The First Assassin

SIXTEEN

THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 1861

A few minutes after eight o’clock, Rook walked into the meeting room of the Winder Building. Portia followed him in. All of the conversations between the officers immediately stopped. Those who were not already seated scrambled for their chairs, almost like schoolchildren who dashed to their desks upon the first sight of their teacher. The only sound came from the ticking of a clock.

The colonel had wondered what his reception would be like. He now realized that there would be no friendly greetings or informal pleasantries. The only exception was Springfield, who nodded almost imperceptibly at him. The two men had not seen each other since the previous day at Tabard’s. Springfield never before had attended one of Scott’s meetings-as a sergeant, his rank was too low-but Rook had sent him a note overnight requesting his presence. The colonel was counting on him to make an important contribution.

Portia’s nighttime appearance at the White House had led to several important connections. Rook learned that she came from the Bennett plantation in South Carolina, carrying the picture of a man supposedly sent to murder the president. Langston Bennett corresponded with Violet Grenier, a secessionist who seemed to sit at the center of a conspiracy. The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fit together, even if the full picture remained unclear.

All eyes were on Rook, who remained standing. The colonel thought he detected a mix of curiosity and skepticism. At the opposite end of the room, sitting furthest from the door, was Scott. He looked positively hostile, with crossed arms. Locke sat to his left, trying to mimic the general’s posture and expression. On the other side of the general sat Seward. Rook had not expected to see him.

Scott was obviously irritated. Having a good sleep interrupted for any reason made the general grumpy. Having it ruined the way it was just a few hours ago, when a messenger from the White House banged on his door in the middle of the night and delivered an urgent note whose contents seemed to undermine so much of what he had been saying over the last several weeks-that was downright humiliating. And Scott disliked few things more than personal humiliation.

Anybody who knew Scott even a little knew this much about him, and Rook had admired the tactful way in which President Lincoln phrased his note to his top general. There was no attempt to complain or disgrace. It was a simple order, issued delicately:

My dear sir:

In the morning, you will be pleased to receive Col. Rook. He will convey information of the utmost importance.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN

Rook was gratified to see it written and dispatched. At the same time, he knew that it left a lot unsaid. He understood that it would be his responsibility not only to say it but also to impress Scott and the others with its significance.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” said Rook. Several of the officers mumbled responses. The general continued to glare in silence. “Let me bring you up to date on the events of the last day, culminating with an extraordinary encounter late last night at the White House.”

Rook knew it would be difficult to summarize his recent activities and how he came to know what he knew. He did not want to attribute any blunders to Scott, at least not yet. A genuine threat against the president needed to take precedence.

“This is Portia, the little woman who is responsible for our meeting this morning,” he said. He described her journey from South Carolina to the White House. He mentioned the photograph and how both Lincoln and Hay had recognized the man in the picture.

“It appears as though an assassin has been in the presence of our commander-in-chief,” said Rook. “His name is Mazorca, and this is what he looks like.” He removed the photograph from a pocket and held it up. The image was too small for everyone to see at once, so Rook handed it to a major who was seated next to him. “Please take a good look and pass it around.”

The picture moved halfway round the table, with each officer plus Seward taking a quick glance, until it arrived at Scott’s place. The general stared at it for a long time. Nobody had said anything since Rook began his report. All wanted the see the reaction of the general prior to forming their own opinions. Would he accept Rook’s logic?

“So, Colonel,” said Scott as he set the photograph on the table rather than passing it on, “you found it impossible to work underneath me and decided to go over my head.”

“Sir, this is an amazing development that none of us could have foreseen-”

Locke broke in, almost shouting. “How do you know that this slave woman is telling the truth? She is a fugitive who ought to be returned to her rightful owner.”

Around the table, a number of heads nodded in agreement. Several others, however, were visibly annoyed at the suggestion. Here was the question that divided the nation, writ small.

“She has no reason to lie,” said Rook with agitation. “Let’s remember the focus of this conversation-it’s not about her.” He gestured to Portia and then walked around the table and grabbed the photograph from the spot where Scott had set it down. “It’s about him.” He held the picture at arm’s length, showing its image to the officers. “This man wants to murder the president. He may have come very close to doing it already. We must stop him from making a new attempt.”

The room erupted into a chaos of voices as several officers spoke at once. Rook could barely hear what any of them said. Soon, however, he became most interested in the one officer who was not saying anything at all: Springfield had not taken his eyes off the photograph since Rook had held it up for the second time.

The sergeant rose from his chair, walked over to Rook, and asked for the picture. Rook gave it to him. Springfield looked at it intensely. He stroked his mustache. It was not long before everybody in the room noticed what he was doing. His deep interest in the photograph could mean only one thing, and everybody knew it.

“I’ve seen this man before,” said Springfield. “I know where he lives.”

Mazorca delayed his return to Tabard’s boardinghouse until the middle of the morning. He had not lingered long at the cabin in Maryland. He had eaten a quick supper, dragged the body of the man he had killed to a nearby stand of trees, and left the scene. He had taken a roundabout route home, avoiding the bridge he had crossed in the morning, using less-traveled roads, and coming into Washington from the north. This was faithful to his plan of keeping his movements irregular. At dawn, as he approached the city, he decided to give his fellow boarders time to eat their breakfasts and leave for their jobs. The less contact he had with them, the better. When he finally walked through the front door, he was exhausted and ready to sleep.

Tabard was in the dining room, wiping the table with a rag. “Good morning, Mr. Mays,” she said.

“Good morning,” replied Mazorca. He headed straight for the stairs.

“You will find a letter in your room,” said Tabard. “It arrived yesterday. I slipped it under your door.”

“Thank you,” called Mazorca without pausing as he made his way up to the second floor.

In truth, he was not at all thankful. He immediately regretted giving his address to Grenier. She was the only person who would have known it. He did not want to be contacted by anyone-even her. Then again, perhaps she had something important to tell him. Maybe she had learned an important detail about Lincoln’s security or his whereabouts.

He unlocked the door, pushed it open, and looked at the floor. There was no letter. He shut the door and scanned the entire room. He saw nothing and wondered whether Tabard had slid the envelope under the door with such force that it had coasted to the opposite wall. He looked under his bed, behind his trunk, and below the window. The search turned up nothing. The letter simply was not in the room.

A troubling thought gripped him. What if Tabard had put it under the wrong door? What if one of the other boarders had opened it?

Mazorca examined the room again. Still no letter. Something was definitely amiss. He thought about the strand of hair he had plucked from his head and positioned in the trunk. He raised the lid of the trunk slowly, not wanting a sudden motion to blow the hair from its place. Peering inside, his clothes appeared to be where he had left them. But the hair was gone.

Mazorca marched down the stairs and into the dining room, where Tabard was arranging a new centerpiece for the table.

“Mrs. Tabard, what did you say as I walked up the steps a few minutes ago?”

A look of concern crossed her face. “I said that I had slipped a letter under your door yesterday. Is there a problem?”

“I don’t know. Are you certain that you slipped it under my door and not somebody else’s?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“There’s no letter in my room.”

“Oh dear,” said Tabard. She pulled out a chair and sat down. The news clearly troubled her. “It came in the morning,” she said, trying to recall details. “You hadn’t been gone for very long-just a few minutes, actually. I even looked out the doorway to see if you were in sight. I didn’t think you would be, and you weren’t, but that’s how close the arrival of the letter followed your departure. When I didn’t see you, I went straight upstairs and put it under your door.”

Mazorca said nothing. A worried look appeared on Tabard’s face. “I am absolutely certain of this,” she said. “I recall it distinctly. I did not make a mistake.”

Either she was telling the truth, or she was an adept liar, thought Mazorca. His instincts told him to believe her. So did the missing piece of hair.

“What can you tell me about the envelope?” he asked.

“How big was it? What did it say on the outside? Tell me everything you remember.”

Tabard did her best, but there was not much to report: it was a small envelope, off-white in color. It was thin and probably contained only a page or two inside, though Tabard could not say for sure because she had not opened it. She didn’t recall any writing on the outside except his name and the address. Mazorca asked her several more questions but failed to learn additional details.

“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Mays,” said Tabard. “It sounds like a very important letter. I’ll be sure to ask the other guests whether they saw it.”

Mazorca thought about this for a moment. “I’d rather you didn’t,” he said as he turned toward the stairs. “There must be some other explanation. I’m going to search the room again.”

He had no intention of doing that. He knew the letter was not there. And that meant he had a very serious problem on his hands.

The officers hushed when Springfield announced that he had recognized the man in the photograph. “I’ve seen this man in the flesh,” he said. “The mangled ear-I am certain of it.” He looked squarely at Rook. “Mazorca is Mr. Mays, the man we investigated yesterday at the boardinghouse.”

“If he is our assassin, we can stop him right now,” said Rook, looking directly at Scott. “Just give the order, sir.”

