With darkness coming on and the inhabitants of Prisco’s inn repairing to their beds, we will shift our scene temporarily from the bucolic if troubled hills of the Hudson Valley to the lit streets of New York City. We are searching specifically for a covered chaise, making its way from the shadows on the west side of the lower island, across the precincts laid waste by the Great Fire, toward a mansion that sits atop a hill on the east side of the isle overlooking the Hell’s Gate.
The carriage’s finely carved wood panels and polished brass fittings are a fine example of British craftsmanship, imported directly to the city two months prior by its owner, who tonight sits alone in the cabin, contemplating the hard twists of life that have brought him to America. Less than a year before, he enjoyed all the prerogatives of London’s leading surgeon and man of science. But in that achievement lay the root of his downfall: the experiments that had helped him reach his position? of necessity performed on live subjects? had given certain small and jealous minds an opening. It was only because of his personal service to the kind that he escaped prison and much worse.
Major Dr. Harland Keen was not a melancholy man, and so his reflections did not have the hard-edged bitterness one would expect from so recent an exile. Nor did he plot a return to London society; he had had quite enough of it, and in many respects was glad of the ocean between him and his former home. Still a man of independent means, the doctor had a wealth of knowledge stored in his brain and a rapacious hunger for more. It was a hunger that the New World, and his position in it, promised to fill.
Major Dr. Keen arrived without fanfare at the mansion in question. This large brick house formerly belonged to a member of the provincial congress, who expressed his confidence in the American army as well as his political preferences by fleeing the city the day the English invaded Long Island. The house had since been occupied by General Henry Clay Bacon, the head of British intelligence services in America, and more ominously, the king's representative of the Secret Department.
It would not be surprising if the reader has not yet become familiar with the workings, or even the existence, of the Secret Department. By far the vast majority of people who have had occasion to deal with them have done so only as their mortal victims. The department, consisting solely of men with close personal ties to the king — and dark tints upon their past which place them utterly within his power — exists only to carry out missions of such nature that all other branches of service, military and civil, shy from even mentioning. Every member of the department is a trained assassin, with additional talents besides; while each man has another, legitimate duty — Keen is employed by the Admiralty as a doctor — his first allegiance is to the department.
Bacon felt so secure in his position and person that he employed but a single guard at his front door. This was no mere soldier, however, nor even a delegate of a distinguished unit such as the Black Watch. Bacon's man had been personally recruited from the southern tip of India and dressed in the peculiar blankets of his native land. His oversized hands had the strength of ten men, and his powers of sight and sound were said to be enhanced by mantras known only among the Hindu. Locked in his grip was a giant blade ordinarily found only in India; it ran the full length of his prodigious leg and was twice as wide as his immense thigh. Sharper than the razor a barber would use to shave his favorite customer, its balance was so perfect that a single finger placed in the middle could support it.
Dr. Keen nodded at him as he passed through the doorway, smiling at the curved sword; the doctor's own weapons of choice were infinitely more subtle.
Bacon was waiting in his study. Formerly the dining room, the general had converted it because he thought entertaining a frivolous and unnecessary occupation. The large windows stood over the water; he liked to look up from his work and stare through them, sometimes for hours, as his mind prepared its dark designs.
"Doctor, you're late," he told Keen without rising from his desk or changing his gaze, which was directed at the window.
"Excuse me, General, but I was detained by Lord Admiral Howe. He wished me to attend to a medical problem of his."
"Syphilis again?" Bacon spit the word toward the glass. He thought little of either of the Howe brothers — Richard "Black Dick" Howe, the admiral in charge of the fleet, or William, the general in charge of the army. To Bacon's mind — and indeed he was not alone in this opinion — the entire British command structure was laden with incompetents and dandies who relied on politics for their positions.
Keen, as was his wont, said nothing. It happened that the ailment was a cold, but mentioning this would bring only a snort of derision. In Keen's judgment, Richard was an able leader and a far different man than his brother William, even if he, too, was soft on the colonists.
