19

Roosevelt? Ridiculous. There wasn’t a man in America who was more admired. To Walter, and to millions of others, TR was America—brave, resourceful, honorable, willing to achieve great things over enormous odds.

Yes, it might be true that TR and McKinley didn’t like each other very much, but Chester Arthur and James Garfield didn’t much like each other either—and Arthur had been forced on Garfield just like TR had been forced on McKinley—but no one had said after Garfield was shot that Arthur had been behind it. And you don’t have to like someone to work well with them. He had been lucky with Harry, but he when he served in the Dakotas, he couldn’t stand Colonel Ashcroft but they worked together just fine.

TR. Fuck you, Isaak.

Impossible.

Unless it wasn’t.

It had been there from the first, of course, not as a serious hypothesis, but as a logical possibility, the sort of thing that just rattles around for a little while before being dismissed. If McKinley had been a private citizen, running a business, say, and his second in command wanted the job, when he was shot, the first person everyone would have looked at was the guy with the most to gain. And no man stood more to gain from McKinley’s death than Theodore Roosevelt.

Walter strode away from the Central Station, the permutations playing in his head despite his attempts to banish them. But, as Walter knew all too well, for him, there would be no banishment of a plausible theory until it had been disproved. His mind was simply not made that way. The question would remain. Could the vice president of the United States have truly been responsible for an attempt on the life of the president?

If TR had been behind the plot, the two men who approached Czolgosz and Esther Kolodkin would therefore have been in his employ, or at least in the employ of his agent. And what about Foster and Ireland? Their behavior at the Temple of Music had seemed inexplicable. Harry may not have wanted to hear it, but the pair could not have been more incompetent in their duty than if they had been trying to get McKinley killed. And it didn’t sound like the two men who approached Esther Kolodkin were Foster and Ireland. The descriptions didn’t match—Ireland was fair-skinned with freckles. That meant a wider conspiracy, which fit what they knew. In any case, the aim was clear—to blame the anarchists.

Could Hannigan have been in on the frame-up? Unlikely. No one would trust him with a secret of that magnitude, or of any magnitude actually. But Hannigan would be the perfect dupe. He would cruise around Chicago grabbing up every anarchist that he could find. He would say the right things to the newspapers. There was no need to take someone like that into your confidence. TR’s men—if they were TR’s men—could move about secure in the knowledge that Hannigan, and other Hannigans throughout the nation, would sweep America’s enemies and deposit them in front of judges and juries who would find them guilty if they had been so much as taking a deep breath on September 6. No sane law enforcement official would dare place himself in the path of such a hurtling locomotive.

Almost none, at any rate.

To test the theory, Walter would have to work backward from Smith and Jones, although there would certainly be intermediaries between them and whoever employed them. No one in power—certainly not TR—would have been dumb enough to hire those guys personally.

The swagger the two had demonstrated in Cleveland, almost daring someone to guess who they were, and then cutting off the trail at the telegraph office, certainly sounded like lawmen or Pinkertons. Military? Maybe. Since the Philippines, a lot of army guys had developed swagger. And, of course, TR . . .

Then, of course, there was Wilkie. TR and Wilkie seemed to dislike each other, but in Washington, alliances and allegiances shifted like so many leaves in a breeze. The president didn’t want a witch-hunt, but Wilkie, and Mark Hanna for that matter, expressed no such reservations. But those questions could wait. This was a problem that would need to be solved from the bottom up, not the top down.

And finally, what to do about Harry? Walter could hardly share any of this with him. Harry would think it subversive, to say nothing of half-witted. And Walter wasn’t certain Harry wouldn’t be right. Hell, he wanted Harry to be right. But not to tell Harry was to expose his friend to great risk. A lot more was at stake than their jobs. Yet for the moment, it seemed, Harry would have to proceed in blissful ignorance. Walter wasn’t about to allow Harry to be dragged down with him.

Every scenario has its serendipity, however. In this case, it seemed that the best place for Walter to begin tracing the two provocateurs was with the only person in Chicago known to have seen them. Harry would be furious, of course, but that wasn’t such a bad thing. His possessiveness of Lucinda would prevent him from even beginning to guess the reason for the visit. Or at least one of the reasons.

Walter learned from a cooing Mrs. Freundlich that Natasha taught four blocks away. He wasn’t keen on bursting into a primary school and certainly didn’t fancy interrupting her classes—poor children should get every minute of schooling they could—but an inquiry into the attempted assassination of a president definitely was sufficient cause. As he closed the distance between her rooms and the school, he felt his palms grow sweaty and his breath came in big gulps.

He turned the corner. The school was just up the street. Walter could see a set of double iron doors on his side. But when he arrived at those doors and read the sign over them, he froze. Natasha Kolodkin did not teach in a school. She taught at the St. Catherine of Siena orphanage.

Walter stood, staring at the entrance, unable to will himself to push open the door. He could wait to see Natasha, he decided, until evening, or the next day, or anytime that didn’t require him to set foot inside that building. He tried to turn and leave, but he couldn’t look away from the sign. He began taking small steps backward when the door opened. A nun emerged. She was young, no more than twenty-five, with olive skin, brown eyes, and the air of placidity that comes when one is certain one serves God.

Her first reaction at seeing the immense, gawking, bearded stranger was to draw back as well. She remained in the entryway, unwilling to venture out even a step. After a moment, Walter realized that if he didn’t say something, the sister would duck back into the building and call the police. Then it would all come tumbling down then. Hannigan would probably haul in Natasha, and Harry would be furious for him two-timing Lucinda. Walter forced out some words.