The general took a deep breath. “Let me make sure I have this straight,” he said slowly. “A slave woman has given us a photo that is said to contain the image of a man who wants to murder the president. The president himself has identified the man in the photo as a person who met with him recently, almost certainly under false pretenses. And now Sergeant Springfield says that he has seen this man and that the two of you know where he may be found.”

For the first time that morning, Rook heard Scott speak with something other than irritation in his voice. He seemed to be genuinely contemplating what he had just heard. “Is there a connection to Violet Grenier?” he asked.

Rook was glad that the general had mentioned her name-he did not want to bring it up on his own. “Actually, sir, there is.” He explained how their surveillance of Grenier had led them to the man at Tabard’s, and how Grenier had received correspondence from Bennett, from whom Portia had escaped. “We don’t know exactly how she is tied to all of this, but there is almost certainly a relationship.”

“Where was she last night?”

Rook did not want to sound frustrated with the general whose very orders had made it impossible to answer the question he now asked. “We didn’t have her under surveillance, sir,” he said as plainly as possible.

“Right, of course not,” said Scott, almost to himself, as he realized his mistake. He asked to see the photograph again and studied it with intensity. The mood in the room began to shift as the officers witnessed Scott reconsider his most recent judgments. Rook felt a tremendous urge to criticize the general-to accuse him of imperiling Lincoln’s life by ignoring security concerns that had been brought to his attention. It was difficult to remain quiet, but Rook knew how important it was for Scott to arrive at the obvious conclusion on his own rather than having it thrust at him.

At last, with his eyes on Rook, the general held up the photograph. “We must find this man,” he said, with a determination that Rook found gratifying.

There were nods of agreement around the room. Rook noticed that Locke was not among them.

“General,” pleaded Locke, “this is really quite extraordinary. Colonel Rook is suggesting that Violet Grenier, a respected citizen of this city, is part of a ludicrous conspiracy. I smell a hoax. You are basing your conclusion on the testimony of a slave woman!” He spoke these final two words with utter contempt.

Portia recoiled, but only for a second. “I don’t know who you are or why you think you’re better than me, and I don’t really care,” she said sternly. Rook thought about trying to stop her, but even if he could he was not sure he wanted to. “Me and a lotta other folks put it all on the line to get that picture here. I saw a friend of mine die. I ain’t gonna see my family again. You can call me a liar, but you’re a coward.”

Locke jumped out of his chair. “That is no way for you to talk to me!” he hollered, his face red with anger. “That is no way for a fugitive negress to speak to a white man!”

Rook wanted to reach across the room and slug him, but Scott made sure this was not necessary. “Shut up, Locke!” roared the general.

Locke was astonished. Was Scott really taking the side of a runaway slave over his loyal aide? It was a remarkable turn of events.

“Now that you’ve shut up, sit down,” sputtered Scott. “I don’t care what you think about proper decorum. I find this woman’s story credible, and we will act upon the information she has presented to us.”

Locke dropped into his seat, crushed by the general’s words.

“On behalf of myself and my officers, please accept my apologies,” said Scott, looking at Portia. “The best way to make amends is for us to do our duty.”

Scott let the words sink in. Then he began to develop a plan. A group of soldiers would immediately rush to Tabard’s and place Mazorca under surveillance; if he had collaborators, Scott wanted to find them. Springfield would join them, but only after helping several other soldiers establish surveillance around Violet Grenier’s. Rook would oversee all aspects of the operation.

The meeting began to break up when Scott spoke again. “One more thing,” he said. “We should have additional copies of this photograph.” He pointed to a lieutenant and told him to go to Brady’s on the Avenue and order reproductions. “Before we’re done, I suspect that we’re going to have to learn a lot more about this man in the picture. It’s a curious name, Mazorca.”

For a moment, nobody said anything. Then Seward, who had remained quiet through the meeting, spoke. “I may know a man who can help us. Let me make an inquiry.”

“By all means,” said Scott. The gathering broke up. Before Rook walked out the door, however, the general called to him.

“Colonel Rook, let me have a word with you.”

Mazorca checked the room a final time to make sure that he had remembered everything. It was pointless to play against the odds that someone had been in his room while he was away. An intruder was the simplest explanation for the vanished letter. He had not planned on moving out of the boardinghouse, but now he did not have a choice. It was the safest thing to do.

He jammed a few extra items into the trunk alongside the clothes and rifle. He found room for a couple of guidebooks, the tools from Calthrop, and not much else. The books from French and Richstein were too big, and he did not want to carry them-except for his one remaining copy of the Bible. He would not abandon it.

Mazorca closed the curtains, darkening the room. Before he moved away from the window, however, he looked at the scene outside. Several people walked in either direction, going about their business. A figure on the opposite side of H Street drew his notice. He wore a brown frock coat as he ambled east, toward Sixth Street. Unlike the other pedestrians, who seemed to be heading places, he appeared to be out for a stroll.

He would take a few leisurely steps, pause, and look around. Without fail, his eyes would stop on Tabard’s. The man was trying to convey a sense of nonchalance, but Mazorca thought this was just a poor performance. He was, in fact, keeping an eye on the boardinghouse. He wondered how long this had been going on. What had he missed before now? He cursed himself for failing to take better precautions.

At the intersection of Seventh and H Street, Mazorca spotted a handful of soldiers in their blue uniforms. This was an ordinary sight in Washington. Yet he had not seen them in this particular place before, certainly not lingering. The fact that these men did not appear to be doing much apart from staring down H Street in the direction of Tabard’s and the fellow in the brown coat aroused his interest even further.

He opened the door to his room and called down. “Mrs. Tabard? Would you mind coming up here? I have a favor to ask.”

The one-on-one meeting with Scott had kept Rook from departing for Tabard’s as quickly as he would have liked. He supposed it was worth it: the general wanted to apologize for questioning his loyalty over the last few weeks. “It appears that you were right about the threats to the president’s security,” Scott had said. “I should have listened to you.”

Rook appreciated the effort. The general was a prideful man. Apologies did not come easily to him. The two men talked for several minutes, trying to repair the damage to their relationship. Then Rook announced that he must be going: he had an assassin to catch.

Leaving the Winder Building, Rook walked past the White House, east on G Street. On Seventh Street, he turned left. From a block away, he saw blue uniforms bunched together at the corner of H Street. He hustled toward them.

“Move out of the way,” he said as he approached. “You can’t stand together and stare up the street. You’ll be seen.”

The men sauntered away from the corner. Scott had ordered them to begin an observation of Mazorca, but they obviously did not know what they were doing. They were soldiers, not detectives. Rook was inclined to forgive their error, but he wished they had used an ounce of common sense.

“This is no way to conduct surveillance,” said Rook. “We need men who are out of uniform, in places where they won’t be noticed. Have any of you thought about getting behind a window in a building across the street from Tabard’s? More important, where is Mazorca?”

A captain spoke up. “We believe he may be in Tabard’s right now, sir.”

“Why do you believe this?”

“Just a few minutes ago, we spotted someone closing the curtains to the window in his room. Either it was him, or someone else was in there.”

“Did one of you actually walk in front of Tabard’s, in uniform, to see this?”

“We sent a fellow who wasn’t in uniform down the street,” said the captain, whose name was Leach. “Here he comes now.” He pointed to a figure in a brown coat, walking toward them. Rook figured that he must have passed in front of Tabard’s and rounded the block. The colonel did not recognize him.

“Who is he?”

“He files applications at the Patent Office. We knew that we needed someone in street clothes to get a close look at Tabard’s. We didn’t want to walk up there ourselves,” said Leach. He hoped that Rook would congratulate him for having done something clever.

Instead, Rook rolled his eyes. “You recruited him off the street to do this?” He almost could not believe what he was hearing.

“I know him from one of the local militias,” said Leach.

“He’s a Union man, and he’s reliable. His name is Grimsley.”

The militiaman stopped in front of Rook and the others. “Nothing new since the lady left,” he said. “Shall I pass by again?”

“Before anything more happens, I need to know exactly what has occurred since you men arrived here,” said Rook.

Leach said that they had rushed straight from the meeting with Scott and began watching Tabard’s from a block away. They monitored the front as well as the rear, which led to a cramped alleyway. Leach spotted Grimsley on the street and pressed him into service. The clerk had walked in front of the building several times to determine whether anybody was inside. On his first pass, he saw the curtains close in a second-floor window-the one that the officers knew as Mazorca’s. A few minutes later, a woman emerged from the front door. “None of us knew whether to regard Mrs. Tabard as an innocent or to suspect her of working in cahoots with Mazorca,” said Leach. “So we put Lieutenant Hamilton on her tail.” This had happened just a few minutes before Rook’s arrival. Since then, they had continued to watch from a block away and Grimsley had passed by two more times, but none of them had seen any more activity.

