The Pinkerton Files Five-Book Bundle

by David Luchuk

  Thaddeus? We are slowing down. Why are we slowing down?

  Stay on him, Thaddeus!

  “Dr. Lowe has been relieved of his command, Pinkerton.”

  Baker! My God, what are you doing?

  “I am seizing this vessel.”

  What possible reason ...

  “You know the reason, Pinkerton. You are the reason.”

  Robert is pulling away. I am losing sight of my son.

  “Did you not think I would know you were communicating with Major Anderson?”

  Baker, please. This is not the time. I will explain what happened.

  “It is the time, Pinkerton. Now is the time. Bring me the note Anderson gave you. Put it in my hand or, so help me God, we will watch your boy burn.”

  * * *

  Repository Note:

  An ambulance waits downstairs. Officer Hirsch is going to meet me at the hospital. These are the first moments I have had to myself since the explosion. I was not injured but three of my staffers, an admin and two researchers, were killed. A dozen others were burned. One of them lost an eye. Another was thrown through a glass door.

  No. I won’t turn them into a list. That’s too cold.

  I have to get myself under control. How could this happen? Police want me to give a statement once I reach the hospital. What am I supposed to say? They are going to rummage through every piece of my life looking for clues. Hirsch tells me it won’t be as bad as I think. I am pretty sure it is going to be terrible. They say whoever set the charge was probably tracking me. Police figure I may have crossed paths with the bomber without realizing. They will go through everything and maybe get lucky. Maybe not.

  I have no idea what I’m going to say to my team. What do I tell their families? I am the one who travelled to New Carthage. I accepted the invitation. I was the one targeted.

  What do I say to them? Words are such feeble things.

  - Diane Larimer, Chief Archivist, United States Library of Congress

  Copyright

  The Sleepwalker and the Spy © 2014 by David Luchuk

  Published by Joe Books Inc.

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  EPub Edition May 2014 ISBN: 9781927854754

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  THE PINKERTON FILES, VOLUME 5:

  The Boatman and the Traitor

  David Luchuk

  Repository Note:

  They say we got what we deserved. If all you do is look for trouble, don’t be surprised when you find it. That message comes through clear as day in op-ed features and soapbox speeches for tv networks across the country: shame about what happened but the Library of Congress obviously had it coming.

  People I’ve known since the day I left college are in the hospital fighting for their lives. Some will not survive. Maybe it’s true that I was looking for trouble. I kept digging through the Pinkerton records in spite of all the bitterness stirred up by their release. Why didn’t I leave it alone? Maybe I liked getting people talking about the past, questioning the history we’ve come to accept. If so, it might also be true that I deserved to be targeted by the bomber.

  My staffers didn’t, though. The bomb that ripped through our office, popping windows like champagne corks and shredding wood tables as easy as loose leaf, was delivered for me. I don’t mind people saying I deserved it. Just don’t tell me the others did. Every one of those injuries, the disfigurements, the deaths, is on me.

  Officer Hirsch tells me not to think in those terms. He says it gives too much power and credit to the bomber. I suppose that’s true. Hirsch is a decent sort of cop, it turns out. I won’t say I feel safe around him. I don’t feel safe around anyone. Still, he does his best. It feels like Hirsch is the only one who’d feel the least bit bad if the bomber came back and finished me off.

  I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with myself now. Do I work? Do I hide? I am at a loss. Everything is wrecked. There’s no going back. It makes me think of Allan Pinkerton looking down at the fire in 1861. That wrecked everything, too. There is something romantic about a city on fire. People call them “great” fires for a reason. They come out of nowhere and go on for days, seemingly without explanation. They are like acts of god.

  If the Pinkertons are to be believed, the New York fire was different in that respect. Confederates snuck turbine furnaces into the city and set the place alight. It was no act of god. New York was ruined. Some believe New York might have gone on to become a sort of world capital if not for that fire. Nobody can say, I guess. The city that emerged is no beacon to the world. It is a derelict place, remarkably big but not much else.

  Today, most will tell you that President Lincoln thought Confederate informants were taking refuge in the city and, as overzealous on the home front as he was on the battlefield, ordered an attack that sparked the fire. The Pinkerton papers tell a different story. They always do.

  Allan was on board Dr. Thaddeus Lowe’s flying steam-tech laboratory, the Protocol. Lafayette Baker, Lincoln’s head of domestic security, had captured John Kennedy and was holding him on the airship, too. Robert Pinkerton launched some kind of prototype aircraft toward the fire just before Baker seized control of the Protocol. It was chaos. Kate Warne was in the rebel south, trying to solve a murder in Wilmington. Ernie Stark dug up the body of Timothy Webster and was following a slave from Shreveport to Wilmington as well. The Pinkerton men, father and son, were alone.

