Five days before his meeting with Cadoudal, the man who would be known as the Viper had made certain arrangements in London. The meeting itself would be only a formality, given the identity of his absent sponsor. The signet ring he carried—a death certificate in France—opened doors in England.
His errands began at a luggage shop in the Strand.
“You’re Watley?”
“Yes, sir. Watley and Son; me being the son, though the old gent’s passed on. I hope my son—”
“Surely every father does. I want to place an order.”
“Yes, sir. We are equipped for anything, as you see.”
On the evidence, this was no exaggeration. Shelves and tables contained portmanteaux in all sizes, stiff and shiny for travel abroad, butter soft for weekends in the country, rugged as bark for adventure on the outer stations. Hat boxes and satchels hung from the ceiling and tall steamer trunks stood on the floor, propped open to display their various drawers and compartments, chifforobes with grips; when the gentry went to get away from it all, they took most of it with them, on the backs of servants. An intoxicating, voluptuous smell of quality leather and peaty tweed permeated the place.
The proprietor approved of his customer at first sight: a tall slender man, English upper-class in appearance, in a conservative gray coat and knee-breeches.
“I understand you make all your goods on the premises.”
Not an accent one heard often in the neighborhood. Not British, but there was breeding in it.
“Yes, sir, my apprentices and myself. All English materials, all English artisans. We serve the royal family by special appointment.” George III had commissioned a pigskin shooting jacket with special pockets for the cruet set he carried everywhere to avoid being poisoned, hence the Hanover coat of arms in the window. The partridge would hear him clinking for miles.
“Have you someplace private? I’d rather not discuss details in front of all London.”
The shopkeeper came round the counter to lock the door and pull down the window shade, then led his customer into the back room.
Here, punches, scraps of leather, spools of coarse thread, and unfinished pieces of luggage cluttered benches set against all the walls. There was an acid stench of dyes and curing compounds and a brownish smell coming from a teakettle leaking steam from its spout atop a coal-burning stove. Watley liked his tea strong enough to float a nail.
“We’re quite accustomed to building luggage to order, sir. That trunk in the corner was designed for the head of a theatrical troupe, to accommodate all his costumes without having to fold them more than once. Over there is a dispatch case, a very special item—”
“Do you discuss all your customers’ orders in public?”
He felt a client slipping away, and fell back to regroup.
“If discretion is—”
“It is. The article I’m about to describe isn’t to be mentioned to anyone. You’ll show it to no one and store it in a secure place out of sight whenever you leave the shop. You’ll leave the shop as seldom as possible until the project’s finished, and you’ll allow no one to remain in the building unattended for any length of time.
“I realize these conditions are unusual, but you’ll be recompensed for the inconvenience. If you find this unsatisfactory in any way, tell me now.”
“Not at all.”
“My instructions are clear.”
“Yes.”
The man desired a large valise, giving dimensions, with standard latches and straps, but with a panel installed inside that left a shallow recess in the bottom. He described its depth to the quarter-inch. The panel, he stressed, must be stiff and strong, to resist bulging, and attached permanently, so that it could not be removed without destroying it. There must be no release mechanism for anyone examining the valise to stumble upon.
The luggage maker looked up from his pencil. “But how will the item you wish to conceal—”
“Store.”
“Store, of course. I beg your pardon. How will you get it inside?”
“I’ll place it there myself when the panel is ready to install. You will wait until then before proceeding. I shall be alone in the room at the time. The item will be wrapped in opaque cloth. Under no circumstances will you disturb the wrapping. I shall watch as the panel is installed. How many apprentices do you employ?”
“Two. My son and another young man.”
“Dismiss them.”
“Dis—?”
“Not permanently. Place them on holiday. You’ll do the work yourself. No one is to see it until it’s finished.”
He did not write this down. Surely he would not forget such requests.
“What is the lightest wood you have available for the frame?”
“I always use maple. It’s stout and dependable.”
“Too heavy. The bag must appear to be empty when it’s presumed to be.”
“Fir, perhaps; but it will not last decades, like maple.”
“I won’t have it even months. I want it to look well-used, not fresh from the shop.”
“Certainly. Obvious newness can be gauche.”
“In any event it attracts attention. The leather is to be stained with chemicals and distressed with sandpaper.”
The shopkeeper made note of this, frowning. To mistreat fine leather was to him more sinful than beating a splendid horse.
“The valise must contain no label or other insignia that will identify its place of purchase. I know you take pride in your workmanship, but I must insist upon anonymity.”