To Rook, it was a series of mistakes: standing in plain sight a block away from Tabard’s, sending a novice down the street, and failing to take key positions where they might observe without being observed. At least they had the sense to send somebody in pursuit of Tabard. If she was collaborating with Mazorca, then it was important to keep tabs on her.

And perhaps the officers’ mistakes were minor. If Mazorca was in Tabard’s, it meant that they had pinpointed his location and could apprehend him at any time.

The colonel barked out a series of orders. He placed officers at both ends of H Street but out of sight of Tabard’s. He ordered another man down an alley to obtain backdoor access to a building across the street from Tabard’s. He demanded a dozen soldiers to change out of their uniforms. Grimsley was dismissed. Within minutes, the assembly of bluecoats was broken up, with each man heading in a separate direction but with a common purpose.

For the first time since the inauguration, Rook felt as though he was in full control of presidential security. The release of the C amp;O men was an aggravating blow. Even so, Rook believed that he had seen the last of them. Justice might not have been done, but order was preserved, and that was more important.

The revelations of the last several hours had validated all of his warnings from the previous six weeks. He was no longer a Cassandra, uttering prophecies that others would ignore. As he stood just a few hundred feet from Tabard’s, thinking about the deadly assassin who lurked inside, it was impossible not to feel vindicated. Even Scott had been finally motivated to abandon his dangerous complacency. This was an outcome Rook barely could have imagined a day ago, when Scott had come close to firing him. Now he stood on the threshold of defeating an ambitious and evil scheme. He knew that much remained undone, but for a fleeting moment he allowed himself to experience a sense of relief.

Mrs. Tabard isn’t out for a casual stroll, thought Lieutenant Hamilton as he followed her south on Sixth Street. She walked quickly, never pausing at a storefront to look inside or stopping to talk to an acquaintance. Although Hamilton was careful to keep a distance, he did not have to deflect suspicious glances sent in his direction or disguise his own activity in any way. He simply got in the woman’s wake and made sure that she stayed within view. All he had to do was keep up with her rapid pace. Tailing her was much easier than he had expected.

When she reached the Avenue a few minutes later, she halted and looked up and down the dusty street. Hamilton held back and watched her reach into a large bag. She pulled out something small. The lieutenant could not see what it was, but he did not have to wonder long. An omnibus pulled up, drawn by horses. She gave a nickel to the driver and climbed aboard for a ride in the direction of Georgetown.

Hamilton’s impulse was to sprint, in order to arrive at the omnibus before it rolled away. But he fought the urge. He had plenty of time, at any rate, as the vehicle paused to let at least a dozen passengers get off and come on.

He was the last person to get on. As he reached into his pocket for loose change, he felt the eyes of the driver fall on him. The man was on a schedule and probably did not want to stay here a moment longer than necessary. Hamilton pulled a handful of coins from his pocket and saw that he did not have a nickel. He had four pennies. He shoved his hand back into his pocket and wiggled his fingers until they found another penny.

The vehicle was crowded, with riders either pressed against each other in their seats or standing shoulder to shoulder. Facing forward, Hamilton could not see Tabard. He figured she was in the rear. Right now, he wanted to avoid gawking. That might give him away.

About a minute into the ride, a wheel slipped into a rut on the Avenue, jolting the entire carriage. As passengers shuffled around, Hamilton craned his neck and allowed himself a brief glance over his shoulder. He still did not see Tabard, but he knew she must be back there. Too many people blocked his view. She was probably in a seat.

As the omnibus crossed Fourteenth Street, Hamilton made a show of looking at Willard’s, on the north side of the street, as if he were admiring its architecture. Instead of concentrating on the hotel, however, he tried to spot Tabard peripherally. He still could not see her. A couple of riders obstructed his view of the other end of the omnibus. A wave of anxiety swept over Hamilton, but it was gone in a flash. He was certain that she was there. How could she be anywhere else? He had seen her climb aboard. She could not possibly have gotten off. Besides, only a ridiculous spendthrift would give up an entire nickel to ride less than a few blocks. People who boarded at Seventh Street usually were traveling all the way to Georgetown. He would spot her soon. He was certain of it.

Half an hour had passed since Rook’s arrival at the intersection of Seventh and H Street, and the colonel was finally becoming satisfied with his surveillance of Tabard’s boardinghouse. Men were positioned at key street corners within several blocks of where he stood, and most of them were now out of uniform. Behind a third-floor window, in a building directly across the street from Tabard’s, three soldiers sat and watched the front of the boardinghouse. In an alleyway behind it, another had assumed the appearance of a drunkard. With a ratty coat covering his body and a half-empty bottle in his hand, he sat against a wall and kept an eye on Tabard’s back door.

Rook was confident that nobody could enter or exit the boardinghouse without at least one of his men knowing it. He was also aware that surveillance could be tedious business-it might take hours of watching the most mundane activity before something happened. Boredom posed the biggest threat. It dulled senses that need to stay sharp, and the problem of sleep always loomed. Long stretches of idleness could lead to napping on the job. Rook had seen it plenty of times in the military with troops posted to the watch.

Because it was daytime rather than evening and the surveillance was young rather than old, Rook knew that he could let some time pass before he worried about these problems. Yet he knew that he might have to confront them eventually. He was already giving orders to prepare second and third shifts of men who could relieve those currently on duty. And at some point, he assumed, Mazorca would make a move. He would not stay caged in Tabard’s forever. For now, however, Rook was content to wait-and remain alert.

He had just dispatched a courier to the Winder Building, to inform Scott of the situation, when Hamilton came dashing in his direction. He was almost out of breath when he stopped in front of Rook.

“She lost me,” gasped the lieutenant.

“Mrs. Tabard?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“I followed her down to the Avenue, where she boarded a bus. I followed right behind. It was crowded, so I didn’t have a good view of her. But I know she got on, and I never saw her get off. Halfway to Georgetown, though, I realized she wasn’t there. She just vanished.”

Hamilton’s eyes dropped to the ground. Rook could tell the lieutenant was ashamed. But then, he deserved to be.

“She didn’t vanish. You lost sight of her,” scolded Rook.

“She must have gotten off the bus just as I was getting on. That’s the only thing that makes sense. But that would mean that she knew I was following her, and I was certain that she didn’t know. She never even looked in my direction.”

Rook pondered this. He knew nothing about Hamilton’s skills at shadowing subjects. He assumed they were unexceptional. But he knew that Tabard was a middle-aged woman who ran a boardinghouse. She was no savvy spy either. It was reasonable to suppose that Hamilton could keep tabs on her, as well as to suppose that even if she were to become aware of him, she would have trouble shaking him. Yet it sounded as if she had not only lost Hamilton but also that she had lost him with speed and efficiency.

“Very well, Lieutenant. Get some rest and report back here at midnight.” That would be Hamilton’s punishment: the late shift. Rook would find a role for him that did not involve following anybody.

As Hamilton loped away, Rook decided to get a better view of the boardinghouse. He walked to Eighth Street, almost two full blocks away from Tabard’s, and crossed H Street. He allowed himself to steal a quick look in the direction of the boardinghouse. The distance was too great to see much of anything. He merely confirmed what he already knew: in the middle of the afternoon, Tabard’s was no beehive of activity. The tenants would be at their jobs around the city.

Once Tabard’s slipped from sight, Rook maneuvered around the city block and entered an alleyway. He passed the back side of several narrow buildings, finally entering one close to Sixth Street. It was an apothecary’s shop. A sign on the wall promised “Remedies for All Ailments!” The shelves contained bottles of strengthening cordials for general heartiness, packages of cephalic pills for headaches, and something called “volcanic oil liniment” that guaranteed instant relief for painful sores. The proprietor waved as Rook charged up two flights of stairs.

He reached the third floor and stepped into a small room. The soldiers were seated. Two were positioned near a pair of windows while the third smoked a pipe behind them. All three rose when Rook entered.

“Nothing stirring, sir,” said the smoker. “We haven’t spotted anything since we got up here.”

“Sit down,” said the colonel. Through a window he could see Tabard’s across the street, and looking downward he had a good view of the front door and the window to Mazorca’s room-the one he had stood in just a day earlier. The curtains were shut, just as Grimsley had reported.

“Have you had your eyes on those closed curtains the entire time?”

“Yes, we have,” said one by the window. “If there’s a person in that room, he hasn’t touched the curtains.”

Rook continued looking out even though he did not see anything in particular. “Don’t get your faces too close to the window or you might be seen,” he said, mostly because he wanted to fill the silence. He had already warned the soldiers about this.

“Yes, sir. We know.”

A few more moments passed quietly.

“What do we know about the druggist downstairs?” asked Rook.

“He’s a Union man,” said the soldier with a pipe. “We made sure of that before we came up here.”

“Does he know Mrs. Tabard?”

“We didn’t ask because we didn’t want to give away our purpose. We just told him we needed to watch the street for a few hours. He was agreeable, but I think he’s curious to know what we’re doing.”

