The Lincoln Deception (13 page)

T
he next morning, Cook was hungry. His head still felt like a mule had kicked him. His back felt like it got the mule's second kick. He had dreamt about the riot, the angry faces in the night, the screaming of “nigger nigger nigger.” He remembered fighting, though not how it started. It was strangers, not the men from Barstow's office. His muscles tensed at the memory—ducking, circling, lashing out, feeling cornered. He remembered Fraser making him walk when he needed to lie down. And here he was in this fine hotel room.

He had little strength, but his mind was clearing. According to Fraser, he had lingered in a twilight consciousness for more than a day. He was through with that, through with lying there in bed.

After Fraser finished examining him, Cook levered himself upright, then stood. A wave of dizziness sent him stumbling to a straight-backed chair. Hanging his head in his hands, he breathed carefully. He gathered himself.

“Easy stages,” Fraser said.

“S'pose I should be thanking you,” Cook said, “taking care of me.”

“It's what doctors do.”

“Also, for getting me out of there.”

“I've never seen anything like that. Those men were crazed.”

“Nothing new, Doc, though I've never seen that many at once.” He sighed deeply. “You came out okay?”

“I'm fine. Miss Eliza saved us both.”

“Thought I saw her. This is her room, right?” Fraser nodded. “Yeah, that's a lady's hair brush.” Cook rubbed his eyes, then each arm and each leg. The pain in his back was less. Not the pain in his head. He leaned forward and looked straight at Fraser. “I remember hearing something about a black bastard?”

A knock on the door brought a waiter with a breakfast tray. He set it on a table next to Cook. The smell was unwelcome. “Is that oatmeal?”

“Cream of wheat, sir,” the waiter answered.

“I'm hungry. How about steak and eggs?”

“You haven't been able to handle much in the way of food,” Fraser said.

“That's why I'm hungry.” Cook turned to the waiter. “Steak and eggs. Four eggs. And biscuits. My friend here will eat this.” As the waiter left, Cook poured himself some water from the pitcher on the tray. He spread butter and jam on a thick slice of toast. After a second slice of toast, he sat back. The headache was relenting. Coffee? No, coffee would make the headache worse. It was warm for coffee, anyway.

“So what happened at Barstow's office?” Fraser asked.

“Hold up. When you saw him at the downtown Delmonico's, or before or after that, or really anytime, did you notice anyone watching you? Is there anyone you've seen more than once? Have you noticed anything unusual?”

“No, nothing I can think of.”

Here he looked straight at Fraser. “Three of them came after me in his office. They either followed me there or were expecting me.”

When Cook was done describing the encounter, Fraser let out a low whistle of admiration. “You had quite a night. Sorry I wasn't there to help.”

Cook let the remark pass. No reason to point out that Fraser would have been a hindrance, not a help. He remembered something. “You never looked in my jacket, did you?” Fraser shook his head. “Bring it here.” Cook patted the garment, relieved to find everything there—the memorandum book and dictionary, and the book with the frog drawing. “See here,” he said, “we may have ourselves some clues.”

Setting the volumes on the table before him, Cook explained where he found them. Fraser pulled up a chair. They decided that the frog book looked too new to have anything to do with the Booth conspiracy. Its columns of numbers ranged between three and five digits. There were no headings or markings other than numbers.

“Must involve money,” Cook said.

“Why?”

“What else do you write down in numbers and hide in a steel box?”

“Money that Barstow got or money that he paid?”

Cook shook his head. “One or the other. Must be some sequence in time here, too, but I can't pick it up. What's the pattern?”

After a few more minutes they put the frog book aside and turned to the worn volumes. Fraser leaned over the memo book's entries. They were numbers and letters, strung in rows. That was a cipher, Fraser said, presumably the code that the Confederate secret service used. He had that cipher key, which came from Booth's own papers. It was in his luggage, which was at the new hotel he had checked them into the day before, while Cook was lying dazed in bed.

