“No,” said Evers, but this was plainly a lie; as he reached forward to grab the charcoal from Lenox it was easy to see an open sketchbook.
“May I see?” Lenox asked.
A battle took place in Evers’s face: pride and resentment fighting against each other. At last the pride won out, and with a great show of antipathy he handed Lenox the book.
Lenox flipped through it. On almost every page was a different sketch of the same vista, at different times of day—the view from this high perch, sometimes with other masts and even people showing, sometimes with a horizon, and always the sun and clouds and water.
“These are wonderful,” said Lenox.
“Oh?” said Evers hoarsely.
“You draw?” Andersen said.
“No!” Evers roared, and snatched the book back.
“Let me see it for myself, this view you draw,” said Lenox.
He stood. The crow’s nest was high-walled enough that it had concealed the panorama it offered from him while he was sitting, but now as he rose he took it all in.
It was one of the most miraculous moments of his life; he had known the pleasure of rest after exertion, and he had known the heartswell one gets from a sweeping view of the natural world in its beauty. He hadn’t known them in combination, however, and together they overwhelmed him. There was the distant deck, populated by miniatures of the men he knew; the masts of the ship, ahead and behind him; there were the cliffs of grayish clouds, and between them, breaking through now and then, the brilliant golden sun.
For five, then ten minutes he gazed out upon the sea and the sky. Raindrops fell on his face. His spirit felt full.
“I don’t blame you for drawing it,” he said at last, sitting down again. “Will you tell me how you came to start drawing?”
Evers wanted to speak, it was plain, but couldn’t with Andersen there. He gulped, and then said, “Some other time, if you don’t mind, sir. I need to be on duty.”
“Not for hours!” said the Swede cheerfully.
“Bugger,” Evers muttered, and set off down through the hole in the crow’s nest and back down the rigging, his sketchbook in his teeth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
So absorbing had life on board been that Lenox had half forgotten the reason he was there at all. But it had been nearly a week now. They would make landfall in Egypt after only five or six more days, four if the wind was exceptionally kind.
So that afternoon he went to his cabin and removed the papers Edmund had handed him at the Plymouth docks from their leather satchel. After coming down from the crow’s nest he had had a good lunch, of roasted chicken, peas, and potatoes, washed down with a half bottle of claret, and then he had slept for an hour or so, physically exhausted. Now he felt refreshed, his mind sharp. He was prepared to read his orders.
There were three sheets of paper, each a mess of jumbled numbers and letters, none of them ever forming a word, much less a sentence. They had been written in cipher by a cryptographer working for the British government.
Thankfully Lenox knew the key to the cipher. For his sake it was a simple one: the first thirteen letters of the alphabet corresponded to the second thirteen, so that the letter
Edmund had told Lenox of this system and made him recite it back several times, until the older brother was satisfied that the younger brother would remember. Now Lenox made a key for himself and set about translating the first of the three documents, his brother’s letter. This took half an hour or so of lip-biting effort. In its translated version the letter read:
Dear Charles,
Two documents are enclosed with this letter. We have enciphered both, believing that it would draw attention to have enciphered only one. The first, marked
in the upper right-hand corner, details your official responsibilities in Suez, and the second, marked
in the upper right-hand corner, your covert ones. It is a matter of the highest importance that you should destroy both this letter and the document marked
as soon as you have committed the simple details of
to your memory.
you may keep, and not bother hiding—should the French find it and decipher it they would discover only your official itinerary, and it might command their attention for long enough to keep their eyes off of you.
Please accept the pistol they offer you at the consulate; you should carry it as a precaution. Return home safely, please, and know me to be,
Your affectionate and grateful brother,
Edmund
For all his life Lenox had kept files full of the letters he received, dating back to school days and the Lord Chesterfield missives his father sent to Harrow. Now, though, he dutifully shredded Edmund’s letter into pieces, did the same with his scrawled translation, and dropped the resultant confetti through his porthole and into the ocean. Now he had only the two letters from the prime minister’s office and his quickly drawn-up key on his desk.
There would be time to look over his official activities, and at any rate the resident consulate would no doubt shepherd him through his duties. It was more urgent to memorize the details of his clandestine mission.
Translation of the
Mr. Lenox:
- Your meeting will take place on May fifteenth at ten minutes before midnight, three days after you are scheduled to arrive. If the
has not reached Port Said by the afternoon of the fifteenth, the meeting will be delayed exactly twenty-four hours.
- Near your hotel is a club for the use of European gentlemen, known in English as Scheherazade’s. Arrive there early, preferably by an hour or so, and order a (nonalcoholic) drink. In the fourth room on the left is a small door. Behind it is a staircase leading to the establishment’s kitchen. Your meeting will take place in the kitchen. A diagram of exits from the kitchen and the Scheherazade are on the back of this sheet. Commit them to memory.
- Your contact, whom you may call Monsieur Sournois, will be at the rear of the kitchen, which at this hour will be empty. He is over six foot, dark-haired, and missing the smallest finger of his left hand. He will say the following phrase to you in English:
To this you will respond:
