On Secret Service

by John Jakes

  Lon wrote it down. Pinkerton always wanted the larger number, the aggregate present, which he then inflated by the usual ten percent. Lon wondered why they were accumulating reams of misleading information. He was angry that no one faced the issue.

  An annoyingly brash Confederate general, “Prince John” Magruder, continued to balk the Union Army along the ten-mile Warwick River line. Between its five mill dams, the flooded river created a series of ponds too wide and deep for an assault by infantry or cavalry. The narrow dams were the only way across, and the rebs had them blanketed by sharpshooters hidden in the woods and behind fortifications.

  Magruder’s artillery blasted anything that moved. His men demonstrated regularly in view of the Federals. His bands played all night long to interrupt sleep. Lowe’s balloons went aloft every day to observe. Sometimes Lowe rode in the basket with one or more observers; sometimes he sent one of his aeronaut-navigators. Members of Pinkerton’s little cadre went up occasionally, studying terrain and making sketch maps. Lon’s turn came toward the end of April.

  Sledge was supposed to go up with him, but he was suffering from the same latrine quickstep that had plagued the boss. Zach Chisolm had lingered on the edge of the group for weeks, barely tolerated, never invited to sit at the regular mess table. He asked to take Sledge’s place. Pinkerton grudgingly agreed. “The balloon navigator has the final say.”

  Lowe’s balloons regularly ascended before dawn, when enemy campfires could be seen. Changes in their location often revealed troop movements. At half past three in the morning, Lon and Zach set out to walk several miles to one of Lowe’s ground stations, a clearing behind the lines out of artillery range.

  Calcium lights with silvered reflectors bathed the clearing in a white glare. The lights were set at a safe distance from the gas generators, two bulky wagons that were basically acid-proof retorts on wheels. Iron filings went in a hatch on top. Sulfuric acid was poured through a vertical tube to create hydrogen gas. Canvas-covered piping ran from each tank to a square wooden apparatus with a single, larger pipe coming from the other side. This pipe inflated a balloon in less than two hours.

  Thaddeus Lowe’s entire complement of fifty men appeared to be working tonight. Although the Balloon Corps reported to the Army topographical engineers, Lowe and his crew were civilians. Lon spotted the husky six-foot professor studying a map with a smaller man who had a pug face and soup-strainer mustache.

  “Hello, my boy,” Lowe said as Lon approached. Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe wasn’t even thirty, but everyone noticeably younger was “my boy.” He was a big, showy man with glossy black hair and powerful shoulders. He wore a long black coat, high boots, and a fatigue cap bearing a balloon-shaped metal badge stamped with the letters BC. Lon imagined he was a commanding presence on the lecture platform. “You’re Mr. Price?”

  “I am.”

  “Mr. Harper’s your navigator this morning.” Lon held out his hand. The pug-faced young man ignored it and stared at Zach.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Zach Chisolm. He’s attached to our unit.”

  Harper rolled up the map. “Didn’t bargain on no niggers.”

  Lowe cautioned him with a stern glance. Harper tramped away to the balloon. By its painted stars and stripes, Lon recognized it as Liberty.

  The single hose from the wooden apparatus snaked over the ground to mate with the balloon envelope where it tapered to a filler port. The balloon’s beige walls were slowly expanding, contained inside a web of linen cords. The cords ran down to a thick wooden ring surrounding the filler port; each cord was tied off on the ring. Below the ring hung a blue wicker basket painted with white stars. Men were attaching sandbags to the basket for ballast. The balloon was sixty feet high, strangely beautiful swaying there on its manila mooring lines.

  “We have no fog and a favorable breeze,” Lowe said. “Harper is instructed to go across the river. Our balloons are always shot at. Are you prepared for that?” Lowe’s blue eyes were fixed on Zach. Zach looked resentful at the implication of weakness.

  “We’ll take the same risks as your aeronaut,” Lon said. A horseman trotted out of the woods. Lon recognized the bespectacled civilian who jumped down from the lathered animal.

  “Stein, what the devil are you doing here?”

  “Finding my way back to Major Allen.” Elvin Stein was a small, fidgety man. The calcium lights reflected from the little circles of his spectacles. In his shabby velvet-collared coat and muted yellow waistcoat he could have passed for an insurance agent or a schoolteacher. He certainly didn’t look like a spy.

