Honor Bound

by Robert N. Macomber

  The next moment, rifle slung on his shoulder, Woodgerd stepped off the guard tower. I heard him groaning as we hauled him up and over the gunwale. As Woodgerd collapsed, blood gushing from his slashed arm, Roche took the rifle.

  In agony himself from those ribs, he laid the rifle on the wicker gunwale, sighting along it toward a large wagon by the corner of the barn. It was the one he’d come to the airship from. The wagon had a machine on the cargo bed and a pile of shiny metal tanks stacked next to it.

  Roche laughed quietly, “How very careless of the brilliant Professor Sergei Alexandrovich Sokolov. Everyone knows you never put hydrogen near a flame. Ah, well, now he’ll get his wish to be a martyr to the people’s will.”

  It was then that I saw what had become of Sokolov. I’d assumed Roche had killed him outright during the chaos, but he hadn’t. The scientist was lashed hand and foot to the rear wheel of the wagon. Even at our quickly increasing distance, I could tell he was yelling something at us. Or maybe at the black men now surrounding him. The Bizangos weren’t untying their boss. They appeared to be taunting him.

  Roche swung the rifle slightly to the right and fired. A lantern on the ground twenty feet from the wagon exploded into pieces, the burning wick igniting the fuel. Flame raced along a trail of oil until it reached the hydrogen generator on the wagon.

  A fiery cloud erupted, blossoming out in all directions, covering the building and rail yard in a yellowish-white glare, rising into a luminescent mushroom-shaped form that roiled up into the sky.

  Incendiary bombs lying nearby on the ground provided the secondary flash, flaring even bigger than the first and engulfing everything near them that was flammable, including the corner of the airship barn. Solid flames rose hundreds of feet into the air, a giant torch turning night into day, with every aspect of Forteresse des Nyajs in stark detail as the fire cloud lit up the mountain.

  We were now well over a quarter-mile away, sailing downwind, but the heat wave reached out to us. For several seconds everyone held their breath and prayed, watching the bag of hydrogen above us, expecting to join the incineration on the ground behind us.

  Our prayers were answered. We didn’t ignite. Exhausted, stunned, we continued our course northward toward the coast, the thumping of the propeller making the only sound.

  In the lone dim light of the binnacle, I surveyed the ship we’d commandeered. The crew compartment of the hull was indeed a wicker, tightly woven from native vines. The open section of the hull was framed in a very light-colored wood.

  The rigging that held us below the massive gas bags above was also composed of vines, far thicker than the wicker. From my vantage point below, I could see what was not apparent from the observation point on the mountain—the cigar form of the airship was an outer envelope covering three elongated bags, or balloons, I suppose, inside. The outer envelope was a sheath, as it were, open along the bottom. The hull we were within was suspended by the vines twelve or so feet below the balloons and swung like a pendulum as we pitched and rolled our way through the air.

  The barometer on the forward bulkhead should indicate our approximate altitude, Dan announced. But, he added, he wasn’t sure of the relative measurement conversion of pressure into elevation, so he periodically looked overboard to try to find the forest tops below. He said he was attempting to stay a couple of hundred feet aloft so he’d have time to maneuver if something went wrong.

  The helm was a common ship’s wheel, attached in normal fashion by lines and blocks to the rudder aft. Dan also dealt with four levers, one of which I could tell controlled the motor’s throttle. Another engaged the shaft clutch. The third operated the short wing structures protruding out on either side, just aft of the bow. They tilted up or down, much like the diving planes on the Peruvian submarine I once had the misfortune to be aboard. I couldn’t deduce what the other lever controlled, as it was seldom used.

  Behind Dan stood Corny, who was in charge of ballast and several lines that ran up to the balloon. He explained that Dan told him the lines controlled escape flaps to let the gas out of the bags in an emergency. I wondered what that did exactly, but Corny did not look confident—well, none of us did—so I didn’t press him on the issue. Absalom stood beside him, gazing ahead to the north, where his islands waited over the black horizon.

