The Drowned Man (39 page)

In truth, Martin was bored with self-important patriots who talked big but lived in luxury in Montreal. On the fifth day, he asked Booth whether he could be of any additional help. It was his way of drawing out the younger man on his plans for Washington, where Booth intended to travel — “soon.” Over drinks in the same French tavern, Booth laid out his plot to kidnap the president and carry him overland to Richmond, where Lincoln's release would be negotiated for that of thousands of Confederate prisoners-of-war held in Northern camps, the very inmates that the Confederate commissioners were unproductively scheming to liberate.

Patrick Martin considered Booth's project and quickly thought that it held as much promise as anything the commissioners had bruited about, publicly or privately.

“How can I help?”

“You can provide me with letters of introduction to anyone who lives in south Maryland who might assist. I know several good men in the Signal Service who have apprised me of clandestine mail routes to Richmond, but I need safe houses along the route, and I may need fresh horses once I cross the Navy Bridge and the Potomac southward.”

“I know two men,” Martin immediately said. He gave the names of Dr. William Queen and Dr. Samuel Mudd, and promised letters of introduction.

His ready agreement was in part diversionary. Let Booth essay a kidnapping. Martin would assist but he was not about to hook Booth up with professional Confederate spies in the Signal Service without Jeff Davis's approval. Queen and Mudd fell into the category of useful sympathizers, amateurs.

Patrick Martin was not there to experience Booth's transition from kidnapper to assassin. Martin delivered the letters of introduction on October 26th but did not tarry at the Hall for drinks. Booth's feelings on his own plan oscillated. Although Martin's letters gave momentum to his kidnapping plot, at the same time the plan had seemed hollow, and possibly impractical, when he voiced it. For the first time, John Wilkes wondered if assassination might be simpler. That evening, he drank alone in the bar and to the clicking of billiard balls and drinking glasses, he sank into a depression. At that moment he felt adrift. The idea of an alliance with the commissioners had spun away from him with the Vermont raid, which occupied their every moment and which had been a failure. Martin had in any case told him that Thompson and the others were impractical men, and that in late 1864 the Confederacy was no closer to recognition by Britain than it ever had been. “Why would they send thin-skinned men from Alabama and Mississippi, men who have never seen snow?” he had said.

Was there a better way to convince Britain of the hostile conspiracy of the Union against the emerging Canadian state?

By his last day in Montreal, Booth's thinking began to crystallize, aided by two unexpected incidents. While drinking at the Hall he caught Sir Fenwick Williams striding in from the rotunda, resplendent in his uniform. He seemed to Booth to move in stiff-backed slow motion, and as he passed Booth's table the two men made eye contact. The actor detected sympathy in the other's look.

A half hour later, while nodding off in the billiard room, Booth was awakened by a brazen voice over by the long mahogany bar.

“To Lincoln and the end of the bloody war!”

“To Lincoln!” seven men agreed, and the sound of bumping steins woke Booth fully.

He bounded from his chair and struck a pose by the billiard table. He picked up the white ball and rapped it down on the felt, leaving a small indentation.

“This Lincoln is a false president yearning for kingly succession! No good can come of his re-election. Tyrants like Napoleon and Caesar must fall before the rights of men and the honour of the democracies to which Athens and the British parliament gave life.”

The oration went on like this for five more minutes. The room fell silent. Afterwards, Booth retreated from the lounge, sobered as much by the effort of declaiming as by the frosty response from the crowd. Booth climbed the staircase to his room, where he took out a leaf of paper from the desk and began to write. The letter seemed to compose itself but as soon as he read it through, a wave of drunken nausea struck him. Barely finishing the one-page missive, he let it slip to the floor. The next day he checked out of the hotel and bought a horse to carry him south.

Henry Hogan came to work early — the Colonial delegates were about to arrive — but he was not early enough to catch Booth, who had already paid the night clerk for his stay. The maid sent to clean the room, Irish and energetic, changed the coverlet on the bed and supplied a basin and a pitcher with fresh water for the next tenant; she swept the floor and polished the one window. She picked up the page of hotel paper from the floor and read the salutation: “To Sir Fenwick Williams.” Reasoning that this must be important — and knowing that Sir Fenwick kept rooms at the far end of the hotel — she placed the sheet of paper in one of the envelopes supplied on the desk and dropped it in the in-hotel post.

Booth hides in the woods as the dew collects on the matted leaves around him, seeming to refuse to dry in the emerging sun. He turns to the next empty page in the diary that he carries and begins to scrawl, and as he does he remembers his week in Montreal, irretrievably far to the north of this cursed swamp. “For six months we have worked to capture,” he writes. Some time ago he learned that his wardrobe trunk, containing his favourite theatrical costumes and an authentic Confederate sword, was lost when the
Marie Victoria
sank in a storm in the St. Lawrence. Patrick Martin was reported drowned. Booth pauses for a long time, then continues to write. He ponders how to finish, for he knows that from now on he is unlikely to be given respite.

