by Guy Roberts
‘Look!’ Cleo shouted. Jack followed her pointing finger southward. The cannonade had slackened off and Jack could see several thick black lines inching their way down the slope toward them. It was not until a faint drumbeat reached his ears that Jack realised the black lines were ranks of French infantry marching toward the farmstead.
‘Bloody hell,’ Jack cursed. ‘We need to get out of here before they arrive,’
A nearby tube emitted a piercing beep, then fired an explosion of smoke up into the sky. Clearly the assault on the farmhouse had begun. Jack frowned. He pulled the Tomcat from his belt and checked the magazine. Only one shot left. He frowned and tucked it away.
‘Where are our horses?’ Cleo asked.
Jack looked around him in surprise. The horses had vanished – presumably scared away by the fireworks launching from the nearby tubes, or set free by the trio of soldiers.
‘Damn it,’ Jack cursed, ‘bugger the horses, where is the bloody gold?’
‘Could it have been taken already?’ Cleo was asking the question he had been trying to ignore for several minutes. ‘Could someone have just discovered it years ago and just kept quiet?’
Jack shook his head. ‘No, I’m not thinking about that. We didn’t get this far to give up now. We’ll have to go back and look again.’
He shut his eyes in frustration, trying to ignore the ache in his jaw from where the Redcoat had landed a blow. He knew the gold was somewhere on the battlefield, he could feel it. Everything they had done had led them to Waterloo – the clues, the tablet, the golden pin... We’ve gone through too much to be stopped now. He could hear his brother’s condescending laugh, the wise older brother pitying his slow-witted sibling. But David was dead and now Jack was left without a clue to find his way.
‘Jack?’ Cleo asked.
Jack ignored her.
We missed something. The golden tablet had led them to the Lion’s Mound, but they had misinterpreted the clues. The goal was not Ferme La Haie Sainte, Jack realised. They had to work backward and find out where they had gone wrong. He stepped away from Cleo, away from the echo of artillery fire and the shouts of distant soldiers. We have to go back.
‘It’s the Lions Mound.’ Jack spoke softly. ‘It’s something to do with the Lion’s Mound, but we missed it the first time.’
‘But we were there,’ Cleo protested, ‘we figured it out – we went to the Lion’s Mound, we saw the connection to Ferme La Haie Sainte. It’s here somewhere.’
‘No,’ Jack shook his head, ‘we made a mistake.’
‘We can’t go back,’ Cleo argued. ‘Whoever sent those three men will send more. We have to keep moving,’
‘Come on, we’ll have to walk.’ Jack pushed onward, ignoring the detonation as another tube nearby disgorged its load into the smoky sky overhead. They turned the corner of the farmhouse and the Lion’s Mound loomed into view, a massive cone rising from the field nearly due west. The green grass of the hill was completely obscured by a thick flock of tourists, covering the hill like seagulls. Jack stared at it in dismay. There was no way they could work their way through such a crowd. With the storm clouds darkening the sky overhead, the mound was glittering like a diamond as cameras flashed again and again.
‘There’s 50,000 tourists on that hill!’ Cleo shouted in frustration. ‘How can we get up there?’
Jack frowned. It would take an hour just to get to the top, let alone try and find a clue in such a crush. He stared across the fields, willing the hill to empty itself of people so the two of them could walk up to the Lion Statue in an instant. The artillery fire around him paused for a moment and a ray of sunlight broke through the clouds, bathing the top of the Lion’s Mound in sunlight.
Jack watched for a moment and a broad smile creased his face. ‘The message on the back of the tablet,’ he whispered, ‘what was it again?’
Cleo thought for a moment, then recited the poem from memory.
‘With London’s passkeys in your hand
Apply them to this golden stand
Then by tribute to a fallen power
Seek guidance from the Ares tower
And by this sacred earthly space
Will be the golden resting place’
She stared at him in mystification.
Jack smiled. ‘It’s the Lion’s Mound,’ he explained. ‘We got it right. But the Lion’s Mound doesn’t point to the clue, it is the clue.’
Cleo tilted her head in confusion.
