The Once and Future Spy

by Robert Littell

  Samuel, who had just turned thirty, smiled caustically. “Of all people,” he called.

  “Small world,” Nate agreed.

  The constable slipped one large hand under the wide leather belt that ran from his left shoulder to his right hip and looked from one man to the other.

  Leaning confidently back against the bar, Samuel toyed with Nate the way a cat toys with a field mouse. “What brings you to New York, cousin?”

  “I am repairing shoes nowadays.”

  A guttural laugh seeped through Samuel’s lips. “I always wondered what skills they taught at Yale.”

  “Times are difficult,” Nate remarked.

  “Isn’t that the god-awful truth.” Samuel cocked his head. “Odd no one in my family mentioned anything about you repairing shoes. Last I heard you had quit teaching Latin and taken a commission in the rebel army.”

  At the adjacent tables all conversation abruptly ceased. The beefy constable turned slowly to study Nate. “What’s this about you being a rebel officer?”

  Nate had a sudden loss of nerve, a sudden urge to run for it. He imagined himself (I imagine him too) peering through the single glass pane, watching Molly at her toilet; imagined her cry of surprise, of sheer pleasure, when she caught sight of him. He shook his head as if he were dismissing a persuasive image and replied evenly to the constable, “I don’t guess there’s any point in me denying it.”

  Here is the interrogation of my man Nate:

  AFTER HIS ARREST AT FRAUNCES’ Tavern by the beefy constable, Nate was handed over to a squadron of Light Dragoons, who bound his wrists and ankles in irons, hustled him into a stagecoach and started out for General Howe’s headquarters at the Beekman Mansion overlooking Turtle Bay. The stagecoach, with two brass-helmeted dragoons inside and a dozen others riding ahead and behind, headed up the Eastern Post Road that ran from New York City to King’s Bridge. Because the day was scorching hot there was a brief pause at the spring-fed Sunfish Pond to water the horses then the coach and its escort started up the flat-topped rise that some called Inclenberg Hill and others called Murray’s Hill, sped past the driveway leading to Robert Murray’s country house and continued on toward Turtle Bay and the Beekman Mansion.

  Arriving in midafternoon, Nate was delivered into the custody of Howe’s Irish Provost Marshal, William Cunningham, a hulking man with short-cropped hair and patriotic tattoos (For God and George III, Britannia Rules) on his arms. Hobbling because of the ankle chains, Nate was hustled into a toolshed next to the greenhouse. His wrists were secured behind his back, with the chain laced through a jagged piece of metal embedded in one of the wall planks. Nate squirmed as the metal dug into the small of his back, tried to find a comfortable position, failed. “I am in great pain,” he told Cunningham.

  “Are you, now?” Cunningham asked with a sneer. “The poor fellow’s suffering great pain,” he told the guards. Several of them smiled knowingly. Before they closed the door, leaving the prisoner in total darkness, Nate caught Cunningham sizing him up with eyes that had the color, the coldness of pewter. He had seen toughness before but Cunningham represented a different order of things. He had a toughness that was more than skin deep, that was indistinguishable from viciousness. It had to do with the way he looked out at the world and obviously didn’t give a damn about it.

  With the sun beating down the temperature inside the toolshed became stifling. Nate lost all track of time. He tried changing his position but whichever way he turned, sharp pains stabbed through his back. In order not to dwell on the pain he summoned up an image of Molly, seen through the window of her room, nude, a candle next to her bare feet. He remembered the feel of her wet skin as she pressed her body against his. He heard her voice saying, “If you are absolutely set on going through with this mad scheme of yours, I propose that we marry ourselves.” It had been an indelible encounter, beyond the polite intercourse he had experienced before, beyond even his wildest flights of fantasy.

