Baltic Mission nd-7

by Ричард Вудмен

  'Do you, indeed.'

  'Yes. In fact I insist upon it.' His cold blue eyes held Drinkwater's in an unblinking gaze. The man made a gesture with his hand as if their roles were reversed and it was he who was inviting Drinkwater below. 'Captain ...?'

  'Mr. Q, get below and turn in. You, Mr. Frey, cut along to the surgeon and tell him to debride those wounds immediately or they will mortify' He turned to the stranger. 'As for you, sir, you had better follow me!'

  Drinkwater strode below and, shutting the door behind the stranger, rounded on him.

  'Now, sir! Enough of this tomfoolery. Who the deuce are you and what the devil d'you mean by behaving like that?'

  The stranger smiled coolly. 'I already have the advantage of you, Captain. Your lieutenant informed me that you are Captain Drinkwater. Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater, I understand ...' A small and strangely threatening smile was playing about the man's mouth, but he held out his hand cordially enough. 'I am Colin Alexander Mackenzie, Captain Drinkwater, and in your debt for saving my life.'

  9

  Mackenzie

  June 1807

  Drinkwater felt awkward under Mackenzie's uncompromising scrutiny. He hesitated, then took the outstretched hand. Everything about the stranger irritated Drinkwater, not least his proprietorial air in Drinkwater's own cabin.

  'Mr. Mackenzie,' he said coldly, 'Colonel Wilson mentioned you.' Drinkwater was not ready to say the British Commissioner had urged him to offer this cold-eyed man as much assistance as he required. The manner of Mackenzie's arrival seemed to indicate he already had that for the time being.

  'So,' Mackenzie smiled, 'you have met Bob Wilson. I wonder where he is now?'

  Drinkwater indicated a chair and Mackenzie slumped into it. 'Thank you.'

  'A glass?' Drinkwater asked.

  'That is very kind of you. What did Wilson say?'

  Drinkwater poured the two glasses of wine and handed one to the Scotsman. He did not hurry to answer, but observed the man as he relaxed. After a little he said, 'That I was to afford you such assistance as you might require. It seems we have already done so.'

  The two men were still weighing each other up and Drinkwater's manner remained cool. Now, however, Mackenzie dropped his aloofness.

  'I'm damn glad you did, Captain. I had to ride for my very life. I am almost sure those dragoons knew who I was ...' He shrugged, passing a hand over his dust-stained face. 'The Russians were smashed, you know, on the fourteenth, at a place called Friedland. Bennigsen got himself caught in a loop of the River Alle and, though the Russians fought like bears, the French got the better of them. Bennigsen was forced to retreat and Konigsberg has fallen. The Russians are falling back everywhere to the line of the Nieman. I was lucky to get out... and even luckier to find you.' He smiled, and Drinkwater found himself feeling less hostile. However he did not pass up the opportunity to goad Mackenzie a little.

  'What exactly is your function, Mr. Mackenzie? I mean what was it you feared the French dragoons took you for?'

  Mackenzie looked at him shrewdly, again that strangely disquieting smile played about his mouth, again Drinkwater received the impression that their roles were reversed and that he, in goading Mackenzie, was in some obscure way being put upon.

  'I am sure you are aware of my function as a British agent.' He paused and added, 'A spy, if you wish.'

  Drinkwater shied away from the dangerous word-game he felt inadequate to play. This was his ship, his cabin; he switched the conversation back onto its safer track.

  'I heard that the French were defeated at a place called Heilsberg. After Eylau we were expecting that the Russians might throw Boney back, once and for all.'

  Mackenzie nodded tiredly, apparently equally relieved at the turn the conversation had taken. 'So did I, Captain. It was true. The Russians and Prussians moved against the French at the beginning of the month when Ney's Corps went foraging. Le Rougeard was caught napping and given a bloody nose. But Napoleon moved the whole mass of the Grand Army, caught Bennigsen ten days later at Friedland and crushed him.'

  'I see.' Drinkwater considered the matter a moment. He did not think that the news left him much alternative. The retreat of the Tsar's Army beyond the Nieman, the French occupation of Poland and East Prussia, the fall of Dantzig and now Konigsberg, left Napoleon the undisputed master of Europe. In accordance with his orders, London must be informed forthwith.

  'Well, Mr. Mackenzie, having rescued you and rendered that assistance required of me, I must now take the news you bring back to London. I take it you will take passage with us?'

