The Barbary Pirates (6 page)

“But all I know of Thira is the name.”

“So you say. Yet what a remarkable coincidence that so much attention is being paid to an obscure rock on the Aegean Sea. And you, Ethan Gage, return from America after association with the British and seek out the American inventor Fulton, the British surveyor Smith, and a French expert on ancient cataclysms. How conspiratorial! The idea of using a bordello as cover was really quite ingenious.”

“It was Madame Marguerite who lured us.”

“Come, Gage, we know each other too well for you to play the fool with me,” Napoleon said. “This charade of bumbling confusion is all very amusing, but you insert yourself in every mystery and conspiracy there is. Nor do I think your esteemed friends would associate with a rake and wastrel like yourself unless there was advantage to be gained. You meet the Rite in the bowels of the Palais Royal, start a fire, initiate a riot, run down your competitors, and pretend to ignorance? All of us know you must be in pursuit of what’s been long rumored.”

“First Consul!” Cuvier cried. “I swear I know nothing about his plotting!”

“Of course not,” Bonaparte said mildly. “Gage is using you. Using all of you. He’s a devious rascal, a master of intrigue, and if he were French I’ve no doubt Fouché would have recruited him to the police long ago. Is that not true, Minister?”

“Even now I do not fully understand his motives and alliances,” Fouché admitted.

I, of course, had not the slightest idea of what was going on, and was trying to decide if I should be proud or insulted by this new description of me as brilliant, devious, and a master of intrigue. All I’d seen was the word “Thira” on a scrap of golden foil in the middle of the American wilderness—a Norse Templar artifact, according to my late companion Magnus Bloodhammer—and nothing else. Still, if the police were so smart, maybe I could learn something from them.

“I’m also looking for Og,” I tried. That was written on the foil, too, before Aurora Somerset made a mess of the whole thing. She was the reason I’d sworn off women.

At that word, Fouché stiffened and looked at me warily. Cuvier, too, stared curiously. But it was Napoleon who’d gone white.

“What did you say?” the first consul asked.

“Og.” It sounded silly even to me.

The first consul glanced questioningly at my three companions, and then addressed the others. “I think Monsieur Gage and I need a moment alone.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

We walked fifty paces from the group and stopped by the pond shore
, out of hearing from anyone else. “Where did you hear that word?” Napoleon asked sharply.

“In America.”

“America! How?”

I sighed. It was the first time I’d even tried to relate what really happened, and I didn’t expect anyone to believe me. “You may remember a Norwegian named Bloodhammer who visited Mortefontaine when we celebrated the treaty between France and my own country,” I began. “He found a place in the Louisiana Territory, far beyond the frontier, which had Norse artifacts.” I decided not to mention anything more about the bewildering site. “One was a gold metal sheet, encased in a rotting shield, which had writing that bore that word. It stuck in my mind because it was so odd.”

“What else did it say?” Bonaparte looked disturbed, almost queasy.

“The inscription was in Latin, which I can’t read. I could only make out a few words and then a fight broke out and the foil was destroyed. It happened in a struggle with a British woman from the Egyptian Rite, actually—quite a long story.” No need to mention I’d been her lover. “Just as I was telling you, I was fighting the British, not spying for them.”

“So you don’t know what it means?”

“No. Do you?”

He frowned, looking out across the pond. The cluster of aides and police were looking at us curiously from a distance, envious of my sudden intimacy with their leader. “Gage,” he finally asked quietly, “have you ever heard of the Little Red Man?”

At the mention of that curious French legend I had the odd feeling I was being watched from an attic window of the pretty château. I turned, but there was nothing to see, of course: its small rectangular dormer windows were dark and blank. Josephine had withdrawn inside as well. “I’ve heard rumor. Everyone has.”

“Do you believe in the supernatural?”

I cleared my throat. “I’ve seen odd things.”

“The Little Red Man is a gnomelike creature dressed and concealed in a red hooded cloak. His face is always in shadow, but he is short and bent with long brown fingers. Sometimes you can see the gleam of eyes. Watchful eyes. Disturbing eyes that know far too much.”

“All France knows the tale, but it’s only a story.”

