The Lincoln Conspiracy

by Timothy L. O'Brien

  “But don’t pretend you don’t like it.”

  “Ha! Y’all here with a rarity, I see. A mighty tall rarity.”

  Lexington stepped back and eyed Temple, drawing in his cane, clothing, and bearing in a quick, wary sweep.

  “I’ve come to ask a favor,” Augustus said.

  He leaned forward and whispered into Lexington’s ear; as Lexington nodded, he told him about the past few days, about Temple, and about the diaries that Temple brought with him. The diaries couldn’t be opened: people would die if they were. The diaries couldn’t be lost: people would go unpunished if they were. And the diaries couldn’t stay in one place for more than a day or two: people might find them otherwise.

  Lexington would have to shepherd the satchel containing the diaries around the District, in and out of different alley-houses, for at least a week or two. He could use his grandsons as messengers; if Augustus needed the packages, he would get word to Tiber Island. Willow Tree Alley would be one of the safest places for them, but Lexington could exercise his own judgment.

  “There’s money in it for you,” Augustus said.

  “Money’s good. But I be set to do it for y’all free, ya know that.”

  “You’ll still get greenbacks. Can we use one of the houses here for an hour or so?”

  “Sure ’nough.”

  With Lexington leading the way, Augustus and Temple proceeded down the alley. One shack looked like a small corner store; two others housed a tinsmith and a blacksmith. As they got farther along, some doors began opening behind them. More children appeared, huddling close to their mothers’ skirts. Next to a cabin marked “Mt. Ararat Baptist Church” hung a small sign saying “Where Will You Spend Eternity?” A few steps beyond was another shed, with a crude banner hung above the door: “St. Matthew’s Overcoming Church.” Barrels and buckets lined the alley, collecting rainwater.

  Lexington guided them into a cabin near the far end of the alley. Temple stooped to enter it, and once inside he had to wait while his eyes adjusted to the dim of the windowless interior. He couldn’t stand at his full height inside, and he lowered himself onto one of two rickety chairs set next to a small wooden table and stretched his legs. Augustus joined him and asked Lexington to leave the door ajar so they had light to read by.

  “ ’Fore ya start your work, I have a thing I want ya to read fer us,” Lexington said. “Will ya?”

  “Of course.”

  Lexington was only gone a moment. When he came back, he had a newspaper in his hands. There was an article in the Washington Evening Star that day that everyone in the alleys was buzzing about, Lexington said. He couldn’t read it himself and he handed it to Augustus, who quickly scanned it.

  “It’s an editorial,” Augustus said.

  “Meanin’?”

  “It’s what the people running the paper think about things in the District and in the Union. They share their ponderings.”

  “So read me what I need to know,” Lexington said.

  As he had at Nail’s, Augustus read aloud: “ ‘While willing to grant the Negro every right due him before the law, we are not prepared to make a farce of the right of suffrage, by giving it to an ignorant mass of Negroes, who know no more how to exercise it than the cattle in the field they so lately herded with.’ ”

  “That sums it?” Lexington asked.

  “Sums it.”

  “Lordy, likin’ us to cows. Suffrage is the vote?”

  “It’s the vote. It will happen—step by step, Lexington,” said Augustus. “We’ve got the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the bureau has the army behind it, and the bureau and the army are going to make sure that Negroes get their land, their schools, and their hospitals.”

  “But no votes? Readin’ and medicines and forty acres and a mule, but no vote? Y’all younger than this old man, son. I’d like the vote before I pass, but I ain’t plannin’ on seein’ no vote.”

  “The vote will only come if free men keep their voices high and change the Constitution. The war and Mr. Lincoln didn’t get us the vote, so we’ll have to do that together.”

  “Amen,” said Lexington.

  “Amen,” Augustus said.

  Temple thumped the table in agreement, and Lexington took the Evening Star from Augustus and backed out of the shack.

  “I’ll make sure nobody bothers y’all,” he said.

