The Emperor's Revenge (Oregon Files 11)

With their air supply renewed, they remained submerged until darkness fell. The Stingray surfaced to a night illuminated by a half-moon. Delacroix was pleased to see that no lights were visible.

He turned his gaze to the jagged cliff of Black Point close by. The northern face rose five hundred feet above the sea. He’d been training for months with the mountaineer Beaumont, but seeing the rocky crag in person made him doubt the mission for the first time.

Beaumont joined him in the hatch and nodded as he viewed the steep cliff.

“Can we climb it?” Delacroix asked.

“Oui,” Beaumont replied. “It’s not the Matterhorn. And it will be easier to climb than Mont Blanc, which I’ve ascended three times.”

Instead of this covert infiltration, Delacroix would have preferred a full-on invasion of the island, but he would have needed three dozen warships and ten thousand men to have any chance at success. The garrison of twenty-eight hundred soldiers and five hundred cannon protecting a single prisoner twelve hundred miles from the nearest land made Napoleon Bonaparte the most well-guarded person in world history. It probably would have been easier to abduct the King of England.

The crew tumbled out onto the deck, inhaling the fresh air. They lowered cork bumpers around the edges of the Stingray to keep it from being dashed on the outcroppings and dropped the anchor.

Delacroix looped a large coil of high-strength fishing line over his shoulder, and Beaumont did the same. They hooked a safety line between them. More than a thousand feet of rope was piled on the deck, along with a contraption that looked like a child’s swing.

With a nod, Beaumont stepped onto the nearest rock and began climbing. When he was ten feet up, Delacroix followed. They methodically climbed the cliff face, detouring when they needed to avoid a particularly sheer part. Beaumont proceeded with seemingly little effort, pausing only to give Delacroix some rest. Just once did Delacroix slip, but the safety line prevented him from plummeting to his death.

Normally, Beaumont would take forty minutes to climb five hundred feet on his own, but Delacroix’s inexperienced pace meant that the ascent took more than an hour.

When they reached the top of the cliff, Beaumont hammered an iron bolt and ring into the rock. He then attached a pulley, tied both coils of fishing line together, and looped the line over the pulley before anchoring it with a metal weight painted bright yellow. He tossed it far over the side to make sure it would extend all the way down to the water next to the sub. Delacroix spotted no ships on the horizon, so he waved a small flag to signal the crewmen to hook up the rope to the line.

When they received a signal in return that the rope was attached, he and Beaumont hauled up the fishing line over the pulley. The heavy rope snaked up the cliff. When it reached the top, they signaled again.

With two hundred pounds of the masked man muscle added to the weight of the rope, progress was agonizingly slow. After ten minutes of backbreaking labor, Beaumont held the rope fast while Delacroix heaved the masked man over the edge and helped him out of the wooden swing contraption, called a bosun’s chair. A separate board was lashed behind for Delacroix to stand on while it was being lowered later in the evening.

“Doesn’t he ever talk?” Beaumont asked, pointing a thumb at the masked man.

“He’s paid not to,” Delacroix said. “Just like you were paid to bring me up here. Now your job is done, and I thank you.”

“So who is he?”

“You’ll never know,” Delacroix said, and jabbed a stiletto into Beaumont’s neck. The alpinist went rigid, his eyes staring in confusion and disbelief. He slumped slowly to the ground.

Delacroix shoved twenty pounds of stones into the pack on Beaumont’s back. Using his foot, he nudged the mountaineer’s corpse over the cliff at an angle to avoid hitting the submarine below. The crewmen would see the tumbling body and the splash, and Delacroix would tell them that Beaumont had slipped and fallen. Now there was one less witness to worry about.

“Come,” Delacroix said to the masked man as they began their arduous three-mile trek inland. Delacroix’s companion followed dutifully behind without a word. Barren rock slowly gave way to lowland scrub brush and then thick forest.

By midnight, they reached the edge of the Longwood estat

e, the sprawling manor house where Napoleon was being held prisoner. It was in the dreariest part of the island, miles from Jamestown, the only port. The isolation was intended to be part of the defeated emperor’s punishment, but it also played into Delacroix’s plan. Because it was so inaccessible, the guards were lax and let Napoleon roam wherever he wanted as long as he did not head toward town.

The sole road to Jamestown lay on the opposite side of the estate, as did the main guard shack and barracks. The guards didn’t even bother with a random patrol of the grounds, a carefully tended garden comprising a mix of native gumwoods and English hardwoods.

Using the trees as cover, Delacroix and the masked man were able to reach the house without raising an alarm. Delacroix had memorized the floor plan and guided them to the nearest door.

At this late hour, the house was still and dark. Delacroix navigated noiselessly through the halls until they reached the bedroom they were looking for. Delacroix eased the door open and crept inside, followed by the masked man. He instructed the man to remove his mask, then struck a match to light the bedside lamp.

The occupant of the bed stirred at the sudden light.

“We’ve come for you, Your Majesty,” Delacroix said.

With a start, Napoleon Bonaparte sat up in bed. He was prepared to shout for assistance when he saw Delacroix’s companion.

He could have been Napoleon’s twin brother. Same balding head, same diminutive height, same Roman nose. Even though Delacroix had been expecting this moment, the sight of them together still took his breath away.

Napoleon squinted at his doppelganger and said, “Robeaud?”

“It is I, Your Majesty,” the double said in a pitch-perfect imitation of the emperor’s cadences.