“Fortress of the clouds?” translated Corny.
“Yes,” answered Woodgerd. “It’s a clearing near the top of Montay San—‘Blood Mountain’ in Creole. Named for when the slaves butchered their masters and the blood ran down the mountain’s river.”
“What a quaint place we’ve found ourselves in . . .” remarked Corny with a perturbed look in my direction. Dan shook his head while gazing at his feet.
“And there was a boy named Luke with the businessman?” I asked. “Is he all right?”
“Yes. I was about to get him. Kingston brought him in with the old man. And yes, the kid is all right—doing just fine and happy as a clam, as a matter of fact.”
Next to me, Cynda’s eyes filled, but Woodgerd missed it and continued. “The kid’s in complete cahoots with Kingston and Sokolov. Luke’s in charge of feeding the old man prisoner and taking care of him, and he also plays servant to the Russian. In fact, he lives at Sokolov’s bungalow, being groomed as another apprentice terrorist to hate the major powers of the world and destroy them. The kid’s already pretty well down that path.”
“Did they already send the ransom demand?”
“Not yet. The ransom demand will be a million dollars. The demand’ll go to New York by telegraph once the cable line is completed at Cap Haitien, which should be any day now.”
Roche and I glanced at each other. His theory was right. Our eyes moved to Cynda, her head bowed in her hands, trying to muffle her weeping as she asked no one in particular, “Why? Why my Luke?”
“That’s her son,” I told Woodgerd. “We came here to rescue him.”
He gave me a what-are-you-crazy? look—then regarded her sadly. “Very sorry to be telling you all this, ma’am. He’s a strong, smart lad, but he’s fallen under the sway of those fanatics. He wants to be just like them.”
I changed the subject to the man I now thought of as our main target. “Tell me as much as you can about this man, Sokolov.”
“He’s unusual. Very unusual. Professor Sergei Alexandrovich Sokolov is fifty-eight years old, with quite a history. He is a brilliant engineer, graduate of the top Russian military academy, veteran of the Crimean War in the fifties and the Russo-Turkish War ten years ago.
“Sokolov is sophisticated, intellectual, versed in literature, likes wines and brandy. Prefers French cuisine and French women. In addition to Russian, he’s fluent in French, English, and German. Started out life as the illegitimate son of a nobleman named Sedova. Ended up an artillerist in the army, where he spent almost forty years. Studied aeronautic physics on his own time and in eighty-four got himself transferred to General Boreskov’s Army Aeronautical Division. They were working on designing airships.
“But our boy Sokolov wasn’t the loyal company man. He got fed up with the decadence of the Russian monarchy during the Turkish War, back in seventy-eight. Said too many Russians died because of royal incompetence, so he secretly joined a group in eighteen-eighty trying to kill the tsar. Gonna rid the country of the bad blue blood. Took ’em years, but they finally pulled it off and killed the tsar. Several got arrested and the rest disbanded. New tsar took over that made the old one look nice.
“Three years ago, Sokolov had finally had enough and deserted the army. Drifted in Germany and France and eventually ended up here, designing and building his dream, an aerial machine that will be invulnerable and deliver death like nothing imagined. His co-revolutionaries were funding him until recently.”
“Colonel Woodgerd, do you know when Sokolov was planning to make this delivery of death?” Roche asked.
“Originally going to leave in October. He’d figured out the weather across the Atlantic, in Russia, everything. But now it’s all changed. Something happened in May—just before I arrived—that worried them. An enemy group had discovered their location and was coming to Haiti. Not sure if they’re other revolutionaries or a government unit or what. Olamda, or something like that, is what Sokolov called it. He’s gotten very secretive about it.
“His supply man in Nassau, the one who transships large equipment on to Haiti, sent a warning letter to Sokolov about it. Then this Nassau man was killed in July, presumably by this enemy group. Sokolov accelerated the timetable on getting his machine ready for action. It’s ready to go now. I don’t know where this opposition group is exactly, but Sokolov and his cronies assume they are here in the country already.”