  Temple pulled the two diaries from the satchel. Temple put Mrs. Lincoln’s pages aside and flipped quickly through the Booth papers, stopping at about a dozen pages at the very end. He stared down at one page for nearly a minute, then began pulling at it, attempting to tear it from the journal.

  “You can’t do that, Temple,” snapped Augustus. “You can’t take it apart yet.”

  “I’ll need to keep some of these pages with me before we leave these journals here. There are pages here that are odd, that read differently to me at Nail’s. I didn’t want to talk about it there, but here we are.”

  “Why didn’t you speak about it there?”

  “Because, as Nail suspects—and I agree—it’s information that will get people killed. It’s better that fewer know about the contents, particularly these final dozen pages or so. Some of it is coded, and the last page contains a cipher.”

  “You still can’t tear it apart. You know that. It’s part of a record, some proof of what’s happened. It has to stay whole.”

  “I can’t remember all of it on my own.”

  “I can help. Share it with me. Share it with Fiona.”

  “No, that won’t do,” Temple said, bolting up from his chair and banging his head against the ceiling. “This”—Temple flapped the journal above his head—“will kill people. They’ve already got Booth’s accomplices and the Surratt woman in jail. There was a throat slit at the B&O over this. It can happen that quickly—to you and to Fiona, too—and I’d rather not bear witness to that, thank you.”

  “But I can make that decision on my own,” Augustus said. “I think Fiona will want to decide for herself as well. And you have straw flakes and bits of dirt on your shoulders from your collision with the ceiling.”

  “I don’t want Fiona to have to make that decision.”

  “She’ll tell you that it’s her choice. But I’ll leave that discussion for the two of you. Brush your shoulders clean and read what you have, Temple. I want to know.”

  Temple sat down, straightening his bad leg and whisking off his shoulders as he resettled, and then thumbed again through Booth’s journal. He stopped in the back, where a series of about a dozen telegrams, clipped down in thin strips from their original sizes, lay pasted to the pages; he showed the first to Augustus.

  March 4, 1865

  From: BAKBWTV

  To: MVVXUJT

  FHVBS NU A ZBAM WYF DQU IG ZAKSCSCL. Q NY FFB SQOIZN MNU WCSURMNX. HFBGJU TW EUCYWCSF WPRZ YFE VFXE BLDAED.

  “You said you wanted to read it,” Temple said, the corners of his mouth lifting into a slight smile.

  “And so I can’t.”

  “All of them are encrypted like this. Except for the last three. Booth penciled translations in plain English above the last three messages. Have a look at those.”

  Temple handed Augustus the journal, opened to the first decoded telegram. In addition to the heavy air in the shack there was little light, and Augustus had to tilt the journal toward the door to read the pages.

  April 5, 1865

  From: Patriot

  To: Avenger

  Maestro sends funds. Goliath and others will join you. Wise Man and Drinker should be taken with Tyrant.

  April 11, 1865

  From: Patriot

  To: Avenger

  You will be allowed to pass at Navy Yard Bridge. Refuge at Tavern.

  April 14, 1865

  From: Patriot

  To: Avenger

  It is Ford’s. Praetorians send a Parker to guard Tyrant. He will abandon the door or let you pass.

  Tucked behind the last page and the back cover of the journal
was a neatly folded piece of paper, with several red flecks upon it that Augustus took to be blood. The spots could have just as well been ink or tea stains, but Augustus was content, minding the bearer, to judge them otherwise.

  He pulled the page out and spread it in front of him. It was a table of letters: A to Z horizontally across its top, A to Z vertically down its left side. The alphabet repeated itself again in each row and column inside the table—though the sequence inside began with whatever letter marked the column or row.

  “It’s called a Vigenère. It’s a ciphering table,” Temple said. “The Confederate army and Secesh spies used these. Pint’s familiar with the tables and codes.”

  “How does Pint know them?”

