She handed him the slip of paper that Dawkins had given her. “He lives in a neighborhood in Arlington, across the river.”
“We’ll stop for a minute at the hotel, then head over there.”
“But Peter … the seminar.”
“Skip it.”
“The Saturday Seminars were my idea. GWU doesn’t have a football team, so we need weekend activities. Besides, I moderate the panel. And maybe Sorrel will show up.”
“Show up?”
“That’s where I met him. It’s open to the public and draws a good crowd,” she said. “People like the subject: ‘From Uncle Tom to the Thirteenth Amendment: the Role of Race in the Civil War.’”
“Maybe the guy in the Bonnie Blue Flag ball cap will show up, too.”
Diana cocked her head and snapped a finger. “I knew I recognized him.”
“You recognized him enough to scare the hell out of him.”
“But Peter—”
“I wanted to sidle up to him at the cheese counter and start chatting.”
“But Peter—”
“Instead, you lit out after him like he just stole your purse.”
“But Peter! He was at the seminar last week. When Sorrel came up to me, he took our picture.”
Peter thought for a moment. “That means he’s been following you for a while. Maybe he hacked you.”
She shrugged and looked out the window, as if she was feeling pretty stupid about that. “It could have been a lot of people. I’m in academe, don’t forget.”
“Where the fights are so vicious because the stakes are so small.”
Diana glared at him. “They’re not small if you’re fighting them.”
He remembered. She didn’t like to be needled. He backed off and gave another glance out the back window. No one was following them. “So do you have any ideas?”
“It could have been him, or a departmental rival, or an angry student—”
“—or a lover?”
“Not me.” Diana laughed. “I’m the latter-day Condi Rice—a hard-climbin’ sistah who got no time for doin’ the nasty with potbellied white professors.”
“Very wise. A girl can hurt her reputation sleeping her way to the top.”
“Hurt it by saying no, too.”
“Saying no?”
“Saying no on Saturday night in somebody’s apartment means that on Monday morning, when the tenure committee meets, you get the blackball.”
Peter looked at her a moment and said, “You didn’t let somebody on your tenure committee take you home after dinner and drinks, did you?”
She looked out the window.
“Anyone we know?” asked Peter.
She shook her head. “You might meet him. But—”
“You think he’s the hacker?”
She shook her head again.
He wasn’t sure if she meant “No, he wasn’t,” or “No, she didn’t know.”
So he said, “What makes you think you’ve been hacked?”
“I got an e-mail from the National Press Club. Invited me to a discussion on slavery with Henry Louis Gates on Monday night. When I registered, I put in my password and got the ‘incorrect password’ prompt. And—”
“Let me guess … it kept prompting you, and you kept trying different passwords.”
“Right.”
“The ones you use for your e-mail, your Gmail, your GWU.edu account, along with your bank account, your library card and—”
“I figured out it was a dummy site when I went on this morning to get a ticket for you, once I knew you were coming to town.”
“Please tell me that you sent the Lincoln letter to me on a protected account.”
She looked out the window again.
So, thought Peter, the hacker knew. He may have known before he hacked her. He may even have been looking for the letter, too.
* * *
Evangeline got out of the cab in front of Ford’s Theatre. She had done her eyes and put on a light face of Mac Studio Fix 5. She wore a blue silk blouse, darker blue slacks, and a dark gray silk-and-wool-blend sport coat.
Abigail Simon was standing in front of the theater, waiting for her. “Nice outfit.”
“Thanks,” said Evangeline.
“Subtle. You got the blue and the gray both goin’ on.”
Evangeline laughed. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“The museum is still open, so we’ll shoot with visitors. It’ll be good background. Let’s go.” Abigail went in the museum entrance, a wall of plate glass next to the old theater.
But Evangeline stopped for a look around.
The replica streetlamps stood guard like those that lit that long-ago night. The high-fronted brick façade rose like a ghost over the narrow street. And the arched doorways were like a proscenium awaiting another performance of the passion play that had been running in the national imagination for 150 years: the “giant sufferer,” as the papers called him, borne from the theater across to a little row house, there to breathe his last, there to inspire the epitaph of Secretary Stanton, “Now he belongs to the ages.” Or was it “angels”?
Evangeline had thought about calling this theater “the nation’s Golgotha,” the place where the savior had been put to death. But she didn’t want the show to be a downer, so … she just stood there, feeling the chill of history.
She didn’t even notice the black Chevy Tahoe pulling up at the opposite curb. Out of the Tahoe stepped a young man, tall, slender, dark gray suit, dark blue tie, dark glasses. He called to her by name.
Her first thought: What does the FBI want with me?
As he came toward her, he smiled. “My name is William Dougherty. I’m chief of staff to Congressman Milbury. He’s excited that you’re preparing a program about the modern landscapes of the Civil War.”
How did Milbury know where she would be shooting? How did so many people seem to know her business in Washington?
Dougherty handed her a business card. “May I watch the filming?”
