The Isle of Devils (46 page)

“Your Imperial Majesty,” protested Harrier. “Surely you must keep something back. You cannot send away all of your wealth.”

The Emperor smiled again. “You are a wise soldier, Commandant. I see how you have risen so far. Do not fear. I will keep one stone in reserve.” He patted a small satchel that hung from his neck. “Now, your Colonel Moreau has devised a route for you. At the end you will find a ship waiting for you that is manned by my adherents.” Moreau moved forward and handed Harrier a sealed letter. “Once you reach Paris, you must insist that Napoleon III acts with great haste in disposing of the jewels. He should not accept less than half-a-million sterling for them. We can hold out here for several months, but we must be reinforced before the summer.” The rest of the
conversation with the Emperor and his advisors was spent in strategizing how Harrier was to help supervise the recruitment of mercenaries for the Emperor’s cause.

§

Harrier’s focus came back to the present. He turned to the huge man that served as his
Sergent Chef
. The twenty-seven year-old Australian was one of the men that he trusted with his life, and he was a natural leader of the more junior soldiers. “I am wondering the same thing myself,
Sergent
Sims. But our orders are clear. I’ve read the letter a dozen times and there is no question.” He turned to one of the junior soldiers. “Speaking of letters, Hector, I have one that I would like you to deliver for me.”

The
Legionnaire de Deuxieme Classe
saluted Harrier. “It would be my honor, sir.”

Harrier smiled. Hector Dubois was a good kid, the youngest in the section at just a few months past his eighteenth birthday. With his fine intellect and passion for debate, Dubois could have easily studied law. He was knife-sharp, and Harrier suspected that he might go far if he ever returned to his home country of Belgium. Harrier often wondered what had drove Dubois from his homeland, as he did for the other members of the section. But it was an unspoken rule in the Legion never to pry into a man’s reason for joining.

The other
Legionnaires de Deuxieme Classe
were also fine young men, and only a few years Dubois’ senior. Aristides Delopolous was clearly born and bred on a boat, back on one of the Greek Isles. But he followed orders precisely and was one of the best riflemen in the entire battalion. Mehmet Nazim Bey was his opposite in almost every way, intellectual rather than athletic, Turkish rather than Greek. But in some odd fashion, the two men had become the closest of friends, each covering for the other’s deficiencies, and bringing out the best in the other man. Legionnaire Bey had a natural skill for all things mechanical and Harrier suspected that he might train as an engineer someday.

The
Legionnaires de Premiere Classe
were also some of the best soldiers that Harrier had ever served with. Both the Portuguese Antonio Cordeiro and the Englishman George Warburton were young men, but impressively skilled in tracking and shooting. The Bohemian Leos Nemcek was the least natural soldier under his command, but he had distinguished himself by becoming an unofficial assistant to the regimental army officer. Harrier hoped that the bright young man might someday attend medical school once he was discharged from the Legion. The Italian Dario
Aicardi served as the section’s Corporal, and with his artist’s precision he rivaled Delopolous for accuracy with a rifle.

The officers were as strong as the men that they led. Lieutenant Ralph Foster hailed from a tiny island in the midst of the Atlantic, and though he dreamed of acting, some unexplained impulse had led him to join the Legion. But his natural good-humor and relaxed leadership style made him immensely popular amongst the men. He spoke often of returning to his home isle and opening an inn with his beautiful bride Elizabeth, whose photograph he was often fond of showing to the other men as proof of how fortunate he had been.
Capitaine
Diego Garcia Ramirez was his opposite, formal and stiff whenever Foster was relaxed and jovial. But the Spaniard was deeply respected, for every man knew that his word was stronger than steel, and that he was a man of both boundless loyalty to his friends and implacable hatred to his enemies. Although
Capitaine
Garcia Ramirez was not known for his humor, Harrier thought that the man must be joking when he said that his wife back in Spain was twice as hard as himself.