“I bless the entire world. Have never hated or wronged anyone. This last was not a wrong, unless God deems it so, and it's with Him to damn or bless me . . . I do not wish to shed a drop of blood, but ‘I must fight the course.' 'Tis all that's left me.”

Twenty One

Fifty Four

Year in which the Na'vi rise up against the Earth invaders on the moon Pandora.

No one emerged with laurels from the Carpenter Affair, as it came to be known around Sir Stephen's office. A police force owes a debt to its fallen and Sir Stephen, dissecting everything in the file (even Peter submitted a complete report), concluded that only two of his people, Peter Cammon and Tommy Verden, had kept that principle uppermost in their thinking and their conduct. Or, as he unloaded onto his assistant, Lorelei, that young woman of surpassing efficiency whom Peter and Tommy both liked for her tempering effect on the boss, when she asked about the wrap-up to the case, “There was a murder to solve. It got solved, my dear.”

“But Cammon freelanced all over the place,” Frank Counter squawked in Bartleben's office subsequent to their boss effectively sacking him three months to the day after the death of John Carpenter.

“When you trust somebody you let them freelance, off the leash,” Sir Stephen retorted. “If it bears results, you don't call it freelancing.”

Counter's antennae should have perked up when Bartleben started coining aphorisms but he was lost and sweating in a jungle of self-pity and he missed the signal. “Stephen, Cammon exceeded his mandate. And he let the girl escape —
twice
.”

Sir Stephen merely stared at Counter with contempt. John Carpenter, Dunning Malloway, and Neil Brayden had all met ugly, lurid deaths but Sir Stephen was confident that the tabloids and the politicians wouldn't make a connection between Cammon's role and the phone hacking and cricket bribery scandals, as long as no one in the hierarchy lost his or her nerve. New Scotland Yard had announced a fresh investigation into the
News of the World
mischief and parliamentary hearings into the matter were on the calendar. Cammon would be safe and Frank Counter should know it.

In his bitterness, Counter persisted in his denunciation of what he called Peter Cammon's “meddling in Canada.”

Sir Stephen's bloody-mindedness expressed itself in clipped sentences. “The deaths of our people won't come out in the inquiry. Nor hopefully in the cricket mess. Peter saw the risk of all this exploding. You didn't, Frank. And Peter did his best not to kill your boy, Malloway.”

“Didn't succeed, did he?”

Class distinctions endure in Britain for a number of reasons, but one is often overlooked: members of higher echelons from time to time insist on the right to speak their minds brutally to those one step down in the hierarchy. Frank Counter liked to believe that he moved round the same circuit as Stephen Bartleben; he attended the right parties, belonged to some of the same clubs, and knew many people, a few of them inside the intelligence elite. But none of this held up when it mattered. Sir Stephen was no longer on the shelf, having graciously accepted the invented title of Coordinator, Special Projects.

Bartleben didn't restrain his cruelty. “You failed to understand that the Minister has to be shielded at all costs. Nicola's man went bad. Malloway turned. Wouldn't have occurred if you had occupied Malloway with keeping Nicola Hilfgott under control, and kept your boy on a tight rein. It was your decision to send Carpenter and then Malloway to Quebec. You're out, Frank. For now, at least. I'm putting Tommy Verden in charge.”

“What?”

“Only of the investigation into the deaths of our officers. The phone-hacking business is moving to a new phase with the announcement under the
Inquiries Act
, and I'll handle that. I want the police investigation regarding Canada contained. Containment requires making sure the Sûreté and the
FBI
are happy, and maybe the municipal forces in D.C. and Buffalo as well.”

“I have solid contacts in the Bureau and with Deroche in Montreal,” Frank pleaded.

“Yes, but Tommy is especially good at the street-level stuff. Speaks their language. He will liaise with the Canadians and the Yanks. Mend fences.”

Frank unwisely took a different tack. “But Deroche can be myopic in his own way, I hear. What interest does he have in helping us?”

“Only that Cammon saved his life on two occasions.”

“So?”

“I've asked Peter to give an assist to Tommy.”

“But Verden aimed a gun at Carpenter's brother inside a church. And again in a car park in Henley.”

Sir Stephen lost it completely. “Tommy Verden maintains self-control at all times. Unlike yourself in this confabulation. So Tommy and Peter are being put in to clean up your failures. Then we'll see. By the way, as your final act perhaps you can find someone to go over and fetch Malloway's remains back to England.”

When Frank Counter went to see Tommy Verden later that afternoon, the veteran inspector was already grinding away at the files. Sir Stephen had shown zero sympathy, but Frank had higher hopes for Verden. Counter walked into Verden's tiny office, which was located one floor down from Bartleben's sanctum. The orderliness of the room should have alerted him, for it betrayed a self-discipline and asceticism far from his own work habits. Tommy received him politely but coldly and listed the thirty or so contacts he had connected with in the first day and a half, just to make a point about who was on the ball.