  Temple looked beyond Augustus, at the shaft of light spilling through the doorway. Fiona didn’t know Pint’s other life, either. Cipher for certain, Declan “Pint” Ramsey. As far as Fiona and Augustus knew, Pint poured beer at Jimmy Scanlon’s saloon in Foggy Bottom each evening, tips in the jar, cash in the pocket, off to home, thank you very much. But where Pint actually spent most of his time was in the telegraph office on the second floor of the War Department, where he monitored the lines for the Union and unscrambled Confederate messages after the army intercepted them.

  “Pint’s a puzzler,” Temple said. “It’s one of his talents. Did you know he had a deaf sister?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “He worked out his own signs with her when they were children, and that’s how they spoke, signing with their own language. I think words and letters just fluttered through his head after that, like a wordsmith. A man full of surprises.”

  “So, this table: Booth used it to decrypt the telegrams?”

  “It would appear. They depend on a key word or phrase to loosen the secrets of an encoded message. Though Booth has given us ample guidance from the grave, I’m happy to say. Someone better versed than I in the mechanics of code breaking can help us along further; that’s what has me thinking on Pint. But we have a start of our own right here: if the first message corresponds with the latter, then BAKBWTV converts to ‘Patriot,’ a code name for one of our many unknowns, and MVVXUJT converts to ‘Avenger,’ whom we can, with some confidence, assume to be Booth. I would also hazard that ‘Tyrant’ was President Lincoln. We can work backward from the translations of Avenger and Patriot to unravel the cipher.”

  Augustus understood more clearly now. The telegrams in Booth’s diary could all be unscrambled, and names and associations would begin to line up. Everyone in the District would want the tell-all, some for bad purpose, some for control, some for vengeance, some for a bit of each of those things.

  “I’m anticipating your question,” Temple said.

  “Who got this journal off Booth’s body to begin with, and how did it get out into the open?”

  “And another question yet?”

  “How and why did it come to be bundled with Mrs. Lincoln’s diary?”

  “So you’ve configured our mission and the questions are spread before us. We only need to knit the elements together and …”

  Temple’s voice trailed off and he stopped speaking. The pain in his leg was flaring again and his head hurt. He rubbed his brow and, leaving Augustus behind, slipped away to words.

  All folks who pretend to religion and grace

  Allow there’s a hell, but dispute of the place:

  But, if hell may by logical rules be defined,

  The place of the damned: I’ll tell you, my mind.

  No, that wasn’t it. It wasn’t the tricks of his imagination or his past that caused his head to throb and his leg to ache. It was spun up by Booth’s telegrams, and by the swamp into which he was dragging Fiona and Augustus. He knitted his fingers behind his head and began rocking slowly. He wanted to escape into a deck of cards or a tumble of dice. Fiona would have it out with him at some point, want to know why he’d courted trouble by meeting with Pint at the B&O. He could see her now, her finger wagging and her voice sharp, taking him to task for selling plunder to bankroll his gambling. “The money serves its purpose. Then I don’t take any of ours or my pay to gamble,” he would argue. “That’s the beauty.” She would have none of it, not a word. Stealing is stealing, she would say.

  “Temple?”

  He let his fingers drop from his brow and looked at Augustus, who was leaning toward him and searching his face.

  “Temple?” he asked again. “You still with me?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Temple slipped the Vigenère table into his pocket, stared at the translated messages, and then snapped the diary shut. After rebundling it, he tied it together with Mrs. Lincoln’s diary and handed the package to Augustus.

  “Will you call Lexington?” Temple asked. “We need to send our treasures into the alleys.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE VAPORS

  Fiona hitched her bag higher on her shoulder and resisted walking too briskly. After all, a reflection in a shop window and a looming slab with sunbeams bouncing off its hat did not, necessarily, a predator make.

  Then again, of course it did.

  I should have stayed in Alexander’s studio and waited there. Temple could have found me. But that’s not our plan. We meet at the Castle. But slow down, now. It’s midday and the streets are populated. I could just wheel on him, give him some outright jesse, and attract a crowd. But he knows his way around his tasks and he’ll divert. Noise won’t deter him. He’ll disappear and then circle back to me again. Our boardinghouse is probably no longer safe, either, and I can’t be on the streets alone after the sun sets. Only Pennsylvania between the Capitol and the President’s House is lighted by gas lamps—it will be shadow and peril elsewhere at dusk.

