Book 11 - The Reverse Of The Medal

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Are you not?' said Stephen, looking into his face.

  'No,' said Blaine, 'I am not. You will recall that I sent you a somewhat cryptic warning of squalls—of troubled waters—of dark obscure currents—when you were in Gibraltar. Well now, almost everything I forecast has come about. Just let me have a word with Mrs Barlow about our supper, and when we have eaten it I will tell you in more detail.'

  'First may I beg you to lend me a handkerchief? My pocket was picked as I was going to the White Horse.'

  'I hope you did not lose much?'

  'Fourpence and a spotted handkerchief, and a mighty dose of self-esteem. I had thought myself a match for a common pickpocket. It is true I was struggling with a cumbrous great umbrella at the time, but that is a poor excuse. My pocket picked clean, as though I were just off the mountain or the bog, for shame.'

  It was a lobster of moderate size that they ate for their supper, followed by a boned capon in a pie and then by a rice pudding, a dish they were both very fond of: but Sir Joseph only toyed with his, and when they carried their wine into the library he said 'Your having your pocket picked like a countryman brings my own mishap so clearly to my mind that it quite takes my appetite away. I am older than you, Maturin, I have had even more experience, and yet I have been done brown; and what angers me even more is that I no more know who roasted me than you know who picked your pocket.'

  He gave Stephen a circumstantial account of the changes that had come about in naval intelligence. Sir Joseph still had a high-sounding title, but in the course of one of those silent Whitehall struggles that turn ministries upside-down he had been deprived of almost all real power: he still represented the Admiralty at the meetings of the Committee for the moment, but he had nothing to do with the day to day business of the department. Last January his horse had fallen with him on an icy road in the country: it had meant no more than a fortnight in bed, but that was fourteen days too long—there had been three important meetings at which his opponents carried all before them and when he crept back he found the organization wholly recast. By now nearly all his friends had been removed or sent to obscure positions far away, and those who remained could hope for no countenance or advancement. Their clerks were taken from them, their rooms were given to others, and they were lodged in mean holes and corners to induce them to resign, and the least slip of some remote agent was seized upon to discredit them. It was the same with those outside the administration. 'Invaluable colleagues have been treated with disrespect and have withdrawn in disgust. When you call at the Admiralty, do not be surprised if they ask you to give up your key to the private door. The pretext will no doubt be that the locks are being changed.' Sir Joseph himself would have resigned months ago if this had been an ordinary department and if he had not had some hopes of reversing the situation in the end. 'I cannot tell you, Maturin,' he said, 'how passionately I long to put things right again, and I shall hold on, in spite of all affronts, in order to do so.'

  'When you speak of your opponents, do you have them clearly in your eye?' asked Stephen.

  'No, I do not, and that is what makes me so uneasy. Barrow is back as second secretary, as I dare say you know, and we have never liked one another; indeed I might say that since the Wilson affair we have lived in a perpetual reciprocation of malevolence. He is an immensely laborious, immensely diligent man, devoted to form and detail, and respectful of rank to a servile degree; he is widely ignorant and he is quite incapable of taking a broad, intelligent view of any given situation; but having risen from a humble situation by his own efforts he has an extraordinarily high opinion of his abilities, and at first I thought that this reorganization was simply an attempt on his part to gain more power, particularly as he has kept Wray, an ambitious young man, as his chief adviser. But that is not the explanation. He is a little man and his idea of a famous victory is six extra clerks and a Turkey carpet. It is true that Wray, though flighty, paederastical and unsound, is very, very much cleverer, but now that I have seen how things are handled and the amount of influence, particularly Treasury influence, that has been brought to bear, it seems to me that the whole thing is far beyond their scope. It seems to me that some Macchiavel, possibly in the Treasury, possibly in the Cabinet Office, is manipulating them; but who he is or what his aim may be I cannot tell. There are times when I feel that the ordinary insatiable appetite for power, patronage, and having one's own way explains it all; and there are times when I fancy I smell if not a rat, then a pretty sinister mouse. However, I shall say no more about that, even to you, until I have something a little more solid than these impressions. A disappointed, angry man is very apt to exaggerate the wickedness of his opponents. But they must not think that by depriving me of the C and F reports and of contact with the agents in the field, they are cutting me off entirely. A man in my position has many old and tried friends in the other intelligence services, and with their help I do not despair of getting to the bottom of the matter.'

