The Crescent Spy

by Michael Wallace

  “Allan Pinkerton,” the bearded man said.

  Pinkerton! Head of the famous private-detective force, who had helped smuggle Lincoln through the hostile secessionists in Maryland before the inauguration and was now reputed to be organizing a secret service to root out spies and purge Washington of secessionists.

  Under other circumstances, Josephine would have relished the opportunity to meet the man. She could test her charms, see if she could get him to spill information as willingly as she’d managed with the generals of the two armies. So many interesting stories to write if she could loosen his tongue.

  But under the present circumstances, the name filled her with terror. She was already rattled and only just managed to keep her composure.

  “And how can I help you, Mr. Pinkerton?”

  Pinkerton glanced at the gathering crowd of people. The yellow-toothed fellow from the National Republican was scribbling furiously in a notebook.

  “You can come with us quietly,” Pinkerton said. “I would prefer not to have a disturbance.”

  “As you can imagine, I am disinclined to follow strange men who demand my cooperation without explanation. So I ask you, sir, where would you have me go?”

  “If you come quietly, no harm will befall you.”

  “Listen to me, I—”

  “But if you cause trouble,” he interrupted, eyes narrowing, “I will arrest you as a traitor and see you hanged.”

  To Josephine’s horror, Pinkerton didn’t take her back to his offices near the White House, but instead marched her toward the canal via B Street. This area of low-slung, rickety buildings was sometimes known as Rum Row. It reeked of outhouses and garbage, except when the wind shifted and brought over the stink of the fish market on Fifteenth Street.

  A few Cyprians—as the papers delicately called whores—stood on their stoops smoking and watching with interest. One woman with red-dyed hair and an inch of face paint made Josephine a sneering offer of employment. Then the woman spotted the rabble following the detectives and their prisoner and started making offers of a different kind.

  Pinkerton gave a disgusted snort, and this offered Josephine an opening.

  “Please, Mr. Pinkerton, could we not take another route? Perhaps to your office to discuss your concerns in a reasonable way?”

  He shot her a withering look. “I know what you did in Virginia. If you don’t care to be treated as a woman plying her trade, you should have chosen a more virtuous path in life.”

  “None of it is true.” She staggered forward as he jabbed her with an elbow to get her to speed up. “Please, could we find a place to talk?”

  They passed two gambling houses and Miss Izzy’s Hotel—another notorious whorehouse—and then finally emerged into the open air near the canal. The air was even worse here, as the sluggish waters of the canal badly needed rain to flush out the garbage and human waste floating in the green, scummy water. She put a hand over her mouth until they’d crossed the canal and passed the sea of tents and milling soldiers encamped around the stumpy, unfinished Washington Monument. Several hundred yards up toward the Capitol lay the Smithsonian Institution, which loomed like a castle of red Seneca sandstone over another large encampment.

  Pinkerton didn’t take her to the Long Bridge, as she guessed. She’d expected him to dump her in Alexandria or Arlington on the Virginia side of the river, but that was Union-controlled territory, so perhaps he figured she would simply wait there until things quieted down and slip back into the city. That had been her own hope, once she confirmed his implacable insistence that she be expelled from Washington.

  But instead, he kept her marching south for block after block, until they reached the arsenal on the spit of land where the Potomac met the Anacostia River.

  Pinkerton stopped before the arsenal gates and said to his fellow agent, “I’ll tell the president you’re off with her. Send me a courier when it’s done.”

  “When what’s done?” Josephine asked.

  Pinkerton ignored her and turned around to go back the way they’d come, pushing past the rabble, now grown to a dozen men. That left Josephine with the young, broad-shouldered Pinkerton agent with the thick mustache. She sized him up and decided to try again.

  “I am sorry, we haven’t met, Mr.—”

  “Franklin Gray.”

  “Gray, that’s another Scottish name. But I don’t hear an accent. Did your parents come over, then? Or has your family been here since the Revolution?”

