The Lincoln Conspiracy (23 page)

“There could have been other reasons they decided against kidnapping him,” Augustus said. “Perhaps they needed President Lincoln out of the way entirely.”

“So we assume that ‘Avenger’ is Booth and ‘Tyrant’ is Lincoln?” Nail asked.

“Assuredly they are.”

“ ‘Patriot’?”

“Not a notion,” said Augustus.

“ ‘Goliath’?”

“Lewis Powell,” said Temple.

“How do you know?”

“Alexander Gardner told me that Baker and others referred to him that way, because of his size,” Temple said. “And Powell attacked Seward the night Lincoln was assassinated, so—”

“So ‘Wise Man’ is the secretary of state.”

“Yes. And I imagine ‘Drinker’ is Andrew Johnson.”

“So the night of the assassination they targeted the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state.”

“But they don’t appear to have Edwin Stanton, the war secretary, on their list,” said Temple. “Why not?”

“Is he ‘Maestro’?”

“Perhaps. Though elsewhere in the diary Booth mentions ‘Lord War,’ which may be Stanton. I’m unsure.”

“Some of the rest of this is clear. On the night of the murder, Booth escaped from the District and into Maryland on the Navy
Yard Bridge; the papers said the Union soldiers guarding the bridge didn’t stop him. The papers also said that the Surratt family had a tavern in Maryland that Booth may have been aiming for, so the April eleventh telegram isn’t too difficult.”

“The April fourteenth telegram I understand, too. The Metropolitan Police Department is, I’m sure, the ‘Praetorians,’ ” Temple said. “They sent one of ours, John Parker, to guard the door outside Lincoln’s box at Ford’s. I know Parker. He’s a drinker, loose with his gun. He left the president unprotected at Ford’s so he could go find a damn drink. Booth got into the box through Parker’s door, and the MPD brought Parker up on charges of neglect of duty. Someone got the case dismissed.”

Augustus stared at his stove, which was secured with thick coils of rope in the back of a wagon. Then he squatted down next to Temple and Nail and tapped his finger on the March 4 telegram.

“Someone sent Booth money so he could stay at the National Hotel. And look, it doesn’t say ‘kill Tyrant.’ It says ‘when you have Tyrant,’ ” Augustus said. “In March it looks like they weren’t contemplating an assassination. It looks as if they wanted to kidnap Mr. Lincoln and hide him in Richmond. Something changed their minds between March fourth and April fourteenth.”

“Reality probably changed their minds,” Nail said. “Stealing the president like a sack of potatoes is a mite bit of a chore.”

“That could be true.”

“Out of the way of what?”

“I don’t know.”

The three men sat back down on the ground, and Temple handed the pile of telegrams back to Augustus.

“We need to know who ‘Patriot’ and ‘Maestro’ are,” said Temple. “We find them, we find everything. There are more telegrams for Augustus to unlock, but that will have to wait because he has an appointment.”

“And you?” Nail asked. “Where are you bound for?”

“You mean ‘we,’ ” Temple replied. “This evening, you and I are going to escort Fiona to the B&O so she can join Mrs. Lincoln on her six p.m. train to Chicago.”

F
IONA ARRIVED AT
the B&O at five-thirty. Though the station wasn’t far from Swampdoodle, Temple had put her in a carriage that traced a circular route across G Street and up Massachusetts, then on K back over to New Jersey and down to the B&O. No use anyone knowing where she was coming from, he told her before he kissed her, placed a wad of greenbacks in her bag, and helped her into the carriage.

The B&O was as busy as Fiona had ever seen it, even during the height of the war. Travelers were arriving from all points for the Grand Review, and each of the station’s three tracks had a train on it. For all of the commotion, Mrs. Lincoln waited almost unnoticed with her two sons—a tiny, fidgeting woman slipping the bonds of a city about to celebrate the end of a war that had martyred her husband and left her isolated, adrift, and no longer tolerated.

Lizzy spotted Fiona and waved, walking forward to help her with her bag.

“Mr. Robert is angry with his mother for letting you join us,” she said to Fiona. “He said our traveling party is big enough as it is. But Mrs. Lincoln hushed him and told him there was plenty of room on their train and that you and I were the closest of friends.”

“I’m grateful, Lizzy, and our train is undeniably magnificent.”

