"Can you forget the Far East, sir?" Twigg insisted. "Whenever we thought we'd truly crippled him, he wriggled free, and came back to bedevil us, twice as strong as before? No, sir. It won't be over till I've his head in a sack, for all to see."
"When last we met, Mister… Silberberg, you told me you prided yourself on keeping things coolly logical and objective," Lewrie said with a dubious look. "Frankly, I think Choundas is become your bug-a-bear. It sounds entirely personal and revengeful, to me. What can he hope to accomplish, with the few ships he has left? With Nelson commanding the Riviera coast? And with your… connections… alerting us to every convoy? In the Far East, he was the only pirate, privateer… whatever, that Paris would sanction, so eliminating him was important. Wartime, though… he's just another ship's captain at the moment, a commander of a minor squadron. There must be a hundred men in France just as potentially troubling."
"He's in my bailiwick, Lewrie," Twigg objected stubbornly, "in charge of the squadron that runs supplies to support the French Army, which will gobble up all of northern Italy if they're not stopped. It makes him my preeminent problem, no matter our past connection. If he is killed, I save another region the grief of facing him. If he dies, Choundas rises no higher. He gets no frigates, no ships of the line to play with. Can you possibly imagine the harm he'd do, were he to become a junior admiral?"
"Then why not have one of your… associates," Lewrie wondered aloud, "stop his business with a knife under the heart?"
"Told you he has a clear head, Peel." Twigg smirked suddenly in glee "When he thinks, that is."
"Yes, sir," Peel agreed, stony-faced, peering at Lewrie openly, judging, weighing, and balancing.
"He's well guarded, Lewrie," Twigg complained petulantly, as he sipped more wine, made another face. "Made no new friends on his rise with the original revolutionaries. Had damned few from before. Those still alive, that is. Once he'd culled 'em for past slights. Imagined slights, half of'em. Stays sober, keeps his wits about him, of which I do not have to tell you, he has considerable. Personal guard force, a pack of Breton pets, including this Hainaut fellow we returned to him. As for vices…"
"Goes for the windward passage, even with girls," Lewrie stuck in. "So we learned from the Filipina villagers, and Chinese whores."
"The younger and weaker, the sweeter, aye," Twigg snarled with revulsion. "Barring someone doing him in like Marat in his bathwater, he's almost impossible to get at. Our abilities, so to speak, are not that firm in Provence, or along the Riviera. Too much fear, d'ye see, 'mongst adult women, and his tastes run to the small, weak, and helpless. Recruiting a girl-child victim stands little chance, either, that he'd choose her, or that she could summon nerve enough to do the deed. We have a better plan, though."
"Oh, Christ, and it involves me, does it?" Lewrie groaned. "We played that card. He'll not fall for it a second time."
"Hot as my hatred for Choundas is, Lewrie, it can't hold a candle to his hatred for you," Twigg cackled, entirely too pleased with himself. "Do you both survive this war, I'd expect he'd be panting to kill you when you're both pensioners. Some things abide. He'll bite."
"And what if I refuse, sir?" Lewrie snapped. "You're Foreign Office, you can't order a serving officer, or his ship…"
Twigg smirked, reached into his coat, and produced two letters. One from Hotham, one from Nelson, Lewrie noted with horror.
"Not afraid of him, are you, sir?" Peel posed, with a barely concealed sneer.
"Name your weapon and place, and I'll show you 'afraid,' sir!"
"Didn't ask were you afraid o' me, sir," Peel egged him on. "I asked were you afraid o' him?"
Lewrie took pause, considering; reading those two sets of orders.
"Aye, I most fuckin' well am fearful of 'im, sir," Lewrie said at last with bald candor. "Anyone who's ever had dealings with Guillaume Choundas has right to fear him. Or should."
"Were you to render me a valuable service, Lewrie," Twigg posed, his pencil-long, thin fingers steepled under his skeletal chin, "which I swear to you involves no physical danger to your ship, your crew, or yourself… which helps bring Choundas to book… would you do it?"
"You say that now, sir," Lewrie countered, still seething from Peel's goading. And suspecting that it was Twigg's arranging, for Peel to put him off balance with his sneer, his cocked eyebrow. "But things always have a way of going from a walk to a gallop, with you. Once you get the bit in your teeth, there's no stopping you. And there I'd be, clinging to your scheme's tail, half dragged to death. My people right with me, thrown into peril all unwitting."
"Swear it on a Bible, Lewrie," Twigg's eyes twinkled, "no harm will come to this ship you love so much, her hands, nor you. This will not involve artillery, nor steel. A single night's… light duties?"
"Means I'm the only one daft enough to listen to you, you mean," Lewrie shot back, topping up his glass. "Or… damme!" He showed them a sly grin. "You mean to use me as bait again. Here in Leghorn? We don't have to sail? That sounds like Choundas has learned where Jester lies, and has sent some bully-bucks to Leghorn to do me in! Coached to town, did you? You said you did. To keep an eye on the assassins he's dispatched, right? Did he come himself? And you want me to trail my colors where you can catch him and kill him?"
"Told you he was imaginative, too, Peel." Twigg sighed in disappointment, like a tutor bored and despairing of a pupil's lack of wit. "Though not always clever when he is. No, Lewrie, Choundas has pressing work up north, he can't abandon his duties to suit his personal desires. You run no risk of assassination. Choundas will await your death until he can arrange it by his own hand, a face-to-face rencontre. Hell not be satisfied with a report. I don't believe that you're in any danger. Your admiral, and Captain Nelson, would never have issued these orders for your cooperation with me, else. Besides…"
Twigg leaned forward, elbows on the desktop, the cabin shadowed as evilly as a conjured-up companion of Satan. And he was snickering!
"Knowing you as I do, I am certain you'll find this duty to be rather… enjoyable, in fact. Now, will you refuse me, sir? Disobey orders from your superiors? I must admit to you, sir, that there is no other person in the entire Royal Navy who may perform this task, since it most vitally concerns you, and you alone. It may very well be the last thing I ever ask of you, and we'll call it 'quits' after."
"Enjoyable," he grunted with deep suspicion. "Then quits?"
"As enjoyable as the night in the brothel on Old Clothes Street in Canton, Lewrie," Twigg tempted, like the hoariest pimp in Macao.
"What, the night I got my head bashed in by Choundas's cox'n?" Lewrie griped. "Hellish fun, that was! What's the chore, then? As I seem to have no say in the matter, anyway…"
"Why, to allow yourself to be seduced, Lewrie," Twigg replied, beaming in triumph of his small victory. "You're hellish-good at that, I know."
"Seduced?" Alan gaped, rocked back on his heels in utter shock. "Have anyone particular in mind, then, do you?"
He pictured the ugliest, fubsiest, most-raddled and bewhiskered old mort in all creation who, unfortunately, possessed information just vital to Twigg concerning Choundas's, and French, intentions.
"I most certainly do, sir," Twigg cackled again. "It is my wish that you rattle Senator Marcello di Silvano's mistress, Lewrie. Signorina Claudia Mastandrea."
"What?" he cried. "Why her? Mean t'say …?"
Lord, you'll remember it's orders, for King and Country, he pled. Though suddenly not quite so averse to the duty as he might have been.