On Secret Service

by John Jakes

  “I am here to see Colonel Lafayette Baker.”

  The guard at the entrance stuck out his chin. “Provost Marshal Baker don’t see anyone without an appointment.”

  “He’ll see me. Give him my name. Alonzo Price.”

  “I’m not authorized to—”

  “Give him my name,” Lon said, a baleful glint in his eye. Only two or three years separated them, but the guard was a soft-cheeked innocent. Lon had the look of a man who’d walked through fire. The guard left him on a bench, ignored by civilians and high-ranking officers who bustled in and out with great self-importance. The guard returned at double time.

  “Take the stairs to the basement. Room at the end of the hall.” As Lon went down the steps, he heard a stentorian voice he took to be Stanton’s, rejecting someone’s plea at his morning audience.

  The gaslit lower hall was gloomy, without windows, and smelled of the eternal Washington dews and damps. Baker waited in the doorway, like a figure in a picture frame. He shook Lon’s hand in a comradely way.

  “We pulled you out. By heaven, I’m pleased.”

  “I’m grateful to you, Colonel Baker.”

  “I arranged for your removal from Virginia because I respect your abilities, Mr. Price. Come in, close the door. We have a great deal to talk about.”

  He seemed less arrogant than Lon remembered. His wintry gray eyes were less hostile, or perhaps Lon only hoped so. A fancy gold frame on his desk held a miniature oil portrait of a woman. Baker noticed Lon’s curiosity. “My wife.” Lon didn’t know Baker had a wife.

  They talked for an hour. Lon related all that had happened to him since Allan Pinkerton had sent him to Richmond with Sledge.

  “You understand that Pinkerton’s completely out of the picture,” Baker said.

  “So I was told. Do you know the man I described, Cicero Miller? Slightly crippled, left leg shorter than the right?”

  “I know him by reputation. He’s high up in their Signal Service. Considered to be one of their smartest agents. Some say he’s not quite right in the head. Based on what you told me about Castle Thunder, you must have similar suspicions.”

  Lon nodded. “How did you learn that I was imprisoned?”

  “Miss Van Lew isn’t one of my operatives, but occasionally I have access to her information, through channels we won’t discuss. Years ago, she sent a free colored girl to Philadelphia to be educated at her expense. The girl remained in the North, but when the war started, Miss Van Lew asked her to return to Richmond. I don’t know how it was pulled off, but this young woman secured a position in the residence of none other than Jeff Davis. Waiting on his table. Serving his food.”

  “Remarkable,” Lon said, though knowing Miss Van Lew, he wasn’t altogether surprised.

  “One evening when Cicero Miller dined with Davis, they discussed your case. The colored girl was in and out of the dining room many times. Miss Van Lew reported what the girl overheard.”

  Baker held out a cigar case, silver, obviously expensive. Lon declined. “I can’t offer you a drink, I’m a temperance man,” Baker said rather piously. “Permit me to ask about your prospects and intentions.”

  “I want to see the secesh whipped, Colonel. I want to see the worst of them dead.”

  “I applaud your determination. We have not exactly enjoyed a cordial relationship in the past, but it isn’t necessary to be friendly in order to work together. If, as you declare, your goal is to punish the rebs, I can guarantee you many excellent opportunities. You can utilize your experience by working for me, or you can throw it away and join the Army. You don’t impress me as a man who enjoys regimentation.”

  “No.”

  “Then what do you say?”

  Lon suspected it was a pact with the devil. He didn’t care.

  “Yes, sir, I’ll sign on.”

  “Splendid.” Baker came around the desk and gave him a brotherly slap on the shoulder. “Mr. Peter Watson, the assistant secretary, will handle the papers and discuss salary and allowance. We’re paid well in this department. I suppose you should submit a formal resignation to Mr. Pinkerton in Chicago.”

  “I will. He owes me back pay.”

  “I doubt you’ll get it. Salaries for his people were badly in arrears when he left. We run a much more efficient operation.” Baker held out his hand. “Welcome to the National Detective Police, sir. We’ll see Jeff Davis roasting in hell before we’re done.”

