David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

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David Liss's bestselling historical thrillers, including A Conspiracy of Paper and The Coffee Trader, have been called remarkable and rousing: the perfect combination of scrupulous research and breathless excitement. Now Liss delivers his best novel yet in an entirely new setting – America in the years after the Revolution, an unstable nation where desperate schemers vie for wealth, power, and a chance to shape a country's destiny.
Ethan Saunders, once among General Washington's most valued spies, now lives in disgrace, haunting the taverns of Philadelphia. An accusation of treason has long since cost him his reputation and his beloved fiancée, Cynthia Pearson, but at his most desperate moment he is recruited for an unlikely task – finding Cynthia's missing husband. To help her, Saunders must serve his old enemy, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, who is engaged in a bitter power struggle with political rival Thomas Jefferson over the fragile young nation's first real financial institution: the Bank of the United States.
Meanwhile, Joan Maycott is a young woman married to another Revolutionary War veteran. With the new states unable to support their ex-soldiers, the Maycotts make a desperate gamble: trade the chance of future payment for the hope of a better life on the western Pennsylvania frontier. There, amid hardship and deprivation, they find unlikely friendship and a chance for prosperity with a new method of distilling whiskey. But on an isolated frontier, whiskey is more than a drink; it is currency and power, and the Maycotts' success attracts the brutal attention of men in Hamilton 's orbit, men who threaten to destroy all Joan holds dear.
As their causes intertwine, Joan and Saunders – both patriots in their own way – find themselves on opposing sides of a daring scheme that will forever change their lives and their new country. The Whiskey Rebels is a superb rendering of a perilous age and a nation nearly torn apart – and David Liss's most powerful novel yet.

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“Entirely alone?”

“It is not as though I have a choice, but you know you may depend upon me.”

“And if you did have a choice?” I asked. “If I were to free you right now, would you continue to stand by me in this until the end?”

“You won’t,” he said.

“But if I did.” I don’t know why I chose to press the point at that moment, but his concern for me placed me upon the precipice of informing him that he was free already.

“I don’t know,” he answered earnestly. He met my eye and did not waver.

I appreciated his candor. How could I not? Yet he put me in a difficult position, for he was the only man I could trust entirely, and I could not do without him. So long as this crisis continued, I would have to keep the truth from him. He could not yet know he was a free man.

Leonidas sensed I was lost in thought and leaned forward to distract me. “What shall you do about the note? Do you plan to watch the tree?”

I shook my head. “It’s not practical. Someone would have to watch it at all times, and there are only two of us.”

“Then you’ll put it back before they discover you’ve taken it?”

“No,” I said. “I want them to know I’ve found it.” I took a fresh piece of paper and wrote out a short note to replace the one I took. My note said only, I am coming to find you. “Let them ponder that,” I said.

“What if they come to find you first?”

“Then they shall save me a great deal of trouble.”

Idid not know if Hamilton would see me again. Once was charity, twice a nuisance; a third time might prove an outrage. I had no illusions about my reception, but then he could have no illusions about me. If I wanted to see him, I would see him. Perhaps I would wait for him on the street or visit him in his home. He knew me. He knew if I wished to speak with him, I would make it happen. For that reason, he admitted me right away.

He sat at his desk, which was covered with four or five high piles of neatly stacked papers. He had a quill in one hand and a near-empty inkpot by his side.

“I am very busy, Captain Saunders,” he said.

“So am I. It’s terrible, isn’t it?”

He set down the pen. “What can this be about? Mr. Pearson has returned, so I know you don’t visit me upon that score.”

“You know I do, and that Mr. Pearson’s return is not an answer but another question.”

“I seem to recall asking you not to involve yourself in this matter.”

“I recall that too, but you and I both know you did not mean it. You would much rather I ran an inquiry parallel to that of Lavien. You will yield far better results if you have two men competing for the same ends. I will not say you engineered this competition, but you cannot regret it. Now let us end this dissimulation. You wish me to proceed, don’t you?”

He looked at me directly. “No.”

