Flight to Canada Read Online Free PDF Page B

about this African tribe that lived in the tropics so long they trained mosquitoes to fight their enemies. Fascinating, don’t you think? I need that gold bad, Mr. Swille. Whatever I decide, it’ll come in handy.”
    “Sure, sure, Lincoln, I know. You’ll decide what’s best. I know that the war is even-steven right now, and this gold will help out. I’ll take a chance on your little Union. The nerve of that guy Lee. I’m going to take back that necklace I gave Mrs. Jefferson Davis. Why, they can’t do that to me. Just for that …” Swille goes to his safe, removes some bags of gold and places them on his desk. “That ought to do it, Mr. President, and if you’re in need of some more, I’ll open up Fort Knox and all that you guys wheelbarrow out in an hour you can have.”
    “Why, thank you, Mr. Swille. You’re a patriotic man. But all of this gold, really, I …”
    “Take it. Take it. A long-term loan, Lincoln. I’ll fix these Confederates. That Lee. Sits on his horse as if he was Caesar or somebody.”
    “The Confederates are innocent, Mr. Swille. The other day one of them was tipping his hat and curtsying, and one of my snipers plugged him. And in the Chattanooga campaign, Grant tells me that once he was ascending Lookout Mountain and the Confederate soldiers saluted him. ‘Salute to the Commanding General,’ they were saying.”
    The men share a chuckle on this one.
    “My generals may look like bums, with their blouses unbuttoned and their excessive drinking and their general ragged appearances, but they know how to fight. Why, that Grant gets sick at the sight of the blood and gets mad when you bring up even the subject of war, and he’s never read a military treatise—but he can fight. His only notion of warfare is, ‘Go where the enemy is and beat hell out of him.’ Crude though it may sound, it seems to work.”
    “You know, Mr. President, I’m beginning to like you. Here, have a Havana. I have three homes there. Ought to come down some time, Mr. President, play some golf, do some sailing on my yacht. Get away from the Capitol.”
    “Well, I don’t know, Mr. Swille. I’d better not leave town with a war going on and all.”
    “Where did they get the idea that you were some kind of brooding mystic, tragic and gaunt, a Midwest Messiah with hollow cheeks? I was saying to myself, ‘How can a smart corporation lawyer like this Lincoln be so way-out.’ ”
    “I keep my mouth shut, Mr. Swille. And when I can’t think quick enough I walk over to the window, put my fingers into my lapels, throw my head back and gaze toward the Washington Monument, assuming a somber, grave and sulfurous countenance. It impresses them, and the myths fly.”
    “You know, Mr. Lincoln, I wish you’d do something about that fugitive-slave law you promised to enforce during the campaign. There are three of my cocoas at large. I’d like to bring them back here. Teach them a lesson for running away. They’re giving the rest of the cocoas around here ideas. They’re always caucusing, not admitting any of my white slaves or the white staff—they pass codes to one another, and some of them have taken to writing.
    “They’re in contact, so it seems, with slaves in the rest of the country, through some kind of intricate grapevine, so Cato my graffado tells me. Sometimes he gets blackened-up with them so’s they won’t know who he’s working for. He’s slow but faithful. So faithful that he volunteered for slavery, and so dedicated he is to slavery, the slaves voted him all-Slavery. Sent him to General Howard’s Civilizing School. You should have heard my son, who was an authority on sables. He said they’re so trusting and kindhearted. I sent him to the Congo to check for some possible energy resources, though he told them he was looking for the source of the Nile. They’re so trusting.
    “He was majoring in some kind of thing called anthropology in one of those experimental colleges. You know the young.