The Crescent Spy (5 page)

“Very well. Go on, Mr. Gray,” Pinkerton urged.

Gray pointed to the second picture. “How old are you in this picture? Fourteen, perhaps?”

“More or less.”

“According to what we found in your personal effects, you were on
Cairo Red
as of 1854,” Gray said. “Seven years ago. So you cannot be older than twenty-one now.”

“You would make a good newspaper writer,” she said grudgingly. “If you weren’t such a scoundrel, I’d suggest you speak with Mr. Barnhart at the
Morning Clarion.
He is short one ace reporter.”

“How old are you now?” Pinkerton asked again. “And why are you claiming to be twenty-four?”

“I left New Orleans at seventeen, but told people that I was older so as to secure passage on a clipper without attracting attention. I kept up the fiction when I arrived in Washington City. I am twenty years old as of last month. Now are you satisfied?”

“So where did you get all the money?” Pinkerton asked. “Did you bring it with you, or acquire it in Washington?”

“I didn’t steal it, I didn’t earn it through disreputable activities, and I haven’t been paid by the enemy to serve as a spy or in any other capacity. So I don’t see how it is any of your business.”

“Miss Breaux,” Gray pressed. “If all of that is true, then what harm would it be to explain?”

“No, I’m not talking about it.”

The two agents prodded her a few more times, but she stubbornly resisted saying anything more. That would bring matters back to the Colonel and to her mother’s semireputable career and sad demise, and that was nobody’s business. She certainly wouldn’t discuss it with these two men. At last they gave it up, as she knew they would. They’d gone to a good deal of trouble to maneuver her into this position and wouldn’t change their minds because she had unexplained money.

A knock came at the door, and the two men rose quickly to their feet. Josephine followed their lead.

The president of the United States entered the room.

A
braham Lincoln stood near the door for a long moment, as if waiting for permission to enter. Josephine had seen the man occasionally walking about the White House grounds or exiting his carriage, but this was the first time she had seen him up close since a brief glimpse at the inauguration earlier in the year.

He seemed even taller and more gaunt than she’d remembered. Bags hung beneath his eyes, and lines crawled across his forehead like the picket lines of a slowly marching army. It was as if he’d aged a decade in a few short months.

“Miss Breaux?” Lincoln said. “Your mouth is hanging open wide enough to swallow a dragonfly.”

She snapped it shut, embarrassed by her gaping. She’d met plenty of generals and politicians, and even the president of the Confederacy a few weeks ago, but maybe it was the long, hot day full of reversals and the interrogation Gray and Pinkerton had already subjected her to that left her tongue-tied. She felt she needed to say something and blurted the first stupid thing that came to mind.

“You’re much taller close up.”

A smile lit up his face, and he chuckled warmly. “And you’re as slender as a willow and not much older than the Irish girl they’ve sent to iron my shirts. But if half of what they tell me is true, you’re the young lady who will help me win New Orleans.”

“Sir?”

“Mr. President—” Pinkerton said at the same time, his voice warning.

Lincoln waved a long, bony hand and sat at the far end of the table. The others sat down as well.

“If she’s as clever as Mr. Gray insisted, then she has figured out most of it already. Haven’t you, Miss Breaux?”

“What was I
supposed
to figure out?”

“Ah, well, perhaps they were wrong. You gentlemen did tell her about New Orleans, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Pinkerton said.

“And you questioned her about the riverboat business, or haven’t you reached that point yet?”

“We started, but she is being obstinate.” Pinkerton put away his pipe. “Except what we can pry out of her, she won’t give us any information until she has sussed out the situation.”

“A woman who bridles her mouth before she sets it agallop is precisely what we are looking for, is it not?” the president asked.

Pinkerton scowled. “I suppose.”

“My first question for you,” Lincoln said, turning his deep, penetrating gaze in Josephine’s direction, “is whether you want to see the slavocracy of the rebellious states win their so-called liberty?”

“Of course not. I am a Union supporter and always have been.”

“Mr. Pinkerton and Mr. Gray want you in New Orleans. Please tell me why. I’d like to find out if you’re as clever as you seem from your writing, or if someone else has been penning your stories.”

She bristled at this, even as she knew he was saying it to goad her into defending her intellect. She only just avoided blurting her thoughts. But one of the first lessons of journalism was that if you wanted information, you should let the other fellow do all of the talking. And she desperately wanted information.