To this he had no objection. He would dread to attach his name to an item that was to look shabby and be framed with inferior wood.
“Now read what you’ve written and commit it to memory. It goes with me when I leave.”
The luggage maker began to wonder if the man was a criminal despite his apparent breeding. The loss of overseas colonies and the ghastly last ten years in France had shaken one’s faith in outward appearances.
He read his notes slowly and carefully, repeating the dimensions in a murmur, tore the sheet off the block, and handed it to his customer. To his surprise, the customer snatched the entire block from his hands and slid it into a pocket of his coat along with the sheet.
From another pocket he drew a leathern sack and placed it on a nearby bench, at an angle that enabled the other to see that it was filled with gold sovereigns. “I’ll be back in a week and give you this same amount. See that it’s ready; everything but the hidden panel.”
It was more than Watley earned in a busy month.
“Is there nothing else?”
“What else could there be?”
“The color.”
The customer smiled for the first time. “Brown, of course. No English gentleman carries black leather.”
From there, the man whom we may call the Viper went to the Bank of England for a prearranged meeting with the head clerk. This was a young fellow who affected a lorgnette, which he used to read the fine print on the client’s letter of credit and study the seal. The name of this “Colonel Meuchel” meant nothing to him, but his affiliation would please the directors. Austria was a British ally when sabers rattled, and the wealthiest empire in Western Europe.
At length he sat back and laid his lorgnette atop it. He didn’t blink at the credit amount; so young a fellow was obviously acting on behalf of interests beyond his ken.
“How much would you like to draw at this time?”
“Ten thousand pounds, to start. In five-pound notes.” The customer patted a dispatch case he’d bought in the shop on the Strand, a cheap one with frayed corners, unlikely to attract the attention of a cutpurse.
“These are uncertain times to carry around that much currency.”
“Thank you. I shan’t carry it long. I’m negotiating a purchase of property and the seller demands cash, in notes backed by the Crown. I’m sure he’d agree with you about the uncertainty of the times.”
The clerk nodded. He had experience dealing with Tories who were convinced Great Britain was headed the way of Gibbon’s Rome. He went to the vault himself to bring back the notes.
“I say, are there rats aboard your vessel?”
The grizzled mariner in the striped shirt and burlap coat scratched his back against the piling that supported him and spoke around the pipe between his teeth.
“There are for a fact, mate, but they don’t take up much room, so I charge ’em only half fare.”
The Viper nodded, as if this witticism were familiar. It served him on this occasion to Anglify his accent and season it with middle-class pomposity.
He proceeded with his arrangements for passage aboard the trawler tied up at the wharf. The master, whose name was Hubbard, had paid for it smuggling goods across the Channel the last time England and France were at war and a blockade was in place, so his passenger didn’t trouble to confirm his ability to keep silent.
Refreshingly, he wasn’t required to explain why he’d chosen such expensive accommodations when he could sail first-class for far less on more conventional craft; the countries were at peace, uneasy though it was, and excursionists traveled back and forth on a regular basis, with Joseph Fouché’s police present when they docked in France, collecting names and stopping-places and following up on the answers.
Hubbard was no stranger to curiosity, but neither did he indulge it. He knew and was known by a charter member of the Cutthroat Club, which although he himself was a dedicated Royalist, he could not join because of low birth. He knew nothing about the passenger other than to expect him, and when asked about vermin on board, to respond as he had.
“Is it seaworthy?”
“She just came out of dry dock, fresh tar and I don’t figure Lord Nelson would find fault with her brass.”
“I don’t care if it’s green as grass. I want assurance we won’t be semaphoring for help. I’d as soon capsize.”
“Tight as a drum, sor.” He gave forth the respectful address without thought. Something about the man suggested command experience. He may have come by that stick up his posterior by clear title.
Another thick stack of five-pound notes changed hands.
“Can you be ready to sail for France on the twenty-second?”
“Provided the tide don’t change its mind.”
That was eight days hence, and he would be busy every minute.
He’d taken a room in an old house off Knightsbridge, on the top floor with a window that opened onto a roof with an easy slope. He had no reason to think he’d have to take advantage of such a handy escape route, but caution came to him without thought.
The landlady was deaf in one ear and suffered from gout, so there’d be no climbing the stairs with trays of refreshment to surprise her boarder. In Brussels, he’d had to strangle an infatuated serving girl who’d come to his room in the middle of the night as he was cleaning his pistols; an activity impossible to explain away, considering he was posing as a seminarian. He’d locked her body in the wardrobe and abandoned both his lodgings and his mission. There was no abandoning this one, his last.
