Killing Lincoln - Bill O'Reilly [37]
The president thinks his getaways are secret, but men like Booth and the members of the Confederate Secret Service are always watching. Booth’s original mission, as defined by his southern handlers, was to capture Lincoln while he rode on the lonely country road to the Soldiers’ Home.
Booth tried and failed twice. Now he has a new plan, one that preys on Lincoln’s fondness for the theater. He will grab him in mid-performance, from the presidential box at a Washington playhouse.
The scheme, however, is so crazy, so downright impossible that none of his co-conspirators will go along with it.
One of them has even backed out completely and taken the train home. It is as if Booth has rehearsed and rehearsed for a major performance, only to have the production canceled moments before the curtain rises. He has poured thousands of dollars into the plan. Some of that money has come from his own pocket; most has been supplied by the Confederacy. And now the scheme will never come to pass.
Booth fires at the bull’s-eye.
The Deringer is less than six inches long, made of brass, with a two-inch barrel. It launches a single large-caliber ball instead of a bullet and is accurate only at close range. For this reason it is often called a “gentleman’s pistol”—small and easily concealed in a pocket or boot, the Deringer is ideal for ending an argument or extracting oneself from a dangerous predicament but wholly unsuited for the battlefield. Booth has purchased other weapons for his various plots, including the cache of revolvers and long-bladed daggers now hidden in his hotel room. But the Deringer with the chocolate-colored wooden grip is his personal favorite. It is not lost on him that the pistol’s primary traits—elegance, stealth, and the potential to produce mayhem—match those of its owner.
Booth is almost out of ammunition. He loads his gun for one last shot, still plotting his next course of action.
He is absolutely certain he can kidnap Lincoln.
But as Booth himself would utter while performing Hamlet, there’s the rub.
If the war is over, then kidnapping Lincoln is pointless.
Yet Lincoln is still the enemy. He always will be.
So if Booth is no longer a kidnapper, then how will he wage war? This is the question that has bothered him all night.
Booth fires his last shot, slides the Deringer into his pocket, and storms out the door, only to once again find the streets full of inebriated revelers. Outraged, he steps into a tavern and knocks back a drink. John Wilkes Booth thinks hard about what comes next. “Our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done,” he tells himself.
Until now, Booth has taken orders from Confederate president Jefferson Davis, currently in hiding. It was Davis who, nearly a year ago, sent two agents to Montreal with a fund of $1 million in gold. That money funded various plots against Lincoln. But Davis is done, fleeing to North Carolina in a train filled with looted Confederate gold, most likely never to return. Booth alone must decide for himself what is wrong and what is right.
From this moment forward he will live and breathe and scheme in accordance with his brand-new identity, and his new mission. The time has come for black flag warfare.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1865
WASHINGTON, D.C.
NIGHT
Booth’s Washington residence is the National Hotel, on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth. Just around the corner is James Pumphrey’s stable, where he often rents a horse. The actor feels perfectly at home at Pumphrey’s, for the owner is also known to be a Confederate sympathizer. Now, well past eight, and with no streetlights beyond the city limits, the night is far too dark for a ride into the country. But a half-drunk Booth needs to get on a horse now—right now—and gallop through Washington, D.C., reassuring himself that he has a way out of the city after putting