On Secret Service

by John Jakes

  “She’s a popular woman. She has many friends. Senator Wilson still calls, though he tells everyone he’s investigating for some committee. He doesn’t consider us traitors.”

  “You hold me responsible for what’s happened, don’t you?”

  “How could I not? I understand you don’t give the orders. You’re a good soldier. I just wish you weren’t. I wish you were on my side.”

  “I am, more than you know. I care for you, Margaret.”

  “I’m engaged to be married.”

  “To that McKee fellow. It doesn’t change my feelings.”

  A clock ticked in the silence. Margaret sank down on a library stool, looking soft and vulnerable in the lamplight. “God, I don’t know whether we’re living in a comic opera or a bad dream.”

  “A war, Margaret. Like none ever before experienced in this country. Cousins and brothers and friends are fighting and killing each other.”

  “When do you suppose it will end?”

  “Springtime, if General McClellan takes the field when the roads are dry. The President wants him to move and capture Richmond.”

  She looked at him intently. “I want to know who murdered my father.”

  “I can’t help you. I’ve said that.”

  “So we’re still enemies.”

  “I hope not.”

  She was silent. The wall between them was as high as ever. Discouraged, he wished her merry Christmas and left.

  Old Capitol Prison at First and East Capitol Streets consisted of several buildings, some straggling a whole block north to A Street. Board fences built since the start of the war created a compound where prisoners could take the air in good weather. But there wasn’t any; rain fell constantly through New Year’s into January. McClellan remained inactive, recovering from an attack of typhoid.

  On Monday, January 20, Pinkerton sent Lon to the Old Capitol with a sealed envelope for the warden, a scurvy little man named William Wood. Lon didn’t expect to share the boss’s every thought and decision, but it struck him that Pinkerton had grown more secretive since Stanton was appointed secretary of war the previous week.

  Rain dripped from Lon’s hat and poncho as he tied his horse outside the prison, three stories of brick elegance that had become a temple of filth and misery. Members of the Congress and Senate had once passed through the main door, to do the nation’s business. Now the second-floor legislative halls were chopped into five large rooms holding Army officers awaiting court-martial, assorted Virginians and Marylanders arrested for aiding the enemy, and in Room 16, the largest, men and women whose political views were deemed dangerous. Elsewhere in the prison, black contrabands were kept as charity cases.

  Pinkerton’s men joked about the Old Capitol as “a rattrap with many holes leading in but no hole leading out.” Lon loathed the dirt, the scabrous whitewashed walls, the stench of the overflowing open-air latrines. Two enclosed sinks for officials were available with appropriate bribes to the jailers. The warden planted paid informers among the prisoners, adding another layer of deceit.

  Lon showed a pass to the soldier standing guard outside. Two noncoms emerged carrying a litter. A soiled sheet draped a man’s body. Lon asked the sergeant, “Who’s that?”

  “Captain Elwood. He finally got hold of rope. Hanged himself last night.” Rain plastered the sheet to the dead man’s nose, chin, and gaping mouth. Lon shuddered, remembering the night under Rose Greenhow’s steps.

  The duty sergeant in the anteroom said Warden Wood was in the basement, interrogating a prisoner. Stories of Wood’s methods had reached the Pinkerton office. Lon started for the stairs. “You can’t go down there.” Lon paid no attention.

  The badly lit lower hall smelled of urine. Something scampered across Lon’s toe as he approached the only door with light showing beneath it. He heard a wheedling voice he recognized as Wood’s. He knocked. “Message for the warden from Major Allen.”

  The door was opened by a prosperous-looking man in a knee-length overcoat of gray tweed with a bold red handkerchief spilling from the breast pocket. The man wore smart leather gloves and a gray felt bowler. Lon didn’t know him.

  “I’ll take the message.”

  “I’m to hand it to the warden personally.”

  “Let him in, let him in, we’re almost done with this fish.” Wood stepped away from an Army officer slumped in a chair with his wrists tied behind him. The warden was a small, ugly man, with uneven teeth and sprouts of hair in his ears. His waistcoat, shirtsleeves, and trousers were stained and speckled by food and drink. The warden always reminded Lon of a Dickens villain.