  Rork and Cynda were aft of me, tending to Woodgerd’s wounded arm, a nasty gash that showed raw meat. They were wrapping a ripped section of her petticoat around it to staunch the bleeding, as Woodgerd growled curse words in the various languages he knew. The enigmatic Roche sat at the back of the compartment, staring aft at the receding fire on the side of Montay San.

  In a tired sigh, Dan called our attention to a ragged line of white far below us—a line of surf breaking on reefs. I checked my pocket watch. It was four minutes until midnight. By my dead reckoning, beneath us were the reefs off Baie de Caracol. The aerial warship was supposed to meet the stolen cable steamer somewhere in the area. I looked, but could not see the ship below us. Did Kingston and his gang manage to steal her? Were they waiting for Sokolov’s war machine on this coast? Could they see us in the night sky?

  We’d made just over twenty-five miles in an hour and a half, admittedly assisted by the following wind, but much better than the French had in their aerial warship. I estimated we had another hundred miles until we reached Great Inagua Island. Four hours, maybe five, in the dark.

  “Dan, please steer northwest from this point and reduce the throttle a bit so we slow down. I want to arrive at Great Inagua at first light, which should be in six hours. And I think it’s time to start a watch system, gentlemen.”

  Everyone nodded wearily. I again called to Dan, who was bent over, watching the compass swing in the binnacle. “You need a break, so teach Rork how to operate this thing. He’ll take first watch and relieve you at the helm.”

  Dan didn’t reply right away. Instead, he gradually straightened up and turned to face me, one hand still on the wheel. His face showed a sickly grin in the faint light. Slowly, his mouth opened and he looked right at me.

  “Too late, Peter. I’m so sorry . . .”

  I waited for him to finish his thought, but he didn’t. Five seconds later, Dan Horloft fell down dead.

  36

  Dead Reckoning

  Off the coast of northern Haiti

  Thursday, 6 September 1888

  The ship instantly swung to the right and began to fall. Corny rushed to the wheel and tried to correct our helm, pulling the lever for the planes and pushing the throttle. Our motion eased a little, but we were now much nearer to the sea, so close you could smell the brine.

  I reached Dan. There was no response, no pulse, no breath. His shirt felt wet, the abdomen swollen and mushy. I pulled open his coat and saw the shirt was soaked by a thick liquid, brown in the yellowed light. I searched and found the hole, just under the right side of his ribcage. The liver, perhaps a kidney, nicked and bleeding into the abdomen, something I’d seen in battle. A Bizango round must have got him as we escaped.

  My friend had bled out over the ninety minutes we were in the air, operating this strange machine, knowing he was the only one who could get us out of there. Knowing there was nothing we could do for him without surgical supplies and bright lights to perform an operation. He never let on that he was wounded—stoic New England fisherman to the end—and probably thinking he could get us to safety.

  Corny was beside himself with guilt. “I stood here the whole time and never knew! He didn’t tell me. Why didn’t he tell me?”

  I had Rork take the wheel, put Absalom on the gas relief lines to the balloon, and grabbed Corny by the arm. “Because he knew there wasn’t anything you could do to help him, Corny. But there is now. You watched Dan operate the airship, so stay here and help Rork figure out how to steer this thing.”

  “He should’ve told me . . .”

  “Corny, stop
it and get your wits together. You’ve got work to do.” An aerial jolt reinforced my request. “Do it.”

  “Right . . . you’re right.” He took a breath and said, “Get a rhythm going, Rork, like steering in heavy seas. Anticipate the roll and pitch and correct ahead of it. And I think we need to slow that throttle a bit, the propeller sounds too overworked.”

  That comment brought something to mind that I’d overlooked earlier. I looked aft to Woodgerd. “Did Sokolov ever tell you how long the battery would last?”

  “Oh, hell . . . No, he didn’t.”

