Vendetta: The Dorset Boy - Book 6

by Christopher C Tubbs

  The door opened and through it walked Rear Admiral Sir Alexander Ball, tall elegant with grey hair tied in a Navy cue with a black silk ribbon. Marty stood, along with the others and bowed.

  “You are underdressed captain, if somewhat over-armed.” The Admiral commented as he shook Marty’s hand. Just then the servant returned so Marty excused himself, retrieved his pistols from Sam, replaced them on his harness and put his coat on after thanking the man.

  “I think that’s better my Lord,” Marty grinned as he tugged his coat back into place.

  The Admiral nodded in approval. “Collinwood wrote to me about you and your excellent physician, he omitted to mention you are a walking armoury.”

  “Just the tools of the trade sir.”

  “Quite, a special unit attached to Naval Intelligence, I believe.”

  Marty coughed and inclined his head to Claudette which brought the Admiral up a little short and a chagrined look on his face.

  Chadwell stepped in quickly. “Thanks to the good Captain we have neutralised another French spy cell,” he interjected making a point of not mentioning Marty’s name and putting the emphasis on his rank.

  The Admiral looked down his long nose at Claudette. “A hanging, then,” he scowled at her.

  “If I may Sir, I believe this presents us with a unique opportunity,” Marty opened, “if Mr. Chadwell and I are permitted to interview Madam Claudette and extract what information we can before any trial, we may be able to come up with an option that will benefit us more.”

  Admiral Ball looked at the two of them and frowned.

  “I hope that process will not involve any ungentlemanly conduct! You can have two days,” he concluded and turned to leave.

  “My ship will be the perfect venue where I can guarantee we won’t be overheard,” Marty offered.

  “Perfect!” said Chadwell, and Claudette fainted.

  Back on board the Formidiable, Marty and Chadwell sat Claudette on a hard-wooden chair in the middle of Marty’s cabin. Marty had Shelby examine her before they started to ‘make sure she was fit to be interrogated.’

  “We can’t have her dying under interrogation and cheating the hangman,” he had said cheerfully as he handed her over.

  Now Marty sat behind his desk, while Chadwell leant against the door frame out of her line of sight. He had taken the fighting knife out of its sheath and laid it on the desk alongside his two stilettoes. He prepared a pen and carefully laid out a piece of paper to take notes.

  “Shall we begin?” he asked Chadwell.

  Chadwell stepped silently across the checkerboard canvas that was laid over the decking.

  “What is your full name?” he said quietly from just behind her right ear.

  She jumped, not expecting him to be so close.

  “Claudette Fremont.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “Nancy.”

  “What are your parents’ names?”

  “Why do you want—"

  “Answer the question,” he gripped her shoulder and squeezed.

  “Eric and Madelaine,” she winced.

  “Do they come from Nancy as well?”

  “Yes.”

  Claudette was confused. Why are they asking me this?

  “Are they still alive?”

  “What?”

  “Are they still alive? Are they dead?”

  “No! I mean, yes, they are still alive.”

  “When did you arrive in Malta.”

  “Three years ago.”

  “Why.”

  “I was sent by the D.I.A.”

  Marty raised his eyebrows the dreaded Department of Internal Affairs was something he was very familiar with.

  “Why you?”

  “Because I spoke English with hardy any French accent.”

  And so, it went on with Marty switching to take the lead and asking the same questions in a different way and order. After three hours they had all the information they could squeeze out of her. She was exhausted and weeping when Marty asked who her controller was.

  “My what?” she replied, confused.

  “What is the name of the man in Paris, who gives you instructions and knows who you are?”

  “He is not in Paris; he is in Italy.”

  “And his name?”

  “Jean-Christoph Messier.”

  “And where in Italy is he located?”

  “Naples.”

  “He is the only member of the D.I.A. who can identify you?”

  “Yes, he recruited me and has kept me to himself.”