Woodgerd glanced around the circle of firelight, then quietly said, “You’re in that cloak-and dagger-business, Peter—ever heard of this Olamda outfit?”
No, I hadn’t heard of Olamda. But I remembered the letter to Kingston from Nassau. The ‘O’ is heading for Nassau. Gerhart Wein was found drowned in Nassau, last seen alive drinking with Roche and his cohorts the night before. Suddenly, it came together for me. ‘O’ wasn’t a person—it was the organization after Sokolov. But who was in it? Roche and his cohorts, to begin with. Who else?
“Don’t recognize that word, Olamda,” I replied. “But for some reason it is ringing a bell. I’ll think of it in a minute.”
“Okhrana. It is the Okhrana, Commander Wake.”
Roche was standing at the edge of the firelight, a sly grin spreading across his face. “Do you recognize the name now?”
Woodgerd nodded. “Yeah, that’s what Sokolov called it.”
Oh, yes, I did recognize that name.
I enlightened the others. “The Okhrana is the Russian Imperial counter-intelligence spy organization, headquartered out of Saint Petersburg. But I think this is about the Okhrana’s Foreign Bureau, which operates out of Paris and specializes in penetrating Russian émigré revolutionary groups. It works closely with the French authorities.”
Turning to Roche, I said, “And I presume that you, Monsieur Roche, are not a French counter-intelligence operative of the Deuxième Bureau, but a senior officer in the Russian Okhrana in Paris. As were your friends, obviously. I must confess, sir—you did have me fooled.”
Roche bowed slightly. “A regrettable but necessary subterfuge, Commander. I am impressed by your knowledge of Okhrana. Not many know of our work. And yes, Henri, Claire, and myself are members.”
“I also presume that ‘Roche’ is an alias.”
He shrugged. “A temporary nom de guerre, yes. Rather uninspired, I know, but what can one do? Of course, my real name is not truly important, especially here in the jungle.”
“And since Sokolov prefers French cuisine and women, Claire was to provide him with a little romantic French companionship?”
“It would have been difficult to arrange, of course. However, my dear Claire was an expert in that delicate art.”
“You killed the German in Nassau?” asked Dan.
“Henri did that, on my orders. Herr Wein was a dedicated follower of another German—the notorious Karl Marx—and a mortal enemy of my sovereign and my country. This is not about intellectual liberty of expression. This is war. It is as simple as that.”
“And Sokolov’s revolutionary group in Europe?” I inquired.
“It was mainly in Russia, with a few in Paris. Narodnaya Volya—in English it is called ‘The People’s Will.’ Spoiled artists-turned-anarchists. They are no longer a problem for anyone but God.”
That was another way of saying they were all executed, a realization not lost on the civilians of my crew.
“I’ve always had a vague idea of what you and Rork did, but now we find out that all three of you are spies?” said Dan, looking around at Rork, me, and Roche. It wasn’t said in admiration.
The Russian’s eyebrows arched mockingly. “Spies? Such an unfortunate word, Mr. Horloft. It is not used in our business, for it has unrealistic connotations. More suitable for cheap British novels.”
Roche’s attention swung to me. “Oh, and speaking of that stalwart island race, Commander, I should let you know that your British friend Randall i
s not really a policeman. He has been with the Military Intelligence Division of the British army since its inception fifteen years ago. His attempts at surveillance were rather clumsy, however. Completely inadequate. And he did no counter-surveillance at all. A basic mistake.
“If he had any professionalism at all, he would have caught me listening and watching your meeting with Randall and Major Teignholder at Graycliff House, where I was flattered to be the main topic. Randall proved to be such a disappointing adversary. I really expected better of British intelligence than that.”
Dan, usually taciturn, was clearly disturbed by the revelations. “What? They’re all spies?” To Corny Rathburn he said, “Murder, kidnapping, mercenaries, spies? What the hell did we get into here? And just how the hell do we get out of it?”
