Shadow of the Osprey

by Peter Watt

  The Major did not pursue the subject except to say, ‘I believe you were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour by the late President Lincoln?’

  Michael nodded and glanced away.

  A short silence followed until the British major decided to restart the conversation. ‘You and I should get together some time and share recollections on the Five Forks campaign,’ he said. ‘A fairly decisive encounter with the army of Northern Virginia by your army. I was rather impressed by the “Boy General” as your newspapers liked to call him. George Custer’s attack on the Confederate right was a rum show. Now there is a young man with a big future. I have read lately that George Custer is doing a spot of duty chasing redskins in the Dakota territory. Damned fine chap for a colonial.’

  Michael knew George Custer and did not like him. He considered the man a dangerous maniac bent on self-glory at the expense of the lives of his men. ‘I believe Lieutenant Colonel Custer is doing so,’ he replied with the emphasis on the lower rank as opposed to Custer’s brevet general rank of his Civil War days.

  ‘If ever there was a man to deal with your native problem then Custer will be the one to bring them to heel,’ the British officer mooted with a note of admiration. ‘We need a man like that here to deal with the damned savages up north. But the blasted darkies prefer to fight guerilla war against our courageous settlers. Won’t stand and fight a battle.’

  ‘Maybe George Custer will bite off more than he can chew some day Major,’ Michael replied sardonically. ‘I can tell you from personal experience that those redskins as you call them are, in the words of one of your own officers, amongst the finest light horsemen anywhere in the world. And man for man I would put my money on the injuns. So long as Custer has the numbers he will beat them. But pity help him if he ever has to face a united nation of the plains tribes.’

  ‘Not likely to happen, Mister O’Flynn,’ Godfrey scoffed. ‘The Indians, fortunately for the white man, are little more than savages, without recourse to our superior tactics and technology. No, Custer will be the man to pacify the savages, mark my words.’ Godfrey could see that George Custer was not a favourite of Mister O’Flynn and tactfully turned the subject. ‘I am rather intrigued by your invitation to the reception Mister O’Flynn. How is it that you know our charming and, might I add, beautiful hostess and her husband the Baron?’

  ‘I have not had the pleasure of meeting the Baron or his wife,’ Michael replied. ‘But I was invited to make the acquaintance of the Baron’s wife by a mutual friend of the Baron and myself in Sydney.’ What Michael said was partially true although he did not know if George Hilary had ever met the Baron or his wife either.

  ‘Ah, I see,’ the major replied, turning to watch the two women strolling towards them across the lawn from the marquees. ‘Then I am pleased to say our hostess is approaching and I will have the honour of introducing you to the beautiful and generous lady.’ Michael half turned and froze. His tanned face drained of blood.

  Penelope White! And Fiona!

  Penelope was smiling as she accepted the Major’s patter of flattering compliments. She turned her frank gaze on Michael who saw a faint flicker of recognition in her eyes. Beside her Fiona had paled and appeared as if she might faint. The subtle exchange between Michael and the two women did not appear to have been noticed by the English major. ‘Mister O’Flynn, may I introduce the Baroness von Fellmann and her charming cousin Missus Fiona White.’

  Michael fought to regain his composure. ‘You were right Major,’ he replied calmly. ‘But not generous enough in your praise of such a beautiful woman as the Baroness,’ he said as he brushed Penelope’s extended hand with a kiss in the Continental fashion. ‘Nor did the Major speak of the beauty of the other ladies of the Colony of New South Wales,’ he continued smoothly as he fixed Fiona with his single grey eye.

  ‘What a charming man you are Mister O’Flynn,’ Penelope said gaily as she withdrew her hand a little reluctantly from his. ‘I have heard that you Americans can be more charming than my French guests. Isn’t Mister O’Flynn charming Fiona?’

  Fiona continued to stare wide-eyed at Michael and her cousin knew what had caused the painful reaction to the American. ‘You seem to be somewhat familiar to us Mister O’Flynn,’ Penelope continued.

  Michael frowned and shook his head. ‘I wish I was Baroness. But this is my first visit to Australia. It may be that I remind you of someone perhaps?’ he asked calmly, although he could feel his heart pounding with the fear of being exposed.