  How does any of this justify detonating a bomb at the Library of Congress? Hirsch has warned me against trying to draw straight lines between our work and what happened. He reminds me that, beyond the controversy that has always surrounded our project, my trip to New Carthage is the sort of thing that makes new enemies as well.

  —Diane Larimer, Chief Archivist, United States Library of Congress

  * * *

  My name is Allan Pinkerton. The date is December 8th, 1861.

  “That will do.”

  Would you like me to set the scene as well, Baker? For the record.

  “If you wish.”

  We are on the airship Protocol. New York City is being swallowed by fire. My son hovers ahead of us on a platform of steam in a flyer no sturdier than a dessert crepe. Mr. Lafayette Baker has seen fit to commandeer the Protocol from Dr. Lowe in order to interrogate me about a message he believes I received from Major Robert Anderson. He is threatening to let my son slip off the platform and fall into the fire if I do not cooperate.

  Would you say that is accurate?

  “Accurate enough.”

  I see him. Robert is not yet too far beyond. He thinks that flimsy thing can maneuver on its own. Dr. Lowe believes the same.

  “But not you.”

  Look at it. The flyer is round and almost flat, built out of woven steel. I can see the edges flapping in the wind. It will tumble from the sky. Robert will die in the fire. We can save him. There is time.

  Do you hear me, Baker? Tell your m
en to release Dr. Lowe. We have to keep the Protocol close. If he gets too far ahead, Robert will fall. There is no need.

  “I agree. Your son does not need to die.”

  Yet we are wasting time. Why am I tied to this chair? What are these metal plates you’ve positioned at the side of my head?

  “Those are magnets, powerful ones, like those on a northern railway. They are misaligned at the moment. The poles aren’t pulling against each other. If I shift them just a little, your brain will shiver inside your skull. If I line them up precisely, such as they would be on the rails, I’m not exactly sure what would happen to be frank. I am a bit curious.”

  You are a maniac. What could you possibly hope to achieve?

  “Cooperation, Pinkerton.”

  I am cooperating. My son is going to die, damn you!

  “Give me the note you received from Major Anderson.”

  I told you. It is destroyed.

  “The magnets will help you focus.”

  Baker, for pity’s sake! I will tell you everything.

  “Be quick, Pinkerton. Your boy is pulling away.”

  Listen closely, then. There will be no time to repeat. It started a month ago. You and I met for the first time along with the President and his new General at the White House.

  “I remember.”

  The discussion turned to that blasted flotilla of slave ships seized in the President’s naval blockade of the south. It was decided that the slaves would be rescued and brought north by canal. The Union army was to secure the route to Washington. You supported the idea. You also told the President that my operative Kate Warne fled south to avoid facing charges for her actions at Bull Run.

  “But that’s not quite the truth, is it?”

  No. I sent her south. In part, it was to shield her from the charges and protect her from you. It was also my intention to make her an informant inside rebel territory. It was a stupid decision on my part. I did not understand what it meant to be a spy.

  Does it make you happy to hear me say that, Baker? I thought it would be easy. Kate Warne would earn the trust of a southern banker by solving his son’s murder then become my informant in the Confederacy. I was a fool.

  “Yes.”

  As part of the plan to bring those slaves north, President Lincoln asked me to look for signs of rebel activity along the canal route. I had no idea how to go about this task. You tried to offer me advice.

  “You would have been better off listening to me.”

  Maybe. I preferred to leave your company as quick as possible. My departure was slowed by a crowd in the East Room. Most were too drunk to remember why they had been invited to the White House in the first place. That is how Harry Vinton prefers his soirees to end. I tried to avoid the scene by cutting through an adjoining office but you were waiting.

  “Do you remember what I said?”

  You told me that effective spies use leverage that appeals to them the least. They put sentiment aside and choose the foulest path. It shames me to admit it but, in a sense, I followed your advice.

  “You went to the canals.”

  Not straight away. First, I went to Chicago to see my older son, William. My work for the President was to occupy a great deal of time. William stayed in Chicago to run our Agency. He acquitted himself well. Our affairs were under control.

  One of our open cases involved a merchant sailor from New York named Jay Thayer who approached the Agency for help with a family matter. He could neither resolve it himself nor refer it to police.

  Thayer was born for the water. He spent his youth on the open seas. Trade routes between Europe, America and the southern islands were home to him. Over time, he earned a reputation for speed and reliability even in bad water.

  Thayer made enough money to outfit a ship and start his own operation. His rise reflects all the good things that are possible in modern America but, like every person who achieves a measure of success, Thayer paid a price in his personal life.