Jack pointed up to the statue of the Lion placed on top of the man-made hill. Cleo stepped close to follow his gaze.
‘The pedestal of the statue.’ Jack spoke into Cleo’s ear. ‘Look closely.’
Cleo looked upward and Jack could feel her breath catch.
‘Roman numerals,’ she whispered. ‘XVIII JUIN MDCCCXV.’
‘The 18th of June, 1815.’ Jack could feel the smile on his face as he looked up at the massive numerals carved into the side of the pedestal. ‘The date of the battle.’
Cleo turned around slowly and looked at him with a questioning expression on her face. ‘That’s it,’ he confirmed, ‘the last clue to Napoleon’s gold.’
Cleo silently passed him the bag, a look of expectation on her face. He slowly pulled the golden tablet from the bag and with Cleo watching eagerly he began to enter the numbers into the tablet. Jack’s mouth was dry and he saw that the tips of his fingers were shaking slightly from the tension.
‘I hope this is right,’ he whispered to himself. ‘The keys are getting stiffer.’ He looked up at Cleo in alarm.
‘Keep going,’ she urged. Jack nodded. He was up to the final string of letters, pushing the letter C three times in a row, each time finding the key stiffer and more resistant.
‘X,’ Jack declared, jamming the key down until the tiny click was heard.
‘Last one,’ he breathed nervously.
‘Do it,’ Cleo whispered.
Jack’s throat clicked dryly as he tried to swallow, then he pushed the final key into place.
The key was so stiff that he had to grip the tablet with both hands to force it into place. Even as he felt it click home, the entire surface of the tablet sprang upward in a disintegration of golden panels, gears and levers. The innards of the tablet glittered brilliantly as they sprang out of the machine and tumbled to the ground. Jack felt his heart leap into his throat as he stared down at the broken tablet in shock. The sides of the tablet collapsed, leaving Jack holding nothing but the back panel of the tablet, a thin golden plate that flashed the sunlight up into his face with a mocking intensity.
Jack felt sick and for a moment thought his legs would give way beneath him. He staggered back against the farmhouse. Cleo stared open-mouthed at the little pile of gears and toothed cogs.
‘A booby-trap,’ Cleo sounded close to tears. ‘After everything… it was a booby trap all along.’
‘We’ve lost it.’ Jack felt sick. ‘We got it wrong... they… they…must have planned it somehow.’
‘Why?’ Cleo sighed. A rattle of nearby musket fire made her flinch helplessly.
‘I don’t know,’ Jack slid to the ground, the pile of ruined cogs between his legs. ‘To keep it out of the wrong hands? To put us on the wrong trail? Just to laugh at us?’ He tossed the golden panel onto the little pile of parts and stared at it moodily.
‘So what do we do?’
Jack shook his head.
‘What can we do?’ he sighed. Something about the golden panel was demanding his attention, but his mind was numbed by the totality of their defeat. ‘We just…’ his voice trailed off into silence. One hand picked idly at the grass beside his thigh.
‘Jack?’
Jack’s forehead furrowed deeply as his eyes focused on the remains of the golden tablet lying on the grass. Wordlessly he reached over and picked up the panel once again, forcing his eyes to read the single word that had been inscribed on the inside of the golden plate.
‘Amen.’
‘Amen,’ Jack
whispered dully. That’s it then, it’s all over, his mind told him bleakly. That’s the end of it.
He took a slow breath. ‘Amen.’
The word hit home. Jack felt his jaw drop open in surprise.
‘We’ve got it!’ he hissed in triumph. Cleo looked at him in confusion. Jack felt a burst of excitement racing through him once again.
‘We’ve got it, Cleo,’ he laughed manically, drumming his heels on the ground. ‘The tablet disintegrated because we don’t need it any more – the message is written on the inside of the back panel. We’ve found it!’ He spun the panel around and waved it at her excitedly. ‘Look! Amen – the end of the chase – it’s finished!’
‘But what do you mean? Amen?’
‘We’re nearly there!’ Jack smiled. ‘You don’t say Amen in a farm, or under a sacred hedge! You say it in a church, a place of God!’
