On Secret Service

by John Jakes

  “When I deny the little imp anything at all, she retaliates for hours. I’m afraid she has the true rebel spirit.”

  Margaret smiled. “I’ve closed the house in Baltimore. Simms, our colored man, will continue to live there as caretaker. Father’s estate will pay him. I don’t intend to go back to Baltimore until the war’s over in ninety days or so.”

  “That may be optimistic. Captain Jordan—do you remember him?” Margaret said she did. “He’s back and forth to Richmond, and he says Beauregard will soon come up from Charleston to take command of the Alexandria line. Did you hear that Lincoln offered command of the Army to Bob Lee and Lee turned him down? He’s joining Virginia.”

  “Will the armies fight there?”

  “Undoubtedly. It will be crucial for Beauregard to have information about enemy strength. Let me show you something.”

  Skirts rustling, Rose took Margaret into a small library where she displayed a sizable stack of newspapers. “New York Herald. Washington Evening Star. Here’s the filthy rag the local Republicans publish. The editors have one thing in common. Great generosity with reports of the Yankee regiments, where they are, where they’re going, in fulsome detail. Until our Northern friends realize how stupid that is, we are in their debt. Captain Jordan takes care of forwarding papers to Richmond. He’s resigning his commission, by the way.”

  “Isn’t he a West Point man?”

  “What of it? Some of the best graduates of that place have already come over. Lee is the most brilliant of them. If only Jeff Davis will give him his head! Davis graduated from the Academy and served in Mexico, so he mistakenly fancies himself a supreme strategist.”

  Rose shut the library door and they returned to the parlor. Margaret realized the house was deserted, the Negro servants gone, for a more subtle reason than a desire for privacy.

  “If you join us, you’ll learn of some other work the captain’s doing,” Rose said.

  “Then there’s a place for me?”

  “Yes, in a small, select circle of refined ladies and gentlemen who will take on the clandestine task of supplying military information to our generals in Virginia. The South needs far more than newspaper subscriptions.” Margaret’s heart began to beat hard in her breast.

  “The work will call for keen wits, and the courage to face down some of these Yankee ruffians in an emergency. We do have an advantage. Most of them are ignorant peasants. Will you take a day or two to think about it?”

  “I don’t need a day, Rose. I came to you hoping for something like this. What you’ve told me exceeds my hopes.”

  Rose swept to her feet. “Be very sure of your decision.”

  “I am.”

  “You are pledging yourself to loyalty and secrecy, no matter what hazards may arise. You must obey instructions without question or hesitation.”

  “I will.”

  Rose embraced her warmly. “Then you’ll be a great asset. Attractive young women won’t be suspected by these Yankee clods. Do you have servants here in Washington?”

  “Only a marvelous cook who’s a perfectly awful and lazy housekeeper.”

  “Discharge her. Colored people can’t be trusted. Not in these times. The paramount thing to remember is this: We’re at war. We must win the war even if we sink to behavior none of us would have contemplated before.”

  Two nights later, Margaret returned to Rose’s house and repeated her declaration of intent to Captain Thomas Jordan. At the end she asked, “Did it cause you pain to abandon your commission?”

  Jordan snorted and tugged his beard. “General Scott’s staff was a fine source of information for a while, but my sentiments were known, and they began to restrict what I could see. Otherwise I have no regrets. The volunteers backslap their commanders, address them by first names—won’t obey an order if they don’t happen to like it. They elect all officers but the colonel according to popularity. That isn’t an Army—it’s a rabble. I’m glad to be free. Furthermore, within our new organization, Captain Jordan no longer exists. I’m Rayford. Assumed names are a necessary protection.”

  Jordan told her he was establishing safe houses in southern Maryland and recruiting watermen to ferry couriers across the Potomac to Virginia. Rose’s men and women would be called on to carry coded messages out of the city to the couriers waiting at the safe houses.

  “Do you know anything about codes and ciphers, Margaret?”

  “Just what little I came across in Edgar Poe’s stories.”

  “Let me show you one cipher we’ll use. It’s called the pigpen cipher, or sometimes the Rosicrucian cipher, because the sect used it for secret documents. It’s very old, but once you understand it, you’ll find that you can easily encrypt a message.”