“No, he is real. He first appeared to Catherine de’Medici, and by reputation lives most commonly in the attic of the Tuileries Palace that she built. He appeared to French royalty on occasion, usually in times of crisis. To me it was just a fable as well, the kind of myth to amuse children. But then I saw him in Egypt.”

“General!”

He nodded, lost in remembrance. “I’ve never been so frightened. It was shortly before the Battle of the Pyramids. He came into my field tent at the night’s darkest hour, when I’d exhausted all my aides and was the only one still awake. I’d just heard of Josephine’s infidelities and was beside myself with rage and sorrow, and couldn’t sleep.”

I remembered in Egypt when Junot related to me his unhappy task of informing the general of his wife’s unfaithfulness, revealed by pilfered letters that had been sent from France.

“A doctor would say it was hallucination, of course. But the creature spoke of the future in a deep, sly voice with a tone I’ve never heard before or since. He was not of our world, Gage, but as real as your three savants standing by the pond over there. And then he began to prophesy.”

That day in Egypt, Napoleon had seemed possessed.

“Later I had similar visions in the Great Pyramid—you’ll remember when I lay in the sarcophagus? But troubling ones as well! In any event, the Little Red Man promised me at least ten years of success to accomplish what I need to accomplish, which is why I was so confused by my loss to you and that obstinate Sidney Smith at the siege of Acre. I was not supposed to lose! But I didn’t lose, in the end, because my defeat ultimately directed me back to Paris to take charge here, thanks to your Rosetta key. The Little Red Man had known after all.”

So was I some blind instrument of fate, setting in motion events I didn’t understand? “What has this got to do with Og?”

“The creature said I should seek its ruins, because a machine of great power was at stake. If it fell into the wrong hands it could disrupt my destiny.”

“Ruins where?”

“I’ve ordered research into just that question. Gog and Magog, it seems, are referred to in the Bible, and are sometimes interpreted as lands at the ends of the earth. Og itself is a Celtic reference to a distant, powerful kingdom. I wonder if there was some common, root language.”

Magnus had believed in long-ago civilizations and forgotten powers.

“This machine had something to do with Og, I was told. The Little Red Man said he’d warned French leaders at critical times before, and that I must remember that word because I would hear it again someday. I remembered the sound of it—Og—because it was so odd, but I hadn’t heard it spoken again until now.” He stared. “By you.”

Despite myself, I felt a shiver. “I don’t know any Little Red Man.”

“But you do find ancient things, and fate keeps bringing us together. You’re an agent of destiny, Ethan Gage, which is why I’ve remained intrigued by you. I’ve told no one of Og, and very few of the Little Red Man, and yet you bear that word. You, the wayward American.”

“It was simply written down. I’d no time to make sense of it.”

“Sense! Sometimes I think I’m as lunatic as my brothers.” Napoleon’s odd family was, of course, the source of endless gossip in Paris. The more he tried to elevate his relatives to positions of responsibility, the sharper the public witticisms in cataloging their faults.

“My elder brother Joseph only wants to be rich, and he’s loyal enough,” Bonaparte confided. “But Lucien is venal and jealous, and Jerome is reportedly smitten by some ship-owner’s daughter in Baltimore. Baltimore!” He said it as if it were a barbarian fiefdom. “I forced Louis to marry Josephine’s daughter, Hortense, this last January, but Louis doesn’t really like women and Hortense loves one of my aides. She spent the night before her wedding weeping.”

Why he confessed all this to me I don’t know, but men sometimes tell me things because they figure me inconsequential. Of course the actual Paris gossip was more malicious than
that
. Napoleon’s brother Lucien had started a rumor that Napoleon forced the marriage of Hortense and Louis because Napoleon, her stepfather, had impregnated her himself in his desperation to father an heir. Hortense’s marriage, so the gossip went, would legitimize a potential successor. Certainly Hortense was heavy with child, but who made it, and when, was open to speculation. I was wise enough not to ask.

“You’re not a lunatic,” I said sympathetically, to ingratiate myself. I can be a shameless courtier. “You just bear the weight of rule.”

“Yes, yes. Ah, Gage. You cannot imagine how carefree you are, floating free of responsibility!”

“But I’m trying to influence the future of Louisiana.”

