“World war?” Dubois scowled. “It’s inconceivable.”
Fouché looked uncomfortable, but not with the conversation. He hated waiting, which was what one did in the Tuileries, and he preferred street clothes to his dress uniform, which was too stiff with gold thread to settle back on his shoulders when he shrugged. All the other trappings of wealth and position met with his approval.
“You heard him as well as I.”
“But is such a thing possible?”
“Bonaparte has never been wrong on the subject of war. I’d rather catch this Viper than put it to the test.”
“Viper. Quel théấtre!”
“Keep your voice down, Dubois. We’re withholding that morsel from the public. Our late friend Cadoudal was fond of such drama; in that he was not unlike the First Consul. Under other circumstances they might have been friends.”
The confession that the Royalist general had hired an assassin to kill Bonaparte had come surprisingly easy once the Prefecture had turned Cadoudal over to the Police Ministry; he still had eight fingernails when he’d cracked wide open, spilling all he knew about this Viper. Fouché thought the Breton must have been proud of the shilling-shocker name he’d concocted, or he’d have held out longer.
“I still think we should have released the information,” Dubois said. “Someone might hear something, and report.”
“Too slim. Our quarry won’t go about introducing himself as a venomous serpent, or by any of the other names he’s used in the past. If we go buzzing round like a swarm of nervous bees, it will put him on his guard. Let him think we believe the plot is broken.”
“He won’t buy it. He hasn’t eluded us this long by being careless.”
“He was once, outside Pontoise; twice, if you count his dalliance with the doctor’s widow friend. History has a habit of repeating itself.”
They awaited Bonaparte in the room leading to the balcony. Like every room in every palace, it was freezing in winter and sweltering in summer. The walls sweated and there was a perennial damp spot on the carpet. Dubois stuck a finger between his stiff uniform collar and his neck, separating them with a noise like skinning a rabbit.
“Stop fidgeting. You’re not a boy at Mass.” Fouché kept his voice below the hearing of the other government functionaries, whose presence added to the beastly heat. Foreign Minister Talleyrand alone appeared unaffected by the conditions, starched and powdered in his Bourbon Court dress, whispering in the ear of Third Consul Ducos; making mischief the way a worm spins silk.
“What else can I do but fidget?” said Dubois. “You’ve set a dangerous trap, using the First Consul as bait.”
“There was no help for it. Bastille Day came too soon, and now that we’re at war there’s no telling where Bonaparte will be in a week; storming Gibraltar personally, perhaps. If he stays out of public view, friend Viper will only bide his time until he resurfaces. Once a tick gets its head under your skin, it can only fester indefinitely. Better to burn this one with a cigar-end before he acts.”
It had come about this way:
Fouché was still too much the Revolutionary to welcome a re-alliance with the Church; but once the nature of the plot had begun to unfold, he’d urged Bonaparte to commemorate the Concordat with a public ceremony.
“Really, Fouché?” The First Consul had sat drinking coffee at Malmaison, still wearing his green colonel’s uniform and famous bicorne. The dust of military maneuvers frosted his boots. “I’d thought the Massacre of Lyons had only increased your thirst for the blood of the clergy.”
“Times change, your excellency. It’s a poor politician who resists changing with them.”
The persuasion hadn’t taken as long as getting him to skip Bastille Day; the Strong Man of France had railed against playing the coward before cowards, but Fouché had won his point, as he usually did, through stubborn tenacity. Bonaparte’s deeply ingrained impatience was the Minister’s best ally in such discussions. Of course he’d leapt at this fresh opportunity to appear in public and lay to rest any doubts about his personal courage.
“Very well, Fouché. Have that splendid uniform of yours sponged and pressed. You’ll join me on the balcony.”
Dubois was still reluctant, and stifling in his own dress uniform, crowned by his snare-drum hat. “I just wish there was a better way. Staking the man you’re pledged to protect, like a goat, isn’t police work.”
“You’d circulate descriptions and sketches, which is; and it would prove feckless. What details we have would apply to every third man in Europe. Cadoudal knew nothing of his background; even the name he gave in England, Molière, was a confessed fiction. As for Meuchel, my inquiries have failed to turn up anyone of any rank with that name in the Austrian Army. We could arrest every Meuchel we find, but that takes time we don’t have, and we wouldn’t have our man.”
“The First Consul has doubles to stand in for him on public occasions when he hasn’t the time,” Dubois said. “Anyone can wave from a balcony and present a target.”
“I’ve more than a hunch he wouldn’t fool the Viper. I did succeed in persuading the First Consul to pull in a division of grenadiers from the northern frontier to assist the Consular Guard. They’re not needed on the Channel.”
“Won’t our snake notice the extras and smell a trap?”
“To go the other way, so soon after unraveling Four Nivose, would make him more suspicious yet.”
“A shell game. I wonder how you keep track of the pea.”
“You’re unpracticed in espionage, Dubois. All your men are in place?”
“At every entrance, among the crowd, on the rooftops. Yours?”
“The same. Let’s hope they don’t shoot one another.”
“At least we have a witness who can identify our man.”
“By now he won’t look anything like him,” Fouché said.
“I think my people can spot a false nose and a wig.”
“There are a hundred ways to dissemble your appearance without resorting to opera. He can lose or gain weight, shave his head, grow a beard, alter his gait, even disguise his height.”
