The First Assassin (41 page)

Within a few minutes, Lincoln was near the steps, close to Rook as well as close to the spot from which he had delivered his inaugural address. A crowd continued to swirl around him. From the side, Rook noticed a man of the cloth advance toward the president. He was probably the pastor from one of the churches on Capitol Hill.

His presence reminded Rook of Lincoln’s words on March 4. Toward the end of his speech, the president had commented that both Northerners and Southerners believed that they had justice on their side. If that was true, he said, then both should have the patience in “the Almighty Ruler of nations” to let justice prevail. Yet Lincoln was also resolute: “You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend’ it.”

Rook recalled the pledge he had made to himself on that day: he had vowed to protect and defend Lincoln, even with his own life.

When the pastor’s head swiveled briefly in Rook’s direction, a flicker of recognition gripped the colonel. He wore a hat, so Rook could not see the ear. Was it the shape of the chin? A look in the eyes? The pastor turned away before Rook could be sure of anything. Yet something told him to make good on his promise right now.

Mazorca adjusted the brim of his hat another time. It already flopped down well enough to hide his ear, but he wanted to be sure. Staring over his spectacles, which he had let slip to the end of his nose so that they would disguise his face but not distort his vision, Mazorca saw Lincoln standing just fifteen feet away. The president was pumping hands and listening to a soldier say how proud he was to have cast his first presidential vote for him.

When the band struck up “Yankee Doodle,” Mazorca realized that he had found his moment. He might not get this close again. One shot. He knew he could get away. The noise and the crowd would create the confusion he needed. And nobody would suspect a preacher who clutched a Bible.

He had thought seriously about giving up. After descending the Washington Monument early in the morning, he walked to the edge of the Potomac River. Unsure about what to do, he headed east, toward the Capitol. He passed a few people who took no particular heed of him. With his hat pulled down tight, his collar up, his spectacles on, his cheeks covered in stubble, and his eyes cast to the ground, he avoided suspicion. The Bible—or a book that appeared on the outside to be a Bible—was a fortunate coincidence because it matched his outfit. Mazorca did not like to rely upon luck, but in this case he welcomed it.

Luck seemed to strike again as he went by the Capitol. Soldiers were gathering by the hundreds. He did not want to go anywhere near them, but he stopped to watch. A few minutes later, a carriage pulled up. A tall man in a black stovepipe hat got out. Mazorca did not believe in fate, but Lincoln’s sudden appearance gave him pause. Rather than conceding defeat, he decided to claim victory.

He listened to Lincoln’s jokes, his brief remarks, and his swearing-in of the soldiers. It was impossible to get close enough. He needed to arrive at almost point-blank range, and ideally when the crowd was starting to break up. If all eyes were locked on Lincoln, there was no way Mazorca could succeed.

Then it happened. The soldiers fell out of rank, the band struck up a tune, and a mass of people swarmed the president. Most were soldiers, but not all—and Mazorca plunged in behind a few civilians. He noticed that Lincoln was heading toward the Capitol. He worked through the crowd to get in position for the president to walk right past him.

When Lincoln was a dozen feet away, Mazorca fixed his hat a final time. He reached for his book’s yellow ribbon and jerked it. The music muffled the click of the gun’s cocking. When Lincoln was ten feet away, Mazorca grabbed the red ribbon and held it taut. With the book at waist level, he slanted it slightly upward so that its bullet would rip into Lincoln’s chest. A soldier stood in front of him, blocking his shot. When Lincoln was five feet away, the soldier reached out to shake the president’s hand.

“Sir,” shouted the soldier, “I believe that God Almighty and Abraham Lincoln are going to save this country!”

Mazorca took half a step to his right. He remained behind the soldier, but the book had an angle. He pulled hard on the ribbon. The gun went off.

Rook did not hear the shot—nobody did, amid the noise of the crowd and the music of the band—but he felt the bullet dig into his left arm. What he heard, instead, was laughter: Lincoln had made another one of his wisecracks, telling the soldier who was shaking his hand, “Private, I believe you’re half right!”

