Baltic Mission nd-7 Read online

  'I do not think that a proper question to answer, Mackenzie. I am not sure I should be answering any of these questions. I am not sure I ought not to have you in irons ...'

  'Captain,' said Mackenzie in a suddenly menacing tone, 'mine is a dangerous trade in which I trust no one. I am curious as to who you thought this man was; why you copied out this signature. It is almost inconceivable that any obviously trusted servant of their lordships of the Admiralty should behave traitorously . ..'

  Drinkwater was on his feet and had leaned across the table. He spat the words through clenched teeth, beside himself with rage:

  'How dare you, you bastard! You have no right to come aboard here and make such accusations! Who the hell are you to accuse me of treason? Get out of my seat! You stand here and make your report to me, before I have this ship put about for The Sound and confine you in the bilboes!'

  'By God, Captain, I apologise ... I see I have misjudged you.' Mackenzie stood and confronted Drinkwater. 'I think you have reassured me on that point at least...'

  'Have a care...'

  'Captain, you must hear me out. It is a matter of the utmost importance, I assure you. I know you have had previous contact with Lord Dungarth's Secret Department; I assume from what you implied earlier that you have some freedom in the interpretation of your orders, perhaps from his Lordship. I also assume that you let Frederic Nielsen proceed because he had a dispatch addressed to Joseph Devlieghere at Antwerp ... Ah, I see you find that reassuring ... Tell me, Captain, did you ever know a man called Brown?'

  'I saw the Dutch hang him at Kijkduin.'

  'And do you think the Dutch were responsible?'

  Drinkwater looked sharply at Mackenzie, but he did not answer.

  'Come, Captain, have you not come across a French agent named Edouard Santhonax?'

  Drinkwater strode across the cabin, pulled out his sea-chest and from it drew a roll of frayed canvas. He unrolled it.

  'Identify this lady and I'll believe you are who you say you are.'

  'Good God!' Mackenzie stared at the cracking paint. The portrait showed a young woman with auburn hair piled upon her head. Pearls were entwined in the contrived negligence of her classical coiffure. Her creamy shoulders were bare and her breasts just visible beneath a wisp of gauze. Her grey eyes looked coolly out of the canvas and there was a hint of a smile about the corners of her lovely mouth. 'Hortense Santhonax, by heaven!'

  'A celebrated beauty, as all Paris knows.'

  'Where the devil did you get it?'

  Drinkwater nodded at the portrait of Elizabeth that had not been done with half as much skill as that of Madame Santhonax. 'It used to hang there. This ship, Mr. Mackenzie, was once commanded by Edouard Santhonax when she was captured in the Red Sea. I was one of the party who took her.' He rolled up the portrait. 'I kept it as a memento. You see, I rescued Madame Santhonax from a Jacobin mob in ninety-two ... before she turned her coat. She was eventually taken back to France. I was on the beach with Lord Dungarth when we released her...'

  'And he didn't shoot her,' put in Mackenzie, shaking his head. 'Yes, he has told me the story.' He looked about him. 'It's incredible ... this ship ... you. Captain, I am sorry, I acted hastily. Please accept my apologies.'

  'Very well. It is of no matter. I think you have provided proof of your identity. We had better sink our differences in a glass of wine.'

  'That is a capital idea.' Mackenzie smiled and, for the first time since meeting him, Drinkwater felt less menaced, more in control of the situation. He poured the two drinks and behind him he heard Mackenzie mutter 'Incredible' to himself.

  'This man Ostroff,' said Drinkwater conversationally, seating himself in his proper place at last, 'is he of importance to you?'

  'He will be invaluable if my hypothesis proves accurate.'

  'You mean if an armistice is concluded between Alexander and Napoleon?'

  'Yes. Whatever terms are agreed upon, they will clearly be prejudicial to Britain. Ostroff is the one man in a position to learn them. Now, with the loss of Konigsberg, Ostroff's communications are cut. The situation is serious but not fatal. We still have access to Memel, at least until the two Emperors meet, hence my request that you carry me there. You see, I am Ostroff's post-boy. I forwarded his dispatch through Nielsen.'

  'You ... you know him well then, this Ostroff?' Drinkwater's heart was thumping again; he felt foolishly vulnerable, although Mackenzie's manner towards him had so drastically altered.