Bacon's contempt did not extend to Keen. The white-haired gentleman with the very proper cut in his powder blue suit and the fussy gold-tipped cane had a hardened, vigorous body and a mind sharper than a fusilier's sword, and Bacon knew and appreciated this. Every piece of the doctor was as balanced and premeditated as a fine watch. The frilly handkerchief he kept up his sleeve, for example, was in fact a deadly weapon — a small bladder secreted inside contained a powder extracted from Convallaria majalis. The general had witnessed the powder's effects — immediate convulsions, a paralyzing stroke, and a painful, lingering death. It was an apt weapon for this man, refined from the beautiful lily of the valley, which appeared so innocent yet struck so viciously when probed.
"I assume, Sir Henry, that I am not here to continue our game of chess."
"There are more important matters to be attended to." Bacon made a slight motion with his head, by which his visitor understood that he was to sit in the large chair to his right. It was a concession of honor — there was a bottle of Madeira on the table next to the chair, and Keen knew he could help himself if he wished.
The doctor sat but did not drink. He was quite aware that this raised his commander's opinion of him.
"I have a difficult problem to be unknotted," said Bacon, finally turning his gaze toward Keen. As he continued to speak, a blackened hand seemed to spread over his face; this was an unfortunate birthmark, which became more prominent during moments of great concentration or stress.
The mark had given rise to the nickname "Black Clay" at a very early age. To use it in the general's presence was to risk great wrath and possibly death, but the sobriquet was commonly applied behind his back. Many a man who knew it thought the name referred appropriately to his soul.
Major Dr. Keen was not among them. He saw a person of superior intelligence hampered by the difficulties of his upbringing and his illegitimate birth — for Keen was well aware that Bacon was the bastard son of King George II, unacknowledged half-brother to the present king.
"I only appreciate difficult problems," said the doctor mildly. "An easy task would be boring."
"There was a young man in the city yesterday named Jake Gibbs. He called himself a medical doctor and said he had attended Edinburgh." "Attending such a school would allow him that honor." "You have met him?" "I have not had that pleasure." "I thought all doctors whored together." Keen said nothing.
"My men think he is merely an apothecary, though they speak highly of his cures," continued Bacon. "In any event, he has a remarkable intelligence and is widely traveled; a five-minute conversation with him would prove the point beyond any doubt."
"I accept your judgment."
Bacon permitted himself a wan smile. "He claimed to be in the service of a Dutchman named Claus van Clynne, a man of money and property. This van Clynne seemed the embodiment of all that is wrong with the race, but perhaps that is my chauvinism."
"I don't believe I know either gentleman," said Keen, his statement implying the question: Why are they important?
"The Dutchman delivered a message from General Burgoyne to Sir William Howe aboard ship yesterday. The message has been checked and authenticated, naturally. Sir William thought it a bit pompous to have been sent by Gentleman Johnny.” Burgoyne's nickname was practically spit from Bacon's mouth. "Though frankly I find it not pompous enough. In any event, the contents are not of immediate interest. But in delivering the message, the Dutchman claimed to have uncovered a plot in our dispatch service, involving a Major Herstraw."
"Another stranger to me."
"A good thing, as he is said to have worked for the rebels."
Keen adjusted one of the gold watch chains on his brocaded yellow vest. He considered looking for a traitor in the messenger service somewhat beneath his level of skill, but an order was an order. "Where was this Herstraw last seen?"
"It's not him I want you to attend to. The Dutchman made some hints to me that he was a member of the Secret Department."
"A Dutchman?"
Bacon frowned, fully in agreement with Keen's prejudices. "The king has, on occasion, used foreign agents on missions of elimination as a temporary expedient. I am personally acquainted with the disappearance of a cardinal that was associated with the workings of an Amsterdam native. Nonetheless, to meet this man — he possesses a certain crude ability, but one would sooner take him for a stage clown than an agent."
