On Secret Service

by John Jakes

  “Ella stays at her sister’s parlor house over on Ohio. She lives there, but she doesn’t work there. Ella belongs to me.” A mistress, then. In the papers Cicero had seen Booth’s name coupled with that of the daughter of the eminently respectable Senator Hale of New Hampshire.

  Ella said, “Pleased ter meet yer. What’s wrong with yer hands?”

  Cicero lost his erection. “A skin problem.” Ella batted her eyes and skipped off to the bedroom to dress. After she kicked the door shut, Booth strolled to an open secretary. He showed his visitor a cut-glass decanter.

  “Brandy? Very fine stuff.” Cicero shook his head. “You don’t mind if I do.” Booth’s thickened speech suggested that someone ought to mind; he was wobbling.

  “So what do we have to talk about?” Booth tossed off a snifter of brandy as though it were well water. Some of the very fine stuff ran down his chin and stained his frilly shirt.

  Speaking in a low voice, Cicero sketched his meeting with Major Siegel of the War Department. “The gentleman will help us if we need information from inside. I am paying him a fee.” He didn’t mention Siegel’s name, or any particulars of their agreement.

  Ella bounced out of the bedroom. “Kiss me, Johnny, I’m on my way.” Cicero sat woodenly as they exchanged open-mouthed kisses. How he admired the actor. How he longed to be like him—sound of body, athletic, alluring to women. Cicero’s envy was nearly hatred.

  Ella tripped out of the room, leaving the heavy scent of her perfume as a reminder of her presence. Booth latched the door. Again Cicero declined brandy. Again Booth helped himself.

  “Can you trust this fellow?”

  “Only while he’s earning money. He isn’t a patriot like you, Mr. Booth. He’s a mercenary. He may be a useful conduit of information, but as soon as he isn’t, we’ll sever our connection, probably by having him killed.”

  Booth tipped his head back and laughed. “I like you, Mr. Seth. You’re so direct.”

  “Cards on the table. We have no room for error or misunderstanding.”

  After more brandy, Booth said, “I’ve been mulling the scheme ever since yesterday. I recommend that we kidnap him from Grover’s or Ford’s. He pollutes both places regularly. Also, I know people at both theaters. Ford’s is my first choice. I stable a horse there and pick up my mail.”

  “Where we’ll do it is yet to be decided.”

  “Since I’ll be in charge, I think I’m the one to say—”

  “It is yet to be decided.”

  On Sixth Street someone fired a pistol. Cicero stared. Booth stared.

  Booth looked away first.

  60

  August 1864

  The side-wheeler Mohican Chief idled in the Potomac, awaiting a berth at the crowded Sixth Street pier. A gray haze blurred the city panorama of trees and buildings. The Capitol dome rose above them, and the red Smithsonian towers, and a bit of the truncated shaft of the unfinished monument to the first president. A tangle of emotions bedeviled Fred. A certain nostalgic pleasure warred with a sharp sense of being among enemies.

  He sat down in the shade, his back against the rail. He lit the stub of his last cigar. A shadow fell across his legs. Of the fifty Union prisoners who’d come up from City Point on the James, forty-nine must have asked him questions. Here came number fifty, a string bean witha wispy beard and missing teeth.

  “Damn hot,” the string bean said, crouching.

  “Sure is. Always like this?”

  “Don’t know, never been here before.” The string bean picked at a scab on his cheek. “That Sherman, he’s pounding Atlanta.”

  “So they say.”

  “Atlanta falls, might be all over.”

  “Soon after, anyway.”

  “What prison was you in?”

  “A new one. Millen, Georgia.”

  “Anybody else aboard from Millen?”

  “No.” And not likely to be. Camp Lawton, a Confederate stockade meant to hold overflow from Andersonville, wouldn’t receive men until the fall. The Signal Service had advised him on creating a history for himself.

  “Me and my friends, we was in Danville. Building number one, next to the bake house. Hot as hell’s hinges this summer.”

  But surely no hotter than the parlor in the cheap hotel in the Rocketts section of Richmond. With gaslight hissing and heavy drapes shutting out the daylight, a Signal Service operative named Miller had rehearsed him the better part of a day:

  “Name and rank?”

