interesting features of Prestwicke’s gift, aboard the steamship on the tiresome voyage from Liverpool to New York.

Winthrop gasped. “My God! What a wicked looking weapon.”

Dane smiled, as he slid the blade back into the cane. “Do you know how to use it?”

“My education included varied lessons from a tutor who was formerly a Colonel in the Royal Hussars, Professor Dane, and fencing was a major part of the syllabus.”

“Call me Dane,” he said. It seemed as if I had been afforded some measure of approval.

Over afternoon tea, both men apprised me of my duties on the planned expedition. Not many months before this meeting Dane had returned from the coast of Peru, where he had been engaged in archaeological research, near the city of Lima. He had sought treatment in Charleston for persistent headaches, and subsequently sought out the help of Winthrop in Baltimore. It was clear, according to Winthrop, that Dane was suffering from a cancer. A tumour deep in the brain that was certain to kill him. “I have, at the most, so my dear friend here informs me, six to nine months. It seems to me that I have the choice of languishing here until I die, or of leaving immediately for South America, in order to accomplish some worthwhile work.

“My good friend Winthrop excepted, I also rather relish the thought of spending someone else’s money on another expedition in Peru, rather than giving my own to a horde of vultures, who will bleed me dry in the name of ‘medical care’ between now and the day I eventually succumb to this monstrous thing growing in my head.”

“Someone else’s money? “Yes, McCoy, I have been prevailed upon to mount an expedition funded by a would be treasure hunter.”

Dane had agreed to accept funding for his last project from a patent medicine firm in Georgia. One of the owners of the firm was apparently obsessed by stories of lost treasure in Peru. He had engaged Dane to take his party to the eastern Andes, where some such hoard was supposedly hidden. “The man, Augustus Swinburne, has agreed to deposit his finds in some appropriate museum, though, in truth, I find his word unreliable. He is, after all, a charlatan, who sells alcohol under the guise of useful medicine. I personally believe his quest has as much chance of success as one of your Irish ancestors would have of finding gold and leprechauns at the end of a rainbow! The ethics of the situation subsequently bother me little. After all, Peru’s greatest treasures will be worth nothing to me ere long.”

It was hard to believe the vital individual sitting before me faced such certain death. I tried to remain even in my tone.

“And what is the object of the expedition for you, Dane? “

“A temple, McCoy, a temple. The Inca domain reached down from the Andes into the jungles of the western Amazon basin. During my researches, I have come across obscure mention of Inca artefacts being found in a region at the foot of the Andes cordillera, east of the Urubamba Valley. I want to go there. I want to see if I can find the remains of the temple and document the site, before I die. Your job will be to bring my records back to America, where Winthrop here will assure their publication.”

The terms for my engagement on Dane’s last expedition were agreed upon. Within a matter of days, I was working closely with Dane on preparations, and we were soon ready to depart Baltimore by coastal steam packet for Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston; the strong smell of hemp and tar that pervaded the meeting with Prestwicke in London came back to me. Perhaps all was not as it seemed here. Within a few days, I made my farewells to uncle Patrick, and met again with Winthrop. I was instructed on how to observe the progress of Dane’s illness and to administer medications to him. These amounted, so Winthrop confessed, to little more than palatable concoctions of Laudanum, to kill the pain. Despite the daunting task that lay ahead of me, I could not fail to feel a growing excitement at the prospect of embarking for a still largely unknown corner of the world, and a hunt for lost treasures and ancient temples.

On October 1st, 1870, I steamed out of Baltimore, a sense of great adventure ahead.

Chapter Two: Charleston & Belle Boyd Upload: 11/07/21