Mary Knapik, the PA, poked her head out the door, “Ms. Carrington—”
Evangeline looked into Dougherty’s eyes, which meant looking at her own reflection in his sunglasses. “The tickets to the museum are free.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Dougherty. “And the congressman would like to invite you to a reception at the Smithsonian tonight, in honor of the Emancipation Proclamation. It’ll be a real Washington event for you and Peter Fallon.”
There it was again. She said, “How did you—?”
Dougherty handed her a printed invitation.
“Ms. Carrington,” said Mary, “we’re ready for your close-up!”
* * *
Peter had hoped to catch Evangeline at the hotel.
When he found the room empty, he called her. She didn’t answer. So he texted her:
Be careful. Just chased suspicious character through Eastern Market.
In a few moments, she texted back:
You would.
Diana laughed out loud when he showed her that. “She’s still a smart-ass.”
“That’s why we still get along.”
“Even if you decided not to get married.”
“Another reason we still get along … I guess.”
Then Evangeline added this to her text:
Suspicious characters everywhere …
Diana said, “Does she mean me?”
“No. She likes you.” He waited for more, but that was it, so he clicked off the phone. “At least she liked you until you dragged me down here.”
“I had no one else I could turn to … that I could trust.”
“Any Lincoln letter is worth a lot. And whenever there’s something out there worth a lot, a lot of people go after it. And some of them do not play by the rules.” Peter grabbed an apple from the fruit basket.
“But you do?” she said.
“I do what?”
“Play by the rules.”
“Rules?�
� He bit into the apple. “No rules in a treasure hunt.”
* * *
The George Washington University was only a few blocks west, so Peter and Diana walked up Fifteenth, to the corner where Pennsylvania made a sharp left and ran straight past the Treasury, the White House, and the Old Executive Office Building.
“We are now in the aortic artery of American political democracy,” said Peter.
The street here was all brick, like a mall. Rows of steel bollards blocked the ends at Fifteenth and Seventeenth. Pedestrians could walk through them, and the bollards could be lowered into the ground to allow vehicles to pass at the checkpoints.
“Before the days of high security,” said Diana, “this was just a regular street, cars, trucks, buses … anybody could drive right by.”
“And in the Civil War”—Peter gestured toward the White House—“you could walk up to the door and ask for the president. Now we’re watched by cameras, radiation sensors, guys on the roof with sniper rifles. Makes you yearn for a simpler time.”
“Except for the racism,” she said. “It’s more subtle today. Back then it was more … in-your-face.”
“No iPhones back then, either.” Peter pulled his from his pocket and glanced at it. “Now we can stay in touch with our assistants anywhere.”
“You mean Antoine? That African American kid?”
“More than a kid. Getting a Ph.D. in History and a law degree, too.”
“Not many people do that,” said Diana, “white or black.”
“I told him to go for history first. You need a past, even if it’s ugly, before you can build a future.” The iPhone vibrated in his hand. “There’s my boy now.”
“Boy?” Diana raised an eyebrow.
“Come on, sistah. Don’t you know we’s livin’ in a postracial society?”
“You don’t do that very well.”
“I don’t rap, either.”
“Thank God,” said Diana. “Now, what does your boy have to say?”
Peter read from the phone: “‘This just scratches the surface, boss.’”
“Boss? He calls you boss? You two sound like Jack Benny and Rochester.”
“A significant pairing in the history of race relations,” said Peter.
“Oh, yeah? How?”
“The white guy was the straight man. The black guy got all the jokes.”
Diana pointed to the iPhone. “Just read.”
“Antoine says, ‘Went to National Archives Web site for troop lists from Compiled Military and Service Records. Checked Mass. regiments first and … bingo! Lieutenant Halsey Hutchinson, Twentieth Mass. Volunteer Infantry. Corporal Jeremiah Murphy, ditto. Heading to MHS’—that’s the Massachusetts Historical Society—‘to read regimental history and muster rolls.’”
“That’s all?” said Diana.
“We’ve only been on this a few hours. The National Archives Web site is the database for every Union soldier, but it only gives name and regiment. To get more, you need to read the biographies in the Compiled Military and Service Records. The government created them to determine who deserved pensions. The actual CMSRs aren’t online. We’ll have to go to the National Archives to read them.”
“The Archives don’t open till Monday.”
“And by Monday, this thing could be over. We’re competing with the camera-guy at the market. And he probably has friends. And there may be others. So Antoine will learn what he can from the muster rolls. But we need to get more on the War Department telegraph office.”
“The War Department building was right there.” Diana pointed at the Old Executive Office Building, a huge confection of French Empire flourishes, hundreds of plate glass windows and pillars, holding thousands of bureaucrats … a complex design for a complex world. “Of course, the Lincoln-era building was much smaller. More like a dorm in Harvard Yard. But when Lieutenant Hutchinson looked out the windows, he would have seen what we see across the street … Blair House, the other high-toned row houses, the Renwick Gallery.”
