expected this, and acceptance sounded like a quick path to being caught in a crossfire. On the other hand, I’d completely failed to deny my connection to the British, and playing along with Réal might give us a chance to escape.
I shifted in my chair, trying not to sound too eager. “I am a moral man. Isn’t working for two sides unethical?”
“Unethical compared to the espionage and assassination cabal of Sir Sidney Smith? Who is a man with no ethics of his own? Do you know that his heroic escape in 1798, celebrated in song and novel, was in fact the product of bribes to French officials who wanted him gone?”
“Certainly not. We’re told he wooed comely women from his Temple Prison window, got word to royalist agents, and made a daring escape with the help of my late friend Phelipeaux, hero of the siege of Acre. People treat him like Robin Hood.”
“History is just that, Gage, a story, and nothing is more fanciful than a man defying impossible odds. No one escapes Temple Prison without connivance.” That had certainly been true in the case of Astiza and me, when we did so in 1799. “The Directory couldn’t prove allegations of espionage against Smith and found his imprisonment an embarrassment. Yet they couldn’t release him after authorities ballyhooed his capture. Easier for both sides were British bribes to key French jailers, who became conveniently stupid when agents arrived with forged papers. This is how the spy game works. A great deal of skullduggery, and then a satisfactory conclusion for everyone involved. Our business is happier than people think.”
I conceded the argument. Espionage was like juicing cards, and was all the sneaking about simply a scheme to divert some English gold into everyone’s pockets? I tried to work out my chances while deciding if at least temporarily joining the French as well as British was expedient or suicidal. I do have principles: namely, to protect my family from torture. As government, armies, and businesses become ever larger and more implacable, I’m a leaf in a hurricane, a man among millions trying to make my way home. So I take opportunities as they come, and revise strategy as I go along. “How did you know I was in Paris?”
“We knew everything, Gage, including when and where you’d land, though we didn’t expect the coastal ambush that allowed you to escape capture. We knew your address shortly after you arrived in Paris, and we’ve followed with curiosity the little you’ve been doing since. As an agent of the British Crown, you are remarkably unproductive. I’d suspect it an American trait, but your mentor Franklin accomplished a great deal.”
“Ambitious as the devil, and a clever conversationalist. It’s not a fair comparison.”
“We know what you eat, the romance novels your wife reads, and the box under your son’s bed where he keeps his toys. This is not the chaos under the Directory you once knew. This is the empire. France is organized now.”
There’s no privacy in our new nineteenth century, it seems. I twisted uncomfortably, trying to figure what I might bargain for. “If you’ve found me out, I’m indeed a poor spy. The British would do the same, would they not, and dismiss my reports as useless? Maybe you should just pack us off to Italy.”
“Of course they’ll discern you’ve been turned, and like us they won’t care. They’re as conceited as we are, and will believe they can skim useful observations from your abominable character. The fact that everyone treats you like a puppet is your only hope.”
“It’s being a puppet I’m trying to get away from.”
“All of us are puppets, Gage. Even an emperor has strings pulled by the millions under him, a mob he must ceaselessly placate. But perhaps a better description is that you serve as a go-between, diplomat, to improve understanding. Do you have a model of a flying machine?” The change in subject was abrupt, and his knowledge disconcerting.
“Perhaps.”
“Monsieur Gage, I’m inquiring to save your neck.”
I cleared my throat. “Then yes, I do. It’s a little golden toy, actually, and not much to learn from in my opinion. I might just melt it down.”
“France is a ferment of ideas about how to cross the Channel. Martel was working on this. So are many others, including some of our most esteemed savants. Bonaparte is open to each, and thinks that while your character is threadbare, your ingenuity might prove useful.”
“I am an electrician of sorts. A Freemason, too, though