On Secret Service

by John Jakes

  Pinkerton lost the battle. The department continued to send a portion of the payroll, never the whole amount. And it was always late. How could one man deal with so many responsibilities without buckling?

  Pinkerton’s problems raised other questions for Lon. What if the boss fell along with his patron? Could Lon switch his loyalty and work for Lafayette Baker? Could his need to do anything he could to hasten a victory overcome his loathing for the man who had imprisoned Margaret Miller?

  The image of Baker’s face dissolved to another, grimly erotic. Margaret lay naked in the marriage bed. Lon’s spirits slumped. General McClellan wasn’t the only one suffering defeat this summer.

  Lincoln didn’t rid himself of McClellan, but instead called him back to rebuild the Army of the Potomac for the defense of Washington. The President did it despite another discourteous letter the general sent from Harrison’s Landing. The grapevine said Little Mac not only lectured Lincoln on strategy, but also on politics, especially the slavery issue. He said it should play no part in military decisions.

  Washington ordered McClellan to abandon the Peninsula and move the Army to Aqua Landing and Alexandria. He protested but he obeyed. To command the new field Army, the Army of Virginia, Lincoln summoned General John Pope, the hero of Island No. 10 in the Western theater. The capital received Pope with the same optimistic fanfare McClellan had enjoyed when he came to town.

  Hanna impatiently awaited her chance to go back to the battlefield. Margaret was suddenly, mysteriously gone from the Old Capitol, leaving a letter that Hanna read with amazement.

  By the time you peruse this, dear friend, I will be a married woman. Donal and I were wed in the prison and immediately after, I was set free. Such is the magic of diplomacy. I hope the despicable Baker will foam and growl like the mad dog he is.

  Donal wishes to live in New York, but first we will make an overland journey to Richmond, for a reunion with my brother. Donal will obtain diplomatic papers to pass us through both Yankee and Confederate lines without interference. There is some risk, of course, as battle lines seem to shift suddenly. He is willing to bear the risk for my sake, and also because he can make important business contacts in Richmond. The government is eager to ship as much cotton abroad as it can, to pay for goods it can no longer buy from the North. I trust we shall come out of the whole adventure unharmed.

  The letter closed with a wish for Hanna’s happiness and safety, and a promise of mended friendship when the clouds rise and the skies clear again.

  Nowhere in the letter did Margaret say that as a newly married woman, she was happy.

  The retreat from the Peninsula began in August. After days of waiting, Lon and Sledge prepared for their mission. George Bangs gave each of them a closely written list of passwords and countersigns and instructed them on contacting the one agent of the Richmond spy ring whose name they were permitted to know. Siegfried Retz, a recent immigrant and opponent of slavery, ran a butcher shop.

  “You won’t get to him immediately,” Bangs said. “If events proceed typically, you’ll be locked up until you’re deemed ready to be put in a work brigade. At worst, you’ll be handed a uniform and sent to the front lines, but the later it is in the year, the less likely that becomes. Should it happen, you’ll simply desert again.”

  “Oh, sure, easy,” Sledge said, rolling his eyes.

  They chose new names. Lon was Private Albion Rogers, Sledge was Private Sam Snowdon. They outfitted themselves with blue kersey trousers, belts with brass buckles, and dark blue sack coats on which they pinned red cloth badges, diamond-shaped. Phil Kearny had introduced corps badges during the campaign and the idea had caught on.

  On the night they left, Pinkerton sought them out and shook hands with both of them. He had no reproaches for Lon. It gratified him.

  They made their way toward Richmond through the shell-blasted countryside, keeping away from main roads. A cool wave of northern air brought the first whisper of autumn. They saw only three Confederate patrols the first day and easily avoided them. By late on the second day they came within hearing of the city’s church bells. Then, on a dirt track snaking through the forest, bad luck showed up in the form of three armed Confederates who suddenly rose in front of them, having marched up the inside of a shell crater. Irregulars, Lon judged; two of them were no more than fourteen. He and Sledge raised their hands without being told.