  ‘Yes you do Mister O’Flynn,’ Penelope said brightly, pursing her lips in a seductive manner while her eyes roamed over him. ‘You bear an uncanny resemblance to a man Missus White and I knew many years ago. But I doubt you could be the same man. No, you are definitely not the man we mistook you for.’

  Michael relaxed a little and appraised both women. Neither showed the passage of years except to mature and grow even more beautiful. They still made an interesting contrast: the dark-haired beauty of Fiona and the golden and more voluptuous beauty of the Baroness.

  Fiona’s emerald green eyes were wide still with what Michael interpreted as shock and her naturally pale and flawless skin whiter than chalk. He was uneasy, but was aware that he had changed dramatically in the intervening years since they last met. The ravages of war had changed his face and he now had the hard look of a man accustomed to living with death rather than the gentler expression of the young man who had once dreamed of being a landscape artist.

  ‘I believe you are the gentleman my husband wrote to me about,’ Penelope said in a more businesslike tone. She was composed and her expression displayed little more than a sensual appraisal of him. ‘It will be my pleasure to discuss with you some matters of business. But you must excuse me today as I have to attend to my guests. Major Godfrey appears to be excelling at entertaining you for the moment. I would like to see you here tomorrow, six o’clock, if that is convenient to you Mister O’Flynn?’

  ‘I think so Baroness,’ Michael replied.

  ‘Good! Please mingle and meet some of my other guests,’ Penelope smiled enigmatically. ‘I am sure they are intrigued by your appearance. I have heard more than one young lady mention how she would like to meet the mysterious American. You seem to have a magnetism for women Mister O’Flynn,’ she said as she slipped her hand under Fiona’s elbow.

  ‘There is little that could be considered mysterious about me Baroness,’ Michael replied modestly. ‘But thank you for the compliment. I will take you up on the invitation.’

  Penelope steered her cousin away. Not until they were out of hearing did Fiona finally utter, ‘Penny, it was like seeing Michael come back from the dead.’

  Penelope beamed a smile at a French naval officer who had consumed a good quantity of his national beverage and was feeling rather amorous. He said something to her in French and she replied fluently in kind before returning her attention to her cousin. ‘I grant you that Mister O’Flynn has an uncanny similarity with Michael Duffy,’ she said as they strolled in the garden back to the marquee.

  Fiona still felt faint. Meeting the American had opened a floodgate of bittersweet memories.

  Penelope again sensed her cousin’s pain and leaned across to her as they strolled amongst the guests. ‘Forget Mister O’Flynn, Fiona my love,’ she whispered. ‘While you are thinking of Mister O’Flynn you are only causing yourself to think of Michael. And Michael is gone forever. You only bring unnecessary pain for what is long past.’

  Fiona knew Penelope was right. Michael Duffy was just a sweet, sad memory. Penelope was convinced that the likeness of O’Flynn to Michael Duffy was purely coincidental. And she was far too astute to make a mistake.

  Michael kept up a pretence of a conversation with Major Godfrey but his mind was still reeling from his encounter with Penelope and Fiona. He was pleased when the Major saw a fellow officer and excused himself with a promise that both men should get together to talk of the war. Michael agreed, but neither man made any ar
rangements to meet.

  As soon as the Major had excused himself Michael also made his exit. He was very aware that he was in territory as dangerous as any battlefield he had fought on. Recognition could mean being betrayed to the police and execution by hanging was still the penalty imposed for the capital crime of murder in the Colony of New South Wales.

  But Major Godfrey had not dismissed the American so easily. He had watched Michael take his leave from the afternoon lawn party with great interest. Damn Horace Brown! Damn him for even mentioning his mission to shadow the American.

  Major Godfrey had not given much thought to his conversations with his old friend from the Crimea until this afternoon when he had noticed Michael O’Flynn amongst the invited guests of the Baroness. As an officer of Her Majesty’s forces he knew it was his duty to keep an eye on the mysterious American.

  Now he would have to take his reluctant leave of the party just as the champagne had made some of the younger and more eligible daughters of the colony less inhibited.

