Agent Provocateur

by Christopher C Tubbs

  Eventually, another messenger boy arrived, and he was led deep into the building. He was shown into a room and was confronted with what looked like the setting for his Lieutenant’s exam. There were three men sitting behind a desk, two in civilian suits and the third in the uniform of a Navy captain. The room was windowless, painted in a drab beige, and lit by a number of lanterns, which just made it stuffy. It didn’t help that one of the civilians was puffing foul-smelling smoke out of a clay pipe.

  He was pointed to a wooden chair, and he sat down facing the three.

  “You are Sebastian St. Martin Enseigne de Vaisseau de première classe, of the Frigate Immortalité?” Asked the man in the middle.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You were captured by the British at Tory Island?”

  “I was.”

  “Please tell us what happened and how you happened to be captured.”

  Marty knew the whole battle by heart and recited the narrative he had prepared, making it sound as if the recollection was painful to him. He finished by saying he was hit by an exploding powder carrier and was knocked out. He had regained consciousness in the surgeon’s quarters of the Fisgard, who had captured them just outside of Brest.

  “Your captain was killed?”

  “Yes, he died on the quarter deck with the first.”

  “What was the condition of the ship when it surrendered?”

  “I am told it was sinking.”

  “You were told?”

  “When we arrived in England and I was released from hospital, I was put with some other officers and servants. One of those was a cox from the Immortalité. He told me.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Frederique Le Bonne. He was exchanged with me and is here in Paris as my companion and helper.”

  The civilian on the end went through some papers then nodded to the man in the centre.

  All this time, the officer listened with a bored look on his face as if he had heard it all before. He looked at Marty narrow-eyed and asked,

  “Please remove your bandage and show us your head.”

  Marty was surprised but did as he was asked, commenting,

  “It is only there to protect my head from the cold.”

  He stood and turned his back to the three.

  “Were you hurt anywhere else?” the officer asked.

  “Yes, I was burnt on my back.”

  He made as if he was about to remove his coat.

  “It is sufficient that we see your head,” the man in the middle said.

  “You may sit down.”

  Marty sat and looked steadily at the three of them and made no attempt to replace the bandage.

  “Are you still in pain?”

  “Yes, I have headaches and my vision sometimes goes blurred. The doctors say it is the remains of the shock to my brain.”

  “So, you are not fit to return to sea?”

  “They say I am not.”

  The second civilian checked another set of papers and nodded again to the man in the middle. The three then had a whispered discussion. The chairman (as Marty was thinking of him) sat forward with his arms on the table and said,

  “You will report to the ministry tomorrow. We will place you in the Supply Department until you can return to sea duty. Le Bonne will be ordered to report for duty as soon as a suitable post is found.”

  He looked at Marty for several seconds.

  “Your orders will be delivered this afternoon. You may go.”

  Marty stood and went to the door. The same messenger boy was waiting outside ready to guide him out.

  Back at the house, he found Linette and James and gave them a brief report on what happened.

  “What do we do if I get orders?” James asked.

  “You will have a ‘tragic accident’ in between here and the ship, and a body will be found that looks enough like you beside the road to prevent further investigation,” answered Linette, “You will be back in England at the farm by then.”

  Marty looked thoughtful.

  “I might be able to intercept any orders or remove James from the list while I am in the ministry. I will need a few days to see how that goes. Meantime, what are we going to do to stir things up?”

  “We need the directorate to get nervous,” Linette suggested.

  “An assassination attempt on one of them?” James put in.

  “That might work but how?” Marty asked.

  They argued back and forth different ideas from a raid on a member’s house, discounted as too risky as the members were heavily guarded by police, to a long range shot with a musket.

  They finally decided that a small bomb would be their best bet as it would send a message and didn’t actually have to kill the target, just get close. Marty had reservations about the collateral risks, as he didn’t like to kill civilians unnecessarily, but he rationalised that if they saved British lives as a result, then it would be worth it.

  The next day, Marty reported to the ministry as ordered and ended up sitting at a plain wooden desk with one drawer that didn’t lock and in a very uncomfortable wooden chair. A snotty-nosed, spotty individual dropped a pile of reports and a ledger on his desk and he was told to enter the details from the reports in the ledger against the ship’s name.

  Within thirty minutes, he was bored to tears. Paperwork was never his forte. He could fill in the admiralty forms necessary to keep a ship running if he had to, but this was tedious beyond belief. He looked around the office where there were another five men doing the same thing. They were all veterans and all recovering from wounds of varying severity.

  He looked across at a one-armed lieutenant who was obviously as disinterested in his task as he was. The lieutenant looked back at him and grinned.

  “Exiled here with the rest of us cripples hey?” he asked.

  “Yes, unfit to be sent back to a ship, so punished by a whip made of paper,” Marty quipped.

  “Raymond de Lyon late of the Herculese.” The one-armed man introduced himself.

  “Sebastian St. Martin of the Immortalité,” Marty replied in kind.

