All Other Nights

by Dara Horn

  The fireplace across from his desk provided inadequate heat in the winter chill, yet he was sweating. He flipped through the papers one more time, but there was no question that the name hadn’t been there. Was it a mistake? If so, whose? He considered his options. If he went to Benjamin to inquire about it and he had simply missed the name somehow, then he would be dismissed as incompetent. But if the name truly wasn’t there—and as he turned the pages again, it seemed clear that this was the case—then it would be incompetent not to inquire. He had to ask. Biting his lip, he rose from his seat and limped down the hall to Benjamin’s office.

  Benjamin wasn’t there. Jacob waited for a time, but Benjamin did not return. Once more Jacob considered his choices. Was it worth going upstairs, to interrupt his meeting with Davis? Fascinating though that would be, it was surely a poor gambit for one trying to prove himself as an able assistant. He decided that he would continue checking for Benjamin, and in the meantime take care of the mindless task of putting together the payment plan.

  But it was far from mindless. As Jacob discovered to his great dismay upon opening the ledger books, the finances were vastly more complicated than he had anticipated. Benjamin may not have been a man of numbers, but one would have to be a man of advanced calculus to extricate any sense from the tangle of digits knotted in the ledgers. Jacob perused the figures, probing the barely decipherable mess of gold specie, tobacco reserves, promissory notes, unsold cotton bales warehoused in an apparently endless wait for higher prices, a complicated series of loans from the house of Baron Erlanger in Paris (a bank he knew from his work at his father’s firm), credit, more credit, even more credit—and debt, debt, debt. It would take days to translate it all into an even slightly more realistic sense of what was actually there. But a cursory glance suggested that the prognosis was indeed bleak. He found it staggering that Baron Erlanger had been foolish enough to risk his own capital on an enterprise that appeared, to Jacob at least, to show all the signs of financial disaster. He later learned that Baron Erlanger was married to the Confederate ambassador’s daughter.

  Jacob barely had time to think. Devising even a basic payment plan took the remainder of the afternoon. Over several hours, he made three more trips down the hall to Benjamin’s office, each one a physical and mental agony. Each time Benjamin’s office was empty. Jacob set aside the problem of the missing agent and composed the letters quickly, trying his best to sound as much like Benjamin as possible. He had just finished the fifth one when someone knocked on the open door.

  Jacob looked up to see a lanky man his age loitering in the doorway, a dark stylish mustache bridging the narrows of his face. “Pardon me, sir,” the man said, with an adolescent swagger. “Is the Secretary here?”

  Jacob swallowed. “No, I’m afraid he isn’t available at the moment,” he replied. “May I be of assistance?”

  The man smiled. “You must be the new fellow. Rappaport, was it?”

  Jacob smiled back, surprised by how pleased he was that the man didn’t flinch at his wounds. It was as though he had found a friend. “Yes, it was. And is.”

  “Pleased to meet you. I’m Little Johnny.”

  Jacob stifled a laugh. Little Johnny was over six feet tall. He had to take off his hat in order to fit through the low door to the room. Once he entered, Jacob could see that his height was matched by his slimness, as though a man of Judah Benjamin’s build had been grasped at both ends and stretched. He had long fingers, deep-set brown eyes, and a chest so narrow that it was almost indented beneath his vest. Jacob imagined him thirty years older, and could picture no one but Abraham Lincoln.

  “So where are the goods?” Little Johnny asked. His pronunciation was almost comically distinct, but his diction was slightly vulgar, like a man with little education and much talent for mimicry. “Show me what you’ve got.”

  “Here,” Jacob said, fanning out the unsealed letters on the desk. “These are the messages for each of the agents on the list I was given, with addresses indicated,” he told him, passing him the envelopes. “We shall have to draw the payments from the safe. The Secretary left me the key.”

  “Bully for us,” Little Johnny said, as though Jacob had just offered him a free tankard of beer. His grin reminded Jacob of the men in the camp when he had first enlisted—of how he and his fellow soldiers would speak to each other when the officers weren’t present, finally free to reveal to one another that they were nothing more than boys. Little Johnny rubbed his hands together. “Let’s get that gold.”

