YOU CANNOT HIDE STOP YOU ARE NOT THE WOMAN YOU SAY
Resisting the urge to toss the rest of the pile directly into the fire, I unfolded the next and held it to the light.
MEET ME
There was no name, which surprised me. There was no name on any of them.
The last one said:
I GROW IMPATIENT STOP MEET ME TONIGHT OR BE EXPOSED STOP HOTEL LOBBY 7 O’CLOCK
It was dated that day, and thank goodness. If the ultimatum had come while I was in Richmond, the deadline would have come and gone without me. But now that I was here, I felt I had no choice. I had to find out who this was and what he—or she—wanted from me.
The likelihood was good that it was Pinkerton, using subterfuge to get my attention, since he knew I might not respond to him as an employee to her employer. There was too much unknown about his motives, his guilt. If it were him, though, I could simply walk away. Causing a scene would be as dangerous for him as it was for me, if not more so.
The possibility that the telegrams might have come from my mother also crossed my mind. She might have decided the money wasn’t enough. But why would she approach me anonymously, when she could have instantly gotten my attention with her name? She wasn’t the one hiding her identity. I doubted she had anything to lose.
I would have to find out firsthand.
So I changed into a plaid dress of muted greens and browns, reknotted my hair, splashed rosewater on my neck, and went down to the lobby at the appointed time.
I edged in carefully, scanning the crowd for familiar faces. Pinkerton was not there, nor was Mrs. Wells. But if not them, who?
When I saw the man next to the grandfather clock, I had my answer.
Age hadn’t been unkind to him. He looked about the same. Of course, any gray in his hair would be painted over, and he took pains to dress well, whatever his current level of income. He had always been able to lead people astray, unless they knew him.
“Come upstairs,” I said softly, so no one nearby could hear. I was a married woman, at least in this hotel, and I didn’t want to raise suspicions by inviting a man to my rooms, but it was much riskier to have this conversation in plain sight of others. I might not be able to contain myself. And if I knew him, or anything about him, after all these years, I suspected he still lacked a sense of moderation.
When he appeared at my door, I opened it long enough to admit him and then shut and locked it quickly. He made a move to embrace me, which I dodged.
“My dear Kate,” he said. “So wonderful to see you again after so long.”
“I wish I could say the same.”
“Don’t be that way. A father and his child are always connected, whatever happens.”
I saw his eye fall upon the socks in the corner. My anger blazed even more brightly.
“I’ll connect my fist to your face,” I said boldly.
His affable manner dropped away for a moment. “You didn’t learn such behavior from me.”
I struck back. “I learned nothing from you. You dragged me around like luggage. And in the end, you sold me off to a gambler. Any success I have is despite you, not because of you.”
“Your mother did say you’d grown bitter.”
“You’ve talked to her? She said she’d left you.”
“I suggested she say so if she ever met you again,” he said. “I guessed you’d be more receptive if you thought I wasn’t involved.”
My blood ran cold. I gave no sign. I had nothing but my armor, invisible though it was. “You guessed right.”
“But you weren’t cooperative enough, Kate. And so we’re going to need some more…cooperation.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “Tell the world my real name. I’m not deceiving anyone. My name has changed, because my husband has changed. This one, you haven’t met.”
“I’d like to.”
“You will not.” I swallowed the gasp of sadness and fury that came with remembering my husband, who had never been my husband, and the reason why my father would never meet him.
“You can’t stop me,” he said. “That’s what you don’t seem to understand. You think you’re calling the shots. But I am. Kate, I want you to hear me. I am.”
He made a move to grab my shoulders. I stepped back smoothly. I wished again for my gun, though it was likely better not to have it; I couldn’t draw attention to myself with violence, not here. Words would have to do.
“I need time to get the money together. My husband is traveling, I don’t have access to the account. I need time.”
“Three days,” he said.
“I need a week.”
“Three days.”
“It’s impossible!”
“Refuse me again, and it’ll be two.” He brandished a finger at me, and I almost slapped it away, but I knew he’d make good on his threat if I pushed him any further. I had to take my bad lot and face it. Born to two people who loved nothing so much as themselves, I had grown into my own woman over time, but every pigeon must return to the roost.
“Three days,” I agreed.
He chuckled low in his throat—it took all I had not to smack him in the face at that—and then was gone.
So three days was all I had, if that. I wouldn’t put it past him to change the terms once agreed upon. He had never been a man of his word.
Regardless of the details, there was one certainty. He would come back. I knew he would. It was only a matter of time, and he wouldn’t hesitate to betray me if the money was better on the other side. He’d betrayed me before, selling me off to Charlie Warne, and cheaply at that. So much more rode on the bets we were making in wartime. My life meant more now, to me and to others. But with my father breathing down my neck, my time was running short.
Now, it was clear what I needed to do. I needed to find E. J. Allen, and soon. Whether he was in the city or not, I had no way of knowing. All I could do, at least for an opening move, was to cable the home office, using the code we saved only for the most dire emergencies.
