Jo Graham - [Numinous World 05]

by The Emperor's Agent (epub)

  I nodded. Not Michel, in other words. Not a man who might unwittingly give something away.

  "I propose to tell these twenty men the date of the invasion," Lannes said. "Each one of the twenty will be told in strictest confidence a different date in the next two months, each told that it is the real embarkation date. And then we will wait, and see which date comes back to us from our spies in Whitehall. Since each date will only be given to one man, the date that comes back will tell us which man was the source."

  "That's very clever!" I said. "And then we can at least concentrate on one person, or on his contacts. If we knew which man it was coming from this would be much easier."

  "That's the idea," Lannes said. "So let us see what it brings us. Meanwhile, I assume you will be available for Lodge day after tomorrow?"

  "I am at your service," I said.

  The following week passed slowly. My nights were spent scouting for the Lodge, gathering such information as I might while Honoré worked on his idea for a way to successfully attack the air elemental. My days were spent pleasantly enough, fencing and dining with Jean-Baptiste and his friends, most often dressed as Charles, or riding down to the beach or across the fields in the bright summer air.

  I did not see Michel except at Lodge, and we were very polite to one another, though we did not speak deeply or privately. Whatever it was that had so disturbed him remained a mystery to me.

  The week ended, and the next began. The Emperor was scheduled to arrive within days. I began to pester Subervie.

  "We have heard nothing," he said. "Nothing whatsoever. Our men in Whitehall report that there is no change in the British preparedness. One man who is keeping tabs on the incoming correspondence from Lion reports that he has not seen any date discussed, just a general state of high alert."

  "What is he doing?" I asked, pacing toward the seaward window of the office. "What is the spy thinking? Why isn't he sending Captain Arnold the date?"

  "It's possible we don't have the right man at all." I turned to see Subervie tapping the edge of the desk impatiently. "If all the men we told were honest men, then none of them are our spy. Nothing would come back to us."

  I sighed. "If they are all honest men…."

  "Then we have no idea who's doing it. We're right where we were in the beginning."

  "At least we will have cleared the twenty officers," I said. "If they were told the embarkation date and proved not to be the spy, that is something. It is more men we can trust." I did find myself pleased that Honoré had been on the list of twenty, given a date of August 4. Perhaps he was as trustworthy as Jean-Baptiste thought.

  "There is that," Subervie said. "That's pretty much what we're concluding."

  "So what's next? We're back to watching the overlook?" I asked.

  "I think so," Subervie said. "Unless you've other ideas? You're the espionage agent, after all."

  "Yes, of course," I said. I had no idea how to do this. It had been a stroke of luck, finding the spot, but I didn't know what happened next. And if we were back to the broad list again, anyone who might walk along the cliffs, I still had no idea how to narrow it down. "I take it we can at least recruit out of the twenty cleared men to help us keep watch."

  Subervie nodded. "That should be fine. I might tell Honoré myself. I've been wanting to, and he's clever. Maybe he can think of something."

  "That sounds like a fine idea," I said. "Perhaps we should get dinner together and fill him in."

  Honoré leaned back in his chair in the almost deserted restaurant. It was late on a Wednesday, nearly eleven, and in Boulogne people ate earlier than in Paris. The restaurant was nearly empty. "The Emperor arrives day after tomorrow," he said.

  Gervais Subervie nodded.

  "If I were the spy, I'd wait and see what the Emperor was doing here before I reported to Lion again," Honoré said. He looked at Subervie. "Are we getting the embarkation order?"

  Subervie regarded him levelly. "You know I can't tell you that."

  "I know."

  "Everything will be clear when the Emperor arrives," Subervie said. "You can trust me on that, Honoré."

  The waiter leaned in to refill my cup, and I stirred my after dinner coffee. "Whether the embarkation date is next week or next month, we're running out of time. It has to be one of the men assigned to the School of War, or to headquarters. We've got to narrow the list down somehow."

  "No, it doesn't," Honoré said.

  "Doesn't what?" I was perplexed.

  "You were born upper class, weren't you?" he asked.