At first, Rook merely felt the bullet’s impact. Uncertain about the pastor’s actual identity, he had tried to force his body in front of the president. When he saw the man turn and move away swiftly, he knew it was Mazorca. He wanted to point and yell, but it was too late: the searing pain of his wound made him clench his teeth and double over. Lincoln kept walking and his pack of followers streamed by Rook. Nobody knew that a shot had been fired or that the colonel had been hit.

When Rook stood upright, he saw Mazorca darting toward a door beneath the Capitol steps. The assassin opened it, went in, and slammed it shut. Rook raced after him, stumbling at first and then gaining his stride. He finally yelled, “Get that man!”—but still nobody heard. He removed his pistol from his holster as he approached the door. Reaching to open it, he felt the pain tear through his left arm. Somehow, he pulled the door open. The sound of running footsteps echoed down a hallway.

Rook chased after them. He figured that he had at least one advantage over Mazorca: he knew his way around the Capitol, and Mazorca presumably did not. It was a large building, and Rook certainly did not know every twist and turn, but he had a general sense of its layout. He knew where its passageways led, where its staircases went, and where its exits were. From what he could tell, Mazorca had bolted through a foyer, turned right where it intersected with a long hall, and was running toward the Senate side of the building.

Rook hurried to the intersection and stopped. He could still hear Mazorca’s footsteps, but he did not want to present himself as a target. On the ground, a book lay open—except that it was not really a book. Its pages were hollowed out. The gun was inside, with ribbons attached for cocking and firing. A hole on the bottom edge of its carved-up pages made Rook realize that this was the gun that had shot him moments before. Mazorca must have discarded it as he ran.

The sound of the footsteps grew fainter. Rook knew he needed to keep moving. He peered around the corner, down the long hallway. Mazorca was not in view. About forty feet in front of him, resting on the ground, he saw the black hat that Mazorca had worn.

The pain in his arm intensified. Rook tried to massage the wound, but the gun in his hand made it impossible. He knew he had to keep moving. If he stayed where he was, he would lose Mazorca. Again.

He sprinted down the hall past a series of closed doors that led to committee rooms. He still heard footsteps ahead, reverberating off the walls. It sounded like they fell on steps.

Rook knew exactly where Mazorca was headed: those stairs led up to a wide hallway just outside the Senate cloakrooms. When the colonel arrived at the staircase, he trained his pistol on the steps, but Mazorca was nowhere in sight.

Climbing the steps slowly, Rook kept looking upward. His arm throbbed, and he could feel blood begin to soak the sleeve of his uniform. It was not gushing out the way it would from hitting a major artery, but the warm dampness was becoming apparent. He did all he could to block the sensation from his mind.

At the top of the steps, Rook gained a view of the area just outside the Senate cloakrooms—it was technically a hallway, but it was wide enough to feel like an actual room. The bedding of soldiers covered the floor. The men who slept here were outside.

Rook wondered if Mazorca had gone to the right, through one of the cloakrooms and into the Senate chamber itself. Then he heard a door shut down a hallway to his left. If it was Mazorca, it meant that he was in the large room where the Supreme Court met. It was sometimes called the Old Senate Room because senators had used it before moving into their more spacious chamber at the north end of the building.

As he ran toward the room, Rook wondered why Mazorca would have chosen the door. If he meant to escape, there were better choices. Then he understood: ahead, in the rotunda, came the sounds of soldiers filing back into the Capitol. The assassin apparently wanted to avoid them. A new thought troubled him: if Lincoln had walked up the steps on the outside of the building’s east front, however, he might very well be in the rotunda with them. Was it possible that Mazorca would have another chance to shoot the president?

The thick wooden doors outside the Old Senate Room were shut. Rook moved to open one of them. The door was heavy, and he might have leaned into it with his shoulder but for his injury. He turned the knob and forced it open with his foot.

Inside, he saw the majestic chamber—a semicircular room with a vaulted ceiling. Yet it was in a state of disarray, with desks and chairs shoved to one side to make room for soldiers who needed a place to sleep. Rook raised his pistol and stepped inside. The door swung shut behind him. He did not see Mazorca, but there was no shortage of places to hide.