“That’s understandable,” said the colonel. “I’ll try to have a few words with him later.”

Rook considered the situation. The disappearance of Tabard troubled him. It suggested that despite appearances, she was no ordinary keeper of a boardinghouse. Perhaps she was in league with Mazorca. This led to another troubling idea. If Rook and his men couldn’t keep track of Tabard, then how could they hope to monitor Mazorca? He might slip from their grasp just as easily as Tabard, even though he was striving to prevent this. Rook reviewed the possibilities. Mazorca could be in Tabard’s right now. If he left, Rook’s men could try to pursue him, but they might fail and it would be difficult to locate him again. On the other hand, they could try to seize him in the boardinghouse. This could hurt their chances of breaking up a wider conspiracy. Mazorca nevertheless appeared to be at the center of everything. He was the man in the photo. The notion of capturing him and putting an end to his machinations, while it was still possible, was appealing.

Rook kept looking across the street. He and the other watchers would have seen anybody who stood beside one of the windows or passed by it. The only exception was Mazorca’s room, where the curtains were shut. They were open everywhere else.

Why were his closed? The day before, when Rook was in the room, they had been left slightly open. The only time Rook had ever closed a curtain in the middle of the day was to sleep. If Mazorca was dozing, he might be secured without a fight.

Rook mulled it over and decided to act on what his gut was telling him to do. “We’re done waiting,” he said. “Let’s go in.”

Polly brightened when the soldier waved to her on Pennsylvania Avenue, outside Willard’s Hotel. She might have worked for Violet Grenier, who could say all kinds of terrible things about federal men, but Polly rather liked how they looked in their blue uniforms. The idea that one of them had actually noticed her made her heart beat a little faster.

“Hello, ma’am,” said the soldier, a private who was about Polly’s age.

Polly smiled coyly. “Hello,” she replied.

“May I show you something?” He held out a card.

It was a peculiar approach, but she had no intention of complaining. She took the card and realized that it was not a card at all but rather a photograph. Polly owned several about the same size. They were mostly pictures of handsome actors who toured the country and occasionally came to Washington.

The image was not sharp. Polly could tell it had not been taken in a studio. It certainly did not appear posed. A man was in the center of it, viewed in profile. His ear was disfigured. It did not make him ugly, but he sure was not as fine looking as the men Polly had admired from the balcony at Ford’s Theatre.

“Have you seen this man?” asked the private.

Disappointment washed over her. The soldier was not interested in her but in what she might know. This was not a casual rendezvous. That was all right, she realized, because he was not as handsome as her favorite actors either.

She looked down at the picture again. “No, I’m afraid not.” She tried to hand it back to him.

“Keep it,” he said. “I’ve got a whole stack, and I’m supposed to get rid of them all.” Polly saw that he held about a hundred of them in his other hand. “Take it back home. Anybody who has seen this man should report to the Winder Building as quickly as possible. He may be dangerous.”

“Okay,” said Polly. She tucked away the photo. “You be careful,” she said as she walked away.

“Yes, ma’am. I will,” said the private. He winked at her and smiled.

Polly decided that he was not bad looking after all. She would have to find an excuse to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue again soon.

In the middle of a weekday afternoon, H Street did not exactly hum with activity-and Rook waited until it was positively deserted before he crossed it from the apothecary’s shop. Six uniformed soldiers followed him, and they made directly for Tabard’s boardinghouse. Anybody watching them would have understood that it was not a social visit.

The door to Tabard’s was unlocked. Rook pushed it open, removing a pistol from his holster at the same time. The soldiers gripped their own guns. Even though H Street was empty, they had not wanted to draw their weapons until they were actually entering the building. To their backs, above the apothecary’s shop, a pair of soldiers leaned out of a third-story window and aimed their Sharps rifles. Several other soldiers were positioned at the intersections of Sixth and Seventh streets, and a few more guarded the alley in the rear. The boardinghouse was surrounded by armed men.

The door swung open. The foyer was vacant except for a rug on the floor and a few small pieces of furniture pushed against a wall. Rook stepped inside and made straight for the staircase, without even a glance at the other rooms on the ground floor. This time, he did not bother with the key in the kitchen. There was nothing surreptitious about what he planned to do. Behind him, three soldiers spread out on the first floor. The other three went up the steps with him.

On the second floor, Rook positioned himself outside of Mazorca’s room. He pressed his ear to the door and listened. No sounds came from within. All was silence except for the rustlings of the soldiers below as they moved around the first floor’s dining room, kitchen, and Tabard’s personal quarters. They were trying to keep quiet, but Rook could hear their muffled footfalls. They had orders to conduct a thorough search, opening closet doors, checking pantries, and looking beneath and behind curtains and anything else that might hide a person who did not want to be found.

When Rook heard one of them coming up the steps, he finally pulled away from Mazorca’s door. The soldier looked at Rook and shook his head to indicate that they had found nobody. A moment later, a soldier who had gone upstairs came back down with the same report: the common areas were free of people.

With his pistol still in hand, Rook reached for the knob on Mazorca’s door and gently tried to turn it. The thing refused to budge. The colonel took a step back, squared himself to the door, raised a leg, and kicked. The sole of his black boot crashed into the door, ripping its latch and flinging it open. His gun entered the room before he did, ready to fire upon anybody who wanted to put up a fight.

The light inside was dim. What illumination there was came from the edges of the closed curtains. He scanned the room rapidly, his head jerking around like a bird as it tried to spot predators. On the bed, a blanket covered a lump the size of a body. Rook had hoped to catch Mazorca napping. Yet he knew that nobody could have slept through the sound of the door smashing in.

The soldiers swarmed in after Rook. One of them opened the curtains. As light fell on the bed, Rook saw the dark stain. He leaned in for a closer look. It was red and fresh. One whiff and Rook knew it was blood. The body was a corpse.

The blanket was not tucked in. Instead, it had been tossed on top of the body in haste. Beneath it was Tabard. She lay on her right side, but her head was twisted unnaturally to the left. Her chin rested on her shoulder, and her face looked up at the ceiling. Her eyes were wide open. If it had not been for the huge gash in her neck, Rook might have thought that she was still alive. He could tell that she had not been dead for long. The blood glistened in the sunlight. It had soaked into everything-the blanket, the mattress, her clothes. Rook had seen men die in battle before. It always amazed him to see how many buckets of blood could fill a human body.

He pulled back. “Mazorca did this,” he said to nobody in particular. “And we don’t know where he is.”

He told the soldiers to clear the entire building-to open all of the doors that were closed, to investigate the guest rooms, and even to check the roof. Rook’s own attention turned to the trunk. He opened it and reached in. To his mild surprise, the rifle was still there, exactly as it had been before. Rook wondered why an assassin would leave behind his weapon.

Rook descended the steps onto the ground floor. From above, he heard knocking on doors, and then the bangs and cracks of forced openings. Yet he was not really listening. He walked into the dining room, passed through the kitchen, and entered Tabard’s bedroom.

It was small and neat-the private chamber of a woman whose life had revolved around her guests. Rook imagined Tabard coming in here at the end of each day, worn out from hours of cooking, cleaning, and conversing, and collapsing into the cool sheets of her bed.

Across the room, a closet stood wide open. It appeared as though someone had ransacked its contents. A few dresses hung from a rack, but several others lay in a heap on the floor. Rook called for the soldier who had entered it just a few moments earlier. When he appeared, Rook pointed to the closet.

“Did you do this?” he asked.

“No, sir. I found it like this.”

“Right,” said the colonel. “At least it’s one mess we aren’t responsible for.”

It was exactly as Rook had feared: his men had arrived in time to capture Mazorca, but Mazorca had outwitted them. Their failure to act sooner or more intelligently had cost Tabard her life-and now it might cost the president as well. They had gone from having the assassin within their grasp to having no clue about where he might have gone. He could be anywhere.

The colonel walked outside the boardinghouse. When he realized that he was still holding his pistol, he holstered it. Across the street, the sharpshooters were gone from the windows. A few other soldiers, sensing that something had gone wrong, made their way toward Tabard’s from their posts. Rook knew that he would have to explain the events of the last few minutes and issue new orders. He would have several men gather whatever information they could from Mazorca’s room, tell the boarders half-truths about why the doors to their rooms were smashed in and their landlady was dead, and question them in detail about Mazorca.

Those were the easy orders to give. The hard ones involved figuring out how to find Mazorca again. Rook wanted time to think about it. He wished he could talk to Springfield, who had been his confidant on these matters for weeks.

Just then, Springfield appeared from a block away. When he saw Rook, he broke into a sprint. He stopped in front of the colonel, panting from exhaustion and excitement. “You won’t believe whose letter I found in Grenier’s mail just now,” he said. He held out a piece of paper.

