Sharpe's Devil

second. The stone around this second door had a raw, new appearance, as though it had only recently been laid. Sharpe, still holding his weapons, walked between the boxes and through the new doorway, and found himself in Captain Marquinez's quarters—the very same rooms in which the handsome Captain had received them on their first day in Valdivia.

Marquinez was sitting on his bed, holding a pistol to his head. He was shaking with fear.

'Put the gun down,' Sharpe said quietly.

'He made me promise! He said he couldn't live without me!'

Sharpe opened his mouth, did not know what to say, so closed it again. Harper, who had stepped into the room behind Sharpe, said something under his breath.

'I loved him!' Marquinez wailed the declaration.

'Oh, Jesus,' Sharpe said, then he crossed the room and lifted the pistol from Marquinez's nerveless fingers. 'Where's Bias Vivar?'

'I don't know, senor, I don't know.' Marquinez was in tears now. He had begun to shake, then slid down to his knees so that he was at Sharpe's feet where he wrapped his arms around Sharpe's legs like a slave beseeching for life. 'I don't know!'

Sharpe reached down and disengaged the arms, then gestured toward the tower. 'What's in the boxes, Marquinez?'

'Gold, plate, pearls, coin. We were going to take it back to Spain. We were going to live in Madrid and be great men.' He was weeping again. 'It was all going to be so wonderful!'

Sharpe gripped Marquinez's black hair and tipped the man's tearful face back. 'Is Bias Vivar here?'

'No, senor, I swear it!'

'Did your lover ambush Vivar?'

'No, senor.”

'So where is he?'

'We don't know! No one knows!'

Sharpe twisted his grip, tugging Marquinez's hair painfully. 'But you were the one who took the dog to Puerto Crucero and buried it?'

'Yes, senor, yes!'

'Why?'

'Because he ordered me to. Because it was embarrassing that we could not find the Captain-General's body. Because Madrid was demanding to know what had happened to General Vivar! We didn't know, but we thought he must be dead, so I found a dead dog and put that in a box instead. At least the box would smell right!' Marquinez paused. 'I don't know where he is! Please! We would have killed him, if we could, because General Vivar had found out about us, and he was threatening to tell the church of our sin, but then he vanished! Miguel said it had to be the rebels, but we never found out! It wasn't our doing! It wasn't!'

Sharpe released Marquinez's hair. 'Bugger,' he said. He released the flint on his pistol and pushed the weapon back into his belt. 'Bugger!'

'But look,” seriorr Marquinez had climbed to his feet and, eager as a puppy for approval, edged into the tower room which had been his secret trysting place. 'Look, senor, gold! And we have your sword, see?' He ran to a box, opened it, and drew out Sharpe's sword. Harper was opening other boxes and whistling with astonishment, though he was not so astonished to forget to fill his pockets with coins. 'Here, senor.' Marquinez held out Sharpe's sword.

Sharpe took it, unbuckled the borrowed scabbard, and strapped his own sword in its place. He drew the familiar blade. It looked very dull in the dim lantern light.

'No, senor!” Marquinez thought Sharpe was going to kill him.

'I'm not going to kill you, Marquinez. I might kill someone else, but not you. Tell me where Bautista's quarters are.'

Sharpe left Harper in his Aladdin's cave, went through Marquinez's rooms, across a landing, down a long corridor, and into a stark, severe chamber. The walls were white, the furniture functional, the bed nothing but a campaign cot covered with thin blankets. This was how Bautista wanted the world to see him, while the tower had been his secret and his fantasy. Now Lord Cochrane sat at Bautista's plain table with two pieces of paper in front of him. Three of Cochrane's sailors were searching the room's cupboards, but were evidently finding nothing of great value. Cochrane grinned as Sharpe came through the door. 'You found me! Well done. Any news of Bautista?'

'He's dead. Blew his own head off.'

'Cowardly way out. Found any treasure?'

'A whole room full of it. Top of the tower.'

'Splendid! Go fetch, lads!' Cochrane snapped his fingers and his three men ran out into the corridor.

Sharpe walked to the table and leaned over Cochrane's two pieces of paper. One he had never seen before, but he recognized the other as the coded message that had been concealed in Bonaparte's portrait. Bautista must have kept the coded message, and Cochrane had found it. Sharpe suspected that the message was the most important thing in all the Citadel for Cochrane. The Scotsman talked of whores and gold, but really he had come for this scrap of paper that he was now translating by using the code that was written on the other sheet of paper. 'Is there a Colonel Charles?' Sharpe asked.

'Oh, yes, but it wouldn't have done for anyone to think that Boney was writing to me, would it? So Charles was our go-between.' Cochrane smiled happily, then copied another letter from the code's key.

'Where's Vivar?' Sharpe asked.

'He's safe. He's not a happy man, but he's safe.'

'You made a bloody fool of me, didn't you?'

Cochrane heard the dangerous bite in Sharpe's voice, and leaned back. 'No, I didn't. I don't think anyone could make a fool of you, Sharpe. I deceived you, yes, but I had to. I've deceived most people here. That doesn't make them fools.'

'And Marcos? The soldier who told the story of Vivar being a prisoner in the Angel Tower? You put him up to it?'

Cochrane grinned. 'Yes. Sorry. But it worked! I rather wanted your help during the assault.'

Sharpe turned the coded message around so that it faced him. 'So this was meant for you, then?'

'Yes.'

Cochrane had only unlocked the first sentence of the Emperor's message. The words were in French, but Sharpe translated them into English as he read them aloud. ''I agree to your proposal, and urge haste. What proposal?'

Cochrane stood. An excited Major Miller had come to the door, but Cochrane waved him away. His Lordship lit a cigar, then walked to a window that looked down into the main courtyard where two hundred Spaniards had surrendered to a handful of rebels. 'It was all the Emperor's fault,' Cochrane said. 'He thought Captain-General Vivar was the same Count of Mouromorto who had fought for him at the war's beginning. We didn't know Mouromorto had a brother.'

''We'?' Sharpe asked.

Cochrane made a dismissive gesture with the cigar. 'A handful of us, Sharpe. Men who believe the world should not be handed over to dull lawyers and avaricious politicians and fat merchants. Men who believe that glory should be undimmed and brilliant!' He smiled. 'Men like you!'

“Just go on,' Sharpe shrugged the compliment away, if indeed it was a compliment.

Cochrane smiled. 'The Emperor doesn't like being cooped up on Saint Helena. Why should he? He's looking for allies, Sharpe, so he ordered me to arrange a meeting with the Count of Mouromorto, which I did, but the weather was shit-terrible, and Mouromorto couldn't get to Talcahuana. So we made a second rendezvous and, of course, he arrived and he heard me out, and then he told me I was thinking of his brother, not him, and, one way or another, it turned out that I was fumbling up the wrong set of skirts. So, of course, I had to take him prisoner. Which was a pity, because we'd met under a flag of truce.' Cochrane laughed ruefully. 'It would have been easier to kill Vivar, but not under a flag of truce, so I took him to sea, and we stranded him with a score of guards, six pigs and a tribe of goats on one of the Juan Fernandez islands.' Cochrane drew on the cigar and watched its smoke drift out the window. 'The islands are three hundred fifty miles off the coast, in the middle of nothing!