The Pinkerton Files Five-Book Bundle (20 page)

Repository Note:

For 50 years, the Library of Congress has tried to make sense of
records buried in the archives of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. It's
been a chore. Since taking over, I've reminded my team many times that answers
are hidden in the mess. We would be the ones to find them. Against the wishes
of our own Justice Department, we've released thousands of documents to the
public. There have been startling discoveries along the way:

Agency founder Allan Pinkerton claimed that, during the Civil War,
President Abraham Lincoln refused to use steam weapons against Confederates.
That would shock most Americans if it turned out to be true. Pinkerton took
credit for saving Lincoln from an assassination attempt spearheaded by outlaw
William Hunt. Accounts from the era cite New York Police Superintendent John
Kennedy as hero of that affair. The rift between Pinkerton's papers and the
historic record goes deeper. He claimed that Major Robert Anderson was a
break-away mutineer intent on using advanced Union munitions to destroy the
Confederacy. Strangest of all, the Pinkerton files suggest that Timothy
Webster, executed as a double agent at the end of the war, was in fact a
detective who died before the fighting started. Either Allan Pinkerton was a
liar, maybe a delusional old man, or the things we think we know about our
country's history are simply wrong.

I was sure this was just the beginning. I guessed that the old
detective hid his notes more carefully after war erupted, after his son Robert
and the disgraced Kate Warne intervened at Bull Run. Their bungling cost
hundreds of lives and handed a crucial victory to southern rebels. Allan
Pinkerton receded from public view after that event. His detectives became
spies for President Lincoln. I expected to find more but the secret cache of
case files never resurfaced. After so much hard work, we were getting nowhere.

That was when I received the invitation, practically on cue. It was
more than a simple invitation, of course. A diplomatic travel visa was
authorized. Security screens were pre-approved. My travel was even booked.
There was no mystery as to who opened this door for me: surely the same man who
spent a small fortune taking the Justice Department to court, blocking their
attempt to shut down our Pinkerton project. Years later, just as we gave up
looking for case files in the Pinkerton archive, he invited me to New Carthage.

The republic is a truly foreign place. I knew the same basics as
everyone else. It is an artificial land mass, built on iron plates and
foundations that reach down to the ocean floor. It extends almost 300 miles
into the Atlantic and now runs the east coast of the United States, top to
bottom. It was constructed as a temporary colony for the relocation of slaves
after the Civil War. But it became a great deal more. The metal island, tiny
and isolated in unfriendly open water, expanded to become a country unto
itself.

Technologies that have been illegal for a century or more in America
have flourished and evolved in New Carthage. Nowhere was this more striking to
me than in the mechanized library where I met my host. Met is the wrong word.
We never stood face to face. I only heard his voice, following me through the
library, always quietly by my side, broadcast on a chain of speakers in the
tables, the floors, the walls, the bookshelves. He was right next to me yet
nowhere to be seen. Amid rotating stacks of books, folders, loose papers,
drawings and artwork of all sorts, he guided me to sound recordings made by the
Pinkertons. I was skeptical. After a short time, though, I recognized the
agents. I knew them well enough. The audio was authentic. It picked up where
our files ended.

Because I travelled on a diplomatic visa, on behalf of the government,
I was required by law to include these items in our Pinkerton collection. I
knew they would cause trouble once released. How could they not? The first
entry is undated. I can't say where it fits in the rest of the sequence. The
others map onto a rough timeline that centers on Allan Pinkerton in New York
during the great fire. What was he doing there?

An angry public debate is gathering force. No one wants to revisit that
painful moment from our past. With every new release from the Pinkerton
archive, the tone of this debate gets darker, more threatening. Maybe we aren't
ready to hear the things Allan Pinkerton has to tell us. Maybe this is what my
host in New Carthage intended all along.

- Diane Larimer, Chief Archivist, United States Library of Congress

*   *   *

Corporal, we have reached the end. Bring the light forward. There is a
hatch on this wall. It will take us to the lead transport. Bring the candle.

