On Secret Service

by John Jakes

  What he found was the Vigenère tableau, a classic grid of letters of the alphabet that anyone could remember, and use, without special skills, apparatus, code books, and the like. The cipher substituted letters in a chosen keyword for letters of the message, and based on these, the message was easily encoded and decoded using the tableau.

  First, the sender wrote his keyword above the words to be transmitted, as many times as necessary. For practice, Lon wrote

  P I N K E R T O N

  m e s s e n g e r

  with Pinkerton the keyword. Going down the tableau’s vertical P column to the intersection of the horizontal M line gave him b as the first letter of the encoded word. For the e in messenger, he went down the I column, to the intersection with the horizontal E line, which gave him m, and so on. The entire word messenger encoded was

  b m f c i e z s e

  The decoder needed to know the sender’s keyword, but that was all. Lon was delighted by this newest piece of spy equipment. He made sure both the boss and George Bangs knew his keyword, preacher.

  On March 7, Friday, Lon tumbled out of bed to the sound of drumming and bugling in the streets. All day long, avenues and bridges were filled with regiments of blue-coated soldiers marching into Virginia, where smoke smudged the sky in the direction of the Confederate works at Centreville and Manassas.

  The boss ordered Lon to follow the troops and report after the fighting. But there wasn’t any fighting. On the Long Bridge, an officer galloping to the city shouted to anyone who would listen, “Joe Johnston’s gone. The whole reb Army slipped away south.”

  In Centreville, Lon beheld astonishing sights. The black iron corpse of a locomotive sat on the tracks. Charred skeletons of freight cars had collapsed behind it. Johnston’s men had burned their huts, their stores, everything but their fortifications. Long gun barrels painted black jutted from the embrasures. Gleeful soldiers were already using knives to cut slivers and chips from the wooden guns.

  Lon fell into conversation with a stout British journalist named Russell who summed it up scornfully: “Little Napoleon’s been humbugged by the rebels and their Quaker cannon. What’s his next mistake?”

  The following day, Washington was excited and alarmed to hear that a Confederate ironclad, Virginia, had sunk two frigates in Hampton Roads. She was the old Union frigate Merrimac, captured and converted. A day later she fought a standoff battle with a queer new vessel called the Monitor. Lon saw an engraving of the Union ship. She resembled a shallow tin can on a wood slat.

  With an enemy ironclad in the waters of Chesapeake Bay, and Joe Johnston’s Army reported to be digging in below the Rappahannock, the Urbanna plan was dead. Pinkerton assembled his men chosen for the field. One was his son William, recently arrived from college for courier duty.

  “Be ready at any hour,” Pinkerton said. “We’ll steam down the river to Fort Monroe with the Army.”

  “Does that mean fighting on the Peninsula?” one man asked.

  “I believe that to be the general’s intention.”

  McClellan no longer had the rank of general-in-chief. Lincoln had relieved him of all duty except command of the Army of the Potomac. The President said it was a boon; McClellan could concentrate on the campaign. The boss saw it differently:

  “Another stab in the back by the Washington cabal.”

  Lon was bothered by the boss’s harping on the cabal idea. Did a secret clique exist, or was it imaginary, a product of Pinkerton’s unwavering devotion to their vain and prideful general? Lon knew of warring factions inside the government, but he thought they should work together, not savage each other like bloodied gamecocks.

  As the meeting broke up, Pinkerton called him aside. “That contraband of yours—what was his name?”

  “Zachariah Chisolm.”

  “Will he come with us?”

  “If you want him, I’m sure he’ll quit his job in a minute.”

  “See to it. We may have use for a man of color.”

  Lon closed out his account with his landlady. She promised to have a room when he returned. “You be careful with yourself, Alonzo. You’re a fine young lad. Come back safely.”

  “No doubt of it,” he said. He didn’t underestimate the hazards of war, but this was what he’d lived and hoped for through the long, dreary winter. A renewed sense of purpose overcame his anxieties.

  The operatives were paid six dollars a day in addition to an expense allowance. Lon had saved money regularly in a coffee can under his bed. He used the fund to equip himself for the campaign. The Pinkertons weren’t supplied by Army quartermasters, something of a blessing since clothing and food sold to the government by private contractors was often shoddy or tainted.