  Stein dippered water from a bucket, drank some, and poured the rest over his grimy forehead. His trousers were torn in two places, as though he’d ridden through brambles.

  “The game’s blown in Richmond. I barely got out. A skiff brought me down the James. I stole this horse back there a ways.”

  “What went wrong in Richmond?”

  “Lewis and Scully found Tim Webster laid up with arthritis, all right. Hattie was nursing him. You remember Senator Jackson Morton of Florida?”

  “The boss had Morton and his family under house arrest in Washington for a while.”

  “And Lewis and Scully guarded them. Two of Morton’s sons are in Richmond. They recognized and identified Pryce and John. General Winder, the provost marshal, has a list of all our operatives, damned if I know how.”

  “Rose Greenhow might be responsible. What else?”

  “The rebs tossed Pryce and John in the Henrico County jail. Pryce and some others managed to escape, but Pryce was caught. He and John were shoved in Castle Godwin. Used to be the old jail for coloreds. Now it’s a hellhole for war prisoners. They were worked over by the provost’s detectives. Nasty bunch. Both our lads held fast, denied everything, though I heard Scully almost broke. They went on trial. The verdict was quick. Guilty. No exchange, no parole. The sentence was hanging.”

  “My God,” Lon said.

  “Haven’t told you the worst. Scully couldn’t take the thought of dying. He said if they pardoned him, he’d confess. He ratted out Pryce, and Tim and Hattie too. Pryce is an Englishman. The acting British consul’s interceding to get his sentence commuted, but Tim and Hattie don’t have an escape hatch. Where exactly do I find the boss?”

  Lon gave directions. Stein hooked his foot in the stirrup and swung up. “This was a fine gentleman’s game to start with. It isn’t anymore.” He rode away into the dark woods.

  In the white glare, Lowe supervised the closing of the gas bag. Harper bellowed, “Hey, detective. If you’re going aloft, get over here, you and your coon.”

  A muscle stood out in Zach’s forehead. Lon said, “Maybe you should stay behind. I have a feeling he’s a mean son of a bitch.”

  “He don’t scare me none.”

  “All right, but don’t let him provoke you. We’re all supposed to be on the same side.”

  “Oh, sure,” Zach said, making a face. As they walked toward the balloon, Lon heard Stein’s ominous words. This was a fine gentleman’s game to start with. It isn’t anymore.

  Harper was already in the balloon basket. Lon threw his leg over and climbed in, then Zach. Distantly, Prince John Magruder’s artillery boomed to salute the dawn.

  28

  April 1862

  The pear-shaped balloon rose slowly toward the tree line as the ground crew paid out its mooring ropes through pulley blocks. The balloon was a pretty sight, its coats of varnish shining ever more brightly as it lifted from the treetops into the light. The basket tended to sway, which Lon found a not unpleasant sensation. Zach looked bilious.

  Lon noticed a rifle wedged between the basket and a pile of extra sandbags. One of the new Spencers, seven-shot, with lever action. It was the only thing about Harper that he envied.

  Daylight bathed the flat, wooded Peninsula slowly revealing itself as they ascended. Lon asked about the two loops of rope hanging down through the wooden ring just above them. Harper said one cont
rolled a valve that vented gas from the top of the balloon, for a slow descent. The other opened something called a rip panel, in the balloon’s upper quadrant, allowing for quick collapse of the envelope in an emergency.

  Zach said, “How high might we be goin’, sir?” Harper didn’t answer. From an instrument box lashed to the outside of the basket he took naval field glasses, useful for scanning a wide area when magnification wasn’t critical.

  “Harper,” Lon said. “Did you hear his question?”

  “Three to five hundred feet’s usual for observation. You can see twelve, fifteen miles on a good day. Today we’ll stay fairly low.” Harper spoke without lowering the field glasses.

  A scene of spectacular beauty and clarity spread before them. They were floating toward the near side of the Warwick River, wide and placid as a moat in the breaking light. Lon asked Harper to identify a narrow dam.

  “Lee’s Mill.”

