The Silver Bullet

Chapter Thirty

W hatever the state of Revolutionary fervor in New York City prior to its invasion, its capture by the British greatly amplified the presence of Tories there. By now the city had become a safe haven for all manner of Loyalists. In direct proportion it became inhospitable to true patriots. But this did not mean there were none left among its citizens. On the contrary. Many of the vast population, especially the lower rungs of working people, stood by Liberty’s flame, though they’d taken the precaution of hiding it beneath a bushel basket. And there were still Sons of Liberty about, as well as a good number of regular spies — one of whom Jake was on his way to contact.

The meeting place will surprise many students of New York politics, for it was nowhere else than the coffeehouse of James Rivington. This is the same Rivington who publishes the Gazette, that hideous newspaper that has given vent to the most evil mutterings against the Cause of Freedom imaginable.

So how, then to explain that Rivington’s was the headquarters for one of General Washington’s most accomplished spies, Culper Junior? How to explain that this Culper Junior — as he remains under cover, we will use only his code name — worked for Rivington and, by some accounts, owned half the coffee shop with him? Was it merely a perfect cover? Was Rivington, a notoriously loudmouthed British apologist, a double agent? Or a fool?

Jake wasn’t sure. He knew only that Culper Junior was completely loyal to the Cause. Beyond that, the coffeehouse was a perfect place to set up shop as a spy; not only was it the preferred place for Royalists to gather and discuss business, but nearly every British officer in the city of any importance spent some part of his day there. Any child with half a wit could gather a full dossier simply by wandering among the tables.

Culper Junior was neither a child nor someone possessing only half a wit. He noticed Jake at the door amid the early morning crowd immediately, and arranged to have one of his lads present him with a note directly: “Next to Coffeehouse Bridge. Five minutes.”

The Coffeehouse Bridge is not a bridge at all, but rather a long wooden platform running down Wall Street for about a block between Dock and Queen streets. Ordinarily it is used for auctions: the reader might envision it as a stage set in the middle of an area convenient for commerce, and not be far wrong.

Exactly five minutes after he had taken up his station, Jake was met by the small boy who had handed him the note in Rivington’s. “Met” was not quite precise; this was a clever lad, who took the precaution of approaching Jake with mock nonchalance. Suddenly darting toward him, he tugged at Jake’s shirt as if stealing something and ran away. Jake marveled at the ruse — there was nothing in his shirt to steal, of course — and charged through the traffic with mock abandon.

The boy was quite fast, and his sudden bursts left Jake winded by the time they reached the alley where his appointment would be kept. The lad stopped short and pointed to a door. Jake smiled, patted him on the head and tossed him two pence as he opened it.

With this much preparation to keep them from being detected, Jake felt his confidence growing that this difficult business would be quickly concluded. Imagine the surprise and chagrin, therefore, when he was met inside the door by a German Jaeger and his bayonet point.

Jake was no weaponless; besides the pocket pistol, he had his large officer’s pistol in the side of his belt. But it was not primed, and in any event, by the time he retrieved it the Hessian would have stitched a decorative five-cornered star pattern on his chest. Discretion, therefore, was called for — Jake smiled, held his hands out as a sign of error and no harm done. His mind worked desperately for the few German words he knew; “mistake” must be among them, but for the moment the only one he could recall with any certainty was bier, obviously inappropriate.

The mercenary held his position but did not advance. Jake reached back for the door latch and realized that either it had changed shape and location, or another soldier with his bayonet extended was standing behind him. Slowly and as calmly as possible, he took a step to the side, offering a sign of surrender with his hands. He still had his forged British warrants and identity papers; surely he could work this out given time.

Granted, time was not one of his most plentiful commodities. He consoled himself by noting that at least van Clynne would be halfway back from the ship by now.

“ The trick is in the malt,” van Clynne said, swirling his mug around, then holding the cup toward the general. “You see the toasted color? That is all flavor, sir. All flavor, I assure you.”

The general studied the liquid, then took a sip. He swished it around his mouth as van Clynne had demonstrated, rolling his tongue first to one side, then the other before swallowing.

“ I never understood that there was so much science to drinking beer,” said Howe.

“ It is a great, deliberative science,” said van Clynne, signaling to the sailor to refill their glasses. “What’s more, it is an art.”

“ You don’t have to be anywhere in particular?”

“ General, I am completely at your disposal.”

