device, putting me in this predicament. There’s something to be said for conservatism, where nothing ever changes.
“George Cayley is just at the beginning of his experiments,” Smith said mildly. “There is, however, an earlier civilization rumored to have mastered the art of flight, or at least to have produced models that look like flying machines. The speculation is that they not only enjoyed a controlled descent, but an ascent as well.”
“You mean the Aztecs. But how? What could make that web of sticks go upward?”
“We’ve no idea. A steam engine, perhaps? You yourself, Gage, are reputed to be somewhat of an electrician, a master of lightning. Perhaps that mysterious force can somehow drive an aerial craft. Mechanicians like Fulton and Watt are coming up with all kinds of peculiar ideas. In any event, the ancients were clever and might have had far better understanding of flight than we do. If the French could learn from an earlier civilization, they might swoop ahead of us and descend on our fleet like vultures.”
“Earlier civilization?”
“So the stories go. The recent notion that those in the future might know more than those in the past, or that the present age is the equal or better than our origins, is very new. For most of history, people believed the ancients knew more than us. The Aztec empire, Mr. Gage, believed it learned the arts of civilization from its gods, and is rumored to have immortalized the designs of their god’s flying machines in the gold and jewels of lost treasures. If the treasure of Montezuma could be found, and provides a model for flight, such a discovery might turn the tide of the war. The Channel could be leaped. That is what Leon Martel has heard, and that is what he’s after in the hoard.”
“But from Indians?”
“You understand better than anyone that the world has lost secrets in deep places. The pyramids? Mythic Norse artifacts on the American frontier? Greek superweapons?”
I had to give him the point. Our planet is a lot stranger than most people are willing to admit. I’d found a number of clever oddities in my time and had nearly died trying to harness them. Clever races or supermen seemed to be mucking about long before our own culture got started, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they flew, as well.
“We know the Caribbean is littered with the wrecks of Spanish treasure ships,” Smith continued, breaking into my thoughts. “In the century after 1550, as many as six hundred such vessels sank, each bearing an average of four to eight million pesos. It says something of the wealth of Mexico and Peru that even with such losses, enough survived that Spain became the richest kingdom in Christendom. Does Montezuma’s treasure exist? Was it lost, recovered, and finally rehidden? Who knows? But even if Martel’s theory is improbable, the barest possibility makes it imperative he is stopped. Empires are at stake. A true flying machine could tip the balance of power in an instant. Imagine a regiment of French cavalry mounted on the equivalent of flying carpets, swooping down the Thames like Valkyries.”
As I’ve said, Smith was barking mad, not to mention having the habit of mixing metaphors. “You enlisted me because you seriously fear Valkyries?”
“We enlisted you, Ethan, in hopes you could get L’Ouverture to tell us where the treasure is, so we can lay claim to them.”
“The French, alas, filled him full of holes.” The death of the Black Spartacus had been reported in the newspapers, but the French blamed L’Ouverture’s end on disease, not a failed escape attempt. “He was dying anyway, but they shot him as we hoisted him.”
“Barbarians. So… did he give you any clue?”
I hesitated. Did we want to share what little bargaining we had with the greedy British? Astiza, a mother, didn’t hesitate.
“He said the emeralds are in the diamond, but we don’t know what that means,” she spoke up. “Please, share that with Leon Martel and get our son back, Sir Sidney. We don’t care about this treasure of Montezuma. You can follow Martel when he goes looking for it and take it away from him then. We just want to get our boy and go home.”
And where did she imagine home was? I wondered. Would she follow me to a new one in America, after I’d helped lose our son?
Smith shook his head, sympathetic but stern. “Absolutely not. We don’t share secrets with the enemy, Mrs. Gage, and have no doubt, Leon Martel is your enemy. Moreover, he’s not easily contacted. In anticipation of war, he’s already crossed the ocean with Horus before he could be stopped by the British navy.”
“Crossed the ocean!”
“And not with Napoleon’s consent, I suspect. Martel’s a renegade, operating on his own, so far as we know. He rowed out to a ship bound for Saint-Domingue during a brewing storm, on the pretense of visiting a friend. When the gale came, the captain was forced to weigh anchor and sail to gain sea room, taking Martel and your son with him. Presumably, the villain has arrived in the embattled colony. We’re also informed that he has relations on the French sugar colony of Martinique. That’s the childhood home, I’m sure you know, of Bonaparte’s wife, Josephine. Martel thinks the treasure is somewhere in the Caribbean, and he’s no doubt sending evil minions out to find it, in order to ingratiate himself with the first consul and his family.”
I wondered if the French would call me an evil minion if I signed on again with the British. Astiza had given me back Napoleon’s little pendant, and I’d secreted it in case we needed to sneak about French possessions. If hung around my neck, it would make a splendid target for a firing squad from either nation.
But what choice did we have but to join Smith? We really knew nothing, and if we were to get my son and emerald back, we either needed a clue to bargain with or the British navy to back up our demands. “What do you want us to do?” I asked resignedly.
“I want you to go to the West Indies, find the treasure before Martel does, and lure him into a trap. At the end you’ll get your son, the emerald, ten percent of anything you find, and everlasting fame.” He nodded, already victorious in his head.
The West Indies! For many men they were a death sentence. I already knew Napoleon’s army was being destroyed by yellow fever and revengeful slaves. “But how?” I asked.
“L’Ouverture is dead, but his successor, General Jean-Jacques Dessalines, fights on in Saint-Domingue. I need you to go to the slave war, Ethan, and find out if the Negroes are hiding the most important golden models in human history. You have an enormous advantage: The French government has no idea it was you and your wife racing across the rooftops of Fortress de Joux. For all Napoleon knows, you’re still his go-between with the American negotiators, correct?”
“I told his ministers in Paris that I was taking leave to draw a map of my explorations for Monroe,” I conceded. “Then we sneaked off to rescue L’Ouverture.”
“That means you can go yourself to the French garrison in Saint-Domingue as an American agent and pretend to be their friend.”
Smith was even more devious than me, which is saying something. “But what good will that do?”
“You need to learn their military secrets and then trade them to Dessalines for the secret of the treasure.” He said this as if it were simple.
“But won’t the French hang us both as spies long before that happens?” Astiza asked. She has impeccable logic.
“Not if you pose as negotiators for Louisiana,” Smith said, “and explain you need to inspect the state of the war in Saint-Domingue to report to both the American and French agents whether a sale makes sense. Can France hold the colony, and, if not, is it best that Napoleon get money for New Orleans? All this is true enough. You can pretend you’re important, even though you’re not.”
Astiza thought out loud. “While Ethan poses as a diplomat in Saint-Domingue, I can look for Harry and Martel.”
“Exactly. You’re double agents, pretending to work for France and America while you really work for England and the slave army. You will pretend to Dessalines that you have been sent by L’Ouverture to find the treasure to finance their new nation. After lying to everyone, you escape and deliver the secret to us, the British.” He smiled with the satisfaction of a burrowed fox watching baying hounds thunder past, tongues out and saliva flying.
For Smith, of course, the question was simple. My loyalties were more complicated. I liked France, and the French, if not their henchmen. It had been France that had helped my own country win independence, bankrupting itself in the process, and the French Revolution that bankruptcy precipitated was closer to American ideals than England was. If I could just persuade Bonaparte to return to its precepts, I might be more at home in Paris than