  Rifle pits were dug on the river’s far bank, on land cleared of brush and small trees. Lon detected movement in the rifle pits, and in the woods behind. Out of the trees came a puff of smoke followed by the bang of an artillery piece. “Spotted us,” Harper said. “Giving us the usual hello and good morning.”

  Lon guessed they might be three thousand yards from the concealed gun. The shell burst harmlessly at less than half that distance.

  “They got twelve-pounders in there,” Harper said. “Smooth bores, in four-gun batteries. Nothing to fret over. Range is too long and twelves can’t fire at a high angle. Mostly they scratch on your nerves.”

  Fervently Zach said, “They sure scratch on mine.” Harper’s response was a patronizing stare.

  He replaced the field glasses in the instrument box; they had told him what he should examine more closely. He uncapped a lacquered telescope tube, pulled the segments apart, and squinted through the eyepiece.

  To their right, Lon could see all the way to Yorktown—the quaint rooftops, Joe Johnston’s fortifications swarming with men, the equally busy Union earthworks facing them. Gloucester Point was visible across the narrow river channel. Straight ahead, a mile or so beyond the Lee’s Mill dam, the rebs had built an abatis, a wide rampart of felled trees with ax-sharpened branches pointing outward to hinder an enemy advance. Some distance behind the abatis lay an enormous earthwork. Tree stumps in front of it had been cut to provide a wide field of fire. Lon tapped Harper, pointed to the earthwork.

  Harper said, “Fort Magruder. Second defense line in case the first fails. Don’t seem like much has changed around here since yesterday. Let’s float on over for a closer look.” He leaned out of the basket and exchanged hand signals with tiny figures on the ground. The crewmen paid out the lines and the balloon drifted to the river. Its shadow appeared on the smooth water.

  The morning was still. Lon heard birdsong, a hound barking somewhere. Smoke in the woods identified campsites coming alive. A sudden air current from the east struck the balloon and drove it down. When the gust died, Harper untied a sandbag and dropped it to help the balloon recover altitude. Lon thought the navigator looked anxious.

  He borrowed Harper’s telescope and watched artillery limbers racing down a distant dirt road, then a cavalry troop in a column of fours advancing at a walk, over toward the old colonial capital of Williamsburg. A couple of eager boys in butternut homespun climbed out of a rifle pit and banged off futile shots at the balloon. Another downdraft pushed the balloon toward the ground, but it recovered and rose quickly. Lon’s pulse beat a little faster.

  “Amazing, how much you can see from here,” he said to Harper.

  “At first the shoulder straps laughed at the professor’s notion of scouting from the air. But a bunch of ’em—Fitz-John Porter, Stoneman, Heintzelman, Little Mac too—they all took rides. Now they believe.”

  As they floated above the placid river, Lon felt the wind, harder than before. The gusts tended to make the balloon plunge suddenly. Each drop of ten or twenty feet drove Lon’s stomach up to his windpipe, or so it felt. More rifles banged away in hopes of a hit. “Damn wind’s movin’ us too close,” Harper said. “Got to go higher. Make yourself useful, nigger. Throw out four or five sandbags.”

  “Look, Harper, don’t use that word with Mr. Chisolm. He’s a free man, good as you.”

  “Fuck he is.” Harper turned his back. Wind pushed them downward again. The bottom of the basket exploded in a shower of splinters. Harper leaped back. A marksman had hit the basket from directly underneath.

  “Jesus. Almost got me. Grab me that rifle, nigger.”

  Lon yanked the Spencer from behind the sandbags and fairly slammed it into Harper’s hands. “I told you to shut up with—” Harper swung the Spencer butt first into Lon’s mouth.

  Lon’s lip split open. Blood ran down his chin. He was more outraged than hurt. As the balloon sailed toward the woods, he brought his fists up. Harper raised the rifle, shielding his face. “You want to have it out or you want to get away? We’re too low, goddam it. You”—Zach—“drop all the sandbags. Price, yank that tether line. Three sharp tugs, wait, then three more.”

  Zach untied and dropped the sandbags. Lon gave three tugs on the manila line, then another three. Two sharp tugs answered. Shouts, oaths, and a stutter of rifle fire protested the falling sandbags. One of the batteries in the woods boomed. Harper yelled, “Keep your head down. This low, they can hit us. They’s seventy or eighty lead balls in every—” A timed-fuse shell detonated in midair.