The Renwick had been designed by the same man who designed the Smithsonian Castle, another romantic Victorian vision of the Gothic past, another strong fortress protecting knowledge and art. In 1862, the Union quartermaster had liked the construction of the Renwick so much that he made it a supply depot.
“Not much else left of Lincoln-era Washington,” said Diana. “It was all chewed up by the modern world.”
“Lincoln was the first modern president,” said Peter. “He traveled faster than any president before, on steamboats and trains. He read by reliable gas light. He communicated electrically through thousands of miles of telegraph wires—”
“But he still lived in a city with one paved street and a stinky canal where Constitution Avenue is today.”
“And even free blacks had to tip their hats to whites,” added Peter.
“Hard to imagine,” said Diana.
“But that’s what I do,” said Peter. “With documents and photos, I can imagine my way into the past, and maybe into a few heads, too. If I can see what they saw and think what they thought, I can find the treasures they left.”
“Do you think you can think like this Lieutenant Halsey Hutchinson?”
“We’ll find out, once Antoine finds out more.”
* * *
At the Ford’s Theatre Museum, Evangeline was discovering a new skill. She could ad-lib in front of a camera, even when creepy Congressional aides were watching.
The basement museum—small but packed with information—was arranged so that the visitor traveled through the war with Lincoln, following him from his ignominious 1861 arrival in Washington to his final visit to the theater.
“Ignominious,” she explained, “because to avoid a threatened assassination in Baltimore, he put on a disguise and sneaked into the city at night. The papers depicted him wearing a long gray cape and Scottish tam-o’-shanter, under the protection of a Scottish detective named Pinkerton.” She said this in front of a six-foot-four dummy in a long gray cape and tam-o’-shanter.
And she noticed Dougherty watching and listening from behind the camera.
The next setup was at the video screens in the middle of the floor, in front of a huge model of the half-finished Capitol dome.
Lots of visitors here, moving about, reading the cards, looking at the exhibits.
“Good production value,” said Abigail Simon. “Be casual.”
Casual … right, thought Evangeline. She looked into the lens, pretended that the key light wasn’t blinding her, and said, “When you come here, you’ll see remarkable multimedia exhibits.”
The video screen showed photographs of the era, including a famous shot of Lincoln’s first inaugural. And each image was animated by pans and tilts, slow zooms and the latest in three-dimensionalizing tricks.
Evangeline explained: “By March of 1861, seven Southern states had seceded. But Lincoln still hoped to hold the country together. He said, ‘Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.’”
A dozen people applauded her.
The PA handed her a water bottle. “Fabulous. All without a teleprompter.”
Abigail said something to the cameraman, then whispered to Evangeline, “Too many words.”
“Too many words?”
“This is TV. We’ll do some cutting,” said Abigail. “The next setup is over in the corner, by the Lincoln suit, the one he wore to the theater.” And she headed in that direction.
Evangeline pulled out her script. Then she sensed William Dougherty beside her. Then she heard him say one word: “tariffs.”
“What?”
He had taken off his sunglasses. His eyes were the same color as his suit. “You’ve been talking about the beginning of the war and
never mentioned tariffs.”
Evangeline held up the script. “It isn’t in here. Is that bad?”
“No. That’s good. So many anti-tax people try to tell you that the Civil War was about the extension of federal power through tariffs, the only federal revenue at the time. They try to say our tax system is as inequitable as the tariff system that supposedly oppressed the South.”
“Politics then, politics now,” said Evangeline. “Is that why the congressman is interested in our film?”
“Perhaps. He sits on the House Committee on Natural Resources. They have oversight over the National Park Service, which has oversight over a lot of the places you’re shooting. And he sits on Ways and Means, which has oversight on tax policy. And he hates to see history twisted for political purposes.”
Was he threatening her? Was he suggesting that she tell the story their way or she might not get permits to shoot on federal land? Was that why he was here? Did politics color everything in this town?
She decided not to lose her temper, so she gave him the kind of smile that Kathi Morganti had given the congressman on the train. “I agree with Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Supreme Court Justice. He said, ‘I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.’”
Dougherty raised a finger. “Supreme Court Justice and Civil War hero.”
* * *
Across town, Peter Fallon was taking a seat in an auditorium at GWU.
His first thought: good air-conditioning. His second: nice room, paneled walls, padded seats. His third: quite a crowd for a Saturday afternoon in September.
Maybe it was the air-conditioning.
Then he read the program and decided it was the speakers, a talking head from the right wing and an academic egghead who likely leaned left, a perfect pairing for a little historical grudge match. Their bios:
Terenzia “Terry” Volpicelli is an independent scholar and defender of “the Constitution as it is.” He is the author of four books on Lincoln. He has lectured extensively, appeared on numerous television talk shows, on Fox News, CNN, and as a regular on LNN, the Liberty News Network. Of his new book, Lincoln’s Gestapo: The Secret Police That Terrorized America, Publishers Weekly said, “guaranteed to make you think.” He will be speaking about it today for the first time.
The Lincoln Letter Page 12