30

Suh Ghul Wasa!

Mountains of the Chaîne de Vallières

Northern Haiti

Sunday, 2 September 1888

The pace was excruciatingly slow and painful for the next several days. After crossing the Grand Rivière du Nord, we stopped and made camp on the fourth night. My dead reckoning indicated we were approximately twenty rhumb-line miles east of the Citadelle. Of course, actual course over ground was probably closer to fifty or more.

Having slung our hammocks—no one sleeps on the ground in a jungle if you can help it—we were about to settle into a circle and partake of a fish dinner from the river when one of the soldiers on guard came running to report to his sergeant. A couple of men were approaching down the trail. One was white.

As this was being translated for me, we heard a deep voice echo through the canopy of trees. The words were angry but unintelligible to any of our party: “Suh ghul wasa! Wo dar di kona.”

It wasn’t French, Russian, or Creole. Was the white man part of Sokolov’s gang? The advance section of an attack on us? Any man other than my present companions I considered an enemy.

We heard it again, a disgusted tone, someone obviously cursing.

“Suh ghul wasa!”

“Everyone get away from the camp,” I ordered. “Set up a defensive line over there,” pointing to a thicket of bushes. To Yablonowski I said, “We’ll make an ambush. Get your soldiers on each flank. Roche, Rork, and I will hold down the center.”

Now I suppose that it is incumbent upon me to reiterate here that the sergeant knew nothing in detail of my or Rork’s background, or Roche’s for that matter. He thought Rork and I were merchant seamen and the Frenchman an acquaintance of ours, all of our party engaged from the start to find the boy.

So how did he respond to my commands? Well, I have discovered over the years that the human instinct is to herd together in times of danger and follow the lead of anyone who shows decisive guidance. Yablonowski did as told, like the others in our group. Our position was thus formed into a concave ambuscade. The campsite and cooking food served the role of bait, and consequently, the killing ground.

It gets dark in the jungle fast. We were losing the last of the light when I saw movement on the trail. Then it stopped—they’d caught a whiff of the cooking fire. Slowing their advance to a step-by-step reconnaissance, they were within twenty feet of the fire when one of them, he looked light-skinned, stumbled on a ground root and uttered yet another of those strange curses, this time as a whisper.

I checked our line. The soldiers were aiming their muskets at the white man. They looked nervous and about to fire, but I hesitated to give the order. Rork and Roche had the second in line calmly centered in their sights. It would be over quickly. But apparently it wasn’t an attack, there were only two of them. Probably scouting for a larger body behind them. Or maybe they were really alone. What if we could capture and interrogate them?

Rork glanced at me, his face showing impatience with the delay, but at that instant I thought I recognized the white man. But it couldn’t be—it was impossible.

“Woodgerd?” I called out. “Is that you?”

“Who the hell is that out there?” the shadowed figure replied in unmistakable Midwestern American English. He had a pistol in his right hand, leveled at the sound of my voice. I focused on the build, then the face. It was him, all right.

I called out to my companions, “Everyone put down your weapons—he’s a friend! I know him.” I repeated the word “friend” in French, and also in my recently learned Creole: “Un ami, un zanmi.”

They lowered their weapons, obviously perplexed by this stranger and his relationship to their de facto leader. To Woodgerd, I said, “It’s Peter Wake, Michael. And Sean Rork.”

Another outlandish phrase erupted from him, ending in English with, “Good God, what the hell is a squid like you doing in this forsaken friggin’ hellhole, Wake? Don’t tell me Uncle Sam’s navy sent you here? You must be in deep trouble with some desk-bound admiral for them to send you to this sewage pit.”

I’d last seen Colonel Michael Woodgerd three years before, when he was home in Alexandria, Virginia, from a mercenary stint as a military instructor to the Hermit Kingdom of Korea. We’d initially met in 1874, at Genoa, in Italy, then worked together in North Africa. In 1880, I was on assignment in South America and we’d met again, surviving some perilous times on the run from rather irate Chileans. I’d had the impression that he was currently in India, working for some rich maharaja as a military consultant, living a life of dissolute luxury.

