Baltic Mission (19 page)

‘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 ofhis 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: NC
AH
.

‘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 with 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?'

‘I do not think that a proper question to answer, Mackenzie. I am not sure I should be answering any of these questions. I am not sure I ought not to have you in irons . . .'

‘Captain,' said Mackenzie in a suddenly menacing tone, ‘mine is a dangerous trade in which I trust no one. I am curious as to whom you thought this man was; why you copied out this signature. It is almost
inconceivable that any obviously trusted servant of their Lordships of the Admiralty should behave traitorously . . .'

Drinkwater was on his feet and had leaned across the table. He spat the words through clenched teeth, beside himself with rage:

‘How dare you, you bastard! You have no right to come aboard here and make such accusations! Who the hell are you to accuse me of treason? Get out of my seat! You stand
here
and make
your
report to
me
, before I have this ship put about for The Sound and confine you in the bilboes!'

‘By God, Captain, I apologise . . . I see I have misjudged you.' Mackenzie stood and confronted Drinkwater. ‘I think you have reassured me on that point at least . . .'

‘Have a care . . .'

‘Captain, you
must
hear me out. It is a matter of the utmost importance, I assure you. I know you have had previous contact with Lord Dungarth's Secret Department; I assume from what you implied earlier that you have some freedom in the interpretation of your orders, perhaps from his Lordship. I also assume that you let Frederic Nielsen proceed because he had a dispatch addressed to Joseph Devlieghere at Antwerp . . . Ah, I see you find that reassuring . . . Tell me, Captain, did you ever know a man called Brown?'