  “Duane Sills. First lieutenant, General Eli Long’s cavalry brigade, Army of the Cumberland.”

  “Where’s your home?”

  “New Zion, Kentucky. Little dot on the map close to Lexington. Horse country.”

  “When and where were you taken?”

  “Chickamauga, second day. September twentieth.”

  “How’d you get out of the Millen stockade?”

  “My father sat in the Kentucky legislature for two terms. He’s a loyal Union man but his brother, my uncle, is high up in the Davis government.”

  They went over and over it. Fred didn’t like the civilian. He was bald as an egg, with reddish purple scarring on his throat and left hand. He limped. He had a fanatical eye and a ready sneer. Compared to him, John Mosby could be considered benign…

  The steamer tooted. Bells rang. Mohican Chief warped in to the long pier amid cheering and hat-waving from the newly freed soldiers. Fred joined in. They trooped up the pier in loose formation, weaving through stevedores rolling barrels and a company of replacements marching to their transport. The green soldiers cast envious eyes on the shaggy, unkempt men whose battles were very likely over.

  A bull-voiced sergeant at the head of the pier waved them on. “Soldier’s Rest that way. You’ll have a meal and then be checked through.”

  Fred stepped out of line. “Where’s the latrine, Sergeant?”

  “Yonder, other side of the canvas. Don’t take too long, sir,” he said with deference to Fred’s shoulder straps. Fred threw him a little salute by way of mockery and followed his nose to the reeking trench. It was screened from the pier head by a square enclosure of dirty canvas. A stevedore pissed loudly into the trench as Fred came in and unbuttoned.

  The stevedore shook himself, nodded casually, left. Fred tore off his blue wool blouse and rolled it into a bundle. He tucked the bundle under his arm and walked out of the enclosure. He moved quickly toward a warren of small warehouses. He could feel his heart beating faster.

  Out of sight of the pier head, he shoved the army blouse into a refuse barrel. The back of his gray cotton work shirt already showed big patches of sweat. A half mile from the pier, blending easily into foot and wagon traffic, he felt he was safe.

  He peered into faces in the teeming streets. Where in all the confusion of the wartime city would he find her? How would he begin? He knew nothing but her name. He couldn’t tramp from door to door: “Any Hanna Siegels here?” Nor did he have time. It tormented him.

  In the scant shade of a fence outside a ropewalk, he stuck his hand under his shirt for the canvas belt they had given him before putting him with the other prisoners and marching all of them across Union lines at City Point under a truce flag. One compartment on the inside of the belt held money, another a forged Union Army pay card. From a third he took a limp paper bearing an address: 541 H Street.

  Mary Surratt was a plain, dull-eyed woman, in contrast to the lurid religious objects decorating her sitting room. A plaster Jesus, pale and bleeding, hung on a wooden cross. On the wall opposite, a brightly painted Mary observed her son’s suffering from her wall niche.

  “Mr. Sills, we’re so glad to see you,” the landlady said with a nervous smile.

  “Glad to be here, ma’am. I have important work to do.”

  “Oh, yes, we know. Some clothes were delivered day before yesterday. My son John should be home by suppertime. He’s ever so anxious to meet you. I can’t offer you fancy quarters. My regular rooms are taken. I’ve put my daughter,
Anna, out of hers in the attic, you may have that.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. I’m sure it’ll be adequate.”

  “Very hot, I’m sorry to say.”

  Fred smiled, resigned. “It’s summer, ma’am.”

  “This way, then.”

  He could stand at full height in just half the attic; the roof pitched steeply. Mrs. Surratt’s daughter had tacked personal things to the exposed rafters. Cards extolling love and friendship in verse. Faded ribbons. Souvenir photographs of General Longstreet, General Lee, the late and well-remembered Jeb Stuart with his prideful eyes, his huge beard, his plumed hat in his lap. Several cards bore photos of male and female theatricals. Fred recognized only one, Edwin Booth’s handsome younger brother John.

  He stripped off his shirt and washed with a basin of tepid water Mrs. Surratt brought up. In the dining room he met a soft and pudgy young man who introduced himself as Louie Weichmann.

