The three of us kept up our fast-paced march, moving out into a wide open space with stunning views of Staten Island and New Jersey that made the strategic setting of this forgotten island crystal clear to me. The wind gusted and I held on to the metal fence that bordered the water, just below my feet.
"Can you see why this island was so coveted by every military leader who saw it?" Mike asked, sweeping his arm in a large semicircle across the vista. "It's the single most important vantage point for the protection of New York Harbor."
"We're below Manhattan," I said, looking back at the most perfect view of the mist-covered skyline. "We're south of it."
"Get yourself a map, Coop," Mike said, shaking his head. "The Lower Bay is beyond Brooklyn. This is the world's busiest harbor and Governors Island controls the access to the entire thing. And to New Jersey's coastline as well. The Dutch practically stole this from the Indians to build a fort here to keep all comers away, even before they settled on the mainland. Fort Amsterdam. Henry Hudson and his Half Moon were the first Europeans to discover it, in 1609. It was Pagganck to the Indians, Nooten Island to the Dutch. Full of nut trees-that's what the Indians had going for them. Quiet little place before the Europeans arrived."
"Then the Dutch lost it to the British?" Mercer asked.
"In 1664. The Big Apple became New York, and this island wound up as the home of His Majesty's governors, till the British military had the brainstorm to use it as a base during the French and Indian Wars. "Like I said, it was Washington who sent the first thousand men here, under General Israel Putnam, 1776. But the British army whipped George's troops in the Battle of Brooklyn-the earliest engagement of the American army with British forces. Most war theorists think if their navy had attacked this little island, the British could have ended the Revolution right then. But the tides were too strong and the weather was too nasty for an invasion here. So Washington's men destroyed their own cannons and retreated, leaving this place to the British, till their occupation of New York City ended in 1783."
I lifted my collar against the wind and light rain and started to turn away.
Mike stepped behind me and put his hands on my shoulders, pointing off in the distance. "But by 1800, Washington had convinced the government to take control of this harbor, along with Bedloe's Island-see it over there? That's where the Statue of Liberty is now, and that's Ellis Island, off in the distance. Over there is Castle Clinton, on the Battery. His plan was to use each of these points around this critically important harbor to build a defense system to protect against for eign invasion."
Mercer got it now. "So there were forts on every one of them."
"Exactly. At the base of Liberty was Fort Hood, and Ellis Island used to be Fort Gibson."
My eyes followed his finger. "Then there's Castle Clinton, on the Battery, named for one of New York's governors, DeWitt Clinton. See, only one story tall? The government ran out of money, so they never completed it. Now turn around."
Behind us was a massive red sandstone fortress, a great circular watchtower looming over the bay from the northwest corner of the island, three stories high with a huge parapet at the top.
"The jewel in the coastal defense crown," Mike said. "Castle Williams."
"Who was Williams?" I asked.
"Who's it named for?"
"Jonathan Williams. The guy who designed this fort. He was also the first superintendent of West Point."
"Add that to your list. Another little West Point factoid that might play into the others." Mercer walked away and was standing at the entrance to Castle Williams. "The gate is open," he said to us, and we followed after him.
The grounds of the building were trim and well kept. At regular intervals around the seemingly impenetrable sandstone walls, there were three columns of casement windows, twenty-six rows of them ringing the building. The largest ones were nearest to the ground, getting smaller toward the top. Each had been fitted with cannons, the tips of some still visible as we approached.
Mercer entered the castle first and led us through its thick, dank walls into the middle of the fort, which had no roof. It was shaped like a giant horseshoe, with its solid front facing the rocky shoal and a small opening to its rear. I turned in place, looking up at the three tiers of galleries and the parapet above them, which housed a cluster of gi ant black cannons, still poised over the waters of the bay. Mercer spotted the iron bars in the doorways of the rooms that fronted the courtyard. He went over to one and pulled on the modern padlock that was looped around the old metal hinge.
"Looks more like a jailhouse," he said.
There were at least a dozen such doors, and we took turns testing the locks on each as we moved around the large interior space.
"You got that right," Mike said. "By the middle of the nineteenth century, these fixed cannon positions had become pretty obsolete.
There were all kinds of artillery that was more mobile and had longer range, even on the ships. That's when the army set up the arsenal here and invented other uses for the island. Bet you didn't know that General Winfield Scott made this the headquarters of the entire U.S. Army in the 1840s before the Mexican War."
"I count on you for all things military," Mercer said.
"Well, during the Civil War, this fortress became a prison for Confederate soldiers. Some fifteen hundred of them crammed into these makeshift cells at a time, many of them awaiting execution on espionage charges. Executions that took place right in this very courtyard, so the other prisoners could watch. Our own little Devil's Island."
"Why here?" I asked.
" 'Cause there's no way out of this place, Coop. The walls are forty feet high and eight feet thick. The only exit is that once-barred gatehouse we came in through. If the rebels were successful at firing into Castle Williams from the water, the people that would be killed were their own comrades."
"Awfully bleak place," Mercer said, continuing to test each lock. "After the Civil War it became a military stockade."
"So this was to the East Coast what Leavenworth and Alcatraz were to the rest of the country? Right here in New York?" Mercer asked. "I never knew it."
"Where's your list, Coop?" Mike said.
I took a notepad and pen out of my pocket.
"We've got to find out who has the keys to these locks," he said.
"What's kept in here and when's the last time anyone's been in these cells."
Mercer had found the staircase that led to the upper tiers. I watched him climb and walk to the door of each pen, checking that the locks were secured.
"Anything open?" Mike asked. "Any sign of life?"
"Nope."
"You know, seeing these cells reminds me that somewhere on this island there was a black hole," Mike said.
"What do you mean? Like Pablo Posano's cell?" I said, thinking of my gang leader rapist, confined upstate with no outside communications allowed.
"Yeah. And like that bunker under the floorboards at Bannerman's house."
"Why do you call it a black hole?"
" 'Cause that's what the expression came from-long before astronomers figured that there were great voids in space, Coop. The black hole of Calcutta? In 1756, the nawab of Bengal threw hundreds of British soldiers in a dungeon, and half of them died there. I'm telling you, during the War of 1812, the most dangerous prisoners were kept in solitary confinement here on Governors Island, in what the troops called a black hole. Now we just have to find it."
Mercer emerged from the stairwell. "Every one of the cells is closed up tight. Let's move on."
We passed out through the thick walls of the entryway and onto a smooth black asphalt road that led away from the water, to the interior part of the island. There was still no sign of Russell Leamer or any of his reinforcements.