Sahara (73 page)

“The Captain’s cabin,” he said definitely. Perlmutter nodded. “Commander Mason Tombs. From what I read of the
Texas’
audacious fight from Richmond to the Atlantic, Tombs was one tough customer.”

Pitt brushed off a tinge of fear, turned the knob, and pushed open the door. Suddenly, Perlmutter reached out and clutched Pitt’s arm. “Wait!”

Pitt looked at Perlmutter, puzzled. “Why? What are you afraid of?”

“I suspect we may find something that should remain unseen.”

“Can’t be worse than what we’ve already laid eyes on,” Giordino argued.

“What are you holding back, Julien?” Pitt demanded.

“I—I didn’t tell you what I found in Edwin Stanton’s secret papers.”

“Tell me later,” Pitt muttered impatiently. He turned from Perlmutter, shined his light through the doorway, and stepped inside.

The cabin would have seemed small and cramped by most contemporary warship standards, but ironclads were not built for long weeks at sea. During the fighting along the rivers and inlets of the Confederacy, they were seldom away from dock for more than two days at a time.

As with the other quarters, all objects and furniture that were not attached to the ship were gone. The Tuaregs, having no skills for handling tools and wrenches, had ignored any fixtures that were built in. The Captain’s cabin still retained bookshelves and a mounted but broken barometer. But for some inexplicable reason, as with the stool in the pilothouse, the Tuaregs had left behind a rocking chair.

Pitt’s light revealed two bodies, one reposed in a bunk, the other sitting as though slumbering in the rocking chair. The corpse in the bunk was lying on its side against the bulkhead naked, the position the Tuaregs had crudely shoved it in when stripping away the clothes and bed covers and mattress. A thicket of red hair still covered the head and face.

Giordino joined Pitt and closely studied the figure in the chair. Under the bright glare of the max optic light, the skin reflected a dark brown shade with the same textured leather look of Kitty Mannock’s body. It had also mummified from the dry heat of the outside desert. The body was still clothed in old-fashioned one-piece underwear.

Even in the sitting position it was evident the man had been quite tall. His face was bearded and exceedingly gaunt with very prominent ears. The eyes were closed as if he had simply drifted off to sleep, the brows thick and strangely short, stopped abruptly as if clipped at the outer edge of the eye. The hair and beard were jet black with only a sprinkling of gray.

“This guy is the spitting image of Lincoln,” Giordino remarked conversationally.

“That
is
Abraham Lincoln,” came Perlmutter’s subdued voice from the doorway. He slowly sank to the deck, his back against the bulkhead, like a whale settling to the seabed. His eyes were locked on the corpse in the rocking chair as if hypnotically fixed.

Pitt stared at Perlmutter with concern and obvious skepticism. “For a renowned historian, you’ve taken a wrong turn, haven’t you?”

Giordino knelt beside Perlmutter and offered him a drink from a water bottle. “The heat must be getting to you, big buddy.”

Perlmutter waved away the water. “God oh God, I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. But Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin McMasters Stanton,
did
reveal the truth in his secret papers.”

“What truth?” asked Pitt, curious.

He hesitated, and then his voice came almost in a whisper. “Lincoln was not shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater. That is him sitting in that rocking chair.”

63

Pitt stared at Perlmutter, incapable of absorbing the words. “Lincoln’s assassination was one of the most widely recorded events in American history. There were over a hundred witnesses in the theater. How can you say it didn’t happen?”

Perlmutter gave a slight shrug of his shoulders. “The event occurred as reported, only it was a staged deception planned and carried out by Stanton using a near look-alike actor made up to appear as Lincoln. Two days before the fake assassination, the real Lincoln was captured by the Confederates and sneaked through Union lines to Richmond where he was held hostage. This part of the story is backed up by another deathbed statement by a captain in the Confederate cavalry who led the capture.”

Pitt looked thoughtfully at Giordino, then back at Perlmutter. “This southern cavalry captain, his name by chance was Neville Brown.”

Perlmutter’s jaw dropped. “How did you know?”

“We ran into an old American prospector who was looking for the
Texas
and her gold. He told us about Brown’s story.”

Giordino looked as if he was waking from a bad dream. “We thought it was a fairy tale.”