His physique still looked the same—tall, barrel-chested, wide-set penetrating eyes—but there the resemblance ended. Now his trimmed goatee had straggled forth into a salt-and-peppered shaggy full beard, his close-cropped hair into long gray waves tied back into a ponytail. He looked like one of those mad intellectual European artists instead of a professional military man and veteran of the Army of the Potomac’s campaigns. He also appeared to have been in the swamps for days, his clothes tattered and filthy. The black man with him was the same.

Rork and I strode forward and shook Woodgerd’s hand.

“I’m on leave from the navy, Michael. This is a personal trip to assist a friend.”

“A personal trip to Haiti?”

“Long story. What about you? You look in bad shape.”

He looked grimly at me and said, “Ha, so do you, squid, but I’m damned glad to see you. I need some help, Peter.”

“Well, so do we, Michael. You start, but first let me tell you who’s who here.”

I introduced him to my people. The Haitian with Woodgerd was named Lucien Aubrac. He stayed quietly in the background, wary of us. Everyone sat down and listened to Woodgerd explain how he was in Haiti as the meal of salt-dried fish and rice was doled out.

It was quite a tale. It turned out that Woodgerd hadn’t been in India. That’s where he thought he was headed, but the intermediary had misled him. Instead, he ended up in Afghanistan, northwest of India. Working in the mountains as a military advisor to a mercurial warlord loyal to the infamously tyrannical king of the country, Emir Abdur Rahman Khan, Woodgerd fought the emir’s enemies for three years. It was no easy task, and one completely without the norms of war expected by Europeans and Americans. Also without any of the luxuries I’d imagined him having in India.

The violent phrases we’d heard as he approached were Pashto curses he’d picked up from his men during the campaign. Suh ghul wasa was a vulgarity that could be more politely translated into “What the hell happened?”

The Afghan contract lasted until the previous January, when he came back to his wife in Virginia and cast about for another mission. Through a friend, he heard of a European on a cattle farm in Haiti who needed a man to run security for the place, evidently against rustlers. An easy job for a man like Woodgerd, one of only a few highly reputable mercenaries in the world who can demand, and get, substantial fees to form and lead large military formations. The term of the contract was until October. The tropics sounded good after the cold of Afghanistan, and it was a short-term commitment, so Woodgerd headed south to the Caribbean. He arrived in May and immediately realized this was no ordinary cattle enterprise. The German name of the farmer he’d been given was an alias—the man was really a Russian named Sokolov.

Cynda gasped. I put my hand on her arm, whispering in her ear, “Let him tell the story. Then I’ll ask about Luke.”

Woodgerd took a breath and continued. “I know you won’t believe this, Peter. I was there and saw it and I didn’t believe it. Sokolov’s farm is a façade for a private military operation that is conducting experiments with aerial warship machines. They’re part of a European revolutionary group and intend to use them against the monarchy in Russia, or anyone who gets in their way.”

“Revolutionaries,” muttered Roche. “It may also be of interest that the word ‘Sokolov’ means ‘falcon’ in Russian. Aerial warships. Ironic, no?”

“So what happened with you?” I asked Woodgerd.

“Sokolov and his Europeans heard I left the U.S. Army under a dark cloud during the war, so they assumed I was like them—beyond any sense of honor or affiliation. Wrong assumption. Once I saw what was going on, what they planned, I didn’t want any part of it. But there I was, in the middle of this—” He gestured to our miserable surroundings. “—so I figured to string them along, find out what they’re doing, and nip out when they weren’t looking. I bided my time, doing my job training the guards, sort of a militia force.”

Woodgerd indicated the man beside him. “Aubrac here was a sergeant in the guards. They’re all Bizango men from another part of Haiti, except for him. Turns out he is a Christian from another tribal group.”

“Mandique,” said Aubrac. He went on in broken English. “I in south when blancs get Bizango men. I have time in army, so blancs ask me join too. I need money, so I go.” He shook his head. “Bad place. No Christian. Voudou très mal.”

Cynda’s fingers gripped my arm when he said that, and I asked, “Michael, did any new people, whites, arrive recently?”

He leaned back in surprise at my question. “Yes. They brought in an old man they’d misled to come to Haiti, then captured. Businessman from New York. Fellow named Kingston took this man and his friends on his schooner through the Bahamas. The others got off at Nassau, but Kingston got the last one to come along to Haiti, ostensibly to find some treasure the old king here buried. It was a sham, of course. Once they were in the middle of the jungle, the Bizangos ended the pretense, scared the wits out of the old man and put him under guard as a hostage at Forteresse du Nyajs. That’s Sokolov’s name for his place.”