  The bearded leader had the look of a backwoods cretin. Half his front teeth were missing. He wore an old felt hat pierced by bullet holes and a comic-opera uniform: emerald green coat, baggy mauve trousers. In his red sash he carried a bowie knife and an oversized .45-caliber Allen pepperbox. He mocked them with his salute.

  “Colonel Jeffa Mars, Henrico County Defenders. Where abouts you boys headed?”

  Sledge groveled appropriately by kneading his forage cap in his hands. “To Richmond, we hope. Had a bellyful of fighting for the wrong side.”

  Colonel Mars looked them up and down. “What’s your names?”

  “Private Sam Snowdon, Heintzelman’s Third Corps, First Division.” Sledge touched the red diamond badge.

  “Private Albion Rogers, same,” Lon said. “Let me reach under my shirt, I’ll show you something to prove we mean what we say.”

  “Go ahead, but slow.”

  Lon unbuttoned his sack coat and produced the Brady photograph. “Here we are, both of us. Had this taken in Washington City. I’d never have signed up except for my girl back home in Albany, New York. She wouldn’t go to the hayloft with me unless I said I’d serve. I did, and she did.”

  Colonel Mars busily scratched his genitals. “Well, sir, that’s a hell of a price to pay for a little piece of cunny. Old cock’s got a way of knocking good sense out of a man, don’t he? Say hello to Captain Seamus Tipper and Captain Bellephon Forney, two of the bravest lads ever fought for Southern rights.” Captains Tipper and Forney were malnourished adolescents equipped with rusty trade muskets that could have been thirty years old.

  “We’re gettin’ a lot of you bluecoats lately,” Mars said. “If you two boys want to serve the side of the righteous, if you truly hate niggers and all who bow down to kiss their asses, then I say welcome. If on the other hand you’re lying about it, if you’re yella cowards or spies or anything like that, we got hangmen who can always handle one more.”

  The self-appointed colonel might be a backwoods ignoramus, but he had a certain deadly shrewdness. The cool air of early evening was suddenly chilling. The late-summer sun cast long shadows. Through the treetops Lon saw a vee of water-birds winging south. He wished they might fly away as easily.

  Colonel Mars vigorously massaged his crotch again. “’Fore we march off to town, let’s see what you got in your pockets. Turn ’em out.”

  Nothing to do but obey; like Sledge, Lon was unarmed. He’d stored his pocket Colt and other personal effects in a small box that Zach had promised to carry back to Washington. Sledge showed the only item he was carrying besides tobacco, his gold-plated toothpick. Colonel Mars’s eyes popped.

  “Say, let’s see that thing.” Visibly upset, Sledge laid the toothpick in Mars’s filthy palm. Mars held it up so it caught the sun. He raised it to his lips, licked it lovingly. “Gold, is it? Mighty good.” Captains Tipper and Forney sniggered and elbowed each other. “Think I’ll just hang onto this.” Mars slipped it in his coat pocket.

  “My pa gave me that pick,” Sledge said.

  Jovially Colonel Mars replied, “So what’s that got to do with me?”

  “It’s mine. Give it back or I’ll take it back.”

  “Hey, here’s a brave one,” Colonel Mars said to his companions. The boy captains leveled their muskets. Lon flashed warning looks, but Sledge ignored them or didn’t see. “Take it away from me if you can, Yank.”

  Sledge had a moment to reconsider but he didn’t. He stepped forward, raising his big fists. Colonel Mars pulled the pepperbox from his red sash and shot him in the forehead.

  Sledge rolled on
the ground and lay still. His bowels let go. Lon trembled with shock, struck dumb by the sudden, senseless killing. Colonel Mars squinted at him.

  “How about you? Want to die for a toothpick?”

  Church bells rang in Richmond, the notes sweetly floating over the summer countryside. A hare peeked from a wild raspberry bush and retreated. Philo Greenglass lay dead with a hole in his skull and a mask of blood around his eyes. Lon remembered the mission, numbly shook his head. Colonel Mars smiled, showing his rotted teeth.

  “All right, then. March.”