  Preparing for this moment, Lon had talked to some veterans of the regular Army, to learn what was useful in the field and what wasn’t. Into a new knapsack he stuffed an extra pair of socks, an extra pair of drawers, an extra shirt, boxes of ammunition for his Colt, an ivory-handled jackknife, tobacco, cigarette papers, matches in a waterproof tube, his Bible, a razor and shaving soap, and a tin of tooth powder applied with any green twig that was handy. For a canteen he substituted a heavy tin cup that could double as a coffee boiler. Mess gear for the operatives would be carried in a camp chest in a supply wagon.

  The knapsack weighed about twenty pounds. On top of it went a blanket roll and half of a shelter tent folded inside his rubber poncho. The poncho could serve as the tent floor.

  He bought a new coat of heavy denim, knee-length, without markings. On the advice of an infantry sergeant he abandoned boots for stout walking shoes—brogues with thick soles and flat heels. Corduroy pants and an unmarked forage cap completed the uniform. Throw the cap away, he could pass for a farmer.

  On St. Patrick’s Day, a Monday, the Potomac was black with two or three hundred hulls of the transport flotilla. Steamers hooted and the tugs threw towlines on the barges. The first companies of Heintzelman’s Third Corps marched to the wharves at Alexandria to board Ocean Queen and Constitution.

  It was two o’clock when Lon called at the Old Capitol. He found Margaret in Room 16, sitting at a deal table with a male inmate. Cards and a cribbage board suggested a game of muggins in progress.

  The sleeve of Margaret’s yellow silk dress had been patched with blue flannel. Dirt marked her wrinkled skirt, as it marked the clothes of the young man with her. He was sallow, with big ears and a phlegmatic expression. His pale blue waistcoat bore a sizable wine stain. Both of them had left their noon meal uneaten; it was a pasty white mess of boiled beans, rice, and lumps of gray meat. Only reckless fools ate the meat served in the prison.

  When Margaret saw Lon, she folded her cards and jumped up with a smile that was warm and genuine, or so he imagined. Her dark hair fell loosely to the middle of her back. He wondered how she kept it shiny and clean.

  “Mason, this is an acquaintance, Mr. Price. This is Mason Highbourne. Mason was attending divinity school when he was picked up. It appears the First Amendment no longer applies if you write or speak about the Lincoln government unfavorably.”

  Mason gave him a slender, faintly damp hand. “I regret your imprisonment if you only spoke your mind, Mr. Highbourne. But I don’t write War Department policy. It’s a lovely day, Margaret. Are you allowed outside?”

  “Yes, they don’t deny us that. Excuse us, Mason?”

  The young man muttered something, sat down, and began to deal a hand of patience.

  Quite a few prisoners were taking the air in the compound under a brilliant sky filled with fat cumulus clouds. Sounds came over the walls from nearby streets: hoofbeats of cavalry, distant band music, the rattle of caissons and limbers bound for the wharves. The sun was baking the mud, as it would bake and harden the lanes and roads in Virginia. The earth smelled of springtime.

  Margaret took his arm. Lon felt the roundness of her breast against his sleeve. The physical reaction was immediate. She said, “You’re dressed differently.”

  “I came
to say good-bye. I’m leaving the city. It may be the first and last campaign of the war.”

  “I wouldn’t count on the South being beaten so easily.” The breeze tossed her dark hair around her shoulders. He saw her rippling image reflected in a puddle.

  “Before I go, I have to ask a question. You may think it impertinent, but to me it couldn’t be more important.” She waited, her head tilted toward him. “How strong is your attachment to McKee?”

  A shoeless contraband walked by, mud squeezing up between his brown toes. Not old, as Lon first thought, but a young man, stooped and prematurely gray from slavery and perhaps the prospect of a life in the North that didn’t want him.

  Margaret touched the little golden palmetto tree hanging on her breast. “I promised to marry him. My father taught me that you don’t break promises.”

  “Well, I respect that. I wish things could have worked out differently.”

  Her hand moved to his arm, closing gently. “There are moments when I feel the same.”

  “In spite of the work I do?”