  She was hoping to draw him out, but he gave her a hard look and turned away. He showed the soldiers at the arsenal gates some sort of pass, and the men let them in. The rabble, however, was turned back with a good deal of grumbling. A couple were scribbling in notepads, and one man shouted a question at her that she didn’t quite catch but wouldn’t have answered if she had.

  Dozens of troops guarded the arsenal, and guard towers bristled along the river. Row after row of newly cast cannons lined up waiting to be finished and then fitted onto gun carriages. They all pointed toward the river, as if already preparing to blast their way into Virginia.

  After crossing the arsenal grounds, Gray showed his pass again, this time to one of the sentries who patrolled the shoreline. The man ran off to fetch a boat. Josephine asked if they might wait in the shade instead of under the sun. Gray consented, and they retreated to the shade of a tree filled with buzzing cicadas.

  She made another attempt. “I am a newspaper writer, Mr. Gray. Naturally, I used feminine charms to get close to the rebel officers—I can play the coquette when I must. But I did not betray our secrets. I’m a patriot, like you.”

  Gray lit a cigarette. “You are a spy and a traitor. If I had my way, you’d be hung. Count yourself fortunate that Mr. Pinkerton has a soft spot for women.”

  “What evidence do you have that I’m a spy?” she persisted. “Because of what you read in the Standard? They’re our enemies, you know. You can’t trust those scoundrels.”

  “Be quiet, I’m weary of your company.”

  She fell silent. The air grew hotter and hotter, and trickles of perspiration ran down her back and dampened her armpits. At last the soldier returned, this time with four of his fellows, carrying a rowboat between them.

  They heaved the boat halfway into the water, where one of the men held it against the current so it wouldn’t drift off.

  “Go on, then,” Gray told Josephine, who was eying the rowboat doubtfully. “Get in.”

  “Don’t tell me I’m supposed to row across by myself.”

  “I wish it were so. Indeed, I’d send you halfway out and let the guns of the fort sink you like a Confederate raider.” He shook his head. “Mr. Pinkerton’s orders are to take you to Manassas under white flag and trade you for one of our colonels taken in the battle.”

  “Nobody will trade for me for a colonel. I told you, I’m not a spy. The rebs wouldn’t give you two cents.”

  Gray smiled. “Mr. Pinkerton telegraphed Richmond this morning. They agreed at once to the trade.”

  “They did?”

  The only way it could be true would be if the Confederates somehow thought she’d betrayed them as well. In that case, she’d be trading humiliation in Washington for a jail cell in Richmond.

  One of the soldiers held out a hand to help Josephine into the boat. She folded her arms and clenched her jaw.

  Gray drew his gun. “Get in that boat or by God I’ll be trading your dead body to the rebs.”

  Josephine gave it a moment of thought. She couldn’t let him take her to Manassas to face angry accusations from Beauregard’s staff. But there might be opportunities to escape along the way. Then she could figure out what to do.

  After she’d climbed in, Gray put away his gun and took his place at the oars. The soldiers pushed them into the current. Gray let them drift for several seconds, then fit the oars into the oarlocks and dipped them in the water. He began to row almost casually for the opposite side of the Potomac. His oars creaked in the oarlocks, an
d eddies swirled around the paddles with each stroke. Sitting near the bow, Gray had his back to Virginia. Josephine faced the agent and looked across to the woods and fields of the other side. A small force of laborers were constructing yet another Union fort on the Virginia side of the river.

  Any hope that a river breeze would cool her disappeared. The air was steamy, the sun like a hammer. Sweat was soon running down Gray’s face and dripping from his mustache.

  “Well?” he said. “Are you going to tell me why you’re innocent?”

  “I thought you said you had orders.”

  “I do. You have until the opposite shore to convince me.”

  “You want me to explain now? You’ve wasted my entire afternoon, refused to let me speak, but now that we’re rowing across the confounded river, you want me to make my case?”

  “It’s up to you. If you’d rather go back to your Confederate lover, that’s your prerogative.”

  This insinuation disgusted her so much that she at first turned away and refused to look at this man. But she’d be a fool to let him best her through her sheer stubbornness, so she relented.