“I’m with the United States Secret Service, ma’am.” His voice sounded scratchy, artificial. “I need to speak with one of your teachers. Lay teachers.”

The nun nodded but her suspicions were not allayed. “You have identification, officer?”

Walter nodded stiffly. He fumbled into his coat and brought out his badge. The sister leaned forward a bit, as to examine it, although from the distance at which she stood, she would have been unable to tell a real badge from a phony.

“Very well,” she said finally, her mouth pinched, “but you’ll need to speak with Mother Superior.”

Walter moved toward the entrance, stiff, his knees hardly bending, but he was unable to lubricate his joints. A few moments later, without being completely aware of how he got there, he found himself standing in the Mother Superior’s outer office. A secretary sat entering information into a large journal, refusing to look up. The inner door opened and another nun walked out.

The Mother Superior was tiny, old, with skin that glowed, almost translucent. She appeared to move within an aura of her own. Walter stared for a moment at the network of greenish-blue veins that ran just under the skin at her temples. When he finally looked to her eyes, he saw they were green, placid, without fear. Sister Ernestine, Mother Superior at St. Marguerite’s, had appeared much the same. She was likely dead by now. Had she taken her guilt to grave?

Walter was jarred when the Mother Superior spoke. “You wish to speak with one of our teachers, officer?” she asked. Her voice barely cleared a whisper, but could have been heard across a room.

“Yes, ma’am. Natasha Kolodkin.”

At the mention of the name, a small beneficent smile passed across the Mother Superior’s face. Small crinkles appeared in the corners of her mouth. “Natasha, yes. She is one of our most treasured possessions. A gift from God. And please call me, Sister Helena, officer.”

A gift from God who doesn’t believe in Him, Walter thought. “Please call me . . . Walter,” he said to the nun.

“This is important, Walter? Enough to interrupt school?”

“Yes, ma’am. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.” Walter’s voice sounded to him somehow higher in pitch, a boy’s voice.

Sister Helena nodded slowly. “Very well. I will take you myself.”

She led him out the door, a tiny nun with the massive man slightly in her wake. Walter, twelve, being led to . . .

A chill permeated the halls, even in early September, but still Walter felt himself perspiring. It began under his arms and around his collar, but he soon felt himself drenched. His heart began to pound sufficiently that he felt the throb in his ears. He could not keep his gaze in one place. He began glancing about furtively. Was there a priest? He took in the location of each staircase and door, in case he was forced to flee. He tapped his forearm against the Colt to make certain it was still there. After a moment, the hall began to sway before him, as if he were looking at it through liquid. The nuns walking the halls glanced at the huge intruder behaving so erratically, but they were too well trained to gape, especially since he was with the Mother Superior.

Finally, they reached a room at the far end of the building. Walter saw a classroom filled with happy-looking urchins, all about eight or ten, who had been scrubbed and dressed to the limits of St. Catherine’s limited resources. As Sister Helena entered the room, he scoured the student population looking for . . . what? Himself?

A moment later, Natasha Kolodkin emerged. The Mother Superior had remained in the room to tend to the children. Natasha was dressed simply, in a blue frock buttoned to the neck. She wore no bonnet or scarf. She stiffened when she saw Walter.

“Is something wrong, Mr. George?”

He shook his head stiffly. “No. But I need to speak with you.”

“Are you ill then?”

Walter shook his head again. “But could we speak outside? The air in here . . .”

She nodded. “Of course.” To Walter’s relief she turned the other way from whence he had come, toward a door at the end of the hall, just a few feet away. The door led to a side street. Once they were outside, Walter began to draw in deep breaths.

“You’re certain you’re feeling well, Mr. George?”

“Yes. It was nothing.”

“It was hardly nothing.”

Walter’s breathing returned to normal and once again, he realized how beautiful Natasha Kolodkin was. Far more so than he had thought when he had first seen her. “Do the sisters know of your . . .” He searched for a way to complete the sentence.

“My political beliefs? My lack of, shall we say, piety? Yes, they know. But Sister Helena cares only for the children. She told me that as long as I do well by them, I am welcome in St. Catherine’s.”

“Very ecumenical of her.”

“You don’t think much of the sisters? Is that why . . .”

“I grew up in one of those places.”

“I see.”

“I ran away.”

“Were the sisters mean to you?”

“No.” Then, before she could ask another question, “Miss Kolodkin, I need a more exact description of the two men who visited your sister.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The color of their eyes. Their hair. How they moved. Was there anything unusual about either of them? Any scars? Odd habits.”

“No scars. But one of the men . . . not the one who played up to Esther . . . had a habit of twirling his key chain on his finger . . . you know, let it swing around until it was wound up one way, then swinging it back.”

“That’s good. What I meant. Was there anything else? Any detail will help.”

“You think you know who they are?”

“No. But if I can get a more precise description, I may know where to look for them.”

“You don’t think they were our people, do you? Who then?”

“I’m not certain what to think. I’m trying to find out.”

“I don’t understand something, Mr. George.”

“What?”

“Why would you go to all this trouble to prove Abe Isaak innocent? That’s what you would be doing, after all. Even more than that, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if the two men were merely posing as anarchists, they would likely be our enemies.”

“I would simply like to know the truth.”

“Wherever it leads?”

“Yes.”

“All right, Mr. George. Would a picture of the men help?”

“Of course. But where will you get a picture?”

“I’ll draw you one. I teach the children art as well.”