by Dara Horn
He was.
If Edwin Booth had the most perfect physical head in America, Judah Benjamin had the most perfect mental one. He was widely regarded as one of the most intelligent men in America, North or South, and he was going to be harder to fool than Edwin Booth. Yet it had been done before. Three years earlier, Benjamin had made the colossal mistake of hiring Timothy Webster, a Union agent, as one of his own Confederate spies. For six months, Webster was the Union secret service’s greatest hero. After that, Benjamin noticed his error and Webster went from hero to martyr, hanged in Richmond in 1862. Jacob was aware of this. But he believed that he had a very slight advantage. He knew that on Sunday mornings, all Hebrews let down their guard.
Every American Hebrew, including Jacob, knew the strange freedom of Sunday mornings. At first the streets would be crowded, the peals of church bells crowding the air as horses and carriages crammed the roads, one after another, loaded with families wearing their best clothes and their most serious faces, even the children chastened into little sorrowful adults. These sad children and their sad parents, along with their sad grandparents and sad uncles and aunts, would then all assemble on the steps of the churches, waiting for the doors to be thrown open. Then the owners of these sad faces would shuffle inside to devote the next hour of their lives to the praise of God. For that magical hour of every week, Hebrews in every American city were free to be themselves. On Sunday mornings they took to the empty streets, the empty courtyards, the empty squares, and breathed. Even as a child in New York, Jacob was aware of the paradise of that precious hour. It was the only time when Hebrew children were allowed to be children, released into the wilds of the gardens, streets and fields, talking as loudly as they wanted without their parents warning them to lower their voices, free to argue and rampage without the haunting fear of embarrassing their parents and thereby ruining their prospects for the lives of their dreams. The adults were more demure, but even they would at last raise their voices, amazed by the existence of an entire hour when absolutely nothing was required of them by either God or man, laughing loudly at the children and each other, talking about whatever they wanted in whatever language they wanted, casting their hands wildly through the air as they spoke, delirious with freedom, relieved, for an entire hour, of the everlasting burden of worrying what others would think. For that magical hour each week, America was theirs. And that was the time when Jacob chose to meet Judah Benjamin, Confederate Secretary of State.
BECAUSE IT WAS Sunday morning, Jacob was not surprised when he rang the bell at the Davenport house on West Main Street and saw Benjamin himself open the door. What surprised him was how awful he looked. When Jacob had last seen him, he had had a stylish cuff of a beard just along the edge of his jaw; now the whole of his chin, jowls, and cheeks was scraggly with dark hair, graying in places and thinning grotesquely in others, as though some sort of ailment had created irregular bald patches on his face. His dark eyes were sunken into his shadowed skin, and his complexion was even darker in the layered bags beneath his eyes. Jacob remembered him being short, but now he seemed even smaller than Jacob remembered. He was hunched like an old man, the weight of years pressing down on his low shoulders. He was in his shirtsleeves, though he still wore a dark vest, with a thick watch chain draped across his belly. His broad waist seemed to sag. But everything he had endured showed only in his body, not in his demeanor. His pose was steady as he stood in the doorway, and he peered at Jacob curiously, his expression cheerfully alert, as if he were anticipating some delightful surprise. He had a little piece of cake with him, and he was nibbling on it even as he looked at Jacob. Jacob had read that he was often mocked for his childish sweet tooth, for nibbling at every opportunity on the cakes and candies that always seemed to fill his pockets. The caricatures in the newspapers depicted him as grotesque, stuffing himself while his fellow Confederates starved. It was only many years later that Jacob learned that he suffered from diabetes.
“Good morning, Secretary,” Jacob announced, with a slight bow. “My name is Jacob Rappaport. I had the honor of meeting you once several years ago, though I looked a bit better at the time.”
Benjamin’s dark eyes examined him, but Jacob soon saw that the Secretary was smiling—a warmer smile than Jacob remembered. It was Sunday morning, the hour of refuge from the assumptions of others. In a sense at once superficial and profound, he knew who Jacob was.