  Lon gave him the letter. The bleary officer raised his head. “For Christ’s sake, you haven’t fed me or let me sleep for two days. I’m sitting in my own shit.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m very sorry,” Wood said, bobbing his head and dry-washing his hands. “I’m just a humble fellow like yourself, doing as I’m told. I want to be your friend. I want to help you. All you have to do is sign the paper.”

  “Told you, I won’t sign a goddam blank confession. I’m not guilty of anything except disliking the President and saying so publicly.”

  “Then I’m sorry, you’ll just have to stay awake and go hungry a while more. If you change your mind, I’ll be the first to help. Serve you breakfast myself, yes, sir.”

  The well-dressed man seemed greatly amused. Wood patted the prisoner’s head, waved the others into the hall. When he shut the door, he discarded his geniality like a mask. “He’ll sign. We’ll break the son of a bitch before dark.”

  He ripped the envelope with a dirty fingernail; read the message. “Quite a piece of news you brought. Do you know my colleague from the War Department, Colonel Lafayette Baker?”

  “Lon Price. I’ve certainly heard of you, Colonel.” This was the mysterious free agent who had circled round and round the cabinet departments, ingratiating himself to secure a job. The boss said Baker had taken a dangerous trip to Richmond on his own, to impress Stanton.

  They shook hands. Baker’s grip was powerful. “You’re with Major Allen, Mr. Price?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you’re really working for McClellan.”

  “I’m working for the Union.”

  “Secretary Stanton has little faith in your general. If he doesn’t engage the enemy soon, he’ll be back running some hick railroad. I mention it because I’ve heard you’re a top operative. Don’t back the wrong horse.”

  Lon wanted to plant a fist in the middle of the smug face. “Any reply to the message, Warden?”

  “Say that we’ll do our utmost to accommodate the guests in a style that befits them. Did Allen share the news with you?”

  “No.”

  Wood bared his stained teeth, a troll’s grin. “He’s persuaded the higher-ups to close Fort Greenhow. All the lovely inmates will reside here starting tomorrow.”

  25

  February–March 1862

  Pinkerton had two dozen operatives working in Washington. During the winter several slipped in and out of Richmond. They bought drinks and wheedled information out of army malcontents, observed and made drawings of fortifications, gleaned what they could from random gossip. One agent, Elvin Stein, managed to stand close to Jeff Davis at his inauguration in the Virginia capital.

  Tim Webster made the dangerous trip several times, with Hattie Lawton posing as Mrs. Webster. Lon envied the men. Their work behind enemy lines fueled resentment of his monotonous job. What was the name of the regiment? Did you count the huts? What were their rations? Describe their morale. Deserters and contrabands continued to exaggerate to please their new friends. When Lon turned in troop strength estimates, Pinkerton increased them:

  “Always add ten percent to make up for regiments lost in the counting. If the general’s to succeed, the Washington cabal must give him adequate manpower. Unless the enemy numbers are significant, they won’t.” The phrase Washington cabal referred to Secretary Stanton and the congressional radicals
, “secret enemies” who were “trying to prejudice the President’s mind against his commander.”

  They seemed to be doing a good job. In the autumn, when Little Mac was drilling his men seven or eight hours a day to create a trained fighting force from a disparate array of three-year volunteers and old Army men, Lincoln had given him his head. The general was not to be hurried. But in January, perhaps swayed by the radicals, Lincoln grew tired of waiting for McClellan’s frequently promised “one great blow that will fatally crush the rebellion.” The President’s evening visits to headquarters for story-swapping stopped. Through Pinkerton, Lon heard of special, secret war orders from Lincoln that laid down irrevocable dates for the army to take the field against Joe Johnston’s Confederates dug in at Manassas and Centreville.

  Pinkerton said McClellan was “enraged and humiliated” by Lincoln’s amateurish interference in military affairs. At the same time, Little Mac was promoting his plan for taking Richmond. It called for moving the Army by water down to Chesapeake Bay and then to Urbanna on the Rappahannock. From there he would strike out overland for the last fifty miles. Lincoln hesitated, withholding approval.