  'Oh yes, I know him, Captain Drinkwater. That is why I could not understand your attitude.'

  'I do not understand you.'

  Mackenzie frowned. 'You mean you really do not know who Ostroff is?'

  'No,' he said, but he felt that his voice lacked conviction.

  'You share the same surname, Captain Drinkwater ...'

  The blood left Drinkwater's face. So, he had been right! Despite the cipher, despite the years that had passed, he had recognised the hand that had penned Nielsen's dispatch.

  'So Ostroff is my brother Edward,' he said flatly.

  'It is a chain of the most remarkable coincidences, Captain,' said Mackenzie.

  'Not at all,' replied Drinkwater wearily, rising and fetching the decanter from its lodgement in the fiddle. 'It is merely evidence of the workings of providence, Mr. Mackenzie, which rules all our fates, including those of Napoleon and Alexander.'

  10

  The Mad Enterprise

  June 1807

  'How did you discover the connection between us?' Drinkwater asked at last, after the two men had sat in silence awhile. 'I understood my brother to be living under a nom de guerre.'

  'Oh, it isn't common knowledge, Captain Drinkwater; you need have no fear that more than a few men know about it. Dungarth does, of course, and Prince Vorontzoff, your brother's employer and a man sympathetic to the alliance with Great Britain, knows him for an Englishman. But I think I am the only other man who knows his identity, excepting yourself, of course.'

  'But you have not said how you knew.'

  'It is quite simple. He told me once. He was sent to me from Hamburg. I introduced him to the elder Vorontzoff and, one night, shortly before I left St Petersburg, we got drunk ... a Russian custom, you see,' Mackenzie said and Drinkwater thought that Mackenzie had probably ensured Edward's loose tongue by his own liberality. 'He had reached a turning-point. A man does not put off the old life overnight and he seemed over-burdened with conscience. He made some thick allusions to drinking water. The joke was too heavy for wit and he was too drunk to jest, yet his persistence made me certain the words had some significance ... but it was only when I learned your name from Lieutenant...'

  'Quilhampton.'

  'Just so, that I began to recall Ostroff's drunken pun. Then, having had my professional curiosity aroused, I felt it was necessary to,' Mackenzie shrugged with an irresponsible smile, 'to invade your privacy, I think you said. And my effrontery was rewarded; you had inscribed Ostroff's Russian signature in your journal. Quod erat demonstrandum.'

  'I see.' It was very strange, but Drinkwater felt an enormous weight lifted from him. Somehow he had known for years that he must atone for his own crime of aiding and abetting Edward's escape from the gallows. It was easy to excuse his actions, to disguise his motives under the cant of reasons of state. The truth was that his own rectitude made him feel guilty. Edward was a man who drifted like a straw upon the tide and who, through some strange working of natural laws, managed to float to the surface in all circumstances. To Edward, and probably Mackenzie, his own misgivings would seem utterly foolish. But he knew himself to be of a different type, a man whose life had been dogged by set-backs, wounds and hardships. Perhaps the atonement would still come but he could not deny the relief at Edward's identity no longer being quite so hermetic a secret.

  He looked at Mackenzie. A few moments earlier he had been ready to consign the man to the devil. Now they sat like old friends sipping their wine, bound by the common knowledge of Ostroff's
true identity. It occurred to Drinkwater that, yet again, Mackenzie had a superior hold over him; but he found the knowledge no longer made him angry.

  'I knew my brother to have found employment with Prince Vorontzoff, on account of his abilities with horses, but I do not fully understand how he serves you and Lord Dungarth.'

  'He is a brilliant horseman, I believe, and on account of this he formed a close friendship with Vorontzoff's son. Good horsemen are much admired in Russia and the younger Vorontzoff, being appointed to the army in the field, got some sort of commission for Ostroff. That sort of thing is not difficult in the Tsar's bureaucracy. Ostroff was at Austerlitz and attached to the Don Cossacks at Eylau, though what he has been up to lately I do not know. I was trying to make contact with him and Wilson when I was chased into Konigsberg by those French dragoons.'

  'And now you want to make another attempt at reaching him through Memel?'

  'Yes. And I would wish you to wait there for my return.'

