Sheinkin's first chapter functions as a prologue. It presents a flash-forward to the end of the story, an execution by hanging of an unnamed character. The scene is a clearing in the woods in autumn where American soldiers have built makeshift gallows. A crowd gathers, eventually numbering in the thousands. A hangman and a wagon bearing a coffin enter. Fife and drums play funeral music. The well-groomed prisoner is led in and begins marching toward his death. 

As we will later learn, this unnamed person is the British officer John André, who has an important part to play in the narrative. 

Here we learn something of Benedict Arnold's family history. He is the sixth person to bear his name. The first Benedict Arnold emigrated from England in the early 1600s and became governor of Rhode Island. The family fell on hard times, whereupon the fourth Benedict Arnold moved to Norwich, Connecticut and became a merchant and sea captain. His son, the Benedict Arnold of this narrative, is born during a brutal winter, one of the coldest months on record in the northeast. To everyone's surprise, he survives.