“All the more reason to be grateful for Eslée. He’s seen him. Limodin thinks the Widow Deauville might become hysterical and give us away; but then Limodin hasn’t met her. I have, and I’d take the risk, but the doctor refused to cooperate if we put her in harm’s way. At all events I trust him.”
“He lied once.”
“He was honoring his oath. This affair can do with a little honor.”
“Where is he?”
The Prefect popped open his watch. “The officers I sent should have brought him here by now. I can’t think what’s keeping them.”
“We begin well.”
The streets were jammed. The morning was sultry already. The stench of sweat mingled with unwashed flesh, sour wine in goatskin bags, and penny cologne. It made the Viper’s head swim.
The crowds, at least, made way for him, respecting the uniform crowned by the tall bearskin. Nevertheless progress was slow. Carriages and cabriolets made less speed still, crawling along a pavement clotted with bodies.
Such doings were nothing without mishaps. A driver, red-faced with frustration or drink or both, unfurled his whip, making contact with a pedestrian, a tactical error possibly caused by bad aim. The crowd dragged him, bellowing and struggling, off his seat and into its midst. Uniformed officers from the Prefecture pushed their way toward the commotion, blasting their tin whistles.
A most typical Paris celebration.
The Viper had allowed for delays. He entered the teeming palace grounds with time to spare. He glanced up at the balcony, its tricolor bunting tied back to expose the as-yet vacant interior, and stepped through an arched passage into the main corridor. The grenadiers flanking the arch, spotting the insignia of a captain, saluted. If his features were unfamiliar, they assigned the fact to the fresh reinforcements brought in from the east. The city police deferred to their judgment; such was the effect of martial law under a Republic. He returned the salute and mounted a marble staircase to the second floor.
“Captain!”
He spun on his heel on the landing, snapped to attention, saluted. “Yes, sir!”
The colonel, he was pleased to note, was unknown to him and probably recently transferred from another branch of the army. His whiskers were black, his eyes set close, perpetually suspicious. They were alone in the corridor.
“What’s your division?”
“The First, mon Colonel. Fourth Tirailleur, serving under General Delaborde.”
“Where the devil is your saber?”
He made a show of surprise, slapping his hip. It was another thing he couldn’t fit into the false bottom of his valise. He was prepared for that contingency, and here was the man to supply the solution.
“I—the belt must have come loose in the jostling outside. Sir.”
“Things have come to a pretty pass when a drunken rabble manages to disarm a grenadier of the Guard.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what do you intend to do about it?”
“I thought, sir, I would borrow yours.” With a snap of the wrist, the dagger slid from his sleeve into his hand. He took two steps and swept it underhand into the colonel’s belly.
Stab wounds initially aren’t painful; the victim feels only a sudden push. The blade was withdrawn by the time the man looked down and saw the red blossom on his white waistcoat. The Viper switched to an overhand grip and drove the point through the colonel’s left eye into the brain.
He was dead immediately, with minimal bleeding. His killer stepped back to let him fall.
The corridor remained empty but for them. He unbuckled the colonel’s sword belt and strapped it round his own waist, the saber swinging in its ornate scabbard. He’d hoped for something more plain, but a gift was a gift.
He moved swiftly, wiping the dagger on the colonel’s tunic and putting it away under his own, next to his pistol. Then he dragged the dead man by his ankles through an arch into an unlit and obviously unused chamber.
Sheets covered the furniture. He hauled the corpse into a corner far from the velvet-cloaked windows and covered it with a sheet he snatched off a chaise. Anyone glancing inside the room would see only another unidentified shape under a dust cover.
A platoon of boots stamped down the corridor. He retreated farther into the dark corner and waited, breathing shallowly, as the troops passed, their sabers rattling like crockery in their scabbards. When the sound faded, he took his hand off his pistol.
He breathed normally. His pistol held but one round, and it wasn’t intended for common soldiers.
Dubois, standing beside Fouché, found himself humming along with the military band playing in the courtyard: one of those whirling, crashing, catchy martial airs that had followed French regiments from Paris to Cairo and back. It seemed a bizarre choice to commemorate the end of a holy schism. But he was an innocent in affairs of state.
Certainly the country’s spiritual rebirth was good for business. Opportunists with rucksacks strapped to their backs worked their way through the crowd gathering under the balcony, waving prayer books hastily printed on coarse paper and bound with shoddy, hawking them like confectionery. They had many takers.
Watching from a casement window, Dubois recognized some pickpockets working in the other direction, hoping to lift purses not yet lightened by the entrepreneurs; but such things weren’t his concern today.
Would that they were.
In time he grew weary of the bumping brass and rattle of drumsticks. His head throbbed in beat with the band. Sweat drenched his armpits. His mouth was dry as cotton.
“Excuse me, Minister. I need to find water.”
“Um-hum.” Fouché surveyed the grounds below through gold opera glasses.
Despite his parched and exhausted condition, Dubois kept alert, searching the invited throng growing within the marble chambers for the squad of officers he’d sent to fetch their witness. It wasn’t like Limodin to be late.
He put a hand on the arm of a passing footman. “Could you tell me where I might get a drink?”
“There are wine merchants outside, monsieur.”
“I was unclear. I want plain water.”
The man seemed impatient; then appeared to notice the Prefect’s pallor.
“Wait here, please. I’ll send someone with a carafe.”
“Thank you.”
The lackey was gone less than a minute when Dubois saw the reason for his haste. A galvanic current surged through the crowd indoors. Bonaparte was coming.