  Raymond looked him over.

  “You seem to have your full complement of wings and pins so what stops you from sailing?”

  “Oh, I got blown up,” said Marty, turning his head to show his red scalp and slowly growing hair. “A full charge from a nine-kilogram cannon went up in its carrier box right behind me. Poor boy was blown to bits. I was blown across the deck and was only saved from going overboard by the boarding nets,” he explained, “I spent a while in an English hospital before being exchanged back to France at the end of October. How about you?”

  “Oh, I got hit by a musket bullet, and it smashed my arm. They took what was left off, and now I’m stuck here.” Raymond looked around furtively and then took a flask out of his jacket pocket. “Fancy a drop of Brandy? Makes the day go much quicker.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Marty grinned.

  Two hours later, Marty had done very little paperwork but had found out a lot about the layout of the ministry and how there was a regular tyrant in charge of the section that posted exchanged men to ships. He was purported to be an ex-school master from the Naval college in Brest and was rumoured to have an intense dislike of all junior officers.

  At the end of the day, he loitered behind and waited for the others to leave. He made his way to the part of the building that Raymond had told him the postings office was in and looked for the right door. Luckily, like most government organisations the Ministry had an obsession with labelling everything, so he soon found what he was looking for.

  He knocked on the door and when there was no answer, he took a quick look up and down the corridor and gently opened it. There was no one inside, so in he went. There were a number of cupboards and a desk. The desk had a couple of paper trays on it with neatly stacked papers in them.

  He had just started leafing through the top one when the door opened behind him and a voice asked,
r />   “And what the hell are you doing in here?”

  He turned and saw a short, older man with grey hair and a pugnacious look on his face.

  “I was – aahh,” he started to say.

  “Looking to see if you were going to be posted to a ship.” The man finished for him, “You young officers are all the same. Impatient, reckless, and foolhardy.” He paused and looked Marty up and down. “You are recovering from being wounded and they put you here to do some paperwork while you recuperate?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Marty

  “What is your name? You look familiar.”

  “Sebastian St. Martin, sir,” Marty replied.

  “Ha! I thought so! You were at the college at Brest in ’91. I taught you Algebra. Mr. Dagmey, do you remember me?”

  Marty thought fast. He couldn’t deny this as he knew that Sebastian had gone to Brest Naval College.

  “Of course! I didn’t recognize you, sir. It’s been a long time, and I have trouble remembering thinks since I was hurt,” he improvised.

  “Well, I can save you the trouble of looking,” Dagmay said as he walked behind the desk and took a sheet of paper from the lower tray.

  “Let me see…… Yes, you are on the list of those that are wounded but will return to duty eventually. Hmm, you were exchanged recently?”

  “Yes, sir. At the end of October.”

  “Then you would not be sent back to sea for a couple of months anyway as it takes time to send back the officer you were exchanged for.” He sighed. “I have a backlog of papers to process it will take me a month to catch up”

  Marty thought fast.

  “Maybe I could help you, sir. They just have me entering reports now and that isn’t very… well,” he stuttered to a stop.

  “Interesting,” Dagmay finished for him, “Maybe you could at that, you were one of my brighter students. Report here tomorrow morning. I will take care of the transfer.”

  Chapter 8: The Best Intentions

  Marty got back to the house an hour later and was going to tell them the good news when he caught the unmistakable odour of gunpowder. He went into the kitchen and found Linette and James with an open barrel of fine gunpowder, the type used for pistol or musket loads, on the table. He quickly looked around, checking for open flames and finding none approached them.

  “For the bomb?” he asked.

  “Yes,” replied James, “It’s the best we could get. At least, it’s better than the stuff they put in their ships.”

  Marty rubbed some between his fingers feeling the grade of the grains and then carefully brushed his fingers off back into the barrel.

  “It should do just fine,” he said, “What are we putting it in to make a bomb?”

  “There are four kilograms in this barrel. How much do you think we should use?” asked Linette.

  “Four pounds would be more than enough,” said Marty, “so about half of this.”

  Linette went to a cupboard and brought back a cast iron casserole dish with a lid. “Would this do it?”

  “I like your thinking,” Marty replied and took the pot from her. “If we fill this and wrap it in rope to hold the lid on it will make a hell of a bang. The question is how do we set it off?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that, and we can’t use slow fuse as the smoke and smell will give it away. I was wondering if we could use a flintlock or wheellock somehow and trigger that with a long chord,” James said.

  “That means one of us would have to be nearby when we set it off. It would be better if we could fire it off automatically,” Marty said thoughtfully.

  They threw ideas back and forward over dinner and the discussion continued until they went to bed, but they didn’t come up with anything.

  On his way to the ministry the next morning, he was passing by a shop and was surprised when what he took to be model of an acrobat on a trapeze suddenly started to move. It was an automaton, and it performed a whole routine before going back to its rest position. That set him thinking.