Abutting the platform were Mrs. Lincoln’s private cars, a pair of long, black, gleaming boxes atop sixteen iron wheels. Gold lettering on each of the cars’ sides announced them as the Pullman Pioneer, and black bunting hung from the rows of rectangular windows that wrapped the upper third of the cars. The bunting was a remnant from the Pioneer’s only previous run, ferrying President Lincoln and his casket from Chicago to Springfield after his funeral train arrived from Washington. Now, at Mrs. Lincoln’s request, and keen for the publicity that would accompany her journey, George Pullman had
sent the Pioneer across the country from Chicago to bring the president’s widow back home, too.

Fiona, like everyone else in the District, had followed Mr. Pullman’s new company with interest. He was said to be building a fleet of elegant sleeper cars that would make rail travel the most modern of modern contrivances. The Pioneer alone cost $20,000 to build, almost seven times more than competitors’ sleepers; it had plush lounge chairs, high ceilings with ventilation, crystal chandeliers, beveled mirrors, etched glass, and dining service in its parlor car, while washrooms, linen closets, and wide, soft beds carved from cherry-wood graced the sleeper car.

A twenty-five-ton steam engine was separated from the Pioneer’s cars by a wide tender piled high with chunks of firewood. A sweeping triangular cowcatcher turned the front of the engine into a massive, imperious arrow, and the locomotive’s boiler was topped off with a two-foot oil-fueled headlight and a five-foot metal smokestack leaking a hazy stream of white vapor from its bonnet as the stoker opened his blower to keep the idling train’s fire hot. At peak speed, the Pioneer could travel faster than twenty miles an hour. Even with stops to refuel or take on new passengers, it could sprint to Chicago from Washington in only fifty-four hours—a pace that boggled the imagination.

As the baggage masters loaded Mrs. Lincoln’s trunks onto the train, she waved Fiona over with a series of quick flaps of her hand.

“Mrs. McFadden, these are my sons, Robert and Tad.”

Robert Lincoln held out his hand, barely acknowledging Fiona’s presence. Taking after his mother in stature and looks, he was slight and had fine features and eyes. A light sheen of macassar kept his hair pressed against his head, in the European fashion, and he had a delicate, neatly trimmed moustache. Like his mother, he was aloof.

“Mother, Mr. Pinkerton was to be here this evening to see us off,” Robert said. “Have you seen him?”

Mrs. Lincoln simply shook her head in response, and Robert, after bowing slightly to Fiona, climbed aboard the train. For his part,
Tad, the twelve-year-old, held out a bag full of apples to Fiona, and she reached in and took one.

“Thank you so much, Tad,” Fiona said. “Can you tell me how you got your wonderful name?”

“My father gave it to me when I was a baby. He said that my head was so large atop my little body that I looked like a tadpole! My real name is Thomas.”

“Which name do you prefer?”

“I prefer Tad because it came from my father and he made me laugh.”

Mrs. Lincoln was looking on blankly, barely aware of the conversation or any of the people around her. Lizzy helped Tad onto the train and then turned back to help Mrs. Lincoln with a small bag she was carrying herself.

“I am traveling efficiently today,” the widow said. “I sent fifty-five boxes ahead to Chicago to T. B. Bryan’s residence on Twenty-second Street. American Express handled the shipment for me, without a charge. Mr. Pullman is letting us journey to Illinois at his expense as well. You see, vendors are honored to make a sale with me, and I make it my practice never to impose upon their good wishes by paying.”

The train’s engineer rang the Pioneer’s bell and one of the baggage men approached Mrs. Lincoln.

“All aboard, Madame President.”

“It is the night before a commemoration of a war my husband prosecuted, and there is no one here to see me off but my family and a baggage man,” the widow said. “I will not miss Washington.”

Fiona pulled Mrs. Lincoln’s diary from her bag and gave it to her before they boarded. The widow smoothed the brown wrapping paper covering the diary and then took Lizzy’s hand to board the Pioneer. Fiona followed them up, and several minutes later the whistle blew as the train pulled away, its wheels and pistons starting to turn in rushed, breathy whooshes. Temple and Nail stepped forward from the shadows beneath one of the overhangs at the end of the
platform and watched it slip past. Temple lifted his cane to Fiona, who gave him a small, surreptitious wave from her window.

“Nail,” said Temple, “the greenbacks you gave me. They’re authentic?”