“Forget Louisiana. Nothing is going to happen with Louisiana until the situation in Haiti is resolved. The blacks fight on and on.” He scowled. “And now you bring back memory of the gnome! He came into my tent past all my guards. His cloak dragged on the sand, making a track like a snake’s.” His voice was hollow, his eyes distant.

“But we don’t know where Og was.”

“Yes we do. Og is a word scholars associate with Atlantis.”

“Atlantis?” Hadn’t the gold foil borne that word as well? “And where is
that
, exactly?” I’d heard of it, of course—Magnus Bloodhammer had talked of it in America, savants had debated its geography, and we’d even speculated it was the source of mysterious copper mines in the wilderness—but I wasn’t sure of the details.

“Atlantis is Plato’s story—a fabulous kingdom named for Atlas that was destroyed in some upheaval. Legend has that it was advanced and sought to assert its influence over the entire world. The common belief is that it was distant, like Og, perhaps. Beyond Gibraltar, what the Greeks called the Pillars of Hercules.”

“So what has Og to do with Thira?”

“Perhaps because they are not far apart after all. My geographers tell me there’s a place on the coast of Greece also referred to as the Pillars of Hercules. In Egypt, my savants mentioned Thira as the source of a cataclysm great enough to have spawned the Atlantis story. What if that island was the fabled kingdom? Or what if its destruction sank an Atlantis nearby?”

Sank Og? Which perhaps came from a language that might have been used by half-mythical beings, I thought, remembering my earlier adventures. Of godlike creatures named Thoth or Thor, whose footsteps I’d followed. Again there was this speculation about our mysterious forebears, remembered now as gods or legends. Where had we, or our civilization, really come from?

“It is simply myth,” Napoleon continued. “Or is it? What if this Og/Atlantis really existed, and left something behind that evil seeks? In recent decades there has been frantic research into the legends of the ancients, driven by the popularity of Freemasonry and new archaeological discoveries. Some artifacts have even been found.” He meant the Book of Thoth I’d pilfered, I was sure. “So what else is out there? Why is this Egyptian Rite so persistent in its search? I believe nothing, and yet I can’t afford not to believe. These are things that might decide battles, dynasties, or wars. And so, once again I am face-to-face with you.”

I swallowed, remembering Thor’s hammer: a myth that had almost fried me alive. “You want me to determine the truth of these rumors?”

“There are reports speculating that there are secrets to be found on Thira, an island of no political significance.”

“My colleagues think it has geologic significance.”

“Which is why you’re here instead of in jail. Come, let’s confer with the others—but not a word about my Red Man. If you speak of this day, I’ll have you shot.”

“Secrets are my specialty.”

He glanced skeptically, but what choice did he have? We were two rascals in expedient partnership. We walked back to rejoin the group, Napoleon’s hands clasped behind his back as if to control his own intensity. My three scientific colleagues were regarding me with new respect after my quiet tête-à-tête with the first consul.

“We were discussing Plato’s fiction of Atlantis,” Bonaparte explained to the others.

“Except some scholars believe it might have been real,” Fouché amended. He had the sleepy watchfulness of a cat, his mind calculating truths and evasions like a warehouse full of ledger clerks. “And that it might have left something behind.”

“Which, however unlikely, you are to investigate,” Napoleon now told us briskly, rubbing his hands together as if to shake a chill. “The rumor is that this object may have been left on this island. Yet if I send a military expedition to Thira, it will set off a war with the Ottomans I don’t need. But a party of savants? Who cares what scientists do? With luck you can slip in and out without being seen. If not, you’re simply on a mission to explore an old volcano. They’ll think you’re harmless eccentrics.”

“What
object?” Cuvier asked.

“This will interest Fulton,” Fouché said. “The rumor is that a terrible weapon from ancient times may still exist, or at least the knowledge of how to build it. The nature of this weapon isn’t clear, but speculation is that the nation who gets it first will control the Mediterranean, and perhaps the world.”

“You mean it’s some kind of ancient war machine?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to see that.” Fulton was as drawn to machines as I am to women.

“When we learned the Egyptian Rite was seeking a meeting with Ethan Gage, we knew we had to act. It’s imperative that we learn the truth of these rumors before something monstrous falls into the wrong hands.”