Nexus Deep (Kirov Series Book 31)

by Schettler, John

  “That’s been drafted as well, sir.”

  “Good… Ah, this last one is a bit curious. I wonder what Lord Elgin has his hands on now?”

  He read the order, with a half smile.

  ‘TO: Captain Charles Marsh Schomberg, HMS Madras .

  Victory, At Sea, 2nd September 1804

  Sir,

  Lord Elgin having requested through Sir Alexander Ball that I would allow a Ship to call on Cerigo, to bring from thence to Malta some marble antiquities, and as I am perfectly disposed to meet his Lordship’s wishes on this occasion, I am to desire you will send a small Transport to Cerigo, with the first Convoy going up the Levant, and leave her there, for the purpose of receiving the antiquities before-mentioned on board till the return of the Convoy, when you will direct the Officer in charge thereof to call at Cerigo, and bring the Transport with his Lordship’s antiquities on board, safe under his protection to Malta, when Sir Alexander Ball will direct the disposal of them; and if it is intended to send them to England, you will give the necessary orders accordingly.

  I am, &c.

  NELSON and BRONTE.

  Much of the Admirals daily ritual was the dictation and drafting of these long-winded orders to various fleet units, a single sentence that, in this case, spanned an entire paragraph. Yet he was very thorough, always leaving no question as to what was desired and so ordered. To Alexander Ball at Malta he would also write a more succinct note, embedded in a long two-page draft. ‘I will Direct the Agent of Transports to send a Vessel to Cerigo with the first Convoy destined into the Levant for Lord Elgin’s things, if she will lay safely there, and one of our ships shall call for her upon her return.’

  That brief sentence summed up his prior order nicely, but the Vice-Admiral would never know just what he had set in motion with his directive. Cerigo was the Venetian name given to the Island of Kythira, or Kythros in that day. It was the mythical haunt of Aphrodite and Eros, though the enchantments of love were the farthest things from the mind of Lord Elgin, who was a most industrious man.

  His Lordship had been put on to the idea by the architect building his new home, “Broome Hall” in Scotland, a Mister Harrison. Since Greek artwork was all the rage in the Kingdom, why not obtain casts of some original Greek carvings, and then use them to decorate the new mansion? Appointed as Ambassador to Constantinople, Lord Elgin could stop off at Athens on his way there to look for suitable antiquities.

  The Acropolis was a Turkish Army garrison site at that time, but Lord Elgin had been in Constantinople in 1800, just after Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, and that service would put him in a good light with the Ottoman Turks, who controlled all of Greece and North Africa at that time. The British aid to the Turks in Egypt against Napoleon’s invasion had opened the door to Elgin obtaining permission, in a written “firman,” obtained by his Chaplain and Secretary, the Reverend John Hunt. The document was written by Hunt himself, seeking permission to view, draw, and model the art of the Parthenon frieze, make excavations and remove stones of interest.

  It would lead to 10 months’ hard work, where Lord Elgin had as many as 300 workmen under his employ at considerable cost, but he would end up removing fifteen metopes, and seventeen pedimental fragments, one of which was the Selene Horse.

  By a strange coincidence, the poet Byron was in that very place, staying at a hotel near the Acropolis, and one of the artists commissioned to copy the frieze met him there. The famous poet would later decry the dismembering of the Parthenon in his poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage , but he would also write a much more scathing satirical poem titled The Curse of Minerva (never intended for publication) in which he named Elgin outright. Many, like Byron, looked on Lord Elgin’s work as plunder and vandalism, while others called it an act of historical conservation, for the Acropolis was enduring considerable damage from the Turks. Some say his Lordship vainly wanted the art to decorate his home; others insisted that he had the more noble motive of enriching an understanding of the arts in England. Neither side ever knew of the treasure hidden in those ‘stones of little value,’ as Lord Elgin would often refer to them to put off the curiosity of others.