  “I have the room at third floor back. Johnny shares it when he’s in town. We knew each other at St. Charles College.” Weichmann clerked in the office of the Commissary General of War Prisoners. “We probably have your records somewhere.”

  “Probably.” If the record included soldiers who didn’t exist.

  Mrs. Surratt served a plate of boiled beef and a bowl of red potatoes. A burly man with dusty hands waved as he went upstairs. When he came down, he introduced himself as John Holahan, a tombstone cutter. He plopped himself at the table and gathered his food with an expert boardinghouse reach.

  Young John Surratt showed up shortly. Before five minutes passed, he let Fred know that he had a temporary job clerking at the Adams Express office and hated it. He was a slim, sandy-haired fellow who struck Fred as considerably brighter than his mother. After supper, sitting on the stoop away from eavesdroppers, Surratt offered Fred a cigarette, struck a match for him.

  “You know what you’re supposed to do, I guess.”

  “I do,” Fred said. “I’ll start tomorrow.”

  “You know Johnny Booth, the actor?”

  “By reputation only.”

  “He’ll want to meet you. He’s running things in Washington.”

  “So I was told. Where is he?”

  “He was up in New York till yesterday, raising money. Last night he rode down to Charles County. To hunt for real estate, so he can start a horse farm.” John Surratt’s smile told Fred it was just a story.

  “I see.”

  “You travel a lot of country roads hunting for good property.”

  “You mean you travel a lot of escape routes.”

  Surratt chuckled. “That’s true. Say, you want to stroll down to McFee’s for a beer? Damn hot, and I’m thirsty.”

  “Sure.” Fred dusted off his pants, squinted against the copper glare of the twilight sky. Reluctantly he added, “I suppose they have coffee. I gave up drinking.”

  Next day, as a first step, he went to the Executive Mansion in President’s Park.

  He shuffled through the public rooms with other visitors, rolling his eyes and volubly expressing horror at the damage done by souvenir hunters. Squares of cloth had been snipped from East Room draperies. Strips of wallpaper were missing. Upholstery in the Green Room had been crudely vandalized with knives or scissors.

  In the afternoon he relaxed on the trampled grass between the White House and the three-story War Department, as many others citizens were doing. A straw hat shaded his face. This was the more pleasant side of the mansion, though it swarmed with mosquitoes and flies. The south side was a sprawl of stables and utility buildings, with squatter shanties visible on the flats beyond. Nothing could cut the foul stench drifting from the canal.

  He opened a book from Shillington’s secondhand bin. Poe’s stories were full of thrills and rococo language, but he hardly paid attention. The book was a prop. He watched the mansion’s north portico.

  About four, a colored groom drove a handsome barouche to the portico. An elderly usher in knee breeches held the door as the President and his sour-faced wife came out, followed by a stout man in a dark frock coat and top hat. One of the Metropolitan Police assigned to guard Lincoln? Two officers worked the day shift, two others at night. Never in uniform, they carried concealed .38 revolvers. They reported to the District marshal, an old friend of Lincoln’s who went heavily armed at all times. Miller had excellent information on security at the White House. Fred knew that Marshal Ward Lamon was unusually fearful of the President’s safety, hence unusually protective.

  In the shade near the bronze statue of Jefferson, Mrs. Lincoln hectored her husband about something. He nodded meekly as he helped her into the open carriage. Four uniformed cavalrymen riding black horses trotted up behind the carriage. Ohio light cavalrymen, quartered behind the mansion. They accompanied Lincoln on his jaunts about town.

  The President took his seat and picked up the reins. A second groom brought up a roan for the unidentified civilian. Lincoln hawed to the team. The buggy rolled down a lane of well-wishers waving kerchiefs and shouting advice. The President tipped his tall hat to them.

  The Ohio cavalrymen walked their horses behind the barouche. The man on the roan came last, scanning the crowd attentively. Lincoln drove out the iron gate and turned right on Pennsylvania Avenue with his bodyguards close behind. Could they be going out Seventh Street, to the presidential cottage at the Soldier’s Home? Occupants of the mansion often summered there. Lincoln had, though lately he restricted himself to short excursions on warm evenings.