  He reported to the postings office and Dagmay gave him a pile of reports on exchanged sailors to sort and classify. He then had to create a list with the names, ranks, last ship and state of readiness of those fit to be reposted. He was about half way through sorting the reports when he came upon the file for Frederique Le Bonne. He put him in the pile of ‘unfit to be posted’ sailors until Dagmay left the room and then slipped it into a hidden pocket at the back of his coat. That taken care of, he continued with his allotted task until it was time to go home.

  When he got to the house, it was empty except for Blaez who greeted him as normal. He took him out for a walk and looked in at a couple of clock shops on his way, an idea percolating in the back of his mind.

  He got back to the house and found Linette and James in the kitchen preparing dinner. The casserole was on the table. Linette looked worried and before Marty could tell them he had secured James’s papers, she said,

  “Something is about to happen in the next couple of days. Napoleon’s brother, who is the chairman of the Councils, is spreading rumours of a rebellion. Napoleon has started positioning troops quietly around the city. If we do something it must be tonight or tomorrow.” She stopped what she was doing and said, “Napoleon will be at the ministry of war tomorrow morning.”

  “Are you suggesting we go after him?” Marty asked in surprise.

  “No, but his brother will be leaving his house at the same time and would be an easier target with all eyes on the General.”

  “The bomb?” Marty asked.

  James leaned forward from where he was sitting the other side of the table.

  “This is no good,” he said, pointing at the casserole. “It’s too heavy and too hard to get into place. It would also cause a lot of innocent casualties as his house is near a school.”

  Marty nodded.

  “We need something that can be in plain site and wont attract attention, is easy to position and can be set off at a distance.”

  “A box of empty wine bottles,” Linette suddenly offered.

  The boys looked at her quizzically.

  “Everybody puts out their empty wine bottles to be collected by the road so that the wine shops can re-use them. The bottles cost more than the wine most of the time.”

  “So, we disguise our bomb as a box of empty bottles and leave it outside his house. But how do we set it off at the right time?” Marty asked.

  “If we placed a closed lantern in the top of the box and some loose powder below you could shoot the lantern and that would do it,” James suggested.

  “That would be quite a shot even if we can find a vantage point,” Marty said.

  “Then we will should go and have a look this evening,” Linette said.

  After dinner, they took a walk across town to the home of Lucien Bonaparte. It was in a nice suburb in a row of typical town houses that faced onto the road and had courtyards at the back. Walking up the road, Marty looked for somewhere that someone with a musket could hide to detonate the bomb. There wasn’t anywhere. That plan wouldn’t work.

  Back at the house, they revisited the problem and came to the conclusion that all they could do was set a slow fuse in the box and light it just before they placed it outside of his house. The hardest part would be distracting the police guards to enable the switch. They would just have to hope no one would smell it.

  Six o’clock the next morning saw the three of them near the house. Linette and James were dressed in typical low-income clothes and had used make-up to change their appearance (France was supposed to be classless, but in reality there were still strata in their society) and went first. They had both sloshed wine over their clothes to reinforce the impression that they were on their way home after a good night out. As they got near to the house, they started to argue loudly and drunkenly. They got increasingly rowdy the closer they got, reaching a peak just outside the door.

  The police guards moved in to move them on and made a real attempt to quiet
them as they didn’t want the chairman’s rest to be disturbed. As they allowed themselves to be moved away, they resisted just enough to keep the guards focus on them. That allowed Marty to walk up to the door and switch his box for the one that was already there. Then he just walked away.

  A half hour later, Lucien’s coach appeared ready to take him to the Council. One of his servants opened the front door when the bomb went off shattering windows up and down the street and demolishing the rear of the carriage. The terrified horses bolted off down the street and disappeared into the distance to be stopped eventually by a teamster who was walking to work. The two police guards were killed instantly as was the servant and the carriage driver. A number of people were hit by flying glass.

  All in all, as a terror attack it had the right impact but not the expected result. Lucien used it as ammunition the following day to persuade the councils that there was a Jacobin revolt going on in Paris and talked them in to decamping to the Chateaux de Saint-Cloud. Bonaparte was given charge of all military assets in the area and charged with the safety of the councils.

  Three of the five councils resigned in protest at that leaving only Napoleons allies remaining.

  The next day, Napoleon walked into the Council backed by a contingent of grenadiers. He was attacked by a group of councillors prompting Lucien to order the military to disband the council on the excuse there was an open rebellion.

  Napoleon had pulled of a Coup d’état.

  Chapter 9: Rumbled

  The team sat in their house wondering what the hell went wrong. Instead of stirring up conflict between the factions, it looked like they had triggered a military coup. They weren’t to know it was a coincidence.

  The ministries were closed down, so Marty didn’t have to go to work. The city was under martial law and a strict curfew was being enforced. All they could do was sit it out.

  Six days later, Napoleon had consolidated his position and was officially made First Consul. The curfew was lifted. The team got their heads down and tried to get as many facts about the sequence of events together as they could.