  But Jacob was no longer a boy. “Before we do, I must ask you something,” he said. Little Johnny looked at him with deep suspicion as he turned the list around on the desk. “The Secretary requested that I include a message and payment for this gentleman,” Jacob told him, pointing to the final name on the list. “But I couldn’t seem to find his address.”

  Little Johnny looked at the name, and shrugged. “Can’t say I’ve heard of the fellow,” he said, with casual cheer. “What else have you got on him?”

  “Nothing, I’m afraid,” Jacob said. “Only the name.”

  “Well, a name isn’t worth much, now, is it,” Little Johnny replied. It wasn’t a question. His cheerful tone had dissipated; there was something sinister in his voice.

  “Nothing is worth more than a good name,” Jacob parried, attempting a joke. Little Johnny grimaced at him. Jacob retreated. “Might there be some way for you to find him?” he asked.

  Suddenly Little Johnny flared with temper, slamming his fists onto Jacob’s desk before throwing his arms in the air, his eyes burning with fury. “What am I expected to do, knock on the door of every farmhouse between here and Washington, just to see who will turn me in first? Do you have any idea of just how impossible my work already is?” His face turned purple, making Jacob shrink into his seat as he raged. “I go out before dawn to pay off some drunken boatman to break the godforsaken ice on the godforsaken river for me; I get shot at by Yankee gunboats; I pass myself off as a country doctor and have to look down sick old men’s throats just to get into their houses; I dress up as a French ambassador until someone notices that I don’t speak a word of French; I pose as a preacher and walk around quoting the Gospels until some farmer’s wife hears me quote something wrong and runs after me with a shotgun; I barely make it to my mother’s boarding house alive—and despite all that, despite all that, I have never missed a single delivery, never lost a single word of a message or a single ingot of gold. But that isn’t enough for you, is it? It’s never enough! Now I need to find some bloody Scotsman’s address, somewhere behind enemy lines, simply because you can’t be bothered to dig it up yourself? Am I expected to get myself hanged just because you can’t find something in your goddamned papers? Forgive me, but I thought I was doing this for my country. I didn’t know that I was risking my backside merely for a bunch of sniveling, condescending, conniving little—”

  Jacob cut him off. “Just pay these five agents, then, please,” he told him.

  “How very gracious of you,” Little Johnny replied, his voice a parody of haughtiness. Jacob watched Little Johnny’s face return to its original color, and felt sweat beading on his own temples. The courier was one of those secretly volatile men, Jacob saw—the sort who seem like models of propriety and discretion just up until they burst. William Williams the Third had been like that too. So had Edwin Booth. Was there a way to provoke him again?

  Little Johnny watched with utter disdain as Jacob struggled to his feet. “Please come with me to the Secretary’s office,” Jacob said. “The Secretary gave me the authority to open the safe.”

  The courier sniffed. Provocation was unnecessary, Jacob saw: Little Johnny resumed his tirade with gleeful resentment, loping and lambasting beside him as he limped down the corridor. “He gave you the authority to open the safe,” he sneered. “And all he gave me the authority to do was to risk my goddamned hide, to dress up like a circus clown or a goddamned French mime, to show up half-dead on my mother’s d
oorstep in Washington, to leave a trail of cash like breadcrumbs all the way through Maryland, to run from the Yankees with my tail between my legs every time someone notices that I’m not a goddamned French mime—”

  Jacob entered Benjamin’s office for the fifth time that afternoon. Benjamin wasn’t in. Dusk had already fallen outside; Jacob took a match from his own pocket and lit the room’s lamps in the fading twilight from the window. He made his way to the mantel and tipped back the bust of George Washington. A little brass key was lodged beneath its base. Jacob blushed as he returned the former president to his regal pose, wincing under his honorable eyes while Little Johnny continued to babble. His hands were sweating as he opened the safe. He half expected to find it empty. Instead he was temporarily blinded, his good eye blinking at the tall columns of coins, carefully arranged and stamped with their denominations. He held his breath and began counting, reminding himself of the cause.