  Fred noted the time, licked the tip of a pencil, and jotted an entry in a small notebook. He tucked Poe under his arm and strolled over to the elderly usher standing in the shade of the portico.

  “Excuse me. That man who just left, the civilian on horseback. I think I know him. From the Metropolitan Police, isn’t he?”

  “No, sir, he’s a special. Works for Colonel Baker. President Lincoln don’t like all them soldiers traipsing after him. Tries to get shed of ’em sometimes. He’s a whole lot fonder of Baker’s men.”

  Affably, Fred tipped his straw hat. “Thanks, I guess I made a mistake.”

  Near the iron fence, he paused to jot another line in his little book. He walked through the gate without haste and disappeared in the crowds on the Avenue.

  Two weeks later, in the middle of the night, he woke in Mrs. Surratt’s attic and remembered something he’d forgotten. Plays. Hanna Siegel said she acted in plays.

  He lay back in the dark, eyes open, smiling.

  61

  October 1864

  Atlanta fell to Sherman in early September. The North took heart but the killing went on. In the midst of hundreds of thousands of family tragedies—fathers, sons, sweethearts, dead and maimed—the Siegels not only escaped tragedy but experienced good fortune. After Jubal Early’s abortive raid, a few panicky owners in the suburbs put their homes on the market at sacrifice prices. The major snapped up a four-room cottage and barn on a lovely treed lot near the Rockville Road, beyond the city limits.

  When he announced the purchase, Hanna said, “Where’s the money coming from, Papa? How many times a week do you tell me your salary’s too low?”

  “It is! Can’t fight the cheap sons of bitches I work for. I been making some investments. Military goods. Don’t trouble your head.”

  “Because I’m a mere female?”

  The sarcasm irked him. “That’s the size of it. No more talk, I got to work on this plan. The whole department’s working on it. Soldiers got to vote for the President in November. They vote in the field or we bring them home on leave. Stanton says if we don’t—kkkk.” His hand chopped like a guillotine.

  “Some in Lincoln’s own party want to do him in, you know. He isn’t tough enough for them. I heard a rumor Stanton feels that way secretly, but I don’t believe it. Washington’s a nasty town for gossip.”

  Washington had become a thriving theatrical town thanks to Leonard Grover and John Ford. Grover liked Hanna’s acting and put her on his list of reliable yo
ung women to engage when visiting stars needed to fill out a supporting cast. She worked with the nimble and funny Joe Jefferson when he brought his famed personation of Rip van Winkle to Grover’s. Far less enjoyable were two weeks in repertory with the old lion of the American stage, Edwin Forrest. Hanna played Goneril five times in King Lear.

  Forrest had kept his faithful audience over many years, though his reputation had never fully recovered from the Astor Place riots in 1849. Detractors still claimed he’d conspired with Bowery toughs and Know-Nothings to drive the English tragedian Macready off the New York stage by means of the riot. Hanna disliked Forrest, a bombastic man of fifty-eight who still had a lecher’s eye.

  In October, Grover cast her in a supporting role in Uncle Waldo’s Wisdom, a weak example of a popular comedy genre: sophisticated city folk shown up by a canny New England rustic. Hanna hated the play but welcomed the salary.

  After daytime rehearsals, she usually dined in a café frequented by theatricals. One evening Derek Fowley hobbled to her table, literally cap in hand. He was out of the ambulance service, shot in the foot by a drunken sutler.

  Fawning shamelessly, Derek asked if she might put in a word for him with Grover. To get rid of him, she said she would.

  “You’ve let your hair grow, Hanna. It’s attractive.”

  “Thank you.” Hanna’s yellow tresses fell prettily on the shoulders of her smart blue jacket. “Mr. Grover insists his actresses look feminine.”

  Derek couldn’t resist a jab. “Not like soldiers?”

  “That was a long time ago, Derek. I’ve gotten over it. So nice to see you. Good-bye.”

  John Wilkes Booth was seen frequently in the city, though not on the boards. Hanna encountered him holding court at the National again. She listened from the back of a crowd of admirers as he exclaimed, “A great, great loss. She was a true Southern patriot. She died more bravely than many a man would have done.”