  49

  June–July 1863

  In the sticky heat of summer, Washington seemed engaged in a wild pursuit of pleasure. Business was fine at the hotels, the theaters, the National Race Course where hordes of soldiers and civilians watched trotters compete for handsome purses. Army officers displayed themselves with their bawds; past indiscretions were evident in the numbers of women lugging infants around town—“Peninsula bastards,” they were called. Certain well-to-do former residents of the District were quietly returning from Richmond, disenchanted with the Confederacy and fearful of its coming defeat.

  The war continued to rumble below the horizon. Since mid-June the War Department had received reports of Lee’s Army on the move from Fredericksburg to Culpeper, possibly presaging a second invasion of the North. On June 9, ten thousand of Stuart’s cavalry fought a ten-hour battle with an equal number of Union horse at Brandy Station. For once the Federal cavalry acquitted itself well.

  In the West, Ulysses Grant tightened a noose around Vicksburg on the Mississippi. Despite gossip about alleged drunkenness, Grant was gaining favor with the administration. He seemed just about the only winning general on the Union side.

  The enemies Lon dealt with were closer at hand.

  In his garret, he lit a candle and propped the small window open with a stick. No air was stirring. He swatted a mosquito buzzing at his ear and opened the dossier of the latest suspect.

  Mr. Chauncey Hull, a Yale graduate, taught young ladies at a local academy. He also wrote literate and forceful letters to newspapers. Mr. Hull’s letters accused the government of suppressing dissent and illegally infringing the rights of citizens by means of the Enrollment and Conscription Act, passed and signed in March. Though not yet in operation, the new draft had already incited riots and disturbances in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Mr. Hull called the draft an evil law created by despots. His seditious views brought him to Baker’s attention. Lon would take Mr. Hull into custody tomorrow morning, accompanied by another agent.

  They met outside Hull’s apartment house. Eugene Sandstrom was new to Baker’s organization. Eugene was thin, with a bland, pleasant face and a ready smile. He’d been training for the local police force when Baker recruited him. Eugene reminded Lon of himself in the early months in the war: pumped full of worthless idealism.

  Lon and Eugene were two of some forty to fifty men in Baker’s private police department. No one knew the exact number except Baker himself, and presumably Mr. Stanton. Lon found it amusing that the gnomelike secretary with his fishbowl spectacles and asthmatic voice had become the most feared man in Washington. He saw something of Cicero Miller in Stanton. A zealot who expected absolute obedience, Stanton ordered the arrest and detention of anyone with the slightest whiff of disloyalty on him, or her. Journalists, clerics, proponents of a negotiated peace, disaffected Army officers—Baker caught them all in his net.

  “Third floor back,” Lon said as they stepped into the dark lower hall. He led the way up creaky stairs past closed doors that breathed out odors of stale cooking. A grime-encrusted skylight over the stairwell dimmed the sunshine to a twilight haze. Lon’s plaid suit was uncomfortably hot. Sweat soaked his collar.

  “What’s this fellow done?” Eugene said as they climbed.

  “Inflammatory letters to the papers. Men shouldn’t obey the draft, England should recognize the Confederacy, that sort of rot.”

  “So you can’t express an opinion anymore?”

  “Not in this town.” Lon slipped the Colt .31 from his jacket. Zach had retu
rned it to Mrs. Phelan for safekeeping, as he’d promised. Zach was working in Willard’s dining room again, not happily.

  On the third floor, a door next to the stairs opened. A mousy woman stepped out. Lon said, “Go back inside and stay there.” The frightened creature saw his gun and nearly fell down in her haste to obey.

  At the door of the back flat, Lon glanced inquiringly at Eugene, who had a four-shot Sharps pocket pistol in hand. Eugene replied with a nervous nod. Lon knocked.

  Seconds went by. He heard someone breathing on the other side of the door. He knocked again, loudly.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Police.”

  Then a woman’s voice. “Who is it, Chauncey?”

  “I don’t know, love. They say they’re police. I’m sure it’s a mistake.” A key rattled; the door swung in.

  “Your name is Chauncey Hull?”

  “That’s correct, sir.” Hull was fifty or so, gone to fat. He had a round, rosy face and muttonchop whiskers. He brought Micawber to mind. “Do you have identification?” Lon showed his tin badge, a star within a circle, with the words NATIONAL DETECTIVE POLICE stamped in a bar running across the middle. Less aggressively, Hull said, “Am I under arrest?”