  Like many who set themselves to meddling with antiquities, angry fates stalked them soon after. Minerva’s Curse was waiting to make its mark on Lord Elgin’s life. Satisfied the work was well in hand, he resolved to return to Britain, leaving instructions on how to transport the Marbles home. Yet neither he, nor his ‘antiquities’ would get to England any time soon. His Lordship was in Paris when the Treaty of Amiens collapsed, and was put under arrest. Bonaparte was laying plans to invade England, massing ships at Brest, Boulogne, and other ports, and a plot was hatched to falsely implicate Lord Elgin in a scheme to set the French Fleet at Brest on fire. Thankfully, it never came to fruition, and Lord Elgin would eventually be released.

  His wife would travel home separately, having an affair with one of her escorts along the way, which led to a bitter public divorce. Lord Elgin himself would be afflicted by an ailment that disfigured his nose, and he would soon be unemployable, at least in any further governmental capacity. All he had left were the Marbles… and the secret that they hid beneath the finely sculpted lines of the Selene Horse.

  While he languished in captivity in Paris, his precious ‘antiquities’ would suffer their appointed fate off the Island of Cerigo, when his ship, the Mentor, ran aground and sunk, taking all her cargo with it. Years would pass as his Lordship and his Agents worked at further expense to find, recover and salvage the lost artwork, and it is at this time that some unexpected ‘visitors’ would come into the story, in a most arcane and mysterious way….

  Chapter 2

  “Well Mum,” said Mack Morgan. “Having the blessing of the Prime Minister is one thing, but actually pulling this crazy mission off is quite another. Do you realize it’s over 1500 miles from Gibraltar to this island?”

  “Cerigo?”

  “I thought it was Kythros. Well, whatever it’s called, how do you suppose we get there? The Argonauts have inflatables and such, but nothing we’d ever get through that crevice entrance in the cave, and certainly nothing that would be suitable for traveling that distance in the Mediterranean Sea!”

  “No,” said Elena, “I realize an inflatable is out of the question. But we have sea faring men aboard. Yes?”

  “Yes, but then there’s the little matter of finding a ship.”

  “Well, there has to be something suitable at Gibraltar.”

  “No argument there. It’s likely there will be warships, patrol craft, merchantmen in the harbor, but all going about their business. Are you saying you intend to simply commandeer a ship? Then what? We can take five men, six at the most for a mission like this. That’s not enough to crew a ship that can get us the 1500 miles to the island.”

  Captain Gordon MacRae had expected this sort of inquiry from Morgan. His intelligence chief was known to be a careful and thorough man, and not one to leave any detail of a mission like this unconsidered or accounted for. He simply smiled when Morgan gave him that wide eyed look that signaled his displeasure.

  “These ships come with crews,” said Elena, matter of factly.

  “They do, but then we add impressment to commandeering and I’d say we’ll make a fine ship of pirates, all out for a little unscheduled jaunt to the Greek islands and back. Of course, there’s no Royal Navy in the Med to be worrying about, and no one will mind one whit if we do such things.”

  Morgan was being sarcastic, of course, for there was a strong Royal Navy presence in the Med that year, commanded by Admiral Nelson himself, intent on blockading the port of Toulon. He wasted little time sharing this information with Elena, folding his arms with the sort of finality that said he had made an unassailable point to settle the argument.

  “That would be a fine mess—Lord Nelson out after us with half the British Mediterranean Squadron.”

  “How would he possibly know we were at sea,” Elena protested. “Come on now, Mack, it’s n
ot like the folks at Gibraltar are going to get off a radio message to the man. There’s no way he could be contacted before we’ve done our business and returned.”

  “Are you so sure of that?” Morgan wasn’t giving up his hill. “Suppose a ship is dispatched after us, and they get to Nelson with news that one of their vessels has been seized by pirates? We’ve no way of knowing that Nelson would never learn of our doings.”

  “Of course, there’s always a risk, but I like my odds that we would get away Scot-free, and remain unbothered by the Royal Navy.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Morgan. “These ships might be lucky to make 12 knots, on a good day, and the wind won’t always be our friend. So let’s just say you average ten knots, day and night. That will be nearly a week to the destination, weather permitting. If we give ourselves some leeway, let’s say ten days out, a few days ashore, and ten days back. It’s only 800 nautical miles to Toulon from Gibraltar. If anyone follows us, or sends word to Nelson by ship, he could learn that we’ve pirated this ship four days after we leave!”

