The Black Hawk

Twenty-seven

JUSTINE STOOD BEFORE THE DESK IN LEBLANC’S office in the Tuileries and gazed past him, out the window, down into the courtyard below, and ached tiredness. Her heart also ached, but that was something she did not think about.

She acknowledged weariness somewhere in the recesses of her mind and set the knowledge aside since there was nothing she could do about it. She had crisscrossed Paris, delivering warnings to important, impatient men who did not like being awakened before dawn. Between those trying interviews, she had drunk four cups of very strong coffee. Or perhaps five. In any case, a great deal. Tiny bright lights jittered and blurred at the corners of her vision.

Leblanc was the last man to whom she must give the Millian letter, and by far the most unpleasant. She might need his men and resources, however. One deals with unpleasant men in any hierarchy. It was the way of the world.

Leblanc’s office was on the second floor of the Tuileries Palace with the rest of the Police Secrète. She had quite a good view of the Louvre.

“. . . which you claim is private correspondence,” he sneered at his copy of Millian’s letter, “between a diplomat in Paris and the British Foreign Office in London. Sent in the diplomatic pouch, doubtless.”

“That is most likely.”

“A letter transported with all elaborate precaution, in inviolate secrecy. Yet you obtained it easily.”

“Not easily. It did not drop into my lap like cherry blossoms.”

“Then how did it come into your hands?”

Leblanc would keep her standing here an hour, to no purpose whatsoever. He would ask stupid questions he knew she would not answer, merely to show he had the power to do so.

“I asked how you got this letter,” he said. “Who gave it to you?”

She must be respectful. He was a senior officer. “I have exceptional sources.” Which I will not reveal to you. “The letter is authentic.”

“I will have his name.”

“My sources are also Madame’s sources. I do not think she wishes me to share them with you. I am not your agent, Monsieur.”

“True. But one never knows what the future will hold, Mademoiselle Justine. You would do well to remember that.”

Leblanc always attempted to steal resources, and Madame had been in Italy for months. Perhaps he thought Justine would be careless in Madame’s absence, or vulnerable, or easily cowed. She was not.

She did not shrug in an openly disrespectful manner, which would be self-indulgence. She let her eyes drift past him, to the window, and paid no attention while he pointed out that anyone could copy a paper and say it came from some secret source.

She merely nodded and said, “Very true.”

In the early morning, a dozen people crossed the pavements of the courtyard below, going from Tuileries to Louvre, or out through the great door that opened onto the Rue de Rivoli. These were not the fashionable, come to see the paintings and statues of the Louvre. These were workers and artists who concerned themselves with the exhibits, or they were men reporting to their work in the Tuileries Palace, to one of the offices of government. A few might be Police Secrète.

Some were servants—Napoleon’s servants—sent out to buy peaches or bonbons or take his boots to the bootmaker. He lived in the apartments of the Tuileries, on the floor below this, where royalty had once been housed.

“You waste my time. This is some British stratagem.” Leblanc flicked the Millian letter that she had so carefully copied. “If the Secret Police have not heard one whisper of this, it is simply a lie. This is nothing. This is invention.”

She was accustomed to working with the master spies of this age. Madame, in an instant, would have brought six clever minds to deciphering this letter. Vauban would have tromped past ranks of Imperial Guard and warned Napoleon, face-to-face, one soldier to another. Soulier would have set informers loose in the Palais Royale, ears open. But Madame was in Italy. Vauban—oh, so greatly mourned—had only last week confounded the odds to die peacefully in bed. Soulier was far away, at his post in England.

Her mentors, who were the great master spies of the Police Secrète, were not in Paris. She was left to make reports to politic, expedient Leblanc, the man of jealousy and mean intrigues. It was inconvenient beyond words.

She said, “The Englishman is dead. Strangely, I find myself convinced.”

“Men die.” He tossed the letter onto a pile at the side of his desk. “It is the nature of things. The English bedevil us with their little Royalist plots and their secret, overheard conversations. They want to send us running in circles. You are young, Justine. Easily fooled. I am not a Madame Lucille in your Pomme d’Or to coddle you in such matters.”

“And if the First Consul is in danger of death?”

“The streets of Paris breed thirty such rumors a week. The Household Guard is alert. They cannot be made more so with constant alarms that come to nothing. I will not bother to mention this to the commander. Or, perhaps . . .” He smiled. It was the smile an eel would make, in some dark pit of the water. “It matters so much to you, Justine?”

“I would not come to you if it did not matter.”

He stood. Slowly, he walked toward her. She had the opportunity of backing away, but she did not. If she once retreated from such men, she would never stop. She straightened and faced him. She had faced worse than Leblanc.

“I am susceptible to the arguments of a lovely woman.” He came too close. “Persuade me.”

She did not mistake his meaning. “Be persuaded by the dead Englishman.”

“We have spent many years working at cross purposes, you and I. It was never necessary. I bear you no enmity. You were caught in the old squabble I had with Lucille.” He had small, mean eyes, like raisins. They were oddly dark to be set in a long, pale face. “You are an ambitious woman, Justine. Under my guidance, you can rise to any height in the Police Secrète. You have a section of your own and a dozen agents working for you. I can give you more. I can give you the Pomme d’Or and the many agents who report there.”

“It is not yours to give. It belongs to Madame.”

“All things change, chérie.” He came within the length of an easy, casual touch. “I might reconsider this letter of Monsieur Millian. Perhaps it is worth investigating for—”

She caught his wrist, where he came to brush the skin of her neck, and held it, digging her nails in. “I am not one of the women of La Pomme d’Or, Monsieur.”

“I did not think you were.”

Since she was a child, she had studied the faces of many men, fearing them and hating them. She had catalogued Leblanc’s expressions carefully, because he was the enemy of Madame, and thus, her enemy. This was Leblanc, coldly, stiffly furious.

He smiled. “You are more attractive than they are, in so many ways.” He turned away. “We will reach a better understanding someday soon. Go. Play with your intrigues of the Englishman and fools and the woman of Tours. Pursue this phantom. Go question this mysterious source of yours. Report to me what progress you make.”

Leblanc was a man of cold rages and of long vengeance. She had offended him. If she had been one of his cadre, without Madame’s protection, she would have been very afraid.