39

Necessary Prevarications

Green Cay

Central Bahamas

Friday, 7 September 1888

Green Cay is uninhabited, so we were on our own. The abandoned salt pan had a hut that furnished us with some shelter but little else. However, there was a bright side to the location. Absalom explained that the monthly mail boat sails past the islet on her course from the Exuma islands to Congo Town on Andros, and thence to Nassau. He also found us succulent cacti to alleviate our thirst somewhat.

Providence shone down on us again the next morning after our landfall, when our Bahamian Seminole native son spied the government sloop on the southeastern horizon, bound for the western end of Green Cay, upon which we stood. Directly, all hands got to work constructing a signal fire out of buttonwood, which sends up prodigious amounts of smoke.

As Absalom and Corny attended to the job of igniting the thing, the whole while debating whether the Bahamian way or the Navajo method was faster, Kovinski called us together, saying he had something he wanted to tell us. We gathered around the roaring fire—Absalom had won the argument—and listened as the Russian embarked upon an extraordinary speech. He began softly, the suave European gentleman, albeit dressed in rags, preparing his audience.

“After all that we have seen and endured together, I think I am justified in considering each of you a dear friend. Therefore, I will be quick in my remarks.”

A pause ensued, followed by Kovinski awarding us an affable smile of seemingly genuine warmth, the first I’d seen from him. Then he turned his attention to the fairest of us, whose grimy tattered appearance was the opposite of when I first saw her at that church in St. Augustine. My mind flooded with emotion. Had it really only been nine weeks earlier? Had we really had a romantic affair during that time? Had I actually fallen in love? Or was it pity? Or perhaps gratitude?

Kovinski’s continued speech ended my daydreaming.

“Cynda, my dear lady, I cannot possibly know the depth of your grief, but I hope you know of our sincerest sympathy for your inestimable loss. Your son was a victim of evil, an evil that is insidiously spreading throughout Europe and America. Anarchists, revolutionaries, criminal gangs, terror-mongers, freedom fighters, whatever you call them, they have the same goal—the destruction of all that civilized Christian people hold dear. Sokolov was the personification of that evil. His war machine was the culmination of their work. Thankfully, we stopped him and saved countless innocent lives, both here in the Bahamas and in Europe.”

His tone grew husky, emotional, as he fixed Cynda in his gaze.

“Your son, Sergeant Yablonowski, Sergeant Aubrac, Claire Fournier, Henri Billot, and Dan Horloft died so that evil could not spread. Many others have been wounded, including Colonel Woodgerd here, not to mention Commander Wake’s own confrontation with death. Your friends pledged their lives to help you rescue your son. That is over now, and we will all go home. But do not doubt that the menace is still out there. Other Sokolovs still lurk—waiting, watching, learning of our weaknesses, as they continue building their own maniacal strengths. And that is the point of my discourse.”

The Russian held up both hands.

“You all know by now that I am an officer in the service of my crown, a service that is devoted to protecting my motherland’s civilization and that of modern Christian countries everywhere. I feel it my duty to warn everyone here that we all possess something the evildoers of the world need and will do anything to obtain—the knowledge of how to create an aerial death machine. The knowledge of what Sokolov designed and built.”

Woodgerd harrumphed and asked, “What’s your point, Major Kovinski?”

“Colonel, it is simple: that we must say nothing to anyone about what we know of Sokolov’s aerial machine. Even to those we love and trust the most, for any disclosure will eventually lead the information to the press. And we all know how that would end. The press would do Sokolov’s work for him, multiplying panic among the public and immensely improving the education of Sokolov’s anarchist cohorts in the malevolent art of terror-making. Each of us has a responsibility not to innocently accomplish what Sokolov wanted to happen.”

“So we stay mum about Sokolov and the airship?” asked Corny.

“Yes, silent about it all. About the machine, how young Luke died, how our friends died, how we came to be here on this island—about everything that has to do with Sokolov. Am I correct, Commander?”

Eyes shifted to me. I took a breath, looking at Cynda.

“Yes. Major Kovinski is right. We can’t allow this scientific knowledge out. It will be used by the Fenians against the British crown, by the Narodnaya Volya against the tsar, by the anarchists in my country against our government. Major Kovinski and I will submit confidential reports to our superiors, but beyond that no one should know.”

I cleared my throat nervously, hoping that Kovinski’s and my conversation sounded unrehearsed. “I think an appropriate explanation would be that our schooner Delilah wrecked on the Haitian coast, that Dan and the others died of disease in Haiti, and that we sailed back to the Bahamas in a native boat that went down, stranding us here. I don’t like conjuring up a tale one bit, but I fully agree that the consequences of letting the press get hold of what we know is far worse than the lie we must perpetuate. It is a necessary prevarication.”

“Aye, ’tis that,” said Rork, who’d not been in the planning of this dialogue, but was loyal to the idea. “Some o’ those Fenians are Irish in name only. Their work is death o’ innocents, an’ I’ll not help ’em one wee bit.”

I wanted to hear their answers. “So? Do each of you agree?”

Absalom sadly nodded his head. “I don’t even want to talk about what I’ve seen and had to do.”

Corny sighed. “I see your point, Peter . . . and agree. Will you tell Dan’s family?”

I’d been worried about Corny’s natural proclivity to liberalism and cocktail gossip. His acquiescence was a worry removed. He would keep his word. “Yes. He had no wife or children, but there was a brother, I think. I’ll tell him.”

I looked at Woodgerd, who nodded. “Yes, I agree.” He certainly didn’t need his connection with Sokolov to be made public.

Kovinski knelt before our lady and took her hands in his. “Madam, what are your thoughts on this?”

I watched her eyes fill and wondered if they would ever know joy again. Her voice was barely audible. “My thoughts? I want to remember Luke as he used to be, before this nightmare began. I don’t want to think of him with that wicked man. And I don’t want my darling husband’s legacy associated with it, either. Don’t worry, Major. I’ll keep quiet.”

And so it was that when the mail sloop anchored off the beach and the skipper came ashore, he heard a fable that has been told to this day.