The Rosetta Key

Great Pyramid, lost it again to keep from drowning, and stolen a balloon from my friend and fellow savant Nicolas- Jacques Conte, I’d crash-landed into the sea and found myself wet and penniless on the quarterdeck of the Dangerous, fate putting me face-to-face with Sir Sidney once more, and as much at the mercy of the British as I’d been the French. My own feelings—that I’d had quite enough of war and treasure and was ready to go home to America—were blithely ignored.

“So while you make inquiries from Syrian Palestine about this woman you took a fancy to, Gage, you can also feel out the Christians and Jews for possible resistance to Bonaparte,” Smith was telling me. “They might side with the frogs, and if he’s taking an army that way, our Turkish allies need all the help they can get.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “You’re just the man for this kind of work, I judge: clever, affable, rootless, and without any scruples or belief.

People tell you things, Gage, because they figure it doesn’t matter.”

“It’s just that I’m American, not British or French . . .”

“Exactly. Perfect for our uses. Djezzar will be impressed that even a man as shallow as you has enlisted.”

Djezzar, whose name meant “the Butcher,” was the notoriously cruel and despotic pasha in Acre whom the British were depending on to fight Napoleon. Charmed, I’m sure.

t h e

r o s e t t a k e y

9

“But my Arabic is crude and I know nothing of Palestine,” I pointed out reasonably.

“Not a problem for an agent with wit and pluck like you, Ethan.

The Crown has a confederate in Jerusalem by the code name of Jericho, an ironmonger by trade who once served in our own navy. He can help you search for this Astiza and work for us. He has contacts in Egypt! A few days of your artful diplomacy, a chance to walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ hisself, and you’re back with nothing more than dust on your boots and a holy relic in your pocket, your other problems solved. It’s really quite splendid how these things work out.

Meanwhile I’ll be helping Djezzar organize the defense of Acre in case Boney marches north, as you’ve warned. In no time we’ll both be bloody heroes, feted in the chambers of London!” Whenever people start complimenting you and using words like

“splendid,” it’s time to check your purse. But, by Bunker Hill, I was curious about the Book of Thoth and tortured by the memory of Astiza. Her sacrifice to save me was the worst moment of my life—

worse, honestly, than when my beloved Pennsylvania long rifle blew up—and the hole in my heart was so big you could fire a cannonball through it and not hit a thing. Which is a good line to use on a woman, I figured, and I wanted to try it out on her. So of course I said yes, the most dangerous word in the English language.

“I am lacking clothes, weapons, and money,” I pointed out. The only things I’d managed to retain from the Great Pyramid were two small gold seraphim, or kneeling angels, which Astiza contended came from the staff of Moses and which I’d stuffed rather ingloriously into my drawers. My initial thought had been to pawn them, but they’d acquired sentimental value despite their tendency to make me scratch. At the very least they were a reserve of precious metal I preferred not to reveal. Let Smith give an allowance, if he was so anxious to enlist me.

“Your taste for Arab rags is perfect,” the British captain said.

“That’s quite the swarthy tan you’ve developed, Gage. Add a cloak and turban in Jaffa and you’ll blend like a native. As for an English weapon, that might get you clapped in a Turkish prison if they suspect 1 0

w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h

you of spying. It’s your wits that will keep you safe. I can lend you a small spyglass. It’s splendidly sharp and just the thing to sort out troop movements.”

“You didn’t mention money.”

“The Crown’s allowance will be more than adequate.” He gave me a purse with a scattering of silver, brass, and copper: Spanish reales, Ottoman piastres, a Russian kopek, and two Dutch rix-dollars. Government budgeting.

“This will hardly buy breakfast!”

“Can’t give you pound sterling, Gage, or it will give you away in an instant. You’re a man of resources, eh? Stretch the odd penny! Lord knows the Admiralty does!”

Well, resourcefulness can start right now, I said to myself, and I wondered if I and the off-duty crewmen might while away the hours with a friendly game of cards. When I was still in good standing as a savant on Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition, I’d enjoyed discussing the laws of probability with famed mathematicians such as Gaspard Monge and the geographer Edme Francois Jomard. They’d encouraged me to think in a more systematic way about odds and the house advantage, sharpening my gambling skills.

“Perhaps I can interest your men in a game of chance?”

“Haw! Be careful they don’t take your breakfast, too!”

c h a p t e r

2

I started with brelan, which is not a bad game to play with simple sailors, contingent as it is on bluff. I had some practice at this in the salons of Paris—the Palais Royale alone had one hundred gambling chambers on a mere six acres—and the honest British seamen were no match for the man they soon called a Frankish dissembler. So after taking them for as much as they’d tolerate by pretending I had better cards —or letting slip my vulnerability when the hand actually left me better armed than the weapon-stuffed sash of a Mameluke bey—I offered games that seemed to be more straightforward luck. Ensigns and gunner mates who’d lost half a month’s pay at a card game of skill eagerly came forward with a full month’s wager on a game of sheer chance.

Except that it wasn’t, of course. In simple lansquenet, the banker—

me—places a bet that other players must match. Two cards are turned, the one to the left my card, the one to