“Good morning to you, Mr. Rappaport,” he replied, and clasped Jacob’s hand in both of his as though they were old friends. He scrutinized Jacob as he grasped his fingers, still smiling, searching for clues before at last giving up. “I do apologize, but I am afraid you must remind me of our acquaintance,” he finally said. “Where did we meet?”
Jacob swallowed, prepared. “On Passover in ’62, at a seder in the home of Harry Hyams,” he said, and added, with great effort, “may his memory be a blessing.”
A dark shadow crossed Benjamin’s face. For an instant Jacob’s throat tightened as he sensed the noose around his neck. But Benjamin’s eyes lit up, thrilled. “Ah, yes, you were the young Rebel private, the turncoat from New York!” he cried. Jacob breathed as Benjamin added, “Please, do come in.”
He took Jacob’s coat himself, hanging it carefully on a clothes tree beside the door as they entered. The house was silent. Jacob followed him down a short corridor and into a small study. The corridor was lined with books, but the study was positively vomiting them. Jacob looked around the room and saw nothing but books, hundreds of volumes in English, Latin, Greek, and French—almost all law books, though here and there a volume of Tennyson or Balzac peeked inauspiciously out from between the larger folios. The shelves were stuffed to bursting, additional volumes crammed into the spaces above the rows of books. If there was a rug on the floor, it had been rendered invisible by neatly organized piles of papers—newspapers, magazines, telegrams, printed documents, and personal letters, all meticulously arranged in enormous stacks, each carefully bundled, as if the papers were regenerating themselves back into trees. The room was a veritable firetrap, and clearly a realm where no lady had ever set foot: as Jacob glanced at the walls and shelves again, he noted that there were no portraits of any family members anywhere, not even a lady’s cameo or silhouette. Jacob remembered that Benjamin was theoretically married and even had a daughter, though both wife and daughter lived in France; one of the more gratuitously vicious rumors Jacob had heard was that the daughter wasn’t his. Their absence felt oddly irrelevant. Jacob later learned that Benjamin lived with his wife’s brother, a dandyish man fifteen years his junior whom he treated as half companion, half ward. There was a pair of upholstered armchairs in front of the exceedingly neat desk, and the small table between the two chairs was occupied by a dish of cake, half-eaten, and a copper tea set, dregs of tea leaves already curling at the bottom of one of the cups. As Jacob glanced at the walls and shelves once more, he noted again that the man seemed to have no commitments in evidence beyond the books and papers that surrounded him, no signs of any more personal cause for devotion. At length Jacob noticed a bronze bust perched on the mantel above the fireplace. The bust was the only human likeness in the room, the closest thing to an image of a beloved. It was of Thomas Jefferson.
“It was tragic, what happened to Harry,” Benjamin was saying as he gestured to Jacob to take a seat.
Jacob lowered himself carefully into a chair and nodded as he helped himself to a piece of cake. The cake was dry in his mouth, like the tasteless unleavened confections that Jewish women serve on Passover. His stomach swayed, black bile churning his gut. “It was terrible,” he agreed.
“And also tragic in the literary sense,” Benjamin said, sitting down across from him. “That runaway slave had a sickening sense of humor, to do that at the seder. One must give him credit for timing and wit.” Jacob focused his attention on the cake, though he was puzzled. Benjamin’s attachment to his dead cousin seemed minimal at best. “Of course, we ourselves are descendants of runaway s
laves,” Benjamin added, “and runaway slaves always ought to look over their shoulders. Harry’s mistake was that he stopped looking.”
Jacob glanced at Benjamin, feeling his heart pound as Benjamin poured him a cup of tea. He was surprised by how intimate it felt to have this familiar little man hovering over him, trying his best to make him feel at home. For a bizarre instant, as Jacob brought the tea to his lips, he did.
“So what brings you here?” Benjamin asked at last. He sat back, comfortable and expectant.
Jacob steeled himself before he spoke. “I’ve come with a message from New York,” he announced, and withdrew the envelope from his pocket. “From Edwin Booth.”
