Alias Dragonfly (23 page)

“Keep looking at me, Madeline,” he said. “Then I’ll know that you are real.”

I turned to leave. He pulled me to him. “Hellcat,” he whispered.

He kissed me, then: my first one, ever. My lips, my whole body was on fire.

“I have to go now, Jake.”

He didn’t stop me. “Whatever you are doing, Madeline, when you are through, we will find each other.”

“Yes.” And I knew we would, if we survived.

I walked out of the boardinghouse.
Mike was waiting for me on the stairs.

“What took you so long, kid? I think I grew an inch waiting.”

“Knock the kid stuff off, once and for all, Mike, okay?”

“Sure, sure. My mistake. Yeah. A kid you’re not, now that I get a good gander at you.”

There was a carriage waiting across the street. I handed the driver my bag. As the door opened, a cloud of cigar smoke floated into my face. I settled into the seat. Mike was on one side; Mr. Pinkerton, on the other.

“Perhaps Mr. Whitestone might be persuaded to join us one day,” he said. “What do you think, lass?”

Madeline Eve Bradford was overjoyed at the thought. Maybe a little nervous, but mostly, overjoyed. The spy known as
Dragonfly
said she’d have to think about it.

Special From the
New York Tribune

Dear Readers,

In case you were fretting over my disappearance and capture, your humble reporter is free.

Freedom. I am guilty over my freedom. Bear with me.

I was housed in an old tobacco warehouse that was converted to a prison. The place was dank and sorrowful. Union soldiers who were swooped up by Rebels after the defeat at Bull Run, deserters from the Confederate army and those sorry men and women who have displeased General Winder’s detective thugs are all still festering there.

Why was I released? I don’t know. Perhaps some influential sort from deep within the Richmond government had a hand in it. If I ever know his identity, I will thank him from the bottom of my heart. After the war, that is, when I pray we will be one country again.

For now, at the behest of my employer Horace Greeley, I have agreed to take a bit of a rest. “To gather your wits,” he said. “And decide if being a flat out Union supporter is worth the risk.”

Well, my wits are gathered. I’m young and strong. It is worth the risk.

PAN

I’m in a secret location. I’m sorry I can’t even tell you where it is. Two of Mr. Pinkerton’s guards are patrolling outside the hideout. Don’t worry; my father thinks I’m safe. When Aunt Salome closed up the boardinghouse, Mr. Pinkerton’s friend wrote a lovely letter inviting me to board with her and tutor her child. We sent word to my father about what had occurred at the boardinghouse. When he came on his soldier’s day pass, a woman in spectacles, a small woman with a diligent, serious manner, greeted him. It was one of Mrs. Warn’s best disguises, I thought. She promised him I’d be well cared for, and paid for my work.

I was itching to leave, but knew I could not. I was gazing at the fire, wondering what book to read next. I’d just finished Miss Brontë’s
Jane Eyre
and was picturing Jake Whitestone as a young Mr. Rochester, all dark and dour, when the door opened and Mr. Pinkerton walked in and came straight up to me. His face was grim.

“First, Miss Bradford, you are to remain here for now. Mr. Washington will replace Mike.” He motioned to a tall, middle-aged Negro man with an anvil-shaped jaw and a hard set to his eyes.

“I’m to keep a watch on you, Miss,” Oliver Washington said.

I was trapped and knew there wasn’t a darn thing I could do about it.

Mr. Pinkerton pulled a chair up close to me.

“Listen well, lass. The Rebel girl you captured has sworn to find you, to kill you.”

Of course she has.

“Did you learn her name, sir?”

“We will. She is a hard one.”

“Was she harmed during the interrogation?”

“We do what we have to. Do not ask such a question again.”

“Yes, sir.”

If I were captured . . . I tried not to dwell on it. Mr. Pinkerton must have read my mind.

“Do not think about what the enemy might do to any one of us. It serves no purpose.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The girl was sent up from Richmond. We know this much: After a drunken Union soldier assaulted her, she killed him—effortlessly. He has been punished. Deservedly so. She was observed and recruited. Her training began.”

I might have done the same.

“No one has ever captured her. Until you.”

I know.

“I have noted that you closely resemble one another. Odd, that. There the likeness ends, surely, eh?”

I don’t know where it ends.

“They promise girls like her that for every Yankee agent they capture or assassinate, they will be rewarded personally and their families will be taken care of should they not survive. That is all we know so far. I don’t doubt there is more.”

“What about Betty Duvall and Rose Greenhow?” I asked, and wondered, how many more there were.

“They remain incarcerated. Mrs. Greenhow’s daughter is very ill. That preoccupies her sufficiently.”

I felt a stab of pity for the nasty little mite.

“And we have determined Betty is not nearly as lethal as the girl in our custody. Betty has begged our forgiveness, and has taken the oath of allegiance to the United States. A noble gesture, but in prison she stays.”

Finally Mr. Pinkerton lit a cigar. With all the talk of prison and killing, the smell of the smoke was familiar and strangely comforting. But the look on his face was not comforting at all.

“There is a large bounty on your head, Miss Bradford.”

Mr. Pinkerton rose. “There is something else. I have not heard from Mr. Webster or Mrs. Smith since they went to Richmond. That is very unusual.”

Mr. Pinkerton was mighty worried, but he tried not to show it. Mr. Webster always told me that one day any of us might not come back. That offered me no comfort at that moment.