“You didn't register under our names, did you?” Cook asked.

“Of course not,” Fraser answered, “I signed the book as John Bingham and friend.”

Cook was irritated by the man's smile. “Don't be so damned clever. You need to move us to a new hotel this afternoon under some other names, and we might just think about leaving this town. I'm not enjoying myself here like I'd hoped.”

Fraser started to tell Cook about his conversation with Barstow. He stopped when the waiter returned with Cook's second breakfast. Cook pitched into the food but soon slowed his pace. The steak felt greasy; the eggs were more than he wanted. As Fraser finished the tale, Cook was picking at a biscuit, most of the food untouched.

“That's the biggest cock-and-bull story I've ever heard,” Cook said. “Those armies, after massacring each other for four years, they're going to trot off together and invade Canada and Mexico? Answer me this. What were they going to do with the 200,000 colored troops in the Union Army? Those were black men with guns and army training. They weren't about to lock arms with those Confederates and go off and conquer some foreign countries. Nor the other way around, either. Those rebels going to fight side by side with the sons of Africa? That's all just crazy. You know what that would have brought on? A real race war. He's trying to fool us.”

“But he thinks I'm Dr. John McIntire, not Jamie Fraser.”

“You sure about that?”

“Of course, I'm sure.”

Cook's mind wasn't all the way clear yet, but he didn't like this Barstow situation. Fraser agreed that the tycoon was probably connected to the Sons of Liberty. Weichmann as much as said so when he wrote out Barstow's name for Fraser. Maybe the frog book included something about the finances of that group.

Figuring out Barstow's books would have to wait. Now they had to protect themselves. Barstow knew by now that Cook had taken his secret records. He must suspect that Dr. John McIntire was connected to it. So they should be wary of anything coming from Barstow.

Eliza stopped in on her way to the theater and expressed pleasure at Cook's improvement. Fraser explained that they would be moving to their own hotel. He would let her know where they settled.

“What's this?” she said, picking up Barstow's memorandum book. She riffled the pages with an air of curiosity.

“Nothing, really,” Fraser said, holding his hand out for the book. “Something we've been working on.”

Eliza looked up to him with an open countenance. “Oh, I see.” She handed him the book, which he slipped into his jacket pocket. She explained that the Clarke company would pack up in two days. Their first stop would be Trenton, then Philadelphia. “We'll be in Washington in ten days.” She sat at the writing desk and jotted a note. “We're playing at the Columbia Theatre there, and, of course, we'll stay at the Willard. These are the addresses. Perhaps if you're in town, you might care to see our show?”

“I was hoping we might see each other again before we leave New York,” Fraser said. He accepted the note, holding her hand for an extra moment.

Eliza smiled. “You know where I'll be. Getting ready for the road is always a hubbub, but I'd be glad to see you.”

After she left, Cook gave Fraser an appraising stare. “I see.”

“What do you see?”

“I see that you and she have traveled a ways while I lay here in cloud cuckoo land. Not that I'm criticizing. She's a fine-looking woman.”

Fraser didn't answer. He moved around the room, ineffectually collecting their things. Cook added, “But can we trust her?”

“Of course, we can trust her. If she hadn't helped us, you might not be alive right now.”

Cook nodded. Fraser went into the next room.

 

After Fraser transferred their luggage to the Miller Hotel on Madison Avenue, the two men slipped out the back of the Waldorf and into a hack. At Cook's insistence, they registered as Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones. The new hotel's nondescript front pleased Cook, and it matched the forlorn atmosphere inside. In the lobby, no piece of furniture matched any other. The water pitcher in their room was chipped. The beds sagged. Cook collapsed on his bed with a grunt of satisfaction. This place, he declared, was perfect. Soon he was snoring.

Fraser dug out his cipher key and set to work on the memo book. There were variations between Barstow's code and the official Confederate cipher, which probably involved a book code keyed to the dictionary that Cook also took from Barstow. It was tedious work, particularly the book code entries. Three consecutive numbers would refer to the page, line, and word in the dictionary.