He sat at the tiny writing table, turned up the lamp, and removed a number of steelpoint engravings from a portfolio.
They were reproductions for popular sale in France made from recent portraits of the First Consul, his fellow consuls Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes and Roger Ducos, and the archfiend Joseph Fouché.
The Minister of Police, that reptile, bore close study: The dossier the Cutthroats had compiled on him was twice as thick as any of the others. Fouché was fond of fine things, paintings and sculpture, fonder still of his authority, and jealously guarded the home he shared with his family from invasions friendly and otherwise.
The Viper thought that last fact useful. Fanged beasts tended to relax their guards in their own dens.
He laid Bonaparte’s likenesses side by side and examined them closely. He could hardly fail to recognize the man in person, but time and circumstances wrought physical changes worth committing to memory.
The First Consul was putting on weight. The little man in the great position was no longer the gaunt hero of Arcole: The hollows had vanished from his cheeks and his middle had expanded where the facings of the famous green tunic parted to expose his waistcoat. “I grow fat in the saddle,” he had declared for public consumption; but months had passed since his last campaign, and his notorious quick meals had filled the void as well as his belly. A roly-poly Bonaparte was difficult to envision, but the sallow cadaver who’d opened fire with cannon on his starving fellow Parisians on 13 Vendémiaire was history.
This was valuable, as the man employed doubles on some ceremonial occasions, and the fellows could not all have inflatable stomachs. The Viper concentrated on the ears, the chin, the nose; features difficult to change with wax and putty and fool the discerning eye. Fortunately, that swollen forehead and cake-knife nose were unmistakable. They belonged on a Roman coin; to one of the many Caesars whose blood had been shed when their vogue passed.
He slid everything back into the portfolio and tied the cord. The material was as good as could be expected, but inadequate. He’d have to get a closer look in person. That increased the danger manifold. But one didn’t earn five million francs sitting at home on his bum.
The amount of written material on his subject was staggering. Everyone who had stood near enough to hear the Great Man fart kept a journal: Generals, mistresses, valets—the man who laundered his underdrawers, it seemed—had all found publishers eager to vomit out their observations. The Viper read them all: his fondness on campaign for fried potatoes and onions, how he brushed his perfect teeth, his sensitivity to odors, the whiteness of his hands; all these things were within access.
Of greater value were Bonaparte’s own writings. Since the emigration of the nobility early in the Revolution, French newspapers were easily obtainable in local kiosks, and French books and periodicals in stalls and the library of the British Museum. The Viper read transcripts of the general’s dispatches and bulletins in Italy and Egypt—comparing his monstrously inflated reports of enemy casualties to the monstrously downgraded figures in the British press—and made notes in the margins of the young artillery lieutenant’s History of Corsica. Such material, dated as it was by the race of events, provided a revealing glimpse into the way the man thought and felt. It was like studying the migratory patterns of a game bird in order to anticipate its movements: in this case, an eagle.
On his second morning in London, the Viper visited the iron-fronted shop of Millbocker & Co., Gunsmiths, in Piccadilly, an old concern whose shelves were gray with dust but whose inventory gleamed. The atmosphere was a mix of vanilla-scented oil—pleasant, as in a Parisian patisserie—sulfur, and solvent, which stung the eyes.
“Mr. Molière!” The red-eyed proprietor glanced at the clock. “Right on time.”
“By that I take it they’re ready.”
Eighty-year-old Augustus Millbocker produced a brace of flintlock pistols in a cherrywood box lined in velvet.
They were intricately engraved, with polished hickory grips, and nestled in form-fitted cutouts beside the ramrod and extractors and a brass powder flask, embossed with Bonaparte’s profile. They were the work of Nicholas Boutet, the best gunmaker in France, and were duplicates of a set presented to the Corsican himself by their manufacturer to commemorate his victories in Italy. The Viper had left them in the shop for necessary adjustments.
“An excellent pair, and beautifully maintained,” said the old smith. “One would think they’d never been fired.”
“They have.” He removed each in turn and sighted down it. The realignments were perfect.
“You haven’t changed your mind?”
“I haven’t. It’s bad luck to sell one’s guns.”
“A pity. Boutet is hard to come by in this country. I wouldn’t have taken you for a superstitious man.”
“I don’t intend to be taken at all.” He handed Millbocker a sovereign.