Killing Lincoln - Bill O'Reilly [53]
It finally dawns on one very drunk George Atzerodt that the plan has shifted from kidnapping to murder. The only reason he joined the conspiracy was that, in addition to running a small carriage-repair business in Port Tobacco, Maryland, he moonlights as a smuggler, ferrying mail, contraband, and people across the broad Potomac into Virginia. It is a hardscrabble and often dangerous existence. Atzerodt’s role in the kidnapping was to be an act of commerce, not rebellion. He was to be paid handsomely to smuggle the bound-and-gagged Lincoln into the hands of the Confederates.
But there is no longer a Confederacy, no longer a kidnapping plot, no longer a need for a boat, and certainly no longer a need for a smuggler—at least in Atzerodt’s mind. The thirty-year-old German immigrant slurs that he wants out.
Booth calmly springs his blackmail.
Booth cannot do without Atzerodt. His boat and his knowledge of the Potomac’s currents are vital to their escape. A massive manhunt will surely begin the instant Lincoln is killed. Federal officials will seal off Washington, D.C., and canvass the Maryland and Virginia countryside, but with Atzerodt’s guidance Booth and his men will rush through rural Maryland ahead of the search parties, cross the Potomac, and then follow smugglers’ routes south to Mexico.
Booth has rehearsed for this moment. He knows his lines and recites them with great drama.
“Then we will do it,” Booth says, nodding at Herold and Powell, never taking his eyes off the drunk German. “But what will come of you?”
And then, as if pulling the solution out of thin air: “You had better come along and get your horse.”
At the word “horse,” Atzerodt’s heart skips a beat. He’s trapped. Booth long ago suggested that the two men share horses from time to time. The horse a man rides is part of his identity. By sharing Booth’s favorite horse—which seemed like such a simple and thoughtful gesture on the actor’s part all those weeks ago—Atzerodt is now visibly connected to the assassination plot. Atzerodt has ridden Booth’s horse all over Washington and has even helped him sell a few animals; so there will be no shortage of witnesses.
Atzerodt sighs and nods his head. Murder it is. There is no way out for him.
The time has come. The four men stand, aware that they are about to commit the greatest crime in the history of the United States.
Before opening the door, Booth reminds them that their post-assassination rendezvous point is the road to Nanjemoy, on the Maryland side of the Potomac. Normally the sight of a lone horseman galloping out of Washington, D.C., long after dark would make the sentries guarding the bridges suspicious. But tonight is not a normal night. All those folks who’ve come into Washington for the Illumination will be making their way back home when it’s all done. Booth and his men will easily blend in with the same drunken bleating masses who are now making that wretched noise on the streets outside room 6.
If for some reason they can’t do the job tonight, they will remain in Washington and try again tomorrow.
Booth shakes hands with each man. They leave one at a time and go their separate ways.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 1865
WASHINGTON, D.C.
NIGHT
There once was a fifth conspirator, the one Booth traveled to Baltimore to corral the day before. Mike O’Laughlen, a former Confederate soldier who grew up across the street from Booth, was one of the first men recruited by him last August. Just a month earlier the two men had lain in wait together for a certain carriage making its way down the lonely country road to the Soldiers’ Home, only to find that its occupant was a Supreme Court justice instead of the president.
Hiding in the tall grass along the side of the road, O’Laughlen had weighed the repercussions of actually kidnapping the president of the United States and realized that he would hang by the neck until dead if caught. He was actually relieved that the carriage belonged to Salmon P. Chase instead of Lincoln.
The twenty-four-year-old