Anglais spy! Charitй intellectually knew of the excesses of the Reign of Terror, of the slaughter in the surf with shot, bayonet, and sword as those refugees who had not found a ship tried to flee Toulon. Three thousand men, women, and children in the space of two hours, the rumour related! And twice that number perished under Gen. Dugommier's guillotines over the next month after the city was re-taken.
But she had not been in Paris during those times, hadn't seen, heard, or smelled the holocaust, which was now mostly a bad memory to the French, uneasily shrugged off as a temporary necessity. But for men like Fouchй, it would never be over, so long as displaced aristos overseas, beyond his grasp, schemed and plotted to overthrow the Revolution and its new leaders. And there were those to aid them, in France!
'Mon Dieu, I have denounced an innocent!' Charitй whispered to herself as she reached the clean air along the banks of the Seine, recalling how lovely and petite, how vivacious and charming Mlle. Aretino was, had been whenever she'd visited her shop. Would her glorious hair be shorn at the nape, would she die under the guillotine, for nothing?
Fouchй rang a small bell on his desk to summon a clerk. There must be enquiries made about this Lewrie, even so. Laisser-passers were now
required of all foreign visitors, and this Lewrie must have one, issued by the Foreign Ministry, registered at the city gates, and noted by the municipal authorities at the Hфtel de Ville. And every concierge at every hotel or lodging house, no matter how grand or how mean, might as well be in Fouchй's employ, and this would make locating the man and his wife very easy.
Fouchй would send for information from the Ministry of Marine, as well, which kept dossiers on enemy Captains and Admirals, to see if they considered this Lewrie dangerous, beyond the scope of naval combat. He paused in his written demands, wondering if Citoyen Pouzin at the Foreign Ministry, a spymaster and aristo hunter well known to him, might have some information; he had been in the Mediterranean in the 1790s, when the de Guilleri chit said that this Lewrie had been.
'All these enquiries I wish answered by this time tomorrow,' Fouchй demanded with an even fiercer scowl. 'See to it, vite, vite.'
Oddly enough, at about that same time of late afternoon, Citoyen Philippe Pouzin (though no one was ever sure if that was the name he had been given at birth) was sharing a bottle of brandy with an old compatriot from his time in the Mediterranean, though with a certain well-hidden sense of distaste. Pouzin's mission to subvert the Genoese, Savoyards, and Piedmontese in order to aid Gen. Bonaparte's First Italian Campaign had been a smashing success, destroying their will to fight for the British, and buying their zeal to ally themselves with France. He and his underling spies, male and female, had even penetrated the elusive and ultra- secret Last Romans movement, which aspired to unite all Italy once more, and turn it into a world power which would re-take everything that had once been under the old Empire in the Balkans and Greece, in the Holy Land, Egypt, and North Africa. Not only penetrated the movement, but turned it to France's advantage!
For that, Pouzin had been rewarded, promoted, and allowed to be among the living as the various feuding factions of the Directory slit each others' throats and sent each other to the guillotine. He'd been overseas, like Napoleon, safe from the treacherous games. Now he held an elevated position in the spy organisation under the aegis of the Foreign Ministry, and had thickened on a rich, safe salary.
His unfortunate compatriot, however, had not been so successful, and had, if appearances were reliable judges, fallen even further than anyone but the unfortunate Job could dread.
'The West Indies, Saint Domingue, and Guadeloupe were not my areas of concern, Capitaine Choundas,' said Pouzin in apology for not being cognisant of Choundas's troubles. 'The undermining of the Kingdom of Naples and the Two Sicilies, the retention of Malta, and the Adriatic took all my attention at the time of the Quasi-War with the Amйricains. You have my condolences for your, ah… lack of success.'
At least in the Med, Guillaume Choundas had still seemed vital, an active and hearty fellow despite his crippled leg with its rigid iron brace, the stiff black mask which covered his maimed face and dead eye. He'd had two arms the last time Pouzin had seen him, as well! Now Choundas was a grey-haired, creased, and stooping ruin, easily mistaken in his shabby remnants of naval uniform for a street beggar; as pruned and wrinkled and aged as a poor fisherman's grand-pиre.
'You say this Lewrie, the author of all your misfortunes, is here in Paris, eh, Choundas?' Pouzin asked between sips of an excellent brandy.
'I saw him, Pouzin,' Choundas insisted in a harsh rasp. 'Sure as I know you, did I see you on the street. He lodges in the Rue Honorй, he and his wife. Recall, citoyen, it was a close-run thing that I got the pay chests intended for the Austrians to your agents in Genoa, a hair's breadth ahead of Lewrie's pursuit, and would have made my escape to report to you, but for him. And what he did to our cause in the West Indies…! All our vessels lost, our cargoes captured by the cursed, ungrateful Amйricains… led to them by that salaud. And my defeat and capture. We both know this peace is only a brief pause. The First Consul grows impatient and angry that the faithless Anglais delay the return of our former colonies, stall their evacuation of the island of Malta… which is in your area of expertise, n'est- ce pas?
'Trust me, Citoyen Pouzin,' Choundas gravelled, his remaining hand clawed about his glass and his one good eye glaring, 'when war comes, that salaud Lewrie will be at our throats once more.'
'I gathered, though, Capitaine Choundas,' Pouzin replied, 'that when we worked together in the Mediterranean, you were dismissive of his cleverness… that you put his interferences in your enterprises down to blind, dumb luck.'
Frankly, Pouzin had always been leery of Choundas's excuses for his set-backs and losses, for they were based more on ancient Celtic Breton superstition than anything else. The man saw signs, portents, and omens in the flights of birds, like an ignorant peasant, despite his vaunted level of education, imparted by cynical and worldly Jesuit tutors, of all people! Pouzin also knew that once Choundas was aware that this Lewrie was in the vicinity, he'd allowed his wits to be focussed more on the man's destruction than upon the job at hand. Pouzin could plainly see why Choundas might wish revenge, having been so ravaged and made to match his old nickname of Le Hideux-The Hideous-by anyone, much less his bкte noire, his imagined nemesis, Lewrie.
'You have spoken to people at the Ministry of Marine, mon cher Capitaine?' Pouzin asked him, feeling sympathetic enough to top up the poor ogre's glass.
'Bah, those indolent and smug bourgeois new-comes! They arrive at nine, do no work 'til ten, then depart for dйjeuner at twelve, not to return 'til three, and go see their wives and mistresses at five, the bear-skin slippered…!' Choundas almost howled with rage, choking on his beverage, and his bile. 'They have no time for the likes of me these days, Pouzin, mon vieux. I upset their digestion.'
Choundas's hideousness was certainly upsetting Pouzin's senses, and the time he allowed the old fellow (wasn't he younger than me, he thought?) was cutting into his supper, and time with his mistress.
'So long as he is here on innocent sight-seeing, mon chere, he is of no concern to my Ministry,' Pouzin had to tell him, if only to hasten his departure.
'Even though he and that foul Anglais spymaster, Zachariah Twigg, who fooled you when he play-acted the part of Silberberg, a Juif banker from London, have been joined at the hip for decades?' the old cripple accused. 'Though I lacked proper support from well-placed spies in the West Indies, we did know that two of Twigg's underlings were active, and that both of them, at one time or other, took passage with Lewrie… one to Saint Domingue to deal with that rebel general, Toussaint L'Ouverture. Lewrie and the Anglais secret service, Pouzin. Their lackey! Not clever, not all that intelligent, but…