  Mackenzie hesitated then said, 'Captain Drinkwater, how discretionary are your orders?'

  'Those from their Lordships are relatively wide.'

  'You have, perhaps, orders from another source?' Mackenzie paused. 'I see you are reluctant to confide in me. No matter. But perhaps you have something else, eh? Something from the Secret Department of Lord Dungarth?'

  'Go on, Mr. Mackenzie. I find your hypothesis ... intriguing,' Drinkwater prevaricated.

  'The Russians are defeated; the shipments of arms in the two merchantmen at Konigsberg have fallen into enemy hands. In commercial terms the Tsar is a bad risk.' Mackenzie smiled. 'Sweden is led by an insane monarch and on the very edge of revolution. Now, Captain, what is the victorious Napoleone going to do about it all? He has destroyed Prussia, driven the Russians back into Mother Russia itself, he is suborning the Swedes, threatening the Danes. He has the Grand Army in the field under his personal control, his rear is secured by Mortier at Stralsund and Brune's Corps of Hispano-Dutch on the borders of Denmark. Austria is quiescent but...' and Mackenzie paused to emphasize his point, 'he has not been in Paris for over a year. The question of what is happening in Paris will prevent him sleeping more than anything. He has a few more months in the field and then,' he shrugged, 'who knows? So what would you do, Captain?'

  'Me? I have no idea.' Drinkwater found the idea absurd.

  'I would conclude an armistice with the Tsar,' said Mackenzie evenly.

  Drinkwater looked sharply at him. The idea was preposterous. The Tsar was the sworn enemy of the French Revolution and the Imperial system of the parvenu Emperor, and yet such was the persuasion of Mackenzie's personality that the cold, cogent logic of it struck Drinkwater. He remembered Straton's cautionary removal of the Tsar's subsidy, and his own now-proven misgivings. He said nothing for there seemed nothing to say.

  Then Mackenzie broke the seriousness of their mood. His smile was unsullied and charming. 'But then, 'tis only a hypothesis, Captain Drinkwater ... and it is my business to speculate, intelligently, of course.'

  'And it's not my business to verify the accuracy of your speculations, Mr. Mackenzie,' said the captain brightening, 'but to take this intelligence back to London as quickly as possible.'

  'Have you heard of any preparations against the Baltic being made at home?'

  'Yes," said Drinkwater. 'Home of the Pegasus mentioned some such expedition to be mounted this summer in support of Gustavus at Rugen. There were problems of command: the King of Sweden wanted to command British troops in person ...'

  'They would walk into a trap," said Mackenzie, his voice a mixture of contempt and exasperation.

  'Well then,' said Drinkwater, 'the sooner we prevent that, the better.'

  'I think you are mistaken, Captain, to think our news would stop His Majesty's ministers from acting in their usual incompetent manner. Hypotheses are not intelligence. Lord Dungarth would be pleased with the news, but not ecstatic. They will know of the Battle of Friedland in London in a day or so, if they do not already. There are other channels ...' Again Drinkwater was confronted by that strange, ominous smile.

  'Well,' expostulated Drinkwater, feeling his irritation returning, 'what do you suggest I do?'

  'I know what we should do, Captain Drinkwater. The question is, can we do it?' Mackenzie's eyes closed to contemplative slits, his voice lowered. 'I am certain that there will be an armistice soon. Th
e French dare not overextend themselves; Napoleon must return to Paris; yet, if he withdraws, the Russians will follow like wolves. There must be an accommodation with the Tsar.'

  'And will the Tsar agree to such a proposal, particularly as it reveals Boney in a position of weakness?'

  Mackenzie chuckled. 'My dear Captain, you know nothing of Russia. There is one thing you must understand, she is an autocracy. What the Tsar wills, is. Alexander professes one thing and does another. The Tsar can be relied upon to be erratic'

  Drinkwater shook his head, still mystified. 'So what do you advise I do?'

  'You already asked that question.'

  'But you did not answer it.'

  'We should eavesdrop on their conversation.'

  'Whose?' asked Drinkwater frowning.

  'Alexander's and Napoleon's.'

  'Mr. Mackenzie, I am sure that you are a tired man, that your recent excitement has exhausted you, but you can scarcely fail to notice that this is a ship of war, not an ear trumpet.'

