in an instant. I was taken aback, and felt guilt without thinking myself entirely guilty. Imagine a painting of paradise that you could magically step into so that a viewer identifies you with all things sweet and serene. This magic happens to lovers, in lovely places, all the time. Now imagine a painting of hell. It was as if Astiza were studying damnation, and I’d wandered into her view.
It was unfair, and yet why did I, the father, have to ask her where my own son was? I felt the shame that comes from miscalculation, and the emptiness that drops the bottom out of your chest when you lose a child. Yet I wouldn’t express my fear, lest I make it true. “Is he still at our hotel?”
Her eyes had the same blaze as the fire. “The renegade gendarmes kidnapped him,” she said. “When I ran to our inn, the maid was tied and gagged, and Harry was gone. The girl said men seized him shortly after we set out for Nitot’s shop.”
My God. I’d lost my son once before to the Barbary pirates, and now this? I mislaid my boy as easily as a bookmark. Being dipped upside down in a tub is nothing compared to the monstrosity of making a child a pawn in a game of nations. I silently cursed Leon Martel. He’d regret not killing me.
Nor could Astiza keep a mother’s accusatory tone out of her voice. She’d urged me to be prompt, and I’d procrastinated. She’d had a hunch to stay with Horus, and I’d insisted she come along so I could show how clever I was. She’d wanted to retire to her studies, and I’d wanted to play a hand in the disposition of Louisiana.
The Greeks, I believe, called it hubris.
“And you?” My voice was a little strangled.
“I ran from one band of spies into the hands of another: these men.” She was impatient. “Instead of pursuing the French bandits, they’ve held me here while finding you. Ethan, what if Harry is dead?”
“Not dead, madame,” Frotte tried to reassure. “A hostage, surely.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because while alive, he can be used to manipulate you. For us to rush a rescue without planning is the one error that would assure he dies. You don’t want your boy in a gun battle.”
This new spy confirmed to me that Astiza had been rescued by English scoundrels, trading one band of hooligans for another. The worst people pursue me, as persistent as gulls after a fishing smack. I felt sick. I’d lost my son for a piece of green glass.
A stone that would have fed my family forever.
“This is the worst luck,” I managed. “The French took our only child?”
“To control you, not to do harm,” Frotte reassured.
“And you saved my wife?”
“To manipulate you, again.”
At least he was candid. Spies understand spies, and Frotte was confident his foe’s motive mirrored his own. Agents depend on one another to be nefarious masters of calculation and the double-cross, lest they all become unemployed. “How?”
“We British need your desperate daring to rescue Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Black Spartacus of Saint- Domingue, from an icy French prison. We believe L’Ouverture may know the truth about the fabled treasure of Montezuma, and that we can use his secrets to find it ourselves. At that point, we can negotiate with Martel for your son and the emerald, ransoming both while keeping a truly important secret out of French hands. You’ve unwittingly become necessary again, Ethan Gage-the key to France and England.”
What bitter honor. “But I was practicing being unnecessary. I should tie strings to my arms. Ethan Gage the puppet! And now you want me to rescue a condemned Negro? How?”
“The plan is to make an escape with a flying machine, a birdlike contraption called a glider.”
Ridiculous. “I’ve flown once before, in a French balloon. It was more terrifying than a ministerial meeting on tax reform, and more disastrous than a mistress wanting to discuss a relationship’s future. Astiza fell into the Nile, and I crashed into the sea. I can assure you, men don’t have wings for good reason. God’s intention is that we stay on the ground.”
“We don’t have gills, either, but you’ve journeyed under the sea,” Frotte argued. “Yes, yes, we know all about your adventures in Tripoli with Robert Fulton’s plunging boat. Come, Gage, we’ve entered the modern nineteenth century. You’re a man of science-no one should be more excited about the future than you.”
“My future is a dignified retirement, financed by a gem I went to no small trouble to steal but that has now sundered my family to pieces.”
“Martel has restolen your gem as well, which means your retirement is on hold until you can get it back. He’s kidnapped your only son and tried to seize your wife. Your only hope is to have something to bargain with, meaning that your chance is alliance with England. Sir Sidney Smith says you’re the most expert treasure hunter in the world. Get L’Ouverture, and you can put your life back together again.”
He was earnest as an undertaker, but his compliment was nonsense, since despite my best efforts of grubbing in tunnels and tombs I continued to come up penniless. But I am susceptible to flattery. I’m also accustomed to fate being frustrating. Nonetheless, I stubbornly shook my head. “You realize that, as usual, I haven’t the slightest idea what is really going on.”
“At stake is the thwarting of a Bonaparte invasion of England and mastery of the world, which means we’re fighting for nothing less than civilization itself. You, I’m afraid, are key.”
I had a headache. “I’m a neutral American trying to help negotiate a land purchase with the first consul.”
“You’re Harry’s only chance, my love.”
“Astiza, you know I’m as heartbroken as you.”
“I’m the mother, Ethan.” It was a trump I couldn’t match. “Horus is why fate brought us together again, and Horus is all I care about now. We have to do whatever it takes to save him.”
“I just wanted to give you peace and security for your studies,” I said wearily. “My plan was precisely to avoid dilemmas like this.”
She took a breath, summoning back her familiar courage. “Destiny has other plans for us. This Martel has pointed the way toward a challenge greater than we wanted, and then the gods sent these English spies to give us a slender opportunity. We’re being punished for trying to relax, I think, but also given a chance for redemption. The only way we’ll get Harry back is to ransom him with what everybody seeks.”
Astiza believed in fate, you see, which gave her an equanimity most people lack. It’s relaxing not having to blame everything on yourself, though that didn’t stop her from silently blaming a good part of this fiasco on me. If I were an ordinary fellow, none of this would have happened, but then again, she’d married me because I wasn’t ordinary. For which she probably blamed herself.
Emotions are entirely too complicated.
I turned back to Frotte. “The lost treasure of the Aztecs,” I said resignedly.
“Which contains information that must never fall into French hands,” he added.
A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats, Benjamin Franklin once said. The same is true, I think, of an American between two great European powers. For me, it was like choosing between two difficult lovers. The British invented liberty, bequeathed it to the American imagination, and stood for order and predictability. The French hailed the rights of man, had helped win our Revolution, and had better cooking, but had made the devil’s bargain called Napoleon for that same order. The two nations hated each other because their idealism was too alike, and Yankee Doodle-me-was caught in the middle.
Ben also said, The first mistake in public business is the going into it, but he was no better at following his advice than I am. He played the statesman in Paris, and flirted shamelessly while lecturing me on marriage.
“So where is this treasure, exactly?”
“That is what you must find out. It seemed lost to history until the slave revolt in Saint-Domingue and the reappearance of your emerald. Rumor for years is that black generals have heard legends of its whereabouts and hope to finance their new nation with its rediscovery. Accordingly, Leclerc tricked the Negro Spartacus, L’Ouverture, into capture. He’s been locked in the Jura Mountains in hopes he’ll disclose the treasure’s location in return for his freedom. But he’s tight as an oyster, and dying from cold. No one took the legend entirely seriously until you showed up with an actual stone. Now both sides fear the secret will die with him.”
“So this Martel thinks that because I had an emerald rumored to come from this treasure, I know the hiding place of the rest as well?”
“Yes. Sidney Smith, in contrast, merely believes you could learn it. L’Ouverture may trust you if you tell him