Corporal! You bloody stupid man. Is there not enough at stake? What
good is a soldier if he can't even be counted on to help break things?

There. I am through. It is even darker up here. Corporal, follow my
voice. Are you still behind me?

Mercy, I hear them. They are coming.

I am installing the transmitter. There is so little time.

Can anyone hear me? This is Kate Warne. Acknowledge. I am transmitting
from the Potomac canal. We are en route to Washington. You must destroy these
vessels. Acknowledge, damn you!

I am Kate Warne. Whoever is listening: destroy these vessels!

*   *   *

Allan Pinkerton, Principal
December, 1861

New York City glows beneath me. I am standing in a weapons laboratory
aboard the airship Protocol. From this vantage, I see currents of fire
swallowing the streets. Rebels mounted turbine furnaces in matched pairs
throughout the city to blast sheer walls of pressurized and oxygen-rich air
into the Manhattan grid. The blaze is out of control.

We do not know where the turbines are located. Dr. Thaddeus Lowe is
trying to deduce their positions. My son, Robert, is presumably trying to help.
I hope he is not hindering Dr. Lowe's progress.

Rebels ignited the turbines without warning. They gave civilians no
chance to escape. Once the first spark was struck, fire swept into the streets.
Temperatures are so extreme that buildings not only burn, they melt.

My view from the laboratory window is shifting now. Navigators are
moving the Protocol further away. This heat is a danger to the airship, I
imagine, even from a distant position over the river.

Dr. Lowe created the Protocol as a test facility, a proving ground for
new innovations. When businesses in the Union north need a piece of equipment
that cannot be purchased, or which does not exist, Dr. Lowe invents it for them
on this vessel.

The main body of the Protocol is comprised of nine round modules. Each
is a dirigible in itself, big enough to occupy an entire hangar. They are bound
to each other in a web of cables as thick as sewer pipes. The modules hold
together in flight by orbiting around one another in a shifting and
counterbalancing array. Pulleys at the center of each module extend and
contract the cables. Every module uses tension created by the others to sustain
its own momentum.

Dr. Lowe devised the array and set it in motion not knowing whether it
could sustain flight. Since he could not say whether it would fly, he never
stopped to ask how it might land. At present, that remains an open question.
Dr. Lowe has kept the Protocol afloat and lived on board ever since.

An exterior housing was initially designed and mounted to protect the
whirling modules. With no way of landing, however, Dr. Lowe has never been able
to complete the installation. The result looks like fingers of a hand reaching
out to grab, without quite capturing, nine massive modules from behind.

The Protocol is the only facility of its kind. Scientists and craftsmen
live with their families on board. They peddle in radical ideas but, for all
their creativity, neither Dr. Lowe nor anyone on his team can imagine a way to
slow down the inferno below.

How did it come to this? Is it possible that my one act of betrayal, a
single unremarkable lie, lead to the burning of New York City?

Confound it! The sound of my own voice in this contraption is
ridiculous. What I would give to have my proper case files. I might make sense
of these events. It is a curse to rely on Robert's damned audio device.

We cannot trust machines. They never face consequences. A machine has a
function. It may be reliable, or it may fail, but it cannot betray. That is
what makes us human. We can breach a trust and we must face consequences. I
fear Robert may never understand this, even if I swing by the neck for what I
am about to do.

The message from Major Robert Anderson is in my hand. I will read it
aloud by the light of New York on fire then I will destroy it. The note is
unsigned. Its origins are impossible to verify. I could invent a hundred
stories to explain how I came to possess it. I do not invent stories. That is
not the legacy I will pass on to my sons. This is for them. If the worst comes
to pass, let it be known that the note reads:

Warn Lincoln: it is a trap. Move the Army north. Commit every
resource to New York.

The paper flares in a gas burner, turns to black ash and cools brittle
in the air. I was a fool. I thought we were ready to be spies. We did not know
the first thing.