Mazorca rubbed a hand against his cheek and felt the scratchy stubble of a new beard. He tugged on the shawl wrapped over his head, hoping to cover more of his face, but it was already pulled tight. The whiskers growing on his chin and jaw were pale in color and so not as immediately obvious as they would have been if he were brown-or black-haired. Yet anybody taking a look at his face probably would notice them. His disguise was not going to work for long. He knew that he needed to avoid eye contact and conversation. And that meant getting out of Center Market, where the crowds would swell as government clerks left their jobs for the day.

For now, however, the disguise would suffice. Mazorca was glad that Tabard had been a large woman. Her closet was full of clothes that fit him comfortably. Most were plain, which was to Mazorca’s liking. He had chosen a dull gray dress that seemed especially ordinary. The fact that it was a little smudgy on its sleeves and slightly frayed at its bottom probably added to its authenticity. To the typical passerby who paid no special heed, Mazorca appeared as a woman who was trying to run errands and keep to herself.

Killing Tabard had been an unfortunate necessity, thought Mazorca. She was not guilty of a penetrating insight, like Calthrop, though there was the question of the missing letter. If Tabard had played a role in its disappearance, she probably would not have told him to look for it under his door. This seemed like a safe assumption. When Mazorca spotted the man with an unusual level of interest in the boardinghouse, however, even the safest assumptions seemed to have their risky elements. Mazorca needed to escape quickly. The idea of using Tabard’s clothes as a disguise came to him immediately. He killed her because he wanted to move with speed, plus there was the possibility that she might say something unhelpful to his pursuers.

Mazorca did not regret the murder. He did not care whether Tabard lived or died. The inconvenience of having to silence her merely annoyed him. Her blood was splattered on the clothes he wore beneath the dress, and they would need replacing. The fact that he had not planned on her murder, however, distressed him. His plans were swerving off course. The government’s security apparatus was onto him. He was no longer in total control.

Mazorca realized what a close call he had just been through. Agents were watching the boardinghouse. They had put a tail on him when he left. Fortunately for him, the tail was inept. Mazorca had spotted him almost immediately, saw him again in the reflection of a storefront window, and then watched him try to board the omnibus at the last possible moment. Just as he had gotten on, Mazorca had gotten off, slipping out from the rear of the vehicle. Then he had crossed Pennsylvania Avenue and darted into Center Market.

Now he wandered among the farmers and fishmongers. Their prices were rising, owing to the city’s nervousness about its immediate future. The local cost of food was far from his mind. His real purpose in visiting Center Market was to confirm that nobody else was following him. After half an hour of maneuvering, he was convinced that he had escaped. Now he needed to get out of Center Market and out of Tabard’s garments.

As Mazorca stepped outside, the sky was clear and the temperature was comfortably cool. He immediately noticed that quite a few people were standing along the Avenue, looking toward the Capitol as if in anticipation of something. The crowd thickened as others streamed out of buildings and lined the street. Mazorca had wanted to cross, but he decided to wait. A woman standing nearby spoke to a companion with excitement. “It’s the Seventh! It’s finally here!” Everyone seemed to be pointing and chattering. From a few blocks away came the sound of music and cheers.

A long column of soldiers marched toward the White House, complete with a band. Mazorca kept his shawl pulled and his head down, so he did not see much of the procession. But he learned that this was New York’s Seventh Regiment. It had come into the train station following a difficult and delayed journey by train and ship. The soldiers had traveled through Annapolis to avoid another violent reception in Baltimore. “There must be a thousand of them!” said one awestruck spectator. “Abe Lincoln will love the sight of this,” said another. “At last, we’re safe!”

Mazorca listened and waited. As the troops strutted by, many in the crowd fell in behind them, on their way to what they imagined would be an enthusiastic reception at the White House. The president was sure to come out and say a few words expressing his gratitude and relief.

When the numbers thinned and the Avenue returned to normal, Mazorca moved on. He would skip the grand affair with Lincoln. His own appointment with the president would come soon enough. He would make sure of that.

Violet Grenier closed her book when Polly walked through the front door. The girl launched into a story about a soldier and a photograph. “He said this man is very dangerous and requested that I show this picture to everyone I know.”

Her earnestness amused Grenier. “Well, you had better let me see it,” she said.

Polly came over to where Grenier was sitting and handed her the photograph. A look of astonishment must have crossed Grenier’s face, because Polly immediately sensed what Grenier knew. “Do you recognize him?” she asked in a mix of excitement and fear.

At first, Grenier was speechless. It was clearly Mazorca. How in the world had Polly obtained a photograph of him?

“Where did you get this?” she asked, making Polly repeat her story. This time, Grenier peppered her with questions about precisely what the soldier had said to her.

When she was done, Polly narrowed her eyes. “Who is he?”

“I have no idea,” lied Grenier. “I’ve never seen him before.”

Polly was suspicious. She did not dare contradict the woman who employed her. Yet she sensed that Grenier was hiding something.

“Have you seen him, Polly?” asked Grenier.

“Me? Oh, good heavens, no. I have not.”

“Are you sure?” Grenier’s voice was heavy with doubt.

“Never-I swear it,” said Polly, nervously. “I’m just trying to do what the soldier asked. That’s all.”

The girl was flustered, which was just how Grenier wanted her.

“Okay, Polly. That’s fine. If this man is dangerous, then we need to be very careful. I’m going to keep this picture. I’d like you to clean the white chair in the guest room. Calhoun has been napping on it again, and he’s left it covered in fur. And you might dust the room while you’re in there.”

Grenier watched her go. She had done a poor job of masking her surprise but believed she had recovered adequately.

She looked at the image again, hoping it would somehow look different and contradict her first impression. Yet she grew even more certain that the picture was of Mazorca.

This was very bad news.

Rook heard Scott before he saw him. The big general’s hearty laugh boomed through the Winder Building as he made his way to his office, where Rook was waiting for him.

“A glorious day!” roared the commander of the army. Rook stood up as Scott entered the room in full military regalia. An enormous, plumed chapeau sat on his head, making him seem even taller than his six foot four and one-quarter inches. His uniform was a crisp blue, with golden epaulettes strapped to his shoulders, their fancy fringes dangling down. A sword was fastened to his belt. Shiny black boots completed the outfit.

Rook never had cared for the pomp and circumstance of the military, but he had to admit that whereas another man might have looked ridiculous, Scott looked majestic. He was fat and old and never would use that sword, or possibly any weapon, in a real battle again. Yet he inhabited his flamboyant costume as perhaps no other American could.

Two other men came into the room behind him. The first was Locke, the general’s ever-present shadow. He was trying to look his best too. His uniform was clean and crisp and its buttons shone. Rook thought he looked more prepared for the intrigues of a ballroom than the ferocity of a firefight. Scott could dress up and still look like a soldier, but not Locke. The second man was Seward, who seemed to be lurking around constantly these days.

“Colonel!” bellowed Scott when he saw Rook. It was both an announcement of surprise and a greeting. The general removed his hat and set it on a peg. “Did you see that marvelous procession?”

Rook knew that he was referring to the arrival of the Seventh Regiment from New York-he had heard the commotion and learned the full story of the regiment’s sudden appearance from a lieutenant just a few minutes earlier. The influx of a thousand fresh men meant that Washington at last was ready for a fight. Lincoln and members of his cabinet, plus Scott and many of his officers, had come out for an impromptu rally.

“I didn’t see the Seventh,” said Rook. “I’m glad that it has arrived.”

“That’s too bad. You missed quite a parade. The best part was to see the president. He was relieved.” Scott emphasized the final word and looked at Seward, who nodded in approval.

“I didn’t think this day could get any better,” continued the general. “If you bring me good news, though, it may indeed do just that!”

“I’m afraid that I’m going to make it worse, sir,” said Rook.

“I see.” The smile vanished from Scott’s face. He fell into a chair and gestured for Rook to do the same. Locke and Seward also took seats. The general’s eyes narrowed to slits.

“What do you have?”

Rook hesitated. “Sir, what I have to say might best be said to you alone,” he said, casting a quick glance at Seward. The general saw it and seemed to consider Rook’s request for the briefest of moments before rejecting it.

“That won’t be necessary,” he said. “Secretary Seward is fully aware of the Mazorca situation and will soon present us with a valuable piece of data. Isn’t that right, Mr. Secretary?”

“Yes, General, in a few moments anyway.” He made a motion to rise. “I could easily step out…”

“Nonsense, sir!” thundered Scott with such force that Seward dropped back into his chair. “We will have a frank discussion about the Mazorca operation. It is indeed fortuitous that we are all here.” He looked directly at Rook. “Colonel, give us your report.”

Rook described what had happened: the beginning of the surveillance, Mazorca’s murder of Tabard, and the raid that had revealed the whole operation as a failure.

“No wonder you wanted to make your report to me alone. This is an embarrassment. We had him in our clutches, and you let him get away.”