Frank tried for an opening, slathering on a false concoction of collegiality and superiority of rank. “I think, Tommy, I can help you pin down the extent of Dunning Malloway's sabotage of the cricket investigation.
Mea culpa
. But I understand a lot about this character the Sword, and the way he operates, and I have great contacts in India . . .”

At first, Tommy said nothing. He knew that a burgeoning file existed on the Sword and woe betide Counter if he had held anything back from it. Counter hadn't got his head around the salient, stark fact that the Sword had promised Malloway £100,000 to execute Alida Nahvi. Someone in the Yard had to be sacrificed, even if out of public view. Tommy also respected the strict limits of his own mandate. He wasn't to take control of the Yard's public responses to the
notw
feature on the Pakistani cricket players but together with Peter, he would interact behind the scenes with all the operational players in four countries; he had already called Souma in the Indian police and Rizeman in D.C.

And so Tommy said nothing in response.

Frank Counter looked disconsolate. He leaned forward. “Tommy, I have contacts you don't . . .”

Tommy's raised eyebrow stopped him.

“Jesus, you know, I feel just like Napoleon exiled to that island,” Frank continued.

Tommy's muscled body hulked forward. “Do you like palindromes?”

It was well known that Tommy Verden loved word puzzles, a habit picked up during long stakeouts in unmarked black sedans.

“Palindromes? Sure.”

“Well, able was
I
ere I saw Elba. Why the fuck weren't you?” Tommy said.

The first of Tommy's thirty calls was to Peter, now back at his cottage. They talked for two hours. Peter followed up with a call to Sir Stephen in support of Tommy's appointment. But it was Peter who suggested that he himself take on a special troubleshooting role in the match-fixing investigation. He preferred to leave the hunt for Alida in the Bureau's hands, but what he could do was help to track down the Sword before another gunman was sent to execute the girl. He explained his thinking to Tommy on the phone.

“Malloway never cared about the three letters. The Sword was paying him to find Alida Nahvi and kill her, and the documents were Nicola's sideshow. The Sword may continue to chase the girl. You'll discover that no one but Henry Pastern in Washington still cares about the letters, though that will be enough to keep him looking for Alida.”

“Will Pastern look hard for her?” Tommy pressed.

“I don't know. Inspector Deroche won't. Oh, she'll stay on the wanted list, but not his personal ten-most-wanted. I don't think Deroche even believes that she exists. She's a will-o'-the-wisp to most of us, I admit.”

But very real to you,
Tommy wanted to say. He had caught the undertone of wistfulness whenever Peter discussed the young woman.

Peter changed the subject. “How is Tom Hilfgott?”

Nicola's husband had survived. Tom Hilfgott and Neil Brayden had duelled with irons and woods until a No. 2 drove Tom to the floor, unconscious. Nicola had found him and called an ambulance.

“Put it this way, Peter: the Hilfgotts are back in England. She was quietly recalled and apparently he recovered enough to travel. Foreign and Commonwealth have been working overtime to keep all this out of the press. I talked to a fellow over in Whitehall yesterday, at Sir Stephen's request, and they count themselves lucky that the media haven't latched onto the story.”

“Better get
News of the World
onto it,” Peter said.

“Quote-unquote: ‘Tom Hilfgott's wounds were so serious he may not play golf again.' On the other hand, I hear he's already angling for an appointment for Nicola as high commissioner to Gabon, since Gabon's a full member of the Commonwealth, and apparently has some fine golf courses. Two of which Tom Hilfgott immediately queried by email, according to my sources.”

The death of Neil Brayden was covered up, because neither the Quebec authorities nor the British government saw any benefit in publicizing it. The inquest was perfunctory, with no questioning comments by Dr. Lowndes in the autopsy report this time. Even the separatist groups in Quebec found nothing to exploit when they learned of the death of an employee at the British consulate. Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs shipped Neil Brayden's body home to his family in Bournemouth.

Peter's report to London ran twenty pages but he failed to mention Alida's naked apparition in Renaud's townhouse. The omission made it difficult to explain why he hadn't summoned Deroche that night. In Peter's report, he merely stated that Alida had coerced Seep into summoning Malloway, promising that he knew Alida's whereabouts.

Scotland Yard's failure to confront Nicola Hilfgott early on was more condemning. Sir Stephen had made it clear from the beginning that she was his
bête noire
. Her fixation on the Booth letters obviously was a personal fetish, well outside the mandate assigned by Her Majesty. Even her unreasoning hatred of Olivier Seep should have been evident from the outset. For his part, Dunning Malloway should not have been surprised that Nicola would find a way to manipulate Brayden into going after Seep. Unfortunately, Brayden had arrived at the Seep house with his own lethal agenda. Dunning Malloway paid a heavy price for his one-night stand with the consul general.