“Some is and some isn’t. I mixed it up.”

“How can I tell the difference?”

“If you can’t sort them out, Temple, then why fill your head with ruminations?”

“You jumbled them on purpose so I wouldn’t give them back to you.”

“Perish the thought.”

A
FTER
S
OJOURNER HAD
taken Augustus’s package to Tiber Island, she delivered the messages that Temple had given her. The first went to the furry, bad-tempered photographer who always, always cursed a storm, heaven forgive him. He met her in front of his studio and also asked her to convey a note of his own to Temple. The second message Sojourner had to pass on was for Mary Ann Hall at her “dirty li’l establishment” on Maryland Avenue—and Sojourner intended to have a word with Temple later about him asking her to tote notes to a cathouse. Lordy.

P
INKERTON HAD TO
cross the Long Bridge from Washington into Virginia in order to get to the Marshall House in Alexandria, and the journey was a powerful test of his patience. The bridge itself was a mile long and three carriages wide, and on the Virginia side the Army of the Tennessee had pitched camp to await its triumphant march into the District on Wednesday.

Beyond that was a toll road that would take him another eight miles or so—past swamps, ravines, and hillocks peppered with stunted pines and under the Cumberland Canal viaduct—to Alexandria. Normally he could get there in one to two hours depending on the condition of the roads. Today, with the Long Bridge stuffed with wagons, horses, and pedestrians swarming the District to attend
the parades, his carriage moved at a crawl, and he had given himself more than three hours to travel so as not to miss his parley.

Three hours was raw sacrifice. Among their many disciplines, the Pinkertons functioned on proper time management. It was, as Pinkerton himself made sure to invoke time and again in tutorials he gave to his staff, the bedrock of their organization. A minute wasted could never be recaptured. Yet here he was, pulled along by a promise and a note into offering up the better part of an afternoon. Patriotism was a worthy end, too, however, and Pinkerton and his staff were Union men through and through. His day and his time lumbering along to Virginia could both be redeemed if he retrieved at the Marshall House what he needed.

As he entered Alexandria, Pinkerton found the town pleasing. It was orderly, industrious, and tightly controlled, as every good town should be. It had its houses surrounded by fine gardens, its stores in squat brick buildings, and its churches green with ivy on almost every square, and warehouses and wharves laced its riverfront. A town that once had proudly displayed secession flags from its custom house and its homes was now little more than a military outpost fortified with Union cannon.

The Marshall House was handsome, if modest: three stories and an attic encased in red brick. Pinkerton entered and inquired after McFadden. Yet another note awaited him, and he scanned it before crumpling it into a ball and rushing back into the street. As the note instructed, he made his way to a green carriage at the curb about a block up from the hotel. A woman’s hand dangled from the window, a scarlet kerchief ringed in white lace hanging from her fingertips, just as the note had said.

“You’ve stolen something that belongs to me,” Pinkerton said to the woman inside, quickly assessing her clothing, her carriage, and the unusual cosmetics that gave her lips and cheeks a deep red glow—a glow that most sensible or discreet women in Washington who shunned the use of face paints would label as “forward.”

“You should join me in my carriage because the town of
Alexandria—wait, I’m being unfair—because the gentlemen monitoring the entrances to most of the fine establishments here won’t permit a woman entry if she’s without a man,” Mary Ann Hall said.

Pinkerton leaned into the carriage’s window, seething. His hours had been squandered after all, and he was forced to waste them on a painted lady. He could have slipped into a full fury, but that would have meant submitting to his emotions. He was a modern man and a student of discipline, and he chose instead to alight upon a proper strategy and pursue the information he needed.

He stepped away from the carriage, adjusted his jacket, and drew a long and calming breath. The woman observed him, amused. He paid her no heed and returned to the carriage, injecting just enough force into his demands to convey that he meant to control the situation, but would do so as a gentleman.

“Tell me about the telegram you sent me from here, and about the diaries that McFadden jayhawked,” he said.

“I don’t know a thing about diaries, Mr. Pinkerton. And I didn’t send you a telegram from here.”

“You most assuredly did. Who else would know to meet me here for this particular game and at this particular hour?”

“Temple McFadden, of course. He directed me to tell you that he sent the telegram and that he asked me to meet you here to—”

“To try to seduce me?”