Rook bristled at the phrasing but let it pass. “The reason he got away is because he knew we were coming,” he said.

The general raised his eyebrows in at least partial disbelief. Seward shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“Mazorca has an informant-someone who may not know that he is passing information to a man who seeks to murder the president, but someone who nonetheless is doing it through his own sheer recklessness.”

Rook paused. He wanted to read the general’s face. Did he harbor any suspicions? Scott merely sat still. His face was expressionless. Seward pursed his lips and scratched his chin. Locke made no attempt to conceal his disdain: he rolled his eyes and let out a mocking sigh.

Scott broke the silence. “That is an extraordinary charge, Colonel. Do you have extraordinary proof to back it up?”

Rook reached into a pocket and pulled out the letter Springfield had given him. He unfolded it slowly.

“This may explain our problem,” said Rook, handing the letter to Scott.

The general took the letter and read it in silence. Rook watched Scott’s eyes widen in astonishment as he read a few lines and checked the signature at the bottom. He let out a little gasp. “This is an unwelcome development,” he said. Then he read aloud, with disgust:

Dearest Violet,

So much to tell you! I have an amazing story to relate about the insubordination of Col. Rook and a group of prisoners that I personally released, acting upon intelligence from an unnamed source. It appears that the unauthorized surveillance of ordinary citizens was much more extensive that I had originally believed. Expect me Friday night. I will keep no secrets from you. I desire to tell you all-and I desire you.

Most intimately,

Sam Locke

Scott glowered at Locke. “Is there anything you can possibly say for yourself, Colonel?”

Locke buried his face in his hands. When he looked up, Rook could see his eyes turning red from tears. “Sir, it is an innocent mistake!”

“Your dealings with Mrs. Grenier do not sound very innocent to me,” said the general, his voice rising in anger. “It would be bad enough if you were merely divulging sensitive information to a random whore-but here is the proof that you’re giving it away to a woman whom we now know is in league with the enemy!”

“I’m sorry, I did not know,” sobbed Locke. “She seduced me.”

“Get out of my sight,” sputtered Scott. “You are relieved of your rank and your duties. Leave this building and never come back.”

As Locke rose and headed for the door, Scott turned to Seward. “This is a tremendous embarrassment. I personally guarantee you that I will get to the bottom…”

He was going to say more but became distracted when Locke nearly crashed into a new figure in the doorway-a short man with dark eyes, thick black hair, and skin the color of bronze. He wore black clothes as well.

Seward rose. “General, I believe that this man will have some answers for us.”

Mazorca rolled the dress into a ball, tossed it into a half-empty closet, and shut the door. He hoped he would never have to see it again. The experience of wearing Tabard’s clothes was humiliating, but it could have been worse. Nothing would have been more humiliating than the defeat he had so narrowly avoided.

His own clothes were ruined. A mirror confirmed it. Tabard’s blood had streaked across his shirt and pants. There was no way he could go out in public. He was annoyed at himself for letting it happen. He could have killed Tabard more cleanly. She had not even put up a fight and probably did not know what was happening to her before she was dead. He had taken her completely by surprise.

The problem was that he had been caught by surprise as well. Someone had exposed him. He reviewed everything that had happened since his arrival in Washington. He had tried to cover his tracks, even murdering Calthrop when the smallest hint of possible detection surfaced. He wondered about whether Tabard was some kind of informant, but that seemed far-fetched. Then there was Grenier. Was she a weak link? Bennett had vouched for her. She must have been the author of that missing letter, because she was the only person who knew his whereabouts. He wished he could read it now. Had she tried to warn him of something?

Before he could plumb these mysteries, he needed a change of clothes. At least this problem had an easy solution. Beneath the mirror sat a dresser. Several of its drawers were empty, but others contained shirts and pants for a man. Mazorca dumped them onto a bed and sorted through the piles. The closet held a few coats and ties. Within minutes, he found all that he needed. He stripped and changed, then threw his old clothes into the closet beside the dress.

His next dilemma was only slightly less urgent. He was in the safe house at 1745 N Street that Grenier had recommended for a time of emergency. Was it truly safe? He could not be certain, and there were few things he disliked more than uncertainty.

From a window, he looked at N Street. People across the city were leaving their jobs and heading home. Three soldiers strolled by. Mazorca figured they belonged to the New York regiment. They must have broken ranks and obtained some free time to explore the city they had come to defend.

Mazorca left the bedroom and drifted down the staircase. In a closet by the foyer, he found a light coat with a pair of large pockets and a hat with a wide brim. A layer of dust covered them. Mazorca brushed them off and put them on. At the front door, he slipped his deadly book into one of the oversize pockets. He grasped the door handle and stepped onto the front porch.

After closing the door and locking it with the key Grenier had given him, Mazorca turned to walk in the direction the soldiers had taken. He collided with a red-haired boy who was running home with a loaf of bread from the market. The boy, less than half the size of Mazorca, tumbled to the ground.

“Watch where you’re going,” snapped Mazorca. He bent over and picked up his hat, which had fallen beside the boy. He placed it back on his head and continued on his way.

For several moments, the boy sat on the ground and watched Mazorca go. Then he stood, grabbing his bread and brushing off a few specks of dirt. His parents would never know that he had dropped it. But there was something else that he suspected he would have to tell them. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the photograph that the soldier on Connecticut Avenue had given him-the picture of “a very bad man who needed to be found as soon as possible.”

Rook did not recognize the man in the doorway to Scott’s office, but Seward clearly did.

“Thank you so much for coming, Ambassador,” said Seward.

“My pleasure, Mr. Secretary.”

Seward put an arm on the ambassador’s back and swept the other one toward Scott and Rook, who also had risen.

“Allow me to introduce Senor Don Luis Molina, the minister to the United States from the Republic of Nicaragua.”

The men shook hands. Rook noted Molina’s firm grip. In a moment, all four were seated, facing each other.

“I asked the ambassador to come here because he may have some information about Mazorca,” said Seward. “Before this morning, I had not heard the name. It is certainly unusual. I repeated it over and over-Mazorca, Mazorca.” He was enunciating the name, vibrating his tongue as he trilled the R.

“I came to the conclusion that it sounded vaguely Latin, and specifically Spanish.”

Here he paused, as if expecting a dollop of praise for his ingenuity. Nobody spoke, and he continued.

“So I sent a note to Ambassador Molina, whom I first met last month, when he was formally received at the White House by President Lincoln. He speaks Spanish, and more to the point, he knows a great deal about the affairs of Spanish America. But best of all, he is a great friend of the United States.”

Seward paused again. This time he looked directly at Molina, who nodded in acknowledgment.

“So I sought the ambassador’s wise counsel and asked if he had ever heard this name, Mazorca. He replied in the affirmative, and we arranged this meeting.”

“It is good of you to come,” said Scott. “What can you tell us about Mazorca?”

Molina folded his hands in his lap. “I have not encountered this name in some time, and I certainly never expected to rediscover it here in Washington.”

The ambassador spoke with an accent, but his English was good.

“The name comes from Argentina. It is not my home, but I know something of it. Have any of you heard of Juan Manuel de Rosas?”

Rook shook his head. The name meant nothing to him. Scott did not seem to be familiar with it either. Finally, Seward spoke, with some hesitance in his voice. “Was he the ruler of Argentina?”

“That is correct,” said Molina. “He was a rancher who became a dictator. He moved in and out of power, but he dominated the politics of Argentina for more than twenty years until he was finally ousted, once and for all, in 1852. Today, Rosas lives in exile, in London. During his reign, Argentina fought with its neighbors. Inside the country, Rosas ruled by fear. One of his instruments of terror was a secret police force-a gang of thugs and killers. Its members were fanatically loyal to Rosas. Within their ranks, they were so closely united that it was said they were like the kernels on an ear of corn.”

Molina illustrated the point by pressing his fingertips together. He squeezed them so hard that they turned red.

“In your language, there is another word for corn,” he continued. “You don’t use it as much, but you know it. The word is maize. In my language, corn is called maiz and an ear is oreja. Put them together in an ear of corn, and you have la mazorca. This was the name that the secret police of Rosas used for themselves.”

Seward straightened his back. “I see we’ve come to the right place,” he said with obvious satisfaction.

“There is something else as well,” said Molina. “Mazorca is a joke-what I think you call a play on words or…” His voice drifted off as he searched for the term.

“A pun,” said Rook.

“Yes, a pun,” said Molina. “Mazorca also means mas horca.” He paused for effect. “Mas horca means ‘more hanging.’”

“That is all very interesting,” said Scott. “But what does it have to do with our man here in Washington?”

“I cannot answer with certainty. What I have said up to now is based on fact. It is all true. What I am about to say is speculative. But it is also reasonable.”

“We’re all ears,” said Seward, who suppressed a chuckle when he remembered that this was no time for laughter.