After a few seconds of silence, Lincoln sighed. “You have either been overestimated or underestimated. I cannot quite decide which.”

Her pride was eating at her, so she turned toward something else that might prove her quality. “I can tell you why you lost the battle at Bull Run.”

“I beg your pardon?” the president said, blinking.

The president’s two agents exchanged glances. “I hardly think you’re qualified to give military advice,” Pinkerton said.

“The rebels boast that every Southerner is worth ten Yankees,” Josephine said. “But that’s not what I saw on the battlefield. The Union boys were every bit as brave as the enemy. It was only when Union leadership failed that the common soldier turned tail and fled.”

“So the problem was our generals?” Lincoln asked. “Is that your claim? That their officers are more intelligent than ours, better versed in the art of war?”

“I wouldn’t even say that. I met Beauregard when I came in to inspect his army. He was easily fooled, and I didn’t get the impression he was any more clever than your average congressman.”

Lincoln chuckled at this. “Go on.”

“What their commanders possessed, and what was lacking in ours, was
energy.
The enemy took the initiative. During the fight, they saw how the battle was flowing, and they made adjustments, while ours proved incapable of changing course.”

“We had more men and horses,” Lincoln said. “We shouldn’t have needed to change course. Sometimes the best way across the river is a straight line.”

“Unless there’s an alligator in your path,” Josephine said, “in which case it’s wise to paddle downstream a stretch before you make the crossing.” She nodded. “Things went wrong, as they always do in battle. Our generals might have altered their plans in response, but they were ponderous, uncertain. They made the worst sort of mistakes, the kind that come from inaction.”

“If you’re going to commit an error, best do so with alacrity,” Lincoln said.

“And that’s why the rebels won the battle. They made adjustments, they kept their nerve, and they pressed the attack when we faltered.”

“Tell me, is Washington in danger?” Lincoln asked.

Pinkerton cleared his throat. “Mr. President, I don’t think this girl—”

“I want her thoughts. The city is in an uproar, and people are expecting Beauregard to come marching up the road any moment now. Perhaps the young lady has some insight.”

“There’s no danger,” Josephine said, more confidently than she felt. “Not in the short term. The enemy is nearly as stunned as we are.”

“Hmm.” The president leaned back in his chair.
“
‘Clever as a congressman,’ you say. I must remember that.” He gave her a long look. “Where did you learn all of this?”

“Sir?”

“Military details, how to execute a campaign, and so on and so forth.”

“I read, Mr. President.”

“You read. Miss Breaux, excuse my skepticism, but you . . .
read
?”

“I read, yes. And I observe. I ask intelligent questions. And I think, usually in writing—it is how I clarify my thoughts.”

Pinkerton cleared his throat. “Mr. President, she’s only a girl—I hardly think she’s capable of understanding the very complex situation we are facing.”

“Does it matter that she is a young lady, so long as she has a good mind for the subject? An ax and a saw can both fell the same tree.”

“If you don’t need the lumber,” Josephine said, “a battery of twenty-four-pounder howitzers can clear an entire forest in short order.”

“I should hire you to write my speeches,” Lincoln said, chuckling. “Do you have any further observations about the unfortunate events in Virginia?”

“Only one,” she said. “You have men who will fight. Now you need generals who can do the same.”

“She hasn’t told us anything we couldn’t have figured out ourselves,” Pinkerton said grudgingly. He nodded at his younger companion. “Mr. Gray filed a report that said much the same thing.”

“Using twice as many words and with half as much clarity,” Lincoln said. “Reading it was like peering through a fog bank and trying to make a map of the far shore. Miss Breaux turned on a limelight and burned away the fog.”

The president had been flattering her—she recognized this—but it was working. Josephine found herself wanting to please him. Her sense of adventure was roused, and she found herself chewing over the idea of returning to the Mississippi. The thought both thrilled and worried her.

“You mentioned New Orleans,” she said. “Can you tell me more?”

Lincoln looked her over. “It will be dangerous. You might find yourself swinging from the end of a rope.”

“I’m not afraid of that.”

“So you say now. Yet taking into account what you faced in Virginia these past few days, it’s clear you’ve got steady nerves. New Orleans will be a grand adventure, a chance for heroism of the highest sort. Are you the woman for the job?”