  36

  July–August 1862

  The final days of the Peninsula campaign took Stuart’s men behind enemy lines again. On June 25 the general led two thousand riders out of Richmond to rendezvous with Jackson’s infantry marching swiftly and secretly from the Valley. Stuart’s force included elements of Fitz Lee’s First Virginia, Rooney Lee’s Ninth, Wickham’s Fourth, the Jeff Davis and Wade Hampton Legions, and Pelham’s artillery. It was among Hampton’s South Carolinians that Fred Dasher spied Charlie Main. They hailed one another, brought their horses together.

  “My God, Charlie, you look grand. Not a day older, and brown as mahogany.”

  Charles Main, a lean and ruggedly handsome young man, touched his cheek. “Still carrying this leather face from two years ago, when I quit the Second Cav down in Texas.”

  “You think we can win this war?”

  “Hell, Carrots, I don’t know. Sometimes I think we’re fighting for all the wrong reasons. Let’s meet and talk soon as McClellan’s whipped. Adios.”

  Stuart guided Jackson’s foot cavalry to McClellan’s unprotected right flank. Jackson was a pale, cadaverous man, not yet forty. Instead of a regulation uniform he wore a soiled, worn-out uniform and, pulled down over one eye, a shabby cap from Virginia Military Institute, where he’d taught. Fred first saw him sitting on a rock consulting a map. He could scarcely believe this mundane person was the famous Stonewall.

  Fighting soon engulfed them. With shells coming in hot and fast, shattering trees, blowing up the earth, lifting men and horses in the air and dismembering them as they died, Fred rode in a charge that routed seven hundred Union lancers whose quaint weapons proved useless. His detachment demonstrated in front of McClellan’s White House base. The show of force was so effective, the Yanks torched the plantation house and its outbuildings and sped their infantry to safety by boat. To ruin captured Yankee locomotives, Pelham’s artillery blew holes in the boilers from a range of fifty yards.

  The troopers foraged in the ashes and blackened beams of the lovely old house. They found crates of unspoiled delicacies, and whiskey. Fred drank his share, temporarily soothing a bad case of war nerves. The land between the Chickahominy and the James was like nothing he’d ever seen, a horrific wasteland of burned forest, fallen trees, fields littered with maggoty corpses, streams fouled with rotting mules and horses. Smelling the air, many a soldier couldn’t keep food down.

  After seven days of fighting, McClellan fell back, Richmond rejoiced, and the cavalry rested.

  Jeb Stuart reported to Lee and returned with a major general’s commission. He recommended many in his command for promotions, including Fred. Fred wasn’t cheered. He felt the war, or his part of it, was on a downward path.

  Exhausted in soul and body, he was unwilling to forgo the dangerous medicine he took for relief. He feared he was becoming a sot. He dreamed awful dreams, brightly colored, full of noise. In them, the little girl at Garlick’s Landing died, then died again, endlessly.

  He arranged a meeting with Charlie at cavalry headquarters, a farm near Atlee’s Station north of Richmond. They relaxed and visited in the warm shade of a huge oak. On the farmhouse lawn, General Stuart romped with his children while his handsome wife, Flora, rested in a rope swing hung from a hickory limb. A summer breeze carried the chuff-chuff of a military train on the Virginia Central line.

  Fred and Charlie laughed and reminisced about the Military Academy. Legs stretched out, a little cigar clenched in his teeth, Charlie observed that the cavalry had become the eyes and ears of the Army, so he and Fred were in effect spies in the saddle. Then he confessed that he was, as he put it, entangled with a woman. She lived in Spotsylvania County.

  “Tell you the truth, Fred, it’s because of her that I’m beginning to hate the damn war. Fellow might be killed any day of the week, bang, no warning, and I don’t think it’s right to fall in love with that hanging over you. Trouble is, I did. Don’t know where it will lead.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Augusta Barclay. Widow woman. God, she’s handsome, and sweet. How about you? Anyone special?”

  Fred shook his head. Much of his life had been devoted to the old Army, and his few brief love affairs hardly deserved the name. Usually he relied on red-light houses. Of late he’d felt a great need for a woman. He envied Charlie.

  Along the sunlit railway, a train of flatcars passed with soldiers hollooing and waving hats. Fred decided they were new recruits who hadn’t seen the elephant. The whistle sounded, long and mournful. Fred and Charlie brushed themselves off and prepared to say good-bye.