“Fortress of the clouds?” translated Corny.

“Yes,” answered Woodgerd. “It’s a clearing near the top of Montay San—‘Blood Mountain’ in Creole. Named for when the slaves butchered their masters and the blood ran down the mountain’s river.”

“What a quaint place we’ve found ourselves in . . .” remarked Corny with a perturbed look in my direction. Dan shook his head while gazing at his feet.

“And there was a boy named Luke with the businessman?” I asked. “Is he all right?”

“Yes. I was about to get him. Kingston brought him in with the old man. And yes, the kid is all right—doing just fine and happy as a clam, as a matter of fact.”

Next to me, Cynda’s eyes filled, but Woodgerd missed it and continued. “The kid’s in complete cahoots with Kingston and Sokolov. Luke’s in charge of feeding the old man prisoner and taking care of him, and he also plays servant to the Russian. In fact, he lives at Sokolov’s bungalow, being groomed as another apprentice terrorist to hate the major powers of the world and destroy them. The kid’s already pretty well down that path.”

“Did they already send the ransom demand?”

“Not yet. The ransom demand will be a million dollars. The demand’ll go to New York by telegraph once the cable line is completed at Cap Haitien, which should be any day now.”

Roche and I glanced at each other. His theory was right. Our eyes moved to Cynda, her head bowed in her hands, trying to muffle her weeping as she asked no one in particular, “Why? Why my Luke?”

“That’s her son,” I told Woodgerd. “We came here to rescue him.”

He gave me a what-are-you-crazy? look—then regarded her sadly. “Very sorry to be telling you all this, ma’am. He’s a strong, smart lad, but he’s fallen under the sway of those fanatics. He wants to be just like them.”

I changed the subject to the man I now thought of as our main target. “Tell me as much as you can about this man, Sokolov.”

“He’s unusual. Very unusual. Professor Sergei Alexandrovich Sokolov is fifty-eight years old, with quite a history. He is a brilliant engineer, graduate of the top Russian military academy, veteran of the Crimean War in the fifties and the Russo-Turkish War ten years ago.

“Sokolov is sophisticated, intellectual, versed in literature, likes wines and brandy. Prefers French cuisine and French women. In addition to Russian, he’s fluent in French, English, and German. Started out life as the illegitimate son of a nobleman named Sedova. Ended up an artillerist in the army, where he spent almost forty years. Studied aeronautic physics on his own time and in eighty-four got himself transferred to General Boreskov’s Army Aeronautical Division. They were working on designing airships.

“But our boy Sokolov wasn’t the loyal company man. He got fed up with the decadence of the Russian monarchy during the Turkish War, back in seventy-eight. Said too many Russians died because of royal incompetence, so he secretly joined a group in eighteen-eighty trying to kill the tsar. Gonna rid the country of the bad blue blood. Took ’em years, but they finally pulled it off and killed the tsar. Several got arrested and the rest disbanded. New tsar took over that made the old one look nice.

“Three years ago, Sokolov had finally had enough and deserted the army. Drifted in Germany and France and eventually ended up here, designing and building his dream, an aerial machine that will be invulnerable and deliver death like nothing imagined. His co-revolutionaries were funding him until recently.”

“Colonel Woodgerd, do you know when Sokolov was planning to make this delivery of death?” Roche asked.

“Originally going to leave in October. He’d figured out the weather across the Atlantic, in Russia, everything. But now it’s all changed. Something happened in May—just before I arrived—that worried them. An enemy group had discovered their location and was coming to Haiti. Not sure if they’re other revolutionaries or a government unit or what. Olamda, or something like that, is what Sokolov called it. He’s gotten very secretive about it.

“His supply man in Nassau, the one who transships large equipment on to Haiti, sent a warning letter to Sokolov about it. Then this Nassau man was killed in July, presumably by this enemy group. Sokolov accelerated the timetable on getting his machine ready for action. It’s ready to go now. I don’t know where this opposition group is exactly, but Sokolov and his cronies assume they are here in the country already.”

Woodgerd glanced around the circle of firelight, then quietly said, “You’re in that cloak-and dagger-business, Peter—ever heard of this Olamda outfit?”

No, I hadn’t heard of Olamda. But I remembered the letter to Kingston from Nassau. The ‘O’ is heading for Nassau. Gerhart Wein was found drowned in Nassau, last seen alive drinking with Roche and his cohorts the night before. Suddenly, it came together for me. ‘O’ wasn’t a person—it was the organization after Sokolov. But who was in it? Roche and his cohorts, to begin with. Who else?

“Don’t recognize that word, Olamda,” I replied. “But for some reason it is ringing a bell. I’ll think of it in a minute.”

“Okhrana. It is the Okhrana, Commander Wake.”

Roche was standing at the edge of the firelight, a sly grin spreading across his face. “Do you recognize the name now?”

Woodgerd nodded. “Yeah, that’s what Sokolov called it.”

Oh, yes, I did recognize that name.

I enlightened the others. “The Okhrana is the Russian Imperial counter-intelligence spy organization, headquartered out of Saint Petersburg. But I think this is about the Okhrana’s Foreign Bureau, which operates out of Paris and specializes in penetrating Russian émigré revolutionary groups. It works closely with the French authorities.”

Turning to Roche, I said, “And I presume that you, Monsieur Roche, are not a French counter-intelligence operative of the Deuxième Bureau, but a senior officer in the Russian Okhrana in Paris. As were your friends, obviously. I must confess, sir—you did have me fooled.”

Roche bowed slightly. “A regrettable but necessary subterfuge, Commander. I am impressed by your knowledge of Okhrana. Not many know of our work. And yes, Henri, Claire, and myself are members.”

“I also presume that ‘Roche’ is an alias.”

He shrugged. “A temporary nom de guerre, yes. Rather uninspired, I know, but what can one do? Of course, my real name is not truly important, especially here in the jungle.”

“And since Sokolov prefers French cuisine and women, Claire was to provide him with a little romantic French companionship?”

“It would have been difficult to arrange, of course. However, my dear Claire was an expert in that delicate art.”

“You killed the German in Nassau?” asked Dan.

“Henri did that, on my orders. Herr Wein was a dedicated follower of another German—the notorious Karl Marx—and a mortal enemy of my sovereign and my country. This is not about intellectual liberty of expression. This is war. It is as simple as that.”

“And Sokolov’s revolutionary group in Europe?” I inquired.

“It was mainly in Russia, with a few in Paris. Narodnaya Volya—in English it is called ‘The People’s Will.’ Spoiled artists-turned-anarchists. They are no longer a problem for anyone but God.”

That was another way of saying they were all executed, a realization not lost on the civilians of my crew.

“I’ve always had a vague idea of what you and Rork did, but now we find out that all three of you are spies?” said Dan, looking around at Rork, me, and Roche. It wasn’t said in admiration.

The Russian’s eyebrows arched mockingly. “Spies? Such an unfortunate word, Mr. Horloft. It is not used in our business, for it has unrealistic connotations. More suitable for cheap British novels.”

Roche’s attention swung to me. “Oh, and speaking of that stalwart island race, Commander, I should let you know that your British friend Randall is not really a policeman. He has been with the Military Intelligence Division of the British army since its inception fifteen years ago. His attempts at surveillance were rather clumsy, however. Completely inadequate. And he did no counter-surveillance at all. A basic mistake.

“If he had any professionalism at all, he would have caught me listening and watching your meeting with Randall and Major Teignholder at Graycliff House, where I was flattered to be the main topic. Randall proved to be such a disappointing adversary. I really expected better of British intelligence than that.”

Dan, usually taciturn, was clearly disturbed by the revelations. “What? They’re all spies?” To Corny Rathburn he said, “Murder, kidnapping, mercenaries, spies? What the hell did we get into here? And just how the hell do we get out of it?”

Agreeing with that assessment, Corny nodded. “Whatever it is, Dan, we’re in it now. For better or worse, we’ve got to stick together.”

Roche, leaning casually against a tree with an amused look at the chaos he’d started, inquired of my friend, “Colonel Woodgerd, how exactly does Sokolov think he is going to harm the Russian monarchy with a balloon in Haiti?”

“It’s more than just a balloon. It’s an aerial warship. He’s going to deliver a devastating attack using it against government targets, starting at the Baltic with the naval station at St. Petersburg and working inland to the Tsar’s Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow itself.

