On Secret Service

by John Jakes

  “God damn it—God damn it, Sam”—two grandmotherly ladies seated by the front window turned to stare—“this is my plan, to carry out as I see fit.”

  “Is that right, Johnny? I thought it was Richmond’s plan.”

  Booth’s hand flew sideways, knocking both coffee mugs to the floor. The mop-haired old man who owned the place lumbered from the kitchen. “What’s this? Who’s tearing up my—? Oh, Booth, it’s you. Might have known.”

  The actor dug greenbacks from his pocket, threw them at the old man. “If you don’t want my patronage, plenty of others welcome it.” He snatched his plumed hat from the next table, glared at Sam Arnold, and marched to the door, brass spurs jingling.

  The old man got down on his knees with a rag. “Those Booths, they’re all crazy. Your friend’s the worst.”

  Arnold said, “They don’t call them the mad Booths of Maryland for nothing.”

  On Wednesday night, January 18, Lincoln did not attend the performance at Ford’s. Not that it would have made any difference. Sam Arnold’s objection prevented Booth from implementing the kidnaping.

  He sent Arnold a note saying they would go at it differently, try to abduct Lincoln from his carriage, at the first opportunity. Booth could barely bring himself to surrender that way, but pragmatically, he had no choice. He needed Arnold. He needed all of them, even though not one of them was adequate to the task.

  Muffled to the eyes against the blowing rain, Booth failed to see the man huddled by the National’s front door. “Cap’n? Cap’n Booth?” The man stepped out. They collided.

  “You damned cretin, you nearly knocked me down.”

  “Cap’n, I’m mighty sorry. I been waitin’ half the day, hopin’ you’d come by.” Huge dark eyes sunken in pale flesh peered at him with childlike entreaty. The young man’s broad, flat nose and overhanging brow gave his face a moronic cast. “Don’t you recognize me?”

  “No, and I’m thankful. Stand aside or—”

  “Cap’n,” the other interrupted, “we met down South. You was playin’ a theater in Montgomery, Alabama.”

  A faint recollection stirred. “What’s your name?”

  “Paine, sir. Lewis Paine.” A swift look along the rainy sidewalk; no one was paying attention, not even to the famous Mr. Booth. Paine crowded close in a way Booth found offensive.

  “When I met you after the show and we had a real nice drink in your dressing room, the name was Lewis Powell. Powell, he was a soldier. Lately he was in Mosby’s command, but he got sick of it. And don’t you know, one day last week at Fairfax Court House, Powell just up and disappeared. Lost his uniform an’ all. The Union soldiers takin’ care of refugees said, ‘What’s your name, boy?’ and I said, Lewis Paine.”

  A deserter, then. “Well, I do remember you, Mr. Paine, but you’ll have to excuse me, I have business.”

  “Oh. I was just hopin’ we could have another drink, so’s I could ask how you been. I know you’re more famous than ever. I always been proud to say I’m a friend of the great Mr. John W. Booth. But I understand about business, Captain.” Looking sad, Paine held out his hand to conclude the conversation.

  Suddenly Booth forgot the chilly rain, the dampness soaking him to the skin. The young man was splendidly built, obviously strong. Booth guessed he was also utterly stupid, but taken with Booth’s celebrity.

  And he needed an obedient soldier.

  He smiled his most radiant and winning smile. “Mr. Paine, I apologize for being rude to an old friend. My business can wait an hour. We certainly must have a drink in memory of that pleasant meeting in Montgomery.”

  “We can go to the saloon bar, I’ll pay,” Paine exclaimed.

  “Oh, no, Mr. Paine, no.” Booth, the shorter, had to strain to throw an arm across Paine’s broad back. “We’ll drink some of the fine whiskey I keep in my suite. It’s my pleasure. Come along, sir. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you again.”

  65

  February 1865

  The Richmond ring still operated successfully behind Miss Van Lew’s facade of craziness. Her operatives sent word of unusual activity within the Army and the government, surmising that Lee was preparing to shift the bulk of his forces to North Carolina, there to fight on until the last man fell.

  Meanwhile, Baker’s detectives investigated every death threat against Lincoln, every rumor of a bomb plot, every fanciful tip from an informer. To deal with the reports, Baker ran his men days at a time without sleep. He dispatched teams to Montreal, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Columbus. Other teams searched the sordid corners of Washington and patrolled rural roads of Maryland. “When desperate men face defeat, they turn from victory to vengeance,” Baker said. “We can take no chances.”

