On Secret Service (41 page)

A fair-haired girl brought two steins and a pitcher of lager on a tray. She was about seventeen, and moon-eyed over the actor. “Mama doesn't approve of beer in the house but she makes an exception when you visit.”

“Dear girl, thank you.” Booth gave her a ravishing smile and patted her bottom. “May I present the landlady's daughter, Miss Anna Surratt? This is Mr. Hiram Seth, Anna.”

“How do you do, sir?” Anna curtsyed. Cicero smiled as warmly as his temperament allowed. The high stock and cotton gloves hid his scars.

“What a sweet child you are,” Booth said. “If you were a bit older, I'd propose.” Anna giggled as she scurried out.

Booth checked the hall and rolled the door shut. Cicero peered out the second-floor window at the gray drizzle on H Street; the brick house stood at No. 541. Booth busied himself filling the steins.

“The landlady's a widow, from Maryland. She and her husband ran a little tavern, but it became a burden after he died. She's a harmless, pious creature, as you might judge from all the religious bric-a-brac. Her older son Isaac's in the Confederate army. John, the younger one, has an excellent record as a courier on the secret line to Richmond. Here, drink up.”

Cicero reached for the stein. As he raised it, he confronted a set of false teeth floating in the beer. He dropped the stein. Booth whooped and caught the stein in midair. Only a little beer spilled.

Laughing, Booth said, “Forgive my little joke, won't you? I'm fond of them, as my friends know all too well.” He fished the teeth from the beer and held them up. “Ivory, but a good imitation. I have a spider and a worm too. Here, take mine.” They exchanged steins. Cicero was not amused.

“Please, be seated.” Booth gestured gracefully, took a chair, and crossed his legs. The actor shamed Cicero with his elegant clothes: a royal blue frock coat, double-breasted silk waistcoat with a yellow-and-blue check, fitted gray trousers, square-toed ankle boots showing no dirt in spite of the mud in H Street. He toasted Cicero. “Here's to success, then.”

Cicero returned the salute. “You've started to recruit the men?”

“Johnny Surratt's the first. There'll be more soon.”

“Good. We'll shortly have someone in place in Washington, to monitor the movements of the target. He will do it over a period of several weeks, so we don't mistake some anomaly for the daily routine.”

“Who is this person?”

“A man from Colonel Mosby's partisan battalion. Chap from West Point who knows the city. He was stationed here before he came South. Dasher's his name, though I assume he'll use a nom de guerre. I'm told he's reliable.”

“He'd better be. This is a high-stakes game. How will I find him?”

“He'll contact you, but only if it's necessary. He's coming in as a released prisoner.”

“Grant has stopped the exchange.”

“The one-for-one exchanges, yes. Our prisons are so crowded, we're releasing men unilaterally, from as far south as Andersonville.”

Booth gulped beer, then poured more. The actor had a reputation for drinking to excess. He could jeopardize the operation if he talked too freely in his cups. Cicero decided the risk was acceptable.

Booth's black eyes sparkled as he paced the sitting room. “This is a propitious moment, Mr. Seth. The tyrant should have been brought down long ago.”

“All the South agrees with that.”

“Not only the South, sir. Some within Lincoln's own house wouldn't be unhappy to see him removed.”

Startled, Cicero said, “I'm not sure I take your meaning.”

“Nothing so difficult about it. Don't you suppose Secretary Stanton resents being Lincoln's lapdog?”

“Are you suggesting—?”

“Not merely suggesting, sir. An actor meets a great many people. Hears a great many things. Don't you recall that the secretary once reviled Lincoln as ‘the original gorilla'? As Byron wrote, ‘Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure.'”

“Booth, are you honestly telling me there are persons in the Federal government as interested as we are in seeing this plan go forward?”

“I am.”

“Will they help us?”

“Let it rest where it is for the present, Mr. Seth.” Booth was annoyingly smug. Cicero suspected he'd learn nothing more unless and until the smug Mr. Booth chose to tell him. The man was a manipulator of the first order. It angered him, but it would be useful in recruiting men of lesser intelligence.

They talked a while longer. Booth refused to name those he might involve in the plan. Cicero also had another person to contact but kept that to himself. As the drizzle let up, he prepared to go. “Shall we meet again tomorrow evening?”

“My rooms. The National Hotel. Shall we say nine?”

“I'll be there. Here's to success.”

“And the tyrant gone to hell where he belongs,” Booth said with a smile that chilled even Cicero's dark heart.

 

Cicero loathed Washington for many reasons. Among the strongest was its large population of rootless colored people. Lincoln had turned the city into a veritable asylum of free niggers. At least they weren't permitted to ride the public cars, one of which Cicero boarded on Pennsylvania Avenue to travel to the heights of Georgetown next morning.

The rain had gone, leaving muggy air. His stand-up collar was damnably hot, but it concealed his scars, as did a pair of kid gloves. He wore a ridiculous and bulky cap of green tweed and carried a city guidebook with a red binding. Cap and book were prearranged signals.

The pleasant Georgetown campus had been abandoned by its Southern students at the start of the war. Classes were still held, though some buildings had been converted to temporary hospitals. Cicero found a bench overlooking the Aqueduct Bridge and the fortifications across the Potomac. Presently a short, stocky man dressed like a peacock came marching along the path. Cicero presumed it was the right person. Short-cropped white hair and a dueling scar had been described to him. He pretended to study the red guidebook.

Bowing, the stranger said, “Is this place taken, sir?”

“No, sir.” The man lifted the tails of his coat, seated himself, and refitted his monocle in his eye.

Cicero watched a barge move slowly downriver with its cargo of three giant mortars. “Siegel?”

“Yah, that's me. I'm usually addressed as major.”

Cicero ignored the complaint. “My name is Hiram Seth.”

“Good as any, I guess.” Siegel's English was accented, his manner brusque.

“You're German?”

“Austrian. In the Army many years.”

“And now working for Stanton's War Department. I've been told you might be open to an arrangement.”

“Depends on the arrangement. Depends on what's wanted.”

“That is not yet determined.”

“Then I guess we got to talk about payment in advance. What do the shyster lawyers call it? Retainer.”

The fish was on the hook.

“How much did you have in mind?”

 

On the third floor of the National Hotel, he found Booth disheveled and not a little drunk. The actor had a woman on his knee, a voluptuous little blonde, wearing thin cotton bloomers and a corset that barely contained her round breasts. Cicero could see part of the young lady's rosy nipples. He hardened almost painfully.

Booth waved his long cigar. “The lady's leaving. We were amusing ourselves until you arrived.” The nature of the entertainment was evident from disarrayed bedclothes in the next room. “This is Ella Turner. Say hello to Mr. Seth, Ella.” Cicero doffed his tweed cap.

“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.

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.