Chapter One Chance Encounters The trip had been punishing, a rocky overnight voyage over rough seas. Humid air, the kind that clings to one''s face, stifled romantic visions of the Mediterranean. Even David Fairchild, a twenty-five-year-old from the prairielands of Kansas, was surprised by the small town of Bastia, Corsica''s eastern outpost where the boat docked. "I had been accustomed to a certain degree of dirt but the town of Bastia appeared unbelievably filthy," he wrote of his first impression. Shabby dogs circled him on the dusty street as he stumbled around, disoriented, in the early light of day. Had he been closer to home, he''d have found the scene easier to stomach. But here, on the French island, Fairchild was as far as anyone in his family had ever ventured. His journey had taken him from Kansas to Washington, across the Atlantic to Italy, north to Germany, and then south again across the Alps to the port where he met the boat.
Such distance might have filled him with pride or pleasure if the last leg hadn''t stirred a deep ailing in his stomach. Sometime during the night, it had become December 17, 1894. Fairchild had spent his youth dreaming of traveling overseas, and now, finally, he was on his first assignment. He waited for the post office to open, and when it did, a man handed him an envelope crowded with forwarding addresses, and inside, a short message. Secretary refuses authorization. As an agent for the United States government, Fairchild had been cautioned to keep secret his mission in Corsica. This sort of undertaking had rarely been tried, and without a treaty or informal diplomatic agreement, or even the definitive knowledge that such a visit was legal, the best Washington could hope for was that its man could get in and out without causing a scene. Fairchild had little direction and, as had now become clear, even less money.
The order from the secretary of agriculture to go to Corsica had been nullified by the same man, who refused to cable money for his agent to complete the job. Fairchild liked the idea of espionage, but he was as skilled at covert action as he was at ballroom dancing, having done neither. He was a botanist, an agent of plants, and not a good one. Without money, Fairchild couldn''t afford to stay long. But already on the island, he figured he might as well try to complete the objective. He flagged a cab drawn by a single horse that trotted south along the coast. To think clearly, he needed to eat. He also needed a lead.
Corsica was hilly, hot, and too big to wander blindly. He stopped at a roadside restaurant, where he was the only customer. While he waited to eat, he mentioned casually to the restaurant''s owner that he was interested in plants. Where, he asked in a mix of English, broken Italian, and arm gestures, could he see some of the island''s trees? Perhaps its famous citron? The man lit with purpose. He took Fairchild behind the restaurant to sample figs he had grown, each one a mouthful of syrup. He suggested that Fairchild see the mayor of Borgo, a town at the top of a nearby mountain in the center of the citron region, and gave Fairchild a note of introduction. "There I was, with an adventure on my hands, and I enjoyed it," Fairchild wrote. He walked outside and hired a donkey to carry him up, observing the view at every switchback up the mountain, oblivious to the fact that Corsicans could be wary of outsiders.
The mayor of Borgo was a red-faced man, skin baggy and sagging, "a bandit of a fellow," Fairchild jotted in his red pocket notebook. The mayor''s house sat on wooden stilts atop a pigsty caked in mud. Fairchild had to navigate the snorting beasts to deliver the note from the man who had served him lunch. As he might have expected, the mayor spoke no English and Fairchild knew almost no French, but the mayor made it understood that he had to leave for a funeral. He poured Fairchild a glass of wine and told his guest to wait. When the mayor left, Fairchild noticed a gray patch of mold floating on the wine and emptied it through a crack in the floorboards onto the pigs. Then he moved to the window, where he looked for a long moment at the deep valleys and orchards filled with fruit. It occurred to him: So long as he was waiting, what difference would it make to wait outside? Efforts to be inconspicuous were betrayed by his large camera, an Eastman Kodet that folded like an accordion and had a cloth curtain.
On the street, a small crowd gathered around him murmuring about the peculiar contraption and the man holding it. He stopped to photograph a group of women in long black skirts. A man urged Fairchild to photograph the view off the side of the mountain. Another woman asked him to take an image of her daughter. He obliged the woman''s request but ignored the man, who turned and marched away. While his head was concealed by the curtain, he felt someone grab his arm. "Vos papiers, s''il vous pla"t." It was a policeman.
