Invasion

The next afternoon when Haslip was taking time for himself, Renzi made his way to the broad open spaces of the Place du Carrousel. This was where the plot to assassinate First Consul Bonaparte had so nearly succeeded two years before. The Breton giant Cadoudal had barely escaped with his life to try again the following year. Renzi carefully pinned a revolutionary red, white and blue cockade to his left arm and, with his hat firmly under the right, strolled through the gardens, admiring the flowers.

In the pleasant sunshine he nodded to the ladies, trying not to think of his deadly peril. A covey of screaming children raced on to the grass with a scolding woman in vain pursuit.

'Vous la! Oui, se tenir pret les fleurs!' challenged a gendarme, with a fierce moustache and red-plumed bicorne. 'Venez ici!' he commanded, gesturing.

'Papers!' he demanded, when Renzi came up, one hand on his sword-hilt, the other outstretched.

Renzi fought down the impulse to run and fumbled for his passport, heart thudding. Passing promenaders gave them a wide berth.

'Oui, monsieur—les voici.' The gendarme examined it closely, then looked up sharply. 'The wolf howls only at the moon!' He stabbed his finger at the passport.

'Th-then it is silent!' Renzi answered nervously. It was the challenge and response, and he was now in contact with a royalist agent.

'What do you want?'

'A—a delicate matter. If you can arrange, in some way, a privy communication with a certain person . . .'

'When?'

'Er, as soon as possible.'

'Very well.' He thrust the passport at Renzi. 'Be sitting at the park bench over my shoulder at four. Do you understand?'

Renzi nodded.

The gendarme smiled unexpectedly. 'Bonne chance, mon brave,' he said, stepping back and folding his arms in dismissal.

In good time Renzi was sitting on the bench as instructed. At four there was no one, and at a quarter past the hour a young mother insisted on occupying the other end while she dandled her baby on her knee in the sunshine, cooing and clucking, inviting him to admire the now squalling infant.

It was a clever ruse and, within a few minutes, Renzi had been invited to impart the essence of the difficulty. In return he received a businesslike solution. A vase of flowers would later appear in his room. If he placed it in the window it would indicate that a message for Fulton was concealed under its base. Likewise, Fulton's message for Renzi might be found under the base should the vase appear again in the window. At the other end there would be different arrangements. How it was done was not his affair.

That night he wrote a short message, in anonymous block capitals, which simply explained how Fulton's new friend might be contacted and hoped that he would hear from him soon.

He placed the vase in the window and went to bed. In the morning when he woke it was still there, but when he returned from another morning of stupefying boredom at the prisoner-of-war negotiating tables, he found a different paper in the hollow base. Feverishly he tore it open.

'The matter is not impossible,' it read, in a beautifully neat and characterful hand. 'What can you offer?'

Exultant, Renzi paced up and down while he considered. In his body-belt he held eight hundred pounds in gold, intended for travel expenses and the like. Would this be enough to tempt Fulton to leave immediately, the form of the contract to be discussed in England?

The thought of quick acceptance followed by rapid departure from this fearful world of danger and deceit was intoxicating. Quickly he penned a reply, emphasising immediate payment and rosily reviewing the prospects he had mentioned earlier.

For the rest of the day he was forced to attend a legal hearing and did not arrive back until late—but there was a reply. Renzi scanned it rapidly, and his heart sank. In lordly tones Fulton was demanding no less than ten thousand pounds to leave France. Carefully he composed a reply. It would not be possible to raise such an amount at short notice but the eight hundred would be more than sufficient to ensure a swift passage to England where all things would be possible. His overriding objective was to ensure his freedom to negotiate at the highest level he chose.

When the response came it was long-winded, hectoring, and demanded, as a condition to Fulton's considering any proposal, an undertaking that the British government form a plenary committee within three weeks of his arrival to examine the scope not only of his submarine craft but of other inventions. In return he would be able to offer the plans for an improved Nautilus and his torpedoes to the Admiralty for a hundred thousand pounds. Further, written proof of the offer from the British at cabinet level would be necessary before he would contemplate acceptance or leaving France.

It was an impossibility. The annual salary of a senior clerk for a thousand years? The man must be mad—or was he? Whoever stalked the undersea realm would surely command the seas, and it was plain that those who stood to lose the most were the English.

Renzi slumped. His first impulse was to promise anything at all, as long as Fulton left for England. He was living on borrowed time—and the stakes could not have been higher. But he knew he could not compromise his principles still further.

He sighed deeply and reached for his pen. With the utmost regrets he admitted he was not in a position to bind the British government to the amount indicated. However, to keep faith with Fulton he would, with all dispatch, open secret communications with Whitehall to establish a basis for negotiation.

There was little more he could do, now that he was passing the responsibility to a higher authority—and, wearily, he realised that this presented a grave problem in itself. How the devil would he get messages of explosive content safely to England when he had no means to secure them? Trusting the agents to perform some kind of coding was asking too much—and, apart from that, they would then be privy to state secrets of the highest importance.