  On the thirteenth of February, a Monday, Lon and Sandstrom rode the cars up to Baltimore. Someone had boasted to a Negro servant girl that he would help kidnap Lincoln. The Baltimore police telegraphed the War Department.

  Bundled in fur-collared coats, the detectives sat near an iron stove at the head of the car. Lon had started his beard again; it was coming out with white patches. He watched forlorn trees and fields pass by. The sky was spitting snow. “God, Eugene, I hate this part of the country.”

  Sandstrom said, “Why?”

  “Bad memories. New York down to Richmond, nothing but bad memories. With one exception.”

  “That lady.”

  Lon nodded.

  “I read a guidebook about California last year. Didn’t sound bad.”

  “Isn’t the gold all gone?”

  “Plenty of sunshine, though. All year long.”

  “I didn’t hate winter when I was growing up in Ohio,” Lon said. “I loved to sled and skate. But I hate it now. I hate the cold, and the gloom, and the snow that’s dirty five minutes after it falls.”

  “I’ll bet it’s the war getting you down, not the weather.”

  “The war, and this work,” Lon said with his eye on the bleak horizon.

  “I’ll loan you the guidebook.”

  “Thanks. I’ll read it.” Though he wouldn’t have to worry about changing anything in his life until the Confederacy threw down its arms and all the undefeated good old rebels, the would-be assassins and bomb throwers, were caught, jailed, or hung.

  “He beat her,” said the large lady who operated Mrs. Branson’s Boarding House near the Baltimore harbor. “Poor Sabina resisted his advances and he turned on her like a wild dog. I’m not surprised. I smelled liquor on him every day he was here.”

  Lon asked, “When did he rent the room?”

  “One week ago today. I had a bad feeling but—you know. Money’s money.”

  Snow slanted past the windows of the cluttered parlor. Lon opened a notebook on his knee. “What was his name?”

  “He signed the card Lou Smith, L-o-u. I could barely read his handwriting. He obviously wasn’t educated.”

  “Describe him for me?”

  “Tall, much taller than either of you gentlemen.” Sandstrom examined his nails with an annoyed expression. “Six feet, perhaps an inch or two more. His forehead sloped out from his hairline, like this. Almost a shelf above his eyes. He looked like a mental deficient. But physically—oh, a Greek god.” She fanned herself with her handkerchief.

  Sandstrom said, “We want to talk to the girl.”

  Mrs. Branson led them to a cold garret lit by a barnyard lantern hung from a rafter. Sabina Lee was a well-fleshed young black woman. Her pretty features were bruised and discolored by a beating. Half a dozen stitches marked her forehead like a worry line.

  “Sabina, these gentlemen are detectives, from Washington. Can you tell them what happened?”

  “So we can catch the man,” Lon said.

  Sabina hitched herself up on her cot. She crossed her arms over the bosom of her flannel nightdress, as if she thought it too revealing, which it wasn’t. “Saturday night, I was cleanin’ the kitchen ’bout half pas’ eleven. He come in, drunk as a polecat. We talked a little, then he pu
t his hand on me. I axed him to stop. He laughed and kep’ on. I told him again, stop it. I was real scared. I grabbed a cleaver. That made him real mad with me. He knocked the cleaver out of my hand an’ punched me in the stomach. Called me nigger and a lot of other names. He punched me again and I threw up. He tore a leg off a kitchen chair an’ whipped me with it.”

  “You see, gentlemen, my cousin Veronica’s ill,” Mrs. Branson explained. “I stayed with her until her husband’s train finished its run Saturday night, he’s a B-and-O brakeman. When I returned at half past twelve, I found Sabina unconscious and bleeding on the floor.”

  Sandstrom said, “That’s a touching story, but what about threats to the President? That’s why we’re here. Tell us what Smith said about the President.” Lon gave him a look which Sandstrom ignored.

  “Oh, he talk a lot ’bout the Pres’dent before he started his dirty stuff. He was real drunk, so I didn’t put no stock in it. He said him and some friends, they was going to kidnap Mr. Linkum. He called the Pres’dent awful names, makes me blush just to remember.”

  Lon said, “Sabina, this is important. Did Smith mention any day or date for the kidnaping?”