“Hmph,” Benjamin grunted. “Edwin Booth.” His tone imparted just the slightest touch of disgust. He still maintained his Sunday morning ease, taking the envelope from Jacob with delicate fingers, as if insulted that its contents might disturb the magic of the hour. Jacob watched as Benjamin inspected the seal and reached over to his desk for a letter opener, with which he dissected the envelope with a single graceful slice. He removed the note and took in its contents almost instantaneously, absorbing its few lines in a single glance. Benjamin looked back at him, and Jacob could see how he was weighing him in the balance of his mind.
“As you can see, I too have been somewhat incapacitated since we last saw each other, while serving in the line of duty,” Jacob said.
Benjamin blushed, his face reflecting the shame of a man who had taken on God’s task of determining who would live and who would die. His patchy beard hid it well, but not well enough. “So I surmised,” he said. “We are eternally grateful for your service.”
“I appreciate your gratitude,” Jacob replied, and glanced down in a display of feigned humility before staring Benjamin in the eye. Successful lying requires full eye contact, with however many eyes one is privileged to own. Jacob had learned that from his wife. “I was able to spend much of my convalescence at my parents’ home in New York, and for a time I was in a position to assist Mr. Booth in disbursing the Toronto funds, in connection with my work at my family’s firm,” he said, without hesitation. “Mr. Booth asked me to come here in person on his behalf, to ensure that you would trust me as his substitute. I apologize that so much time has passed since the date of his letter. I could not find safe passage through the lines, and had to come on a blockade runner via Bermuda.” The real reason for the delay, of course, was that the command had insisted on retraining him; the code system had evolved considerably since the officers had last engaged his services, as had other protocols. He had also had to master everything he could about the resources available in Richmond, paltry though they were: which rooming houses wouldn’t ask him questions; which segments of society to avoid at all costs; which neighborhoods were poor or rich or black or white; which bakery he would use to send his messages back over the lines. He held his breath and prayed that Benjamin would believe him.
“I see,” Benjamin said. “Well, we have all come to expect that sort of delay.” Benjamin examined him, again inspecting his eye patch and his scars, but Jacob could detect no suspicion in his glance. He was grateful that Benjamin didn’t seem interested in the details of how he had been injured, or more importantly, how he had returned to New York thereafter; he had stories prepared to explain it all, but it was exhausting to keep track of them. Fortunately Benjamin had other things on his mind. He glanced at the note again before looking back at Jacob’s disfigured face. “What’s become of dear Edwin, then?” he asked. “He doesn’t specify.”
Lying with a purpose had become second nature to Jacob. What he was still learning to enjoy, however, was his newfound talent for lying purely for his own amusement. “The matter is a bit delicate, I’m afraid,” he replied, his face somber. “Most men prefer not to advertise it when they’ve contracted syphilis.”
“Oh dear,” Benjamin sighed. Jacob stifled a smile. “Well, I must admit that I never did find him terribly reliable for our purposes,” he said. “It seemed to me that he cared rather more for his brother than he did for us.” Benjamin’s perceptiveness was more than a rumor, Jacob noted. He would have to be careful, if he valued his life. He watched as Benjamin sipped his tea. “It’s just as well, though,” Benjamin added. “We are halting funds to Toronto at the moment, so as to concentrate resources on Maryland and the signal corps line. The Canadian operations have been a bit cursed, it seems. The great challenge now is to convince a few more of those in Canada to return, so that we can use their services in Maryland and in the Northern Neck.”
“Hm,” Jacob said. On a Sunday morning between him and Benjamin, the air was redolent with trust, and ripe with low-hanging assumptions. Jacob tried to touch one, to see if he could. “Edwin did mention the Maryland plan. To him the arrangements appeared overly compromising, though perhaps that was merely due to his lack of commitment to the cause.”
He was stretching, he knew, reaching far beyond his grasp. But luck was on his side, this time at least. Benjamin’s eyes narrowed. At first Jacob’s throat clenched, but soon he saw that Benjamin’s anger was directed not at him, but at Edwin Booth. “In that case, let me be absolutely clear, to ensure that everyone understands this,” Benjamin said, his voice firm. “This is not an assassination plot.”
Jacob pursed his lips, fighting the impulse to gape. Benjamin’s irritation, layered over the free air of Sunday morning, rendered the space between them electric. The Secretary buzzed like a fly trapped in a kerosene lamp. “In fact, if even one of them were to die, then the entire objective would be lost,” he added.
