“He reckoned it was inside when the house burned, sir.”
Lavisser used the efficacious word. “All that work wasted,” he said. “Wasted!”
Barker stared up at the pigeons on the palace roof. He thought his own night had been wasted, for Lavisser had insisted he watch and count the falling bombs with him. Barker would have preferred to guard Bredgade, but Lavisser had instructed Barker to count the gun flashes from the fleet while Lavisser counted the shots from the land batteries. A real waste, Barker thought, for if he had been in Bredgade then Sharpe would have died and Skovgaard might still be revealing names. “We have to find Skovgaard again, sir,” Barker said.
“How?” Lavisser asked sourly, then answered his own question. “He has to be in hospital, doesn’t he?”
“At a doctor’s?” Barker suggested.
Lavisser shook his head. “All doctors were ordered to the hospitals.”
So Lavisser and Barker looked for Ole Skovgaard in Copenhagen’s hospitals. That search took them all morning as they went from ward to ward where hundreds of burn victims lay in awful pain, but Skovgaard was nowhere to be found. A morning wasted, and Lavisser was in a grim mood when he went to see what was left of Bredgade, but the house was a smoking ruin and the gold, if it was still there, was nothing but a molten mass deep in its cellars. But at least Jules, one of the Frenchmen left behind when the diplomats fled Copenhagen, was still in the undamaged coach house and Jules wanted his own revenge on Sharpe.
“We know where he is,” Barker insisted.
“Ulfedt’s Plads?” Lavisser suggested.
“Where else?”
“You, me and Jules,” Lavisser said, “and three of them? I think we must improve those odds.”
Barker and Jules went to watch Ulfedt’s Plads while Lavisser went to the citadel where General Peymann had his quarters, but the General had been up all night and had now taken to his bed and it was midafter-noon before he woke and Lavisser was able to spin his tale. “A child was killed playing with an unexploded bomb, sir,” he said, “and I fear there’ll be more such deaths. There are too many bombs lying in the streets.”
Peymann blew on his coffee to cool it. “I thought Captain Nielsen was dealing with that problem,” the General observed.
“He’s overwhelmed, sir. I need a dozen men.”
“Of course, of course.” Peymann signed the necessary order and Lavisser woke a reluctant lieutenant and ordered him to assemble a squad.
The Lieutenant wondered why his men needed muskets to collect unexploded missiles, but he was too tired to argue. He just followed Lavisser to Ulfedt’s Plads where two civilians waited beside a warehouse. “Knock on the door, Lieutenant,” Lavisser ordered.
“I thought we were here to collect bombs, sir.”
Lavisser took the man aside. “Can you be discreet, Lieutenant?”
“As well as the next man.” The Lieutenant was offended by the question.
“I could not be frank with you before, Lieutenant. God knows there are too many rumors circling the city already and I didn’t want to start more, but General Peymann has been warned that there are English spies in Copenhagen.”
“Spies, sir?” The Lieutenant’s eyes widened. He was nineteen and had only been an officer for two months and so far his most responsible duty had been making certain that the citadel’s flag was hoisted at each sunrise.
“Saboteurs, more like,” Lavisser embroidered his tale. “The British, we think, are running out of bombs. They will probably fire a few tonight, but we think they will be relying on their agents in the city to do more damage. The General believes the men are hiding on these premises.”
The Lieutenant snapped at his men to fix bayonets, then hammered on Skovgaard’s door which was opened by a frightened maid. She screamed when she saw the bayonets, then said that her master and mistress had disappeared.
“What about the Englishman?” Lavisser asked over the Lieutenant’s shoulder.
“He hasn’t come back, sir,” the maid said. “None of them have, sir.”
“Search the premises,” Lavisser ordered the soldiers. He sent some of the men into the warehouse and others up the stairs of the house while he, Jules and Barker went to Skovgaard’s office.
They found no list of names there. They did find a metal box crammed with money, but no names. The Lieutenant discovered an unloaded musket upstairs, but then the terrified maids told the Lieutenant that Mister Bang was locked in the old stables. The Lieutenant took that news down to the office.
“Mister Bang?” Lavisser said, stuffing money into his coat pocket.
“The fellow who sold us Skovgaard,” Barker reminded him.
The padlock was prized from the door and a startled Aksel Bang stumbled into the waning daylight. He was nervous and indignant, and so bewildered that he was hardly able to talk sense and so, to calm him down, Lavisser ordered the maids to make some tea, then he took Bang upstairs and settled him in Skovgaard’s parlor where Bang told how Lieutenant Sharpe had come back to the city and how Bang had tried to arrest him. The story was a little tangled there, for Bang was unwilling to admit how easily he had been overpowered, but Lavisser did not pursue the details. Bang did not know how many men were helping Sharpe, but he had heard their voices in the yard and knew there must be at least two or three.
“And Mister Skovgaard’s daughter was helping these Englishmen?” Lavisser asked.
“Not willingly, not willingly,” Bang insisted. “She must have been deceived.”
“Of course.”
“But her father, now, he was always on the English side,” Bang said vengefully, “and he made Astrid help him. She didn’t want to, of course, but he made her.”;
Lavisser sipped his tea. “So Astrid knows as much as her father?”
“Oh yes,” Bang said.
“She knows the names of her father’s correspondents?” Lavisser asked.
“What he knows,” Bang said, “she knows.”
“Does she now,” Lavisser said to himself. He lit a candle, for dusk was darkening the room. “You did well, Lieutenant,” he said, careful to flatter Bang by using his militia rank, “when you handed Skovgaard to the police.”
A small doubt nagged Bang. “Lieutenant Sharpe said that it was you who had taken Skovgaard, sir.”
“He said what?” Lavisser looked astonished, then unleashed his charming smile. “Of course not! I have no authority in that area. No, Mister Skovgaard was taken for questioning by the police, but, alas, he escaped. The confusion of the bombing, you understand? And our problem is that Lieutenant Sharpe and his English helpers are somewhere in the city. They may already have rescued Mister Skovgaard. General Peymann thought we would find them here, but alas.” He shrugged. “I suspect they are hiding, but you, Lieutenant, know Mister Skovgaard better than anyone.”
“True,” Bang said.
“And who knows how they are deceiving Astrid?” Lavisser asked in a worried tone.
“They are deceiving her!” Bang said angrily, and spilled out his resentment of Sharpe. The Englishman, he said, had promised Astrid he would stay in Denmark. “And she believes him!” Bang said. “She believes him! He has turned her head.”
And a pretty head it was too, Lavisser thought, and filled with knowledge that he needed. “I fear for her, Lieutenant,” he said gravely, “I truly do.” He stood and stared out of the window so that Bang would not see his amusement. So Sharpe was in love? Lavisser smiled at that realization. The darkening sky was banded in black cloud and soon, he thought, the first bombs would start falling unless the British had exhausted their stocks, in which case the city would be spared until more could be fetched from England. “They are doubtless holding poor Astrid as a hostage”—he turned back to Bang—“and we must find them.”
“They could be anywhere,” Bang said helplessly.