Falconer's Quest Read online

  “Our safety comes from speed and surprise,” Falconer reminded him.

  Their plan was simple. The gold needed to be shifted to safety ashore. Their best plan lay in doing so immediately upon making landfall. Hopefully their foes would still be amassing information about their weaknesses. There was a risk they would be attacked in this first foray. So they had planned a feint of their own. Two parties would leave together, then split apart, leaving their attackers uncertain which carried the gold.

  Harkness nodded to the second lieutenant, now commanding the ship, then said to the others gathered about him, “Ready yourselves, gentlemen.”

  Where the entryway to the stern cabins blocked the view from the quayside, Lieutenant Bivens remained poised above three sailor’s packs. The packs were fitted so as to ride high upon their backs. Bivens hefted one and fastened it into place, as Falconer did the same for Soap, who had begged and pleaded for the chance to serve. Falconer had reduced Soap’s load by a third, to take the additional weight himself. Even so, the steward staggered slightly as he took the sack’s weight.

  Falconer took the third sack upon his own shoulders. The steward had sewn one canvas bag into another and attached leather security straps which they now bound across their chests. The sack’s contents clinked softly as he fitted it into place. They took spare oilskins and slipped them down between the canvas and their spines, then looped them over the bags such that they hung down behind. The cloaks left them looking rather deformed, but it hid the sacks from more careful inspection. They hoped to move too swiftly for anything further.

  Speed and surprise were their greatest allies.

  Harkness motioned to the bosun, who whistled softly. Four handpicked bullyboys came up from belowdecks. Muscular and battle-scarred, their fierce expressions signified men hungry for conflict. Two men bore oilskincovered packs, but theirs were filled with cotton batting. In their hands were wooden billy clubs. The two other sailors were unencumbered save for long wooden staffs.

  “We’re off,” Harkness announced.

  They took the stairs to the main deck. The bullyboys slipped into line behind them. Harkness led them down the gangplank, piped away by the oldest middy. Falconer glanced at Matt but did not smile. Nor did he ask if Soap could manage the weight. The man had not a single ounce of quit in him.

  Once on the crowded quayside, Harkness asked the nearest man holding the staff, “You’re sure of the way?”

  “Been over the map with Lieutenant Bivens and the master both,” the sailor confirmed.

  “Then lead off, and make all speed,” Harkness said. “There’s a gold sovereign for each of you at the end of this day’s escapade.”

  The sailors needed no further impetus. They flitted to the front of the entourage, bellowing, “Make way!”

  “Close up ranks,” Harkness barked. “Quick march.”

  “Make way!” Voices accustomed to being heard above a storm parted the crowded quayside traffic. People and animals alike bleated and jumped aside. Before they could recover, the nine of them were past. Two of the sailors, then Harkness and Reginald Langston, followed by Falconer and Soap and Bivens. Then the two sailors with their billy clubs and empty sacks making up the rear guard.

  The entourage passed a corner marked by street signs. Falconer saw they traversed the Quai du Port, a cobblestone lane littered with refuse from the waterfront market. The smell of fresh-caught fish was strong. Customers and stallholders alike turned to observe their passage.

  The strengthening day was humid, both from the sea and from the previous night’s rain. Under his burden and cape, Falconer sweated heavily. Ahead, Soap’s face was wet with perspiration and his bow-legged limp growing more evident. The canvas straps bit deeply into Falconer’s shoulders, his load weighing in excess of one hundred and sixty pounds. It was not possible even for a man of Falconer’s strength to trot while carrying such a load. He made do with a quick shuffle. His boots scraped across the cobblestones as he pushed himself hard, around the bend at the harbor’s most inward point, and then back out again. They faced seaward, away from the rising sun, out of the market bustle and upon a broader and more orderly lane. Falconer shook his eyes clear of gathering sweat and saw from a passing corner sign that this new road was called the Quai de Rive Neuve.

  “Here,” Bivens gasped from behind Falconer, each word a severe effort. “Turn here.”