Molina ignored him. “During the final years of the Rosas period, the mazorqueros were less active than they had been previously. Yet they maintained a horrifying presence. The most ruthless among them was said to be a foreigner-an American. He arrived in Buenos Aires shortly after your country’s invasion of Mexico and conquest of Mexico City.”

“We marched into Mexico City on September 14, 1847,” said Scott. “The country had become ours in just six months.”

“Yes,” said Molina, replying to Scott. “It would have been shortly after that. It was always presumed that this most brutal of mazorqueros was a deserter or a criminal who had decided to venture south rather than return home.”

“What happened to him after Rosas was deposed?” asked Seward.

“Again, I do not know for certain. But I have heard that after the fall of the Rosas regime, this man left Argentina and sought occasional employment from individuals who required special services-sinister services, if you will. I was given to understand that those who seek him must approach intermediaries in Cuba.”

“How can you be sure of all this?” asked Scott.

“I am sure of nothing. But you will recall the recent history of my region-the internal strife that has plagued my country, combined with the external pressures of British colonialism and American filibusters such as William Walker. We have lived through turbulent times. We have known dreadful violence. And we have suffered from the acts of men who murder for money. If the Mazorca you are worried about right now is the same man who operated in and around my country just a few years ago, then I am truly fearful for the safety of your leaders.”

“So our Mazorca is a professional killer-an assassin for hire,” said Rook.

“I believe that is a sound assumption. It is certainly an assumption that will prevent you from underestimating him. He is most dangerous when he is underestimated.”

Rook caught the eye of Scott, who quickly looked away. The general was chastened.

“Be warned,” said Molina, leaning forward in his chair in order to emphasize his point. “This man is a destroyer of lives. He will let nothing stand between himself and those whom he has marked for death.”

Beside the murky waters of Washington’s oozing canal, a woman leaned her back against a wall. Mazorca could see her only faintly in the dark. She held a small box in her arms, and her shoulders trembled. When she raised a sleeve to her face, Mazorca assumed that she had sneezed and was wiping her nose. But she continued to shake. Mazorca realized that she was crying. For several minutes, he watched her take turns between looking at the box and raising her head upward, toward the heavens.

Mazorca stood motionless in a doorway, about thirty feet from where she wept. Eventually the woman suppressed her tears and approached the edge of the canal. The stench rising from the canal was strong enough to repel anybody who did not have a good reason for being there.

The woman dropped to her knees and raised the box to her lips. Its top was open. She kissed whatever was inside. Then she set it down beside her and adjusted its contents. She appeared to pull out a small, rectangular object, flip it around, and set it back in. She fidgeted with the box for a few more seconds and then placed it in the water. For a moment it bobbed up and down and Mazorca thought it might sink. Yet it appeared to steady itself and began floating with the lazy current. By the time it had drifted in front of Mazorca, the woman was gone.

Propelled by curiosity, Mazorca approached the canal and looked at the box. Tucked inside, swaddled in a blanket, was a newborn baby. The child’s eyes were wide open, but it did not cry. At its feet, Mazorca saw the rectangular object that the woman had shifted: a brick. Actually there were two of them, and their grim purpose was apparent. It did not occur to Mazorca that he might reach into the water and pull the box out. As the baby meandered by, he felt nothing at all.

The child’s mother was obviously a whore, thought Mazorca. She did what whores so often do after giving birth, in their loneliness. The baby’s father might be a poor clerk or a rich senator. He had almost certainly vanished from the woman’s life long ago, just as suddenly as he had appeared, and he was not aware of what their brief encounter had created. Or what was now floating toward its doom.

Such was the way of things in Murder Bay, the seediest part of Washington. It slouched between the malodorous canal and the business district on Pennsylvania Avenue to the north, in a triangular section of the city between Ninth and Fifteenth streets. The streets were grimy and narrow, the buildings dilapidated, and the inhabitants dissolute. For all of its drawbacks, however, the area offered a concentration of amusements and diversions that could not be found anywhere else in the city: drinking saloons, gambling halls, and dens of ill repute.

Early on, Mazorca had learned to avoid the place. Although he was not above partaking of its vices, he wanted nothing to get in the way of his objective. Murder Bay posed too many risks: its cheap hotels weren’t safe, its alleyways were full of toughs and pickpockets, and its bars and bordellos were unwelcome distractions. Yet now he relied on the allure of its debauchery to help him reach his goal. Murder Bay was a magnet for certain types of men: young, far from home, unencumbered by the obligations of marriage and family. Soldiers were frequently all of these things at once. As day turned to night, they fell on Murder Bay in droves, intending to explore its decadent entertainments.

On this night, New York’s Seventh Regiment contributed heavily to their numbers. Its members came from the upper crust of their city-they were the sons of bankers and shippers. They had endured a long journey, marched past the White House, and settled into rooms at Willard’s and other fine hotels along Pennsylvania Avenue. In the morning, they were supposed to report to their new quarters in the House of Representatives, an empty chamber ever since the congressmen left town immediately following the presidential inauguration. Yet this evening was entirely theirs, and many of the New Yorkers were eager to pursue very particular forms of rest and relaxation.

Mazorca had watched them flock to Murder Bay. Some were loud braggarts who made no effort to hide their intentions. They boasted about their own prowess and the pleasures they planned to obtain. Others were less sure of themselves. Mazorca saw the guilt on their faces as they wandered about, battling their inhibitions as they contemplated entering establishments with names such as the Haystack, the Blue Goose, and Madam Wilton’s Private Residence for Ladies. Sooner or later, they all went inside.

The problem for Mazorca was that the soldiers traveled in packs. He suspected that their officers had warned them to stick together, like herds of animals that sought safety in numbers. It was good advice: Murder Bay was full of predators in search of prey. Most of them merely intended to separate the soldiers from their money. Occasionally, however, a denizen of this squalid district wanted something far worse. Murder Bay had not earned its nickname for nothing, and its victims were not always babes.

Outside the Winder Building, ten-year-old Zachariah Hoadly stood beside his father. He brushed aside his red hair, which kept falling in his face. He needed to visit a barbershop.

“You’re sure it’s him?” asked Isaac Hoadly, repeating a question he had posed perhaps a dozen times already.

“I’m pretty sure,” said the boy, sounding less than fully confident.

Isaac looked at the photograph. “And it’s because of the ear?”

“Yes, Dad,” said Zack, annoyed at his father’s doubts.

“And this is where they told you to come?”

“Uh-huh.”

Isaac was building up the nerve to go inside when a man in a blue uniform walked out the front door. “Excuse me,” said Isaac. “Can you help me?”

Colonel Rook halted in front of the Hoadlys. He looked tired and none too interested in helping anybody.

“My son came home with this picture,” said Isaac. He held up the photograph of Mazorca.

Rook’s eyes lit up. “Please tell me you’ve seen him.”

From a block away, Mazorca saw the sergeant walking along Tenth Street. Springfield was alone, which is what initially attracted Mazorca’s interest-he was searching for a bluecoat who was not part of a crowd. He figured that as the night grew older, soldiers would stumble away from their card games, bottles, and prostitutes. Most would have entered Murder Bay with companions, but many would exit on their own.

Springfield was far from ideal. For starters, he was a burly man who looked like he could put up a fight. He was also sober. Mazorca’s goal was to identify someone who was closer to his own size, and preferably drunk. Yet he decided to keep an eye on Springfield for at least a few minutes.

The sergeant’s behavior quickly puzzled him. Springfield walked methodically from brothel to brothel. He would enter one, remain inside for several minutes, and come back out. Then he would go to the next one on the street. At first, Mazorca suspected that the ladies of the house Springfield had chosen were preoccupied. After he came out of the third house, however, Mazorca wondered if Springfield was picky about whom he would pay for companionship. Mazorca soon decided that something else was going on.

When Springfield turned onto C Street, Mazorca was only a dozen feet behind him. As the sergeant approached yet another bordello-it went by the name of Madam Russell’s Bake Oven-another man approached him.

“Sir! Do not enter that house of sin!” he shouted.

Springfield stopped in his tracks and smiled. Mazorca halted as well, pretending to look through the window of a watering hole, as if he were searching for a friend. From the corner of his eye, he could see that the man who assailed Springfield was a bespectacled chaplain. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and a frock coat that extended almost to his knees. In one hand he held a cross and in the other a Bible.

“Walk through that doorway and abandon all hope of salvation,” pleaded the chaplain.

“Don’t worry,” laughed Springfield. “I will commit no sin by entering the Bake Oven.”

Springfield placed his arm on the chaplain’s shoulder. Their voices dropped, and Mazorca could not make out what they were saying. The sergeant seemed greatly amused. The chaplain maintained an earnest look on his face, but soon he began to nod, as if Springfield had persuaded him of something. Then Springfield handed the chaplain a slip of paper, headed for the door of Madam Russell’s Bake Oven, and went inside.

