Authors: Rob Griffith
I passed the Crown & Anchor, but then turned back. If there was anywhere to take the pulse of the city it was in the Crown & Anchor and besides, I realised I was starving. A good slab of English beef was something I had missed in France where everything was served with some kind of sauce or ragu. The Crown was almost an extension of Parliament in those days; the ballroom saw as many political debates and meetings as either House. MPs and Lords gossiped and argued in the bars whilst getting steadily foxed. I entered and took a table near the centre of the room. When the serving girl came over, fair looking but with an expression that dared you to say anything of it, I gave her my order for the meal I had dreamt of since leaving Paris. I asked for a thick steak, with onion and beetroot in oil and vinegar, washed down by a pint of Arrack punch and followed by a large piece of apple pie.
I tucked eagerly into my steak, my hungry body taking command and overruling my mind’s apathy towards sustaining myself. The conversation around me was as worrying as the reaction of the crowd outside. The fears of the right honourable gentlemen, the lords and the ministers at the tables behind me were all the more chilling for their rationality. Bonaparte had defeated every nation in Europe. Bonaparte was massing his army around Boulogne. Bonaparte was building a fleet of barges to carry them across the Channel. Our army was tiny, the militia ineffective, the volunteers a joke. Only the Royal Navy could stop the French marching into London when they chose. The merchants worried about the effect on trade; if all of Europe were French then with whom would we trade? The financiers feared another run on the banks as rumours of invasion swept the counting houses. The MPs, as ever, feared for their jobs should an invasion be successful.
I wiped up the juices on my plate with a thick slice of bread and then drained the last of the punch. I had heard enough to feel the packet of papers burning a hole in my pocket. Perhaps the lists of craft and troops could do something to avert the coming onslaught. My own petty problems began to seem just that, petty. I stood and left the last of my, or rather Frazer’s, coins on the table and began to hurry down the Strand with a new sense of purpose. I hoped the Alien Office kept longer hours than most government offices. Walking past Charing Cross I spared a glance for the poor soul in the pillory, a few ragamuffins were throwing filth and insults at the offender. I caught a glimpse of St James’ Park and then turned into Crown Street. Number 20 was an unassuming building in the shadow of the Foreign and Home Office. It did not look like the hub of a web of agents and spies that spanned Europe. It had only been formed a decade before when the Alien Act had forced the sudden influx of émigrés to register, and the former Dukes and Vicomtes had balked at frequenting Bow Street and the other new Police offices, refusing to wait in line with common criminals.
The heavy black door was open and a queue of foreigners snaked down the steps, all clutching their papers and moaning about the wait in a cacophony of different tongues. Being English of course, I just barged past them and through the door. The crowd inside was even worse. Two besieged clerks sat behind desks and slowly filled in their forms and ledgers while hysterical aristocrats shouted at them. I went to the nearest clerk, ignoring the howls of protest and multilingual curses of the queue. I slapped the packet of papers on the desk and demanded to see Henry Brooke. The clerk did not react immediately. He finished the sentence he was writing, his copperplate script immaculate, and placed his pen back in the inkwell. He carefully blotted the document and folded it twice before handing it to the foreigner I had so rudely displaced. The clerk looked up at me through small, half-moon spectacles for nearly a quarter of a minute before he spoke.
“Mr Brooke is expecting you Mr Blackthorne.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Henry Brooke, Chief Clerk and Superintendent of the Alien Office, was younger than I expected. I had imagined some aged sinecure holder whose mind had long since withered along with his body, a man who was only sitting behind his large mahogany desk, when he could be bothered to make an appearance, because he had a distant cousin who was a Lord. However, Henry Brooke was probably younger than forty, but not by much, and the first thing that struck you was his alertness. He shot from his chair like a cannon ball and shook my hand with disarming warmth, disarming that is until I saw his eyes flicking over me, assessing me. I must have passed because he indicated a comfortable looking chair near the dormant fireplace. The office was sparsely but well furnished with new and bright furniture in the latest styles. The walls were Wedgwood blue and partly panelled, the plaster-work restrained and classical in influence.
“Please be seated, Lieutenant Blackthorne, or would you prefer Mister? You have had a long journey I gather. Let me pour you a Madeira, you must be most fatigued,” he said, pouring two healthy glasses without waiting for an answer from me. He handed me the glass and sat opposite. He wore sombre grey with black stockings and a well kept powdered wig, he seemed to want to belie his relative youth by adopting the uniform of his father’s generation.
“Thank you, Mr Brooke. Mister would be preferable.” I said and took a mouthful of the wine to give me time to gather my thoughts. As is so often when one has a long story to tell it is difficult to decide where to commence, and what to leave out. Brooke seemed to read my mind, a disconcerting habit he would repeat on many other occasions.
“Mr Blackthorne, I think it is somewhat traditional to begin a story at the beginning, and to end it at the end. Your story ends with you handing me that packet of papers that you slipped back into your pocket while the clerk was waiting to show you into my office and which are now spoiling the cut of an otherwise well tailored, if unkempt, coat. Your story begins with you meeting Captain Wright. It would be helpful for me to know what occurred in between.” He sat back in his chair and waited for me to tell my tale, but I had other questions on my mind that needed answering first.
“Mr Brooke, you seem to have been expecting me?”
“Of course. We knew you were on your way ever since someone got word to us that you needed to be collected from the French coast.”
“I believe that message originated with Jean-Baptiste Dossonville,” I said hoping to provoke some kind of reaction.
“Indeed? That would explain much,” he said without any outward sign of concern that a French government official could request the assistance of the Royal Navy.
