The Emerald Storm

Chapter 36

I’m afraid I need your help.”

Few sentences have been harder to spit out. Leon Martel looked as triumphant as a Caesar viewing a barbarian chieftain in chains. He had my wife, he had my son, and now he thought he had me. The British arrival at Diamond Rock was going to make us allies of convenience. I’d seen his kind of smile a thousand times when gambling; it was the smile of a man who has seen the other’s cards and knows he has a winning hand.

“Bonaparte would be pleased,” he said.

“Napoleon sent me to negotiate for Louisiana, not to hunt for Aztec flying machines. If he knew what we’re trying to do, he’d throw us in the asylum with de Sade.”

“Don’t be so sure.” We were sitting on the terrace of Martel’s opulent headquarters, which I still didn’t understand how he could afford. The jungle was a throbbing wall of green, birds and frogs sending up chorus enough to mask any conversation from eavesdroppers. He took a sip of wine, sighing in appreciation at the vintage. Having me as a supplicant gave him even more pleasure. “And you need my help because?”

“The British navy has claimed Diamond Rock.”

“The British?” Now he sat erect.

“I’m afraid they’re making a fort of it.” It was typical Albion cheek. The limeys had sailed in as smart as you pleased, scaled the Caribbean Gibraltar like a bunch of goats, and winched artillery to the summit. Now they could bang away with impunity at any French vessel that ventured near. The cannon fire would force ships approaching from the south to make a long detour to safety to the west, which in turn required them to beat against wind and current to get into Fort-de-France. Many trading vessels wouldn’t bother, crippling Martinique’s economy. To add insult to injury, the English flew their flag from their perch. They’d even christened the monolith HMS Diamond Rock, but it was a ship that couldn’t be sunk. It was rudeness that bordered on the inspirational, and I couldn’t help admire the wicked genius of it. Yet the jack tars were squatting over what might be the world’s most fabulous treasure like an ignorant goose, atop an egg it doesn’t realize is golden.

“England!” Martel exclaimed again, with the same venom I’d heard from Napoleon. “They’re gobbling everything because their superior navy allows it.”

“I believe it’s called war.”

“We have a cowardly fleet.”

“No, a leaderless one. Your best naval officers fled or were executed during the Revolution. It takes decades of experience to command a ship of the line, and your nation called such experience royalism. You chased it away.”

Martel scowled. “Someday France will have its revenge, but for now we’re on the defensive. The English have been pirates and barbarians since the retreat of the Roman Empire. No one knows that better than America. You and France are natural allies, Gage. I tried to tell you that in Paris.”

“By drowning me in a tub of water?”

“I am sometimes impatient. But bad introductions can lead to good friendships. Now we’re partners, in search of a treasure that will have great importance strategically, historically, and scientifically. England will finally be conquered, and the world will find itself at peace under the visionary direction of Napoleon Bonaparte. You will be rich, I will be powerful, and we’ll dine with the first consul and bring Josephine gossip of her home village of Trois-Ilets.”

He certainly had imagination. Since I’ve the same fault, I was anything but encouraged; too much vision tends to obscure reality. Yet my Negroes and I needed technical help and a way to distract the British. So here I was plotting with a renegade policeman with my wife’s reluctant blessing.

When I’d returned to Martel’s chateau after scouting the rock, I insisted upon meeting Astiza before striking a bargain. Since my enemy sensed that my truculence had softened, he’d allowed us to meet alone in the plantation library.

It was a passionate reunion. I’d earlier watched a land crab on the beach stalk and pounce on a mate buried in the sand with the single-mindedness of a landlord on rent day. I’d done much the same with my beloved, striding across the room like a frenzied youth to seize and kiss her, my hand roaming from her waist to bottom while another clutched a breast. It had been a long separation! While I groped I was secretly alert for any sign of hesitation that might hint at infidelity or violation. But no, she kissed me back with ardor of her own, gasping when we broke for air, and melted against me in a way that made me want to take her on the carpet. Damnation that Crow and his guards were right outside the door.

“Did he assault you?” I asked.

“If he’d tried, one of us would be dead.”

“Why didn’t you wait for me in Saint-Domingue?”

She kissed me again and leaned against my shoulder. “He said that he had Horus and that the ultimate goal was likely Martinique. If I wanted my son, we must take temporary leave from my dangerous husband. Meanwhile, he tempted me with his own research into the legends. Ethan, I didn’t want to go into the jungle with Dessalines when my son was in Cap-Francois in the hands of a madman. So I went with Martel in hopes of safeguarding our boy until you found us. And I couldn’t explain. You’d disappeared from the library, and there was no time to find you.”

I’d folded myself into a dumbwaiter. “I thought you’d been taken to Rochambeau. I almost killed the general.”

“So impulsive! And so unnecessary. Why would I be tempted by a lizard like Rochambeau when I already had Adonis as my husband?”

Well, I liked that. Truth be told, I’m a handsome rascal. “When we retire, they’ll want the two of us at the best parties. We’re very stylish.”

She’s also learned when to ignore me. “Martel knew the city was about to fall. He wanted out and knew you’d follow. I didn’t choose Horus or Leon over you. I simply made the only choice I could.”