  Fiona kept on a forward path along Pennsylvania. The Willard wasn’t far away, but that was where Pinkerton kept his rooms. An easy solution wasn’t at hand. About twenty yards ahead, a carriage pulled out of an alley near the Willard and stopped. A driver began loading bags onto the back of it; probably a hotel guest. Fiona stepped off the narrow sidewalk onto Pennsylvania’s cobblestones and walked around the horses. As she turned back to the sidewalk, she glanced over her shoulder. Her man was no longer behind her. A conundrum.

  She entered the Willard, which was buzzing, as always, with activity. Only men, though, walked freely around the lobby. There were other women there, but they were accompanied by men, most likely their husbands. Fiona looked carefully at two or three of them, wondering if in fact they were adventuresses rather than wives, and decided that they most certainly must be wives—the Willard wouldn’t allow women of ill repute to parade in its lobby lest its reputation become sullied. There were no other unescorted women there, and as she continued to scan the room, Fiona realized that she, too, must be drawing attention, and not only from the hotel’s patrons and visitors. Her eyes moved across the faces in the room and the tendrils of cigar smoke lacing the air until she found the concierge’s desk. A lean, bald man with extravagant whiskers on either side of his jaw stared at her, assessing.

  She nodded in his direction, refusing to show any unease. He slipped out from behind his desk and approached her.

  “Madam.”

  “Sir.”

  “May I be of service in any way?”

  “None whatsoever, thank you. I’m awaiting my husband.”

  “I trust he’s on his way or a guest, ma’am?”

  “On his way. I’m most grateful for your courtesies.”

  The concierge returned to his post behind an ornate desk the size of a wagon. He sorted through letters and telegrams but didn’t sit down, alternately gazing at the envelopes in his hands and keeping Fiona in sight. She kept her eyes on the front doors, waiting for her pursuer to push through them. The pendulum in an ornate wooden clock hanging on the wall above her head swung back and forth as the seconds passed. Expensive German clocks were appearing in all of the District’s finest homes and public places, but the Gustav Becker in the Willard was the most talked ab
out. Cherubs were carved into the casing around its face, and its pendulum was a departure—instead of a brass sphere hanging from a wooden rail, the pendulum’s bottom featured two more cherubs, one riding a lion and another playing a flute. “Mother and Child” was inscribed on a porcelain insert across the front of the pendulum. Fiona found herself wondering again about when she and Temple would have a child of their own. She spoke of the topic more freely and easily than he, and they simply never spoke about it quite enough. That would have to change, she thought.

  “Madam?”

  The concierge had returned.

  “Your husband will be arriving soon?”

  “Oh, yes. Any minute,” Fiona responded, trying to consider what she might do when she returned to the street. “Sir, may I ask for an indulgence, please?”

  “That will surely depend on its nature, ma’am.”

  “The heat today bears down upon me. Might you spare two kerchiefs for me? I’d be much obliged.”

  He shuffled wearily back to his desk, sliding open various drawers until he found some handkerchiefs. Fiona pulled one of the glass vials from her bag and transferred it into the small purse hanging from her left wrist, nodding in gratitude at the concierge when he returned. She put one of the kerchiefs into her bag and mopped her forehead with the other.

  “My thanks.”

  “Of course, madam.”

  Fiona left the lobby and returned to the street, the concierge on her heels.

  “Your husband has not arrived?”

  “He has not.”

  “Unfortunate. Then I trust we won’t enjoy your company again in our lobby.”

  “Sir, do you consider me an adventuress?”

  The concierge went pale.

  “Madam?”

  “A hooker? Do you?”

  “No, ma’am, I only—”

  “Fine, then,” Fiona said. “Call me a carriage. My husband is obviously misplaced and I must run to collect him. And we will return to the Willard together, I assure you. My husband will be pleased to make your acquaintance.”