“Oh, nothing. It’s just a nice day.”
“Indeed it is!” said Bennett. He joined Lucius at gazing into the distance. “I was thinking that later this morning you would join me on a little expedition to the slave quarters. We need to distribute the new clothes we brought from Charleston. I haven’t been down there in months. It will be good to do some visiting. I can’t be a stranger on my own plantation, after all.”
“No, sir,” said Lucius.
Bennett tapped him on the shoulder and smiled. “And I can’t wait to see your granddaughter.”
As Rook passed through the front door of Brown’s, he tried to remember the last time he had dressed out of uniform. It had been at least a month, since before the inauguration. It felt awkward. On the walk to the hotel, he had hoped that none of his fellow officers would spot him. He did not want to have to explain himself to Scott.
A lunchtime crowd filled the lobby. Rook moved away from the door and toward a wall, where he would not call attention to himself. He scanned the lobby for Clark. The corporal was seated in a chair by a column and looking straight at him. Rook nodded slightly and then left through the front door. He crossed Sixth Street and stood on the brick pavement outside the National. From this vantage point, he could watch the entrance to Brown’s and try to blend in with the loiterers on the sidewalk. It was harder than he had anticipated. Most of the people standing around him were slaves, waiting for their owners to finish their business inside. But not all of them were, and Rook was glad not to draw any suspicious glances. After about five minutes, Clark emerged from the hotel.
“Any sign of our friends yet?” asked Rook in a low voice.
“Davis is down here right now. Stephens will show up soon.”
After about thirty minutes, the Southerners exited Brown’s. Davis was big and tall, with black hair, dark eyes, and skin tanned from hours in the sun. Stephens was his opposite: short, scrawny, fair-haired, and ruddy. On Pennsylvania Avenue, they headed southeast. Rook and Clark followed about fifty feet behind. The tailing was easy. Davis and Stephens made no attempt to see if anybody was tracking them.
“It looks like they know where they’re going,” said Clark as they approached Second Street.
“Right for the Capitol,” said Rook.
As they left the commercial stretch of the Avenue, Rook and Clark were able to drop back a bit further and still keep Davis and Stephens in sight. The Capitol did not appear much changed since the inauguration. Rook wondered if any work had been done on it at all. As they circled around to the east side of the building, the colonel noticed the grounds were still a mess, littered with piles of coal and wood, marble blocks, and columns in various states of assembly. Several statues stood amid the clutter, waiting for someone to put them inside the unfinished building. One was a big sculpture of George Washington that made the first president look like a Roman general.
When Davis and Stephens reached the wide steps on the eastern front of the building, they paused. A handful of soldiers sat near the top smoking pipes. They did not appear to be on duty. Rook assumed that because they were new to the city, they would not recognize him.
The two Southerners seemed uncertain about what to do. They exchanged a few words and looked around. As Rook and Clark approached the foot of the steps, Davis and Stephens began to climb them. At the summit, they turned around to take in the view.
Rook raised his hand to his mouth so nobody could read his lips. “Keep moving forward,” he said.
He and Clark walked past the stairs. Now their backs were to Davis and Stephens. If the Southerners were testing them, turning around would blow their cover. If they kept walking, however, they might lose their quarry for good. Rook knew he had to make a decision. He casually stuck his hand in a pocket and found a penny.
All of a sudden, he halted and bent over. “Look at this,” he said, trying to sound surprised as he touched the ground. He made a great show of holding up the penny, as if he wanted to study its design in the light. From the corner of his eye he was able to see the top of the steps. He could see the soldiers, but not Davis and Stephens. Rook and Clark raced up the steps, taking two at a time. “This isn’t going to be easy indoors,” said Rook when they arrived at the top.
They passed through a doorway and almost immediately were in the Capitol’s rotunda, which was open to the sky. A massive wooden scaffolding rose from the center of the room, reaching toward the hole where the dome was supposed to rest. More than a hundred feet above his head, Rook could see a few men clinging to the planks and moving a giant crane. They were continuing the slow work of construction. President Lincoln had insisted that their efforts not stop, because they held symbolic importance to a divided nation.
As Rook gazed at the scene overhead, he saw one of the workers move off the scaffolding, grab a rope attached to a cornice, and lower himself to the ground in a matter of seconds. To the colonel, it was an incredible feat of acrobatics. He had seen it before, but it still impressed him. Others in the room had become used to it. Just a few feet from where the fellow had landed, a group of soldiers did not even look up from their card game. Elsewhere, men occupied themselves by reading and napping.
Rook studied the scene for a moment but did not see Davis or Stephens immediately. “There they are,” whispered Clark. “On the far side of the scaffolding.”
Davis was running his hand along a thick beam supporting the crane. He pointed upward and said something to Stephens. It appeared as if they were thinking about climbing the steps that spiraled up the middle of the scaffold. Then Davis shook his head. The Southerners studied the rotunda for a few more minutes. Rook tried to stay out of view. Then he realized they were not looking at people. They were examining the room itself. When they were done, they exited through an opening on Rook’s left, which led toward the House of Representatives, on the south side of the building.
Rook did not want to follow them too closely, so he stood still for a moment and then moved cautiously toward the passageway with Clark. When they got there, Rook stood to one side, gestured for Clark to stay back, and peered down a long corridor. Soldiers were hammering wooden boards into place along both sides of the hall, apparently to protect the statues that lined it. Rook could see all the way to the House doors, but Davis and Stephens were nowhere in sight. Could they have gone so far in so little time?
Before Rook had a chance to wonder where they went, he heard the patter of footsteps on his right. In his haste, he had overlooked a small doorway that led to a curving staircase. Davis and Stephens must have used it. But had they gone up or down? He could not tell. He supposed it was even possible that they had separated. Rook knew from previous visits to the Capitol that up led to congressional offices and down led to the basement. He went up and ordered Clark down.
Compared to the grand space of the rotunda and the long hallway to the House of Representatives, the staircase was cramped. Rook could see only a dozen or so steps in each direction before they curved out of view. He climbed cautiously, not wanting to bump into Davis and Stephens. He also treaded lightly, not wanting to make a sound.
The staircase led to new opening, where a private stood at attention. He was the first soldier Rook had seen that day in the Capitol who actually appeared to be on duty. He could not have been a day older than twenty years.
“Excuse me,” said Rook, “did a couple of men come this way just now?”
“No, sir,” said the soldier. “It’s been quiet up here for a while.”
Rook offered a swift word of thanks, turned around, and descended the winding staircase. A moment later, he was with Clark in the Capitol basement. A long hallway stretched to the right. On their left, a large room occupied the space directly below the rotunda. It was full of thick support columns. The light was poor. They heard someone talking in a part of the room they could not see.