  'I am very much concerned at what you tell me,' said Stephen. 'Very much concerned indeed.' And after a pause, 'Listen, Blaine. Before we left Gibraltar the Admiral's secretary sent for me: his orders were to tell me the Government had sent a Mr Cunningham to the Spanish South American colonies in the packet Danaë with a large sum of money in gold. It was now feared that she might be taken by the American frigate we were being sent to deal with. If we met the Danaë in the Atlantic I was to leave Mr Cunningham his gold but I was to remove a very much larger sum that had been concealed in his cabin without his knowledge. The American did in fact take the Danaë, but we recaptured her this side of the Horn. I considered that my instructions required me to look for this larger sum, and I found it: it was contained in a small brass box that is now attached to my person. Jack Aubrey sent the Danaë home under Captain Pullings, but since it was not improbable that she should be taken yet again I thought proper to keep this box aboard a man-of-war, as being less liable to capture. Yet several aspects of the matter made me uneasy in mind: the seal on the box broke when it fell from its hiding-place; the eventualities foreseen in my instructions did not include the packet's recapture and it might be said that I had exceeded my authority; the sum that Jack Aubrey and I—for he had helped me to follow the nautical directions—picked up from the cabin floor was very great indeed, far, far greater than I cared to be answerable for or indeed associated with; and I had had your letter speaking of the troubled, murky atmosphere in Whitehall. However, we put it all back in the brass box, sealed the lid again, using my watch-key, and here it is.' He tapped his side.

  'Have you seen Barrow or Wray?' asked Sir Joseph.

  'I have not. I did call on Wray at his house, but he was not at home and in any event that was about another matter entirely.' A spasm of pain crossed his usually impassive face and for a moment he hung his head. 'No. From the first I had no intention of going to the Admiralty until I had seen you unofficially and had asked your advice: now I am doubly glad of it.'

  'Is it indeed a very great sum?'

  'You shall see.' Stephen stood up, took off his coat and waistcoat, tucked up his shirt and unwound the bandage. Once again the brass box fell unexpectedly; once again it burst open; and once again the amount astonished those who picked it up.

  'No, no,' said Sir Joseph. 'This is nothing to do with us. This is nothing to do with naval intelligence. This exceeds the whole department's budget. This is something on quite another scale. This represents the subversion of a realm.'

  'I had not remembered it as so much,' said Stephen. 'I doubt I made the addition at the time: my mind was much taken up by my patients.' He waved a sheaf of bills and said 'In vain may heroes fight and patriots rave, If secret gold sap on from knave to knave, at least in this amount.'

  'Heavens,' said Sir Joseph, still busily creeping about the floor, 'were I as good at the mathematics as your friend Aubrey—and I remember the paper he read to the Royal Society on a new way of calculating the occultation of stars made my head ache—I could reckon the
number of men required to carry this sum in gold. And a small brass box will hold it all! Oh the convenience of paper money and the draft on a discreet banking house, made out to bearer! Do you remember how your couplet goes on?' he asked, getting up with creaking knees.

  'Pray remind me,' said Stephen, who was very fond of Blaine.

  'Blest paper credit,' said Sir Joseph, emphasizing the paper and raising one finger,

  'Blest paper credit! last and best supply!

  That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!

  A single leaf shall waft an army o'er

  Or ship off senates to a distant shore.

  Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen

  And silent sells a king, or buys a queen.'

  'Pregnant with thousands, yes indeed,' said Stephen. 'The question is, what am I to do with my pregnant scraps?'

  'It appears to me that the first thing to do is to make an inventory,' said Sir Joseph. 'Let us put them into some kind of order, and then if you will read out the bare names, dates and figures I will write them down.'

  The inventory took some time and at the end of each page they paused for a glass of port. During one of these pauses Sir Joseph remarked 'To begin with, Barrow was positively obsequious to me; then he learnt that I too was the son of a labouring man and he despised me straight away. Wray is well-connected, and I believe it is that, quite as much as his cleverness, which makes Barrow value him.'

  'Will I seal it again?' asked Stephen, when the list was finished and the box was full.

  'You might as well,' said Sir Joseph. 'I do not believe there is a piece of string in the house; I tried to put up a parcel not long since, but with no success.'

  'And is it Barrow I will give it to, or Wray? And will I desire them to give me a receipt?' asked Stephen: a great mental and spiritual fatigue had come over him and all he wanted was to be told what to do.

  'You should say you wish to see me, and when they tell you I am not there you should ask for Wray, since it was with him that you were last in contact. As for a receipt . . . No. I think a certain sancta simplicitas is in order here—a placid handing-over of this enormous fortune without any question of quittance or formal acknowledgement. In any event a receipt would be pointless, since if there is bad faith they can always say there was more in the box in the first place, before the seal was broke. It would be as pointless as this inventory, which has no legal force or validity whatsoever. But I do not have to tell you, Maturin, that in intelligence we do not always regard the law very closely.' He passed the wax and held the candle while Stephen sealed the box and went on, 'This war has caused the most enormous pouring-out of public funds, and peculation has kept pace. A great deal of money passes through various hands in the Admiralty and some of them are tolerably retentive. When Mr Croker took over as First Secretary—I believe you were abroad at the time: oh yes, you were a great way off—he instantly looked into the affairs of Roger Horehound, Jolly Roger as we used to call him, and found that he had taken no less than two hundred thousand pounds. Not that that was in our department however: as you know the First Secretary has virtually nothing to do with intelligence—until recently it was entirely my concern. Jolly Roger's goose was cooked, but there are people cleverer and more cautious than Roger, and it has sometimes appeared to me that this taking-over of our department may well have greed as its motive, or one of its motives; it is a department in which expenditure cannot be closely controlled and in which large sums pass from hand to hand. If that is the case, and I am more and more persuaded of it, then the people concerned will surely cling to some of this superabundance,'—nodding towards the brass box. 'Not Barrow, for although I find him singularly unlovable I am perfectly certain that he is honest, rigidly honest: but he is a fool. The people concerned, I say, will cling . . . the temptation is very great . . . But it so happens that I am very well with the Nathans and their cousins—they have supported us nobly in this war—and as soon as any one of these bills is negotiated I shall know of it and what is more important I shall know just who my enemies are.' He made some remarks about the money-market to which Stephen paid little attention and then observed, with a chuckle, 'Such an elegant little trap; if it had not existed I should have had to invent it. But should I ever have had such a happy thought? I doubt it. Tell me, my dear Maturin, does anyone know that you were coming to see me?'