"There are ways to validate his identity, I assume," said Major Dr. Keen.
"It is not easy. I would have to send someone to London, and then have certain questions asked, which could lead to difficulties. Nonetheless, it will be done, if you fail."
As Keen was sworn to carry out any mission assigned or die in the process, this was an unnecessary if subtle threat. But the doctor was too mannered to respond directly.
"What hints could he have made?"
"He possessed a knife," said Bacon, almost as an afterthought. "He managed to show it to me discreetly."
The knife Bacon referred to was a long, thin-bladed weapon with a ruby set into its ornate hilt. The stone was modeled after one of the crown jewels and was the department's signifier. A member of the brotherhood was given the dagger at the moment he was assigned a specific task, and it was returned when the job done. There were less than two dozen such knives in existence; to possess one was as sure a sign possible that a man was a member of the small, bloody coterie.
"But you are suspicious nonetheless." Keen had never heard of a member of the department being impersonated; indeed, the very nature of the organization and its members made that unlikely. The knife was impossible to counterfeit and would be guarded to the death by its possessor. Still — a Dutchman?
"I sent a man with them from the ship in New York, after Howe released them. He was merely an intelligence agent, but he was a very good one. I had him pose as a member of the Sons of Liberty." Bacon lifted a small, mangled piece of lead from the top of his desk and stared at it. The metal had once been a bullet; it had been removed from his leg by Keen several years before in London. "The man's body was discovered today in the ruins of the rebel powder house that blew up last evening. If this van Clynne was a rebel, then he alerted the rabble and had the man killed."
"But if he is truly a member of the Secret Department, you would expect him to have killed the man, and blown up the powder stores in the process. It would be his duty if the fellow stood in his way."
"There is something in my soul that weighs the first possibility as much greater than the second," said Bacon. "Or I would not have called you. I have learned to trust my suspicions, and act on them."
"A difficult problem, indeed." Keen's hand reached involuntarily for the flask of wine on the table next to him. He caught himself but took up the bottle anyway, ignoring Bacon's ironic smile — the general would be congratulating himself on knowing the limits of his underling's willpower. "Where was this Dutchman going?"
"He said back to Burgoyne, though of course that might be merely a cover story. He couldn't divulge his mission, even to me."
"Assuming he's authentic."
Bacon shifted in his chair, then looked back out the window of his study into the blackness of the night. Unlike Keen, he longed to return to England; he longed to be truly recognized and acknowledged. But he had even less chance than the doctor of seeing his native shores again.
"I want you to locate him and settle this for me," Bacon said without changing his gaze. "Find his assistant as well, Gibbs." "And if they are rebels?" "I would think they have much information that would be useful. Your methods of extraction would be called for." "Naturally."
"After that, Gibbs should be killed outright, as long as it can be done in a painful manner. But this Dutchman — to impersonate a member of the Secret Department is not something that can be punished by simple death."
"There is a venom of a snake found at the tip of South America I have long wished to experiment with," said Dr. Keen. "It can be used to paralyze portions of the body quite selectively. I know of no antidote."
"Your first target should be the man's tongue. He talks enough for a shire's worth of parsons."
"Perhaps we should experiment on him, regardless of his allegiance."
Bacon's expression did not change. "I would not want a member of our department harmed. But if he met with an unavoidable accident, well, even that would be understandable, depending on the circumstance."
Keen nodded.
"If they are what they say, I would not like anything to happen to our Dr. Gibbs. I would consider recruiting him myself — he has a sharp mind."
Bacon gave Keen a brief but precise description of both men, their weapons, and their clothes, then turned back to his desk. He reached into a bottom desk drawer, where he retrieved a small wooden case. Using a key that hung from around his neck, he opened the box and removed a thin, ruby-hilted knife, his fingers caressing the gem gently before laying it on the desk.
"You are to leave immediately," said the general.
"I would be comfortable doing nothing less."