The Willard (32 page)

Olivia and James helped Victoria back to the Willard. She had turned her ankle in the collision, but aside from that the only damage she suffered was a dirty dress and a lifelong conviction that James was a menace on the road. They were happy to fill in the blanks for Olivia.

The night before, Victoria had struggled with whether or not to send a message to James. She ultimately decided she would try and find him in person and if she wasn’t able to she would leave a note in care of his brother at the congressman’s office. She spent hours on the note, searching for just the right tone. The next morning she went to Capitol Hill and found him working alongside his brother. When he saw her he was
astonished. He had been struggling all night with his decision to go home that afternoon. Every time he thought he had made up his mind, he changed it and by morning he was still debating with himself. He’d even had a heated argument with his brother, ultimately telling him to butt out and that he thought the women who were planning to march were very brave. His brother told another staffer he’d never seen James look that way and thought Victoria must be something special to have him in such a tizzy.

When she walked in the office he knew with certainty he could never have boarded the train and she knew that no matter what nonsense he might spout today she was just going to have to work on him and eventually he’d come around. The eloquent words of her note were lost in a jumble of speech on both sides with each professing to be the fool in the situation.

Victoria had been asked the day before to ride on one of the floats and when the time came for her to leave he had promised to finish his work and catch up with her before the big finale. He thought he could get a car to take him there, but he hadn’t counted on the traffic jams caused by the event. After hoofing it as quickly as possible he feared he was about to be late when he saw a carriage for hire on a back street and asked the driver to get him to the Treasury Building as quickly as possible. Apparently the noise of the parade excited the horses and their driver was unable to fully control them. In the end there were no serious injuries and the parade continued. It wouldn’t warrant a footnote in the history books, but it was paramount to Olivia. It was the collision in the story of her grandparents’ meeting that she’d always heard about.

She left the young people alone to spend some time together, but promised to meet them for an early dinner. Chase was relieved to see them and felt that everything would work out as it should.

At six-thirty, Olivia went to the dining room to join James and Victoria as promised. They were chatting easily and laughing and anyone could see they were completely enamored with one another. They had a lovely dinner and both thanked Olivia for her kindness and for helping to bring them back together. Olivia had apologized to James for telling him to leave, but he wouldn’t hear any apology from her. He told her she had been exactly right and that he was quite sorry to have been in such pitiable shape.

Olivia knew the time had come for her to leave them. She told them she was going back to New York the following morning, but before she took her leave she wanted to ask them one question.

“If you could see fifty years into the future, what do you hope it will look like?”

Victoria looked like she was going to answer, but James beat her to it.

“I don’t care what it looks like, as long as I’m seeing it with Victoria.”

Olivia knew what they didn’t—that in four short years he would go to war and leave his youth on the battlefields of France. That their son, James Jr. would follow in his father’s footsteps and become a lawyer and that his daughter, a dark-haired girl named Olivia, would one day do things her grandmother could only dream of, things Victoria had helped make possible. Olivia knew they wouldn’t have fifty years together, but it wouldn’t matter. They would make the most of every moment and she could leave them now knowing everything was as it should be.

She bid them goodbye and left the restaurant, but she couldn’t resist just one look back. She felt a presence over her shoulder and knew he was watching too.

“They’re exquisite, aren’t they, Edward?”

“Indeed they are, as is their granddaughter.”

He offered her his arm and walked her to the elevator.

“Will you sleep well tonight, Olivia?”

She smiled. “Yes. Tonight I believe I will sleep better than ever before.”

“Very well. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“In the morning, Edward.” And the elevator doors closed.

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HAPTER 79

CATHERINE PARKER

2016

It looked a bit different, but very familiar. People don’t like change when it comes to historic places. The people in charge of Ford’s Theatre recognize that and they’ve kept it as close as possible to the way it appeared on that night in 1865. Across the street, Catherine saw the sign outside the boarding house denoting it as the place Abraham Lincoln died.

The Petersen House. That’s where they carried him
.

Catherine went inside the theatre and walked around. The seats were different and there were modern lights, but everything else looked remarkably the same. She looked to the state box and saw its draped flag and portrait of George Washington. It looked very close to the way she remembered, but she could see subtle differences. She thought about going upstairs, but she couldn’t bring herself to get any closer to the box than the spot where she sat in the audience that night. It just didn’t feel right. It had been a dream and she didn’t belong there. She felt that if she saw it for real she’d forget the way it looked in her dream. As terrible as it was, she wanted to remember the details she had dreamt. They were so vivid and complete. Looking in from behind glass wouldn’t be the same. She went back to the lobby and proceeded down the stairs to the museum.

She was astonished at what she saw. There were artifacts that matched those in her dream exactly. She saw the president’s clothing, stained with his blood. There was the playbill announcing his attendance and featuring in large, bold letters the name of the woman who befriended her in the dream. LAURA KEENE, it read. Even the original door to the state box was there, with the hole drilled in it so Booth could have looked inside before he entered. Catherine kept looking for one thing in particular until she found it. In a glass case not three feet in front of her was the boot of John Wilkes Booth. It had obviously been cut when Dr. Mudd removed it from the murderer’s swollen leg. She remembered the way she had felt when Edward Chase told her she had been responsible for keeping history intact by causing Booth to fall and break his leg and here was the evidence of that fateful break. She knew it was just a dream, probably brought on by her excitement at the thought of making this city her home and her dreams of doing big things with her life. She thought about Edward Chase and wondered if he had just been a dream. She hoped not. He was an interesting man with a calming demeanor. She would like to be friends with him if she got the job and moved here. And Laura Keene, what an interesting person she must have been. Catherine wondered if she was really a nice person like she was in her dream or if she had been a diva like so many of the stars of today. She preferred to think of her as a nice lady.