  He was close to his sister, a pretty girl named Adele. As children, they were inseparable. During his seafaring years, Thayer visited her at every opportunity. He worried when she started turning the heads of young men in the city. She wore jeweled rings and silk dresses given to her as gifts from suitors whose names she could not remember. She relished the attention.

  For a time, Thayer’s anxiety was eased. Adele fell for one of his fellow sailors, a common sort of man named Ed Henry. They were married. Thayer made it his business to ensure that Henry was a success. He knew it would benefit his dear Adele.

  Ed Henry made a good living thanks to Thayer. He bought a small home in New York and was a committed husband. In the months that followed, however, there was a change. Ed Henry spent more and more time at sea. He complained about never earning enough to satisfy Adele’s tastes. Eventually, he stopped going home altogether because he could not afford to let his earnings wane.

  Thayer cared about his sister and feared she lost her way. He sold his ship and returned to the mainland. His skills as a boatman were in high demand among shipping companies who ran the canals. It was dirty work with no prestige. He chose the love of family over the lure of commerce. It was a fine gesture from an honorable man.

  To his dismay, Thayer found the situation in New York was worse than he imagined. Adele was pregnant. The unborn baby’s father was not her husband. Adele freely admitted she was having an affair. She was in love with another man, a Manhattan hotelier named Linus Pattmore.

  Thayer was mortified. Adele drove her devoted husband away so she could give herself to a primped up society man who was, himself, married. His sister had willingly, even happily, become Linus Pattmore’s pregnant mistress. It galled Thayer to the marrow in his bones.

  Ever the dedicated brother, he abandoned every ethical impulse and paid for Adele to have an abortion and insisted she break off the affair. No sooner was this illegal procedure performed than Pattmore started visiting Adele again. Thayer demanded that it end. He begged her to recommit to her husband.

  Adele refused. She said Pattmore’s wife was gravely ill and the lovers looked forward to a new life together, a life in Washington high society no less, after that poor woman died. However, Pattmore was not a politician. He had no legitimate connections in the government. All he had was a portfolio of properties, expanding with every derelict building and far flung piece of land he purchased around New York.

  Thayer tried to make his sister understand that her lover was a fraud and would never be elected to the Senate or to Congress, or whichever he claimed. All Adele could see, sadly, was a sunny future in which she and Pattmore would no longer need to hide their romance.

  In utter despair, Thayer came to us. He asked my son William to devise some means of finding her lawful husband, Ed Henry. We were to assist in bringing him home and breaking Adele away from Linus Pattmore.

  William wanted to help but, other than the abortion, no crime had been committed. He decided that our Agency could not accept the case. It was the right decision. William was shocked when I instructed him to contact Jay Thayer and imply that we might take it on after all. I ordered him to make no assurances, only to tell Thayer that I wished to meet. When I admitted that my true aim was to press Thayer for information, William protested and even refused to comply.

  “But your boy yielded in the end.”

  Of course he did.

  I met Jay Thayer in one of the many filthy villages built for canal workers deep down in the earth near the transport channels themselves. The man traded a life on the world’s open waters for dank squalor underground.

  Almost a half century has passed since the original Erie Canal w
as built. That first experiment connected Buffalo and Albany to New York, merging the primary waterways between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes. The Erie was such a success that New York became the busiest port on the continent. This led to expansion.

  Lateral connections were built. Canals were widened to accommodate heavier traffic. The great frontier of the west opened up. If politicians had left it alone, canals would rival trains today as the primary mode of transport in America. Instead, they planned one more expansion.

  The idea was to liberate commercial barges from the meandering pace of some rivers. They wanted to make the speed of traffic uniform and controllable. Engineers could not make the canals wider so they dug deeper. Some were lowered so far that they resembled underground pipes. Pumping stations were installed at key junctures. Every channel in the network was soon capped. From a technical standpoint, it was a success.

  The flow of water inside the closed channels maintained a steady pace. Barges were redesigned to bob below the surface. They travelled in the current. The entire system was synchronized from pumping stations. The problem is that people do not want to travel in the dark, underground. The expansion destroyed passenger traffic.

  Container shipments held steady but the nature of goods shipped in the barges changed. Canals became a backbone of illegal trade. They were perfect for it. To sustain a uniform pressure inside, the entire canal system was sealed in bronze cylinders and buried under the earth. The whole operation was hidden from view.

  Towns sprung to life underground, where a generation of poor, overworked people learned to live in the half-light. What incentive did they have to report illegal activity to police? The few times anyone dared bring officers down to the canals, a quick and gruesome murder put everyone else back in line. Only the pumping station managers exerted any control over the flow of traffic. They were always happy to be bribed. The more money governments poured into the canals, the more illegal traffic they attracted. Underground villages turned into dangerous black markets.