  'And then convey you to London with all dispatch?'

  'I see, at last, that we are of one mind, Captain Drinkwater,' Mackenzie smiled.

  'Then we had better drink to it,' Drinkwater said, rising and fetching the decanter.

  'A capital idea,' replied Mackenzie, holding out his glass.

  Drinkwater woke sweating and staring into the darkness, trying to place the source of the wild laughter. He had been dreaming, a nightmare of terrifying reality, in which a white-clothed figure loomed over him to the sound of clanking chains. The figure had been that of Hortense Santhonax, her beauty hideously transformed. The Medusa head had laughed in his face and he had seemed to drown below her, struggling helplessly as the laughter grew and the breath was squeezed from his lungs.

  In the darkness of the cabin, surrounded by the familiar creaking of Antigone, he found the laughter resolve itself into a knocking at the cabin door. He pulled himself together. 'Enter!'

  'It's Frey, sir.' The midshipman's slight figure showed in the gloom. 'Mr. Quilhampton's compliments, sir, and we've raised Memel light.'

  'Very well. I'll be up shortly.'

  Frey disappeared and he lay back in the cot, seeking a few minutes of peace. The nightmare was an old one but had not lost its potency. Usually he attached it to presentiment or times of extreme anxiety, but this morning he managed to smile at himself for a fool. It was the unburdening of the secret of Edward that had brought on the dream; a retrospective abstraction haunting his isolated imagination while he slept.

  'Damn fool,' he chid himself and, flinging back the blankets, threw his legs over the edge of the cot. Five minutes later he was on deck.

  'Mornin', Mr. Q.'

  'Morning, sir. Memel light three leagues distant, sir.' Quilhampton pointed and Drinkwater saw the orange glow. 'It's supposed to rival the full moon at a league, sir.'

  'I'm pleased to see you have been studying the rutter, Mr. Q,' said Drinkwater drily, amused at Quilhampton.

  'To be fair, sir, it's Frey who has studied the rutter. I merely picked his brains.'

  'Tch, tch. Most reprehensible,' Drinkwater laughed. 'Incidentally, Mr. Q, I will want you to put our guest ashore later.'

  'Mr. Mackenzie, sir?' 'Yes.'

  Drinkwater could almost hear Quilhampton's curiosity working. He considered the wisdom of revealing something of Mackenzie's purpose. On balance, he considered, it would not hurt. It was better to reveal a half-truth than risk stupid speculation growing wild. He had known a silly rumour started on the quarterdeck reach the fo'c's'le as a hardened fact magnified twentyfold. It had caused a deal of resentment among the hands, and even a denial by the first lieutenant had failed to extinguish it. The old saw about there being no smoke without fire was murmured by men starved of any news, whose days were governed by the whims of the weather and the denizens of the quarterdeck, and by whom any remark that intimated yet greater impositions upon them was accepted without question. In the end it was better that the people knew something of what was going on.

  'I expect you are wondering exactly who, or what, Mr. Mackenzie is, eh, James?'

  'Well, sir, the thought had crossed my mind.'

  'And not just yours, I'll warrant.'

  'No, sir.'

  'He's an agent, Mr. Q, like some of those mysterious johnnies we picked up in the Channel a year or two ago. We shall put him ashore in order that he can find out what exactly the Russians are going to do after Boney beat 'em at Friedland.'

  'I see, sir. Thank you.'

  Drinkwater fell to pacing the quarterdeck as, in the east, the light grew and the masts, rigging and sails began to stand out blackly against the lightening sky. By the time the people went to their messes for breakfast they would know all about Mr. Mackenzie.

  A few hours later the barge was swung out and lowered as, with her main-topsail against the mast, Antigone hove to. It was a bright summer morning and the port of Memel with its conspicuous lighthouse was no more than four miles away. Mackenzie came aft to make his farewells.

  'I rely upon you to cruise hereabouts until my return, Captain,' he said.

  'I shall maintain station, Mr. Mackenzie; you may rely upon it. I may chase a neutral or two for amusement, Drinkwater replied, ‘but my main occupation will be to ensure the ship is in a fit state for a swift passage home.'