  “I only crossed into rebel lines to get a good story. I was nobody’s lover, and I told the Confederates nothing they couldn’t have read in the papers.”

  “The blooming fools of the press are all too happy to report every regiment who marches in and out of the city,” Gray agreed. “But when enemy reinforcements arrived all the way from the Shenandoah just in time to turn McDowell’s attack, we knew they’d received advance warning. There’s a spy in Washington, someone who can speak to our generals.”

  “I’m aware of that,” she said. “There have been hints before.”

  “And we believe she’s a woman.”

  “I know that, too. I’ve given the matter much thought.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You have?”

  She glared back at him, unwilling to say more. Information was not free, and in this case, she wanted him to think she had more than she possessed.

  Gray stopped and took off his jacket. He rolled up his shirtsleeves to reveal powerful forearms. They’d drifted a greater distance downstream than the distance he’d rowed toward the far shore, but his slow, powerful strokes had still carried them right into the middle of the river.

  “We’re halfway across,” he said. “I’m not convinced.”

  “What do you want me to say? I’m a writer, not a spy. How am I supposed to prove that?”

  “Why did you enter Washington wearing nothing but your bloomers?”

  “I dismounted my horse to give water to a dying Confederate soldier,” she said. “But I couldn’t regain the saddle because of the crinoline. The Union soldiers were in a panic—nobody would help me. So I cut off the dress and the underwire.”

  “Why not just take it off?”

  She gave him a sharp look. “You’ve never put on a dress and hoops or you wouldn’t ask that. There was gunfire, I was afraid of getting killed. I needed to get back on that horse.”

  “You weren’t mounted when you approached the bridge.”

  “A Union officer commandeered my horse and left me to be mocked by foot soldiers. Mrs. Stanley Lamont took pity on me and carried me into Washington.”

  Gray was silent for a few minutes, his brow furrowed in thought as he rowed. “And how did you gain access to General Beauregard’s camp? You simply walked in with your pen and paper and started asking questions?”

  “Of course not. Two days before the battle I approached the Confederate camp posing as a secessionist Marylander.” Josephine changed her accent to someone from the Chesapeake: “‘General, I’ve brought a few things to raise your spirits and help you whip them Yankees and abolitionists. Twenty pounds of coffee, fifty pounds of chewing tobacco. Barrels of flour and salted pork. And these home-baked huckleberry pies for you and your staff.’”

  Gray raised his eyebrows. “Impressive accent.”

  “My mother was an actress and dancer on a Mississippi steamboat. She taught me the tricks of the trade. And I’ve heard all sorts of accents in my life.” Now she turned to Pinkerton’s Scottish burr: “And believe me when I say that I can mimic them at will.”

  “Hmm,” Gray said, seemingly less impressed this time. “The suspicious part is that the newspaper would pay for all those goods that you gave to the enemy. Why, to get one story? An important story, yes, but you couldn’t know that at the time. Not for sure.”

  “I didn’t ask Mr. Barnhart to buy the supplies. And he wouldn’t have paid if I had. I have my own funds. That’s all I’ll say about that.”

  Gray let his oars fold in against the boat, dipped his hands into the water, and splashed his face and neck, then eyed the opposite shore and began to row again. They were now so far downstream that it would be a long walk west to reach the road to Manassas. Again, she was confused as to why Mr. Pinkerton and Mr. Gray hadn’t simply hired a carriage and taken her out of the city by way of the Long Bridge.

  “If you’re not a spy,” Gray said, as if in answer to her unspoken question, “there are plenty in Washington who are. I needed to make a spectacle of your departure. Word will get back to the enemy.”

  Josephine allowed herself to hope she would get out of this predicament. “Does that mean you knew all along? Was my arrest at the Morning Clarion a charade?”

  “You are sharp, you understand most of it. The answer is no, not entirely a charade. Mr. Pinkerton wanted to be sure. And I’m not yet convinced.” A smile crossed his lips, and for the first time he didn’t look like an unfeeling beast. “But almost.”

