Raucous laughter emanated from the Executive Mansion’s kitchen in the basement one February,1866, evening. Lafayette Baker told President Johnson some of his tales of breaking up spy rings during the war years. In particular, Baker embellished the details of how he tracked down and arrested Belle Starr, the notorious female spy. He claimed her charms held nothing for him for he was a good family man.
“So you have children?” Johnson asked amiably.
“Oh. No, sir,” Baker replied, a bit taken off guard. “My wife Jennie and I were never blessed with children. But I consider myself a family man because I am married and as such I—Jennie and I—are our own family.”
“And where does she live?” Johnson’s smile fixed and his gaze dogged.
“In Philadelphia. I was a mechanic there, before the war.” Baker heard footsteps and looked behind the president to see the butler and his wife the cook pass by the kitchen door and glance in. He realized they knew what he actually was and what he was capable of. Yet he still had to carry on. “She’s been my saint through all these years of separation.”
For some reason, Johnson preferred to have relaxed conversations in the kitchen where the walls were rough hewn and the corners covered in cobwebs. Since the first of 1866, his kitchen friend had been Baker. In the months following the assassination, Baker had been more accessible to late night talks than others in Johnson’s immediate circle of intimates had.
Baker’s official job title had always been chief of the Secret Service, an agency which rooted out counterfeiters. Unofficially he handled unpleasant tasks assigned by Secretary of War Stanton. His latest job was to ingratiate himself to the new president so he might more easily observe Johnson’s imperfections. The ultimate goal was to gather such irrefutable evidence that Congress would have no choice but to impeach and remove the president from office as soon as possible. The ruse only intensified Baker’s hatred for Stanton.
“Do you know why I like you, Lafe?” Johnson asked, staring into his eyes.
“No, sir. Why?” He clinched his jaw and hoped he would find the correct reaction to what the president was about to say to him.
“Because you’re a real man. You know what it’s like to grow up snot poor. You got up and out of it. Made something out of yourself. Went out West. Did the tough work nobody else had the belly for.”
Baker’s eyes went down. “Some of it I’m none too proud of.”
“Oh, hell, pride never does nothing for nobody. I’ll be damned if I’m proud of anything I did in my life. But I’m proud to have you as the head of the Secret Service.”
Baker looked up and smiled. “I’ll drink to that.” Pulling a flask from his inside jacket pocket, he extended it to the president. “Let’s share a toast to getting things done. It’s the best whisky from your home state of Tennessee.” He could not continue to look at Johnson. One of the supreme tasks given him by Stanton was to lure the president back into his old drunken habits, a sure way to make impeachment efforts successful.
“Eliza is in the house now, along with our daughter and her husband and their children. They would skin me alive if they smelled liquor on my breath.” He smiled grimly and stood. “In fact, she’ll be expecting me upstairs in a while.” He extended his hand to Baker. “Come again when you have the time. You don’t know how much these talks help to relax me.”
After Johnson left the kitchen, he walked up the stairs, his heavy boots crunching loudly on the straw mats on the steps. Baker took a moment to compose himself before going outside through the kitchen door, turning his coat collar up to protect himself from the bitter winds of February. Returning to his room at the National Hotel, he slowly took off his boots, sprawled across the bed, opened the flask and took a couple of gulps.
He tried to think back to a time when he decided that money was more important than morality, honesty and loyalty. Baker knew. It was after he rose in the ranks of the military, each new position gave him more power. It seemed so easy as he explained to officials they had two choices: submit to the public disgrace of being charged with corrupt practices or pay Baker to hide their sins in the far reaches of insignificant filing cabinets. Then in 1862, Stanton approached him with his hare-brained scheme to kidnap Lincoln and hold him captive in the Executive Mansion. Baker saw this ultimate act of immorality easy to commit.
He masterminded the abduction of Abraham Lincoln and manipulated simple-minded rebels to carry out the president’s assassination. He personally murdered the man and woman who pretended to be the Lincolns and finally drove the innocent young soldier who guarded the president and the first lady to commit suicide. Those atrocious sins disgusted Baker and awoke what was left of his soul. Now Stanton coerced him into a new round of deception and murder, and Baker’s newly resurrected humanity said, “No”. Baker had to find a way to escape the grasp of Stanton. He was sick and tired of it.
Washington City entered a new chapter of turmoil as Baker planned his personal emancipation. President Johnson began to set his own course of reconstruction which neither followed the wishes of the late Mr. Lincoln nor the dictates of the Radical Republicans in Congress. Recently the President publicly grumbled about the extension and expansion of powers of the Freedman’s Bureau, which not only provided welfare relief for freed slaves but also to white refugees, now homeless after the ravages of war. Johnson told confidantes that in his opinion that the bill was unconstitutional and, now a year after the war had ended, not needed. Somehow those private thoughts made their way into the local newspapers.
Stanton summoned Baker to his office in the morning and berated him on his lack of action. Each time the war secretary slammed his fist on the desk, Baker cringed.
“What’s wrong with you? Why haven’t you forced him back into the liquor bottle? What’s going on in his mind? What other shocking steps will he take? Which bill will he dare veto next?”