Many of Barstow's entries recorded ships and dates, time and tides, presumably the arrangements for running the Union blockade. The references to Spencer must mean Julius Spencer, a New York cotton trader who partnered with Barstow after the war, creating Spencer, Barstow & Company. From Mr. Bingham's library, Fraser knew that Spencer was a leading New York Democrat, deeply involved in George McClellan's campaign for president in 1864. Had Confederate cotton financed McClellan's campaign?

When Cook snorted awake, Fraser showed him some of the late pages in the memo book. Barstow's notes stated that “au”—the chemical symbol for gold—went to New York on three occasions in February and March of 1865. Each transfer was for $3,000. The final entry on each line was “JH.” John Surratt, whose full name was John Harrison Surratt, often went by the alias “John Harrison.”

“So,” Fraser said, “the question is why the Confederates were sending gold to New York so near the end of the war? And having John Surratt carry it?”

“You think it was getting to Booth?”

“Don't you?”

Cook made a face. “This could be Confederate money, but it could be Barstow's money. Maybe he was just getting his own money someplace safe.”

“But he's using a Confederate courier, John Surratt, to do it.” “Barstow may not have been too fussy about who he used to run his errands, not at that point in the war. And his business and Confederate business may not have been entirely separate.” Cook shook his head. “Something else doesn't add up for me. Why does Barstow still have this book? Can't help him any, not thirty-five years later. Actually, it can only hurt him. I thought he was so smart.”

“It could be he needed this record to get his share from his partners in the cotton smuggling. The man from Lehman Brothers said that Barstow's partners today are the men he went through the war with. Maybe he kept it as a sort of insurance, to keep them under his control, so he could prove something against them if he had to.”

Cook pursed his lips. “Maybe. I don't like it when really smart people do things that seem dumb. Makes me think I'm figuring something wrong.”

They agreed to go to Baltimore next. Many of the story's strands led to that city. Anna Surratt, the conspirator's daughter, lived there still, as did her brother John. Sam Arnold, one of the conspirators, lived in a town to the south. Fraser proposed to wire Townsend, the writer in western Maryland, for advice on how to track them down. Cook assumed he would wire Eliza as well, but didn't say anything about it.

When Fraser returned from the telegraph office, he had bread and liverwurst for their midday meal. As they ate, Cook grumbled that the trip to Baltimore wasn't worth it. “Those Surratts and Samuel Arnold won't ever talk to us.”

“Maybe they're ready after all these years. Maybe we can find something like this memo book so they won't actually have to talk. Anna Surratt might be a good bet. Weichmann said she's a sensitive person. She may be less devoted to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy than her brother is. And Sam Arnold may be angry about what happened to him, since he actually tried to pull out of Booth's conspiracy. He might blame the people who got him into it. We'll never know if we don't try.”

“What about Barstow?” Cook asked. “He could start trailing us again.”

“He doesn't have to trail us, actually. I have a meeting with him at five this afternoon. Or, rather, Dr. McIntire has a meeting with him. And he'd better get a move on.”

Despite the heat of the afternoon, which crowded into their small room, Fraser began to don his cravat. As he peered into the cracked mirror that hung askew on the wall, he explained the special investment opportunity that Barstow had mentioned at their dinner.

“So what is it?” Cook asked.

“I don't know. That's why I'm going to meet him.”

Cook shook his head. “You don't see what a bad idea that is? Whatever the truth is about Barstow, he's not trying to find you a good investment. And it ain't like you're looking for one.”

“Every time I talk to him, we learn something. We even learn from how he lies.”

“That's either the dumbest thing I ever heard or it's just way over the head of this poor colored man. You say he's the one who wanted to talk to you in that restaurant, right? Why's such a rich man want to talk to some hayseed from Ohio dressed up in his best suit?”