  “I’ve tried hard to hate you. I can’t.”

  He didn’t know which was stronger, his regret or his longing. “I hold you in the highest esteem, Margaret. The first day I saw you, I fell in love with—”

  “Don’t.” Cool fingers against his lips stopped the rest. “You only rouse feelings that I can’t permit.”

  “You mean in other circumstances…?” Overcome, he didn’t dare finish. Tears brimmed in her dark eyes. She dashed them away.

  “Yes.”

  Heedless of other prisoners in the yard, she flung her arms around his neck. “Yes, yes! Now go. And for God’s sake take care of yourself.”

  He felt her warm tears. She pressed a kiss on his cheek before she broke the embrace and ran away toward the prison entrance. In a window on the second floor, he saw someone dart back; someone who’d been watching. He thought it was the divinity student.

  At the doorway Margaret raised a hand. A little wave, then she plunged into shadow, gone.

  Lon left the prison by a guarded gate in the plank wall of the compound. Five minutes later, Mason Highbourne tapped at the warden’s door on the first floor and slipped inside.

  26

  March 1862

  The following day Margaret had a less welcome visitor.

  She had been upstairs, visiting with Rose in the room she shared with her daughter. The furnishings consisted of a narrow bed, a broken chair, a pallet for little Rose, a piece of looking glass hung from a nail, and Rose’s sewing machine. A sprig of jasmine drooped in a fruit jar on the table. The room had no windows, but the door could be closed for privacy. Sympathizers who visited Old Capitol brought stories of Rose’s fame in Richmond. The Wild Rose was a Confederate heroine.

  Rose asked if Margaret had been crying.

  “Yes. I’m ashamed to admit it, but this place wears me down.” She could hardly say otherwise; her cheeks and nose were red. She’d wept silently and fitfully all night, churning with fear that Lon Price would be killed, longing for intimate physical contact with him, guilty over her father’s unpunished death, confused about her future with Donal.

  They discussed Hanna Siegel. She hadn’t visited either of them in prison. Margaret regretted it, but took it as another consequence of the war.

  Back in Room 16, she fell into conversation with Dr. Whyville. He had been arrested and jailed two days after her arrest. She mused on the ironies. “We’re both here because of an innocent bookmark.”

  “Not so innocent, my dear. Each little flower represented ten artillery pieces of a particular kind. The red flowers signified six-pound guns, yellow the old twelve-pound howitzers, white the twelve-pound 1857 Napoleons. Rose shouldn’t have written the key in a book.” Rose’s arrogant confidence, her carelessness in keeping too many secret names and records where they could be discovered, was a subject much discussed by those thrown in jail because of it. Rose had been a dedicated spy, but not a prudent one.

  “I believe that gentleman is looking for you,” the doctor said, gathering up his playing cards. The court cards were famous Indian chiefs.

  The man walked up to them. He lifted his gray bowler respectfully. “Hello, Miss Miller. Remember me? Colonel Baker?”

  Margaret’s temples started to hurt. A middle-aged woman sitting in her bunk vomited into a pail. The stench carried; Baker fanned himself with his hat.

  “I was advised that you were here, but duties at the War Department have kept me from calling until now. Would it be more pleasant to stroll in the compound?”

  “No. And you needn’t waste your time. I’ve said all I’m going to say.”

  “Which so far amounts to precisely nothing. I’ve discussed your case, your silence, with Warden Wood. However, I’m not here to pry, only to inquire about your comfort.”

  “Really? Isn’t that a bit ridiculous? Look around.” The old woman retching in the bucket had half the inmates retreating from her, and the other half looking on with disgust.

  “You needn’t endure this, you know. You could have a room to yourself. Better food. It can be arranged.”

  “By paying these venal jailers? No thank you.”

  “Someone else could pay them. A benefactor. A special friend.” Baker’s eye slid along the curve of her bosom. “You’re an extremely handsome woman.”

  She remembered the pursuit up and down Sixteenth Avenue in the hot sun; she’d seen the same glint in his eye then. Her smile was full of sweet venom as she said, “Mr. Baker, whoever you are, whatever you do, I want nothing from you. I don’t traffic with Yankee trash.”