As Catherine browsed the museum she saw a display about the conspirators including Mary Surratt. She thought about visiting her boarding house in the dream and about meeting her daughter, Anna. She wondered about Anna. Had she been there when they hung her mother from the gallows? Was Mary really part of the conspiracy or was she caught up in something she didn’t fully understand? It was all so fascinating to think about and Catherine decided she’d visit the museum store on her way out and pick up a few books about the
president, the assassination, and the conspiracy. There had to be much more than she had, literally, ever dreamed.

She took one more turn around the exhibits on her way to the store. She would only have a few minutes to choose her books before she’d have to find a cab and make her way back to Cameron, Hanson and Smith. They were kind enough to reschedule her appointment, but she had no intention of being late this afternoon. The dream was over and it was time to get the job—time to start making her own history.

She stopped one last time at the display of items that were found inside the state box after the assassination. That’s when she saw it and her hand flew to her lapel. It was her grandmother’s diamond brooch, on a gray velvet display pedestal under the lights. It was only inches away from the president’s bloody shirt. She remembered pinning it to her good navy suit before she lay down for her nap, ensuring she’d have her grandmother with her in spirit for her interview. Then she remembered the lady’s maid retrieving it from the rosewood box on her dresser and pinning it to her deep blue gown before she left for the theatre in her dream. She had wanted to feel like her grandmother was with her there, too. And now, as she looked down at the suit she was wearing, she could see it wasn’t there. Somehow, someway, it had been found on the floor of the state box on the night of the assassination. It wasn’t possible, yet there it was, her one-of-a-kind family heirloom with the distinctive design her grandfather had drawn for the jeweler. Under the brooch was a description card. It read:

Diamond Brooch

Owner Unknown

This diamond brooch was found on the floor of the state box after the assassination. It may have belonged to actress Laura Keene who rushed to the president’s side after he was shot.

It wasn’t possible, and yet it had happened. It wasn’t a dream. Catherine stood there absorbing what that meant.

Across the room, a father was telling his little boy about the brave president who had given his life for his country. The boy thought it sounded awfully sad. All he could think about was the tall man in the stovepipe hat who had been killed, and how he’d had a little boy too. At that moment, he noticed the woman in the navy suit and high heels at the next display case. She seemed to be studying a beautiful, shiny piece of jewelry. Something about her struck him as odd. She had tears running down her face, but he realized she didn’t look sad like he did. Whatever she saw in the case wasn’t making her sad at all.

“Look, Daddy,” the little boy said. “That lady is smiling.”

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HAPTER 80

TOM KELLY

1962

For one hour, the man Tom knew as Anatoly Volkov told him a story he swore on the greatness of Mother Russia was true. His real name was Boris Bespalov and he wasn’t the son of Tsar Nicholas’ messenger at Tsarskoe Selo. He
was
the messenger. The tales he had spun about being the second generation of the organization were all part of his cover. After completing his formal education he had taken a job at the royal estate in the mews when he was thirty years old. He took care of the new motorcars and sometimes drove members of the family to various appointments in town if their normal driver was otherwise engaged. Since he had access to cars and was known to the guards he was able to come and go with ease, and he became the conduit between the imprisoned Tsar and his loyalist supporters. When the Romanovs were taken from Tsarskoe Selo, Boris was sent away with strict instructions to keep the lines of communication open among the loyalists. The organization grew from there and in 1920 he fled to New York with the secrets of the defeated regime in his possession. He had been in New York ever since. For ten years he operated in secret with the help of those still inside the old country. He cultivated a new identity as a Scottish-born professor of literature. High-level Russian contacts helped forge the necessary documentation and his inherent love of literature made his transition an easy one.
The Scottish accent was a bit harder to master, but his fair coloring and ability to charm his way through most situations helped immensely. He was living not a double life, but a triple life. He was Bespalov and McAdams and before long he added Volkov to the list. His Volkov persona would be his official “Russian” identity. For his safety and the safety of family still in the U.S.S.R., Bespalov no longer existed publicly.

Everything else he had told Tom about the founding of Back Channel was true. The organization Tom had infiltrated two years before would have been an invisible wall to anyone looking. Had it not been for his chance introduction to “Volkov” (in correspondence only, never in person) he would never have gotten into the pipeline. Volkov allowed it because he thought Tom could prove to be a useful resource at some future time. That time had come when the perfect storm presented itself. First, Castro made himself the number one target of the American government with his dedication to communism right in the backyard of democracy. Next, Khrushchev put his “secret” missiles in Cuba where they were discovered by the Americans. Finally, Tom had made the phone call on behalf of the American government to access Back Channel in an effort to avoid war. Though none of these things were set in motion by Back Channel, they worked perfectly to set up a scenario the group needed to make their final move, the one that had been in the works for more than forty years.