SEND ME EJ ALLEN STOP HELL IS EMPTY
There was no response, at least no written one, several hours later. I despaired, pacing the tiny strip of floor between the bed and the couch, trying not to remember the room less empty. But after midnight, I heard a soft knock on my door. I prayed that it was the man I needed to talk to. It was.
I motioned him inside and locked the door behind him immediately, but I couldn’t look at him. Not after what had happened.
“Warne,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
I held up my hand, more forcefully than I meant to. “I don’t want to talk about him. That’s not why I needed to see you.”
“Nevertheless. I am sorry. None of us wanted him to—”
“Don’t say it!”
“But I wanted to tell you—”
“No! Nothing about him. Not a word. Only the business we must do. Understand?”
His eyes were full of sadness, but he said, “All right, Warne. Tell me what you’re here to tell me.”
“We must snare Mrs. Greenhow,” I said. “And we must do it tomorrow.”
The boss eyed me. I bore up under his gaze, only my rage against Greenhow keeping me standing. Without it, I might remember and collapse.
I wanted to plan with him, working together, like old times. But I could trust neither myself nor him. This time, all the ideas would have to be mine. I told him the part I wanted him to play and informed him what I would be doing. The only thing I needed from him was a suggestion for a trustworthy local apothecary, which he promised to secure. After that, success or failure would rest securely on my shoulders.
I could get myself invited into Mrs. Greenhow’s house but only while she was there, and it was highly unlikely I could find the evidence I needed while she was present. That gambit had already failed once. We needed to be sure sh
e was gone, and we needed to be sure we could gain access to the house during that time. We found a general who would welcome her company and feed her false secrets. How I wish we would have found him months before. But with his cooperation, we could be sure she would stay out overnight. Then, all we needed was a key. I knew the man who had one.
Getting it from him would be more complicated. That was where the apothecary came in. A sleeping draft would be easy enough to slip into his tea or whatever else he might be drinking. With him unconscious, it would be an easy matter to fit key to lock, enter Mrs. Greenhow’s house under cover of night, and search at our leisure for evidence. Most of her servants did not live in, so there would only be Little Rose and one maid upstairs, and our experts knew how to be silent.
I knew her paramours and I knew her habits, everything I had seen and heard over the course of months in Washington, and I would use it all against her.
Of all the men she entangled herself with, there was only one who was allowed to come to her house. All the others, she met at their own residences or hotels, but for some reason, she had taken a shine to one particular gentleman. I knew this because she had told me. I knew every single thing about their relationship, including the fact that she had given him a key to her back door, which he availed himself of only when she gave him permission. He did not come and go as he pleased but as she pleased, she had informed me proudly. I had cooed at her confidence, praising her for taking the reins, and filed the information away until I needed it. I needed it now.
His name was Captain Bowditch. He had springy dark curls, an unkempt beard, and a solid belly curving out the front of his uniform. Had he not held a position as chief supply officer of the U.S. Army, I would have wondered what she saw in him, but with that, I knew. I had met him on several occasions and even engaged in some mild flirting, under Tim’s watchful eye. With my husband supposedly out of town, if I were to approach him on some adventure, I thought the chances were good that he would offer to accommodate me. I needed to be certain though, and for that reason, I concocted a more detailed plan. I would pretend I had been assaulted and seek refuge at his house, as if I were fleeing an enemy. I knew his paternal instinct would get me halfway to my goal, and his lecherous manly nature should do the rest.
It wouldn’t be pleasant, but it was necessary. And the draft that I’d been supplied with would keep me from having to fully engage him in the way my words and manner would promise.
And so the operation began.
Shortly after ten o’clock at night, a very late hour for visitors, I appeared on Bowditch’s doorstep, disheveled, with my dress torn in a precise spot that would support my story of having been attacked, as well as revealing a generous view of my undergarments and the swell of my breasts above my corset.
“Could I… Would it be all right if…” I gestured toward the open door behind him, as if I couldn’t bring myself to violate etiquette and invite myself in, even in my disastrous state.
“Oh, dear thing!” he said. “Please, come in!”
His house was modest, another factor that reminded me he must be of strategic value to Mrs. Greenhow, who was not known for valuing substance over style. Paths were worn in the carpets along the most-traveled routes, and the bricks around the fireplace were streaked with black ash from a fire that had been allowed to burn too hot, who knows how long before. All these details, I observed in a moment. I was there but not there, my mind separate from my body, despite the evening’s importance.
I sat in his parlor and unspooled my sad tale, while he plied me with wine and made supportive clucking noises. His eyes returned over and over to the rip in my dress, and I leaned far enough over to give him an eyeful. Since becoming an operative, I had always been very conscious of my position relative to that of people regarding me, finding it important to view myself through their eyes. But I had never been so precise, so aware, of how every move I made led directly to a ripple of feeling in the person I was talking with.
I rubbed my ankle as if it ached, and he wolfishly followed the motion of my hand along my leg. I held my empty glass out toward him, and he nearly tripped over his feet in his haste to pour. So much depended on having his attention. I would do anything to keep it as the night unfolded.
The hour grew late.
Finally, after making it clear that I was afraid to go out in the street again after my experience, I waited for him to make an inappropriate offer, and he did not disappoint me.