“Mr. President,” she said with a smile that was half-coquettish, half-skeptical—a smile learned from her mother, who was rarely denied by men of any kind—“now you’re appealing to my vanity.”

“Is it working?”

“Quite frankly, yes, it is. I’m flattered and I’m intrigued, and there’s no denying it. But I need to know what I’m getting into.”

“I’m sure you’ve guessed this much,” Lincoln said. “The key to this war is control of the Mississippi, from Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico, together with that river’s several tributaries. And the key to the Mississippi is New Orleans. It’s the biggest city and port in the South, site of manufacturers and possessing a population base from which the enemy can raise tens of thousands of troops. The very sinews of war pass through New Orleans.”

He delivered all of this with the same broad frontier accent with which he had been speaking earlier, but something had changed in his tone. She could sense the keen mind that had led a country lawyer on a path to the presidency of the United States. He was holding the map of the South in his mind and probing at her weaknesses, looking for a way to strangle the rebellion.

Pinkerton and Gray listened raptly to the president’s thoughts. The younger man rested his hand on Josephine’s banknotes and let his thumb run along the edge of the money like a riverboat gambler playing with a deck of cards.

“New Orleans is a snapping turtle buried in the mud,” Lincoln continued, “protected by a shell of forts both upstream and down and all the gunboats the enemy can muster. Taking the city is key to shearing off the western states of the rebellion, but right now that is impossible. And that is why we need you in New Orleans.

“Once there, you will be given specific tasks suitable to your impressive range of skills. Your duties will be among the most important of the war. When you have done your work, New Orleans will return to the Union, and enemy hopes will collapse. God willing, this terrible conflict will come to a swift end. You will play a key role in this heroic endeavor.”

Throughout this little speech, Josephine felt her ego swelling, and though she recognized that this was the president’s intent, that didn’t make her immune to its effects. Lincoln had mixed flattery with an appeal to her sense of adventure and glory. Nothing he had given her was useful information—had she been a Confederate spy, Richmond would have reacted to it with a dismissive shrug. Of course New Orleans was critical. Everyone knew that, but she still felt like she was privy to secret war knowledge by hearing it from the mouth of Abraham Lincoln himself.

“Now,” Lincoln said, rising to his feet, which spurred the other three to rise as well. “I have a long night of work ahead of me. I feel like a sailor with a leaky boat, running about, slapping pitch on the timbers to keep it from taking on more water. So I will leave the three of you to your planning.”

“But I still don’t know what you want me to do,” Josephine protested.

“I am sowing many seeds, and I hope that with time some of them will bear fruit. That is all I can say at the moment. For now, I leave this matter in the capable hands of Mr. Pinkerton and Mr. Gray. And you, too, exercising what energy and ingenuity you can bring to bear. Best wishes in New Orleans, Miss Breaux. Now you will excuse me, I am hard pressed.”

Lincoln made for the door, but Josephine sputtered as he walked past her. “I haven’t even said I would go.”

“That is true,” Lincoln said when he reached the door. “There’s nothing we can do to force you. But for the sake of your country, I hope you will.”

Josephine looked from the president to the two agents. Pinkerton tucked
his pipe into his breast pocket and raised his eyebrows in an implied question.

“Well?” Gray said.

Josephine hesitated. She could almost smell New Orleans, the thick, almost tropical scent, smell the river as it cut its wide, inexorable path through the heart of the continent. Already, she could feel the weight of so many memories, some beautiful, some ugly and terrifying. She might come to regret her naïveté, but at the moment she was less worried about the risk of being caught by the Confederates and hung as a spy, and more frightened of being hoisted in the noose of her own past.

Against those fears was personal glory, a chance to test herself, to prove her value. And yes, she possessed a gambling streak that may or may not run in her blood. She thought about the Colonel before shoving aside those memories.

“You’ll have everything you need,” Lincoln prodded. “These two gentlemen will arrange transport to New Orleans, and will make sure you have the resources to support yourself in enemy territory.”

She made her decision.

“I’ll do it.” Josephine eyed Gray, who still had her banknotes, coins, photographs, and letters spread on the table in front of him. “But if your men will return what they’ve stolen, I won’t need your resources, because I’ll have everything I need.”