  Outside the toolshed the guards were being changed. Nate was brought back to the present-brought back to the metal stabbing into his back-by the grunts of relief coming from the Northumberland fusilier being replaced. He heard orders shouted from the Beekman Mansion. A crisp “Aye” came from the fusilier at the door. A key turned in the padlock and the door was pulled open. I can imagine Nate squinting as the sunlight stabbed into the interior of the toolshed. Two fusiliers, sweating profusely under their brass helmets, burst in, leaned their rifles against a broken plow and set about undoing the chain that held him pinned to the metal embedded in the wall. His wrists were freed and manacled in front of him. Jerked roughly to his feet, Nate hobbled between the guards out of the shed, across the well-tended garden alive with late snow-white roses, toward the back entrance of the mansion.

  As he reached the wooden steps leading to the kitchen, the door ahead was thrown open and a tall fusilier emerged. He held a rifle in one hand and a chain leash attached to the manacled wrists of Haym Salomon in the other. Nate looked at him in horror. The Jew was almost unrecognizable-his face was full of purple bruises. One eye was swollen shut. His nose was twisted to one side and caked with dried blood. Salomon shook his head imperceptibly and tried to whisper something, but his lips were too swollen to form words.

  “Bring the spy along smartly now,” Cunningham bellowed from the kitchen, and Nate was sent flying through the doorway by the flat of a hand on his back. Cunningham, wearing breeches held up by braces and a sweat-and-blood-stained shirt, smiled at him as if he were greeting a long-lost friend. He nodded at the fusilier, who produced a ring of keys and unlocked the manacles from Nate’s wrists and ankles. Massaging the welts on his wrists, Nate heard Cunningham bark, “Strip.” He looked at Cunningham, then at the dozen or so fusiliers lounging against walls and tables. “If you won’t undress yourself,” Cunningham snarled, pronouncing each syllable of each word carefully, “my boys here will be doing it for you.”

  Moving stiffly, trying to maintain what dignity he could, Nate pulled his shirt over his head, then kicked off his shoes. He removed his stockings and breeches. “Strip,” Cunningham said, pointing to Nate’s drawers, “means down to the bone.”

  Nate hesitated. Several of the fusiliers pushed themselves off the wall. Nate quickly removed his drawers and stood naked in the middle of the kitchen. He was vaguely ashamed of the whiteness of his body, of appearing naked before his enemies. Cunningham nodded at the clothes. A fusilier spread the garments on the kitchen table. Scratching absently at the inside of a nostril, Cunningham turned to inspect them. He searched methodically, running his fingers along every inch of every seam, feeling the hems to see if anything had been sewn within, examining stitching to see if it showed signs of having been redone. As he finished each garment he discarded it on the floor. Finally only Nate’s shoes were left. Cunningham picked one up and turned it in his large hand, looking at it from various angles, poking at the sole to see if he could pull it loose. He reached inside and dug his fingernails under the inner sole and pried it up. Nate heard his snort of delight when he caught sight of the folded letters. Cunningham tucked the stray hairs that had appeared back up into his nostrils with delicate clockwise thrusts of his thick pinky. He found the pages from Nate’s notebook folded under the inner sole of the other shoe. Flinging the shoes at Nate’s feet, he collected the documents, struggled into a tight uniform jacket and rushed from the room.

  “Can I put my clothes on, then?” Nate asked.

  One of the fusiliers said, “What do you take us for? Hanging you while you are stark naked is the kind of thing the rebels would do. We are not like our enemies.” The other fusiliers laughed.

  Nate pulled on his clothes and waited. He could hear flies buzzing in the kitchen, voices droning in the heart of the house, a pulse throbbing in one of his ears. It came to him as a revelation that he was desperately afraid of being afraid; that it was this deeper fear that kept the normal fear for life and limb at arm’s length.

  Someone shout
ed an order out of a window. Minutes later a horse galloped up to the kitchen door and a captain with engineer’s insignias on the sleeves of his uniform came running in. He glanced at Nate and disappeared into the hallway. A quarter of an hour went by. Cunningham returned to the kitchen, beckoned Nate with a jerk of his head and pushed him down a corridor. An orderly stood before the sliding double doors of the drawing room. He opened them and stepped aside. Cunningham put a hammerlock on Nate and marched him into the room.