“Mr Brooke, you will forgive me if I say that I am unfamiliar with your world, the world of confidential agents, spies, or whatever you call yourselves. So perhaps, for the purposes of this conversation, you should treat me as a simpleton and explain yourself more fully,” I said.
“Yes, I quite understand. I will endeavour to enlighten you in good time, but first I really must insist on you telling your story, from the beginning and without omission if you please,” he replied, in the same measured tone but with the merest hint of steel in his voice, suggesting that I might not want to cross swords with him.
I took another sip of the Madeira, it was a good vintage, and I did as he suggested. I began my story as I began it for you, with that morning in Paris. True, I might have omitted some of the more amusing segments and I definitely withheld some of the more intimate moments with Dominique, and much that was said between us, but the tale was essentially the same. Brooke did not interrupt me. He refilled my glass when it was empty and lit the candles when the light became dim but otherwise he contributed nothing. When I was finished he held out his hands for the papers and, with only slight hesitation, I handed them over.
“Thank you. Are you sure that you told me everything?” Brooke said, meeting my eyes.
“Yes,” I lied, and did my best to return his stare.
Brooke stood and put the papers on his desk, where they sat with a plethora of reports, documents and letters. He picked something up from his desk and handed it to me. It was a cheque to the amount of forty pounds.
“A small token, Blackthorne. I’m sorry for the trouble we have caused you. Your country and your king are in your debt. One of the clerks will arrange for a carriage to take you where you wish.” He held out his hand to me again, I stood but this time I did not take his hand. I wasn’t quite ready to leave yet.
“Could I just ask if Captain Wright returned safely?” I asked.
“Yes, he did. Some days before you as it happened. He told me to express his gratitude to you, for assisting him that morning,” said Brooke, beginning to usher me out of his office.
“He’s already told what’s in the packet hasn’t he?” I said, not willing to be moved on like an child who wouldn’t go to his bed.
“Yes, the gist of it. The Admiralty and Horse Guards will still be glad of the details,” he said, examining me closely once again.
“You know you have a traitor amongst your ranks in Paris?” I said, hoping again for a reaction.
“Wright suspected as much,” he replied blithely.
“I think I know who it might be?”
“Pray tell,” he said, with a little more interest, looking like a lady eager to hear the latest gossip but wanting to appear above such things.
“It’s one of three men. Ferdinand Fauche, André Duprez or Jules Montaignac,” I said and then outlined mine and Dominique’s suspicions.
“Interesting. You have earned my thanks once again. Good day now. You must excuse me you have given me a lot of work to do,” he said shooing me away like an over-affectionate puppy.
“What will you do about the traitor?” I asked, thinking mainly of Dominique and Claude but also of my own hope that whoever had betrayed me would get what was coming to them.
“Mr Blackthorne, you have a choice; you can take the money and leave things be or you can ask me questions that you’d probably be more contented not knowing the answers to. The decisions that I have to make can be unpalatable to some, and too complex for others.”
“Answer my question!” I insisted, I was tired of being in the dark. Brooke looked out of the window and paused before answering me.
“Very well, if you insist. Your father did say you are often too curious for your own good.”
“My father? What the hell as he got to do with this?” Even the mention of my father had a habit of lighting my rather short fuse.
“I think it is time that
I
began from the beginning, don’t you?” said Brooke, gesturing for me to sit down again.
I helped myself to another glass of wine. Brooke held out his glass to be filled and we both sat back down in our chairs.
“It commenced with the murder of two of our agents,” Brooke began. “They were found dead in Paris, this was back in February, and soon other of our missions began to go awry. We realised that we had a problem. When a clerk in the French Department of Marine, Duprez, obtained the invasion plans for us we knew at once that the French would stop at nothing to keep us from getting them back to London. By the by, don’t think Duprez is beyond suspicion because he stole the papers in the first place. They could be bait in a trap of Bonaparte’s own devising. So we needed a courier we could trust and one that wasn’t known to our other agents. We always planned for Captain Wright to give the plans to you. Unfortunately the traitor was one step ahead of us and almost caught you both before Wright could hand them over,” he said, as if he played with people’s lives every day, which he most likely did.
“So my meeting Wright that morning was pre-arranged?”
“More or less. The girl that you woke up with lost both her brothers in the revolution and was willing to do us a small favour of getting you in the particular place at the particular time. We hadn’t planned for the authorities to arrive before you met Wright but you and he improvised adequately.”
“How did you know I would be able to make it back to England?” I asked, thinking perhaps they had planned a better exit than the one I had ended up taking.
“We didn’t, but we didn’t have much choice. We needed a man with quick wits and courage, and who was already in Paris.”
“So the fact that I fell in with the very group you suspected was…”
“Just bad luck,” he interjected. “Still, you coped well with all that was thrown at you. We asked Dossonville to keep an eye out for you as well.”
“He’s on your payroll then?”
“No, not precisely. Dossonville takes our money but only serves us when it suits him,” he said.
“Do you think Mademoiselle Calvet will be safe?” I asked.
“Almost certainly not. Not until we have dealt with the traitor at least,” he said, sipping his Madeira and looking away for a moment.
“How?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.
“Once we have identified him he will be killed.”
“Do you always treat lives so casually?”
“Casually? Do you think it is easy for me to sit here and read of treachery and death all day? It is not, sir. But how else can we fight the Corsican tyrant? He will have all of Europe in his hands unless he is stopped. We tried to kill him once, and we will try again, but do not think that anything that I do is casual.” The steel in Brooke’s voice returned tenfold and did indeed convince me that this was not a man to cross. The fact that the Alien Office had been involved in the attempt to kill Bonaparte by exploding a wine cask full of powder as he drove past on his way to the Opera both impressed me for the nerve of it and made me doubt their competence because although it had been close, it had still failed.