  They turned onto a lane broader than the quay and passed a palatial building. Above the expansive staircase and the trio of giant doors, Falconer read the two words chiseled into the stone facing. Opera Municipal. Beyond that rose an even grander building, the one he had been looking for, the one that announced itself to be the Theatre National.

  “Go,” he said, the one word he had breath for.

  Reginald Langston cast him a worried glance but did as Falconer said. Rising from the corner just beyond the theater was a long building whose ground floor was wrapped by broad wood-framed windows. And above each window were gilt letters spelling out Langston’s.

  The sailors executed as tight a maneuver as any Falconer had seen. One of the men holding a staff and one of those with a sack peeled off with Reginald Langston and the captain. The other two bunched more tightly still about Falconer, Bivens, and Soap.

  Falconer managed to ask, “Can we increase the pace?”

  Ahead of him, Soap could not spare the breath to respond with more than a quick nod.

  The lane was immensely crowded. Carriages and pedestrians, women in broad hoopskirts and tradesmen pushing barrows on tall metal wheels, hawkers and children and mules. The lead sailor kept up a steady call for those ahead to give way. But this rather well-heeled crowd proved less willing to step aside. Falconer steadied Soap as he stumbled over a curb. The man’s body trembled. They all did.

  “There,” Bivens gasped. “To your left.”

  It was then, with their destination in sight, that the attackers struck.

  The assault was lightning swift. A trio of men, perhaps four—Falconer could not risk a glance about to be certain. They slipped from a narrow alcove, either a servants’ entrance or a constricted alley. Falconer was almost blinded by the sweat pouring from his hair and brow. But he saw the metal glint in the sunlight and bellowed with what strength he could spare, “Attack!”

  Two villains armed with wicked clubs took aim at the man on point. The sailor parried the first blow but took the second on the muscle where his shoulder met his neck. He grunted and went down to one knee, managing somehow to raise his staff and deflect the second strike.

  What the villains clearly had not expected was for the last man in their little line to spring forward so swiftly. The billy club rose and fell like wooden lightning, and two blades clattered to the street.

  “Run!” Falconer could scarcely recognize the voice as his own.

  Bivens shouldered past a carriage that had chosen this moment to halt alongside their walkway. Or perhaps it was part of the attackers’ scheme. Falconer had no idea. He merely knew that Soap would have sprawled headlong into the horses’ traces had Falconer not been there to steady him.

  An attacker lifted a stave or pike and tried to jam it into Falconer’s face. Falconer merely turned himself so that the blow landed upon his sack. The pack clinked and cushioned the blow, though the additional weight almost pushed Falconer to his knees. Then another set of hands gripped him from the other side and plucked him back aloft.

  A woman to Falconer’s left screamed. Or perhaps it was a bucking horse. Falconer could not spare a moment’s glance. For all he knew, the villains were still on them. He heard fighting behind him and more voices raised in fearful protest. Falconer, Soap, and Bivens remained gripped in tight unison and shoved their way across the street. A horse rose up on its hind legs at their sudden appearance and a man yelled at them in what Falconer assumed was French. They mounted the curb and three round steps that formed a rising curve around a broad street corner. A guard shouted at them in the same unknown tongue. T
hey shoved him aside, pushed through the doors, and entered shadowed coolness.

  Falconer cuffed his eyes clear of sweat and peered about. Somehow the fracas out on the street seemed louder here in the quiet and the cool. The guard scrambled through the door behind them and angrily protested their arrival.

  Soap muttered, “What do we do now?”

  Falconer rounded on the guard. Whatever the man saw in Falconer’s face caused him to step back. He turned the name Langston had given him into a question. “Sancerre?”

  Ignoring Falconer’s query, the guard picked up his tirade again.

  Falconer inflated his lungs as far as the leather straps permitted and roared, “Sancerre!”

  Another voice rose. “You seek Monsieur Sancerre? He is not here.”

  Falconer saw a slender man in a black topcoat and neatly trimmed beard. “His office?”

  Despite the heavy accent, the man’s English was excellent. “There at the rear. But you cannot—”

  “Forward, men. On the double.”

  “Monsieur! You cannot enter without—”

  Attention flashed away from them, however. For at that moment the corner door crashed back, admitting two sailors. One held the broken half of a wooden staff in his hand and bled profusely from a cut to his forehead. The other held a billy club high overhead, as though searching out the next villain to strike.

  This time Falconer was certain the screams came from women.

  The bleeding sailor roared, “Lieutenant!”

  Bivens called over his shoulder as he shuffled down the length of the bank behind Falconer. “All clear, Sailor. Stand guard!”

  “Aye, sir.” The sailors formed up back-to-back and lifted their weapons to the ready.

  Falconer shouldered his way past a cluster of bank officials, opened a door at the rear, and shouted, “Bring me Sancerre!”

  Chapter 14

  The young banker’s name was Bernard Lemi, and he treated Falconer’s arrival as grand entertainment. The Marseilles bank was a branch of a Paris-based establishment whose tendrils extended from South America to the Spice Islands. Monsieur Sancerre, director of the Marseilles branch, was away for a fortnight in Paris, they learned from their host in accented but perfect English. Bernard Lemi was the youngest son of the company’s chairman, acting head in Sancerre’s absence.

  Over coffee, Lemi readily admitted to despising his job. “It’s a dreadful bore, good sirs. Except for events this morning,” he added with a mischievous grin.

  Falconer had insisted upon the two sailors remaining on guard outside the office where he and Bivens now sat in high-backed chairs. Soap had declined the offer and taken up station in the corner behind Lemi’s chair, from where he rubbed the kinks from his back and legs. Falconer could hear querulous protests from the main hall, no doubt over the two brutish sailors on guard outside his door. “The city or the bank is boring?” he now asked Lemi.

  “This position. Marseilles is a gateway to mystery. But alas, as a banker all such doors remain closed to me. As my dear papa has often said, a banker is paid to be respectable. Do take more coffee, good sirs. You must be parched after your encounter with the ruffians.”

  The cup was delicate china and so tiny Falconer could not fit his finger through the loop. He held the cup by its rim, as he would a thimble, and permitted the banker to add to the treacly black contents. “Your English is excellent.”

  “I studied in London for a year and a half. My father wished to establish connections with British merchants. I confess to loving the British, sir. They are a most adventurous race.”

  Bivens set down his cup and rubbed the shoulder injured in the storm. “Is it common for villains to attack in full daylight?”

  “This close to the port and Le Panier, anything is possible.” Bernard Lemi wore standard bankers’ garb of black and gray, but with a somewhat raffish cut. His striped gray trousers had the shimmer of silk, as did his gray waistcoat. His half boots were shiny and pointed, with a row of buttons up each ankle. “But no, I must confess that such a massive show of force as you describe, and in broad daylight, is shocking.” But the banker did not sound shocked, appearing delighted with the break in his routine.

  Bivens said, “Le Panier, that is the city’s old quarter?”

  “Indeed, sir. It lies within the medieval walls northwest of the port. A greater den of wickedness and danger does not exist anywhere,” the banker noted with relish.

  “You know it?”

  “I confess to having ventured there on occasion.” Lemi hesitated, then added, “Though if my father knew as much, I would instantly be brought home.”

  Falconer had a warrior’s trust for his gut instinct. But this was not his decision alone. Which was why he looked at Bivens as he said, “Mr. Lemi, I wonder if I might entrust you with a secret and a mystery.”

  The banker’s voice rose an octave. “Nothing you could possibly say would bring more joy to my day, sir!”

  Bivens hesitated a long moment, then nodded his agreement. Falconer settled back into his chair, wincing at how the motion pained his shoulder. A welt was rising where the sack’s straps had cut into his skin. “The sacks you see there hold five thousand gold sovereigns.”

  The suave banker couldn’t help his gape at the bulky canvas bags, half covered by the oilskins. “But that is a fortune!”