In sum, it was an elite section and Harrier was proud to command it. It was little wonder why they were chosen for this delicate mission, but Harrier was still puzzled by the orders found in the letter of Lieutenant-Colonel Moreau. He had no more time to ponder the oddities, however, for as soon as he had handed his letter to Mr. Dubois, a branch cracked in the neighboring woods. The men turned as one, all reaching for their rifles which were never far from hand. But before they could raise their arms into position, a band of disheveled men stepped from the woods, all with rifles trained upon Harrier and his men. Although the men wore peasant dress and had unshaven cheeks, the rifles in their hands appeared new and free of any rust or wear that might impede their accuracy.

Harrier was stunned. “What?” he stammered. “How did you get past the picquets?”

“Your men are dead, Commandant,” said a large man harshly. He had skin bronzed by the tropical sun, and greasy dark hair tied in a loose knot behind his head. In age he appeared a little over thirty, but his hard eyes spoke to a life lived roughly. “The same will happen to you if you fail to obey me. Throw down your guns and put your hands behind your heads.”

Harrier tried to place the man’s accent. It was not Mexican or even Spanish. Nor was it French, not entirely. But it was maddingly familiar. None of his men had moved. Harrier’s eyes flickered around the camp, attempting to count how many men were arrayed against him. There
were at least six in his immediate field of view, which meant at least another six behind him, and likely a few more concealed in the trees in reserve. If the man was telling the truth, which seemed likely since they had made their way into the camp itself, then Harrier was down to just eight men in addition to himself and the other two officers. The odds were stacked against them. “Do as he says,” said Harrier finally. “Throw down your guns.”

“Sir?” said Ralph Foster questioningly.

In a flash, the man that appeared to be the leader of the ruffians turned his gun on Foster and shot him in the shoulder. Foster collapsed to the ground and the rest of Harrier’s section seemed about to jump into action. “Stop!” Harrier cried out before the rest of his men were gunned down, for he knew that there was no way they could bring their arms to bear before the bandits fired.

The bandit leader growled, “That is what happens to anyone who disobeys me!”

“You heard the man!” Harrier ordered. “Drop your weapons, and hands behind your head. You too, Mr. Sims!” With a clatter of metal upon the hard ground, his men quickly obeyed his order.

“Excellent,” growled the bandit. “Now, Commandant, give me the key.”

Harrier frowned. “Key?”

“Do not play games with me, Harrier! I can take it from your dead body just as easily as from your live hands.”

Harrier’s mind was moving as fast as a race horse. It was possible that the man had deduced his rank by the number of bars on his shoulder insignia next to the green and red epaulettes. But how could the man have known his name? And how could he have known about the key that Harrier carried? And then the man’s accent clicked. He had known men with the same tone on their tongue during
McClellan’s
push towards Richmond.

“You are far from home, Creole,” Harrier finally replied.

The man’s response was to backhand Harrier across the mouth. “Shut up! You have one more chance to hand over that key before I send you to hell.”

“Of course,” replied Harrier evenly. But his mind continued to race. He decided that after these men found the Emperor’s gems, there was little chance that they would let he and his men live. If Harrier made a move it was likely that many of his men would die, but some might live. As Harrier slipped the silken cord from about his neck, he glanced over at Sims and gave the
Sergent
a minuscule nod.

The Creole roughly took the key from Harrier and immediately strode over to the Commandant’s tent. Kneeling down, he pulled out the Emperor’s coffer and fitted the key into the lock. In seconds, he was rising and turning about with the Empress Emerald held aloft in his hand. The attention of the other bandits was distracted for a moment, which was all the time that Sims needed. In a flash, an enormous bowie knife emerged from a sheath nestled along his spine, and erupted from the chest of the bandit across from him. He and the other Legionnaires dove for their guns and some form of cover, while the stunned bandits began a ragged fire.

Despite the element of surprise, Harrier was still not confident about their odds. He cared more about the lives of his men than he did the Emperor’s gems. “To the woods!” he cried. His men reacted like the disciplined soldiers that they were. He was proud to see Legionnaire Nemcek dragging the fallen Foster after him into the deeper forest. The section took up shelter behind tree trunks and began to return fire towards the bandits in the clearing. For a moment, Harrier thought that the tide was turning and that they might prevail despite their wounded man and numerical inferiority.