  The radicals resurrected Ball’s Bluff, where one of the Senate’s own, Baker of Oregon, had died in the fighting. Brigadier General Stone was dragged before the Joint Committee on Conduct of the War and accused of “consorting with the enemy.” Charges were based on testimony of a deserter named Jacob Shorb. He swore to the truth of earlier, unsubstantiated stories of secret negotiations between Stone and Confederate officers. Pinkerton called Shorb’s statement unreliable, but he passed the report to McClellan, who sent it to Stanton. General Stone denied the charges and defended his honor and loyalty. He was arrested and packed off to prison in New York harbor, his career ruined. The point wasn’t lost on the boss:

  “General Stone is a conservative Democrat, tolerant of the South, like a certain high-ranking officer of our acquaintance. The Republicans choke on that. They’re hell-bent on weeding out men who don’t embrace their views one hundred percent. Being an emancipationist is fine, laudable. I’m an emancipationist. But the way the emancipationists in Congress promote their agenda is vicious and unprincipled. It isn’t idealism, it’s politics.”

  Reports of new victories came from the West. Fort Henry on the Tennessee River fell, and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland. Nashville was occupied. Why, then, was it still “all quiet on the Potomac”? The word cowardice was whispered in connection with McClellan.

  Lon brought reports into the city every few days. He was caught there when a snowstorm struck. He was crossing the white wasteland of Treasury Park, bent against the wind, when a scarecrow figure loomed too abruptly for him to step out of the way. They collided. A blue-caped soldier following the tall man drew his side arm. Lon exclaimed, “Mr. President, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.”

  A muffler covered half of Lincoln’s sallow face. Sunken eyes seemed to shine feverishly under his stovepipe hat. He signaled the soldier, who put his pistol away. Lincoln bent to peer at Lon. “We’ve met before, sir.”

  “Harrisburg, Mr. President. My name is Price. I’m with Major E. J. Allen. I’d like to say I was mightily sorry to hear about your loss.”

  “Willie was a fine boy. Spoiled, I guess, but he’d have grown out of it. Doctors called it bilious fever. It’s always bilious fever if they’re ignorant of the true cause.”

  “A terrible loss for you and your wife.”

  “We all bear burdens. The nation bears the heaviest one. Many families will lose beloved sons. We’ll come through it. I pray the same for you in your important work. My regards to your chief.”

  Bony fingers, cold but strong, clasped Lon’s hand. Then the President and his bodyguard proceeded down the path, quickly lost in the snowstorm.

  The President looked sad, and whipped. The war was at a standstill. His wife was suspected of disloyalty because of her Kentucky relatives—“Two-thirds slavery, the other third secesh,” they said of Mary Lincoln. Lincoln’s general-in-chief alternately snubbed him, rebelled at his interference, or wooed him for whatever military purpose he had in mind. As Lon tramped on toward the Avenue, he reflected that the gaunt and gloomy man from Illinois bore the greatest burdens of anyone.

  Sledge rode out to Fairfax Station one evening in late February. The weather had turned warm, melting the snow. Sledge and Lon walked among soldiers’ log huts near the Orange & Alexandria railway, then up a low hill with a black shell crater gaping in its southern slope. Lon twisted a telescope into focus. He hoped to see Joe Johnston’s campfires. The terrain was too hilly. All he saw, low on the horizon, was the bulbous silhouette of one of the new Federal observation balloons. A telegraph wire ran from the basket to the ground. Against a background of deep blue twilight and emerging stars, the balloon was descending slowly as the aeronaut valved off its lighter-than-air gas. Unseen below it, a ground crew held fast to heavy guy ropes to protect the balloon from chance wind gusts.

  Sledge lit his corncob pipe. “Lewis and Scully headed for Richmond yesterday. Tim Webster’s bad sick in some hotel down there. Crippled with arthritis. One too many trips across the Potomac in icy weather, I guess. Hattie’s tending him. Pryce and John will take over, maybe try to bring him out.”

  “Lucky bastards.” Lon snapped the sections of telescope together.

  “You think so? Pryce says Richmond’s crawling with detectives working for the Confederate provost marshal, Winder. He plays a rough game. Rougher than ours.”

  “I’d still like to be in it.”

