Jo Graham - [Numinous World 05]

by The Emperor's Agent (epub)

  "Very respectable," Corbineau said with a quirk of the eyebrow at me. "Would you care to come out and about tomorrow evening, or would Charles van Aylde prefer to come?"

  I grinned. "I think it will be Charles. If that suits you?"

  "But of course," he said with a bow low over my hand. "It can only do my reputation good to be seen with such a ravishing creature."

  "Wicked boy," I said, teasing, and sent him on his way.

  I went upstairs and stood by the window that looked out not over the street but toward the house behind, watching the shadows move on the curtains of the other window, hearing the sounds of the night. A small town grown brothels and lodgings, taverns and stables. What would happen when we were gone? Surely Boulogne would not go back to what it had been before.

  We can never go back, I thought. We can never become what we were before. The best we can do is go on, hoping to be more complete.

  Seeing Michel had been like a sword to the heart. It should not have hurt after so long. I should not have wanted him still, as much as ever despite all that had passed between us, despite the years. I had hoped that would change.

  And how should it, I wondered. If I have loved him before unchangingly, as perhaps I have, how could that have gone away in three short years? It was there still, even if his primary response to seeing me had been irritation.

  I squared my shoulders. I was here for the Emperor, not for Michel. I was here on a mission of vital importance. I must not get distracted. The only thing that mattered was the job, my chance to prove my worth. And that must happen, whether or not Michel turned out to have any connection to the spy I sought.

  Theaters of War

  The next day Subervie delivered to me the lists of the men who had access to headquarters, but he did not stay, both because the lady who owned the house and who had previously met Madame Subervie was eyeing him suspiciously as we spoke in the parlor, and also because he was in the midst of a wargame.

  "And how is Carrhae?" I asked him.

  Subervie grimaced. "Let's just say that the only one having fun is Reille."

  "The fencer," I said, recalling the young man I had seen fencing with Michel the day before, though I supposed he was not so young as that. He must be about my age.

  "The fencer," Subervie said. "But today he's running Parthian horse archers. I think I hate him!" He grinned to show that he didn't mean it, and hurried off to the campaign.

  I retired upstairs ostensibly to write letters, under the glare of the landlady. I wasn't sure this respectable house idea was going to work.

  Three hours later I put the papers down disconsolately. There were too many people. Dozens of men had access to the operational papers, and hundreds more to information about supply and logistics. How not? The officers of the Quartermaster Corps that supplied the camps of the Army of Coasts of Ocean numbered nearly a thousand, from noncommissioned officers on up. All of them had to know where fodder was going, where foodstuffs were being delivered, where powder and shot needed to go. The carters who carried and delivered it needed to know, though not far in advance.

  It simply was not possible, I thought grimly, to supply an invasion force of 60,000 men without anyone noticing. There were so many details, so many things that could give away the invasion date. Every spy they could muster would be standing about on French country lanes, counting carts. The location of the target beaches was a bit easier to keep under wraps. Whether we intended Dover or Portsmouth, our supply would look much the same. And surely this would be the most important priority of British intelligence. Every spy they could muster would be standing about on French country lanes, counting carts.

  Well, then, I thought, scrubbing at my eyes, actual security is impossible. They will know more or less when we intend to go. The question is where. And that's a question that can only be answered by a highly placed man, not by agents bribing carters with drinks to find out where they're taking that load of hay. That's the man I need to catch.

  The list at least was smaller. Roughly twenty-five men had access to some part of the planning and operational materials that were the most classified, the ones kept in cipher in strongboxes. Locks could be picked, of course, so strongboxes might not truly be secure, but presumably the cipher was good.

  Unless the man in question had a key to the cipher. Or unless he could make a copy of someone else's legitimate key to the cipher.

  My head spun. Did every man with a key to the cipher walk around with it on his person all the time? Of course not. They left them locked in desk drawers or under the blotter. They put them in the filing cabinet in some unlikely place. They stuck them in a book on their desk. Some of the twenty-five would be careful with them, but not all. Some would be careless. And any man with access to the headquarters offices could find them.