  Marty knelt in front of her on one knee and looked her in the eyes. “If I can remove him would you work for us to save yourself from the hangman?”

  “My family!”

  “Will be quite safe. I will guarantee that.”

  The next morning, they were in Rear Admiral Ball’s office making a report.

  “She seduced Brigadier Du Mort of the Froberg regiment and managed to get all that information out of him?” he gasped incredulously.

  “Yes, she is extremely skilled,” Marty replied.

  “And you say you have turned her to our side?”

  “With the guarantee I will kill the only man in the French Government who knows who she is.”

  “Then I can’t hang her?”

  Marty let that pass as a rhetorical question.

  “You could hang Du Mort for treason,” Chadwell suggested.

  “Damned if I’m not tempted, but I will have to leave his fate to his superiors.”

  Chapter 14: To Spring a Trap

  Marty made the rendezvous with the rest of his ships and was pleasantly surprised to see they had picked up a couple of prizes on the way. As the S.O.F. went by the rule that every prize belonged to the flotilla, not just the ship that captured it, everyone was happy.

  They returned to Gibraltar and Marty sent a message to Ridgley that he wanted to talk to him.

  “How do we explain that she no longer needs to get off the island?” Ridgley asked after he had read the letter from his colleague Chadwell.

  “We don’t, we use her to bait one big operation that will seriously damage the French’s ability to cause trouble in the Mediterranean. Then I will kill her controller and she will be free to work for us.”

  “A right little mercenary,” Ridgley huffed.

  “Just a survivor,” Marty smiled.

  “Well then, how do we proceed?”

  Jean-Christoph Messier sat in his office and tried to ignore the dead fish stink that came off the clothing of the man stood the other side of his desk. The Maltese fisherman was a regular messenger between him and his, every shrinking, set of spies on the Island and the message he bore was more bad news.

  The ship that was supposed to pick up Claudette and get her off the island with the information she had screwed out of the royalist pig of a Brigadier, had gotten itself shot to pieces in the bay of Malaga.

  “Tell her to be ready, we will find another ship and get her out within a month. I will send a message as soon as we have the details.”

  The fisherman left with a gold Louis clutched in his grimy fist leaving the door open behind him.

  He got up to cross the room to close it when a voice said,

  “It’s so touching that you think so much of me that it takes a message to get you to organise a replacement ship to come and get me,” said Claudette as she stepped through the door.

  “How?” he started to say. “The fisherman!”

  “His boat stinks as bad as he does. It will take a week to get the smell off my skin.”

  He stepped forward to embrace her and crinkled his nose at the smell.

  “You need a bath and a change of clothes, but first what news?”

  “The plans for the defences of Malta,” she pulled a packet from the shoulder bag she was carrying and handed them over.

  “The English captured me. These are a second set I had made just in case of an instance such as this. They think I am passing y
ou the fakes they produced which would get any invading force annihilated.

  There is a new force in the Mediterranean, a flotilla attached to Naval intelligence. It is operating independently to the Commander in Chief and is run by a, rather attractive, Captain who is very clever and a deadly fighter. From snippets I overheard he has a number of boats and they are based in Gibraltar.”

  “Did you hear his name?”

  “No, they were very careful not to mention it, but he has a beautiful wife and two children, his ship is the Formidiable.”

  “Hmm, that is a Spanish version of the name, I wonder….”

  Messier went to a cupboard, took out a sheaf of papers and sorted through them.

  “Ah Ha! I thought so. There was a report of a battle for a Spanish treasure fleet in the Caribbean last year and it was reported in the British newspaper the Gazette. Captain Sir Martin Stockley, Knight of the Bath and Baron of Candor, captured two Spanish galleons and two Frigates one of which was the Formidiable.”

  “A Lord? He doesn’t act like an aristo,” Claudette commented thoughtfully.

  “Forget it, Claudette. He is married to the infamous Baroness Caroline Candor, she has a reputation that eclipses even you and is even more ruthless. They are inseparable.”