One of them? One of whom? Benjamin had already settled back in his chair, at once aware of his indiscretion. He took another piece of cake and chewed it quickly, swallowing with barely disguised regret. Jacob worked hard to affect only the mildest of interest as he stirred his tea, trying to think of a way to change the subject. Benjamin changed it first, or nearly did.
“The problem at the moment is that too much of the capital is with our agents in Canada,” he said. “We need some of these agents to return, but the funds have already been disbursed. There is some allotment to draw them back here, but there is very little room for waste, and it isn’t clear to me how to use what we have most effectively. Despite the popular prejudice, I haven’t much of a mind for finances.”
Jacob struggled to look at him calmly. “Your talents in other areas are surely more than sufficient to compensate,” he said.
“Well, I am more a man of letters than a man of numbers,” Benjamin replied.
Jacob looked pointedly at the stacks of books and papers around the room. “One never would have guessed,” he grinned.
Benjamin smiled, though he seemed barely to have heard him. He was watching Jacob, weighing his own thoughts. Then, suddenly, he leaned toward Jacob, planting his hands on his knees. “Rappaport, you were the bookkeeping wizard, weren’t you? Harry mentioned that to me. Weren’t you the one working in your father’s import-export firm in Madison Square?”
“I was,” Jacob replied, nervous. How had Benjamin remembered that?
“Harry said that your father had relied on you completely since you were sixteen years old,” Benjamin said. “He couldn’t believe that your father would have let you leave New York, given how valuable you were to him. He speculated that you must have run away.”
Jacob’s head ached, thinking of his father. His father had never told him how much he needed him. “I did run off, it’s true,” Jacob said. “And the firm did lose half its value while I was gone.” Of course, the firm’s losses had far more to do with the ostensible country Benjamin served than with Jacob’s absence. But Jacob allowed the assumptions to dangle, ready for the taking.
Benjamin nodded, captivated, and took one. “So you are a sort of magician with funds, then,” he said. “Brilliant with numbers.”
Jacob thought of his father, and winced. “People have told me that,” he replied.
Benjamin nodded again, and took a bite of hi
s cake. As Benjamin chewed, Jacob could see him thinking, though he could not imagine what was on his mind. Benjamin swallowed, and spoke. “Tell me, Rappaport,” he said. “From a purely financial perspective, how would you motivate these agents to return, without an exorbitant expenditure of capital, when most of them believe that they have already been paid in full? They are all quite committed, of course; nobody is doing this to become rich. But one needs to defray their expenses, at the least, and that is no small matter. As you can imagine, we hardly have unlimited resources at our disposal. I have been thinking this through for quite some time, but it seems to me that once one has paid someone out, there isn’t really any going back.”
“Not necessarily,” Jacob told him. “One just has to offer future incentives on a sliding scale over time.”
Benjamin leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
“I mean a schedule of payments, with choices to encourage loyalty,” Jacob said, the space behind his missing eye aching. “First one offers a small sum, but with perhaps only fifteen percent of the payment available immediately, and arranged such that the person has to return to the desired location in order to draw it in liquid. Then one offers the recipient a choice as to how to collect the remaining eighty-five percent. First, he might receive it in a lump sum on a predetermined date. Or, as a second option, he might receive it in the form of installments to be collected at multiple predetermined dates further in the future—but the installments are paid out with compounded interest and, if necessary, with additional incentives attached to each payment at the later dates. Now if the initial cash outlay presents a hardship, one might be tempted to offer only the installment plan, but I believe that would be a mistake. One needs to offer a choice, so that the recipient believes himself to be personally invested in his own compensation. That makes a much larger difference than one might expect.” Jacob’s head throbbed as he continued. “In my experience, most men are rather shortsighted and prefer to be paid as soon as possible, even if it means being paid less. But the presentation of a choice creates an advantage for those making the payments, because it provides a sorting mechanism. The recipients who choose the more immediate payment have already proven that a continuing relationship is not their real priority. And those who choose the installment plan are precisely the sort of men one actually wishes to retain. The interest is money well spent to find those who are truly dedicated.”