Major Anderson knew what was coming. He arranged for that note to be
placed in my hand, tasked me with helping the President prevent a catastrophe.
Now the note is destroyed and the city of New York is ablaze.

Does that make me a traitor? It makes no difference.

Madness. I have lived to see a day when being a traitor or not is
beside the point.

Only one month has passed since this all began, since I stupidly
believed we were ready for the business of war. How can so much have happened
in such a thin splinter of time? One month ago, I was standing in the White
House, preparing to lie to the President during my first official function as a
Union spy. Lincoln introduced me to a kind of inner circle; the sort of men who
knew about cold brutality. Among that group was Lafayette Baker, Lincoln's
Chief of Domestic Security.

Baker is aboard the Protocol with me. As soon as we reached New York
City, he seized Superintendent John Kennedy based on my account of his role in
the Golden Circle case. Baker is holding him as a prisoner and a suspect in the
outbreak of this fire.

Superintendent Kennedy is well known to me. He arrested my son and
conspired with William Hunt to kill President Lincoln in order to bring down
the government. It is a travesty that Kennedy remains a respected public
figure. The policemen's union and a legion of New York lawyers blocked every
attempt to bring charges against him.

Lafayette Baker is not impressed by unions or lawyers. The rule of law
is an annoyance to him. Prior to the war, Baker was an army truant officer. All
he possessed was narrow mindedness. Never has a soldier, leaving his post to
tend to a dying relative, received less pity. War has a way of making zealots
seem like achievers. His lack of empathy made him an asset. The President
handpicked him to spy on other northerners.

Despite his elevated station, Lafayette Baker still looks like a
highwayman. He wears his rusty hair in a matted crop. Every strand is cut the
same length, even on his beard. Baker has eyes like a blind man. They do not
focus. He watches the world in peripheral vision. Behind that gaze, he seems
utterly absent.

Finding John Kennedy was no great achievement. Where else would the
Superintendent be in a time of crisis? He was at police headquarters. Still,
Baker bounced on his heels when he brought Kennedy aboard the Protocol. You
would have thought he unmasked the Count of Monte Cristo. His body jittered
with excitement. His eyes registered no emotion.

Baker took the prisoner to a lecture hall. I watched with mounting
alarm as he went about his work. Guards strapped Kennedy to a chair. At the far
end of the hall, the carcass of a hog was propped in a matching seat.

Baker told me he tried variations of this technique with live hogs. He
found that dead ones worked better. He believed the struggle of a living animal
elicited more pity than fear. A carcass was more impactful. The hog's snout was
turned up, as though sniffing. Baker fed a hose into its windpipe. He strapped
a leather mask over its mouth and nose. The airway was sealed.

We sat in silence. It was impossible to take our eyes off the hog.

Baker signalled to the operator of a steam chamber out of view. The hog
jerked. Its little arms quivered. Its chest and belly filled with air. I
thought the beast might float away. The hog shook so hard that the chair
rattled then its carcass came to pieces with a dull pop. Slabs of bloodless
meat thumped against the wall. Legs and haunches remained in the chair. The nub
of its spine poked up.

John Kennedy understood the meaning behind this display. He could be
tortured by degrees. It was a simple matter of adjusting pressure in the steam
chamber. He could be made to suffer without pause.

Body parts were cleared away. Baker went so far as to bring the leather
mask close enough that Kennedy felt air leaking from the hose. That was as hard
as Baker needed to press. Kennedy's resolve came apart like the quarters of
that hog.

Baker asked where the turbines were located. Kennedy did not know. He
knew part of the rebel plan but not the details. Rebels no longer trusted him.
Witnessing his capitulation to Lafayette Baker, I understood why.

Kennedy wept. He did not realize they meant to burn the city. His wife
lived in New York and was pregnant. They were to have a family at last. Her
whereabouts were still unknown at the time of his capture. Kennedy told Baker
as much as he knew. It amounted to this: rebels would not negotiate. They would
not turn off the turbines. The city would be destroyed.