Or perhaps a soldier. Fairchild had no papers to show, nor could he respond in a way the man understood. The minimal French learned in school left his head at the precise moment it might have been useful. In just a few hours on the island, two hours into his first assignment working in a foreign land on behalf of the American government, Fairchild found himself arrested. If he knew anything about this type of work, he demonstrated the opposite. He had made his mission known to a government official. He had drawn attention to himself in the streets. And worst of all, he would now be interrogated.
If he couldn''t hold his resolve, the man would compel him to divulge what he had come for, and who had sent him. The gendarme escorted Fairchild to a small house that doubled as the town''s jail. He gestured for Fairchild to empty his pockets. The man picked up Fairchild''s red pocket notebook and began to thumb through its pages. He asked in staccato what each word meant. Some of the scratches were in English, others in German and Italian, his attempt to practice languages he didn''t know. Fairchild was filled half with fear, half with indignation, neither of which compelled him to cooperate. In the corner of the room sat a woman in a black robe with a baby perched at her breast.
As she rocked, she barked orders in Corsican French to the man. He paid her no attention, his gaze affixed on the notebook. It struck Fairchild that the man mistook him for a spy, which he technically was, but the kind seeking more serious secrets. How else to explain the notebook with suspicious writings? Why the camera? Owing to the heat, his growing annoyance, and the creeping fear that he could spend his life in a Corsican prison, blood began to rush from Fairchild''s face. "On an errand that was not likely to be pleasing if explained to the guard, with no papers in my pocket, with a captor whose very look was enough to terrify anyone, and in a jail that would rival in filthiness any that the Inquisition ever had, I think there are few men who would not have paled," he later wrote. The policeman was familiar with the game of espionage, with foreigners arriving innocently but looking for political or economic secrets-or worse, to survey the land''s value. The island had been war-torn for centuries, a plaything of European empires that fought for the rights to a Mediterranean oasis rich in crops, water, and fertile soil. America wasn''t a threat, but the superpower Spain was, as was Italy, France''s neighbor, which saw rich promise in a nearby island.
A European spy hoping to steal strategic secrets from Corsica would be wise to impersonate a bumbling American who could barely speak French. If the money had arrived from Washington, Fairchild would have had papers to prove his identity, his employer, and his mission, which, at the very least, was less threatening than looking for military secrets. Instead, all he had remaining in the bottom of his pockets was an old reimbursement check for fifteen dollars for work as a government contractor. With nothing left to offer, Fairchild tossed the crumpled envelope containing the check onto the desk. But something caught both men''s eyes. There on the envelope was the muscular visage of Ulysses S. Grant. "Oo-lissies Grant," Fairchild said, pointing at the imprint.
"Americano!" The woman with the baby stared. The man held the envelope up to study it. He seemed more taken by Grant''s brawny gaze than by Fairchild''s flailing insistence. Then slowly, he pushed the red notebook back at Fairchild and uttered a string of words that sounded like a warning never to come back. Fairchild stumbled out of the house, sweating lightly and breathing hard. With his head down he walked past the group of Corsicans watching him, then hoisted himself onto the donkey he had hired and kicked its side. As the animal trotted away, Fairchild peered over his shoulder every few paces, wary of being pursued. Halfway down the mountain, when he felt confident he wasn''t being followed, he dismounted.
An orchard of yellow fruit had caught his eye, and he dashed into the grove of citron trees. He checked over both shoulders as he crouched in the dirt. Then he broke off four small bud sticks, the part of the tree where two thin branches merge into one. He tucked them into his breast pocket. These cuttings could later be grown into new trees, the Corsican citron mimicked in American soil. Then he plucked three small fruit from the tree''s branches. If the buds didn''t survive, the seeds inside these citrons might. Back on the trail, Fairchild slowed the don.