Circle of Spies (52 page)

Marietta's scream blended with the rumble of thunder.

Lord, help me. Help me save her.

Dragging in a breath, he called up the mask he usually wore in Hughes's presence. Slid a step to the side, so the metal door was at his back. “Relax, Hughes. I came along to help, that's all. Booth sent me a note saying Surratt had just returned and they wouldn't need me in Washington.”

He prayed it didn't sound as stupid to Hughes's ears as it did to his own. And if it did, then maybe a cocky smile would smooth it over. “As for your woman.” He added a shrug. “You know how she gets in storms, I imagine. Just eager for comfort. And after listening for hours to her moan and groan about how much she loves you and how afraid she is you wouldn't believe her, I just wanted to shut her up. Thought I'd have a little fun doing it.”

Lord, forgive the lies. Please. Please save her.

Eyes wide, Marietta rubbed together the thumb and forefinger of the arm pinned to her side, over and again. He frowned until he realized it was a sign, one of the ones Elsie used frequently.
What are you doing?

He hadn't the words, silent or vocal, to answer.
Giving you a chance
, he wanted to say, but his hands didn't know how and his lips didn't dare.

So he had to settle for a command. One simple word, one simple motion of the hand from waist to heart, with his thumb up.
Live
.

She shook her head, though whether in answer to him or Hughes he couldn't tell. The gun was level now, Hughes's finger on the trigger. He knew she would do everything she could to keep the weapon from firing. Everything she could to affect the aim.

He owed it to her to try, one last time. With one final
please, Lord
he lunged for the crate.

Fire spat from the barrel of his revolver. She managed to jerk Hughes's arm, but it didn't matter. The car shifted, his foot slid. Fire kicked him. He reached out, trying to grab something, anything, to halt him. For one moment his fingers caught hold of the edge of the door, but the metal was rain-slick, and his hand would not obey his command to hold tight.

A scream. A curse.

Empty air embraced him. Nothing but air for an eternity, long enough that he saw the scarlet curls fly out the door after him. Saw them jerk back in. Long enough that he could be thankful she didn't follow, that he heard no second shot.

Then earth, rock, tree limbs. Some rushing by, some reaching out greedy claws to grab at him, pummel him, bite him. The mountainside went on forever.

His arms wouldn't obey his orders to reach out and find a hold. His breath wouldn't come. His chest felt as though the locomotive had seared its way through him.

Crashing, snapping. Green filled his vision, then gray. So much gray, no color left in the world. Nothing but that memory of her fiery red hair.

Splash
. The cold of the water made him jerk, twist, and blackest night edged out the gray.
To live is Christ…to die is gain.

Eternity pressed down. He could see only a splinter of the world—the track on the mountain above him, the hillside he had just tumbled down. He could feel only the nothingness of the icy Potomac. He could hear only the din of a cry whose words made no sense.

“Aunt Abigail! Aunt Abigail, hurry!”

A wisp of blue that should have been gray. Of black that should have been red. A face, there one moment and gone the next. Something pressing, pushing eternity away.

More voices, jumbles of words.
What
and
train
and
fall
.
Shot
and
bridge
and
ran
.

Another face. A woman. “Who did this to you, mister?”

Did he have any breath left? He gathered what he could, expelled it on the name. “Hughes. Dev…” The black grew. The splinter shrank. The fire of pain both consumed and, somehow, numbed. He dragged in one more breath. His last words couldn't, wouldn't be that monster's name. They had to matter. They had to matter as much as she did. “Lord…save…her.”

His answer was a bolt of lightning, a crack that rent the very air in two. A treetop rushing toward him.

The black descended.

Time was a dragon set against him, and as Walker ran down the dark streets, he felt it breathing down his back. He didn't need a watch to know too many tocks had ticked. Didn't need the knot in his gut to
tell him things were all wrong. Didn't need the cold bite of night air to send a chill down his spine.

Evil walked tonight.

“Lord, go before me. Make clear the way. Protect the family I left at home.”

Cora and their tiny son were doing well when he left them at dusk. Jess had woken up. That would have to suffice for now.

He sucked in a breath and turned the corner onto Tenth Street. He prayed that Hez had made it to Secretary Steward's house and convinced them to be on their guard. He knew the family, which was why he'd been the one to go. But then he would try to make his way to the theater too.

Grandpa Henry had gone to the Kirkwood House, where Vice President Johnson and Atzerodt were both staying. His grandfather knew “Port Tobacco” well enough to promise he could get him talking, get him drinking…and that then it would be a simple matter of dissuading him from his role.

That left Walker with the biggest task of them all. Hez should have done it. He knew that as he hurried down the street with all the rich white folk and felt their stares upon him. Hez could have gone into the theater and made sure the president stayed safe. Walker, on the other hand…

But they had decided to obey their own rules and stay undetected. So Hez went to the family who wouldn't ask questions he couldn't answer. And Walker went to find one of Pinkerton's men.

Herschel wasn't back. The other doors he had knocked on had either slammed in his face when he mentioned Osborne or waved him away as a fool. So much time wasted. What choice did he have now but to try to get into the theater himself?