  I got up and walked to the window. Yesterday's rain had cleared out, leaving a beautiful sunny day, a perfect sky marred only by a few puffy white clouds like whiffs of cannon smoke. I found my gloves and my summer straw bonnet. I could think outside in the wind, on the beach or the cliffs, and perhaps get a look at England across the channel. They said on fair days one could almost see Dover.

  Boulogne itself was a good sized town, a sea port of long standing, and as a deep water port almost in sight of England, the logical place for the invasion fleet to prepare. Given the right wind, our men could be on English soil in half a day, if we chose to land at the closest point. However, sixty thousand men could not be billeted in Boulogne. The camps of the Army of the Coasts of Ocean stretched northward to Calais, southward and inland for many kilometers, various units headquartered in different villages, while the camps themselves were built on leased farmland, or on the windy meadows near the sea. V Corps, commanded by Marshal Lannes, was headquartered in Boulogne itself, while Ney's VI Corps was headquartered in the pretty village of Montreuil, some 15 kilometers south along the road to Paris. Our men were thus spread over a wide expanse of countryside.

  As I walked along the road in the bright summer air, I wondered how I should do this. Somehow I had to narrow the suspects down. I could not possibly investigate all the men who might have access in half a dozen different headquarters kilometers apart. Nor could I guess at motives. Any man might have the motive of money, while the Revolution had left many enemies. If it did not have to be a senior officer, but rather a man with access to a senior officer's cipher, there might be a hundred possibilities.

  But were there? I had seen how busy Lannes' headquarters was. There were dozens of people in and out constantly. If a man were trying to get at papers not his own, he would not know who might walk in on him or when, given the constant bustle. Surely it was quieter at night, I thought. But of course at night there were guards. We did not leave our headquarters without even the preliminary protection of men at the guardposts. One could not just walk in with no justification besides idle curiosity.

  Ahead, the road went round a curve, rising as it went up through scrubby underbrush instead of manicured fields. The air smelled of salt, though I could see nothing of the sea yet.

  Could one just walk in if one had justification? I suspected one could. Surely people worked late and arrived early. Someone detailed to headquarters arriving early in the morning would not be questioned by the guards, and he might have the offices to himself for a while. That would be the time to search for a cipher and copy it, or to work with documents not one's own.

  That was better, I thought. A man who either has access to the ciphers himself, or who arrives early or stays late. But that still left potentially dozens of suspects.

  I sighed. I was chasing around in circles, coming no closer to what I sought.

  I reached the top of the rise, and before me stretched serried ranks of sand dunes spotted with tall beach grasses, sloping down among stones to a sudden drop. Beyond, the sea glittered in the bright summer sun, still as glass from this vantage. In the distance I could see the white sails of a ship beating down the coast against the w
ind, a frigate from the look of her. Not ours. I thought I could see the yellow gunport stripe down her side. The Channel Fleet was keeping watch.

  I climbed to the highest point, my bonnet shading my eyes, looking out at the panorama. To my right the road led back to Boulogne, but the curve of the coastline hid the town from me. I could just see the outer edges of the breakwater, but the lighthouse and the forts were hidden. To my left the track led off along the cliffs, a neat sign pointing the way to the village of Courcelles and to the observation pavilion that the Emperor had had built. Ahead stretched the sea. It was not clear enough to see across the Channel, or perhaps one couldn't from this particular place, but one could see clearly enough the faint haze on the horizon.

  The frigate was taking in sail. I watched her mainsail come down neatly in reefs, passing by as tight in as she might, just a bit more than a cannon's shot offshore. She could not come closer, I thought, even with the tide at about half as it was, because of the rocks. It looked as though the water shoaled swiftly, and despite the seemingly soft looking sand, this was a rocky coast. No, even a frigate could not stand in more closely.

