The Dakota Cipher

CHAPTER TWO

‘You would not consider returning home, then?’ Davie asked me.

‘Frankly, I’d planned to, but then I became embroiled in Napoleon’s recent Italian campaign and these negotiations. The opportunity has not arisen, and perhaps I can do more for my country here in France.’ I’d been seduced by the place, as Franklin and Jefferson had been.

‘Indeed. And yet you’re a Franklin man, are you not? Our new expert on the science of electricity?’

‘I’ve done some experiments.’ Including the harnessing of lightning in a lost city and turning myself into a friction battery to ignite my arch-enemy, but I didn’t add that. Rumours floated, and they served my reputation well enough.

‘The reason I ask is that our delegation has encountered a gentleman from Norway who has a particular curiosity about your expertise. He thinks you may be able to enlighten each other. Would you care to meet him?’

‘Norway?’ I had a vague mental picture of snow, dank forest, and a medieval economy. I knew people lived up there, but it was hard to understand why.

‘Governed by Denmark, but increasingly interested in its own independence after our American example. His extraordinary name is Magnus Bloodhammer – it’s of Viking origin, apparently – and his looks fit his moniker. He’s an eccentric, like you.’

‘I prefer to think of myself as individualistic.’

‘I would say you both are … open-minded. If we find him, I’ll introduce you.’

A modicum of fame requires you to meet people, so I shrugged. But I was in no hurry to make conversation about electricity with a Norwegian (to tell the truth, I always worried about betraying my own considerable ignorance), so I had us stop at the first amusement we came to, a new gambling device called a roulette, or ‘little wheel.’ Paulette was playing there.

The French have taken an English device and improved upon it, adding two colours, more numbers, and a patterned board that offers intriguing betting possibilities. You can wager on anything, from a single number to half the wheel, and play the odds accordingly. It’s been eagerly seized on by a nation enthralled with risk, fate, and destiny since the Terror. I don’t play roulette as much as cards, as there is little skill, but I like the convivial crowding at the tables, men smelling of smoke and cologne, ladies leaning provocatively to give a glimpse of décolletage, and croupiers raking chips as adroitly as fencers. Napoleon frowns on both the wheel and the new female exhibitionism, but he’s smart enough not to prohibit either.

I talked Davie into placing a small bet or two, which he promptly lost. Competitive enough to bet again, and then again, he lost still more. Some men are not born to gamble. I repaid his losses from my own modest winnings, earned by conservative wagers on column and row. Pauline, excitedly leaning across from me, bet more recklessly. She lost money I’m sure she’d been given by her famous brother, but then did win a single number at odds of 35 to 1 and clapped her hands, squeezing her breasts together most enchantingly. She was the loveliest of Napoleon’s siblings, sought after by portraitists and sculptors. There were reports she was posing in the nude.

‘Madame, it seems your skill matches your beauty,’ I congratulated.

She laughed. ‘I have my brother’s luck!’ She wasn’t particularly bright, but she was loyal, the kind who’d stick to Bonaparte long after craftier friends and siblings had deserted him.

‘We Americans could learn from a Venus such as you.’

‘But, Monsieur Gage,’ she returned, her eyelids flashing like a semaphore, ‘I am told you are a man of much experience already.’

I gave a slight bow.

‘You served with my brother in Egypt in the company of savants,’ she went on. ‘Yet found yourself opposed to him at Acre, embroiled with him at 18 Brumaire when he took power, and allied yet again at Marengo. You seem a master of all positions.’

The girl did make herself clear. ‘Like a dance, it’s all in the partner.’

Davie, no doubt seeing banter with the first consul’s married sister as a diplomatic disaster in the making, cleared his throat. ‘I don’t seem to share the luck of you and the lady, Mr Gage.’

‘Ah, but you really do,’ I said generously – and honestly. ‘I’ll tell you the secret of gambling, Davie. You lose eventually as certainly as we all die eventually. The game is about hope, and the mathematics about defeat and death. The trick is to beat the arithmetic for a moment, take your winnings, and run. Very few can do that, because optimism trumps sense. Which is why you should own the wheel, not play it.’

‘Yet you have a reputation as a gambling winner, sir.’

‘Of battles, not the war. I am not a rich man.’

‘But an honest one, it seems. So why do you play?’

‘I can improve my odds by taking advantage of the less practised. More important is the game itself, as Bonaparte himself told me. The play’s the thing.’

‘You are a philosopher!’

‘All of us ponder the mystery of life. Those of us with no answers deal at cards.’

Davie smiled. ‘So perhaps we should adjourn to a table and let us supplement your income by playing pharaon. I suspect you can handle your rustic countrymen. I see Bloodhammer over there, and there’s considerable curiosity about these experiments of yours. Moreover, I understand you’ve experience in the fur trade?’

‘In my youth. I daresay I’ve seen some of the world. A cruel, fascinating, rather unreliable planet, I’ve concluded. So, yes, let’s have some claret and you can ask me what you’d like. Perhaps the lady would care to join us?’

‘After my luck turns here, Monsieur Gage.’ She winked. ‘I do not have your discipline to retreat when I am ahead.’