  They embraced like brothers. Charlie said, “We’ll talk again when, as, and if we’re all done with this fuss.” He set his battered slouch hat on his head. “You sure you’re all right, Carrots? You look pale as the inside of a flour sack.”

  Fred saw Garlick’s Landing. He saw the girl die. He hadn’t spoken of it. He itched for a shot of whiskey.

  “I’m fine. You take care. Regards to your lady.”

  “Thank you. Godspeed, Major, sir.” Fred had revealed his coming promotion. Smiling, he returned Charlie’s mock salute. He watched his handsome brown-faced friend go jauntily in search of his horse. He stood in the hot shade, silent and sad.

  He spent the rest of July and the early part of August at a training camp at Hanover Court House, drilling new men. He was secretly pleased to hear that John Mosby, foolishly endangering himself on a scouting mission, had been captured by Yankee cavalry. In August he heard that Mosby was free in a prisoner exchange.

  McClellan was moving his Peninsula Army up the Potomac as possible reinforcement for John Pope’s new Army of Virginia. Pope advanced to an exposed position somewhere between the Rapidan and Rappahannock rivers. Lee decided on a preemptive strategy, a move against Pope before the two armies united.

  After observing Pope’s Army from a hilltop called Clark’s Mountain, Lee sent Stuart and a small escort to probe enemy positions. Fred was part of the group, along with Mosby. They made camp at a farm outside Verdiersville just before midnight on August 17. The men stretched out to sleep on the fragrant lawn while Stuart settled on the farmhouse porch.

  In the silence of the starlit night, Fred woke to the sound of horses approaching on a nearby road. He kicked free of his blanket. On the porch, Mosby roused Stuart. “Yankee cavalry, sir. Be here any minute.”

  They ran for their horses. Stuart vaulted onto Skylark so vigorously his plumed hat fell off. Stuart and Fred and the others galloped away from the farm in a hail of gunfire and narrowly escaped the pursuers. Stuart was incensed over the loss of his hat.

  A day later, Pope inexplicably began to retreat north to the Rappahannock. Lee sent Stuart’s men to spy on the enemy Army, harass its lines of communication, and impede the withdrawal. This time Stuart took fifteen hundred riders and two fieldpieces. Inordinately jolly after escaping capture, he shouted as they rode out, “Boys, we’re going after my hat!”

  Their first objective in the enemy’s rear was a railroad bridge over Cedar Run at Catlett’s Station, on the Orange and Alexandria line. To reach it they circled wide to Warrenton, northwest of Catlett’s. At a tavern where they paused to rest at dusk, a lieutenant brought a lanky white-haired Negro to Stuart. “Pickets caught him outside of town, General.”

  “Didn’t take a whole lot of catching,” the black man said. “My name is Simon Biggs. I’m a teamster, and a free man. Blasted Yankees impr
essed me like Englishmen used to shanghai sailors. Been driving their blasted freight wagons six months now. I got too much ‘nigger, do this, nigger do that,’ so I ran off.” Sitting at a plank table near Stuart, a tin cup of stale beer in hand, Fred reflected that neither side in this war had a monopoly on meanness.

  “And where exactly did you come from, Mr. Biggs?” Stuart asked.

  Simon Biggs understood that he commanded the situation, no matter how many pistols and sabers surrounded him. He stretched the moment, fastidiously straightening the frayed collar of his old gray work shirt. He squinted at Stuart and smiled in a foxy way.

  “Why, General, I come from the headquarters camp of another general, John Pope.”

  In the stillness Fred heard a fly buzzing. Mosby, ever eager to draw attention to himself, jumped off his bench and strode to Stuart’s table, the better to listen. Watching, Fred drank from the tin cup, looking like he’d swallowed poison.

  “Is the camp near?” Stuart’s voice held a suppressed tension.

  “Close by Catlett’s Station.”

  “Is Pope himself there?”

  “Not sure. He was a while ago. All his baggage is piled up, though. I can show you.”

  Stuart shook hands. “Thank you, Mr. Biggs, delighted to have your cooperation.” To the assembled officers Stuart said, “In the saddle in two minutes.”