  There is a military maxim that no plan, no matter how well conceived, outlives the initial reality of the battlefield. Our odyssey had become a case in point.

  ***

  At this moment in time, the most inscrutable of our number, Pierre Jean Roche, approached me, contritely asking if I had the time and inclination to talk. I soon discovered that what he really meant was for me to listen.

  “I think after all that has happened, we need to be truthful with each other, Commander. You have been more than fair with me and have led us through this treacherous journey to find the truth about your quarry, Luke, and about my target, Sokolov. As a fellow intelligence professional, you, more than others, understand the restrictions I have regarding information about myself and my work. But by now, I think we have proven ourselves to each other. Hesitation is no longer valid.”

  With the noise of the wind and the propeller, his voice was audible only to me as we sat within the wicker hull. It made for an extraordinary scene—two wary espionage operatives from opposites side of the world, flung together in a precarious situation.

  He held out a hand, which I clasped, as he said, “We share a common first name, you know. Peter. My real name is Pyotr Ivanovich Kovinski. I am a major in the Okhrana, the counter-revolutionary section of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and I command the foreign espionage operations section in Paris. My assignment is to compromise radical émigré revolutionaries in Europe through penetration agents—what the French call provocateurs.”

  Provocateurs. The Russians were known by the murky intelligence profession as the best in the world at that—with the Okhrana as the best of the best. “From what I hear in the press, you are busy these days. There are lots of unhappy Russian émigrés. Are you successful?”

  He shrugged. “I am told that I am very good at it.”

  I thought about his name, Pyotr Ivanovich. Pierre Jean, in French. Not much of a stretch. “So tell me, Pyotr, did you have a provocateur here in Haiti that alerted you to Sokolov’s activities?”

  “Yes, a man passing through the area wrote about an odd Russian with a place in the mountains. The description matched our missing fanatical genius. Later, we sent an operative here from New York to follow up. He confirmed the initial report.”

  An agent in New York? That was interesting.

  “Really? Who was that?” I asked as casually as I could.

  “Peter . . . you know I cannot reveal my agents’ identities. Please do not worry, though. Our agents in America are focused on Russian émigrés, not American citizens. We have no quarrel with your country.”

  I doubted that, but switched subjects. “So you, as the head of foreign counter-intelligence took this mission yourself? This renegade Russian must have been very important to you already. I assume you had been trying to find Sokolov for some time. You knew of his work.”

  “Yes. His work was pioneering. Then he suddenly left. We found out about his intellectual weaknesses, his true motives, his deplorable treachery. He deceived and used us—to gain knowledge, to expand his evil network, to build his heinous dream machine of death.”

  Roche, or Kovinski as I now had to remind myself, raised an index finger in exclamation. “Sokolov was judged to be one of our most dangerous enemies. But now, thanks to you, and the others on this expedition, we in Russia can breathe safely again. The fiend is slain.”

  “And some good people died.”

  “Yes. And that is why you should know that you will always have me, and the imperial House of Romanov, in your debt, Peter. I am genuinely sorry for the loss of your friends Dan and Yablonowski. Henri and Claire knew the dangers, but your friends did not. Everyone aboard has my appreciation.”

  Later, he let everyone know his true name, which was used from then on. That moment when he opened up to me was memorable, beginning a unique opportunity for me. The Russians were known in the profession for efficiency, ruthlessness, and obsessive secrecy. I now had an entrée into their private world. I thanked Major Kovinski with the assurance that I would be ready to assist him in the future, professionally and personally, should he ever need help.

  ***

  We honored my friend Dan Horloft at dawn. A born and bred seaman, he would’ve appreciated the bird’s-eye view from higher than any mast he’d climbed. The sun was a sphere of liquid gold, rising through a misty peach-colored sky. Below us was a wave-flecked indigo sea. The panorama was awe-inspiring, perfect for the welcoming of a sailor son home to heaven.

