on you, I’ve found.
Fouche answered. “As minister of police, it’s my responsibility to keep an eye on all factions that represent a possible threat to the state, including the Egyptian Rite. One of my investigators learned that you’d been asking your scientific associates in Paris about the island of Thira at the same time these renegade Freemasons were acquiring books and maps on it.”
“But all I know of Thira is the name.”
“So you say. Yet what a remarkable coincidence that so much attention is being paid to an obscure rock on the Aegean Sea. And you, Ethan Gage, return from America after association with the British and seek out the American inventor Fulton, the British surveyor Smith, and a French expert on ancient cataclysms. How conspiratorial! The idea of using a bordello as cover was really quite ingenious.”
“It was Madame Marguerite who lured us.”
“Come, Gage, we know each other too well for you to play the fool with me,” Napoleon said. “This charade of bumbling confusion is all very amusing, but you insert yourself in every mystery and conspiracy there is. Nor do I think your esteemed friends would associate with a rake and wastrel like yourself unless there was advantage to be gained. You meet the Rite in the bowels of the Palais Royal, start a fire, initiate a riot, run down your competitors, and pretend to ignorance? All of us know you must be in pursuit of what’s been long rumored.”
“First Consul!” Cuvier cried. “I swear I know nothing about his plotting!”
“Of course not,” Bonaparte said mildly. “Gage is using you. Using all of you. He’s a devious rascal, a master of intrigue, and if he were French I’ve no doubt Fouche would have recruited him to the police long ago. Is that not true, Minister?”
“Even now I do not fully understand his motives and alliances,” Fouche admitted.
I, of course, had not the slightest idea of what was going on, and was trying to decide if I should be proud or insulted by this new description of me as brilliant, devious, and a master of intrigue. All I’d seen was the word “Thira” on a scrap of golden foil in the middle of the American wilderness—a Norse Templar artifact, according to my late companion Magnus Bloodhammer—and nothing else. Still, if the police were so smart, maybe I could learn something from them.
“I’m also looking for Og,” I tried. That was written on the foil, too, before Aurora Somerset made a mess of the whole thing. She was the reason I’d sworn off women.
At that word, Fouche stiffened and looked at me warily. Cuvier, too, stared curiously. But it was Napoleon who’d gone white.
“What did you say?” the first consul asked.
“Og.” It sounded silly even to me.
The first consul glanced questioningly at my three companions, and then addressed the others. “I think Monsieur Gage and I need a moment alone.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“In America.”
“America! How?”
I sighed. It was the first time I’d even tried to relate what really happened, and I didn’t expect anyone to believe me. “You may remember a Norwegian named Bloodhammer who visited Mortefontaine when we celebrated the treaty between France and my own country,” I began. “He found a place in the Louisiana Territory, far beyond the frontier, which had Norse artifacts.” I decided not to mention anything more about the bewildering site. “One was a gold metal sheet, encased in a rotting shield, which had writing that bore that word. It stuck in my mind because it was so odd.”
“What else did it say?” Bonaparte looked disturbed, almost queasy.
“The inscription was in Latin, which I can’t read. I could only make out a few words and then a fight broke out and the foil was destroyed. It happened in a struggle with a British woman from the Egyptian Rite, actually— quite a long story.” No need to mention I’d been her lover. “Just as I was telling you, I was fighting the British, not spying for them.”
“So you don’t know what it means?”
“No. Do you?”
He frowned, looking out across the pond. The cluster of aides and police were looking at us curiously from a distance, envious of my sudden intimacy with their leader. “Gage,” he finally asked quietly, “have you ever heard of the Little Red Man?”
At the mention of that curious French legend I had the odd feeling I was being watched from an attic window of the pretty chateau. I turned, but there was nothing to see, of course: its small rectangular dormer windows were dark and blank. Josephine had withdrawn inside as well. “I’ve heard rumor. Everyone has.”
“Do you believe in the supernatural?”
I cleared my throat. “I’ve seen odd things.”
“The Little Red Man is a gnomelike creature dressed and concealed in a red hooded cloak. His face is always in shadow, but he is short and bent with long brown fingers. Sometimes you can see the gleam of eyes. Watchful eyes. Disturbing eyes that know far too much.”
“All France knows the tale, but it’s only a story.”
“No, he is real. He first appeared to Catherine de’Medici, and by reputation lives most commonly in the attic of the Tuileries Palace that she built. He appeared to French royalty on occasion, usually in times of crisis. To me it was just a fable as well, the kind of myth to amuse children. But then I saw him in Egypt.”
“General!”
He nodded, lost in remembrance. “I’ve never been so frightened. It was shortly before the Battle of the Pyramids. He came into my field tent at the night’s darkest hour, when I’d exhausted all my aides and was the only one still awake. I’d just heard of Josephine’s infidelities and was beside myself with rage and sorrow, and couldn’t sleep.”
I remembered in Egypt when Junot related to me his unhappy task of informing the general of his wife’s unfaithfulness, revealed by pilfered letters that had been sent from France.
“A doctor would say it was hallucination, of course. But the creature spoke of the future in a deep, sly voice with a tone I’ve never heard before or since. He was not of our world, Gage, but as real as your three savants standing by the pond over there. And then he began to prophesy.”
That day in Egypt, Napoleon had seemed possessed.
“Later I had similar visions in the Great Pyramid—you’ll remember when I lay in the sarcophagus? But troubling ones as well! In any event, the Little Red Man promised me at least ten years of success to accomplish what I need to accomplish, which is why I was so confused by my loss to you and that obstinate Sidney Smith at the siege of Acre. I was not supposed to lose! But I didn’t lose, in the end, because my defeat ultimately directed me back to Paris to take charge here, thanks to your Rosetta key. The Little Red Man had known after all.”
So was I some blind instrument of fate, setting in motion events I didn’t understand? “What has this got to do with Og?”
“The creature said I should seek its ruins, because a machine of great power was at stake. If it fell into the wrong hands it could disrupt my destiny.”
“Ruins where?”
“I’ve ordered research into just that question. Gog and Magog, it seems, are referred to in the Bible, and are sometimes interpreted as lands at the ends of the earth. Og itself is a Celtic reference to a distant, powerful kingdom. I wonder if there was some common, root language.”
Magnus had believed in long-ago civilizations and forgotten powers.
“This machine had something to do with Og, I was told. The Little Red Man said he’d warned French leaders