  “After I gave Beauregard’s staff the supplies,” Josephine said, continuing her story with less reluctance, “they were happy to lead me through their encampment, proudly showing me this regiment and that. Telling how they meant to lick the Yanks and march on Washington. I was in Beauregard’s camp for most of the battle, and only slipped away near the end.”

  “Will the enemy march on Washington? We were routed yesterday, scattered. Completely disorganized. If they came now . . .”

  “So are they. Almost as disorganized in victory as we are in defeat.”

  “I am glad to hear it.” Gray glanced over his shoulder at the opposite bank, now drawing near. He was breathing heavily but did not appear exhausted. “What drives you, Miss Breaux? What is your personal philosophy?”

  “Mr. Gray, I write lurid prose to be consumed by the masses. My philosophy, my motive, is personal glory.”

  He laughed at this. “Very well. But are you seeking glory under the Union flag or with the secessionists?”

  “I am a Union girl, sir. Secession is simply another word for treason. And slavery is a canker and an embarrassment, and must be swept away.” Josephine nodded. “So long as it does not get in the way of a good story, of course.”

  “And you would take the oath of allegiance, truthfully and without guile?”

  She lifted her right hand. “I will support the Constitution of the United States.”

  “Good. I thought you would.”

  Gray pulled the oars out of the water. They were only twenty yards from the grassy slope on the Virginia side of the river, but he let them drift downstream for another few minutes, the muddy current slowly twisting the boat around as they slid past guard posts and tent encampments. The meadows gave way to woods, and when they were beyond the last guard post, he eased them up to shore. He helped her out of the boat.

  “I assume you have given up on your plan to deliver me to the Confederates,” she said.

  “There was never a plan in the first place. If you failed to convince me, I was going to abandon you here and go back alone, leaving you with the threat of jail should you return.”

  Josephine put her hands on her hips. “Seems a lot of fuss and bother if that was your intent all along. What now, will you row me across and tell Mr. Barnhart to hire me back at the paper?”

  “I’m afraid you’re finished with the Morning Clarion, Miss Breaux.”

/>   “You devil, I am not! You will march at once to my publisher and tell him I am innocent of this slander and demand that he reinstate me. I don’t care what that rag the Washington Standard says, I’m the best writer in the city.”

  “My, you’re a feisty one,” Gray said, in a tone equal parts admiring and condescending. “But no, Mr. Pinkerton has other plans for you.”

  “My imagination fails me, Mr. Gray.”

  “Miss Breaux, if you declared the oath of allegiance in all good faith, then you have far more important business than penning stories about the war. You will have a hand in shaping it. And if you do well, I promise you all the personal glory in the world.”

  She raised her eyebrows, and her eyes widened. She made no attempt to conceal her interest. “Oh?”

  “First, we sneak back into the city. And when we arrive, there is someone Mr. Pinkerton wants you to meet.”

  “Who?”

  “President Abraham Lincoln.”

  Franklin Gray led Josephine down the halls of the White House. As the sun went down, the staff was kicking out the various supplicants, curiosity seekers, and the gaggle of ne’er-do-wells who always seemed to be idling around the grounds and property of the presidential mansion. Gray found an inebriated man on the stairs, spitting tobacco toward a spittoon and missing, and the Pinkerton agent ordered him to vacate the premises at once.

  They came into the president’s office on the south side of the second floor, but she was disappointed when she looked about expecting to see Abraham Lincoln. Instead, Allan Pinkerton stood by the window, a pipe at his lips. He turned when they entered and gestured that they take a seat at a heavy oak table where Josephine knew the president met with his cabinet. She sat on one side, and the two agents sat next to each other on the other.

  Lincoln’s office was a massive room, some twenty-five or thirty feet wide and forty feet long, but there was nothing gaudy about the furniture or the furnishings. In addition to the table, a smaller mahogany desk was tucked to one side, with a pigeonhole cabinet stuffed with letters and telegrams. Various military maps decorated the walls, the largest of which was a huge map showing the entire South, this one marked with black dots. As it was growing dark, someone had lit the candelabras around the room, but there was no sign of the servant or any other person in the room.