  Our resources were obviously limited. I cobbled together a short prayer. Absalom quoted John 14 and the 91st Psalm by heart. Kovinski said a prayer in Russian. And finally, all of us—led by my Catholic friend Rork—sang the first verse from the Episcopal sailors’ hymn, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.” Then we let the mortal remains of our companion go down into the sea far below.

  Afterward, Absalom, holding one of Cynda’s hands and I the other, led a prayer for Luke, an innocent caught up in something he couldn’t fathom. Woodgerd closed his eyes like the rest, but didn’t mouth the words.

  No one spoke for a long time afterward.

  ***

  We never saw Great Inagua Island, one of the largest of the Bahamian chain, that morning. A distressing development, to say the least. Nervous glances were cast my way by the passengers. Even Rork had a worried look on his face.

  Navigation is done by calculating time, course, and speed. I knew the course well enough, and the approximate time by my pocket watch. But I’d never navigated a ship that moved through the air. Once we left the land, I was dead reckoning, guessing really, at our airship’s speed and the amount of drift to leeward.

  37

  Powerless

  Southern Bahamian Islands

  Thursday, 6 September 1888

  In the daylight I found two items in a stowage locker in Sokolov’s “navigation bridge”—for lack of a better term—that proved quite useful. The first was a telescope, which I immediately issued to Absalom, who possessed the youngest and sharpest eyes. The second was a general chart of the region. Kovinski, Rork, and I studied it as Corny steered. Woodgerd was aft, resting. Cynda was gazing behind us.

  I was going to try to deduce our position but was distracted by marks on the chart. A rhumb line was noted in pencil, emanating from a circled point off Haiti’s northern coast, right about where we exited. It progressed across the chart two hundred miles west-northwesterly to a circled point in the tiny archipelago of reef islets south of Ragged Island in the Bahamas. The line then ran straight north-northwesterly to Nassau. A third leg of the line left Nassau in a northeasterly course for a hundred miles, to a circled point out in the ocean, thirty miles from the end of Eleuthera Island. Circled points are used by navigators as approximate position fixes, or as a rendezvous.

  Sokolov’s plan was right there, before us.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. His first target wasn’t going to be in Russia, gentlemen,” I said. “The cable ship would meet him here, then tow him from Haiti to . . .” I peered at the chart. “Santo Domingo Cay, south of Ragged Island in the southern Bahamas. But look, from that place this rhumb line crosses over islands on its way to Nassau, so I presume that would be the course of the aerial warship. It would be launched from the cable steamer and fly north across the Bahamas.”

  “Attackin’ Nassau?�
� asked Rork. “It’s British, not Rooskie. Why there?”

  Kovinski nodded. “For practice, Rork. A dress rehearsal attack on Nassau at night, to make sure things worked correctly. No one would know the perpetrator or the method, but everyone would be panicked. Later, after Sokolov attacked Saint Petersburg, people would know who attacked Nassau. He would show the European monarchs his ability to humiliate them, to hit their empires everywhere. Sokolov hated them all, including Queen Victoria.”

  “Ah, so then after he did Nassau, the bugger’d sail his airship nor’east an’ meet up with his stolen steamer at this last place on the chart, out in the ocean. Dicey move, that. Tryin’ to find a ship in the dark in the ocean an’ get winched down to it.”

  “Yes, but if the ship shined electrical lights up into the air, like a lighthouse, you could see it from quite a distance at this altitude,” I said, adding, “and then, once they get secured to the ship, they steam to the Baltic. But that steamer doesn’t carry enough coal to get to the Baltic in one run. He’d have to re-coal the cable ship, and maybe re-arm his war machine, somewhere in the European Atlantic islands. Azores or Canaries.”

  Kovinski sighed. “I have more work to do. Okhrana must discover his accomplices in Europe. This came very close to happening. Too close.” He looked up expectantly at me. “I must get to Nassau as quickly as possible, Commander, and obtain steamer passage home. So . . . where are we now?”