  “Yes, sir, he did. Day after tomorrow. Wednesday.”

  “He was definite?”

  “Yes, sir. Said he had to be back in Washington for the party—he called it the party—Tuesday noon.”

  “And where was this criminal act supposed to take place?” Sandstrom said.

  “He said when Mr. Linkum went to see a play.”

  “Ford’s Theater? Grover’s? Which?”

  “The play’s at some hospital. Not at night, in the daytime. Mr. Linkum and his wife, they’d both go see this play and that’s when it would happen.”

  Lon patted her hand. “Thank you, Sabina, you’ve been a lot of help. You also, Mrs. Branson.”

  “Don’t let nothin’ happen to Mr. Linkum, sirs. He a great man. He set the colored people free, and when the war’s done, he’ll bring the jubilee.”

  “But there are plenty who’d like to stop him,” Lon said.

  Tuesday morning, Lafayette Baker brought the White House schedule down from Stanton’s office. Lon and Sandstrom jumped from their chairs.

  “Gentlemen, that darky deserves a reward and a guaranteed ticket to heaven. Look here.” Baker pointed to an entry on the closely written sheet. “Tomorrow afternoon, three o’clock, Campbell Hospital out by the Soldier’s Home. E. L. Davenport and others from Daly’s traveling troupe will present Still Waters Run Deep for the convalescents. The President and Mrs. Lincoln are to attend, then visit with the boys. The papers printed the story last week.”

  “They can’t go,” Lon said.

  “That’s what I told the secretary. He will inform the White House and send the President somewhere else. The President won’t like it, but he’ll go along. Stanton’s got the wind up about this.”

  Baker laid his boot heel on the corner of his desk. “The presidential carriage will go to Campbell Hospital as scheduled. With its regular driver, but no cavalry escort. You gentlemen will ride inside. Armed,” he said, almost as an afterthought.

  Bitter air stung Booth’s cheeks. His little one-eyed mare pranced. He’d bought her in Baltimore for eighty dollars and got his money’s worth. He laid a gauntlet on the mare’s neck to calm her. Everything was in place, nothing overlooked.

  Behind him, partially hidden in a thicket of bare trees, Johnny Surratt fidgeted on the seat of an old Dearborn wagon, a plain gray vehicle with its middle and rear side curtains lowered. Lincoln would be removed from his carriage and trussed in the wagon. At a rendezvous in the District, Arnold and O’Laughlin would join them and escort the wagon across the East Branch bridge into Maryland. At Port Tobacco, George Atzerodt would supervise the night crossing of the Potomac. A detachment from the Virginia Ninth Cavalry would escort the captive to Ashland, a resort fifteen miles north of Richmond. Johnny Surratt had spent almost two weeks down there in January, arranging everything. Last week Booth had sent a signal to Miller by courier, naming the day. He wrote the message using the Vigenère tableau and a new key phrase, come victory.

  In a hurried trip to New York, he’d said good-bye to Edwin at his Gramercy Park town house. Edwin of course had no idea why his younger brother seemed so passionate about the farewell. Next Booth called on their beloved sister, Asia, in Philadelphia. She sensed something amiss when he gave her a sealed pouch for her husband’s safe. He wouldn’t tell her what it contained: his will, leaving his meager assets to her, June, and Edwin, and a letter. To whom it may concern. The letter described Booth’s lifelong loyalty to the South and justified the abduction of the Yankee tyrant.

  This far past the city limits, traffic on the Seventh Street road was sparse, especially on a dark winter afternoon. Two ambulances had rolled by thirty minutes ago carrying wounded to the hospital. Three nurses shivering in an open buggy passed southbound a little later. In either direction, Booth saw a dreary vista of woodlands, farmhouses, livestock pens, and barns. Not a single person moved anywhere in the gray landscape. Atzerodt and Paine were hidden behind a dilapidated chicken coop across the road. Each carried a pistol and a double-barrel shotgun from a supply stored at the rural tavern still called Surratt’s.

  Booth heard the approaching carriage before he saw it. A half mile south, the road curved and dipped. “Johnny, get ready. I think he’s coming.”

  Surratt picked up the reins. Two horses appeared from the sunken road, then the big vehicle, a somber black landau with its top raised against the winter cold. On each corner of the low rail in front of the driver, a small Stars and Stripes streamed out. Booth’s stomach hurt. Into his head leaped Richmond’s speech at Bosworth Field in the fifth act of Richard III. O thou, whose captain I account myself—He pulled his cloak away from his face, unconsciously mouthing the words.