  “That’s the size of it. Get your coat.”

  “What’s the charge?”

  “You’ll be told when someone wants to tell you.”

  “Show me your warrant.”

  “We don’t need one.”

  “Habeas corpus—”

  “Doesn’t exist. Eugene, go with him so he doesn’t pull anything.” Eugene slid past his partner, diverting Lon’s attention a moment. Hull bolted between them into the hall. The woman screamed, “Oh, don’t.”

  Lon pivoted, caught Hull’s collar, pulled him back. He pounded the gun butt against Hull’s right ear. Hull collapsed, breaking his fall by grabbing the stair post. Lon hauled him up, jabbed the gun barrel in his cheek.

  “More?” Lon shook the trembling teacher. “You want some more?”

  “N-no, I’ll go peaceably. Let me stand up. Tell Hortense I’ll be all right.” Eugene walked to the woman hysterically weeping in the apartment.

  Hull stumbled several times on the way out. He was cowed. “Are you taking me to Old Capitol?”

  “Carroll annex. They’ve reserved a cozy apartment for you in solitary.” Eugene regarded Lon with dismay. Lon stared him down until he looked away. The boy had a lot to learn about waging war.

  That same week, Corporal Fred Dasher of the 43rd Partisan Ranger Battalion rode into Richmond driving a wagonload of prisoners. The Yanks had been captured by Mosby’s men the week before, up in Loudoun County. Two other mounted partisans with rifles rode guarding the wagon’s flanks.

  Escorting prisoners was the lowest duty a man could be given. Fred had done it a dozen times over the past months. He was resigned. He couldn’t expect much better from a commander who had made his feelings plain when Fred reported. Fred remembered the iciness of Mosby’s eyes that day. Curiously, he also remembered the finely bound book on Mosby’s field desk. Plutarch’s Lives.

  “We have a mutual dislike of one another, Mr. Dasher. But we have a mutual duty, so we’ll forgo personal animosity. Stay sober, obey orders, all will be well. Step over the line in any respect and no excuses will serve. You’ll be dealt with summarily.”

  Fred needed no elaboration. At the headquarters camp in Fauquier, a Yankee deserter serving with Mosby had forced himself on the adolescent daughter of a householder with whom the soldier was billeted. Mosby passed sentence personally. A sergeant marched the offender away at pistol point. The man was never seen again.

  John Mosby’s rangers were a raffish lot of Union deserters, Confederate veterans recovered from wounds, disaffected Marylanders who swam the Potomac to locate the guerilla captain at his headquarters in Fauquier County. Mosby called his men “conglomerates.” Fred associated with them only when necessary. They didn’t know how to drill or put up a tent like proper soldiers. When they weren’t raiding, they slept in quarters provided by the populace and had their meals cooked and served to them. Most had enlisted for plunder. Recently some of them had split $30,000 after selling Yankee goods in Charlottesville. Mosby admitted that greed motivated most of his men. He allowed them to do what they liked between raids so long as no crimes were committed against civilians.

  The conglomerates were fine marksmen; they practiced endlessly. As a unit, they had stuck a lot of burrs under enemy saddles. They harried the Orange and Alexandria railroad, derailing locomotives, burning bridges, tearing up crossties and setting them afire with turpentine. The conflagrations melted iron rails nicely. The exploits of Mosby’s partisans had spread his name across the Confederacy and earned him promotion to captain, then major.

  Fred looked slightly more presentable than most in the battalion. He’d foraged a decent light gray sack coat and sewn on his two stripes when Mosby awarded them as a sop to his former rank. He wore spurs on his knee boots, and a brace of Union Army Colt .44s taken off a dead Yankee during a raid.

  He drove the wagon across a guarded bridge to Belle Isle, the small island in the James used intermittently as a prison since the start of the war. At the moment Belle Isle held five or six thousand men, in conical Sibley tents crowded on six acres behind earthworks that served as a deadline. Originally it was thought that Belle Isle’s open air would be healthful, but summer heat and winter cold proved that false. Conditions were primitive. Prisoners bathed and drew drinking water from the river, which they also used as a latrine. Belle Isle’s young commandant, Lieutenant Bossieux, was a martinet.