“Believe you me,” said Perlmutter, unable to keep his eyes from the corpse, “it’s no fairy tale. The abduction plot was hatched by an aide of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in an effort to save what was left of the South. With Grant tightening the noose around Richmond and Sherman marching north to strike General Lee’s army of Virginia from the rear, the war was lost and everyone knew it. The hatred for the secessionist states in Congress was no secret. Davis and his government were certain the North would exact a terrible tribute when the Confederacy was totally defeated. The aide, whose name has been forgotten, came up with the wild proposal that by capturing Lincoln and holding him as a hostage, the South could use him as leverage to strike an advantageous deal for surrender terms.”

“Actually not a bad idea,” said Giordino, settling on the deck to take a load off his feet.

“Except for old nasty Edwin Stanton. He queered the deal.”

“He refused to be blackmailed,” said Pitt.

“That and other reasons,” Perlmutter nodded. “To Lincoln’s credit, he insisted Stanton join his cabinet as Secretary of War. He believed Stanton was the best man for the job despite the fact the man disliked Lincoln intensely, even sneering at him as the ‘original gorilla.’ Stanton saw the President’s capture as an opportunity rather than a disaster.”

“How was Lincoln abducted?” asked Pitt.

“The President was known to take a daily carriage ride through the countryside surrounding Washington most every day. A Confederate cavalry troop, dressed in Union cavalry uniforms, and led by Captain Brown, overwhelmed Lincoln’s escort during one of the outings and smuggled him across the Potomac River and into Confederate-held territory.”

Pitt was having trouble putting the pieces together. An historical event he had fervently believed as gospel was now being revealed as a fraud, and it took all his willpower to keep an open mind. “What was Stanton’s immediate reaction to Lincoln’s abduction?” he asked.

“Unfortunately for Lincoln, Stanton was the first to be notified by survivors of Lincoln’s bodyguards. He foresaw the panic and outrage if the country learned their President had been captured by the enemy. He quickly covered the disaster with a cloak of secrecy and created a cover story. Going so far as to tell Mary Todd Lincoln that her husband was on a secret mission to General Grant’s headquarters and wouldn’t return for several days.”

“Hard to believe there wasn’t a leak,” said Giordino skeptically.

“Stanton was the most feared man in Washington. If he swore you to secrecy, you’d die silent or he’d make sure you did.”

“Didn’t the situation become exposed when Davis sent word of Lincoln’s imprisonment and his demands for favorable surrender terms?”

“Stanton was shrewd. He guessed the Confederate plot a few hours after Lincoln was captured. He alerted the Union general in command of Washington’s defenses, and when Davis’ courier crossed the battle lines under a flag of truce, he was taken immediately to Stanton. Neither Vice-President Johnson, Secretary of State William Henry Seward, nor any other members of Lincoln’s cabinet were aware of what was happening. Stanton secretly replied to President Davis’ terms and soundly rejected any negotiation, suggesting that the Confederacy could do everyone a favor by drowning Lincoln in the James River.

“Davis was stunned when he received Stanton’s reply. You can imagine his dilemma. Here he sits with the Confederacy going up in flames around him. He has the leader of the entire Union in captivity. A high-ranking member of the United States government tells him they don’t care a damn, and as far as they’re concerned they can keep Lincoln. Davis suddenly began to see the very real possibility he might be hanged by the victorious Yankees. With his great plan to save the South from going down the sewer, and not about to have Lincoln’s death on his hands, he temporarily got rid of his nemesis by ordering him put on board the
Texas
as a prisoner. Davis hoped the ship would successfully run the Union navy blockade, save the treasury gold, and keep Lincoln out of Union hands as a pawn for future negotiations when calmer heads than Stanton prevailed. Unfortunately, nothing went right.”

“Stanton stages the assassination and the
Texas
vanishes with all hands and is presumed lost,” Pitt concluded.

“Yes,” Perlmutter acknowledged. “Imprisoned after the war for two years, Jefferson Davis never spoke of Lincoln’s capture for fear of Union anger and retaliation against a South struggling to rise to its feet again.”

“How did Stanton pull off the assassination?” asked Giordino.