“I’m going to kill Martel, you know.”

“He knows, too, so he’ll be prepared when you try. It’s what men do, isn’t it? All I want is a chance to get away from him as a family. I don’t care about this treasure or war. Can we please do that, Ethan? Simply get away?”

“Absolutely. But I don’t think we’ll have an opportunity until he’s distracted by treasure. We find it, bargain, fight, and flee.”

“And this treasure is…?”

“Under a rock as massive as the Great Pyramid. Maybe. We’ve found an underwater cave but need a means to get through it, and now the British are sitting on top. That’s where Martel comes in.”

“The treasure is cursed, Ethan. The Aztecs put a spell on it. I saw troubling things in the little temple I made in the Hecate when we crossed the Atlantic, and read more here. You mustn’t be tempted. Let the French have it; they’ll regret their discovery. We just need to get away.”

“What did you read?”

“Martel discovered reports of a pirate ship in these waters manned by black Maroons, two centuries before. They circuited Martinique as if looking for a hiding place, perhaps this rock you’ve found. Since they didn’t prey on merchant ships, the speculation was that they were burying treasure instead of seizing it. Planters have dug Martinique’s shores ever since, without success. But that isn’t the odd thing. I found more documents Martel doesn’t know about.”

“Records of what?”

“Weeks later, their pirate vessel was found drifting at sea.”

“And?”

“No one was aboard. All the Maroons had vanished. No bodies, no combat, no clue.”

I felt a chill. “They went ashore and the ship broke anchor, perhaps.”

“Perhaps.” She looked at me steadily. “But here’s my question, Ethan. If they came from Saint-Domingue, did these blacks come here to hide a treasure? Or get rid of it? Were they determined to return for it? Or bury it so deep that no one ever found it again?”

“You think they were cursed.”

“Think of all the trouble a single emerald has caused, both to Yussef Karamanli in Tripoli and now us.”

I shook my head. “First of all, I believe in luck but not in curses. Second, I already have the emerald back, and it’s still going to finance our retirement. Third, it’s foolish not to take a king’s ransom, should we find it. So let Martel be cursed. Or let Jubal and the blacks take it and strike a deal between their gods and the Aztec ones. We just need a chance to escape together, but won’t have one until we’re all as rich as Montezuma.” Frankly, I also wanted a peek.

“Your family for the gold. Don’t forget, and don’t be greedy.”

“Agreed. But to win, we must have a plan of revenge. So here’s what we’ll do.”

L acking a Robert Fulton or a working submarine, the scheme I’d come up with was inspired by Jubal’s overturned canoe. We’d use a diving bell, a device dating back to ancient Greece.

The idea is simple. Invert a cauldron and drop it in the water so that it traps air, just as the canoe did. You can test the idea by putting a bucket upside down in water. Dive, surface within the container, and breathe in the space of the upended vessel. If possible, refresh the pocket of air with a hose.

A diving bell the size normally used to salvage ships, with barges and air pumps, would be unwieldy in the cave under Diamond Rock. Such an apparatus would also attract the attention of the English.

My scheme was less complicated. We’d sheathe a rum barrel with lead to give it the necessary weight and tightness to remain underwater while trapping air. A small window would be fit on its side to look out through, and to navigate by. Foxfire, the phosphorescent luminescence sometimes found in rotting bark, would shed a little light. Without a hose and pumps, we’d refresh our atmosphere from leather bags filled with air. I’d wear this keg on my shoulders with a harness. My torso would be in the Caribbean, but my head would have something to breathe.

We’d attach a rope, as we had to Jubal.

It was cleverness worthy of a savant, except it wasn’t original with me. In fact, we looked at diagrams in a book in Martel’s rented library to help puzzle the thing out. Other tomes showed plans for the kind of warship we’d need.

“If the cave goes nowhere, I give a tug and am hauled back out,” I reassured Astiza when we met with Martel and Jubal in the library. To hold a council of war with a woman and a Negro was extraordinary, but these are modern times. “If there’s treasure, then I ferry out an armful at a time.”

“And the English?”

“We’ll distract them with a naval attack on the side of the rock opposite from where we’re working,” Martel said.

“All in trust.” Her tone was skeptical.

“Of course not, madame. Business partners use contracts and lawyers, not trust. We’ll have you, and your husband will have the hoard. But there’s honor among thieves, is there not, Monsieur Gage? A friendly exchange, and your family free to go. To the United States, I suppose.”

“As far as we can get from you.”

“A third goes to Haiti,” Jubal insisted.

Martel frowned. “I am not accustomed to bargaining with blacks.”

“And a free Haitian is not accustomed to consorting with men who are allied with slave masters,” my massive friend said. “So we do as a slave does.”

“What’s that?”

“Partner with whom we must, and spit afterward.”

Martel laughed. “You’d make a fine criminal in the Paris underworld.”

“And you a fine field hand with a cane bill and straw hat.”

The Frenchman regarded his gigantic new ally uncertainly. “In two weeks we’ll have the dark of the moon,” he finally said. “Best to work when it’s hard for the British to see.”

“And then we’ll be done with each other once and for all,” I said.