  Michael did not notice the British officer take a cab to follow him. He was preoccupied with his unexpected meeting with Fiona and Penelope. What if Penelope had not been fooled? How much did she still dislike him? He hailed a hansom cab to return to his hotel. The last time they had met – a decade earlier – she had expressed her resentment of him in the most cruel way she could. Did she still dislike him enough to have him arrested? The uneasy thoughts nagged Michael as he sat brooding in the cab even though he was sure he had convinced the two women that he was Michael O’Flynn, American gun dealer.

  That evening Michael drank alone in the bar of the hotel and no-one dared approach the one-eyed man. He did not have the appearance of someone looking for company.

  When the bar closed Michael made his way up to his room and was annoyed to find that the door was not locked. He was sure he had locked it.

  He carefully pushed the door open and stepped warily inside the darkened room. It took only seconds for his eyes to scan the room that was bathed in the soft shadows of a hallway light. The outline of the naked figure reclining on his bed caused him to catch his breath.

  Penelope slid from the bed and padded across the dimly lit room to him. As she approached he could see the contours of her shapely hips and slim waist.

  He did not resist when she pulled his face down to hers. The kiss was at first soft and moist, then savage as her teeth bit into his lip. He pulled away and could taste blood in his mouth.

  ‘Hello Mister O’Flynn. Or should I say, Michael Duffy?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘You might have only one eye Michael, but you still have the same soul,’ she said, stroking his lips with the tips of her fingers. The touch stung where she had broken the skin with her teeth and she felt him wince. ‘I knew you from the moment I looked into that eye and I saw the man you once were . . . and always will be. The same man that I had promised myself would be at my mercy one day. And now you are truly at my mercy!’

  ‘Does Fiona know?’ Michael asked as she tasted his blood on the tips of her fingers.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she purred deeply. ‘My cousin is a romantic who would prefer to think that her lover died with his last thoughts being of her. Did you Michael?’ she teased. ‘Were your last thoughts of Fiona?’

  ‘There have been many times in my life when I have had last thoughts Baroness,’ Michael growled. ‘But mostly of regret for not having had the opportunity to kill your brother. But for now I must confess that I am confused as to why you are in my bed. The last time I saw you you were expressing a deep and abiding hatred for me.’

  ‘I want you Michael Duffy. I have always wanted you,’ she said in a husky voice as she slid her hand inside his shirt to feel the hard muscle of his chest, ‘from that day I saw you on the pier at Manly. But you were too besotted with my cousin to notice me then. And now I have you at my mercy as you fully know and can do with you whatever I wish. Even make you beg for me. Make you indulge me in my most depraved desires. And make you do whatever I want no matter how you should feel about any other woman in your life. Your life is mine because I know who you really are.’ She drew his face down to hers and her kiss was hot and passionate.

  For the moment he was totally at her mercy. Whether he had free choice was a moot point as the lingering scent of her body was the desirable and musky scent of a woman. He was losing himself to her desire. The years of living in a world of sudden death and extreme violence boiled over into a passion to create rather than destroy, to give pleasure instead of pain. It had been a long time since he had experienced the sweet and sensual pleasure of a woman’s body. A long time since he had experienced the erotic pleasures she unleashed in him.

  Penelope finally realised both a dream of revenge and a deep desire she had concealed even from herself. She drew him down onto the bed and her legs wrapped around his waist, locking him into her body. As he submitted to her will he was everything she imagined he would be: a magnificent lover who embodied all the maleness of a wild and untamed animal. She did not imagine love in the coupling of their bodies. No, her love was only for the dark-haired woman with the emerald green eyes who thought she had seen a ghost. She smiled triumphantly as she guided Michael’s head down between her legs. Hers was the power of a woman to use her body to defeat her enemies – especially if they were men.

  Michael did not think of Fiona. He had long learned to seize the moment in the turbulent and dangerous world that had changed him from being a romantic dreamer to a hard-bitten, cynical soldier of fortune. For him love was something he had lost with his dreams of marrying the dark-haired beauty Fiona Macintosh. At least with Penelope he understood the violence of lust. Lust, the satisfaction of which was paid for or occasionally granted freely in his troubled life as a soldier.