“I must insist you stay with me tonight.”
“I couldn’t.”
“You can, and you will. I have a small guest room that adjoins my own. Let me show you.” He extended his hand, and I took it. In my other hand, he placed the wineglass that I had almost left behind.
In the room, he gestured to the bed and cabinets, saying, “You’ll be comfortable here. But are you quite sure you should be alone? I would be fearful in your situation.”
“I am…fearful, sir.”
“Wait here just a moment, please,” he said. He was gone truly only a moment, as he had gone back to the parlor to fetch another bottle of wine, and he opened it quickly while I sat down on the edge of the uncomfortable bed and cast my eyes down at the carpet.
“So,” he said. “Perhaps I should remain with you for a time. To be sure that you feel more secure.”
I noticed that he did not phrase it as a question. I was unsure whether a refusal on my part would be graciously accepted. Not that it mattered, since I had no plans to refuse.
Silently, I nodded my assent.
I was in unfamiliar territory, but I could make educated guesses at what came next. I had to excuse myself for private ablutions, and he did too. While he was gone, I made sure to pour him another glass of wine and one for myself, though mine was just for appearance’s sake.
I carefully took out the precious vial of liquid. Just a few drops should render him unconscious within a few minutes. Everything depended on the quick action of the anesthetic. If it took too long to work, I might find myself compromised, and that was to be avoided. But I’d been assured it acted with exactly the right speed.
The vial was slender and clear. The liquid inside was a pale yellow just this side of iodine. It felt fragile in my nervous grasp. I was just unscrewing the lid, hunched over his glass, when I heard the door handle rattle and the captain’s voice call out, “My dear, are you quite ready?”
My hand twitched, and I fumbled the liquid, which tumbled down, down, down, and landed on the thick carpet. For a moment, I held out hope that the lid had still been sealed, but I could see at a glance through the clear glass of the vial that my hope was misplaced. Hungrily, the fibers of the carpet drank up what was spilled.
Every last drop was gone, and I was lost.
There was no time to mourn the error. I was still here, and my quarry was still just outside the door waiting for me. Something had to be done. This was my only chance to lay my hands on the key, and the key was my only chance to get into Mrs. Greenhow’s household while she was out of town to search it. There had to be clues there. The Pinkertons would find them. But first, we had to get into the house, and to do that, I needed that key.
I forged ahead, and I did what was required.
Kicking the empty vial under a dresser and out of sight, I called out, “Enter.”
He came into the room, and though he said nothing untoward, there was no ambiguity about what he intended, what he wanted.
A woman might take part in the sexual act for a host of reasons. Earlier in my life, I had done so out of sympathy and out of expectation. Recently, I had done so out of passion bordering on lust. With Captain Bowditch was the only time I did it out of patriotic duty. That didn’t make it transcendent or glorious or indecent. It simply was. And then, it was done.
Afterward, he slept, and I got what I’d come for.
The key in my hand was hot from my
flesh. Everything depended on it, on such a small piece of metal. For want of a nail, the shoe was lost, as they say; for want of this key, not much larger than a nail, a war could be lost.
Or, I hoped, won.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Bright Hope
As we expected, Mrs. Greenhow stayed out all night at the general’s, and a small team of our men was able to enter her house and search it thoroughly. I was not present for the initial search. As planned, I passed the key to an operative at Bowditch’s back door. It was a surprise that the operative in question was Graham DeForest, and when I saw his familiar mustache and the understanding in his warm brown eyes, I wanted to cry out and collapse into his arms. It would have been a luxury. Instead, I pressed the key into his hand wordlessly, keeping my composure until I was back indoors.
Several long hours later, we repeated the operation in reverse, and I took the key back from him to replace it so that Bowditch would never know it had been missing. When DeForest returned the stolen key, he covered both my hands with his in a prearranged signal, the only thing that could put a smile on my face: they had found what they sought at Mrs. Greenhow’s. Our work had been fruitful. I allowed myself a few precious tears of joy before I took the long steps back to the bedroom. Then I found the empty vial under the bureau and tucked it into my pocket, so I would leave no evidence. The spill on the carpet had already dried to invisibility.
My conversation in the morning with Bowditch was blessedly short, the span of just a few minutes. He left unmentioned the husband he thought I was returning to. He found several excuses to pat me possessively, touching my cheek, my hand, my shoulder. I steeled myself and did not wince. Then I returned to my hotel to scrub off the entire night’s doings as best I could.
A few hours later, I went with the team to Mrs. Greenhow’s house. Not having slept a wink, I was dizzy with exhaustion, but the importance of the day kept me alert. Dressed in a heavy nut-brown skirt and shirtwaist, sober and silent, I blended into the background. DeForest, without a word, stood next to me; I realized Pinkerton had brought him purely for my benefit, and I would have been grateful, if I had allowed myself to feel anything at all. Instead, I stayed focused on the proceedings. Pinkerton bore a civil warrant in hand, and we entered the spy’s house legally, for the purpose of arresting her for treason and taking her directly to prison.
Girl in Disguise Page 24