  “Well he thinks that he has turned me to the British side and will use me to trap and destroy a significant French fleet, but we can trap and destroy him instead. He killed my men, I want his head in repayment.”

  “What we need to do then is provide him with the right bait and get him somewhere where we can spring a trap,” he sorted through some more of the papers, “and I think I know just who.”

  Claudette reported back to Chadwell as soon as she returned to Gibraltar and he, in turn, sent a report back to Ridgley. Marty sat in Ridgley’s office and read it.

  “She handed over the fake plans and we now know where her controller’s office is and what he looks like,” Ridgley commented, “your idea to follow her and that Maltese fisherman worked a treat.”

  “What’s this about the French sending a new force into the area?” Marty asked.

  “They are sending in a frigate and a couple of corvettes to try and re-establish a presence in the bay of Naples. A chap by the name of le Bonne, is the Captain of the frigate, he is not long back from the Caribbean. Apparently walks with a cane and has lost his left arm.” Ridgley read from a page of the report he hadn’t handed to Marty yet.

  Marty felt a shiver run down his spine, it couldn’t be, could it?

  “That cannot be a coincidence,” Marty murmured.

  “What?” Ridgley asked.

  “Thinking out loud,” Marty replied, “I think I smell a rat. But let’s play the hand and see what happens”

  Marty took the Formidiable and Eagle back to Malta and after giving the requisite salute moored in Valetta harbour. He took Ryan with him when he went to visit Chadwell in his rooms.

  “How is the plan progressing to feed the French with information to pull them into a trap?” he asked the agent.

  “Good, good,” Chadwell smiled. “Claudette delivered the maps and planted the fake information about the supply fleet.”

  They had come up with the idea of letting the French know that a fleet of merchant ships escorted by only a minimal Navy force would be delivering fresh troops to Malta to replace the resident force to allow them to return to England. The destruction of such a fleet would be a major victory for the French Navy.

  “We know where her contact is based,” Chadwell continued, “we had an agent on the fishing boat who ‘offered’ to escort her and act as her bodyguard.”

  “Does she know?” Marty asked.

  “That he was an agent? No of course not.” Chadwell confirmed in a slightly injured tone.

  “This new Navy commander, what of him?”

  “Experienced chap, not long back from the Caribbean,” he looked at Martin as a thought struck him. “I say! You were there last year, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, but I’ve never heard of him,” Marty dissembled causing Ryan to look at him out of the corner of his eye.

  “Where is Claudette now?”

  “At her house.”

  Marty got up, walked to the door to Chadwell’s bedroom and opened it.

  “I say!” Chadwell squawked in outrage.

  Marty sniffed and closed the door with a grin.

  “And when did she leave here? Your room stinks of her perfume and she’s wrecked your bed.”

  Back on board the Formidiable Marty called an informal officers meeting. Blaez objected to the crowd and went up on deck.

  “Gentlemen it would appear that our old friend de Faux or le Bonne as he is now known is back on the scene. This time with a frigate and a couple of corvettes.”

  “Oh good! Can we can get to blow him up again?” asked Yeovilton, the Gunner, with a laugh.

  “It’s all too convenient that they chose him for Naples,” Ryan interjected, “we think they may have identified the Captain. The treasure fleet action was posted all over the Gazette after all. The man is highly motivated to kill us all.”

  “Well that’s what we will assume, and we can also assume that Claudette hasn’t turned as far as Chadwell thinks she has. I will lay good odds; the bitch is playing a triple cross. Which also means that the trap we have been planning isn’t worth a farthing.” Marty concluded.”

  He went to his drawer and took out two packets of drawings and held one up. “The drawings we found on her when we captured her,” he held up the second pack, “and the duplicate set we found in her house when we searched it. I replaced this with a set of the fake plans we came up with for the deception.”