  'I know, I know, Captain, it is only wishful thinking.' Mackenzie's eyes narrowed again. He was contemplating a scene of his imagination's making. 'But a frigate could take me to Memel, couldn't it?'

  'Is that what you want?' asked Drinkwater, the prospect of returning Mackenzie to the shore a pleasing one at that moment. 'A passage to Memel?'

  'Yes,' said Mackenzie, seeming to make up his mind. 'That and somewhere to sleep.'

  Drinkwater nodded at his cot. 'Help yourself. I must get the ship under weigh and see the wounded.'

  Picking up his hat Drinkwater left the cabin. Too tired to move suddenly, Mackenzie stared after him. 'Captain Drinkwater,' he muttered, smiling to himself, 'Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater, by all that's holy ...'

  In the dark and foetid stink of the orlop deck Drinkwater picked his way forward. Antigone listed over, and down here, deep in her belly, Drinkwater could hear the rush of the sea past her stout wooden sides. Here, where the midshipmen and master's mates messed next to the marines above the hold, Lallo and his loblolly boys were plying their trade.

  'How are they?' he asked, stepping into the circle of light above the struggling body of a seaman. Lallo did not look up but Skeete's evil leer was diabolical in the bizarre play of the lantern. Drinkwater peered round in the darkness, searching for Tregembo, one hand on the low deck beam overhead. The prone seaman groaned pitifully, the sweat standing out on his body like glass beads. His screams were muted to agonised grunts as he bit on the leather pad Skeete had forced into his mouth. With a twist and a jerk Lallo withdrew his hand, red from a wound in the man's thigh, and held a knife up to the dim light. The musket ball stuck on its point was intact. Lallo grunted his satisfaction as the man slipped into a merciful unconsciousness, and looked up at the captain.

  'Mostly gunshot wounds ... at long range... spent...'

  'They came under fire getting out of the river. Where's Tregembo?'

  With a grunt, as of stiff muscles, Lallo got to his feet and, stepping over the body that Skeete and his mate were dragging to a corner of the tiny space, he led Drinkwater forward to where Tregembo lay, half propped against a futtock. Drinkwater knelt down. Tregembo's shirt was torn aside and the white of the bandage showed in the mephitic gloom.

  'A sabre thrust to the bone,' explained the surgeon. 'It would have been easier to clean had it been a cut. It is too high to amputate.'

  'Amputate! God damn it, man, I sent particular word to you to ensure you debrided it.'

  Lallo took the uncorked rum bottle that Skeete handed him and swigged from it.

  'I took your kind advice, sir,' Lallo said with heavy irony, 'but, as I have just said, the wound is a deep one. I have done my best but...'

  'Yes, yes, of course . ..'

  Tregembo opened his eyes. He was already on the edge of fever, slipping in and out of semi-consciousness. He made an effort to focus his eyes on Drinkwater and began to speak, but the words were incomprehensible, and after a minute or two it was plain he was unaware of his surroundings. Drinkwater touched his arm. It was hot.

  'The prognosis?' Drinkwater rose, stooping under the low deck-head.

  Lallo shook his head. 'Not good, sir. Uncertain at best.'

  'They spent a long time in the boat after the wounding.'

  'Too long ...' Lallo corked the rum bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  'Mr. Lallo, I will risk the chance of offending you by saying that, when I was a prisoner aboard the Bucentaure, I observed a method of dressing a wound that was considered highly effective.'

  'A French method, sir?'

  'Yes.'

  'Humph!'

  'Soak a pledget in sea-water or camphorated wine and add a few drops of lead acetate. D'you have any lead acetate? Good. Bind the wound firmly with a linen bandage in which holes have been cut. Do not disturb the dressing but have the purulent matter which seeps through the holes wiped away. A compress of the same type is bound tightly over the first dressing and changed daily.' Drinkwater looked at the men groaning at his feet. 'Try it, Mr. Lallo, as I have directed ... and perhaps you will have less need of rum.'

  He turned and made for the ladder, leaving Lallo and Skeete staring after him. On deck the fresh air was unbelievably sweet.

  Mackenzie woke among unfamiliar surroundings. He tried to get out of the cot and found it difficult. When he got his feet on the deck Antigone heeled a little, the cot swayed outboard and in getting out he fell, sending the cot swinging further. Disencumbered of his weight the cot swung back, fetching Mackenzie a blow on the back of the head.