Ford's was just ahead. Cabbies waited outside, drivers hunching into their blankets and horses' ears twitching. He hurried along, trying his best to look like just another servant out on a mission from his master, no one to pay any heed to.

He nearly collided with a sot staggering out of a tavern. Yellow light and tinny music spilled out with him, and Walker hissed out a breath when he saw his face. “Mr. Kaplan?”

The detective leaned against the tavern's filthy brick wall. “Shine my shoes, boy?”

He shook that away. “Mr. Kaplan, thank the Lord. There's a man planning on shooting the president in just a few minutes. You can stop him.”

Kaplan straightened and spat. “Not much to be thankin' God for these days, is there, boy? War might be over, but it killed all the good ones. Nothin' left but the sick and the weak and cowards. God musta turned His face away from us long ago.”

Sometimes it sure seemed that way. But then, you couldn't see if God had turned His head when you'd already turned yours. “He's still there. Still waiting for us to do the right thing. Will you help me, Mr. Kaplan?”

“Help you?” Kaplan hiccupped and waved a hand toward the theater. “Do I look ready to work to you? Someone else is on guard duty tonight. Let him stop him if there's even a him to stop. It's…it's…” He squinted and then loosed a low, ugly laugh. “It's Parker, that's who. He's watching Lincoln. Assuming he isn't drunk or asleep on the job like he was last week. And last month. And—”

“Thunder and turf!” Walker sidestepped the drunk and darted across the street to the theater.

A black man stepped forward in the uniform of a doorman, his hand up. “Whoa, there. Where do you think you're going, son?”

Walker knew he would stop him, but maybe, just maybe he could get around him. “Please, you have to let me in. I got an important message.”

The older man shook his head, though sympathy lit his eyes. “You know I can't let you in this door, not the one the white folks use. You gotta go round the back.”

“You don't understand.” He stepped closer, praying the man would relent. Would look the other way. “It's urgent. Life-and-death kind of urgent.”

“I'm sorry.” The doorman shook his head again. “If I let you in, it's real trouble for me. You gotta go round. Right on round there and then through the back entrance. My boy can help get your message to your master.”

Briefly, Walker considered force. But if he tried it, he would get shot
or beaten within steps of the door. Folks wouldn't take too kindly to a black man bursting into a place like that. He nodded and followed the doorman's outstretched arm.

The theater shared walls with the other buildings on the street, and he had to jog all the way to the corner and around, and then down an alleyway. The moon still shone hazy and dim through the clouds, but it felt darker, as though something had swooped down over the street.

Walker slowed only when he spotted the theater doors, open to the night. Folks loitered around it in the circle of light, smoking and laughing. He pushed through them with an abstract nod of greeting and stepped into an unfamiliar world. Props, curtains, discarded costumes, and rows of what he assumed were backdrops. People were darting this way and that, some with extravagant costumes on, some obviously never to see the stage.

Seeing a boy who had the look of the doorman about him, he stopped him with what he hoped was a casual grin. “Hey there. You know where the president's box is?”

The boy, probably twelve or so, grinned back. “You want a glimpse of him too? Come on. I'll show ya the best view.”

He didn't need the best view; he needed the closest one. But at least it would give him an idea of the layout.

The boy waved him down a dark corridor. “You gotta be real quiet,” he whispered. He paused at a break in the wall and nodded toward the brightly lit stage. “That there's Miss Keene. Listen—this is the best line of the play.”

He could barely see the woman and didn't much care. He edged onward as she said, “I am aware, Mr. Trenchard, that you are not used to the manners of polite society.”

Another piece of wall, another break in it. He halted. What were all those banners hanging over on the side there, above the stage? Red, white, and blue ones…the president's box?

A man on stage preened. “Heh, heh. Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap!”

Laughter roared through the audience. Walker strained forward. Was that Lincoln standing in the shadows of the box? Or—

Crack
.

Chaos, instant and deafening. Walker tried to rush forward, but the actors were running, screaming, pushing into him.

A figure jumped from the balcony to the stage. Booth, shouting something in Latin. He took off for the back.

Walker took off after him, bowling over the boy and getting caught in the shouting, darting crowd of theater people. But even as he fought his way outside, he knew he was too late.

Booth was gone. Lincoln was shot.

Walker sank to the cool bricks and stared into the thick darkness. Two more minutes, and he could have been there. He could have stopped him. Two more minutes, and the Culpers would have won.

Two more minutes the world had refused him. And now he could only watch them reel.

Thirty-Four

M
arietta had gone numb lying on the cold, damp rock. The blindfold made time swim, the gag sucked all the moisture from her mouth, and the rope tying her wrists chafed her raw as she struggled.

Why fight?
a voice snarled in her ear.
He's dead. You lost
.

Her eyes burned behind the blindfold, but she couldn't cry, not if she wanted to obey Slade's last instruction. Not if she wanted to live to find him justice.

She wasn't sure she did. She wasn't sure it mattered. Why had Dev stopped her from jumping behind him from the train? She had caught a glimpse of the landscape only in that last second, hadn't known when she managed, too late, to break free that the ground fell away so dramatically. The fall very well could have killed her. And that would have been so much easier on them all.