  ‘The Baroness left immediately following the reception,’ Major Godfrey said with an edge of envy for the American’s luck in bedding the beautiful wife of the Prussian aristocrat. ‘She is currently, shall we say, in the arms of Mister O’Flynn in his hotel room, lucky blighter.’

  Baroness von Fellmann had a reputation for being very discreet in her amorous escapades as Godfrey well knew. But visiting a man at his hotel was less than prudent. ‘Do you think she knows Mister O’Flynn from some other time?’ Horace asked him as both men conversed quietly in a corner of the Officers’ Mess at Victoria Barracks.

  Godfrey shook his head. ‘I cannot see how that would be possible. As far as I know, the Baroness has never visited either Samoa or America. No, I would say the lady was smitten by our American friend. Nothing more.’

  Horace frowned. He was not convinced that Mister O’Flynn and the Baroness had not met before. Although he could not say from personal experience anything about the sexual needs of a woman, he did know enough about the opposite sex to know a woman did not go to bed with a man she had only exchanged a few words with at a reception.

  Horace was however in possession of information that she had first visited the gun dealer after she left her own reception party and then gone to the hotel where O’Flynn was staying. It was obvious that she had gone out of her way to locate the man and bed him. The whole situation was perplexing.

  Mister O’Flynn seemed to have more of an interesting past than Horace had first suspected. He had a strange and intriguing accent under his Irish-American speech. One thing about being an expert in linguistics as Horace was, was the ability to read words and accents, as a hunter would interpret an animal’s tracks. He strongly suspected that Michael O’Flynn had either spent a long time in Australia – or had visited before.

  The visit by the Baroness to O’Flynn’s hotel room seemed to confirm his theory that the American had been in Sydney previously although there was no record in existence to say so. So just who was Mister O’Flynn? The answer to that question just might prove more than valuable.

  ‘O’Flynn tells me you are very good with the cards, Horace old chap,’ Godfrey drawled, flashing a grin at h
is friend who was still brooding on the subject of Michael O’Flynn. ‘Care for a hand or two? For a few guineas?’

  ‘Dear chap,’ Horace replied in a sad voice. ‘One thing that I well and truly learned in the Crimea was never to play cards with an infantry officer. Sadly, you are not gentlemen like your brothers from the cavalry. No gentlemen at all.’

  Godfrey gave his old friend a broad grin. ‘It was worth a try old chap,’ he sighed.

  Horace finished his drink and excused himself from the Mess. Outside the barracks he hailed a cab. He was deep in thought during the trip back to his hotel. Manfred von Fellmann was up to something. What would the former Prussian officer do if he realised his Anglo-Australian wife was in bed with the American? Fortunately for O’Flynn the Baron was still in Samoa as far as he knew.

  The English agent wondered at the intentions of the Germans and particularly of Manfred von Fellmann. He was Bismarck’s most trusted intelligence agent for the Pacific region. Whatever the Germans were planning had to be of vital importance to their strategic interests in what most European powers considered to be the backwater of international politics. Horace frowned as he passed by the tenement houses of Sydney. Why the hell had von Fellmann suddenly shifted his attention from Samoa to Sydney as British intelligence sources in Samoa had indicated? For whatever reason, he was sure that the mysterious Irish-American was the key to the whole enterprise. All he had to do was keep track of him and learn more about his past. He was sure that was the key to finding what was underlying the Germans’ sudden interest in this part of the world. And Horace’s keenly honed intelligence instincts told him too that O’Flynn was not all that he appeared to be.

  Penelope lay in Michael’s arms. She smiled when she remembered how only two nights earlier she had held Fiona against her naked body in a similar manner. She gazed down at Michael’s battle-scarred body. How ironic that she and Michael had shared Fiona’s body at different stages in their lives.

  There was little chance she would betray Michael to the police. He was a key player in her husband’s games of international intrigue. And besides, she mused as she watched him sleep, he was one of the best lovers she had ever bedded. She traced a long scar down his chest with the tip of her nail and smiled wickedly. ‘Oh Michael,’ she sighed softly so as not to wake him. ‘If you only knew the games I have planned for when we next meet you would most probably rather face the gallows.’