  Little Johnny was still rambling. “No, all I have the authority to do is to make sure all of these goons get paid, to measure the currents in the goddamned river myself as though I’m some kind of goddamned ancient mariner, to find every godforsaken barn within ninety miles where someone could be hogtied with no one noticing, to figure out how in hell to hide a hostage in the bottom of a goddamned canoe—”

  A hostage?

  “—and I’m the one who needs to ask you for the key to the safe!”

  Jacob had lost count of the coins. He took several piles of them in various denominations and placed them on Benjamin’s desk before sinking into Benjamin’s chair. As he crouched down beneath Little Johnny’s gaze, he was suddenly aware of the picture he made: he was reduced to a living version of the ancient caricature, a hideous man counting out gold. “These are for the agents, and this is for you,” he said, grimacing as he separated out fifteen dollars from the pile and added it to the columns he had made for the five agents on the list.

  Little Johnny swept his hand across the desk, dumping the coins into his satchel in a huff. “I suppose I’m meant to kneel down before you in endless gratitude,” he sneered.

  The courier was playing a part, too; everyone was. “That won’t be necessary,” Jacob said. “Just sign a receipt for the Secretary, please.”

  Little Johnny snorted, taking a piece of paper from a shelf and helping himself to the pen in the inkwell. Jacob watched as the courier scratched out a few words, printing them in the childlike hand of someone for whom schooling was a very minor part of youth: I got the gold and left. John Surratt.

  Without saying goodbye, he did exactly that. Jacob quickly locked up the safe and put away the key. He had just lowered himself again into the large chair behind Benjamin’s desk when a knock on the open door startled him. It was Benjamin. He began to struggle to his feet, but Benjamin quickly waved at him to sit down.

  “I’m so sorry not to have come by earlier,” Benjamin said, the perpetual smile still on his lips. “I trust you were able to complete your tasks.”

  Jacob felt his scars throbbing. “Yes. I—I hope you will forgive me for taking your seat momentarily. It is difficult for me to remain standing for long.” Benjamin nodded, indifferent. “The courier just departed with the gold a moment ago,” Jacob added. “In fact, you might even still see him yourself if you hurry to the door.”

  Benjamin pursed his lips, rubbing at his beard. “That ought to be unnecessary,” he announced. “Assuming everything went as expected, of course.”

  Jacob breathed as he steadied himself, fighting hard to keep the unease out of his voice. “In fact, there was one difficulty,” he replied.

  “What was that?” Benjamin asked. He seemed genuinely curious, rather than critical—as if he, rather than Jacob, were the young apprentice trying to determine the facts.

  “There was a name on the list that I couldn’t locate,” Jacob said. He leaned over the desk, looking at the names again before placing his finger under the last one. “This gentleman, Mr. Macduff. There was no information about him in any of the files you provided. I assure you that I was quite thorough, and I was still unable to find him.”

  “Hm,” Benjamin said. The half-smile lingered on his lips, making Jacob even more uneasy. “So did you give the funds for Mr. Macduff to the courier?”

  For a moment Jacob considered lying. Perhaps it had been a mistake not to send the money along? But surely there was a way that he could cast his failure as prudence. “No, I did not,” he said. “The courier didn’t know any more about the gentleman, and it seemed unwise to me to disburse further funds without confirmation of an accurate address,” he continued and ingratiated himself. “I had been intending to speak with you about it, but I visited your office several times in the hopes of finding you, and never succeeded. And I did not think it important enough to merit interrupting your work with Mr. Davis, though perhaps I misjudged on that point. I apologize if I was insufficiently vigilant.”

  “Hm,” Benjamin replied, his voice utterly blank.

  It was becoming hard for Jacob to control his unease. He wiped his remaining eye. Benjamin placed his hands on the desk, and leaned forward. Jacob was caught between Benjamin’s elbows, the paper framed between the Secretary’s thick hands.

