PROLOGUE

Washington, D.C.

January 24, 1865

2:45 p.m.

He spotted sudden alarm on his host’s face.  An unusual sight given Joseph Henry’s somber reputation as one of America’s leading scientists, not to mention the man’s prestigious title. 

Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 

He was sitting in Henry’s chilly office on a comfortable leather couch, their business nearly concluded.  He’d made the appointment weeks earlier, and it was supposed to have occurred yesterday, but he’d been delayed.  Understandable, as a civil war raged just across the river in Virginia, though the conflict seemed to be in its waning days.  Everything had changed since Gettysburg.  Over 250,000 Confederate soldiers lay dead.  Another 250,000 languished in Federal prisoner-of-war camps, 125,000 more were crippled and wounded.  Where before a Southern victory had seemed possible, it appeared now that the high tide of the Confederacy had finally run out. 

“Did you hear that?” Henry asked.

Actually, he had. 

A sharp, crackling sound from overhead. 

The office sat on the second floor, behind a great rose window, between two of the building’s trademark towers.

“Could simply be ice sliding from the roof,” he said to Henry.

The day was bitterly cold.  The Potomac barely flowed, littered with dense ice that had all but halted river traffic and delayed his arrival.  Entering the northern capital had not been easy.  Forts ringed the Federal district.  Troops were encamped everywhere.  Security had grown tight.  Access in and out came with questions and restrictions.  Luckily, he possessed the necessary credentials to come and go, which was why he’d been chosen for this mission.

The noise came again.

Then, again. 

“It could be ice,” Henry said.  “But it’s not.”

His host rose and rushed to the office door.  He followed him out into a cavernous two-tiered lecture hall where dense clouds of smoke billowed against  the ceiling. 

“The house is on fire,” Henry yelled.  “Sound the alarm.”

The Secretary hurried off down the stairs to the ground floor.  Beyond the windows, past the ceiling oculus, natural light which normally flooded the interior had turned dark and gloomy.  Smoke had swallowed the exterior and was beginning the claim inside.  He heard heavy footfalls, doors opening and closing, and shouts.  Men flooded into the auditorium, then fled down to the ground floor. 

He ran up one of the aisles toward the adjacent picture gallery, where plaster from the ceiling rained down, exposing flames that were already busy consuming the attic and roof.  A few of the canvases had caught fire.  As a painter, the sight sickened him.  The blaze seemed extra intense here, which might indicate its point of origin.  He purged the artist from his brain and started thinking like an intelligence operative, analyzing his options and reaching conclusions. 

Black smoke gathered in thick clouds.

Breathing was becoming difficult.

He’d traveled from Richmond on secret orders from President Jefferson Davis himself.  The fact that he was acquainted with Joseph Henry and familiar with the Smithsonian had made him the ideal choice.  A secret peace conference was already scheduled for two weeks hence at Hampton Roads.  Lincoln planned to attend, as would Vice-President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens, who’d been trying for two years to end the war.  Jeff Davis hated his second-in-command, considering the impish Georgian weak and treasonous.  But Stephens harbored high hopes that an honorable end could be negotiated.

He raised an arm and used the sleeve of his wool coat as a filter to breathe.  On the far side of the lecture hall, past another doorway, flames ravaged the apparatus room, its collection of rare scientific instruments soon to be no more.  He knew the interior walls both here and across on the other side of the lecture hall did not attach to the ceiling, the idea being that they could be removed and the auditorium eliminated, converting the entire second floor into more exhibit space.  That convenience, though, now aided the fire, which spread overhead unimpeded.

“The building is gone,” a man screamed, running through the auditorium hauling a box to safety.  “Everyone must leave.”

That assessment may be right, so he should hurry.  The purpose of his visit remained inside Henry’s office, lying on the desk.  It had to be protected. Flames had yet to find their way there, but it would be a matter of only moments before that happened.  People rushed about, some toting paintings, others books and records, a few cradling specimens apparently deemed too precious to leave behind.  The building had stood since 1846 when Congress finally decided what to do with the $500,000 left in a will by an obscure British chemist named James Smithson, his directive from the grave as to how to spend the money somewhat puzzling. 

To found at Washington an establishment, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.

Even odder was the fact that Smithson had never once visited the United States, yet he left his entire fortune to its government. 