Something glinted on the ground, catching his eye. Rook looked down. It was a pair of spectacles. His mind had registered nothing more than that when he sensed movement on his left. Mazorca emerged from behind a pillar and rushed toward him with a large knife in his hand. Instinctively, Rook tried to raise his left arm to block the attack, but the pain from his gunshot wound was so sharp that his knees buckled.

The move might have saved his life. Mazorca’s dive was too high. The slash of his knife missed Rook entirely. Off balance, he fell to the floor. Meanwhile, Rook hopped to his feet and pointed his pistol directly at Mazorca, who rolled from his side to his back. The knife was still in his hand.

“Drop it,” shouted Rook.

Mazorca closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them, he also appeared to loosen his grip on the handle of his knife. Instead of letting it fall, however, he flipped it up, grabbed the blade, and tried to throw it.

Rook pulled his trigger three times. Mazorca shuddered as each bullet hit its mark. The knife dropped harmlessly to the ground. The assassin’s body jolted. Then it slumped. It did not move again.

“There you are!” yelled Springfield from across the rotunda. The large room beneath the Capitol’s open dome was filling with soldiers. Lincoln had just passed through and was walking down a hallway toward the House chamber, away from Rook. The colonel gripped his left arm, as if by holding it he would lessen the pain.

Springfield ran over. Clark was with him.

“Where is he?” asked the sergeant.

“It’s done,” said Rook.

“You found Mazorca?”

“He’s dead.”

The sergeant explained that he had seen Rook chase a man into the Capitol and assumed the worst. He and Clark tried to catch up, but they started out too far away. By the time they entered the Capitol, they had no idea where Mazorca and Rook had gone.

“You’ve been shot,” said Springfield, noticing Rook’s wound for the first time.

For a moment, Rook said nothing. He just stared, first at Springfield, then at Clark, and then back at Springfield. “Where is Violet Grenier?” he asked.

The two soldiers looked at each other. They had forgotten. That was when Rook knew: she was gone.

SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 1861

Langston Bennett was surprised to hear the sound of gravel crunching beneath the wheels of a carriage. He had not expected visitors. Hughes remained confined to his bed, though after three weeks at the Stark farm he finally had moved back to his own plantation. Bennett had paid him a couple of visits but still had not given the young man the excoriation that he thought he deserved for letting Portia slip away.

Perhaps it was a man seeking employment. Ever since Tate had quit—abruptly, and immediately following the burial of that runaway Big Joe—he had let it be known that he wished to hire an experienced overseer. So far, nobody had come to him for the job. Many of the men in the region were gripped with war fever. They were signing up to fight the North.

A minute ticked by as Bennett waited for Lucius to walk through the door and announce a guest. Then he remembered that the old slave would not appear again. Bennett was still unaccustomed to his absence. He had made no attempt to replace him.

Bennett rose from his desk and hobbled to the front door. He opened it and looked upon one of the people he least expected to see: Violet Grenier.

“Hello,” he said, somehow making the greeting sound more like a question.

“Good afternoon, Langston,” said Grenier. “It has been an exceedingly long journey. Are you going to invite me in?”

He did, and they settled into chairs in Bennett’s office.

“This is certainly a surprise, Violet,” said Bennett. “I anticipated a letter, not a visit. It has been quite some time since you wrote. I feared that something had happened.”

“You wouldn’t believe how much has happened—everything and nothing, all at once.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mazorca is dead.” She handed him a Brady’s reproduction of the photograph. Bennett stared at it and sighed.

Grenier told her story: Mazorca’s arrival, his pursuit, and his disappearance. She neglected to say that she had been arrested or that she had escaped during the tumult on April 26—she simply said that life in Washington had become too difficult for someone of her views. Bennett did not probe her on this point.

“How do you know Mazorca is dead?” he asked.

“I suspect strongly that Rook and his men killed him and then covered it up. The entire episode has been kept out of the papers. It’s just rumors, really—about a lunatic who was shot in the Capitol and then given a pauper’s burial. Nothing is confirmed, but it hardly matters. The bottom line is that Lincoln is still alive.”

“How unfortunate,” said Bennett. “It is such a shame to have failed.”

Grenier narrowed her eyes and put her hand on Bennett’s knee—the one above the false leg. “Mazorca failed,” she said. “We have not.”

Bennett looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

She smiled wickedly. “The war is young.”