Legends

“One and the same,” Dante said from his place along the wall. “The Virginians called him Bobby Lee—though never to his face.”

“Well, this does open avenues for exploration,” the chairman told the others. “Our man may not be a Civil War expert, but with a little help from his friends he could certainly pass for one, couldn’t he?”

“Which brings us to the name,” Maggie Poole said. “And what could be more logique for a Civil War expert than calling him Lincoln?”

“I suppose you were thinking of using Abraham as a first name,” sneered the aversion therapist.

“Va te faire cuire un oeuf,” Maggie Poole shot back. She glared at the aversion therapist, clearly tempted to stick her tongue out at him. “I was thinking along the lines of using Lincoln as a prenom because it would tend to give credibility to a Civil War legend.”

“Lincoln something or other sounds quite elegant to me,” Dante called from the wall.

“Merci, Mr. Pippen, for being so open minded, which is more than I can say for some others in this room,” ventured Maggie Poole.

“I once knew a gun collector in Chicago whose name was Dittmann—that’s with two ‘t’s and two ‘n’s,” said the lexicographer. “There was some suggestion that Dittmann wasn’t his real name but that’s neither here nor there. He specialized in Civil War firearms. His pride and joy was an English sniper rifle, it was called the Whentworth or Whitworth, something like that. As I recall, the paper cartridges were exorbitant, but in the hands of a skilled sharpshooter the rifle was considered to be a lethal weapon.”

“Lincoln Dittmann is a name with … weight,” the chairman decided. “How does it strike you, Mr. Pippen?”

“I could learn to live with it,” he agreed. “And it would certainly be original to turn a field agent into a Civil War expert.”

The members of the Legend Committee knew they had hit pay dirt and the ideas started to come thick and fast.

“He could start building the legend by visiting all the battle grounds.”

“He ought to have a collection personnelle of Civil War firearms, I should think.”

“I like having guns around,” Pippen announced from his seat. “Come to think of it, a personal collection of Civil War weapons would make a great cover for an arms dealer, which is where Fred Astaire is heading with this legend.”

“So we need to think in terms of a legend for an arms dealer?”

“Yes.”

“Who in God’s name is Fred Astaire?”

“It’s Mrs. Quest’s in-house nickname.”

“Oh, dear.”

“In what part of the world would Lincoln Dittmann be operating? Who would be his clients?”

Lincoln had to be careful not to give away family jewels. “His clients would be a hodgepodge of people who are out to hurt America,” he said.

“To step into Lincoln Dittmann’s shoes, you would have to do your homework.”

“Do you mind reading up on a subject, Mr. Pippen?”

“Not at all. Sounds fun to me.”

“He’d need professional credentials.”

“Okay. Let’s summarize. He was raised in Jonestown, Pennsylvania, and visited Fredericksburg so often as a child that he knew the battlefield backward and forward at a time when his young friends were reading Batman comics.”

“His father could have owned a chain of hardware stores with the central depot in Fredericksburg, which meant he would have had to spend a lot of time there in any given year. Nothing would have been more natural than to have taken his young son with him whenever he could

“Of course! He would have taken him along to Fredericksburg during school vacations. The young Lincoln Dittmann would have joined the boys scouring the battlefield for Civil War souvenirs that wash up to the surface after heavy rainfalls.”

“At some point Lincoln would have encouraged his father to hunt for rifles and powder horns and medals when he drove around—let’s give him a Studebaker, which was a popular car after the war—checking on his hardware stores. The local farmers keep these Civil War things in their attics and Lincoln’s father would have brought something back with him after each trip.”

“If I collected medals,” Pippen noted, “they’d all have to be from the Union Army. Confederate Army didn’t award medals.”

“How did they get their soldiers to soldier if they didn’t award medals?”

“They were fighting for a cause they believed in,” Pippen said.

“They were defending slavery, for God’s sake—”