  Beyond Mackenzie, Drinkwater saw the word 'home' had been caught by a seaman coiling down a line. That, too, would not hurt. It would brighten the men's spirits to know the ship was destined for a British port.

  'Do you wish me to keep a boat at Memel to await you, Mr. Mackenzie?'

  'No, I think not, Captain. In view of the possible results of our ... hypothesis, I think it unwise. I can doubtless bribe a fishing boat to bring me off.' He smiled. The cupidity of fishermen was universal.

  Mackenzie held out his hand and moved half a pace nearer. 'Do you have a message for Ostroff?' he asked in a low voice.

  'Yes ... wish him well for me, Mackenzie ... and ask him if he is still afraid of the dark.'

  Mackenzie laughed. 'He does not strike me as a man who might be afraid of the dark, Captain.'

  Drinkwater grinned back. 'Perhaps not; but he was once. Good luck, Mackenzie.'

  'A bientot, Captain ...'

  For two days Drinkwater kept Antigone under weigh. He was merciless to the entire crew, officers and men alike. The British frigate stood on and off the land, first under easy sail and then setting every stitch of canvas she possessed. When ropes parted or jammed, he chastised the petty officers and midshipmen responsible with verbal lashings from the windward hance. It brought him a deep inner satisfaction, for junior officers were rarely blamed for the many small things that went wrong on board. They buried such failings more often than not by starting the unfortunate hands, a practice that usually assuaged the quarterdeck officers. Midshipmen had the worst name for these minor malpractices which caused such resentment among the men, and it did them good to be chased hither and thither and called to account for their failures in full view of the ship's company.

  As the studdingsails rose and set for the eighth or ninth time, as the topgallant masts were struck and the yards sent down, the men worked with a will, seeing how at every misfortune it was a midshipman, a master's mate or a petty officer that was identified as being the culprit. The hands were in high glee for, with the captain on deck throughout the manoeuvres, there was little revengeful starting carried out by the bosun's mates who well knew Drinkwater's aversion to the practice. It was one thing to start men aloft in an emergency or when faced with the enemy, when the need to manoeuvre was paramount; but quite another to do it when the ship was being put through her paces.

  Even the officers bore their share of Drinkwater's strange behaviour, Rogers, as first lieutenant, in particular. But he bore it well, submitting to it as though to a test of his recovery. At the end of the second day, as the men secured the guns from a final practice drill, Drinkwater pronounced himself satisfied, ordered a double ration of three-water grog s
erved out to all hands and brought the ship to anchor a league from Memel light.

  'Well, Mr. Rogers, I think the ship will make a fast passage when she is called upon to do so, don't you?'

  'Yes, sir. But a passage where, sir?' asked Rogers, puzzled.

  'Well, if we get the right slant of wind, we shall make for London River!'

  Rogers's smile was unalloyed. 'Hell's teeth, that's good news. May I ask when that might be?'

  'When Mr. Mackenzie returns, Sam, when Mr. Mackenzie returns. '

  Mr. Mackenzie returned shortly before noon three days later, hailing them from the deck of a fishing boat and obviously in a state of high excitement. Drinkwater was on deck to meet him and found Mackenzie had lost his air of cool self-possession. His dust-stained clothes flapping about him, he strode across the deck, his face lined with dirt which gave its expression a compulsive ferocity.

  'Captain, your cabin at once.' He seemed breathless, for all that he must have been inactive during the boat's passage.

  'Prepare to get under weigh, Mr. Rogers,' Drinkwater ordered, turning towards Mackenzie, but the agent shook his head.

  'No ... not yet. There is something we must attend to first. Come, Captain, every second counts!'

  Drinkwater shrugged at the first lieutenant. 'Belay that, Mr. Rogers. Come then, Mr. Mackenzie.' He led the way below and Mackenzie collapsed into a chair. Pouring two glasses of blackstrap Drinkwater handed one to the exhausted agent. 'Here, drink this and then tell me what has happened.'

  Mackenzie tossed off the glass, wiped a hand across his mouth and stared at Drinkwater with eyes that glittered from red-rimmed sockets.

  'Captain,' began Mackenzie, 'I need you to come with me. I have returned to persuade you. It is imperative. It is a mad enterprise, but one on which everything hangs.'

  'Everything?' Drinkwater frowned uncertainly.