It had taken years for Congress to act.

Some thought the establishment should be only a great library, others a mere museum, a few pushed for a self-financed lecture series, while another group wanted to publish only respected treatises.  Southern Congressional representatives were wholly skeptical, thinking the proposed entity would become some sort of forum for antislavery advocates.  They’d resisted doing anything, wanting simply to give the money back.  Eventually, cooler heads prevailed and an establishment was chartered that called for a library, museum, art gallery, lecture hall, and a building of liberal scale to accommodate it all.  The resulting Romanesque edifice, in the style of the 12^th century, with long wings, tall towers, arches, and a slate roof had become unique to the country—its shape and red sandstone exterior like a monastery.  Which had been intentional, creating a startling contrast to the Greek revival architecture that dominated the rest of the capital city.  Joseph Henry hated the finished product, calling it a fantastic and almost useless building.  A sad mistake.  But many had started referring to it by another name. 

The Castle.           

Now it was burning.

He raced back to Henry’s office to find it occupied.  Another man had gained entrance and, at first, he’d thought him part of the staff.  Then he noticed the dark blue uniform with a trim great coat, the insignia of a Union Army captain on both shoulders.  The man turned and, without a moment’s hesitation, reached for his sidearm. 

Earlier, he’d thought someone had been following him.  His plan had been to get in and out of the Castle unnoticed.  But things did not always go according to plan. 

He heard a shot and a bullet splintered the jamb, but he’d already dove from the doorway.  He’d also noticed that the revolver was one of the new ones with a double-action that automatically cocked and released the hammer, turning the cylinder. 

Expensive and rare.

He landed in the corridor and reached for his own double-action revolver, tucked into a holster beneath his coat.  He’d hoped to avoid violence, but now there seemed to be no choice.  He rose and prepared to take down the man in Henry’s office.  Twenty-five feet above him fire raced across the ceiling in a blackened path, the entire auditorium nearly engulfed in smoke.  Chunks of burning wood rained down both here and inside Henry’s office.  The captain ran out, the gun in one hand and what he’d brought for Joseph Henry in the other.

“Give this to the Secretary,” Jefferson Davis had instructed, handing him a brass skeleton key. “And retrieve your journal.”

He’d seen the volume lying on Henry’s desk, but the captain now held it along with the key.  That this stranger knew exactly what to retrieve was disturbing.

So he tackled the captain to the floor. 

Together they rolled toward the podium that faced the semicircular rows of seats.  The captain broke away and sprang to his feet, but a yank on both ankles staggered him back on his heels, arms flailing in the air, the uniformed body toppling hard to the wood floor with a thump. 

Which caused the man’s grip on everything he held to release.

He grabbed the key and the journal.

“Thank you, kindly,” he said to the dazed captain.

He stood and kicked the gun off into the smoke.  He was about to make an exit when the captain regained his senses and rolled up on all fours, ready to pounce. 

“Why must you?” he muttered to the officer.

Then he planted the toe of his boot to the underside of the captain’s chin, sending the man back to the floor unconscious.

“Now please stay there.”

He hustled for the stairs and descended to ground level.  Thankfully, the fire seemed confined to the upper floors, with only minor smoke below.  He noticed that pails of water spaced throughout the Great Hall—surely a precaution for just this emergency—sat frozen, useless to stave off the growing conflagration.  Even if they’d not been ice, the fire was simply too big to fight with buckets.

He heard a crash and realized that more of the roof had caved in above.

Time to leave.

But that captain.

He might not make it out.

Why should he care?

A conscience was such a hindrance.

He stuffed the gun back into his holster and the key and journal into an inside coat pocket.  Then, against his better judgment, he re-climbed the stairs, found the captain’s unconscious body, and heaved him onto one shoulder.  He carried the man down and out into the daylight just as steam-powered fire trucks rolled onto the grounds. 

By now quite a crowd had gathered. 

Smoke and flames poured from the Castle’s upper reaches, curling around the stonework, licking out through the arches and trefoils.  Books rained down from the windows, where volunteers were desperately trying to save what they could.  A tower collapsed amongst a storm of smoke and embers.  He deposited the captain away from the building, near where others, choking from smoke, were being examined.

He stared back at the disaster.