Then, to his immediate right, he saw
Capitaine
Garcia Ramirez take a bullet directly through his eye. The man fell with barely a sound and Harrier felt a pang at the loss of such a good friend. As he continued to return fire, his mind still tried to puzzle out how the Creole had found them, and how he knew about the treasure that they were carrying. Surely, the soldiers of the Mexican Army were loyal to the Emperor and would have wanted to see this mission succeed. Only one other man knew about the mission, and that was the man that gave them the orders for their route through the Sierra Gorda.
Moreau, that damned traitor
, thought Harrier.

The gunfire from the Creole’s men appeared to be tapering off, until Harrier heard a final shot ring out. He noted this one much more clearly than any other gunshot that he had ever heard before. The name echoed in his brain.
Moreau. Moreau.
And then he felt an agonizing pain, sharper than any prior hurt. He couldn’t localize the
pain;
it seemed to be coming from
everywhere. But it was soon washed away by an embracing darkness.
Moreau. Moreau.
And then a final thought…
Lucy….

§

The silence of the room when I finished my tale was deep and profound. Everyone had listened spellbound to this fantastic narrative. Only the creaking wheels of a cart being driven down Duke of York Street punctuated the stillness. Excepting only the incredulous constable, the faces of the men surrounding me were grim, while the women’s faces were fixed into emotionless masques. But I thought I detected a hint of tears forming in the corners of Lucy’s eyes.

“You have a lively imagination, Doctor,” said Sims finally
, a firm and
even tone to his voice. “That is a cock-and-bull story if I’ve ever heard one.”

“Perhaps,” I admitted. “It is all conjecture and surmise.
I don’t insist that every detail is exact.
But I think I have aimed close to the mark.
It has at least an answer for everything. It is too monstrous a coincidence to suppose that a group of individuals, all with military attributes or connections, could have come together in this tiny hotel by chance alone.
I think that less than half of your section made it out of that forest alive, Ralph Foster with enough lead in his chest that it would trouble his health for the
shortened
remainder of his life. If they had appeared
in Europe
without the Emperor’s jewels, with which they had been entrusted, the survivors would have been looked upon with the greatest suspicion. They likely decided never to rejoin the Legion, but rather to make their own way in the world. However, before they separated I suspect that the survivors of that ambush
agreed
to hunt down and extract revenge
up
on the man who betrayed their mission, regardless how far across the globe he tried to flee.
Without Harrier’s letter from Moreau, i
t likely took the survivors
many
years to learn the exact identity of who stood to profit from such a perfidy. Many of them took other professions in order to survive, but the common yearning for justice never died
in anyone’s
heart. For those surviving men of the
L
égion é
trang
è
re
were avenging more than just the deaths of their friends and leaders. They were avenging the death of Emperor Maximilian himself. Despite braving a three month siege, perhaps always hoping that the
jewels
that
he sent with Commandant Harrier would
soon
purchase succor, Maximilian was finally captured by the forces of Benito Juarez. A travesty of a court-martial sentenced him to death
. D
espite telegrams of protest from the leaders of Europe
,
and even the great
French
writer Victor
Hugo, a firing-squad soon ended the Emperor’s life, as well as those of Generals Miramon and Mejia. The Empress Carlota has never admitted that her husband was dead, and
she
has been in seclusion near Trieste since that time. So, in a way
,
they were avenging her as well.
Moreau got away out of Mexico and carried himself and the memory of his abhorrent crime to some land beyond the seas. But danger was dogging his footsteps. The survivors knew that any vengeance would have to come from outside the pale of the law.
I suspect that the mercenaries who carried out the ambush were eliminated first. It was reading the news of the C
reole
’s death that likely drove Colonel Moreau to hide his identity under that of the investor Dumas. And yet he was drawn out of hiding by his own
unslacked
greed. Although Moreau had received the lion’s share of the magnificent jewels
stolen
from Harrier
’s tent
, he had to share at least
part of the spoils
with the mercenaries that had
actually carried out
the despicable deed.
And Moreau lost heavily dabbling in stocks. He was ready to do anything on earth to regain his ill-gotten fortune.
And so a great plan was concocted to lure him to Bermuda, to the very hotel run by the widow of one of the ambushed men, with the pretense of hunting for treasure.
And there the sword of justice fell upon him.
”