‘Which place?’ Cleo looked at him urgently, still not sure what he had discovered.
‘There’s only one place like that at Waterloo,’ Jack smiled. ‘Hougoumont. The Chapel of Hougoumont. The Chapel! That’s where the gold is hidden!’
Cleo looked down at the panel, then greeted the new clue with a whoop of joy. ‘No code, no mystery, this is it?’ She looked at him in shock, daring to believe he was correct. ‘The final instruction? It’s hidden in a chapel?’ Cleo squealed with excitement, jumping onto Jack and hugging him in delight. ‘That means we’re still in the game! There’s no way Deschamps could know about the Amen!’
‘All right, all right, calm down.’ Jack grinned at her joy, using both hands to hold her still and then ducking to the ground and scooping the cogs and gears of the tablet back into the bag. ‘Reynard and Deschamps don’t know about the gold, but they’re still out there. There’s no guarantee they won’t be following us right now.’
‘I know,’ Cleo nodded impatiently, ‘but that doesn’t matter. Once we find the gold, we can deal with them. But this Hougoumont place… where is it?’
Jack stood up, rested the bag on his shoulder and then pointed one finger across the fields to the south west.
Across the battlefield, wrapped in a haze of smoke, stood another walled farmhouse. Red coats and blue coats were both marching in columns toward the buildings and it was clear the brick walls of the complex had made it a valuable outpost in the conflict between Wellington and Napoleon. For Wellington, it would have been the anchor for his right flank; for Napoleon, seizing the farmhouse would have allowed his deadly artillery to move even closer to the British lines. Cannon smoke hugged the building lazily. Even as Jack and Cleo watched, there were flashes of light within the haze and the distant rattle of a musket volley reached their ears.
‘That’s where we’re going,’ Jack declared. ‘Hougoumont.’
A loud rumbling from the north interrupted their examination of the building. A swarm of British cavalry hundreds strong thundered past toward the French lines, the horses’ hooves ripping up the field as they cantered in a long sweep past the farmhouse and into the smoke of the battlefield. The charging horses filled the space between Ferme La Haie Sainte and the base of the Lion’s Mound, and Jack shuddered to think what it would have been like to see such a tide of cavalry approaching during a genuine war. A trailing ‘Gone Away’ bugle call chirruped out in the wake of the charge and Jack swallowed nervously as the thundering tide chased south.
‘My God,’ Cleo’s voice was low, ‘if we got caught in something like that…’
Jack nodded, his eyes sweeping the battlefield. ‘We’ve got no choice. The horses are gone.’
He took her hand and started across the fields before she could protest further. The ground was still boggy from the storm in the night and churned up by the cavalry charge and within three steps Jack and Cleo were staggering knee-deep through mud.
‘Come on,’ Jack leaned over to help pull Cleo onward. The work was exhaustive and they were soon puffing for air as they struggled toward the farmhouse. It seemed to Jack that they had been fighting their way through the sea of mud for an hour, yet the smoke-wrapped walls of Hougoumont seemed no closer.
Something changed.
The sweet sound of birdsong suddenly trilled in the distance and Jack realised the cannons had stopped blasting their charges into the air. The lack of gunfire screamed danger and Jack redoubled his efforts to lead Cleo to the safety of the Hougoumont farmyard. They were more than half way, yet the ground underfoot was ever more hazardous, torn up by the thunderous cavalry charges of the morning. The grasping mud sucked at their feet with every step. Trying to ignore his body’s protests, Jack pushed himself forward once more.
They had barely covered a dozen paces more before Cleo whistled a low note of warning and pointed urgently southward. Jack followed her gaze and grunted in dismay. A score of British cavalry had crested the ridge as they returned to the British lines. Behind them chased a horde of French cavalry, clad in metal chest-pieces and helmets, each one waving a sabre overhead as they pursued the remains of the British charge. Jack felt his hopes plunge. The flood of riders were galloping toward them pell-mell and he and Cleo were stuck in their path like flies in honey. Holding Cleo by the hand, Jack staggered onward, trying to ignore the ground shaking beneath their feet as the cavalry charge drew close.