  “‘—look on my forces with a gracious eye.’”

  The carriage horses pounded the frozen road.

  “‘Put in their hands thy bruising irons of wrath—’”

  He raised one gloved hand, drew a little circle in the air. Paine rode from behind the chicken coop. He wore a greatcoat and a greasy plug hat. He acknowledged Booth’s signal by thrusting his shotgun over his head.

  “‘Make us thy ministers of chastisement!’”

  Booth backed the mare to a position nearer Surratt’s wagon. The landau was nearly abreast of them. A square is in-glass window reflected dull daylight. The landau hid Paine when he fired both shotgun barrels. The reports reverberated.

  The driver lashed the team. The isinglass window flew up. A man leaned out, aiming a pistol. Booth’s smug smile vanished. Someone else in the landau fired shots on the other side. Booth’s skittish mare snorted and sidestepped. “It isn’t Lincoln!” Surratt exclaimed. “Who the hell is it?”

  With a rattle of chains and a grind of wheels, the landau passed. Booth saw Paine and Atzerodt astride their horses, baffled and frightened. The driver kicked the brake and dragged on the reins; the landau rocked to a stop. Two men jumped out and ran back toward the site of the attack. “Get away, scatter,” Booth yelled to his cohorts across the road. “Leave the wagon, Johnny. Climb up behind me.”

  “But there’s pistols and ammunition left in—”

  “God damn it, climb up unless you want to be caught and hung.”

  Johnny Surratt flung himself onto the mare’s back and clasped Booth’s waist. The men on foot fired a fusillade at Paine and Atzerodt galloping away. Booth spurred the mare into the thicket of bare trees. They were ready for us. How did they know?

  Low branches whipped his face. Soon he had bleeding cuts on both cheeks. He could easily outdistance the pursuers, who had to be government detectives. That was no consolation. The tyrant in the White House was safe and unhurt. Booth roared every filthy oath he knew as the mare carried them away.

  Lon slammed a fist on Baker’s desk. “We shouldn’t have lost them. We should have ridden horses.”

&n
bsp; “I agree. The fault’s mine.” Baker’s words made Lon feel no better. “I should have sent six or eight men, not two.”

  “I recognized the man Sabina Lee described.”

  “We’ll put out a dodger on Smith if that’s really his name. Circulate it to our men, the provost guards, and the metropolitans, with orders to arrest and detain anyone who resembles him even slightly.”

  Sandstrom grimaced. “Good luck. There are a thousand holes for hiding in this town. Couldn’t it be that we’ve seen the last of them, Colonel? Maybe we frightened them off.”

  “And perhaps angels will dance on the Avenue at high noon. Don’t congratulate yourself. They’ll try again in some fashion. The war’s ending. Richmond will fall or be abandoned. Jeff Davis faces the hangman or a lifetime as a fugitive. Remember what I said. These are desperate men.”

  66

  March 1865

  Four companies of Mosby’s partisans wintered in King George County, on the Northern Neck between the Potomac and the Rappahannock. Their old territory, Loudoun and Fauquier Counties, couldn’t support the entire regiment. Food and fodder could no longer be found in the burned hamlets and farmlands of Mosby’s Confederacy. In bivouac on the Neck, they ate stale crackers soaked in muddy water and fried in old grease using half a canteen for a skillet. What little meat they had was strong with age, but roasting it over an open fire usually cured the smell. Fred’s eight-man mess had only one knife, his; they ate with sticks, splinters of wood, or their hands.

  Captain Smith had promoted him to second lieutenant. It wasn’t a great honor; he was replacing a clap-ridden officer who had succumbed to pneumonia. His fine black horse, Baron, suffered foot rot from standing on wet earth. The steed’s ribs showed as distinctly as bars of a cage. Weeping sores covered his body. Baron was dying for lack of feed. Fred intended to put him down before the inevitable happened.

  He wrote long letters to Hanna, in his head; there was no paper. Sickly, spindly, tired beyond belief, he was sustained only by memories of their days together, and Hanna’s promise to be waiting in Washington when this accursed war ended. The loneliness and deprivation, the constant rain and sleet, revived his thirst for spirits but he resisted.