  He spread writing paper on the lamplit table. “It’s a symbol cipher, not a substitution code that uses patterns of words to stand for other words that are the nulls and clears.”

  “I beg your pardon. Nulls and…?”

  “Clears. Nulls are words in an encrypted message that have no meaning. Only the clears reveal the content. Here’s the pigpen.” He drew two horizontal lines, crossed them with two verticals, creating an open-sided grid of nine boxes. Starting with ABC in the upper left box, he filled each with three letters. The lower right box held only Y and Z.

  “Because the grid’s open on all sides, no two boxes are alike. For a coded message, you draw the shape of the box required for the letter you want, then put in one dot for the second letter in that box, two if you want the third letter, or if it’s the first letter, none. You repeat the process for the rest of the letters in the message. I’ll write the word cat.”

  Jordan laid his pencil beside the paper. “You can see it isn’t sophisticated. Hardly worthy of an Army in the field. But we aren’t yet an Army, so we make do. We will be an army soon. This house will help bring that to pass. Therefore let me say welcome.”

  He offered his hand. Margaret took it, shivering with uncontrollable excitement.

  Next day she was browsing among Shillington’s books when a voice startled her. “Margaret?”

  “Good heavens. Hanna.” Her friend was unflatteringly dressed in trousers and a mannish frock coat. Her blonde hair was barbarously short. A clerk stared; two patrons whispered.

  Margaret wrapped Hanna in a hug. “How are you? It’s been ages since we’ve seen each other.”

  Hanna touched Margaret’s black silk sleeve. “Has there been a death in the family?” Margaret told her about Calhoun Miller. Hanna squeezed Margaret’s hand.

  “How dreadful. I remember meeting your father. He was such a smart, polite gentleman.”

  “He was callously murdered by a pair of Yankee detectives, though I don’t know which one fired the shot. I’ll be a long while getting over it. How is the major?”

  “Much better than he’s been in a while. He’s working for Secretary Cameron in the War Department.” Margaret thought of her new allegiance to Rose and “Mr. Rayford.” All other relationships had to be scrutinized in light of it.

  “He’s happy to be in the center of the war,” Hanna went on, “but of course he’s dissatisfied with the pittance they pay him. He’ll never rest till he makes a fortune, though I don’t see how he will in Washington. Is Rose still conducting her salon?”

  “Occasionally. Not as often as before.”

  “Well, given her politics, I don’t care to go back. May we ride some afternoon?”

  Margaret couldn’t reply with an enthusiastic yes, as she wanted. “Oh, I’m afraid not. I’m dreadfully busy with other things. The estate…” It trailed off, lame and cold.

  Hanna peered at her with something close to suspicion. “I see. Well, good-bye then. Until we meet next time.”

  Hanna left the store. Margaret slid a book back on the shelf, hating what she’d done. The guilt passed quickly. In wartime, didn’t friends sometimes find themselves on different sides? Hanna was now the enemy.

  14

  June 1861

  H
alf a mile distant, a B&O engine whistled. The Ohio Valley’s link with western Virginia was open again. Two weeks ago, three Federal columns had entered and secured Grafton, the junction of the line’s branches to Wheeling and Ohio. Five days later, in the rain, General Morris had surprised a small Confederate force at Philippi and sent the rebs running, some with pants still around their ankles. The substantially pro-Union counties of western Virginia cheered “the Philippi Races.” The man who had sent the three columns across the Ohio River was newly commissioned Brigadier General George McClellan.

  In the Kanawha Rest, a public house in Parkersburg, where the B&O approached the river, Lon and his partner sat by a grimy window, keeping watch on a warehouse across the street. They’d watched it for three days, daylight and dusk, with no result.

  Lon scratched a fingernail back and forth on the plank table. The sleeves of his gray work shirt were rolled up, the brim of his old straw hat pulled down. No one paid attention, which was the point of looking dull and ordinary.

  Sledge puffed a corncob pipe and idly turned pages of a local paper. “Appears they’re about to form a pro-Union government up in Wheeling. Don’t want to be part of a slave state anymore.”

