On Secret Service (18 page)

“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 way 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.

Lon and his colleagues were bedeviled and bitten by sand fleas, deer flies, gnats, and mosquitoes. They slept in mud and damp. In a matter of hours Lon's clothes were stiff and rank. They wouldn't be washed until and unless he did it himself. All the Army laundresses had been left behind.

At least they ate decently. Pinkerton had found an Italian cook whom he paid out of his own pocket. Spaldini's English consisted mostly of profanity. He relied on his hands, waving them about when he wasn't chopping or slicing ingredients or stirring the stew kettle. Pinkerton relaxed his stand on alcohol and allowed small glasses of port to be served at the evening mess. He ate and drank nothing. Since arriving, he'd been sick with dysentery.

Yorktown lay behind enormous fortifications, some left over from the Revolution. These were protected by deep outer ditches, and bombproof dugouts to nullify artillery. A second Confederate bastion at Gloucester Point, across the York, menaced both the Federal Army and its gunboats in the river.

Camp talk said the Federals could easily storm the Yorktown fortifications and overcome the estimated fifteen or twenty thousand defenders. McClellan preferred a slower, safer method, a siege. Commencing April 6, earthworks were dug by night, and guns brought up during succeeding days. The fortifications were masterpieces of engineering, great ramparts of earth held firm by gabions, dirt-filled baskets, topped by sandbags. Impatient for action, Lon wasn't impressed by such niceties of military science.

Pinkerton tottered through the days gray-faced and weak. He was burdened with all sorts of new work from the War Department: orders to pursue bounty jumpers, requests from politicians who wanted some favor from the general, summonses to sit in court-martial hearings, complaints against crooked contractors. Some of the complaints fell to Lon to investigate. He became an unwilling expert on biscuits infested with worms and on the purple shine of rotten beef. He wrote reports and more reports.

His beard had grown thick and long; a majority of the men in the Army looked like biblical patriarchs. Wherever he went, Lon kept his loaded pistol in one coat pocket and the Brady photograph in another. He longed for a picture of Margaret Miller.

The telegraph brought word of a big battle at a place called Shiloh Church in faraway Tennessee. A general nicknamed Unconditional Surrender Grant was praised. The rebs had lost one of their best, General Albert Sidney Johnston.

A few deserters made their way through Union lines. Lon interrogated one from the Ninth Alabama. The wall-eyed corporal was eager to cooperate. “They's a new man advisin' Jeff Davis. General Bob Lee. Seen him as we passed through Richmond.”

Lon wrote it down, though he'd heard it before. “How many men in your regiment?”

The corporal wriggled on his stool, scratched at unwelcome visitors in his crotch. “You mean on the rolls or ready to scrap?”

“There's a difference?” A suspicion about that had nagged him for days.

“Shit, yes, johnny. How many men you think we got?”

“We estimate seven or eight hundred to a regiment.”

“On the rolls, mebbe. That don't mean fit for duty. They's always a bunch sick, or put in irons. Then they's the cooks and drummer boys and some too yella to shoot a musket. Six or six-fifty might be more like it, though I ain't never counted heads.”

Lon wrote it down. Pinkerton always wanted the larger number, the aggregate present, which he then inflated by the usual ten percent. Lon wondered why they were accumulating reams of misleading information. He was angry that no one faced the issue.

 

An annoyingly brash Confederate general, “Prince John” Magruder, continued to balk the Union Army along the ten-mile Warwick River line. Between its five mill dams, the flooded river created a series of ponds too wide and deep for an assault by infantry or cavalry. The narrow dams were the only way across, and the rebs had them blanketed by sharpshooters hidden in the woods and behind fortifications.

Magruder's artillery blasted anything that moved. His men demonstrated regularly in view of the Federals. His bands played all night long to interrupt sleep. Lowe's balloons went aloft every day to observe. Sometimes Lowe rode in the basket with one or more observers; sometimes he sent one of his aeronaut-navigators. Members of Pinkerton's little cadre went up occasionally, studying terrain and making sketch maps. Lon's turn came toward the end of April.

Sledge was supposed to go up with him, but he was suffering from the same latrine quickstep that had plagued the boss. Zach Chisolm had lingered on the edge of the group for weeks, barely tolerated, never invited to sit at the regular mess table. He asked to take Sledge's place. Pinkerton grudgingly agreed. “The balloon navigator has the final say.”