  Fred concluded his business with Bossieux as quickly as he could, left his subordinate to fend for himself, and retired to a Richmond alehouse. There, he rested his aching left leg on a wooden bench. It was a strange life, he reflected. He served the cause by serving a man he disliked, though he was professional enough to overcome West Point snobbery and recognize Mosby’s military skills. He drank when he could and was staying reasonably sober. He paid for a woman’s favors when opportunity arose. He scratched his crotch and decided it was time to pay for such favors again, before he rode out of Richmond at sunrise.

  Something profound had happened to him in those moments with Hanna Siegel, the strange and pretty girl who had wanted to be a soldier until she discovered the realities of war. He supposed he’d never see her again, at least not until the war ended. If he searched for her, he’d probably find her married or gone from Washington leaving no trace.

  He no longer believed the South could win, no matter how many Mosbys, Stuarts, or Lees it mustered. The North’s resources in men and materiel were too overwhelming. And he understood that all the dangerous dashing about, galloping through pine forests, jumping creeks and fallen trees while Yankee bullets whined, could easily result in one of those bullets catching him fatally. It no longer mattered. Feelings were burned out of him, except guilt, and his yearning for the girl he had impulsively kissed that rainy night.

  “Bring me another,” he shouted at the landlord. By the time Fred finished his fourth tankard he was too tired to hunt for a whore. He passed the night on the bench, head lolling, his dreams full of mingled images of Hanna and the young girl he had murdered.

  Margaret found New York no less lonely that she’d imagined, but far less hostile. Many of the Yankees she met on her excursions to Lord and Taylor’s or the A.T. Stewart Marble Dry Goods Palace were not ogres, but in fact quite agreeable. Further, anti-war sentiment in the city was strong. Editorial gasconades in the Daily News and Journal of Commerce, while not openly supportive of the Confederacy, flirted so audaciously with that position that she assumed the editors would face arrest were they in Washington.

  If possessions and real estate were the foundations of happiness, Donal’s town house on Gramercy Park North was everything a married woman could want. The town house offered Margaret a spacious bedroom of her own, a sewing room, library, music room—three entire floors with a ser
vant’s floor beneath. A black woman cooked for them, two other black women, sisters, worked as parlor maids, and an aging Irishman named Phineas Farley ran the household. All of them went home at night.

  Margaret inhabited the town house like a quiet ghost. Familiar activities palled. Mr. Trollope didn’t amuse, and Mr. Hugo’s new doorstop of a novel about a poor man pursued all his life for stealing bread was simply too big to hold comfortably for long. She resurrected what she remembered of piano lessons and played ballads on the spinet—“Aura Lee,” and “Lorena,” written in Chicago but long ago adopted as a Southern song. Thoughts of Lon Price in prison were often with her, most intensely when she played the sad songs.

  On Independence Day, curiosity took her to lower Broadway to watch the annual parade. It wasn’t much of one, she decided, observing from the scanty shade of her parasol. There were a couple of marching bands, several ragtag units of cavalry, and the perennial trio of elderly men portraying the Spirit of ’76. New York troops were noticeably missing. Twelve regiments had been rushed to Pennsylvania to join a titanic battle. To judge by the headlines, the outcome did not look favorable for Margaret’s side: REBEL ARMY FAILING! THE GREAT PIRATE CONFEDERACY CAVING IN! GENERAL MEADE APPEARS TRIUMPHANT!

  She’d never heard of General Meade until late June, when he’d replaced Hooker as the Army of the Potomac’s sixth commander. Hooker was banished to Tennessee after failing against Lee at Chancellorsville. That battle cost Lee the services of the mighty Jackson, who died of pneumonia May 10, a consequence of gunshot wounds and amputation. The Union could take no credit; Jackson had been shot accidentally by Confederate pickets.

  Donal’s connections had secured a pass for her to the Academy of Music on Fourteenth Street, where the governor would address the New York Democratic Association at two o’clock. People stared as Margaret slipped into her seat. A woman alone was assumed to be contemptuous of convention, if not a harlot prowling for customers.