  Sledge sucked on his pipe and blew smoke into the night air. He’d largely given up trying to persuade Lon that they weren’t knights jousting with chivalrous opponents. He settled for an occasional prediction that Lon would get his eyes opened someday and, being the person he was, Lon wouldn’t like what he saw.

  When Lon returned to Washington with another valise full of reports, steamers, tugboats, and barges were crowded together in the Potomac basin: the flotilla McClellan was assembling for the voyage to Urbanna. Residents of the city still feared invasion. General Tom Jackson, called Stonewall after a heroic stand at Bull Run, was abroad in the Shenandoah valley with a force estimated at twenty to thirty thousand. Jackson was the capital’s nightmare. If McClellan moved most of the army toward Richmond, the city would be vulnerable to a strike by Jackson’s fast-marching “foot cavalry.”

  Pinkerton said that when the army did move, he would follow, doing intelligence work from the field. “I know you’ve chafed at all those hours of asking questions, Alonzo. I expect to take Mr. Bangs as my field assistant, and twelve other men besides. You will be one of them. See to your kit, make sure you have a weapon, and take any precautions that might be necessary in case you should be killed or captured. A will is a good idea.”

  “Thank you, sir, but there’s no one to inherit anything.” Admitting that brought frustrating thoughts of Margaret.

  He and Sledge discussed Pinkerton’s remark about capture. Lon thought of something that might be useful, so he took Sledge to the Mathew Brady studio on the Avenue. Brady, a feisty little Irishman with a bushy beard, was a popular Washington photographer. He kept a storeroom of martial properties for soldiers who wanted portraits to send home.

  “We work for Major E. J. Allen,” Lon began.

  “I’ve heard the name.” Brady’s expression suggested he’d heard more than that.

  “We want to be able to prove we’re rebs if it’s necessary.”

  “Wait here.”

  Brady returned with a large flag, four feet square; the Confederacy’s new battle flag, a red field and a blue St. Andrew’s cross holding thirteen white stars, eleven for the seceding states, two more for Missouri and Kentucky. The flag was pristine, the colors vivid.

  “Where’d you come by that?” Sledge asked. “Looks brand-new.”

  “A gent from the vestry of one of our fine Episcopal churches came in for his portrait last week. He brought the flag as a backdrop
. Said he purchased it from a shop here in town.” Brady’s smile was sardonic. “He didn’t identify the shop, and I won’t identify him. You’re liable to arrest him.”

  “The flag’s perfect,” Lon said. “If we’re captured, we’re loyal sons of the South, with a picture to prove it.”

  Brady posed them in head clamps, Lon sitting, Sledge standing, against the flag and a potted palm. He dodged under the black head cloth, made the long exposure, and told Lon to come back tomorrow. Lon picked up two small metal cases, each holding a pale brown image of two heroic Confederates with jutting jaws and warlike scowls.

  The next day Lon took his picture to Old Capitol, to show Margaret. On the second floor, Room 16 was home to some two dozen men and women of varying age and appearance. It was a filthy, squalid place, with bunks ranged around the walls, and no privacy. Most of the bunks overflowed with small trunks, hatboxes, shoes, books, and other personal items.

  “Why do they use the beds for storage?” Lon asked the guard.

  “Ain’t no good for sleeping. We got more bedbugs than McClellan’s got soldiers. At night they put pallets on the floor. Some pull those tables together and spread blankets on ’em.” Lon spied Margaret deep in conversation with someone partially hidden by another prisoner. He started through the tables of letter writers and penny poker players, only to stop when the prisoner moved and he recognized Margaret’s fiancé, McKee. Stung with jealousy, he about-faced and left.

  Through the winter, Lon had prepared for the possibility of capture in another way. He crammed his head with everything he could read and memorize about codes and ciphers. In enemy hands, a spy might need a safe means of sending a message to his commander.

  Back in Cincinnati, the boss, General McClellan, and a telegrapher had developed a word-transposition cipher they used frequently. It depended on code sheets that could incriminate anyone caught with them. Lon wanted something workable but less dangerous. He found it in a translation of the otherwise turgid Treatise on Secret Writing by the French nobleman Blaise de Vigenère.