  Which brought me to the next question. The Emperor had said that the British were getting the information very quickly. Our counterspies in Whitehall reported that information was coming in only five days old, and that consistently. It was relayed through Dover most generally by a Captain Arnold of the frigate Lion. I presumed the frigate in question was now before me, tacking slowly down the coast in the bright summer air.

  How? Lion was very obvious in her movements. Surely everyone could see her from shore as plainly as I could, and should she attempt to launch a boat it would be met by our men. Of course we patrolled this coast constantly, and we had thousands of men to do it. It might be possible, once or twice, with luck and bad weather on his side, for this Captain Arnold to sneak a man ashore, but surely he couldn't do it consistently! Not on bright moonlit nights in high summer! A spy might come ashore, but how could he report back? And moreover, how could a British spy, no matter how well he spoke French, penetrate the most secure parts of the camp?

  I raised my hand, shading my face as I watched Lion's leisurely progress. Two men, I thought. Two men if they do it that way. One man on the inside, and a spy coming ashore to meet him and pick up documents. In which case the weak point must be the rendezvous. The spy must come ashore from Lion and then go somewhere that this man can meet him. Perhaps it's out on the seashore. Perhaps it's in Boulogne, or one of the hamlets along the coast.

  If the British were plagued by smugglers on their side, men willing to bring ashore goods or passengers from France for a price, so were we. Generations of seamen on both sides of the Channel had made a career of slipping things across clandestinely. Who and how? Emperor and Republic and Crown before had tried to catch smugglers with little success. If they met in some smugglers' den we should have to find it.

  Three things, then, I thought, ticking them off in my head, three methods of approach: Identifying who could get to the documents and how, finding the spy coming ashore from Lion, and figuring out how the spy meets the man inside. For the middle one I would need help. I could not patrol the coastline myself, nor keep a watch on Lion. But surely we already had men doing that. I should speak to Marshal Lannes about that. If we could disrupt their rendezvous, we would cripple the spy at least. It would do the British little good for their man to have documents but be unable to get them to Captain Arnold. And sooner or later, in frustration, either Arnold or the inside man would make a mistake. That might, ultimately, be our best chance.

  Having at least a preliminary plan made me feel better about this entire business. None of these options had the slightest thing to do with Michel, and with him in Montreuil and me in Boulogne, perhaps I would not even have to see him again. I could simply work on this plan with Lannes and Subervie, and ignore him completely.

  So I turned, leaving Lion to her solitary patrol, and made my way back to Lannes' headquarters.

  This time I did not have to wait so long, and the officer of the watch was polite. "If you will wait but a few minutes, Madame," he said, "The Marshal has a gentleman with him at present."

  "I should be pleased to wait," I said, and sat down again in one of the chairs.

  It had only been a moment when the officer glanced back down the hall to Lannes' office. "They are coming out now," he said. "The Marshal will see you next, Madame."

  I stood up, smoothing out the front of my gown, as Lannes came down the hall, a civilian following him. Lannes was speaking to him over his shoulder.

  I stepped around the chair, and in a second saw who he was.

  "You!" the civilian said with a start.

  "You!" I replied, like some ingénue in a bad comedy of manners.

  "You know each other?" Lannes sounded baffled.

  "We are acquainted," M. Noirtier said. His hair was more gray than it had been five years ago, liberally streaked where once it had only been touched, odd over such a young man's face.

  I tried to make light of it. "Oh yes. Years and years ago. All those silly fake séances."

  Lannes grabbed me by the arm and propelled me down the hall in front of him, Noirtier trailing behind. "Back in the office." He hurried me in and closed the door, releasing me and turning about. "What about séances?"

  Noirtier still looked surprised. Perhaps he wasn't used to Lannes' precipitousness. "She's a Dove," he said. "The best Dove I've ever seen. She's the real thing."