  'No one. Except conceivably the porter at my club, who saw to the delivery of my note.'

  'What is your club?'

  'Black's.'

  'It is mine too. I did not know you were a member?

  'I rarely go.'

  'It would be wiser for us to meet there. And Maturin, it would also be wise to armour yourself. I may of course be quite mistaken about the bad faith I referred to just now, but it can do no harm to suppose I am right. You are in a vulnerable position. May I suggest that you let it be seen that you are not defenceless, not without allies, and that you cannot be treated as a man of no account might be treated—overwhelmed, put down, made to bear the blame? Will you not go to the birthday levee, for example? The Duke of Clarence will be there, and many of your grander friends.'

  'I might,' said Stephen, with no conviction. He stood up to take leave, putting the brass box in his pocket. Weariness had quite dulled his mind.

  'And lastly may I suggest,' said Blaine in a low, hesitant voice, 'may I suggest that if a mission across the Channel is proposed, you should refuse it?' Stephen looked up, fully alive again. 'No, no, I do not mean that,' cried Sir Joseph, seeing the shocked, startled question in his face. 'I only mean loose talk and inefficiency: anything more sinister would be only the most extreme hypothesis. But in your particular case I prefer the precautions to be extreme. Come. I will see you home. The streets are far from safe at night. Though indeed,' he added, 'it might save a world of trouble, were your pocket to be quietly picked again.'

  In the morning, a bright clear morning so far, though to a sailor's eye 'there was foul weather breeding there in the east-north-east', Jack and Stephen walked through the park to the Admiralty. Captain Aubrey, paying an official call, was in uniform: Dr Maturin, as a civil adviser, was in a decent snuff-coloured coat with cloth-covered buttons. They were shown into the waiting-room where Jack had spent so many hours of his life, and there they found a dozen officers already installed. Most were lieutenants and commanders, of course, they being the most numerous class; but so many of these had been passed over for promotion that Jack found several contemporaries among them. Indeed, there was one lieutenant who had been second of the Resolution when he was a midshipman in her, and they were deep in recollections of her after-hold when a clerk came to tell Jack that the First Lord was now at leisure.

  In his curiously frigid and inhuman way the First Lord was happy to welcome Captain Aubrey home and to say that the Board, on hearing his dispatch read by Mr Croker, had been glad to learn that the expedition to the South Sea was satisfactorily accomplished and the Surprise brought home in such good condition. He regretted having to tell Aubrey that there was no suitable command vacant for him at the moment, but his name should certainly be borne in mind for the next eligible ship: he regretted still more having to say that the Board had decided to sell the Surprise out of the service, because he knew how attached sailors became to their vessels.

  'Yes, indeed, my lord,' said Jack. 'Never was a ship like Surprise: I have known her, man and boy, these twenty years, and we all loved her very dearly. But I trust I may be able to buy her: she is not likely to fetch a mint of money, I suppose.'

  'Let us hope for at least a moderate amount, for the sake of the naval estimates,' said Melville, looking sharply at Jack Aubrey. Sea-officers quite often primed themselves with brandy, rum, or even gin for an interview at the Admiralty; but this was not the case with Jack. His lack of protest at the news (news whose bite was quite removed by his knowledge of the coming peace, when the frigate's occupation would be gone), his whole attitude and the look on his face was caused by t
he cheerfulness at the idea of being rich again, of seeing Sophie within the next few days, and of telling her that their anxieties were at an end.

  'Finally, my lord,' said Jack, standing up when the conversation drew to a close, 'may I put in a word for Thomas Pullings, a very fine seaman, a commander, at present unemployed? He brought the Danaë home as a volunteer.'

  'I will bear him in mind,' said Melville. 'But as you know Whitehall is lined with commanders who are very fine seamen and who would be glad of a sloop.' He walked to the door with Jack and just before he opened it Jack said 'Now that our official interview is over, may I ask how Heneage does?'