The Barbary Pirates

CHAPTER SIX

Bonaparte turned. Again he exhibited that electrical presence, that firmness of command, which inspired and intimidated. The shock of dark hair, the bright gray eyes, the oddly sallow skin for a soldier of Corsican descent (a slight yellow tint, which I wondered might hint at some malady), and the tense energy were all there as I remembered. He was thicker than when I’d last seen him almost two years before—not fat, but the leanness of youth was gone. Napoleon had the mature muscle of a thirty-two-year-old soldier dining at too many state banquets. His hair was combed forward in the Roman style to cover a hairline already beginning to slightly recede, as if he lived and aged faster than most men. His gaze was calculating, yet amused.

He pretended surprise to the French scientist. “You, too, Cuvier?”

“First Consul, I don’t even remember what happened. We were following Gage. I lapsed into unconsciousness and awoke in catastrophe…”

“Yes, I quite understand. I’ve met the American myself.” He shook his head and then glanced with slight distaste at Fouché, as if wishing he didn’t need the policeman. But of course he did, if he wanted to stay in power. “Savants with your abilities should think twice before enlisting Ethan Gage as a guide to depravity. No man attracts more trouble. Or gets out of it so frequently.” Now he looked directly at me. “The last time we met, you crawled out of a pond at Mortefontaine with your hair almost on fire. I sent you on to America to get you away from my sister. What did you learn there that is useful?”

I blinked, trying to summon coherent thought. Was I a prisoner or a diplomat? “Louisiana is almost unimaginably large and unimaginably distant,” I said. “It is full of fierce Indians and desired by the British. Unless you have an army to hold it, it’s more liability than asset. I suggest you sell it to the United States to keep it out of English hands.” I turned. “Sorry, Smith.”

The geologist blinked. “I really have no opinion. It’s a long way from my canals.”

“I have an army, in St. Domingue, if Leclerc doesn’t lose it to disease and those damn blacks,” Napoleon said. “What would your nation do with Louisiana?”

I shrugged. “Jefferson thinks everyone should be a farmer, if it can be farmed.”

“And can it?”

“Eventually it is empty of trees, like the steppes. The weather is terrible. I don’t know.”

He sighed. “At least you don’t tell me what you think I might like to hear. That’s the only reason I didn’t shoot you long ago, Gage. And these savants are experts at bones and rocks?”

“Yes, First Consul. We went to the Palais Royal on a lark and were lured into a brothel. We entered simply to study its interior décor, and then a fire broke out…”

“Which you set. Fouché’s report got here before he did. I know more about what went on there than you do. I asked about your friends, Gage, not your stupidity.”

“Fulton is…”

“Yes, yes, I know all about his damn plunging boat. He might have crept up on the British navy but could never catch it.”

“With additional money for improvements…” Fulton began eagerly.

“Enough, I said!” It was a military bark, and Fulton’s mouth snapped shut. “You, Gage, were trying to learn something of an old lover, am I correct?”

Fouché had clearly been spying on us, if he hadn’t arranged the entire affair himself to embarrass me. I took a breath. “You remember Astiza, First Consul. You were going to shoot both of us outside the Tuileries.”

“Women.” He glanced back at the château. “Josephine is mucking up our estate with her damned swans, which I have threatened to shoot, but she pleads, and so I relent, so there is more shit, so then I take out my guns, and eventually we reconcile…” He smiled a moment at a private memory. “Women by natural order should be the property of men, but the reality is that we’re slaves to them, are we not?”

“I don’t think even Josephine would call you a slave, First Consul.”

“Well, you are indentured to me. I gave you two hundred dollars and clear instructions and yet you spent much of your time in North America with the British, just as you did in the Holy Land. Are you their spy, Gage? What are you doing with this ditch-digging Englishman, Smith? What is it about Smith’s grasping nation of pirates and tinkerers that makes you find their company so appealing?”

“Pirates and tinkerers?” Smith protested.