The chaplain began to look up and down C Street, apparently hoping to find more soldiers he might approach. His job must be a lonely one, thought Mazorca, and especially on a night like this and in a place like Murder Bay. Armies functioned because they built a sense of camaraderie among the young men who joined their ranks. The intensity of a battle might frighten them, but they would refuse to retreat because they did not want to let their buddies down. They preferred to take their chances against bullets and bayonets rather than risk the disappointment of the men who marched and fought beside them. Yet here was the chaplain, haranguing soldiers for doing what soldiers always have done. Mazorca realized that this chaplain might become attached to a regiment, but he never would be just one of the guys.

Mazorca made a snap decision: he whistled. The chaplain looked his way, and Mazorca gestured for him to approach.

In the dim light, Mazorca had not seen that the chaplain’s coat was black, not blue. He noticed the difference in color as the man came forward but decided to speak to the chaplain anyway.

“I’m so glad to have found you,” said Mazorca, pretending to be short on breath, as if he had been sprinting. “I just pulled a baby out of the canal.”

“We must rescue the child!” said the chaplain.

With that, Mazorca made for Tenth Street and turned south. The chaplain kept pace with him, holding his hat to keep it from falling off.

“I didn’t expect to find a man of God in these parts,” said Mazorca as they ran.

“The Lord came into the world to save sinners,” said the chaplain. “He is most needed in places like this.”

They smelled the canal before they saw it-its powerful reek reached into Murder Bay even without the help of the wind. A moment later, they stood at its edge.

“You took the baby from the canal?” asked the chaplain.

“Yes, I removed it right away and carried it over to this alleyway,” said Mazorca. He pointed to a dark passage between a pair of abandoned buildings.

A look of doubt spread across on the chaplain’s face. “Why did you put the child there? Why didn’t you bring it away from this dreadful place?”

It was a sensible question, asked with a tone of mounting skepticism. Mazorca had relied on the man’s good heart and gullibility to get him to the canal. He figured he had no time to lose. In a fast and fluid motion, Mazorca whipped out his knife and sprang at the chaplain, who took an instinctive step backward but lost his balance when he tried to avoid plunging into the canal. He tumbled to the ground. Mazorca fell upon him, pressing his knee against the chaplain’s chest and his blade against his neck.

The chaplain closed his eyes and started mumbling, “Our Father…” He continued to clutch his cross and Bible.

“Shut your mouth-if you want to live,” said Mazorca.

In the silence, Mazorca looked up and made sure nobody had seen them. The track along the edge of the canal was desolate.

Rising to his feet but keeping his knife on the chaplain’s neck, Mazorca pointed to the alley once more. “You will get up, you will walk over there, and you will do it quietly,” he said.

The chaplain did as he was told. The alley was dingy and strewn with rotting garbage. A stray cat scampered away as they entered.

Several feet in, the chaplain stopped and faced Mazorca. “I forgive you,” he said.

Mazorca scoffed. “Are you sure about that?”

“I’m absolutely sure of it.”

“Your faith is pathetic. Do you think it will save you?”

“I’m not the one in need of saving.”

“Whatever,” said Mazorca. “Take off your coat.”

The chaplain did not hesitate. He quickly set down the cross and Bible, unbuttoned, and removed the coat. As he handed it to Mazorca, the clouds overhead suddenly parted, exposing the moon. One night before, it had been full. Its bright beams lit Mazorca and the chaplain.

“Wait,” said the chaplain, squinting at Mazorca. “You look like…”

He paused.

“What?” said Mazorca, with anger in his voice. “What do I look like?”

The chaplain sighed. He knew he should not have spoken.

“Tell me,” insisted Mazorca. The knife was no longer pressed against the chaplain’s neck, but Mazorca continued to point it at him. One wrong move and the chaplain would be dead. “Tell me now.”

“There is only one way to confirm it,” said the chaplain.

“It’s in the pocket.”

He reached for the coat, but Mazorca pulled it away.

“What’s in the pocket?”

“A picture.”

“A picture of what?”

“Please just let me retrieve it,” said the chaplain. “I don’t care about the coat. You can keep the coat.”

Mazorca wiggled the knife to remind the chaplain of its presence. “If this is a trick, you’ll be dead before your corpse hits the ground,” he said.

The chaplain nodded, reached a hand into his pocket, and pulled out a stiff piece of paper. He looked at it in the moonlight and then studied Mazorca’s face. When Mazorca realized what he was doing, he dropped the coat and grabbed the photograph.

The image astonished him: the picture was a little fuzzy, but there was no mistaking it. Mazorca had never allowed a photograph of himself to be taken before. Where could this one possibly have come from? He had absolutely no idea.

“Where did you get this?” he asked. There was urgency in his voice.

“A sergeant handed it to me, just a few minutes ago.”

Mazorca remembered Springfield’s encounter with the chaplain, outside Madam Russell’s Bake Oven.

“He had a handful of them,” said the chaplain. “He was distributing copies to the women of this quarter, hoping that one of them might recognize the person in it. I didn’t really want one. He practically forced me to take it.”

“How many did he have?”

“I don’t know-quite a few.”

Mazorca looked at the picture again but remained mystified as to its origins. He appeared to be standing outside. But where? And when?

“Could be anybody, I suppose,” said the chaplain.

Mazorca glared at him. Up above, the clouds moved in front of the moon. Darkness descended on the alley again.

“Just keep the coat,” said the chaplain. “You can have the picture as well. I have a little money too.”

He thrust a hand into his pants pocket. As he did, Mazorca struck, slashing the knife across the chaplain’s throat. Blood spewed out, and Mazorca hopped out of the way as the chaplain collapsed.

He put on the chaplain’s coat and hat and stuffed the picture into the pocket from which it had come. He thought about removing the chaplain’s pants, but he decided not to bother. They were close enough in appearance to the ones he was wearing. He did, however, pick up the cross and the Bible. The dead man’s neck was still seeping blood as Mazorca left the alley.

At the edge of the canal, Mazorca hurled the cross into the water. It splashed and sank. Then he tossed the Bible. It splashed and dipped below the surface before coming back up. Its dark cover was difficult to spot, but Mazorca thought he saw it begin to float away with the current.

Mazorca walked in the opposite direction. He needed to go into hiding, away from the eyes of people who had seen his photograph. He could not possibly check into a hotel-that would be the first place Rook and his men would have distributed pictures. Murder Bay was covered too. He could not even safely occupy a room in a whorehouse. There was always the safe house. Was it too risky? Or was it the best option among a set of worse alternatives?

There would be no escape this time. Rook would see to that. He was not interested in observing Mazorca from afar or trying to tail him anywhere. He wanted him killed or captured as quickly as possible. And if Mazorca was in the row house at 1745 N Street, one of those two things would happen in just a few minutes.

The house belonged to Robert Fowler. After Zack Hoadly had identified it, a lieutenant had looked up the address in the city’s ownership records. Rook remembered Fowler as the man who had crossed the Long Bridge into Virginia with an overstuffed wagon on the day the news of Fort Sumter’s fall had reached Washington. He knew that Fowler was a Southerner and a secessionist, but he was not sure that meant anything. To Mazorca, the Fowler residence might have represented nothing more than an abandoned building.

Everything rode on the accuracy of Zack’s report. Could the account of a ten-year-old boy be trusted? Boys could have powerful imaginations. Yet Rook was convinced that Zack had bumped into somebody outside the front door of 1745 N Street-and the possibility that it was a chance encounter with Mazorca was his only genuine lead. Rook was determined to pursue it.

The brown-brick row house was three stories tall. It was not a mansion, but it was large-Fowler was clearly a man of some means. Several large windows lined its front. It did not appear as though anybody was inside. Mazorca, of course, would have wanted it that way.

The colonel had assembled two dozen men. They quickly took position around the building. A handful went around to the rear. Several others positioned themselves on N Street, where they would make sure Mazorca could not leave through one of the windows. The rest marched with Rook to the front door.

Rook gave the knob a cursory twist, but it held tight. He gestured to a burly private. The man raised an ax and slammed it into the lock. Two more hits and the door cracked open. Anybody inside the house would now be on alert. Rook rushed in with his troops. They fanned through the building, charging up the stairs and racing in and out of rooms. They swiftly reached the conclusion Rook had feared: the house was empty.

Had Zack led them to the wrong house? Rook did not think so. The boy had been certain about the location.

Starting on the ground floor, Rook walked through the entire house, searching for clues. He did not find anything of special interest until he entered a bedroom on the third floor. Clothes littered the bed. Several drawers rested near the headboard, turned upside down. They had been removed from a dresser along the wall.

A closet door was shut. Rook approached and pulled it open. On the floor he saw it: the dress and the ball of bloody clothes. The boy had in fact seen Mazorca and had led Rook to the right house. Once again, however, he was too late. Mazorca was gone.