“Of course you do. There is too much in the balance. Perhaps it is time for you to tell me why you wished Lavien to find Pearson in the first place. Why is he of interest to you?”

“It is a private matter.”

So he said, but I began to think it must be a public matter. There was no personal connection I could divine, so there was but one obvious reason Hamilton might take an interest in Pearson. Given what the bearded Scotsman had told me this morning about defaulted bank loans, I could but conclude one thing. “He has borrowed money from the bank, hasn’t he?”

Hamilton blinked and looked away. “I suppose he may have.”

“How much?”

“The bank was, in its conception, my idea, and I take an interest in its operation, but I do not run the bank, and I do not take an interest in its day-to-day operations. I doubt that even Mr. Willing, the bank president, could tell you about individual loans without resorting to files. You cannot expect that I, who am far more removed, can summon such information instantaneously on any possible borrower.”

“No, I don’t expect you to know any possible borrower. I do, however, expect you know about this one. How much?”

He sighed. “He has borrowed fifty thousand dollars.”

“Good God, you give that much to a single individual?”

“It was for investment and development. You have seen how the city thrives under bank money. Pearson is a respected dealer in real estate, and he presented us with a specific plan for developing land to the west of the city.”

“But he hasn’t done it, has he? You received word that not only was Pearson not buying and developing land, he was losing the properties he already had. You don’t keep an eye on the day-to-day minutiae of investment, nor does the bank president, I’ll wager. No one was going out to Helltown to see if Pearson was developing it. He was a respected man of business, and it was safe to assume he was doing what he said. But then you receive word that his properties are being foreclosed, and you learn that no one knows where he is. Suddenly fifty thousand in bank funds may have vanished. Can the bank withstand such a loss?”

“Of course it can. It is a serious loss but there are systems built into the bank’s charter to enable it to weather defaulted loans.”

“Easily?”

“It is never easy.”

“It is never easy,” I said, “because what you fear most is Jefferson and his faction getting word of this. That is the issue, isn’t it? Your bank has just launched and endured a rocky first half year with wildly fluctuating share prices. Now, it will be said, it is granting loans to the personal friends of the bank president, loans that will not-cannot-be repaid. You know what they will say: that the bank is an engine of the northern money men to feed their own greed.”

Hamilton nodded. “That is, indeed, what they will say. That is part of it.”

“There is more?”

“You will keep this quiet?”

“Of course.”

“There is also the method of the bank’s funding, the whiskey excise. Jefferson ’s faction will waste no time in saying that we tax the poor men of the frontier to pay for the irresponsible spending of the rich. That is what they will say.”

“And the truth?”

“The truth is that the Bank of the United States is a large bank that makes large loans, so of course it is of direct benefit to the rich. There are smaller land banks that benefit small landholders, and that is what they should do, but projects that benefit the rich also benefit others. Had Pearson done with the money what he was supposed to do, he would have built properties, which would have employed men and caused goods to change hands. Those buildings would have provided housing, space for shops and services, for the growth of the economy. That benefits all, rich and poor.”

“Clearly that is not what happened with Pearson. Now he has returned, what has Lavien learned about the fate of the money?”

“Very little. Pearson won’t answer any questions.”

“And, I suppose, you haven’t given Lavien permission to break his elbows or cut off his feet. Not with someone so prominent.”

“Pearson is clever,” said Hamilton. “He has openly refused to appear at the bank to explain the status of his loan, and he knows we dare not press the matter, lest it become public knowledge that a loan of this magnitude is in danger. I’m sure Pearson knows that that scoundrel Philip Freneau, who writes Jefferson ’s newspaper, has been sniffing about, asking questions. If Freneau learns the truth, he will use it to ruin us all. Jefferson and his men would gladly sacrifice the national economy if only to prove I am wrong and they are right.”

“Which is why the bank has not seized Pearson’s assets. To keep this from becoming a scandal?”

“Yes. While there is the chance of a quiet repayment of all or even some of the loan, we prefer to avoid a public fiasco that will only feed Jefferson ’s public animosity toward the bank. Until we know more, we will have to find other means of discovering what Pearson is up to.”

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