Previously in the novel: War Secretary Stanton placed President and Mrs. Lincoln under guard in the White House basement. Stanton replaced Lincoln with a lookalike he had found in prison and groomed him to impersonate the president. Pvt. Adam Christy was placed in charge of the Lincolns.
Dusk fell over Lafayette Square as Private Adam Christy stopped at the Executive Mansion door to tell the Washington policeman, dressed as a doorman in a frock coat and baggy trousers, that he would be right back after meeting someone for a moment in the park. The guard narrowed his eyes.
“And who are you?”
“Didn’t Mr. Stanton tell you? I’m the president’s new adjutant.” Adam cleared his throat. “And who are you?”
“John Parker.”
John Parker…it struck a chord with Adam, who remembered Stanton telling him to be wary of a certain guard at the front door who tended to stay drunk. The metropolitan police had brought him up on charges of going to whorehouses, being drunk, and sleeping on duty.
“The president’s last adjutant was a lieutenant,” the guard said after carefully eyeing the single stripe on Adam’s rumpled blue sleeve.
“Um, I’m from Mr. Stanton’s hometown,” Adam whispered as he looked down.
“Oh. So that’s how it is.” A grunt gurgled from Parker’s lips.
“Yes.” Adam glanced across Pennsylvania Avenue into Lafayette Square to see if Gabby’s sister Cordie was there. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Of course, boss,” Parker said, his voice tinged with irony and his breath reeked of whiskey.
As Adam walked down the steps, across the driveway, and into the street, he felt the back of his neck burn, though he kept telling himself there was no shame in taking advantage of a family acquaintance to get a leg up, as his father would say. How else would a young man from a small town on the banks of the Ohio River find himself in the center of his nation’s government? Steubenville’s only link to political importance was in its name, homage to Baron Von Steuben who had trained General George Washington’s troops at Valley Forge, turning them into a viable fighting force. The Prussian native was well rewarded with land and money, but he spent his remaining years in New York, not in the back country of Ohio. So Steubenville itself was known for its manufacture of plates and cups and bolts of cloth, not its political influence. Therefore, when young Adam Christy announced as a child that he wanted to be a general, his father laughed. To be a general, his father explained as he stroked Adam’s red hair, he would have to go to West Point; and to go to West Point, he needed to be appointed by a congressman. And congressmen only came to Steubenville once every two years before an election. Perhaps one day he could be a sergeant, he had tried to encourage himself. Then his father burst through the door on a bright day in June of 1862, grinning broadly.
“Boy, you might make general after all,” he said, grabbing Adam’s shoulders.
“What do you mean, Pa?” Adam’s heartbeat quickened.
“I saw something in the newspaper back at the first of the year,” the elder Christy began. “I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to get your hopes up.” He paused, smiling, to catch his breath. “You know how I’ve always said it’s not what you know but who you know, and my problem was that I never knew anybody. Well, what I saw in the newspaper let me realize I finally know somebody.”
“Who, Pa, who?”
“Well, I used to laugh and tell how I caught this fellow at the graveyard digging up your aunt. He’d taken a shine to her and wanted to make sure she was dead. But I caught him. I laughed at him and told everybody in town so they laughed at him until he finally got his back up. He blustered up to me, but dog-tailed it real fast when I said, ‘Yeah, so what? What are you going to do about it?’”
“Pa, what does that have to do with—”
“Just this. That fellow is now secretary of war for Abraham Lincoln.”
“But wouldn’t he hate your guts?” Adam frowned.
“Son, he’s a grown man,” his father said. “Grown men don’t hold grudges. Only boys do that.”
“So you wrote him about me?” Adam smiled.
“Sure did. Took a few months for a reply, but I got it today.” His father squeezed his shoulder. “He said for you to get on the next train headed for Washington. He has a special duty for you, and if you do a good job, he promised a commission.”
The next few weeks went by quickly for Adam, who mounted the train in Steubenville, crossed the Ohio River, passed Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania countryside, entered Maryland, and stepped off the train into the different world of Washington, D.C. A nameless man in a rumpled blue uniform met him at the station and took him to an induction center where he was sworn in as a member of the Army of the Potomac, but instead of being led away to one of the training camps around the capital, Adam was taken to the War Department, where he met Edwin Stanton and his destiny.
Nothing wrong with using connections to receive a special assignment, he told himself as he looked back at the Executive Mansion from Lafayette Park. The guard at the door was only jealous. Then he looked up at the statues around him. A smile found its way to his lips as his eyes adjusted to the failing light to recognize a monument to General Frederick William Von Steuben, his hometown’s namesake. A portent of good fortune. Now that he had put his personal doubts behind him for the moment, Adam’s attention focused on his promise to Gabby Zook to tell his sister Cordie that he would not be coming home with her for some time. Looking around, Adam could see that few elderly women walked in the park at twilight, so spotting Gabby’s sister would be no problem. After a few minutes of shifting from one foot to another, however, he worried he had been wrong, until two female figures appeared far down Pennsylvania Avenue. One was short and had rounded shoulders. That one must be Cordie Zook. But he did not know who the second person might be, a tall, straight silhouette with a quick gait and lively waving of hands and bobbing of her head during conversation. He smiled, wondering what the young woman was saying. Adam already liked her.