  “That right. Well.” With no warning, a memory clicked in. “Oh, hell’s fire.” Lon whacked his whiskey glass on the table and startled the tavern keeper. “We left Cincinnati so fast, I forgot to pay my rent.”

  Sledge’s owlish gaze reflected his three whiskeys to Lon’s one. “Not like you, partner.”

  “My landlady’s one of those Cincinnati Germans. Expects everything on time, if not sooner. I suppose she’ll heave my belongings into the street.”

  “Threaten her. She’ll heave ’em right back.”

  “That’s your answer to everything. A fist.”

  “Works. Not so loud, hey?” Sledge eyed three farmers at the bar. “You’re goddam touchy, you know that?”

  “Why not? Our colleagues are in Kentucky, Tennessee, gathering useful information, and we’re in the backwoods, watching a damned warehouse full of old flintlock muskets left over from Bunker Hill. Good for nothing.”

  “With rifling and new percussion caps they’re good for plenty. That’s why they’ve been busted out of other warehouses around here.”

  “Not by rebels. By common thieves.”

  “The rifles and ammunition are Army property. McClellan wants the ring broken up. You’re in the war, partner.”

  “I don’t think so,” Lon said with a sourness not typical of him. While the war went forward, his life went the other way.

  Just as the boss had predicted, G. B. McClellan had been recalled to the colors. In fact, three states, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, had tried to recruit him. He chose to command the Army’s new Department of the Ohio. He immediately telegraphed Pinkerton, asking him to organize a bureau to gather military information. He called it a secret service department. He would bear all the costs. The Army had no such operation, and no budget for one. McClellan had been impressed by similar bureaus when he was overseas as an observer in the Crimean War.

  Although Pinkerton and Brigadier General McClellan were a mile apart on slavery—the general was a Democrat, tolerant of it—the boss felt it his duty to serve. He was ready. In April he’d offered the resources of the agency in a letter to the President. Invited to Washington, he sat through a long meeting, received promises, went home to Chicago, and heard nothing more. He made no secret of his anger.

  He had scaled back Chicago operations and moved his most capable men and women to McClellan’s headquarters city, Cincinnati. In a dusty downtown office building, with no name on the outer door, “Major E. J. Allen” presided over his new bureau. Allen was the boss’s nom de guerre, a phrase Pinkerton explained when Lon asked.

  Singly and in pairs, the other operatives had been sent to rebel territory. Pinkerton himself undertook a risky journey all the way to Memphis, presenting himself as an expatriate from Georgia, the role he’d played in Baltimore. Lon and Sledge were dispatched to chase petty thieves. Lon hated being so far from the real war, and Washington, where he’d met Margaret Miller. He thought of her a lot.

  The summer twilight, dusty orange, faded from the street. In the gloaming June bugs buzzed and lightning bugs winked. The tavern keeper struck a match for a ceiling lamp. As the farmers drank more, they told scurrilous jokes about Jeff Davis. Then one of the farmers brought out a mouth organ and played “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.” Another whooped and clumsily danced around the floor. The tavern keeper said, “Don’t break any chairs or you pay for ’em.”

  Lon’s ears caught a sound in the unpaved street. He wiped the greasy windowpane with his sleeve. Four roughly dressed men rested their lathered horses outside the warehouse. Lon grabbed Sledge’s arm without looking. Whiskey splashed his hand.

  “Jesus, Lon, you spilled half my—”

  “Look there. The man in the middle—the one with the huge head. I saw him in West Union six days ago when we were riding the line.”

  “Recognize the others?”

  “No. But I remember him.” So might anyone; he was a giant, a cruel burden on his swaybacked horse. His head was shaved, emphasizing his gnarled ears, swollen cranium, bulging forehead, eyes buried in fat and almost invisible. Like the other three men, he wore holstered pistols in plain sight.

  “Where are they going? Is there a back door to the warehouse?”

  Sledge said, “Yep. Saw it when I looked around earlier.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Lon jumped up, overturning his chair, interrupting a rendition of “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” He yanked his hat on. “Let’s go.”