  “Speculation,” Elena waved her hand.

  “And then the good Admiral could have a squadron patrolling the Sicilian Narrows to intercept us on the way home.” Morgan persisted.

  “How would they know we’d be returning to Gibraltar?”

  “He wouldn’t, but he might easily calculate our farthest on, and if anyone spots our direction as heading east into the Med, he’d know our approximate whereabouts the day he receives the news, at least along that circle. In fact, that’s where we’d be—right in the Sicilian Narrows four days out of port from Gibraltar.”

  “Mack, we could be anywhere within that farthest on. There’s no way he could determine our real location, and even if he did, Toulon is what, 500 miles north of the Sicilian Narrows? He could get the news, send out his ships, and we’d be two days ahead of them. They’d never find us.”

  Morgan was getting more frustrated. “I don’t like it,” he said. “There was a lot going on in the Med. The bloody Americans even had a military naval squadron there, out after the very sort of thing we’d be doing—piracy! Ever hear of the Barbary Pirates? They operated off the Algerian and Libyan coast, and used Tripoli as a main harbor. Miss Fairchild, these are dangerous waters. So I hope you plan on hijacking a warship. It’s very likely that we’ll run into other ships, and some may not be friendly, even if we do give Lord Nelson the slip.”

  “Point taken,” said Elena. “But we can handle ourselves.”

  “Aye, that we can,” said Gordon. He had been listening, somewhat amused with Morgan’s frustration, but he knew the man had good reason for his misgivings, and now he spoke. “There’s one other consideration. It occurred to me while I was having tea on the weather deck yesterday after we concocted this plan. I looked down and saw that a curious fly was fluttering about in my tea! If we do this, I thought, then we’ll be the fly in the teacup.”

  Elena looked at him, knowing he meant more with that metaphor than a simple reinforcement of Mack Morgan’s warning of danger. “You mean the history,” she said, giving him a look.

  “Aye, the history. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think it will record that an intrepid group of men in strange garb, escorting a lovely lady, seized and commandeered a military vessel in Gibraltar, crew and all, and then high-tailed it out to sea. We’re going to make waves, Elena, just like that fly fluttering in the last of my tea. We’re going to change things.”

  Elena was silent, the words of the Prime Minister still in her mind: “Might I advise caution while you are there. I know your Argonauts are quite effective, but a bullet in the wrong place might have some alarming repercussions. You might shoot someone’s grandfather, if you fathom what I’m getting at.”

  Morgan knew enough not to say another word, for Captain MacRae had just put forward the real problem with this whole idea—contamination of the time meridian. Yes, they were going to change things. Their very presence in that year would be an anomaly, and every breath they would take would be stolen from history of 1804.

  The two scouts they sent through the passage beneath St. Michael’s Cave had already caused a little trouble, raising suspicion of the local constabulary and being chased into the cave as a result. They evaded further discovery, and were lucky to take the correct passage that led them to the severed rope, leading the way home. Elena had her team throw it down through the crevasse, with a lit flashlight tied to the end, all in the hope they would find it. She got lucky with that fishing expedition, but even so, one of her men came back with Yellow Fever. So there were more things to worry about than Lord Nelson, the Royal Navy, and the Barbary Pirates of the Med. They might have an encounter—do something—that ended up creating a transformation in the history, and the Captain had finally hit a nerve.

  “Now,” said Gordon. “The less we shove, the better. What’s all this talk about commandeering a ship? We could be gentlemanly, and see if we might buy passage east out of Gibraltar instead of trying to take a ship there by force. To my mind, the less force used, the better. Gold has a way of opening doors and gaining cooperation, doesn’t it? I’ll warrant there will be more than a few hungry sea captains there who might like to undertake a charter for wealthy patrons. Going that route eliminates all this talk of Lord Nelson, though we’d still have those Barbary Pirates to consider.”