  "It was just some silly fake séances," I said to the marshal. "Years ago, when I was hard up for money, I worked with this man who staged fake séances. There wasn't anything to it. It was all mumbo jumbo. M. Noirtier was a customer a few times. But Monsieur, there wasn't anything illegal about it! It was just a stage act."

  "She's the real thing," Noirtier said. "Absolutely the real thing. She said that the campaign in Egypt would be compromised because 'Orient's loss will blind the Eagle.' How was she to know that the expedition's flagship would be L'Orient, or that it would be destroyed by a shot to its powder magazine at Aboukir Bay by Admiral Nelson, and that without L'Orient and its fleet General Bonaparte would be stuck in Egypt?"

  I opened my mouth and shut it again. Those had just been words when I uttered them, and I had not thought of them twice since.

  Lannes' brow furrowed. "Is that true?" he asked me quietly.

  I nodded. "Yes, but…."

  "I saw her several times," Noirtier said. "She told a naval officer which ship he was about to be posted to. She channeled the Archangel Michael. She told me that you would rise, and likewise Augereau and Massena. I've never seen anyone handle angelic presence that well."

  "It was just a game!" I said desperately.

  Lannes' eyes met mine. "Really?"

  I shut my eyes and opened them again. "Monsieur, please."

  His voice was low, and he shifted so that he stood between me and Noirtier almost protectively. "Are you a Dove, Madame?"

  "I don't know," I said. "I truly don't. It was a scam, but some of the things I said came true. And that night…." I cast my mind back to the Walpurgis Night in question, when I thought perhaps an angel had spoken to me. "I don't really know what happened. I can't explain. But why in the world would you care, M. le Marechal? Why does it matter to you?"

  Lannes sat down on the edge of his desk, pushing the hair back from his eyes in a surprisingly boyish gesture. "I am stepping off a precipice to tell you this, Madame, and if you repeat it I will swear I never said it. There is more than one war, here in Boulogne. There is more than one storm front. There is the one you and I have already discussed, and there is the one that we see before us, the sea and the Channel and the British Navy waiting. And there is a third. We are at war, Madame, on more planes than one. They sent forth a sortie, and we push it back. We sally forth, and they push us back. Control of the Channel is about more than a few kilometers of water. It is about controlling the powers of sky and sea, and at the moment we
cannot do that."

  "You're joking." I slid down into a chair. Lannes was a rational man in a rational age, the Emperor's friend, a Marshal of France. "That is something out of a fairy tale."

  "You are the Dove, and you do not yourself believe?" Noirtier asked.

  "It cannot be. This is the age of enlightenment," I said.

  Lannes shot him a quick look, as if to say, let me attend to this. "Nevertheless, it is true. Should we dismiss forty centuries of humanity's accumulated knowledge, dismiss the experiences of thousands of men who have gone before us? That is much less rational. Our failure to understand something doesn't make it less real. Is it not far more rational to apply ourselves to understanding what we can?"

  I took a deep breath. It did indeed make more sense. And had I ever truly disbelieved? I thought that I had not, for if I had, why should I fear something that was nothing but folly? What I feared was my mother's madness, and it seemed to me this path led all too clearly in that direction. She had said we were Doves, all the women of our family, but I had never asked her what that meant. I had not wanted to know. "What do you need a Dove for?"

  Lannes leaned back on his hands, his trim form perched on the edge of his desk. His brown eyes were frank. "It's complicated." He seemed to search for the words for a moment. "In this war we fight, just as in the war we fight in our physical bodies, there are different kinds of troops, different men who are suited by nature and temperament and training to different endeavors. We have our roles, and we learn to use our talents most effectively, just as we do on the drill field. At the moment, however, we are lacking one particular talent we urgently need." He put his hands together, gold braid on his cuffs glittering. "Imagine that we faced a foe in the field, but we had no cavalry screen, no light cavalry made up of chasseurs or hussars who might scout for us. Our armies would be effectively blind. What would one do in such a pass?"