I vowed then and there to find a way to get to Richmond to find out what had become of him.

“Oh, Miss Bradford,” Mr. Pinkerton said, with a half-smile, which for him was like a full one. “I nearly forgot, there is someone here to see you.”

“Me?”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Jake Whitestone came into the room! He looked like the devil, unshaven exhausted and—Mike was right behind him, flashing a thumbs-up sign to me. Mike told me they “captured” Jake, and he tested really fine! Jake looked elated, and a bit shaky. I knew the feeling.

“I suspected you had another life going, Miss Madeline.” Jake said.

“Are you going to work with us?” I couldn’t believe what I was asking.

“Looks that way. I can still do my reporting, but Mr. Pinkerton says I will be of great value. It’s truly my war now, Madeline, just like it is yours.”

I knew just what he meant.

Mr. Pinkerton patted Jake on the shoulder, turned on his heel and left trailing cigar smoke behind him.

Mike was cleaning a rifle, humming Dixie.

“Catchy little tune, isn’t it? When we win this war, I hope we capture the song along with all the soldiers they have left.” He set the rifle down and picked up a long, sharp hunting knife.

“Can’t be too well armed.” He said.

Mr. Oliver Washington was standing by the cabin door. He looked uneasy, and never smiled.

Jake Whitestone settled next to me on the sofa.

“Don’t worry about anything. I’ll take care of you, Madeline.” He said, groggily. Before I could reply, or argue, he was fast asleep.

“I’ll take care of myself,” I whispered, brushing back a wisp of a black curl that had fallen over his brow.

I guess I can tell you that the sun was setting over a bluebell-studded meadow. Through the window, I saw the guards walking back and forth.

It would be really quiet, peaceful, even, if Mike would stop humming.

Will she slip past them, glowing like fox fire through the trees on her way to find me, to do battle with me? It is not over between us, that I know.

I fear it will be a long war, Miss Bradford, Mr. Webster told me once. Should you survive, you will have many more missions. You must continue to muster up all that you are, and all that you know to keep fighting this righteous battle.

I
will
keep fighting. Whatever happens next
,
I am ready.

(Continue reading for more information)

Her timing was perfect. She gazed at me from a nineteenth- century, hand-tinted ambrotype—cool eyed, aloof and solemn, with a tiny mark on her forehead in the shape of a comet or a falling star—a teenage girl lost in time. She’d been resting for who knows how long in a dusty case in the back of a used bookshop. I like to think she was waiting for me.

I’m a tale spinner—a novelist and a researcher. I’m hooked on all things Civil War, and have been ever since I was a little kid prowling around battlefields, never wanting to leave, and somehow knowing that the war that began 150 years ago would always be important to me.

I’m especially interested in the spies who worked undercover, different kinds of soldiers who provided intelligence and helped the effort for both the Union and Confederate sides. So when I found the photo, I was in the middle of outlining a book about a fifteen-year-old spy I called Madeline Eve Bradford, a lonely, homebound misfit with an amazing memory. Maddie landed smack in the middle of Civil War DC and found her true calling as a Union agent working for Detective Allan Pinkerton.

Even better, I learned that Pinkerton was the first in US history to hire women, not just as clerks, but as detectives. He used his teenage son as a dispatch carrier and had several women of unknown ages working for him when he started his detective agency in Chicago, even before he became the top spy in DC, so I took the liberty of having him hire Maddie. And I gave her a voice.

Writing in the first person is my favorite way to tell a story. As an actor, when I play a role, I think a lot about the characters. Not just what they look like, but how they sound, the way they move, what gives them the shivers, how they love, or shine, and what choices they make.

While Maddie, Jake, Nellie, Mike, Aunt Salome, Isaac and Summoner Bradford—some of the other people you’ve met in
Alias Dragonfly
—are fictional characters, they are based on stories of some of the spies Pinkerton used. But in
Alias Dragonfly
, they do not change the course of history. Nope. Don’t want to do that. Instead my bunch moves through real events in real time, in a very real world; interacting with people who actually existed during the Civil War.

I’ll list the real players here so if you want to know more about them, have a look at the list of books I recommend.

Who Was Really Who

(Researching the lives of spies can be really challenging. They obscured their identities, created blinds, appeared and disappeared like wisps of smoke.)

Allan Pinkerton: Chicago detective, and the head of General George McClellan’s secret service. (You can read all about “Little Mac.”)

Timothy Webster: Maddie’s trainer, Detective Pinkerton’s top spy. His story is big, scary, and ultimately very sad. You’ll learn more about Timothy in the next book in the series, Alias Sparrow Hawk.

Kate Warn: The head of Pinkerton’s female detectives. I’ve done a whole lot of work on the mystery of Kate. Check out my website for more details of how I uncovered her true identity.

“Hattie Lawton,” was probably an alias. I think she was based on a very fearless young spy in Pinkerton’s autobiographical account of his time in the war.

Mrs. Smith and Agnes Crawford: I found these women in an 1860 DC census living with Kate Warn. A biography of Pinkerton said Kate ran a training center for spies at the beginning of the war.

Rose Greenhow, and “Little Rose.” Mama Rose was a society matron in DC. She was able to worm secrets out of the politicians and Union officers she hung around with, and pass intelligence straight through enemy lines to the Confederates. She was a big deal. “Little Rose” was, well, a passionate kid who hated Yankees for what they did to her mom. Can you blame her?