  The Commander-in-Chief of His Britannic Majesty’s Expeditionary Forces in the Americas, Major General William Howe, sat on a high-backed settle chair, peering through a magnifying glass at the documents Cunningham had discovered in Nate’s shoes. To Nate’s eye, the General had the lean, hungry look that comes from presiding over a military campaign from which little glory was to be derived; it was common knowledge that Howe complained bitterly that His Majesty’s ministers had such a low opinion of the American fighting potential that any setback, not to mention a defeat, could put an end to the General’s career. (It was surely not lost on Howe that the debacle at Breed’s Hill in Boston had put an end to his predecessor’s career.) With his sloping shoulders, his sunken cheeks, his pasty complexion, his chalk-colored hair, Howe looked to Nate like a fin de race nobleman who knew not only where the various bodies were buried, but what they had died of-and who had profited from their deaths and could be accused of murder if the need arose.

  Captain John Montresor, the engineering officer who had arrived in such haste earlier, was leaning over the General’s shoulder, translating the Latin into the King’s English. “ ‘Litterae tuae maxime prosunt. Cum flumiuem experti erint, qui e Duobus Fratribus supererunt, numguam litus propter te praeteribunt.’ That could be taken to mean, ‘Your report was extremely valuable. When they take to the river, those who … survive, yes, survive is right … those who survive the Two Brothers will never get past the landing beach, thanks to you.’ “ Montresor straightened. “Does the expression ‘Two Brothers’ mean anything to the General?” he inquired.

  Howe looked up at Nate, standing in the middle of the room. The General reached out and caressed the ivory grip of a pistol that served as a paperweight on his desk. “Perhaps we should put the question to the spy,” he suggested.

  Nate said, “I have been chained like a dog in the toolshed for hours. Can I have a glass of water?”

  Captain Montresor, a tall man with an open, honest face, went to the sideboard, filled a glass from a pitcher and offered it to the prisoner. Nate grabbed the glass in both hands, drank off the water in one swallow, dabbed at his lips with the sleeve of his shirt.

  “About Two Brothers,” Howe said. “Can you tell us what it refers to?”

  Nate shook his head. Cunningham grabbed Nate’s wrist and started to twist it behind his back. Howe waved him off with an impatient finger. “That will not be necessary, Provost Marshal. Two Brothers is the name of two small islands in the East River immediately beyond Hell Gate. Forewarned by this spy, Washington has obviously fortified the islands, as well as the landing beaches at Frog’s Neck. It is good fortune the spy fell into our hands, along with these documents.” Howe addressed Nate directly. “In the end you have not done your cause a service. My amphibious operation would have speeded the resolution of this foolish war. Less blood would have flowed on both sides. Reconciliation would have been easier. Now things will drag on. But the denouement is inevitable. Enlistments will expire. Your militiamen will return to their homes. That so-called Congress of yours will never raise a second army. The rebellion will peter out. The Colonies will return to the royal fold.”

  Nate shook free from Cunningham’s grip and stepped forward. “The real rebellion is in our hearts-it is the loss of affection and respect for your king and your country. Nothing can alter that.”

  Howe sniffed the air delicately. “Your own Ben Franklin has said, ‘Passion governs, and she never governs wisely.’ You prove his point. However, the passions of the several millions of your countrymen will eventually be cooled by military and economic realities. As for me,” he continued, addressing Montresor and two staff officers, “I am committed to Marshal Saxe’s dictum that the best commander is the one who achieves his ends by maneuver rather than engagement. Since Washington is forewarned about this maneuver, we will bestir ourselves and invent another.”

  “What of the landing barges in the New Town Creek?” asked one of the staff officers.

  “Give the order for them to return to their respective ships,” Howe said. “And bring the assembled troops across the river to reinforce our army facing the Haarlem Heights.”

  From behind Nate Cunningham growled, “What is the General’s pleasure with the prisoner? Will it be the inglorious tree, as befits a spy?”

  Nate brought a hand up to the hair mole on his neck.

  Howe scraped back his seat and came around the desk to take a closer look at Nate. “What is your name?”

  “Nathan Hale.”

  “Your rank?”

  “Captain.”

  “What is it you do in civil life?”