1045 hrs (0945 hrs GMT) 18 June 2015, Battlefield of Waterloo, Belgium.
GR 50.679983, 4.424835
Sir Johnathon sat motionless, a brass telescope affixed to one eye as he watched two tiny figures scramble across the distant farmland toward the Hougoumont complex. Jack and Cleo at last, he thought grimly, and in appropriate uniform, no less. What a chase those two have given me. He lowered the telescope from his eye for a moment and looked out across the battlefield. And what a place they have run to. He was sitting on a calm grey horse on a low hill to the east of the battlefield, able to see the entire battle as it unfolded before him. Musket fire crackled to his left where the British troops were stretched out in long ranks of red-coated infantry. Puffs of cannon smoke drifted across the landscape like great ephemeral beasts and the rumble of the cannonades was matched by the lowering clouds overhead.
Sir Johnathon reached down and patted the horse’s shoulder affectionately. Getting into France had been easy enough, with an old school friend happy to fly his private plane across the Channel at short notice. After that, Sir Johnathon moved to Paris itself, remaining below the radar of the European authorities even as he spoke to individual spymasters and bureaucrats whose friendship and trust he had fostered over decades. Those contacts had led him to Gare du Nord seconds after Deschamps’ train had left for Brussels, while the Asterix Team had rescued Jack before Sir Johnathon could intercede. A desperate gamble had led him to the Belgian hospital where ‘Sparky’ Watts had been taken, but the wounded veteran had known nothing of Jack’s whereabouts and it seemed that the search for Jack Starling had come to a dead end – until the phone by Sparky’s bedside had rung.
The voice on the phone had simply informed him that Jack and Cleo would be at Waterloo then hung up the phone without another word.
Sir Johnathon responded instantly. Whoever had the power to know he was at the hospital would clearly know about Jack and Cleo as well. After that it was only a matter of arranging transport – one vehicle to get James Watts away from any retribution from Deschamps, another to deliver Sir Johnathon to the battlefield itself. The horse and uniform had been a final touch – the easiest way to cross the battlefield without drawing attention to himself.
Sir Johnathon now sat atop his horse, telescope in hand, watching as thousands of men and women marched across an ancient battlefield. Sir Johnathon held up the eyeglass again, focusing upon the tiny images of Jack and Cleo as they struggled across the mud churned fields between Ferme La Haie Sainte and Hougoumont. He let the telescope roam across the field for a moment, admiring the cannon and troops lined up in authentic deployments. The horse beneath him shifted slightly and Sir Johnathon took in his breath in surprise.
A man on horseback had emerged from the lee of the Lion’s Mount and ridden to the edge of La Haie Sainte, watching Jack and Cleo as they ran toward Hougoumont. Even at this distance Sir Johnathon could feel the malevolent intensity with which the blue-coated figure watched the pair struggling through the mud. Reynard, Sir Johnathon decided with a frown, the one who killed David Starling. The clouds overhead rumbled angrily. Sir Johnathon snapped the brass telescope shut and tucked it into a saddlebag, brushing his hand against the Walther P99 he had carried from all the way from London. Without further ado, Sir Johnathon pulled his horse around and descended the hill.
‘Sir,’ a single voice rang out and Sir Johnathon pulled his horse to a stop. A dozen horsemen were waiting in a line at the bottom of the hill, each one dressed in the 1815 dress of a British cavalryman but several of them carrying modern SA80 assault rifles.
A horseman dug in his heels, spurring his horse up the hill to where Sir Johnathon sat waiting. The two men regarded each other silently.
‘Sir Johnathon Fairchild,’ the soldier spoke at last, ‘I think you’d better come with us. You’re wanted in London.’
The civil servant looked candidly at the group of soldiers before him. One hand twisted the bezel of his wrist watch for a moment as his legs tightened imperceptibly atop his horse.
He thought about the Walther P99. A wintery smile crossed Sir Johnathon’s face at last as he spurred his horse closer to his opponent.
‘I am afraid, gentlemen, that London will have to wait.’
0950 hrs 18 June 2015, COBRA, Whitehall, London.