  'God!' He got to his feet and stood unsteadily, feeling the bile stirring in his gullet. Casting desperately about he recalled the privy and reached the door to the quarter-gallery just in time. After a little while he felt better, and being a self-reliant and resourceful man he diverted his mind from his guts to the matter in hand. He carefully crossed the cabin and stood braced at Drinkwater's table, staring down at the chart and the open pages of Mount's Military Atlas. The latter attracted his interest and he swiftly forgot his seasickness.

  'By God, that's providential,' he murmured to himself. After a moment or two his curiosity and professional interest turned itself to Drinkwater's desk. The left-hand of its two drawers was slightly open. Mackenzie pulled it out and lifted Drinkwater's journal from it. He flicked the pages over and, on the page on which the neat script ceased, he noticed a strange entry in the margin. It consisted of a short word in Cyrillic script: ИCЛAHД.

  'So, I was right...'

  'What the devil d'you think you're doing?'

  Mackenzie looked up at Drinkwater standing in the doorway, his hat in his hand. He was quite unabashed.

  'Is this how you abuse my hospitality?' Drinkwater advanced across the cabin, anger plain in his face. He confronted Mackenzie across the table; Mackenzie remained unruffled.

  'Where did you come across this?' he pointed to the strange letters.

  In his outrage Drinkwater had not seen exactly what Mackenzie had found. He had assumed the spy had been prying. Now the sudden emphasis Mackenzie put on those strangely exotic letters recalled to his mind his own, intensely personal reasons for having written them. He was briefly silent and then suddenly explosively angry.

  'God damn you, Mackenzie, you presume too much! That is a private journal! It has nothing to do with you!'

  'Be calm, Captain,' Mackenzie said, continuing in a reasonable tone, 'you are wrong, it has everything to do with me. What do these Russian letters mean? Do you know? Where did you learn them?'

  'What is that to you?'

  'Captain, don't play games. You are out of your depth. This word and the hand that wrote it are known to me.' He paused and looked up. 'Do you know what these Cyrillic letters mean?'

  Drinkwater sank back into the chair opposite to his usual one, the chair reserved for visitors to his cabin, so that their roles were again reversed. He shook his head.

  'If you transpose each of these letters w
ith its Roman equivalent you spell the word island.'

  Drinkwater shook his head. 'I do not understand.'

  'If you then translate the word island back into Russian, you have the word Ostroff. It is a passably Russian-sounding name, isn't it?'

  Drinkwater shrugged. 'I suppose so.' 'Do you know who Ostroff is?' 'I haven't the remotest idea.'

  'Oh, come, Captain,' Mackenzie remonstrated disbelievingly. 'You went to the trouble of making a note of his name and in a book that was personally significant.'

  'Mr. Mackenzie,' Drinkwater said severely, 'I do not know what you are implying, but you have obviously invaded my privacy!'

  But Drinkwater's anger was not entirely directed at Mackenzie, furious though he was at the man's effrontery. There had been a reason why he had noted that incomprehensible Russian lettering down in his journal; and though he did not know who Ostroff was, he had his suspicions. He resolved to clear the matter up and settle the doubts that had been provoked by the sight of Nielsen's dispatch.

  'Who the devil is this Ostroff then?'

  Mackenzie smiled that tight, menacing smile, and Drinkwater sensed he knew more than he was saying. 'A spy. An agent in the Russian army. And now perhaps you will trade one confidence for another. Where did you get these letters from? Are you in correspondence with this man?'

  Drinkwater's heart was thumping. Mackenzie's words closed the gap between speculation and certainty.

  'From a dispatch intercepted in the possession of a Danish merchantman which I stopped a week or two ago.'

  'What was the name of the ship?'

  'The Birthe of Grenaa, Captain ...'

  'Nielsen?' interrupted Mackenzie.

  'Yes. Frederic Nielsen.'

  'And what did you do with Nielsen and his dispatch?' 'I let him go with it. I was satisfied that he and it were what they said they were.'

  'But you copied out the name by which the dispatch was signed?' 'Yes.' 'Why?'

  Drinkwater shrugged.

  'Captain, you say you were sure of the authenticity of a dispatch carried by a neutral and you let the vessel go. Yet you were not sure enough not to note down the signatory. Odd, don't you think? Where was the dispatch bound?'