  “Good point, Gordon,” said Elena, and Morgan gave him those eyes again, for he had just solved one problem, but still threw a log on her fire.

  “We’ll take along a good sum of gold….” Elena was thinking. “I didn’t think we could find coin that would be legal tender for that time period, but Mister Churchill put in a call to the Bank of England, and was able to get me a good sum in old King George III Spade Guineas issued between 1787 and 1799. They were worth a Pound back then, but in our time, they sell for as much as £1,000, so it was a very generous offer. I have some ingots in the safe here as well, just in case we need more buying power. Once we get there, we might use them to obtain more currency.”

  “Gold glitters better than anything,” said MacRae.

  “So we’ll be trotting about with ingots of gold in our haversacks?” Morgan was still objecting.

  “It won’t take many,” said Elena. “The coinage we have should suffice. In fact, because of the threat of invasion by Napoleon, the Banks were somewhat skittish, and hoarding their coin. They issued one and two pound notes, though they were not in wide circulation. There’s no chance we could find those, so the coins the Prime Minister provided will have to do. I’ve a hundred Spade Guineas, and another twenty pounds in Shillings for our walking around money. That should do. Most people of that day might never even see a Guinea come their way. They earned five to ten shillings per week, if they were lucky, with an average annual income of no more than 20 pounds. So even a few small gold ingots would go a very long way if we need them, and for that matter, we could also take diamonds.”

  “Diamonds? And where do we come by those?”

  Elena smiled. “That would be telling,” she said. “One never inquires where a lady gets her diamonds, but I assure you, this lady is not without resources.”

  “Alright, alright,” said Morgan. “Supposing we can book passage, or even charter an entire ship, that act alone would be ahistorical. It might seem like an innocent cruise out to the Greek islands and back, but we’ve no way to know that. Anything could happen, and the chance that we would introduce some contamination is very high. In fact, I’d say it was inevitable. It will be 1804, the farther back you go, the greater the damage each footfall we make on that ground could do. We’ll change lives. The ship we charter was never supposed to go there, and every soul aboard will be on an altered life meridian from the moment we tip our hats at the gunwales of their ship. I find it hard to imagine that we could pull this off without introducing changes.”

  “But they might only be small changes,” said Elena, “like a scratch on the skin that Time might easily heal.�
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  “Here we sit with an ex-Daring class destroyer riding roughshod all through this history,” said Morgan. “We’ve fought battles here, influenced the Atlantic convoy campaign, made that raid on Saint Nazaire, not to mention the fact that Prime Movers in this era know all about us—Churchill, Wavell, Tovey, Cunningham. God only knows what history will arise from this altered time line. Weren’t you preaching it yourself a while back? What was all that talk about some kind of Grand Finality. If that wasn’t doom and gloom, then what is? Now we’re talking about going back another 139 years! Anything we do back there could influence this time—1943—and profoundly.”

  “So we’ll have to be very careful.”

  “Aye, careful indeed. Here it’s loose lips, sink ships. Back there it will be one errant whisper and the whole damn world could spin off in a new direction.”

  Mack Morgan was exaggerating to make his point, but then again, he wasn’t too far from the truth. One errant whisper in the ear of Sergei Kirov in 1908 had done much to change this entire world, and Morgan was also correct in wondering what the future might arise from this version of the war.

  “Bottom line,” said Morgan, making his close. “This is dangerous—damn dangerous. We’ll have to ask ourselves if that key is worth the trouble. Why do we even need it? Forgive me, Mum, but aren’t we just trying to satisfy our own curiosity as to what these keys are all about. Well, curiosity killed the cat.”

  “And satisfaction?” Elena gave him a wink. “Look Mack, I’m not sure I buy the image of that fly in a teacup. I’ll admit that commandeering a ship is out of the question. We’ll want to be as inconspicuous as possible. If we’re careful, nice and polite, I’m thinking our presence there will be more like one more fish in the sea. It’s a very big world out there. We might not change anything at all if we’re discrete.”