  The horsemen disappeared single file at the right side of the warehouse. Its wide street door, locked and chained, remained undisturbed. Lon ran across to the building’s left side, stole along the wall in purple shadows. At the corner he pulled his Colt .31 from under his shirt. The B&O whistled again. The long wail made him think of death. He began to sweat. He heard voices.

  “Where’s the fucking wagon?”

  “Next street, I’ll bring it when it’s time.”

  “Saw that chain, we ain’t got till next year.”

  “Shut up, Grier, I’m goin’ fast as I can.”

  Lon heard the rasp of something working on metal.

  “The fuck I’ll shut up, this is my minstrel show, don’t you forget it.”

  My minstrel show, Grier. Was Grier the leader?

  A clank, a rattle, then a man whooped softly as the chain broke. They wrenched and tugged at the door, probably the end without the padlock. Grier gasped, “I can squeeze through but go ahead and bust the lock. We need the door wide open to haul the goods out.”

  “It’s got too dark, Grier. Can’t see.”

  “Use the fucking lantern. Let the idjit hold it.”

  As best Lon could figure it, two men had gone inside the warehouse leaving two behind. One was attacking the lock hasp. What did they call the other? Idiot? A fine bunch.

  With whispers and hand signals, Lon and Sledge set themselves. Lon counted three and jumped out from the corner, far enough to leave room for Sledge. The man chiseling the lock spied them first. The man with the bulbous head was staring at the stars. The lantern in his hand looked toy-sized.

  “Grier,” the first man yelled, hurling his chisel. It caught Sledge’s forehead, stunning him. The giant turned his slitted eyes on the detectives and threw the lantern. Lon dodged. The lantern broke in a pile of kindling and firewood. The kindling ignited. Lon aimed at the other man.

  “Put them up high, partner. High as you can.”

  The area behind the warehouse grew bright as the kindling blazed. The man at the lock obeyed Lon, but the giant reached out, grabbed the man’s arm, whipped him around, and threw him into Sledge, who was bleeding from a three-inch gash to the forehead. Sledge caromed into Lon. Lon pushed him off, but by then the giant had him by the throat.

  Lon went to his knees. The giant choked him, s
mirking like a child. In the warehouse, men shouted questions. Lon’s eyes blurred. The giant hands crushed his windpipe and starved him for air. Grier and the fourth man were kicking and pushing the loose end of the door to get out. Lon had a vague thought that he’d die in Parkersburg, ignominiously, with never a chance to do something fine for his country.

  A pistol cracked. The giant gasped, rose on his toes, and convulsively squeezed harder. Everything darkened. Sledge put three more shots into the giant—back, legs, head. The swollen skull exploded like a rotten pumpkin dropped off a roof. Blood and gray matter drenched Lon as he ripped free of the constricting fingers. One man had escaped the building. Though the firelight was bright, raising a clamor at the public house, Lon was too dizzy to see the man’s face clearly. But he saw a target clearly enough to shoot it. One bullet; the man went down on his face.

  “Oh, Godamighty—Grier? Grier?” That was the man chiseling the lock. He fled, vanishing between some shanties on the next street. The man left inside retreated and moments later kicked down a side door. Lon ran around the building but the man was gone into the dark.

  Men appeared, with lanterns. The tavern keeper shouted, “Fetch water buckets or it’ll burn the whole neighborhood.”

  Lon swallowed sour bile that burned his throat. He nudged Grier with his boot, rolled him over. Lon’s shot had taken the gang’s leader in the chest. Grier’s mouth was open, his eyes too. His expression was curiously innocent, bewildered.

  Lon wiped his forehead. “Anyone know this man?”

  One of the farmers bent over the corpse. “Name’s Decimas Grier. Hails from over Clarksburg way. Known to steal anything laying loose. The other, that thing with half the head gone, I don’t know him at all—oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” The farmer reeled off to throw up.

  More townsfolk arrived, including a couple of youngsters excited about the mayhem and dead bodies. Buckets of water emptied on the fire reduced it to embers. Sledge worked the blood off his face with his shirttail.