  Baker’s cheeks bloomed with deep, rougelike color. Holding his bowler, his knuckles were white.

  “The opposite of friendship is enmity, Miss Miller. Not a wise choice in these times.”

  “Get out of my sight.”

  “Certainly, after I remind you that enemies of the government can be kept in prison for years, without cause, without recourse to the legal system, or any hope of pardon. I’m afraid you have just guaranteed that fate for yourself, Miss Miller. Good afternoon.”

  Part Three

  RETRIBUTION

  27

  April 1862

  “Godamighty, what’s ’at?”

  “Professor Lowe’s balloon boat,” Lon said. “Never been anything like it. I told you about it.”

  Sledge’s lapse was forgivable. There was too much to absorb in the display of martial might encircling them like a great sunlit cyclorama. Below the bluff in the York River, a steam tug towed a Navy coal barge fitted with a flat deck, deckhouses forward and balloon inflation equipment aft. Secured above the deck by mooring lines, one of Lowe’s India silk balloons floated. Fifty feet high, it was handsomely painted with stars and a fierce Federal eagle.

  That was only part of the spectacle of the Army of the Potomac debarking at Fort Monroe, at the tip of the peninsula where the York and James rivers joined. A garrison of ten thousand under elderly General Wool had held the fort since the outbreak of hostilities. Side-wheelers and barges unloaded men, materiel, wagons, ambulances, and artillery, including giant seacoast mortars that were moved inches at a time by teams of a hundred horses. Off the barges onto the piers came huge reels of telegraph wire to link McClellan with his field generals, and his headquarters with Washington. What a great, modern world they lived in!

  “Is Lowe really a professor someplace?” Sledge asked.

  “Don’t think so. Mostly he gives public lectures. He’s a scientist, and scientists are always called professor.”

  Behind the two men stretched a white ocean of tents, their own submerged in it somewhere. The air resounded with axles grinding, whips cracking, noncoms shouting cadence, pigs squealing and cattle lowing in hastily built slaughter pens. In the past fifteen days 125,000 men had moved down the Potomac—companies with their regiments, regiments with their divisions, divisions with their brigades, brigades with their corps. The boss said Little Mac was on his w
ay to Fort Monroe by steamer right now. Three miles south across the water, the rebel base at Norfolk hid in haze; the enemy presence seemed unreal, no threat at all.

  “Godamighty,” Sledge said again. “Lon, did you ever see such an army? Bet we bust into Richmond before the first of May. Then we can all go home.”

  It was a bright, hopeful moment, this hot April Fools’ morning. Lon remembered it because they were so full of anticipation and confidence, and because, after that, everything went wrong.

  McClellan counted on a force of more than 150,000 for the campaign. Lincoln and the War Department seemed intent on denying it to him. On March 31, Blenker’s ten-thousand-man division was ordered to Harpers Ferry to reinforce Frémont’s new command. General Wool’s garrison had to remain at Fort Monroe to guard against raids by Virginia. McClellan counted on a trump card, McDowell’s I Corps, waiting outside Washington for orders to march. April 3, the day after the general’s arrival on the Peninsula, Washington signaled that I Corps would be held back to defend the city.

  “Before God, it’s unconscionable,” Pinkerton said to his men. “I have never seen the general so angry and bitter. If there was ever a doubt of the intent of the Washington cabal, it’s gone.”

  Still, numbers favored the Federals; confidence remained high. The Army advanced on the old colonial village of Yorktown twelve miles up the Peninsula, where Cornwallis had surrendered to end the Revolution. Heintzelman’s III Corps took the main road; Keyes’s IV Corps marched in the same direction closer to the James. The soldiers sang a new “Battle Hymn,” words set to the old tune of “John Brown’s Body.” The day was gloriously sunny.

  The second day, the skies opened. Torrential rain turned the roads to glue. McClellan’s staff had been told the roads were passable in all weather. Old General Wool had issued faulty maps showing the Warwick River running parallel to the James. Actually it cut across the Peninsula, flowing toward Yorktown. The rebels were dug in behind it. McClellan’s great juggernaut ground to a stop. Weather kept Professor Lowe’s observation balloons grounded.