  "In the sense of having parents with pretensions to gentility, if that's what you mean." I felt a bit odd, classing my parents as upper class when I suspected my father was little more than an adventurer.

  "But you were raised in nice houses, weren't you?" Honoré pursued. "Didn't wash your own clothes or dishes? Didn't do your own cooking?"

  "No," I said.

  Honoré looked at Subervie meaningfully over the rim of his coffee cup. "How many people are in this conversation?"

  "Three." Gervais stopped, and I saw his face change. "Four."

  Honoré nodded. "That's right."

  "What?" I said, confused.

  The former busboy nodded gravely. "The waiter."

  "It doesn't have to be a man assigned to the School of War or to Headquarters," Honore said. "There are a hundred servants in and out. You don't even see them. And you don't see the way they come and go." He gave me a cockeyed smile. "I saw that when we tried to break into your old lodging. You had two ways to do it -- through the front door or through the window. But there's a back door too, and the back door is usually open. Probably we could have just walked around the back and come in through the kitchen, but it never even occurred to you. Well-bred people aren't supposed to see servants. They're just there." He glanced at Subervie. "The busboy is supposed to be invisible."

  "If he's not it's because he's dropped the china," Subervie said. "That's the only time people notice him. And yes, he's supposed to be invisible. Guests aren't supposed to pay him any attention. It's rude."

  "It's a sign of poor breeding," Honoré said. "Don't you think so, when men are ogling the waitress or watching the parlormaid?"

  I let out a deep breath. "Oh, my God."

  "We're not looking for a soldier. We're looking for a servant," Honoré said. "Someone who goes in and out all the time, someone who's supposed to be there. Someone we never see. How secret is a Lodge meeting after all? Do you think the buffet appears out of thin air?"

  Subervie snorted. "I've no excuse for missing that. I've thought about it, actually. The setting up and serving while we're still robed and half the time still talking about what we're doing. The footmen can see this is no staff meeting. They have to see it."

  "Yes," Honoré said. "A servant to a senior officer, either at Headquarters or the School of War."

  I shook my head, baffled by my own idiocy. "Michel had the cipher out on his desk. Someone must make his bed, empty his chamber pot. There must be servants in and out. You're right. I never see them. And I'd never thought about it."

  "We don’t even know who half of them are," Subervie said. "If they're not military personnel, they're locals hired by the permanent staff. Boulogne Castle, for example, has a permanent chatelaine who's here all the time, Madame Dumont. She's completely in charge of hiring and firing household staff. I only deal with the military personnel who are directly assigned to Headquarters or to the staff of V Corps."

  "Are they all local?" I asked. "Or as busy as it is, as much extra work as there is, would it be reasonable to hire someone from outside who came with references?"

  "It probably would be," Honoré said.

  Subervie sighed. "And over in Montreuil who's doing the hiring?"

  "We hired a lot of people locally," Honoré said. "And there are a bunch of enlisted men's wives who take in the laundry. Sophie Henri is the one who does mine and who cleans my room. I have no idea who does anyone else's. It's no
t my job. I'm cavalry training right now, so my attention's on the stables."

  "We're going to have to close the meetings and close Headquarters," I said. "If we can't know who we've already got, the only thing to do is assign military personnel to all the support tasks in Headquarters. It's a precaution for the Emperor's visit or something like that."

  "Soldiers gossip," Subervie said. "I'm not sure it's more secure."

  "It's more secure than the spy we know we have," Honoré pointed out. "Yes, some private from the Vosges can be plied with drink and pumped for information, but that's not as bad as what we've got. Besides, it will take time for our man to do that. We can stall him for a week or more with this."

  "I'm not sure that helps," Subervie said thoughtfully.

  I saw Honore's eyes flicker, and I knew he had heard the same thing I had: that it wasn't a matter of stalling for a few days until the Emperor arrived and we embarked. If it were, delaying him would be all we needed. No, there would be no embarkation next week, and Subervie didn't seem to realize he'd said it.

  "Close the Headquarters except to military personnel," I said. "And we'll have to step up surveillance on the coast." I looked at Subervie. "I don't suppose Marshal Lannes can tell me when the embarkation is."

