#the baltimore plot

@wearewatcher

1858: Chicago, Illinois

“I’d like to apply for the position of Detective with your agency.”

Allan Pinkerton looked up from the papers he’d been reviewing on his desk. A day of interviews, with men he wouldn’t trust to deliver a letter across the street left him exhausted and dispirited. How hard could it be to find an honest man in Chicago? But even as he thought it, he had to laugh. It was exactly as hard as it was proving to be…

And then came this last interviewee.

For seven hours, Pinkerton had assumed that the pretty young girl had been his secretary. Pretty was all that he allowed himself to see. 10 years of marriage had taught him that any more was dangerous. So you see the girl, register the pretty and then you move on, but now she was asking for a job, as a detective.

Pinkerton took a better look and then instantly realized that she was carrying her body differently than she had for the previous 7 hours. She wasn’t averting her eyes and speaking with a subservient whisper. She was staring right through him, as though she knew everything there was to know about him. That she came from money, old-money, not-quite-human-anymore money, was obvious from her imperious posture. That’s not something you can copy (and God knows he’d tried). And there was something in her pronunciation; New York, with time spent on the continent. Then he noticed her clothes. They were a shop-girl’s clothes, but well-made and well-maintained. That they weren’t new was obvious, but even more obvious was that they had been fitted to her figure. They were hers because she’d been working as a shopgirl. And there was something else there too, something hidden behind the master’s gaze, a submerged desperation…

Allan Pinkerton, founder of Pinkerton Detective Agency, advisor to the giants of industry and friend and former employee of new President-Elect of the United States of America, Mr. Abraham Lincoln, was intrigued.

“What’s your name girl?” He said the phrase with his public voice, the one that emphasized the Scottish brogue that he had spent 5 years learning to hide for his professional work as a detective.

The young woman opposite reached into her handbag and pulled out a small black notebook. She opened it to the first page, reviewed the contents; and then leaned forward, across the desk and gently pulled the false beard from his face.

The woman (30’s Pinkerton thought?) placed the beard on the table and then turned to her notes. “Your name is Allan Pinkerton, 41, although you lie about your age and say you are 32. You opened your agency 10 years ago when, your life was physically threatened by the Chief of Police, when you wouldn’t let a prominent member of the City’s Founding Family free on a murder charge. You are considered to be the town’s only honest man, although you lie every day and are currently breaking Federal law by using your home as a weigh station on the Underground Railroad (In the past week I’ve seen no less than five black families ferried through your home to Canada).

“Everything about you is false. Your beard. Your accent. Your clothes are padded to make you seem stronger than you are. You purposely hunch over to seem 3 inches smaller, and by my count you are carrying at least seven concealed weapons on your person right now, here, in the safety of your own office. Which speaks of certain level of paranoia.”

The young woman looked up, “Should I go on?”

Allan Pinkerton, the man who thought he couldn’t be surprised, who had grown weary of confronting the endless train of everyday lies that his profession forced him to reveal, was impressed.

At least that’s what he told himself so that he wouldn’t have to admit the truth. The TRUTH (in capital letters) was that he’d just met the only woman he would ever truly love; and he was bound to her, in a way that he would never be able to explain to anybody; not his friends, not his family, not even to himself. She was fabulous. She was lightning. And she needed a job.

“You haven’t told me your name.” he said, using his real voice for the first time in 3 days.

“Katherine Warne” she lied.

There was a long pause as the two just stared at each other. He, trying to find words; and she, desperately waiting to hear only what she wanted to hear, “Well…? Do I have a job?”

“Of course, you do.” He croaked.

1859: New Orleans, Louisiana

The air thick with the stink of cordite, hot lead filling the air, finding themselves back to back, guns blazing; that’s when Kate Warne first realized what Allan Pinkerton had known from their first meeting.

For her, it was that moment when she realized that he would stand by her side, always; not demand her obedience as did her overbearing/over-protective father, not lie to her as did the feckless wastrel of her now dead husband (a liaison that had cut her off from her family and driven her into a streets where she had no choice but live by her wits). That he was a good man was obvious, that he was a strong man was a plus, but it was the fact that he saw he as an equal (which she was), that made Allan Pinkerton the great love of her life…

1860: Charlotte, South Carolina

Facing a firing squad led by traitorous Southern officers who had masterminded the spree of train robberies to finance an assassination attempt on Abraham Lincoln to keep him from being sworn in as President of the United States, that’s when their feelings found a voice…

“Kate…” his voice was deep, coming from his belly. “God Damn, Kate! I love you girl. I’ve always loved you.” His hands bound behind his back, the blindfold keeping him from seeing her face, from dying with his eyes locked in her… Oh God how the thought that he would never see her eyes again just killed him. “I… “

“Al.” she whispered. “Shut up. I got my hand free. And I still have a derringer hidden in my bustle. I think we might have a chance. When I say duck. You duck.”

He could have taken her right then. Even as they fought for their lives against those damn Reb soldiers, with the bullet in his shoulder and her with a broken rib, he wanted to take her right there on the ground; and that look in her eye, that crazy smile that she got when they were in the thick of it, fighting for their lives, that crazy smile that he knew found its partner his face, that madman’s grin let him know that she was thinking the same…

They got one kiss. One kiss that said it all. The lifetime kiss by which all other kisses are found wanting. The kiss, that if you’re lucky you get once in your life, when you meet your other half (and most people don’t even have one), that’s how special and unique these moments are…

And they got it.

But they still had to save President-elect Lincoln. There were telegrams to be sent, trains to intercepted… They had to fight their way past Lincoln’s own Honor Guard, pull him off the train and then smuggle him across Maryland and into Washington while being hunted by a troop of rogue Southern Officers.

How they did it, is a matter of legend. We know it as “The Baltimore Plot”. If we’re lucky we find a paragraph that describes an attempt to kill Lincoln in Baltimore before his inauguration. There are mentions of Allan Pinkerton and if you do a little extra work, you’ll find mention of a female operative named Kate Warne that worked alongside Pinkerton, but you’ll never hear the true story.

In this country, there were once two great detectives. A man of streets, and a woman of great breeding and for 8 years, their adventures were the stuff of legend. They helped design the Secret Service, they were Spies and Spy hunters, they foiled crimes and saved countless lives.

They were friends, partners and lovers…

And we will never see their like again.