  Marty sat on the edge of his desk and recalled the sequence of events. After the interrogation of Claudette, he had John Smith make a very convincing replica of her drawings but change some key details. He had gone ashore to her house that night with John and searched it, found the plans and replaced them with John’s fakes. If the French believed them, they would be annihilated if they tried to invade.

  “We need to know if le Bonne and his ships have arrived yet. It’s only a couple of days sailing from Toulon to Naples with a fair wind.” Marty continued and then ordered.

  “Ryan, take the Eagle and go and have a look, don’t take any chances we need information, not prizes,” he ordered, and Ryan immediately left.

  “. Mr. Fletcher, I would appreciate it if you can procure us a serviceable fishing boat big enough for seven men,” Blaez walked in through the door as Ryan left, “and a dog.”

  He thought for a while longer then grinned.

  “le Bonne seems to have a vendetta against us, I think I should reciprocate and there is a Sicilian tradition when you declare a vendetta on your enemies.”

  A message was sent on the regular packet to get the Alouette and Hornfleur to Palermo where Marty would meet them later. He didn’t want Claudette to know his real strength. Then he set off to meet with Chadwell.

  He entered Chadwell’s rooms and picked up Claudette’s scent immediately. He had Blaez with him who gave a violent sneeze as the cloying odour got up his nose.

  “She can come out of the bedroom Chadwell, I want to talk to her as well,” he said to the spy who was making out he had been sat at his desk all along.

  The bedroom door opened, and Claudette came into the room dressed in a silk robe and not a lot else. Blaez went to her and promptly stuck his nose up under the robe in the vicinity of her groin, making her squeal.

  Marty laughed, “he’s just checking you for fertility.”

  “His nose is cold!” she complained, “and there is nothing wrong with my ‘fertility’.”

  Blaez returned to Marty’s side and sat with a doggy grin and his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.

  “I have some questions,” he opened and sat down in Chadwell’s comfiest chair. Blaez immediately climbed up so he could rest his chest on Marty’s lap with his back feet on the floor.

 
“Excuse my dog, he is just a big softy. Oh yes, the questions. Did your contact, what’s his name again? Look at the plans?”

  “Why yes, he examined them very carefully, and his name is Jean-Christoph.” She replied, thinking He was very happy because they were the real ones.

  “He wasn’t suspicious that they could be fakes?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Excellent! Will he inform you if they will act on them?”

  “Yes, he will not want me caught up in an invasion.”

  “Very considerate.”

  “Now, what do you know about this new Naval commander and his force?”

  “His name is le Bonne; he will command a frigate and two corvettes to replace what was lost. As far as I know he spent the last year in the Caribbean where he was wounded and lost an arm. He also walks with a cane as he was wounded in the legs as well.”

  “Sounds like an unlucky sort of chap to me,” Marty laughed, “or damned careless.”

  “Have you never been wounded?” she asked, sounding just a little annoyed at Marty’s jest.

  “A few times,” Marty admitted.

  Blaez got too hot, slid to the floor, found a cool piece of uncarpeted wood and lay down, farted, sniffed the air like it was something someone else had done, and moved to the other side of the room.

  “What does ‘Jean-Christoph’ want you to do now?” Marty said wondering what smelt worse, her cloying perfume, or Blaez’s fart.

  “I am to find out when the supply ships are due and send the information so le Bonne can attack them.”

  “Well that’s what you should do then,” Marty stated as he stood to leave. He looked at Chadwell, “make sure you mix genuine information with the fake to keep it believable.”

  Chadwell looked like he would protest but the look in Marty’s eye stuck it in his throat.

  “She will make sure that ‘Jean-Christoph’ only takes note of the real information, mate,” he said to Blaez as they walked back to the docks.

  Blaez would have agreed but at that point a stray dog walked into his path and a minor war broke out about who had the right to set foot on the path. The stray was out of his league and soon left yelping with his tail between his legs. Blaez followed for a few steps, stopped to scratch the ground stiff legged to mark his victory then anointed the street as his with a steaming stream of piss.