“The warship will drop both explosives and some sort of material, clothing maybe, infected with typhus. Also propaganda leaflets to the people, calling for them to take back their country. Sokolov’s almost ready to fly the final version of this thing.”

The mention of that dreaded word typhus brought a gasp from everyone, Haitians, Bahamian, and Americans. To me there was a huge gap in the logic, though. “I don’t understand how he’s going to get this thing to Russia. It’s too far to fly.”

“The long distance cable ship at Cap Haitian. Kingston and his crew will capture it in the middle of the night and disappear with it east along the coast to Caracol Bay, just north of here. Sokolov will fly the machine down to the coast and meet the ship. They’ll use the cable drum on the ship as an adjustable tow line and steam across the Atlantic to Europe. Look, I know it all sounds far-fetched, but it isn’t. I’ve seen this warship machine. And I know the cable ship is in the harbor. Sokolov’s planned this damned thing out pretty well. Kingston has already departed for the coast and I presume he’s getting ready now to seize the ship.”

Our company, previously troubled by Roche’s comments, was now speechless at the enormity of what Woodgerd had just laid out to us. While it did surprise me, I knew that from a technical standpoint what he said was entirely possible.

In my work at the Office of Naval Intelligence, I routinely perused technical reports from our operatives around the world. I’d read the reports on airships coming from American naval attachés in Europe: Lieutenant Benjamin Buckingham in Paris and Commander French Chadwick in London.

Those reports documented the French, German, Russian, and British armies’ use of aerial ships, mostly balloons, for observation purposes. The British had used them quite effectively during the Sudan War in the preceding two years. The French used them in Indochina in 1884, a year after I was there, at the battles of Dien Bien Phu and Hong Dha. But balloons weren’t powered or steerable. They stayed tethered in one spot or they sailed downwind.

The French army’s recent efforts were the most advanced and had gone far beyond simple stationary balloons. They were working on the creation of an aerial warship that could fly anywhere, even against the wind. In 1884, they’d launched an electric-motor-powered military craft one hundred seventy feet long, La France. She’d flown through the sky for miles, upwind and down, ascending and descending, and navigating various courses at will. It was just a matter of time until military applications to powered flight came to fruition. The Americans, as usual, lagged far behind, without any current military effort in the field at all.

My knowledge of the advancements in this science was quite basic, but I did know this: If Sokolov actually had advanced beyond the French army’s aerial warship, he would be absolutely invincible.

“So how and when did you two get out?” I asked Woodgerd.

“Last night we slipped over the wall. My plan was to get to Cap Haitien and warn the authorities. Sokolov knows we’re gone by now and probably has men out looking for us. And he’ll set his plan in motion right away. It takes time to get the hydrogen generators going, get everything ready, so it’ll be tomorrow night at the earliest.”

“And his plan is to take himself and his cadre out of there on the machine?”

“Yes.”

“With the boy and the hostage?”

“Probably the boy, but not the old man. Now that everything is falling apart he doesn’t have time for the ransom idea. No room for the hostage. Weight is the critical factor for the warship. Even I wasn’t allowed to go. He told me I was to return to Cap Haitien and get passage home from there, but I figured he’d really have me killed just after he departed. No loose ends that way.”

“Then we don’t have the time to go back to Cap Haitien. We have to make do with what we have and get to Sokolov’s compound as soon as possible. All right, let’s break up this camp, we need to get away from the trail in case they come looking. We’ll rest for a while over there, in the forest, then get moving again. Michael, you’ll lead when we get under way.”

Yablonowski came over and sat next to me. “I need to send a messenger to General Hyppolite in Cap Haitien. Tell him about Sokolov’s fort and what he is doing there, and about what he plans on doing with the cable ship. I will send two of my men. It will take several days, but I must alert my superiors.”

“Excellent idea, Sergeant.”

More rain began as we removed our gear from the campsite on the trail. Soaked and sitting on a fallen tree trunk off by myself, mind reeling with the various factors at work, I loathed my inability to come up with a coherent plan of action for when we arrived at Forteresse des Nyajs. There was yet an additional factor that had not yet occurred to me, however—a major one, that both Sokolov and I had neglected to take into account.

God was about to get involved, in a very impressive way.