“ Very good,” said Howe, reaching for his mug. “Very good. You shall join my officers in a small discussion. You can tell us what you’ve seen of the Neutral Ground and its defenses. Clinton in particular — and antidote to his pomposity would be very welcome, I dare say.”

“ With pleasure, sir; with pleasure.”

Jake had backed himself completely to the wall. There were now four Hessians guarding him. The men wore green and red uniforms, and would have been identified by Jake as members of the Hesse-Cassel Field Jaeger Corps, a crack unit composed primarily of hunters and riflemen who had much the same reputation for toughness and accuracy in shooting as the frontier elements of the Pennsylvania militia.

Except for one small detail, which loomed large in the well-trained eye of the patriot agents: they had bayonets.

The bayonet is a most deadly and efficient weapon; theoreticians of warfare claim with much validity that it, not the bullet, it the true vanquisher on the battlefield. But the bayonet was not typically fixed to a rifle, which was the jaegers weapon of choice. Nor were these rifles — the knives had their stems slotted into standard-issue British Brown Bess muskets.

Riflemen with muskets?

This lack of syntactical symmetry might mean many things, not least among them that the British had decided to handicap their most effective units with weapons ill-suited to their tactics.

Or perhaps not. The side door promptly opened to reveal Culper Junior, smiling and laughing. The rest of the company quickly joined in.

Sons of Liberty in disguise.

“ How do you like our Germans?” said Culper, clapping Jake on the back.

“ They’ve got the wrong guns.”

“ Still, they fooled you.” Culper’s amusement quickly passed when he saw that Jake wasn’t laughing. “I’m sorry for the trouble, but we have to take many precautions these days. There are Tory informers everywhere.”

“ I need your help intercepting a messenger,” said Jake. “He’s on his way to General Howe.”

“ Howe is on his brother’s flagship in the harbor.”

“ Exactly.” A look passed between them indicating there was considerably more to the story, but that it would not be made explicitly. “Can I borrow your German troop? We have to move quickly.”

“ They’re at your disposal,” said Culper. “As is my lieutenant, Mark Daltoons.”

Herstraw and his escort had passed the eight-mile stone south of Day’s Tavern on the King’s Bridge Road down to the city by the time one of Culper’s boys — the same who had led Jake to his “trap” — spotted them. That left precious little time to arrange the diversion at McGowan’s Pass, less than a mile away.

It had been at McGowan’s Pass the previous September that a stout group of American patriots held off Clinton’s advance guard, keeping them at bay while Washington and Putnam regrouped at the Harlem Heights above. The action here this afternoon was considerably less severe, but just as hotly contested — the British messenger and his escort, along with some sentries routinely posted to the area, found themselves suddenly under heavy bombardment.

The first egg hit Herstraw square in the forehead. Just as he opened his mouth to protest, it was filled with a putrid, year-old apple, half-bitten, incidentally, by one of the attacking troops, none of whom was over ten years old.

Three dozen young lads held the woods above the ravine, raining all manner of vegetable debris on the helpless redcoats. A brilliantly coordinated hammer and anvil movement had left the troop trapped in the defile. Just as the first egg was lobbed, the hammer was launched — a large cart of manure was dumped over the side of the hill behind the troop, cutting off retreat. And then the anvil: at the head of the column, two large and odiferous carcasses of former cows were deposited on signal from a trapeze like device in the trees.

The assault being made by children, the British troops found themselves frustrated to the extreme. The dared not fire, for fear of hitting one of the urchins and causing a major incident; yet they could not advance in the face of what was a rather ferocious stream of rancid fruit and vegetables, together with some rocks and miscellaneous debris.

The British formed a defensive perimeter as best they could, and once their assailants’ ammunition ran low, dispatched a party to rout out the young rebels. The boys led those on a merry chase, avoiding capture yet staying close enough to entice the soldiers onward. In this way, the messenger was delay nearly an hour until close to one p.m., and his guard force much depleted.

Herstraw was heard to complain as they marched south that never had he witnessed such a poor state of affairs as that experienced over the past few days. The colonials were harassing the whole countryside. Common thieves, such as the scoundrels who stole all of Roelff’s plate and silver before trying to set the inn on fire the night before, ran rampant. Children were able to make fools of a company of handpicked grenadiers. Perhaps, said Herstraw, the British were not preordained to win this war as he had earlier believed.