“He won’t take another drink of liquor as long as his wife is in residence at the Executive Mansion.”
“That should be easily solved. The woman is an invalid. No one would be surprised by her sudden death.”
Baker glared at Stanton, but only a whisper came out of his mouth. “I am not killing another woman under your orders. It must stop. All this has got to stop.”
Stanton sat back in his chair. “Of all the men in Washington City, you are the last one I would suspect of turning coward.” He sighed deeply. “Get into his office. Make notes of the documents on his desk. That should not disturb your sensibilities too greatly.”
That evening Baker dropped by the Executive Mansion, catching President Johnson as he left the private family dining room on the main floor. Everyone entering into the hall—Johnson, his wife Eliza, their daughter Martha and her husband David Patterson—were laughing. Johnson pushed his wife’s wheelchair. He smiled and walked toward Baker with an extended hand.
“Mr. Baker, so good to see you. You’ve met my family, I believe. Not only is my son-in-law the new senator from Tennessee, he’s the only man in this blasted place I trust to carry my wife up to our private quarters. She suffers from consumption. But she’s a fighter. She’s not giving up.”
Patterson lifted the First Lady and gracefully led the way up the staircase.
“At some point I’m afraid Eliza will have to return to our home in Greeneville. This big city living is not good for her health, it seems; but my daughter Martha will act as hostess when the time comes. Please join us upstairs.”
Baker smiled and nodded as they began up the staircase. Johnson leaned into him to whisper.
“Wait for me in my office. I have some documents to show you. It doesn’t look good for Stanton.”
“Yes, sir.”
On the second floor, the Johnson family turned toward the bedroom.
“We must get Eliza into her bed before she sprains my poor son-in-law’s back.” He smiled at Baker and motioned to his office at the end of the hall. “Go ahead. I shall join you momentarily.”
Baker found himself alone in the president’s office. First, he looked back down the hall to make sure no staff members were lingering before he returned to Johnson’s desk, which was a jumbled mess of papers. On top was what he was expecting from Johnson’s comments—an investigation into the private affairs of Edwin Masters Stanton, Secretary of War. Pushing the report aside, Baker dug deeper into the stack where he found another report—alternatives to the Freedman’s Bureau, achieving dissolution with minimum political impact.
Taking a small notebook from his inner coat pocket, he began scribbling notes from the report. This would be information Stanton and his Radical Republican friends in Congress would want to see.
When the door creaked open, Baker twitched and looked up to see the president glowering at him. This was not the first time he had been caught in the act of spying. The Confederates had walked in on him often during his War years in Richmond where he posed as a photographer. A ready smile flashed across his face.
“I found that report you told me about, the one exposing Stanton’s background. I was just making a few notes so I might help in furthering your investigation.”
Johnson walked to him with his right hand extended. “Oh really. May I see what information impressed you so much?”
“It’s nothing, actually.” Baker’s voice weakened.
“Nevertheless, I want to see it.” The president paused and added in a growl, “I said, hand it over.”
Baker knew he had been sloppy. He should have moved more quickly. He should have brought a second notebook, to make non-incriminating notes, which he could hand over in a situation like this, keeping the real notations hidden. Was he truly now unpracticed in the art of espionage? Or did he subconsciously allow himself to be caught in such a compromising situation, creating an excuse to extract himself from this ongoing political nightmare?
The President grabbed the notebook and began reading. First his eyebrows went up and then he pursed his lips before returning his gaze to Baker.
“I don’t see anything in here about Mr. Stanton.”
“Well, you see, I have devised a special code for my private purposes—“
“Interesting. You chose the words Freedman’s Bureau as code for Edwin Stanton?” He walked over to the stove, opened the iron door and threw the notebook into the flames. “I am not a smart man, Mr. Baker. Not anywhere as smart as my predecessor but remember this one fact. He is dead, and I am still alive. After years of living in poverty in the mountains of Tennessee, I have developed a keen sense of smelling bullshit. I could have you thrown in prison, tried and executed for treason, but to maintain a façade of unity for the citizens of these United States I will simply say your services are no longer needed. Now get the hell out of here.”
Baker left without saying a word and returned to his hotel room where he slept more soundly than he had in years. His termination had lifted the awesome burden of being an evil embodiment of political expediency. Private Adam Christy’s pale, ghostly face smeared with blood no longer haunted his dreams. On the train ride the next morning, back to his home in Philadelphia where his wife Jennie patiently waited for him, Baker realized he was not completely free, even now.
To ensure his future safety he knew he had to write his own version of the Lincoln assassination, as he was sure everyone else involved would eventually do. He decided to make the main subject of the book his part in the creation of the Secret Service, a topic of interest but not provocative. By the end of the manuscript, Baker planned to reveal that John Wilkes Booth had kept a journal from the time of the assassination to his own supposed death. The book would claim that Baker immediately handed the notebook over to Secretary of War Stanton intact. Now there were eighteen pages missing. Baker knew there were eighteen pages missing because he was there when Stanton tore them out.