  “I hold a diploma from Yale Academy for the instruction of Latin, the classics and penmanship.”

  “You are sensible you risked being hanged when you put aside your uniform?”

  For answer Nate shot back, “Was the General sensible he risked being shot when he led his Grenadiers against the rail fence at Breed’s Hill?”

  “He should be flogged for insolence before being hanged,” declared one of the staff officers.

  “My question,” Howe said, “is in effect well answered. I respect courage, the more so when it is exhibited for a lost cause. I am inclined to charity, Captain Hale.” He spoke past Nate to Provost Marshal Cunningham. “Incarcerate him in a prison ship for the duration of hostilities.” Howe started toward his seat, then turned back. “I neglected to ask what unit you served in. I am a keen student of the colonial order of battle.”

  Nate elevated his chin with pride. “I served with Colonel Webb’s Nineteenth Connecticut Volunteers until I was given a captaincy in Knowlton’s Rangers.”

  General Howe’s face froze. The two staff officers avoided looking at each other. A cruel smile crept onto Cunningham’s lips. Speaking barely louder than a whisper, Howe asked, “Do I understand you to be referring to Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Knowlton?”

  “The same,” Nate acknowledged. A pulse started pounding in his ear again.

  General Howe could be heard breathing loudly through his nostrils. With each breath his face became redder, his eyes more inflamed. “Knowlton is an assassin, a criminal!” he burst out. “The marksmen he commanded at the rail fence were under orders to pick off my officers. Aiming at officers is against all the established rules of warfare. Every single member of my staff was killed or wounded. The ensign, Hendricks by name, carrying my wine flask was shot through the eye. And you dare to mention Knowlton to me as if he was a civilized officer! His militiamen crammed rusty nails, pieces of glass into their muskets. The wounds they inflicted were terrible. Terrible! I shall not forget until the day I die the carts loaded with wounded making their way back down Breed’s damned hill. The surgeons sawed off limbs as if they were cutting kindling for the winter.”

  Howe strode around the desk and sat down abruptly in the settle. “I am inclined to charity,” he said, “when charity is merited.” He addressed Cunningham directly. ‘The spy is to be hanged by the neck until dead, and left hanging three days as an example to others who would follow his lead. Said sentence to be executed no later than tomorrow morning. Dismissed.”

  So here it is at last (Henry James’s dying words), the Distinguished Thing (another nervous clearing of a dry throat; the author still squirms at executions that take place in the imagination):

  FOR NATE IT WASN’T A MATTER OF sleeping or not sleeping; the word no longer had any meaning, any relevance. It was a question of sorting through a maze of emotions, of dealing with the overlapping waves of pa
nic that surged against his heart, interrupting its beat, threatening at any instant to choke off what little breath he had. Execution by hanging, as an imminent event, didn’t frighten him as much as the idea that he would forever cease to exist. He believed in an Almighty Creator but not in an afterlife; the concept seemed too convenient to be true. What was left was a yawning void into which he would leap with dignity if only he could remain master of his body, of his brain. He worked through a tangle of thoughts to his mother and father, his brothers and sisters; he imagined their horror, their shame, at the news that he had been hanged as a spy. He thought too about Molly; he imagined her face contorted in grief. He thought about his mission; he would go to the inglorious tree more peacefully if he could know that the cause he served, in which he deeply believed, had profited from his death. But for it to profit he would have to get word back to General Washington.

  That would be his last preoccupation, one that would keep the overlapping waves of panic at bay …

  At midnight Nate called for the duty officer and asked for a taper and writing materials, which were duly brought by a tall fusilier with a waxed mustache. The fusilier unlocked the prisoner’s wrist manacles so he could pen the traditional last letters. Nate addressed the first one to his brother Enoch, carefully burying the code sentences from Addison’s Cato that he and A. Hamilton had agreed upon in the heart of the letter-the sentences that would indicate to General Washington that the British were not going to try and trap him in Manhattan; that he would have time to organize an orderly retreat into Westchester. The second letter, with the coded sentences again embedded in its heart, was addressed to his father, and ended: