Jack Absolute (10 page)

He leaped the stairs three at a time. On the deck, his eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness after the brightness of
the cabin-stage. When they did, he saw her straight away. She was poised at the top of the ship’s ladder, watching her maid,
Nancy, descend.

‘Eloping, Louisa? Doesn’t that take two?’

She started, turned at his voice. ‘Jack.’

‘You did not tell me you were leaving this night.’

‘My father has arranged lodgings in the town. After five weeks cramped at sea …’ Her voice trailed off.

‘Were you not going to say farewell?’

‘I hate farewells, Jack. Detest them. Nancy spent much time in the shading of my eyes for the play and promised she would
punish me if I let them run. Besides, I do not leave to join my father and his regiment at St John’s for a few days. I will
see you in the town, without the weight of a shipboard goodbye upon us.’

‘I hope there will be the time. I believe the General plans to keep me busy.’

‘I am certain he does. But I accompany the campaign, remember. We will have much time together. You will grow sick at the
sight of me.’

There was a falseness to her tone, as if she were still in the play.

Suddenly Jack realized why.

‘Von Schlaben upset you, didn’t he? I saw you here … before. His hand on you. I have reasons aplenty to loathe him already,
but if he has caused you a moment’s unease—’

‘Nay, Jack. Pay him no mind. I …’ She hesitated, then sighed. ‘Yes, I will admit it. He did fluster me. I knew him a little
in London, and—’

Jack frowned. ‘I recall you said you’d met him. You never said your acquaintance had gone so far as to allow him to touch
you.’ Jack did not like his tone of voice, but her silence made him continue with it. ‘I find it strange that you did not
talk of him before now, Louisa. Considering what passed between he and I.’

‘Why strange?’ Her face flushed. ‘After all, it was only this evening that you chose to tell me of To … ne …’

‘Tonesaha?’ Jack shook his head, bemused. ‘How … how is that the same?

Her jaw was pointed at him like an accusation. ‘You chose not to once mention this love on the voyage bringing us to the land
where you loved her.’

‘Why on earth would I have done?’

‘Exactly, Jack. Exactly. And neither have you once mentioned the supposed reason for the duel.’ At his blank look, she added,
‘The actress?’ When he flinched, her tone softened and she stepped closer. ‘I apologize, Jack. I … I do not tax you with this.
I merely observe that when one is … paying and receiving addresses, it is not customary to talk of previous loves.’

Chill replaced his heat. ‘Von Schlaben was your lover?’

‘Of course not! The very idea!’ She shuddered. ‘I found him loathsome before I ever heard either of his designs upon you or
the little the General has told me of his Illuminati’s designs upon my country.’ She laid a gloved hand on his arm. ‘But we
cannot always be understood the way we intend. In his imagination, it seems he took my coolest politeness as encouragement.
Perhaps that is how the women woo their men in Germany.’

She laughed, briefly, but Jack did not join her, his mind still full of this new reason to hate the Count.

She saw the look on his face. ‘I am sorry, Jack. It was why I was so poor in the play tonight, why I am so hasty in my
departure. I do not wish to be in his company any longer. And as for you and I … we will see each other tomorrow, or the day
after, in the town. So do not look so glum.’

Below them, on the water, Nancy had settled into the bow of the little wherry. The boatman, a stockinged wool hat pulled well
down over a swarthy face, called up. His accent was rough, of the town.

Louisa half-turned. ‘What did he say?’

‘He asked that you hurry as he has a young wife warming a bed. Do you not speak French?’

‘Hardly a word. Heigh-ho for an American education!’

The boatman called up again, a string of oaths.

‘I will see you on shore, Jack Absolute. And on the march. We will have our time again, I know.’

She reached up and their lips collided, something desperate in the kiss, and before he knew it he was handing her down the
ladder. The boatman was there, guiding her feet to the rungs. Then she was in the boat, settled in the stern, oars were in
the water and the craft pulled swiftly away, aimed at the docks.

Jack watched her, the set of her shoulders. She did not once look back. But halfway to the wharf, one hand was raised in sudden
farewell.

The gloom of night took the boat. Still he stared, going through the words he had not spoken, that perhaps would remain unspoken
now.

When at last he returned to his cabin, he was looking forward to the distraction from his thoughts that the code would furnish.
Pellew’s snores provided a varied musical backdrop. With a newly sharpened pencil he copied the numbers on to the top half
of a clean sheet of paper. Then he bent over the page, focusing first on the blank area, then letting his eyes drift up till
they were full of the numbers laid out in six lines:

71685459656355545569642

52646369765269527452766964597

656953765351

62765272745959626551526566

5560577561595165

123

Assuming each letter would be represented by a number, he knew a single numeral would be too easy, three per letter too complex.
It was probably a pair per letter – though this left an uneven number on the first two lines and the last.

He would come back to that. Swiftly he used a pencil to mark off pairs, leaving the ends of those first two lines as threesomes.
There were clusters, flows of linked numbers – 555455 in the first line. That could be a consonant, bonded with vowels, he
thought – ‘ini’ for example, as in ‘dining.’

He looked for the lowest number of the pairs, found it in the third, fourth, and fifth lines – 51. If 51 was ‘A’, then 52
was ‘B’ and so on.

He swiftly wrote out a crib on a separate page. Then taking the third line, he matched each paired number to its letters and
wrote out the result: Osczca.

A code within a code? A name? Acronym? Even an anagram? For half an hour he tried to make one, first in English, then in French.
He tried the other lines and got equal nonsense – though these yielded up some surprising, useless (and two quite rude) anagrams.
Nothing worked.

Throwing down his pencil, he rose and went for a turn around the deck. When he came back he stood above the page, looked again
at the lines of numbers … and suddenly saw what he might have missed. Perhaps, as a further concealment, the code writer had
altered the starting letter for each line? If there
had
been a ‘51’ on the first line it would have been ‘A’. On the second line, ‘51’ would then have been
‘B’. Thus on the third line, where ‘51’ actually did appear, it would be the third letter, ‘C’. Scratching swiftly, he made
a new crib for the third line: 51 was ‘C’, 52 was ‘D’ and so on. When he got to ‘Z’ at 74, ‘A’ became 75, ‘B’
76.
He then substituted the numbers for this new order of letters and wrote out a different version of line three.

It was a single word: Quebec.

Excited now, a new crib for each line was the matter of moments. Soon almost the entire message was laid out before him. After
a struggle he concluded that the threesomes at the end of the first two lines – 642 and 597 – were just that – numbers, codes
for agents’ names, to be used in future communications.

There was only the last little scribble that took Jack another ten minutes to figure out and when he did he could only laugh.
He’d been looking for concealment and it was the one unencoded part of the message. And the only part in French.

1–2–3, it read, the ‘1’ with a line through it. Un-deux-trois. Un-de-trois. One of three.

All spymasters would send multiple messages as so many were intercepted. This, recovered from a silver bullet and a man’s
guts, was the first of three.

Jack threw down his pencil and rubbed his eyes. Through the porthole, a faint light was glowing in the east. He would sleep
for two hours and then he would report.

He lay down, tired now, thinking that, despite the droning from Pellew’s bunk, he would fall asleep fast. But it wasn’t his
fellow Cornishman’s snores that kept him awake. It was the memory of a boat rowing away from him, bearing Louisa, their last
conversation full of his suspicion and jealousy. He’d been foolish. On the morrow, ashore in Quebec, he would make amends.

His firm knock at Burgoyne’s cabin door the next morning
was answered with an equally firm, ‘Enter!’ The General was standing at the table’s end, a steaming mug in one hand, a long
fork in the other. Before him was a plate of what could only be kidneys. In their campaign together in Spain in 1762, the
General had conceived an enormous appetite for them in ‘the Spanish Style’. The acrid smell of offal, masked by the sweetness
of sherry, filled the room, causing Jack’s stomach to give a warning leap. He was not overfond of mornings. And the indulgence
of the night before, coupled with his lack of sleep, now sat heavily upon him.

‘Grab a fork, Jack. These arrived by the first rowboat, compliments of the Governor.’ Burgoyne stabbed down and waved pinkish
flesh at him. ‘Quite delicious. D’ye know, I am as hungry as a hunter this morning. Can’t think why.’

A loud giggle was heard from the corner of the cabin. The screen that had concealed actors the previous night now concealed
something else. Burgoyne gave him a pronounced wink.

Jack tried a smile. ‘Just some of that coffee, if I may, sir.’

At Burgoyne’s nod, Jack filled a cup from the jug. The General, who was merely in shirt and stockings, now reached for his
breeches.

‘Shall I call your servant, sir?’

‘Have you unravelled the mystery?’

‘I have.’

‘Then I think I can dress myself while you explain it.’

Jack raised his eyebrows towards the screen. Burgoyne shook his head. ‘Impeccable source, Absolute. Do not concern yourself
there.’

Jack sighed. One thing that made his trade more difficult was the wilful disregard by senior commanders of secrecy. Still,
he laid the piece of paper he carried on the table’s end, and tried not to inhale too much of the kidneys’ rich steam.

Beneath each numerical puzzle-line was its solution and Burgoyne slowly read each one out.

U R DIOMEDES
642

CONTACT BY CATO
597

QUEBEC

OBEY ALL ORDERS

INK COMES

Burgoyne’s finger rested on the name. ‘Diomedes?’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me if it was our late guest last night, sir. This supplies him with his agent name. The three numbers at
the end of the line – 642 – will be his number code.’

Burgoyne tapped the butt of his fork on the paper. ‘And Cato, 597?’

‘I would suggest he is Diomedes’s immediate superior. “Ink Comes” means they are moving from pure codes to codes in invisible
ink.’

‘As will we, no doubt?’

‘Indeed.’ Jack hesitated. But he felt he must try one last time. ‘Sir, I am convinced Von Schlaben is at the heart of all
this. Do you still wish him to remain … unmolested?’

‘Oh, I think so. You forget another thing, Jack. The Count is Baron von Riedesel’s cousin. We are going to have enough trouble
merging with our German allies without knocking off their commander’s kin.’ Burgoyne laughed. ‘No, my boy. You leave the Count
to me. I’ll keep him on a tight leash, believe me. And when I have learned all I need to from him, when we have discovered
all there is to know of these Illuminati, why then, my boy,’ Burgoyne stabbed his fork down, impaling the last glistening
kidney, ‘
I
will deal with him.’

Burgoyne chewed, swallowed, sighed with joy, and dropped the fork on to the plate; then he reached for his black stock. Jack
took it, moved behind.

‘Thank you, Jack.’ He began to tie the cloth around the General’s neck and Burgoyne leaned forward, pulling a map
towards him. ‘You have demonstrated once again, dear Jack, how valuable you are to me as an agent. I would keep you by my
side throughout the campaign if I could and I hate to part with you. But, much as I need you here, I have something even more
important for you to do, which will suit another of your peculiar talents. I decided not to expand on it last night in, uh,
mixed company.’ The General jabbed down at a spot on the map. ‘Know it?’

His finger rested just on the edge of a large expanse of water.

‘Lake Ontario. More specifically, I believe you are pointing at Oswego.’

‘Exactly. Oswego. A good rallying point, wouldn’t you say? Word will go out to the Six Nations of the Iroquois – and any other
savage who cares to gather there – “Come to the biggest party you’ve ever seen. Come for powder, presents, and plenty of rum.”
Should prove irresistible, what?’

Jack knew it would, and the knowledge saddened him. His Mohawk brethren, every other tribe, Iroquois or not, were now dependent
on these handouts from the Great White Father, King George. It didn’t mean they would fight, necessarily. But impressive gifts
and substantial supplies of rum were powerful persuaders.

Jack looked at the map again. The Mohawk River flowed inland, down the valley of the same name, the heartland of his adopted
people, through rich farmlands of settlers, both Loyal and Rebel, and on to a place the General had talked of the night before,
where a continent could be won.

‘You’ve seen it, ain’t ye?’

‘I believe so, sir. A third force, striking along the Mohawk. To rendezvous with you and General Howe at Albany.’

‘Ah, Jack! You should have stayed in the army, my boy, not run off to India to make money. You’d have been a general yourself
by now.’

‘I couldn’t have afforded the purchases.’ Jack still stared down at the map. ‘And the size of the expedition?’

‘A small force of Regulars. Perhaps some Germans. Can’t spare many from the main thrust. But there’ll be two Loyalist regiments
at least and our friend Skene assures me that the Mohawk Valley is filled with others waiting to rally to our standards. But
the main threat will come from your Indians.’ Burgoyne, his stock finished, rose and laid a hand on Jack’s shoulder. ‘Dazzled
by our generosity, they’ll sign up in droves. I’ve already sent to that Iroquois leader, Joseph Brant. You know him, don’t
you?’