The Dakota Cipher

Millions of square miles are at stake, and a man who has worked for the British, the French, and the Americans in turn is in a position to make a difference – and have foes. You’re quite the momentary celebrity, Ethan Gage, but lie low, lie low. New York can be a dangerous, brutal city.’

‘Anyone who meets me knows I mean no harm.’

‘Anyone you meet could do you harm. That’s a fact. I understand you have a rifle?’

‘Made by a craftsman in Jerusalem.’

‘Keep it as close as a frontiersman, Ethan. Keep it as ready as a Minute Man.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

Not knowing how to explain the Norwegian and his odd theories, I took him to dinners and balls as an example of an oversized Scandinavian idealist come to see democracy in action.

‘So you’re a man of liberty yourself, Mr, er, Bloodhammer?’

‘The Danes are our British,’ he would growl.

‘And you hope to emulate our republic?’

‘I want to be the Norwegian Washington.’

When I confided Astor’s warning he took to wearing his map case like an arrow quiver everywhere we went, and with his eye patch, his cloak, and a new cane topped with an ivory unicorn’s head, its horn a steel protuberance, he was inconspicuous as a rooster in a henhouse. ‘We should go west now,’ he insisted.

‘We can’t in the dead of winter.’

In February word finally came that a president had indeed been chosen. ‘Ethan, shouldn’t we be journeying on to Washington?’ Magnus pressed.

‘Exploration needs money,’ I said as I dealt another hand of faro, which I was playing along with piquet, basset and whist. ‘Talleyrand’s silver dollars are already half-gone.’ Like so many men, I consistently ignored the good advice I gave others, particularly about gambling. But my real reason for stalling was that we’d recently been given hospitality, thanks to my minor fame, in the home of one Angus Philbrick. He had a young German serving girl with braids that bounced on her breasts like drumsticks, and I suspected she’d be a fine bedwarmer if I had just a day or two more to practise diplomacy. The fact that I knew no German, or she English, seemed an advantage.

It’s true that Magnus and I had been experiencing a curious run of bad luck I blamed on coincidence. There was a sausage cart that somehow got away from its donkey and almost ran us down. Then a fire in a hotel that led to Philbrick’s offer of temporary shelter. We’d slipped on a midnight sheet of ice from a carelessly spilt bucket, our downhill skid arrested only by the horn of Bloodhammer’s cane, which sent up a shower of sparks. Hooded figures coming up to presumably assist us took one look at the potential weapon in the fist of my hulking, one-eyed companion and disappeared.

‘I think we’ve been followed,’ Magnus concluded.

‘Across the ocean? You’re daft, man.’

That night, however, when I arranged for Gwendolyn to come to my room and tidy up when the others were abed, our Manhattan sojourn came to an abrupt end. She arrived as promised, and performed as hoped, and I had drifted off when something – the click of the door and the scrape of heavy furniture, perhaps – startled me awake. Gwendolyn’s place beside me was cooling, and there was an odd smell to the air. I slipped on my nightshirt, went to the door, but couldn’t pull it inward: it felt like the latch on the other side was tied to a dresser or chest jammed against the outer wall. I sniffed. Sulphur? I looked more closely. Smoke was drifting from under my bed.

The window was stuck fast, too, and my longrifle and tomahawk were gone!

Gwendolyn clearly had not finished as sleepy as I had, and had actually been quite busy, the cunning trollop. With no time to think, I picked up a heavy crockery washbasin, swung it to smash the glass and sash of my locked window, and dove headfirst towards the backyard. I managed to roll as I came down, cartwheeling into cold snow, and came up bearing the durable basin as a shield.

‘Ethan!’

I looked towards the kitchen door and there was Magnus Bloodhammer, twirling his cane overhead and looking straight at me as if to attack. Was he my enemy? I crouched, holding out the basin as meagre protection and then it exploded in my hands – but not from his cane, which went whickering overhead. I dimly realised a shot had come from somewhere, and then there was a surprised grunt and I turned to see a black-clad assailant pitch backward into the necessary house, a pistol dropped, and the point of Bloodhammer’s walking stick stuck fast between the bastard’s neck and shoulder. As he crashed down into the outhouse, I saw the flare of another fuse.

‘What in Hades?’

There were twin roars. Behind me my bedroom erupted in a gout of flame, glass, and brick, making me crouch even more, and then poor Philbrick’s necessary house blew up in thunderous counterpoint, sending skyward a fountain of slivers, my would-be assassin’s body parts, and sewage. I tucked into a ball between the two blasts. Debris, much of it odoriferous, rained down to pock-mark the snow and spatter me with offal. Feathers from my destroyed mattress drifted down like flakes, sticking to my nightshirt and hair in each spot I was splattered with shit. I realised that my enemies had intended to be thorough. If the bedroom bomb could not be set, I was to have met my maker when I mounted the outhouse throne.

Though half-deaf, I could hear dogs barking and bells ringing.

Before I could do something more productive about my situation – like run – Magnus appeared again, waving my longrifle. I cringed, but he didn’t shoot me.

‘I charged her with a poker and she dropped this after she missed her shot and hit your basin,’ he explained. ‘You’ve used up three lives in thirty seconds! Plus my perfectly good cane!’

‘I thought I’d performed with her better than that,’ I said with numb wonder, shaking at my near-escape. I tottered towards him, my bare feet freezing and my body covered with feathers, and he began laughing. My assassins may not have killed me, but they had certainly finished off my dignity.

‘You look like a drowned chicken!’ my companion said. ‘You need more care than a three-legged dog!’

‘I wonder if the lovely Gwendolyn was really speaking German. Maybe it was Danish.’ I brushed at the feathers.

‘Too late to ask her. She ran to some horsemen and galloped away.’

A flabbergasted Philbrick was looking out at us from the gaping new hole in the side of his house.

‘Maybe it’s time to get on to Washington, after all,’ I said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Our hurried departure was in late February, shortly after Jefferson’s election in the House on the thirty-sixth ballot – a contest so drawn out and nefarious that it resulted in proposals to amend the Constitution. Burr would be vice president after all, and both men would be inaugurated on March 4^th. I kept notes because Napoleon would press me for details. He was as curious about our democracy as he was sceptical.

‘Magnus, do you really think Danish assassins trailed us here?’ I asked, looking warily back as our hastily hired stagecoach rolled out of New York before Philbrick recovered wit enough to bring suit. ‘It’s not like we’ve found anything to prove your claims. Why bother? And why me instead of you?’

‘They could be church agents,’ he said, ticking the possibilities off on his fingers, ‘believing you a pagan blasphemer by association. If it’s the Danes, they assume you’re my guide and easier to finish off than a true warrior like me. The British, of course, will suspect you as an agent of the French. The American Federalists think you a Republican, while the Republicans are whispering that I bought too many maps from the disgraced Tory bookseller Gaine. French royalists no doubt believe you a Bonapartist, while French Revolutionary veterans might want to seek some measure of revenge for your defence of Acre against their comrades. The Spanish probably want to delay your announcement about the change in ownership of Louisiana, and all the powers fear I’ll prove Norway has first claim to the continent. Who cares who’s after us? The sooner we get protection from your young government, the better.’