Agreeing with that assessment, Corny nodded. “Whatever it is, Dan, we’re in it now. For better or worse, we’ve got to stick together.”
Roche, leaning casually against a tree with an amused look at the chaos he’d started, inquired of my friend, “Colonel Woodgerd, how exactly does Sokolov think he is going to harm the Russian monarchy with a balloon in Haiti?”
“It’s more than just a balloon. It’s an aerial warship. He’s going to deliver a devastating attack using it against government targets, starting at the Baltic with the naval station at St. Petersburg and working inland to the Tsar’s Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow itself.
“The warship will drop both explosives and some sort of material, clothing maybe, infected with typhus. Also propaganda leaflets to the people, calling for them to take back their country. Sokolov’s almost ready to fly the final version of this thing.”
The mention of that dreaded word typhus brought a gasp from everyone, Haitians, Bahamian, and Americans. To me there was a huge gap in the logic, though. “I don’t understand how he’s going to get this thing to Russia. It’s too far to fly.”
“The long distance cable ship at Cap Haitian. Kingston and his crew will capture it in the middle of the night and disappear with it east along the coast to Caracol Bay, just north of here. Sokolov will fly the machine down to the coast and meet the ship. They’ll use the cable drum on the ship as an adjustable tow line and steam across the Atlantic to Europe. Look, I know it all sounds far-fetched, but it isn’t. I’ve seen this warship machine. And I know the cable ship is in the harbor. Sokolov’s planned this damned thing out pretty well. Kingston has already departed for the coast and I presume he’s getting ready now to seize the ship.”
Our company, previously troubled by Roche’s comments, was now speechless at the enormity of what Woodgerd had just laid out to us. While it did surprise me, I knew that from a technical standpoint what he said was entirely possible.
In my work at the Office of Naval Intelligence, I routinely perused technical reports from our operatives around the world. I’d read the reports on airships coming from American naval attachés in Europe: Lieutenant Benjamin Buckingham in Paris and Commander French Chadwick in London.
Those reports documented the French, German, Russian, and British armies’ use of aerial ships, mostly balloons, for observation purposes. The British had used them quite effectively during the Sudan War in the preceding two years. The French used them in Indochina in 1884, a year after I was there, at the battles of Dien Bien Phu and Hong Dha. But balloons weren’t powered or steerable. They stayed tethered in one spot or they sailed downwind.
The French army’s recent efforts were the most advanced and had gone far beyond simple stationary balloons. They were working on the creation of an aerial warship that could fly anywhere, even against the wind. In 1884, they’d launched an electric-motor-powered military craft one hundred seventy feet long, La France. She’d flown through the sky for miles, upwind and down, ascending and descending, and navigating various courses at will. It was just a matter of time until military applications to powered flight came to fruition. The Americans, as usual, lagged far behind, without any current military effort in the field at all.
My knowledge of the advancements in this science was quite basic, but I did know this: If Sokolov actually had advanced beyond the French army’s aerial warship, he would be absolutely invincible.
“So how and when did you two get out?” I asked Woodgerd.
“Last night we slipped over the wall. My plan was to get to Cap Haitien and warn the authorities. Sokolov knows we’re gone by now and probably has men out looking for us. And he’ll set his plan in motion right away. It takes time to get the hydrogen generators going, get everything ready, so it’ll be tomorrow night at the earliest.”
“And his plan is to take himself and his cadre out of there on the machine?”
“Yes.”
“With the boy and the hostage?”
“Probably the boy, but not the old man. Now that everything is falling apart he doesn’t have time for the ransom idea. No room for the hostage. Weight is the critical factor for the warship. Even I wasn’t allowed to go. He told me I was to return to Cap Haitien and get passage home from there, but I figured he’d really have me killed just after he departed. No loose ends that way.”
“Then we don’t have the time to go back to Cap Haitien. We have to make do with what we have and get to Sokolov’s compound as soon as possible. All right, let’s break up this camp, we need to get away from the trail in case they come looking. We’ll rest for a while over there, in the forest, then get moving again. Michael, you’ll lead when we get under way.”
