The Barbary Pirates

at critical times before, and that I must remember that word because I would hear it again someday. I remembered the sound of it—Og—because it was so odd, but I hadn’t heard it spoken again until now.” He stared. “By you.”

Despite myself, I felt a shiver. “I don’t know any Little Red Man.”

“But you do find ancient things, and fate keeps bringing us together. You’re an agent of destiny, Ethan Gage, which is why I’ve remained intrigued by you. I’ve told no one of Og, and very few of the Little Red Man, and yet you bear that word. You, the wayward American.”

“It was simply written down. I’d no time to make sense of it.”

“Sense! Sometimes I think I’m as lunatic as my brothers.” Napoleon’s odd family was, of course, the source of endless gossip in Paris. The more he tried to elevate his relatives to positions of responsibility, the sharper the public witticisms in cataloging their faults.

“My elder brother Joseph only wants to be rich, and he’s loyal enough,” Bonaparte confided. “But Lucien is venal and jealous, and Jerome is reportedly smitten by some ship-owner’s daughter in Baltimore. Baltimore!” He said it as if it were a barbarian fiefdom. “I forced Louis to marry Josephine’s daughter, Hortense, this last January, but Louis doesn’t really like women and Hortense loves one of my aides. She spent the night before her wedding weeping.”

Why he confessed all this to me I don’t know, but men sometimes tell me things because they figure me inconsequential. Of course the actual Paris gossip was more malicious than that. Napoleon’s brother Lucien had started a rumor that Napoleon forced the marriage of Hortense and Louis because Napoleon, her stepfather, had impregnated her himself in his desperation to father an heir. Hortense’s marriage, so the gossip went, would legitimize a potential successor. Certainly Hortense was heavy with child, but who made it, and when, was open to speculation. I was wise enough not to ask.

“You’re not a lunatic,” I said sympathetically, to ingratiate myself. I can be a shameless courtier. “You just bear the weight of rule.”

“Yes, yes. Ah, Gage. You cannot imagine how carefree you are, floating free of responsibility!”

“But I’m trying to influence the future of Louisiana.”

“Forget Louisiana. Nothing is going to happen with Louisiana until the situation in Haiti is resolved. The blacks fight on and on.” He scowled. “And now you bring back memory of the gnome! He came into my tent past all my guards. His cloak dragged on the sand, making a track like a snake’s.” His voice was hollow, his eyes distant.

“But we don’t know where Og was.”

“Yes we do. Og is a word scholars associate with Atlantis.”

“Atlantis?” Hadn’t the gold foil borne that word as well? “And where is that, exactly?” I’d heard of it, of course—Magnus Bloodhammer had talked of it in America, savants had debated its geography, and we’d even speculated it was the source of mysterious copper mines in the wilderness—but I wasn’t sure of the details.

“Atlantis is Plato’s story—a fabulous kingdom named for Atlas that was destroyed in some upheaval. Legend has that it was advanced and sought to assert its influence over the entire world. The common belief is that it was distant, like Og, perhaps. Beyond Gibraltar, what the Greeks called the Pillars of Hercules.”

“So what has Og to do with Thira?”

“Perhaps because they are not far apart after all. My geographers tell me there’s a place on the coast of Greece also referred to as the Pillars of Hercules. In Egypt, my savants mentioned Thira as the source of a cataclysm great enough to have spawned the Atlantis story. What if that island was the fabled kingdom? Or what if its destruction sank an Atlantis nearby?”

Sank Og? Which perhaps came from a language that might have been used by half-mythical beings, I thought, remembering my earlier adventures. Of godlike creatures named Thoth or Thor, whose footsteps I’d followed. Again there was this speculation about our mysterious forebears, remembered now as gods or legends. Where had we, or our civilization, really come from?

“It is simply myth,” Napoleon continued. “Or is it? What if this Og/Atlantis really existed, and left something behind that evil seeks? In recent decades there has been frantic research into the legends of the ancients, driven by the popularity of Freemasonry and new archaeological discoveries. Some artifacts have even been found.” He meant the Book of Thoth I’d pilfered, I was sure. “So what else is out there? Why is this Egyptian Rite so persistent in its search? I believe nothing, and yet I can’t afford not to believe. These are things that might decide battles, dynasties, or wars. And so, once again I am face-to-face with you.”

I swallowed, remembering Thor’s hammer: a myth that had almost fried me alive. “You want me to determine the truth of these rumors?”

“There are reports speculating that there are secrets to be found on Thira, an island of no political significance.”

“My colleagues think it has geologic significance.”

“Which is why you’re here instead of in jail. Come, let’s confer with the others—but not a word about my Red Man. If you speak of this day, I’ll have you shot.”

“Secrets are my specialty.”

He glanced skeptically, but what choice did he have? We were two rascals in expedient partnership. We walked back to rejoin the group, Napoleon’s hands clasped behind his back as if to control his own intensity. My three scientific colleagues were regarding me with new respect after my quiet tete-a-tete with the first consul.

“We were discussing Plato’s fiction of Atlantis,” Bonaparte explained to the others.

“Except some scholars believe it might have been real,” Fouche amended. He had the sleepy watchfulness of a cat, his mind calculating truths and evasions like a warehouse full of ledger clerks. “And that it might have left something behind.”

“Which, however unlikely, you are to investigate,” Napoleon now told us briskly, rubbing his hands together as if to shake a chill. “The rumor is that this object may have been left on this island. Yet if I send a military expedition to Thira, it will set off a war with the Ottomans I don’t need. But a party of savants? Who cares what scientists do? With luck you can slip in and out without being seen. If not, you’re simply on a mission to explore an old volcano. They’ll think you’re harmless eccentrics.”

“What object?” Cuvier asked.

“This will interest Fulton,” Fouche said. “The rumor is that a terrible weapon from ancient times may still exist, or at least the knowledge of how to build it. The nature of this weapon isn’t clear, but speculation is that the nation who gets it first will control the Mediterranean, and perhaps the world.”

“You mean it’s some kind of ancient war machine?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to see that.” Fulton was as drawn to machines as I am to women.

“When we learned the Egyptian Rite was seeking a meeting with Ethan Gage, we knew we had to act. It’s imperative that we learn the truth of these rumors before something monstrous falls into the wrong hands.”

“What, English hands?” Smith challenged.

“I’m speaking of this cult, which seems to have an agenda counter to all civilized nations. While we’d have preferred not to include you, Monsieur Smith, this is not a French-English rivalry—it is union in a greater cause. Besides, Gage gave us no choice after his expedition dragging you to the wicked Palais. Now, I’m afraid, you must briefly cooperate with the French government in this hunt for knowledge. We are at peace, after all.”

“But my business is in Britain!”

“My information is that you’re quite unemployed.”

“Not to the point of wanting to go to Greece!”

“We are your new employer.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then we’ll confine you as a spy until this matter is sorted out. Cooperate, and you may advance your geologic career. We know your work has been ignored by the Royal Society.”

“Wait just a minute,” Fulton said. “I may be interested in ancient machinery, but I’ve no interest in this Thira, or Og, either!”

“You do if you want French interest in your peculiar idea for a steamboat,” Napoleon said. “You’ve exhausted our patience and budget with your ridiculous Nautilus, but if you help us with this, we’ll give your new contraption a fair look.”