  “A heavy one,” Soap muttered.

  “Three hundred and twenty pounds in weight,” Bivens agreed. “At least, it started as such. By the time we arrived here it must have weighed ten times that amount,” he said wryly.

  “Five thousand sovereigns,” Falconer repeated. “Ransom money.”

  The banker’s eyes gleamed with an almost feverish light. “Ransom for what?”

  “A young girl of nine and a gentleman of twenty-seven.”

  “Kidnapped?”

  “So we have been informed.”

  “By whom?”

  Again Falconer glanced at the young lieutenant and once more received a confirming nod. “Ali Saleem.”

  “Ah.” The banker stroked the tip of his neatly trimmed beard. “You mean, of course, Saleem’s trusted friend and deputy, Admiral La Rue.”

  “You know him?”

  “I know of him, sir. We have of course never met. But there is a client of this bank who is said to be La Rue’s representative in France.”

  Bivens leaned forward. “A client? Here?”

  “Indeed so. And I must tell you, sir, that it is your great good fortune Monsieur Sancerre is away. For this gentleman—his name is Raban—is my superior’s closest friend.”

  Harkness had ordered them to report back immediately upon depositing the funds in the bank. Instead, Falconer sent Soap with news of their discovery and intentions. He and Bivens then set off with the two sailors and Bernard Lemi. The banker explained that they should walk, as the distance was less than a mile, and a carriage would only draw further unwanted attention.

  They did not return to the harbor, but instead cut down a series of side streets. The closer they come to Le Panier, the more constricted grew the lanes and the denser the foot traffic. It was good they had elected to walk, for once inside the crumbling old walls the lanes narrowed to little more than alleys. They were forced to walk single file and had to take considerable care not to become separated.

  The lanes were cooler than the city’s wealthier quarters, for sunlight seldom penetrated. The air was thick with odors and woodsmoke and spices. Falconer found himself drawn back to days he had thought lost and gone forever. No longer in a French city, his memories took him back to Africa. Back to a world of danger and menace. Back where every passing stranger might hold a dagger or a pistol or both.

  He could not say whether he disliked the way his blood ran faster or his muscles bunched with the danger-tension that had saved his life on so many occasions. Only that it was so.

  A new man, he silently repeated. One created in a higher image.

  He hoped and prayed that when
challenged, the words would prove true.

  They paused at a point where the alley began a steep incline. A crossroads permitted a sharp lance of sunlight, strong as a golden pillar. In the blinding light Falconer made out a series of stalls where young boys sat and pounded brass into a myriad of bowls and saucers and carafes. The scene was drawn from a hundred other ports, down to the dusty djellabas the boys wore, and the hats called fezzes worn by the overseers. Even the Frenchmen he saw wore the Arab hats. At least, Falconer assumed they were French.

  One of the sailors muttered, “Never thought I could be this lost this close to the sea.”

  “The harbor is a thousand paces directly behind you,” Bivens told him. “If we lose contact, use the sunlight as your compass and aim south by west.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The banker pointed into the sun-splashed lane. “Directly across from here is Raban’s cafe. His office is the rear corner table, beside the door leading to the upstairs rooms.”

  “What happens upstairs?” Bivens asked.

  In reply, Bernard Lemi simply looked at Falconer. Falconer grimaced his understanding. The banker was no longer smiling as he asked, “Shall I proceed and introduce you?”

  “I would rather keep our alliance a secret,” Falconer said. “At least for now.”

  The banker looked somewhat relieved. “When shall we meet again?”

  “Tonight,” Falconer decided. “Join us on board for dinner, if you will.”

  “With pleasure.” He cast another glance across the thoroughfare. “Be on your best guard in there. When it comes to the beast known as Raban, little is as it seems.”

  Chapter 15

  The café’s exterior was like most buildings Falconer had passed in the Panier district. The second floor was rimmed with wrought-iron balconies. The building’s ancient stone was cloaked in centuries of yellow dust. He spied the top floor’s adornment and stopped at the edge of the thoroughfare.