This brought strenuous objection from the captain, and the two officers were still arguing when they were met in the road by a small group of Hessians up from the harbor. Had it not been for this disagreement, the captain might not have left Herstraw; like most other British soldiers, he had no respect for the Germans, though their army was as professional as his. But his orders were only to conduct the messenger into the city, and here they were standing at the intersection of Broad and George streets, well within the precincts of the north ward. If the truth be told, Herstraw had been quite a pain the whole way; the captain was only too glad to be rid of him. With no other ceremony, he promptly turned his men around and marched northwards to reassemble his force.

Herstraw was impressed that Howe had sent out another guard, even if it were composed of foreigners. The only English speaker was a young man of thin build who hardly looked old enough to shave. Nonetheless, the young man wore the markings of a sergeant; if the promotion was due to exploits on the battlefield instead of experience, well, so much the better. The fact that the sergeant was on horseback also did not arouse suspicion, but their path through the city — down Wall and then over Queen, heading away from the fort — did.

“ The general has set up auxiliary headquarter,” explained the sergeant. He had an apologetic tone in his voice. “It has to do, well, you know of Mrs. Loring, I assume.”

Herstraw showed great restraint in not asking any further questions, and the sergeant displayed equal discretion in not volunteering further information. In fact, such discretion might be thought unparalleled — provided, of course, that the man were truly what he claimed he was. But if such were the case, he would never had conducted Herstraw to Nicoll’s mansion, which had been temporarily appropriated by the Sons of Liberty under Jake’s direction a half hour before.

Nicoll was a Tory who had fled the city some months before the British invasion and hadn’t yet found the chance to return. The house had a good view of the east ward and the harbor. The officers from one of the guard companies who occupied it had just so happened to be called out on a special assignment a few moments before Jake’s arrival.

Well, perhaps this wasn’t entirely a coincidence, since they had been called out to look specifically for Mr. Gibbs, who was now suspected of having been involved in the firing of New York the previous fall. At least that was what the warrant claimed. Considering that the warrant also described Mr. Gibbs as being five-feet-two, with black hair and brown eyes and well past his prime, perhaps the warrant should not be fully believed.

In any event, the front room of the mansion was now under the control of a lieutenant and his aide. (The lieutenant bore a remarkable resemblance to Culper Junior’s own chief lieutenant, Mark Daltoons, and the aide, if not for the mustache, looked somewhat like the real Jake Gibbs.) Herstraw was marched before them and presented by the sergeant, who snapped to attention with all the ceremony of a guard presiding at the king’s palace.

“ Very good, Sergeant, that will do,” said the lieutenant as his aide inconspicuously took up a position behind the messenger. “Mr. William Herstraw, I presume. Do you have identification?”

Herstraw took out his coin and handed it to the lieutenant, who waved it to his aide. The assistant plucked the coin from the messenger’s hand and slid it into his pocket.

“ I am given to understand you have a message for the general,” said the lieutenant. His accent made him sound as if he had come from Westminster not a week before — a remarkable achievement for Daltoons, who had never been further east than Brooklyn.

The elaborate fiction he and Jake had constructed here was aimed not at retrieving the bullet — that could be done as soon as Daltoons leaned forward, pressing the level attached to the pistol wired beneath the desk. The Sons hoped to follow Herstraw through the city after he made his delivery, thereby gathering hints about the British messenger network. Jake had let himself be persuaded on this point by Culper Junior, but in truth had some doubts about whether Herstraw would agree to hand over the bullet without a struggle.

“ My orders are to see the general in person,” said the messenger.

“ I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” answered the lieutenant. “That is against procedure.”

“ Nevertheless, those are my orders. I’ll wait until he’s free, if that’s a problem.”

“ That would be a very long time,” said the mustachioed aide, who had his pocket pistol loaded out of sight up his sleeve.

“ General Burgoyne gave the order to me directly, and I am honor bound to carry it out,” said Herstraw, turning to face the aide. “Excuse me, but have we met?”

“ I don’t believe so.”

“ Why do you wear a mustache?”

The aid — we all know it’s Jake, don’t we? — feigned embarrassment before answering.

“ It’s to hide a scar I received. My upper lip was cut at Lexington.”

“ Lexington? Whom did you serve under?”

“ I was serving under the lieutenant here.”

“ Impossible. His unit was not in Boston at the time.” Herstraw rose and took a step back as recognition flooded into his eyes. “I know you!”