“It is Paris I came back to, First Consul,” I interrupted. “I ended up fighting the English couple I met in America, not allying with them. They were part of the same perfidious Egyptian Rite I kept warning you about at the pyramids. Now I’ve encountered it in the Palais Royal as well. I declare it’s a conspiracy you should fear. And what the British taught me is that it would be easier for you to sell Louisiana than to lose it.”

“Hmph.” Napoleon sighted at the swans again, but didn’t fire, handing the gun back to a servant. “Well, I have a new mission for you now, and if you help, then maybe I’ll consider your arguments about a sale, which should make Jefferson happy.” He addressed my companions. “You were arrested, gentlemen, thanks to the impetuousness of Ethan Gage here. The man is a brilliant imbecile. But you are about to have an opportunity for clemency and a quiet expurgation of this incidence of whoring and drug-taking. I want you to take ship for the Greek island of Thira and investigate a peculiar rumor.”

“Thira!” Cuvier exclaimed.

“Your presence as savants should help blind the Ottomans to your true task, which is to sound out Greek patriots about the idea of revolt against the Turks. We have lost Egypt and the Ionian Islands, and the damnable British are refusing to evacuate Malta as required by our new peace treaty. Yet Greece as an ally would be a thorn to Istanbul, Austria, and the English, and a rose to us. All we need is a steady ally, and I have one in mind, a scholarly firebrand named Ioannis Kapodistrias. You’re to meet him, under the guise of an archaeological mission, and see if French help could instigate a revolt.”

“Didn’t you try that in Ireland?” I reminded, undiplomatically.

“It will work this time.”

“And what archaeological mission?” If I sounded wary, it was because I associated the trade with trick doors, collapsing tunnels, and near drowning. Pyramids and temples have a way of pinching in on you, I’ve found.

Fouché answered. “As minister of police, it’s my responsibility to keep an eye on all factions that represent a possible threat to the state, including the Egyptian Rite. One of my investigators learned that you’d been asking your scientific associates in Paris about the island of Thira at the same time these renegade Freemasons were acquiring books and maps on it.”

“But all I know of Thira is the name.”

“So you say. Yet what a remarkable coincidence that so much attention is being paid to an obscure rock on the Aegean Sea. And you, Ethan Gage, return from America after association with the British and seek out the American inventor Fulton, the British surveyor Smith, and a French expert on ancient cataclysms. How conspiratorial! The idea of using a bordello as cover was really quite ingenious.”

“It was Madame Marguerite who lured us.”

“Come, Gage, we know each other too well for you to play the fool with me,” Napoleon said. “This charade of bumbling confusion is all very amusing, but you insert yourself in every mystery and conspiracy there is. Nor do I think your esteemed friends would associate with a rake and wastrel like yourself unless there was advantage to be gained. You meet the Rite in the bowels of the Palais Royal, start a fire, initiate a riot, run down your competitors, and pretend to ignorance? All of us know you must be in pursuit of what’s been long rumored.”

“First Consul!” Cuvier cried. “I swear I know nothing about his plotting!”

“Of course not,” Bonaparte said mildly. “Gage is using you. Using all of you. He’s a devious rascal, a master of intrigue, and if he were French I’ve no doubt Fouché would have recruited him to the police long ago. Is that not true, Minister?”

“Even now I do not fully understand his motives and alliances,” Fouché admitted.

I, of course, had not the slightest idea of what was going on, and was trying to decide if I should be proud or insulted by this new description of me as brilliant, devious, and a master of intrigue. All I’d seen was the word “Thira” on a scrap of golden foil in the middle of the American wilderness—a Norse Templar artifact, according to my late companion Magnus Bloodhammer—and nothing else. Still, if the police were so smart, maybe I could learn something from them.

“I’m also looking for Og,” I tried. That was written on the foil, too, before Aurora Somerset made a mess of the whole thing. She was the reason I’d sworn off women.

At that word, Fouché stiffened and looked at me warily. Cuvier, too, stared curiously. But it was Napoleon who’d gone white.

“What did you say?” the first consul asked.

“Og.” It sounded silly even to me.

The first consul glanced questioningly at my three companions, and then addressed the others. “I think Monsieur Gage and I need a moment alone.”