The Dakota Cipher

‘He’s a genius!’

‘Or a prima donna!’

Not knowing what else to do, I held my rocket upside down as flames spewed skyward and tried to muster singed dignity, my smile gritted against the pain of the burns. There! Were hooded onlookers melting into the trees? The final sparks were cascading past my figure to hiss into the water as I grounded and finally stepped ashore, like Columbus.

‘Bravo! What a scene stealer!’

I bowed, more than a little shaken. I was half-blind, coughing from the acrid fumes, and wincing from my burns and abrasions. My watering eyes cut rivulets down my blackened cheeks.

The American commissioners pushed their way to the front of the throng. ‘By heavens, Gage, what the devil are you trying to symbolise?’ Ellsworth asked.

I dazedly tried to think fast. ‘Liberty, I think.’

‘That was quite the performance,’ Davie said. ‘You might have been hurt.’

‘He’s a plucky daredevil,’ said Vans Murray. ‘It’s an addiction, is it not?’

Then Bonaparte was there, too. ‘I might have known,’ he said. ‘I’m grateful you are not in politics, Monsieur Gage, or your instinct would be to upstage me.’

‘I’m afraid that would be impossible, First Consul.’

He looked sceptically from me to the island. ‘You were planning this stunt all along?’

‘It was a last-minute inspiration, I assure you.’

‘Well.’ He looked at the others. ‘Holding that torch aloft was a nice touch. This will be an evening for us all to remember. The friendship of France and the United States! Gage, you obviously have flair. It will stand you in good stead as you carry my messages to your president.’

‘America?’ I glanced around for Pauline’s husband, Egyptian snake worshippers, Muslim fanatics, or British agents. Perhaps it was time to go home.

An arm went around my shoulder. ‘And now you have new friends to keep you safe!’ said Magnus Bloodhammer, squeezing me like a bear. He smiled at Napoleon. ‘Gage and I have been looking for each other, and now I will go to America, too!’

CHAPTER EIGHT

Magnus pushed me into shadows at the edge of the crowd, his embrace rough and his breath smelling of alcohol. ‘You should not have crept off with that Bonaparte wench,’ the Norwegian lectured quietly. ‘You would have been safer with me!’

‘I had no idea her husband’s men were lurking around. Nor that he was so possessive. My God, her reputation …’

‘Those were not Leclerc’s men, you fool. Those were Danes.’

‘Danes?’ Why did they care whom I was rogering?

‘Or they were the church, or worse. It’s too late for you now, Gage, you’ve been seen with me. They know how crucial you are to our cause. Your life is in terrible danger.’

‘Who knows? What cause?’ I swear I draw lunatics like bees to honey.

‘Were they going to burn you on the island?’

‘Yes. If it hadn’t been for this newfangled solid chocolate …’

‘They’re trying to warn me off. And make a statement. Don’t think they didn’t mean for us to mark the similarities to the medieval stake of the Inquisition. Your incineration was to be a signal to the rest of us. Which only convinces me the map is real. I tell you Gage, your nation needs me as much as I need it.’

‘What map?’

‘How many are there? Are they well-armed?’

‘Frankly, I didn’t get a good look. I was rather busy …’

‘Who can we trust? The odds appear long. Do you have any allies at all?’

‘Bloodhammer …’

‘Call me Magnus.’

‘Magnus, can you take your arm from my shoulder, please? We’re barely acquainted.’

Reluctantly, the big man did so, and I got some breathing room. ‘Thank you. Now, I don’t know any Danes, the church has been thrown out of France by the Revolution, and I know nothing of any map. We’re here to celebrate a Franco-American peace treaty, if you’ll recall, and I try to be a friend to everyone, when I can. Including Pauline Bonaparte. Perhaps my assailants made some mistake. They gagged me, so I couldn’t explain who I really was.’

‘Your new enemies don’t make mistakes.’

‘But I don’t have any new enemies!’ I glanced about. ‘Do I?’

‘I’m afraid my enemies are now yours, because of your fame and expertise. You are an electrician, are you not? An investigator of the past? A protege of the great Franklin?’

‘More of an assistant, at best.’ It was beginning to occur to me that while boasting of my exploits might win me alliance with fine ladies, it also seemed to draw the attention of the worst kind of men. Someday I’m going to be more careful. ‘I’m a wastrel, actually. Hardly worth caring about.’

‘Gage, I’m on a quest, and there’s only one man in the world with the curious combination of talents I need to help me succeed. That man is you, and everything you’ve said tonight only confirms it. No, don’t protest! Has not Bonaparte himself put his trust in you? Destiny is at work. What I am after is important, not only to Norway but to your own young nation. You are a patriot, sir, are you not?’

‘Well, I like to think so. God rest George Washington. Not that I ever met the man.’

He leant close, his whisper masked by the noise of the milling, inebriated crowd. ‘What if I were to tell you that Columbus was not the first to reach your shores?’

‘The Indians were there, I suppose …’

‘My own ancestors reached North America centuries before those Italian and Spanish interlopers, Ethan Gage. Norse voyagers were the real discoverers of your continent.’

‘Really? But if they did, they didn’t stick, did they? It doesn’t count.’

‘It does!’ he roared, and people looked at us. He dragged me back even farther, to the shadow under an oak, and seized my shoulders in the dark underneath. ‘The Norse came, and drew a map, and left behind an artefact so powerful, so earthshaking, that whoever finds it will control the future! I’m talking about the fate of your own United States, Ethan Gage!’

I was suspicious. ‘What do you care about the United States?’

‘Because the rightful return of this artefact to my own nation will be a rallying point for its independence at the same time it saves your own from foreign domination. We have a chance to change world history!’

Well, I’d heard this kind of talk before, and what did I have to show for it? I’d run around Egypt and Jerusalem on the hinge of history and ended up bruised, singed, and heartbroken. ‘I’m not much for affecting history, I’m afraid. It’s hard, dirty work, quite tiring, with very little recompense, I’ve found.’

‘And we’ll discover something worth more than an emperor’s crown.’ He looked at me with the crafty expertise of a mule salesman.

That stopped me, shameless mercenary that I am. ‘Worth more? As in money?’

‘You’re a gambler, Ethan Gage. Wouldn’t you like to be rich?’

This Bloodhammer, who had the gleam of a Pizarro eyeing a roomful of Inca gold, was suddenly more interesting. I coughed to clear my throat. ‘My primary interest is the advancement of knowledge. I am a man of science, after all. Yet if there is reward to be had, I’m not opposed to compensation. As my mentor Franklin said, ‘Rather go to bed without dinner than to rise in debt.’

‘You didn’t have dinner?’

‘I’m chronically in debt. Just what is this treasure, Magnus?’

‘I can only confide in a place less public than this.’ He surveyed the assembly, now drifting back inside and preparing to go home, the way Bonaparte took in a battlefield. ‘Soon they will scatter, and we will be at risk again from the foul brigands who accosted you. Our first challenge is to make it out of Mortefontaine alive.’