  Subervie met my eyes candidly. "He said your efforts would be the same regardless, and therefore it was not necessary."

  "True enough," I said. My work would be the same whether we planned for early, mid or late August. And the fewer people who knew the fewer who could let something slip.

  "I'll take a turn watching," Honoré said. "The more the better. We're going to have to catch someone actually signaling."

  "When the Emperor is here," I said. "That's the thing. That's when the British will be desperate to get news, when they're expecting embarkation. All the servants know the Emperor is coming. What if we give them something to report?"

  "A boat drill," Subervie said. "I can set up a boat drill for V Corps in the middle of the night when the Emperor's here. A demonstration for him that we can embark in an hour and a half, men, horses and guns. You can see it from the town, so there will be plenty of people who know. And then we watch the overlook."

  "I'll do it myself," I said.

  "I'll come with you," Honoré said. "I'm with the School of War, so I'm not involved in V Corps' boat drill, unlike Subervie who'll have to be there."

  "Let's give them something to look at," I said with satisfaction, "And see what we can catch."

  "A plan," Honoré said, pushing himself back from the table. "Now I need to go read Diodorus tonight."

  Gervais swore. "Oh the damned exercise tomorrow! What are we doing, anyway?"

  "Ptolemy versus Perdiccas. The Battle of Memphis. Don't you ever read your homework?" Honoré asked. "It's only ten pages of Diodorus in translation."

  "Is this the bloody war elephants? And who's supposed to win, anyway?"

  "Yes," Honoré said, grinning. "The bloody elephants. And Ptolemy wins."

  "Very handily," I said. I had always been rather fond of Ptolemy.

  "I don't see why we have to study war elephants," Subervie grumbled. "Unless there's a new Prussian Elephant Corps I don't know about, or we decide to invade India."

  "You never know," I said. "The Maratha princes have envoys in Paris right now about an alliance against the British. They want arms and support for a mass rising centered on Delhi and Hyderabad. A treaty with Napoleon would give them a lot. You might be off to India sooner than you think."

  Honoré gave me a sideways look. "And where would the Emperor's agent be in that?"

  "I'd be off to Delhi in a heartbeat if Napoleon asked it of me," I said. "I imagine it would be fascinating." I took a sip of my long-cold coffee. "The exercise tomorrow -- out of curiosity, what are you playing?"

  "I've got Ptolemy's cavalry," Honoré said. He looked at me keenly. "Want to come watch?"

  "Could I?"

  "I don't see why not. We've had a bunch of guests in there before, and there's nothing particularly secret about the outcome of a battle two thousand years ago. Come along if you like, Madame."

  Michel would be there, probably. But then, was that a reason not to do something that I really wanted to?

  "I'll come," I promised.

  I suppose I had expected that the exercises were conducted in an office, or perhaps in some sort of cabinet room, but the actual facility looked more like a mess hall. It was a big flat building constructed of wood, with broad windows on all four sides that let in a wealth of summer sunlight as well as a pleasant cross breeze. In the middle of the room was a massive table fully twenty feet square, made up of several smaller tables intended to fit together. Around it, as around a giant billiards table, were a bunch of billiard cues. There were smaller tables around the walls, one of them bearing a coffee service for the fifteen or so men who milled about, some of them already without their coats in the warmth of the morning. They scrambled to put them back on when they saw me, as I was dressed nicely in women's clothes today, a white lawn dress with a turquoise shawl.

  Honoré came over to greet me eagerly. "Let me show you the set up," he said, leading me to the table. "Jomini and his assistant were here at six getting ready. You know Jomini, don't you? The Swiss volunteer that Marshal Ney has commissioned because of his work on the theoretical nature of warfare?"

  "I’ve not met him yet," I said. He was one of the men I'd had my suspicions of, though he had been given the date of July 30 and it had not come back from Whitehall.

  "He'll be here in a bit," Honoré said. "He runs the simulations and keeps us from killing one another." He ran one long hand along the edge of the table. "So here's the set up."

  "It's gorgeous," I said, and it was.

  The table was covered in what appeared to be a very elaborate chart, depicting in beautiful colored detail the banks of the Nile. At the far left was laid out the city of Memphis, her white walls coming down almost to the river, while on the right bank of the Nile were trees and fields colored green to indicate growing crops. In the middle of the Nile a little upstream from Memphis was an island.

  I frowned. "Why are the fields green?"

  "I think the battle was fought in June. Why?" Honoré asked. "Shouldn't they be?"

  "I don't know," I said, but it bothered me. It did not seem right that the battle was fought with crops in the field. The fields should lie fallow.

  "The chart is based on Diodorus," he said, "And on Denon's sketches of Egypt when he was there. He did a few charts himself for us to use as reference."

  "Do you mark up that lovely thing?" I asked. The playing surface looked almost like a work of art itself.

  "No, we use toys." Honoré grinned. "I'll show you." He fetched a box from the side table and opened it. It looked like a set of little wooden toy soldiers, each with his armor painted golden and a tiny red plume on his helmet, each clutching a tiny sarissa. "Each one counts as twenty men. We can arrange them and move them about, because the chart is made to scale. That way we can visualize the entire battle and we never mark up the chart. You can see the current positions of all units." He handed me another box.

  "Those are lovely," I said, picking out one of the perfect miniature elephants, its caparisons painted gold and scarlet, an archer on its back with bow drawn.

  "Each elephant counts as two," Honoré said. "They take up more room. Here are my favorites."

  He opened a third box. Against the black batiste lining were a dozen horse archers, each one painted in exquisite detail, dark beards and dark eyes. One horse tossed her head, while another archer was arrested in the motion of reaching over his shoulder for a fresh arrow. "Persian horse archers. I've used these a bunch of times now." He gave them a friendly pat. "They always come through for me."

  "Do you have any today?" I asked.

  "I'll have five of them," Honoré said. "To be Ptolemy's fifty horse archers with the cavalry."

  "Don't you think fifty is too many?" I blurted.

/>   Honoré winked. "I do, but I'm not complaining about having a few extra! After all, Diodorus doesn’t say exactly how many Ptolemy had left at this point, and Jomini has decided it's five facings, not three." He dropped his voice. "So don't tell him he's wrong!"

  "I wouldn't dream of it," I assured him. I had no idea why Honoré and I should both think there ought to be thirty. It was somewhat disturbing.

  I looked up and straight into Michel's eyes. He did not look away, but just nodded at me as though I were a friendly acquaintance. Which was, in its own way, worse.

  "Ptolemy's men, over here!" Subervie had come in and was calling out. "Everybody who's one of Ptolemy's men, come here!" He waved a hand with a cup of coffee in it. "Conference time, my brothers!"

  "Excuse me," Honoré said, "I need to go." He handed me the box of archers.

  "Of course." He and four or five others joined Subervie in the corner, heads together, no doubt plotting mayhem. I wished I could join them.

  I didn't have to look around to know that Michel had come to stand beside me. "You're not one of Ptolemy's men?"

  "No," he said. "I'm afraid not. I'm Perdiccas today."

  "And who's Ptolemy?"

  "Subervie." Michel cleared his throat. "Lannes is tied up with the Emperor arriving tomorrow."

  I turned and met his eyes, so very blue and so grave. "Perdiccas dies," I said.

  "Only because he loses," Michel said. "Murdered by his own men for losing. If he'd won, he'd have prevailed."

  "I'm not sure Seleucus would have suffered him long," I said. "Or Roxane." It was hardly fair that our minds worked the same, that we could slide through the centuries like this, in perfect accord.

  "Perdiccas and Roxane got on well enough," Michel said easily. "But he wasn't much of a general. He was adequate, but that was an age of giants."

  "So is this," I said.

  He nodded, then gave me a sideways smile. "But I'm still better than Perdiccas ever was!" He raised his voice and his arm. "Perdiccas' men! Over here! Come over here if you're with Perdiccas!"

  I stepped back and let him confer, thinking it would not be fair to hear what he said. After all, I was quite certain I wanted Ptolemy to win.