“There is no stranger story in American history,” Perlmutter answered, “than the plot that supposedly took Lincoln’s life. The astounding reality is that Stanton hired John Wilkes Booth to direct and act in the hoax. Booth knew an actor who was close to Lincoln’s height and thin body. Stanton took General Grant into his confidence and together they gave out the story of their meeting with Lincoln that afternoon, and Grant’s turning down the invitation to go to Ford’s Theater. Stanton’s agents also drugged Mary Todd Lincoln so that by the time the fake Lincoln appeared to take her to Ford’s Theater she was too muddled to see through the substitute who was made up to look like her real husband.

“At the theater the actor acknowledged the standing applause from the audience who were just far enough away from the presidential box to not detect the bogus President. Booth did his act, actually shooting the unsuspecting actor in the back of the head before leaping to the stage. Then the poor dupe was carried across the street with a handkerchief over his face to deceive onlookers and then died in a scene directed by Stanton himself.”

“But there were witnesses at the deathbed,” protested Pitt. “Army doctors, members of his cabinet, and Lincoln’s aides.”

“The doctors were friends and agents of Stanton,” Perlmutter said wearily. “We’ll never be sure how the others were deceived. Stanton does not say.”

“And the conspiracy to kill Vice-President Johnson and Secretary of State Seward? Was that part of Stanton’s plan?”

“With them out of the way, he would have been next in line as President. But the men Booth hired bungled the job. Even so, Stanton acted somewhat like a dictator the first few weeks after Johnson took over as President. He conducted the investigation, the arrest of the conspirators, and directed a lightning-fast trial and hanging. He also spread the word across the nation that Lincoln had been murdered by agents of Jefferson Davis as a last desperate gamble of the Confederate war effort.”

“Then Stanton had Booth killed to keep him from talking as well,” Pitt surmised.

Perlmutter shook his head. “Another man was shot in the barn that burned. The autopsy and identification were cover-ups. Booth got away and lived for a number of years, eventually committing suicide in Enid, Oklahoma in 1903.”

“I read somewhere that Stanton burned Booth’s diary,” said Pitt.

“That’s true,” replied Perlmutter. “The damage was done. Stanton had inflamed public opinion against the beaten Confederacy. Lincoln’s plans to help the South back on its feet were buried with his double in a grave in Springfield, Illinois.”

“This mummy in the rocking chair,” whispered Giordino, staring in rigid awe, “sitting here in the remains of a Confederate warship covered by a sand dune in the middle of the Sahara Desert is truly Abraham Lincoln?”

“I’m positive of it,” answered Perlmutter. “An anatomic examination will prove his identity without doubt. In fact, if you’ll recall, grave robbers broke into his tomb but were caught before they could steal the body. What was not revealed but quickly concealed was that the officials who prepared the body for reinterment discovered they had a substitute on their hands. Word came down from Washington ordering them to keep quiet and to fix it so the grave could never be opened again. A hundred tons of concrete were poured over the coffins of Lincoln and his son Tad to prevent future ghouls from desecrating the grave, so they said. But the real truth was to bury all evidence of the crime.”

“You realize what this means,” Pitt asked Perlmutter, “don’t you?”

“Do I realize what
what
means?” he muttered dumbly.

“We are about to alter the past,” Pitt explained. “Once we announce what we’ve found here, the most tragic event in United States history will be irrevocably rewritten.”

Perlmutter stared at Pitt in near horror. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Abraham Lincoln is revered as a saint as well as a humble man in American folklore, history books, poems, and novels. The assassination made him a martyr to be revered through the centuries. If we expose Stanton’s fake assassination of him, his image will be shattered, and Americans will be the poorer for it.”

Pitt looked very, very tired, but his face was set and his eyes bright and alive. “No man was admired more for his honesty than Abraham Lincoln. His moral principles and compassion were second to no man. To have died under such deceitful and unconscionable circumstances was against everything he stood for. His remains deserve an honest burial. I have to believe he would have wanted the future generations of the people he served so faithfully to know the truth.”

“I’m with you,” Giordino affirmed steadily. “I’ll be honored to stand next to you when the curtain goes up.”

“There will be a negative uproar,” Perlmutter gasped as if a pair of hands were around his windpipe. “Good God, Dirk, can’t you see? This is a subject best left unknown. The nation must never know.”