I sat with the men, conversing impatiently until Pauline – I was thinking of her as a pretty Paulette by now – could drift over. Ellsworth wanted to hear about the Egyptian monuments that were already inspiring Napoleon’s plans for Paris. Vans Murray was curious about the Holy Land. Davie beckoned to the odd bear of a man lurking in the shadows, the Norwegian he’d referred to earlier, and bade him sit. This Magnus was tall like me, but thicker, with a fisherman’s rough, reddened face. He had an eye patch like a pirate’s – his other eye was icy blue – and a thick nose, high forehead, and bushy beard: most unfashionable in 1800. There was that wild glint of the dreamer to him that was quite disturbing.

‘Gage, this is the gentleman I told you about. Magnus, Ethan Gage.’

Bloodhammer looked like a Viking, all right, as ill fit in a grey suit as a buffalo in a bonnet. He gripped the table as if to overthrow it.

‘Unusual to meet a man from the north, sir,’ I said, a little wary. ‘What brings you to France?’

‘Studies,’ the Norwegian replied in a rumbling bass. ‘I’m investigating mysteries from the past in hope of influencing my nation’s future. I’ve heard of you, Mr Gage, and your own remarkable scholarship.’

‘Curiosity at best. I’m very much the amateur savant.’ Yes, I can be modest when women aren’t around. ‘I suspect the ancients knew something of electricity’s strange power, and we’ve forgotten what we once knew. Bonaparte almost had me shot in the garden outside the Tuileries, but decided to retain me on the chance I might be useful.’

‘And my brother spared a beautiful Egyptian woman at the same time, I heard,’ Pauline murmured. She’d come up behind us, smelling of violets.

‘Yes, my former companion Astiza, who decided to return to Egypt to continue her studies when Napoleon talked of sending me as an emissary to America. Parting was sweet sorrow, as they say.’ In truth I longed for her, yet also felt unshackled from her intensity. I was lonely and empty, but free.

‘But you’re not in America,’ Ellsworth said. ‘You’re here with us.’

‘Well, President Adams was sending you three here. It seemed best to wait in Paris to lend a hand. I do have a weakness for gaming, and the little wheel is rather mesmerising, don’t you think?’

‘Have your studies helped your gambling, Mr Gage?’ Bloodhammer’s voice had a slight aggression to it, as if he were testing me. Instinct told me he was trouble.

‘Mathematics has helped, thanks to the advice of the French savants I travelled with. But as I was explaining to Davie, true understanding of the odds only persuades that one must eventually lose.’

‘Indeed. Do you know what the thirty-six numbers of a roulette wheel add up to, sir?’

‘Haven’t thought about it, really.’

The Norwegian looked at us intently, as if revealing a dark secret. ‘Six hundred and sixty-six. Or 666, the Number of the Beast, from Revelations.’ He waited portentously for a reaction, but we all just blinked.

‘Oh, dear,’ I finally said. ‘But you’re not the first to suggest gambling is the devil’s tool. I don’t entirely disagree.’

‘As a Freemason, you know numbers and symbols have meaning.’

‘I’m not much of a Mason, I’m afraid.’

‘And perhaps entire nations have meaning, as well.’ He looked at my companions with disquieting intensity. ‘Is it coincidence, my American friends, that nearly half of your revolution’s generals and signers of your Constitution were Masons? That so many French Revolutionaries were members as well? That Bavaria’s secret Illuminati were founded in 1776, the same year as your Declaration of Independence? That the first boundary marker of the American capital city was laid in a Masonic ceremony, as well as the cornerstones for your capitol building and president’s house? That’s why I find your two nations so fascinating. There is a secret thread behind your revolutions.’

I looked at the others. None seemed to concur. ‘I frankly don’t know,’ I said. ‘Napoleon’s not a Mason. You’re one yourself, Bloodhammer?’

‘I’m an investigator, like you, interested in my own nation’s independence. The Scandinavian kingdoms united in 1363, a curious time in our region’s history. Norway has been in Denmark’s shadow since. As a patriot, I hope for independence. You and I have things to teach each other, I suspect.’

‘Do we, now?’ This Viking seemed rather forward. ‘What do you have to teach me?’

‘More about your nation’s beginnings, perhaps. And something even more intriguing and powerful. Something of incalculable value.’

I waited.

‘But what I wish to share is not for all ears.’

‘The usual caveat.’ People have a habit of talking grand, but what they really want is to milk me for what I know. It’s become a game.

‘So I ask for a word with you in private, Gage, later this evening.’

‘Well.’ I glanced at Pauline. If I wanted a private word, it was with her. ‘When I complete my other engagements, then of course!’ I grinned at the girl and she returned the volley.

‘But first the American must tell us his adventures!’ she prompted.

‘Yes, I’m curious how you found yourself in Italy,’ Ellsworth added.

So I played up my deeds in the season just past, more anxious to explore Napoleon’s randy sister than my nation’s beginnings. ‘France this spring was beset by enemies on all sides, you’ll recall,’ I began with a storyteller’s flair. ‘Napoleon had to win a European peace before he had the strength to negotiate an American one. Despite his scepticism of my loyalties and motives, I was called to the Tuileries to answer some questions about America. I wound up making a casual remark about Switzerland.’ I smiled at Pauline. ‘Without exaggerating too much, I think I played a critical role in the French victory that followed.’

She fanned herself, the crowd and candles making all of us too warm. A little moisture glistened in the vale between her enchanting orbs. ‘I think it grand you could aid Napoleon as Lafayette helped Washington,’ she cooed.

I laughed. ‘I’m no Lafayette! But I did have to kill a double agent …’