The picture gallery, with its tall arched windows and walls lined with majestic Indian portraits, seemed lost, as was Henry’s office.  Upper story windows exploded outward, raining down glass.  The fire engines began to work, their job compounded by the cold.  Remarkably, the east side of the building, where Henry lived with his family, seemed okay, the fire localized to the west portion of the second floor.

None of this was his problem, though.  That would be for others to handle, most prominent among them Secretary Henry, the tall ascetic man, huddled inside a shapeless black coat, who scurried about the grounds giving orders.  He caught Henry’s eye and gave a discreet pat to a coat pocket, which indicated that all remained safe.  Henry nodded, confirming that he understood.  Then a slight jerk of Henry’s head, angled off to one side, signaled that he should leave. 

Excellent advice. 

Without question, Joseph Henry was playing a dangerous game.  On the one hand he served on the Navy Department’s Permanent Commission, advising the Union on things such as the use of balloons in warfare, new armaments, even the mining of coal in Central America.  But on the other he held a deep belief in his responsibility to universal knowledge and to his duties as Smithsonian Secretary.  Keeping with that, he’d refused to fly the American flag over the Castle and resisted quartering Union troops, asserting that the Smithsonian was a neutral international scientific organization.  His pre-war friendship with Jefferson Davis was no secret, and today’s meeting had been arranged by Henry directly with Richmond, the coded messages carried back and forth by pigeon posts.

He noticed a contingent of Union soldiers arriving.

Definitely time to leave.

He melted into the crowd and slowly eased away.  He recognized some of the faces that had gathered to watch the spectacle and realized that Congress itself had adjourned.  Many familiar Northern Republican politicians stood in the cold.  His journal remained safe beneath his coat, close to his breast.  He was one man, on a mission.

Just the way he liked it.

The soldiers had fanned out and were now surveying the crowd.  Odd, considering they should be dealing with the fire.  Then he saw the captain from inside, roused to his feet, leading the search.

Several carriages were parked nearby, their occupants gazing at the  burning building in the dim afternoon.  He zeroed in on one where the pretty oval face of a middle-aged woman, framed by shoulder-length brown hair, could be seen.  Around her neck she wore a necklace, the gold medallion standing out in stark contrast to her black coat, buttoned tight to the cold. 

He studied the symbol.

A cross inside a circle.

Soldiers were drawing closer, but he kept easing toward the carriage, keeping his head down, his throat raw from deep, dragged-in breaths of freezing air. 

He arrived and said, “All you young people that pass by, as you are now so once was I.”

She smiled at his lyric.  “So poetic.”

“Might you be able to add to my prose?”

“As I am now so must you be, therefore prepare to follow me.’”

The precise words, spoken correctly.  It was an epitaph he’d seen once on an old grave, the lines stuck in his brain.  Things were like that for him.  He had a hard time forgetting anything.  Details stayed forever, a talent that had come in handy these past few years.  Originally, he was supposed to have found this attractive woman once he’d left the Castle, the plan being for her to pass by on 10th Street at precisely four p.m.

“Please, join me,” she said.

He climbed in and closed the carriage door, sitting back, out of view  across from her. 

“A few more moments and you might have been discovered,” she whispered.

“That I might.” 

He rarely possessed any tangible sense of fear, able to stay calm in the face of intense danger.  But once that peril faded there always seemed a momentary pause, a sense of release that signaled both relief and safety. 

Like now.

She stuffed the necklace back beneath her coat, out of sight.  Then she called out for the driver to leave and the horse moved ahead.  The idea had been for him to conclude his business with Secretary Henry and, during the coming evening, join this woman for the second part of his mission.  The Washington social season had already started—a time for parties, receptions, and levees.  The gathering tonight, at Navy Secretary Gideon Welles’ home, would be its usual grand, influential event.  Nearly 75,000 people lived in the federal city, one-third of whom leaned toward the South.  His job would have been to attend with this woman on his arm and keep his ears open.  After all, that was a spy’s main task.  But that was no longer possible. 

Things had changed.   

At least he had the key and the journal. 

Mentioning the encounter with the Union officer was not necessary.  That report would be for Jefferson Davis’ ears only.  But he did owe his savior thanks, so he tipped his head and threw her a smile. 

“Angus Adams, ma’am.”

She smiled back.  “Marianna McLoughlin.  My friends call me Mary.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Mary.  My friends call me Cotton.”