  Lon and Zach ducked. Lon held the top of his head. Lead balls whistled through the rigging. One knocked a triangular chunk from the wooden ring. Two net lines broke. Harper shouted at Lon, “When you pulled the tether did they answer?”

  “Think so. I felt two tugs.”

  Bullets from the rifle pits chipped the sides of the basket. “Why’n hell don’t they reel us in? Got to lighten more.” The navigator had a crazed look. He levered a round in the chamber, cocked the Spencer, and aimed at Zach.

  “Do your countrymen a service, nigger. Jump.”

  Zach’s mouth dropped open. Enraged, Lon tore the Colt out of his pocket. A boom warned of another shell on the way. Lon launched himself across the basket at Harper.

  The navigator swung the Spencer to club him. The artillery shell detonated close to the balloon. Not two feet from Lon, a lead ball drove into Harper’s right eye. Harper’s hands flew in the air. His wrist tangled in the rip panel rope and dragged on it as he fell, crying a woman’s name. With a crack, the rip panel opened above them. Gas vented noisily. They plummeted.

  A third shell burst. Lead balls tore through the gas bag. Lon only had time to snatch the fallen Spencer and shout, “Hang on, Zach,” before they crashed.

  Harper shrieked. Lon bit through his lower lip, starting a fresh flow of blood. He had a nightmare glimpse of Harper’s lolling head, one eye a bloody cavity, the other dead white, the iris rolled up out of sight.

  Lon shoved Zach out of the basket and tumbled after him, a moment before the balloon and its net of ropes collapsed on the basket and all the yelling men in a rifle pit on which they’d landed.

  Lon scrambled up with the Spencer. Not far away, the river shone like a mirror of pink glass, bisected by the narrow dam. “Run for it, Zach. Follow me across.”

  Rebel soldiers piled out of the rifle pits, whooping about a Yankee turkey shoot. Lon bent over and ran with all his strength. He didn’t look behind, trusting to his ears to tell him Zach was there, running just as hard.

  Rifles cracked. A bullet ripped Lon’s pant leg. He stumbled, almost fell headfirst into the river, but righted himself. He skidded onto the narrow wooden cap of the dam, ran a quarter of the way across. Bullets plopped and plucked at the water around him.

  Halfway across…

  Three-quarters…

  The ground ahead was sparsely treed, poor cover. At the end of the dam he tripped on a buried stone and fell sideways to the sloping bank. Landing in the mud, he slid downward on his belly. His brogues went into the w
ater. He slammed the Spencer’s butt into the bank and gripped it like a pole to arrest the slide. With all his weight on the barrel he pulled himself out of the water. The Spencer’s stock split and broke, hurling him to the bank face first. The impact left him gasping and spitting mud.

  “Get up, Lonzo.” Zach knelt. His long, tapering fingers slid under Lon’s arms to lift him. He was crouched that way when the first reb in a file of six crossing the dam fired his musket. Zach yelled. The bullet threw him down across his fallen friend.

  We shall meet, but we shall miss him.

  There will be one vacant chair…

  Margaret laid a red four-spot on a black five and listened to the singer. She didn’t know his name, but he had a lovely tenor. The words of his ballad affected her even though it was a Yankee song, written after Ball’s Bluff.

  We shall linger to caress him

  While we breathe our evening prayer.

  She stared at the patience layout, the fiftieth or five hundredth she’d dealt in the days and weeks that blurred together with a dreadful sameness. Prisoners left, others arrived, dragged in by Stanton’s private police. Dr. Whyville was ailing again. General McClellan was advancing on Richmond. Was Cicero safe? She fought against worry and despair that pulled her down a little more every day. She hated herself for succumbing, yet seemed helpless to reverse the descent.

  She thought often of Lon Price. Was he in danger? Why did he prey on her mind? She knew very well. She was in love with him; a hopeless, wrongful, aching love. She told no one. Lon was the enemy.

  Well, it was over. It had never started, really. Doubtless she’d never see him again.

  The sad song ended. She laid a black trey on the four. Her hair was stringy and dull. She had no soap to wash it properly, and only half a bucket of water once a week. Under her clothing, red insect bites itched on her legs, her neck, between her breasts.