Yablonowski came over and sat next to me. “I need to send a messenger to General Hyppolite in Cap Haitien. Tell him about Sokolov’s fort and what he is doing there, and about what he plans on doing with the cable ship. I will send two of my men. It will take several days, but I must alert my superiors.”
“Excellent idea, Sergeant.”
More rain began as we removed our gear from the campsite on the trail. Soaked and sitting on a fallen tree trunk off by myself, mind reeling with the various factors at work, I loathed my inability to come up with a coherent plan of action for when we arrived at Forteresse des Nyajs. There was yet an additional factor that had not yet occurred to me, however—a major one, that both Sokolov and I had neglected to take into account.
God was about to get involved, in a very impressive way.
31
The Monster Revealed
Forteresse des Nyajs
Montay San in Northern Haiti
Tuesday, 4 September 1888
It was sunrise two days later when we arrived, muddy and exhausted, at the side of a mountain overlooking Sokolov’s lair. I say overlooking, but we could not see a thing because the air was thick with water, for the steady rain had developed into a deluge.
An ocean of water dropped from the heavens, accompanied by gusts of wind that bent the trees and sent fallen branches sailing through the air. The northwesterly wind increased by the hour, the blasts well up into tropical storm force. The Haitians jabbered about what this meant, the consensus being that yet another hurricane was on the way. Absalom’s opinion was that it had already arrived. I thought him right.
Rork ventured the notion that we should be thankful, for the stormy conditions hampered enemy efforts to search for us or to flee in the aerial machine. And it helped make our approach undetected. He then suggested that we use the weather to our advantage in our upcoming business, surprise and stealth being our best allies. It was an eminently sound idea, which unfortunately didn’t survive the scene we found before us, when we finally could see where we were.
It was noon before a break in the rain allowed a view of our adversary’s fortress spread out across a plateau forty feet below us. Between our jungle-covered hillside observation point and the outer wall was a swift-running, thirty-foot-wide, stream called the Rivière San, as in Blood River.
Fifty yards upstream to our left, rocky shoals supplied a potential route across the water, bu
t the river was rising fast. Ten yards from the opposite riverbank was the wooden outer wall. It stretched a long way. The Russian’s entire base was huge—every bit of a quarter mile long by two hundred yards wide. Our location was nearest the northern end. Woodgerd pointed out the various features and described them in detail.
The outer perimeter wall was a palisade of palm logs about ten feet high, topped by guard towers every thirty yards. Only one gate pierced the wall, at the farthest end from us. Four of the guard towers were larger and carried deadly Hotchkiss guns, thirty-seven millimeter rapid-fire cannons capable of firing forty-three rounds a minute. Between the outer perimeter and an inner wall lay a barn, paddock, vegetable gardens, and barracks for the Bizangos. Between the walls down at the far end to the south were the officers’ quarters.
Inside the five-foot-high inner wall, built of palm logs laid horizontally, lay the reason for the base—the aerial warship’s barn, a building fully two hundred feet long, fifty high, and sixty wide. It was surrounded by workshops, and at the southern end, by the armory and Sokolov’s bungalow, the only dwelling inside the inner wall.
Rork noted that the men in the guard posts were carrying modern rifles, and seemed to be alert even in the prevailing stormy conditions. Woodgerd said they were armed with the recently issued French army Lebel rifles, an eight-round rifle that used the new smokeless powder I’d heard about but not seen in action. The Lebels and Hotchkiss guns were obtained through Sokolov’s contacts in France, stolen from army depots and subsequently sold on the black market in Marseille.
Woodgerd said the hostage was kept in the small barn I could see fifty yards from our position. It had bamboo walls and a thatch roof. The intervening space between us had two barriers: that raging river and the outer wall. An added dimension trumped the barriers—one of the guard posts on that section of the wall contained a Hotchkiss gun, with two men crouching next to it, scanning their sector, which was our hillside.
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