Lowe's balloons regularly ascended before dawn, when enemy campfires could be seen. Changes in their location often revealed troop movements. At half past three in the morning, Lon and Zach set out to walk several miles to one of Lowe's ground stations, a clearing behind the lines out of artillery range.

Calcium lights with silvered reflectors bathed the clearing in a white glare. The lights were set at a safe distance from the gas generators, two bulky wagons that were basically acid-proof retorts on wheels. Iron filings went in a hatch on top. Sulfuric acid was poured through a vertical tube to create hydrogen gas. Canvas-covered piping ran from each tank to a square wooden apparatus with a single, larger pipe coming from the other side. This pipe inflated a balloon in less than two hours.

Thaddeus Lowe's entire complement of fifty men appeared to be working tonight. Although the Balloon Corps reported to the Army topographical engineers, Lowe and his crew were civilians. Lon spotted the husky six-foot professor studying a map with a smaller man who had a pug face and soup-strainer mustache.

“Hello, my boy,” Lowe said as Lon approached. Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe wasn't even thirty, but everyone noticeably younger was “my boy.” He was a big, showy man with glossy black hair and powerful shoulders. He wore a long black coat, high boots, and a fatigue cap bearing a balloon-shaped metal badge stamped with the letters
BC.
Lon imagined he was a commanding presence on the lecture platform. “You're Mr. Price?”

“I am.”

“Mr. Harper's your navigator this morning.” Lon held out his hand. The pug-faced young man ignored it and stared at Zach.

“Who's this?”

“Zach Chisolm. He's attached to our unit.”

Harper rolled up the map. “Didn't bargain on no niggers.”

Lowe cautioned him with a stern glance. Harper tramped away to the balloon. By its painted stars and stripes, Lon recognized it as
Liberty
.

The single hose from the wooden apparatus snaked over the ground to mate with the balloon envelope where it tapered to a filler port. The balloon's beige walls were slowly expanding, contained inside a web of linen cords. The cords ran down to a thick wooden ring surrounding the filler port; each cord was tied off on the ring. Below the ring hung a blue wicker basket painted with white stars. Men were attaching sandbags to the basket for ballast. The balloon was sixty feet high, strangely beautiful swaying there on its manila mooring lines.

“We have no fog and a favorable breeze,” Lowe said. “Harper is instructed to go across the river. Our balloons are always shot at. Are you prepared for that?” Lowe's blue eyes were fixed on Zach. Zach looked resentful at the implication of weakness.

“We'll take the same risks as your aeronaut,” Lon said. A horseman trotted out of the woods. Lon recognized the bespectacled civilian who jumped down from the lathered animal.

“Stein, what the devil are you doing here?”

“Finding my way back to Major Allen.” Elvin Stein was a small, fidgety man. The calcium lights reflected from the little circles of his spectacles. In his shabby velvet-collared coat and muted yellow waistcoat he could have passed for an insurance agent or a schoolteacher. He certainly didn't look like a spy.

Stein dippered water from a bucket, drank some, and poured the rest over his grimy forehead. His trousers were torn in two places, as though he'd ridden through brambles.

“The game's blown in Richmond. I barely got out. A skiff brought me down the James. I stole this horse back there a ways.”

“What went wrong in Richmond?”

“Lewis and Scully found Tim Webster laid up with arthritis, all right. Hattie was nursing him. You remember Senator Jackson Morton of Florida?”

“The boss had Morton and his family under house arrest in Washington for a while.”

“And Lewis and Scully guarded them. Two of Morton's sons are in Richmond. They recognized and identified Pryce and John. General Winder, the provost marshal, has a list of all our operatives, damned if I know how.”

“Rose Greenhow might be responsible. What else?”

“The rebs tossed Pryce and John in the Henrico County jail. Pryce and some others managed to escape, but Pryce was caught. He and John were shoved in Castle Godwin. Used to be the old jail for coloreds. Now it's a hellhole for war prisoners. They were worked over by the provost's detectives. Nasty bunch. Both our lads held fast, denied everything, though I heard Scully almost broke. They went on trial. The verdict was quick. Guilty. No exchange, no parole. The sentence was hanging.”