  “Rappaport, I must say that your difficulty in locating Mr. Macduff does not surprise me,” he said.

  His words terrified Jacob. Jacob breathed in, and for an instant he felt his entire soul being sucked out of his body, drawn into the poisoned air between them. Benjamin added, with a smile, “Because the poor gentleman doesn’t exist.”

  “He—he doesn’t exist?”

  “Not outside of Shakespeare’s Scottish play,” Benjamin said, still grinning. “You might recall that in Shakespeare’s version, the murderer is warned to beware of him.”

  Jacob’s scars tingled along his cheek. Benjamin stood up straight, still looking at Jacob. “Another man might have adjusted the account books to reflect Mr. Macduff’s payment, particularly during my anticipated absence, and helped himself to the gold,” Benjamin said. “Surely for the unscrupulous, that would have been the obvious course.” He paused, and finally leaned down on the desk again. “There are two possible explanations for your failure to do so. Either you are not as bright as I was led to believe, or you are truly devoted to the cause.”

  There were, of course, several more explanations beyond these two, though if Benjamin were aware of them, he chose not to share. Jacob’s head throbbed. “I should hope to claim the latter, Secretary,” he replied.

  Benjamin smiled—the same perpetual smile, the mask. “That remains to be seen,” he said. Jacob swallowed, frightened. He had become Benjamin’s captive. “I would like you to be here every morning at nine o’clock. As you have surely noticed today, our finances would benefit from your organizational skills. Tomorrow you may proceed with sorting through the accounts.”

  “Gladly, sir,” Jacob murmured.

  “Until tomorrow, then,” Benjamin said.

  “Thank you, sir,” Jacob replied, and struggled to his feet. “I wish you a pleasant evening.”

  Benjamin didn’t say goodbye. Instead, he simply nodded and stepped back toward his desk. In awkward silence, Jacob turned and began limping out. Just as he reached the door, he heard Benjamin say to the back of his head, “Rappaport, I am watching you.”

  Jacob looked back, but Benjamin was already seated at his desk in front of a new stack of papers, immersed in his work. Jacob hobbled out the door and into the suffering city, shivering in the cold winter air, looking over his shoulder like a runaway slave.

  PART EIGHT

  THE ESCAPE ARTIST

  1.

  AS WINTER FADED INTO MARCH, JACOB BEGAN TO DISCERN, IN almost imperceptible outline, the workings of the plan.

  Nearly all of the funds were being directed toward Maryland and northern Virginia—most of them toward small plantations and farms, though some went to other establishments too, like a tavern or a boarding house or a doctor’s home. Many of th
ese were so isolated that the closest towns were miles away. At first Jacob could perceive no pattern to the payments, nor to the sorts of people who appeared to be receiving them. The recipients were both men and women, soldiers and civilians, landowners and laborers, planters and tavernkeepers, officers and privates, elderly widows and adolescent boys, with no apparent rhyme or reason to any of it. But over time a thought occurred to him. Among the papers he had been given was a detailed map of Maryland and Virginia. One morning when he knew that Benjamin would be giving a speech to the Congress, he spread the map out on his desk. Afraid to mark it, he began plotting points with scraps of paper, labeling each recipient’s most recent location with little removable flags. A picture unfurled before his remaining eye as he connected the dots: a clear, solid advance marching in perfect formation, the farmhouses and taverns and post offices and boathouses and barns assembling single file in an uninterrupted line from Richmond to Washington—or, perhaps, in the other direction. They were building a road. But was the road being built for invasion, or for escape?

  Then there was the matter of the munitions. Another series of payments—at first it appeared to be the same project, but soon it was clear that none of the names overlapped—went toward the delivery of gunpowder and the like to the Northern Neck, a no-man’s-land in northern Virginia where the only soldiers were supposed to be those on furlough. A very active furlough, it seemed. Then there were the boatmen, the river current and tide measurements, the schedules for the Union gunboat patrols on the Potomac. It was a raid of some sort, clearly. But what kind of raid?