“Nothing goes perfectly in battle. You know that.”
We were all quiet a moment.
“But not for the other side, either,” I finally said. “In gambling, you don’t have to be perfect, just good enough to win the game. Let’s put on our Arab robes.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
We maneuvered to the outermost boat in a line of docked feluccas and Fulton, Pierre, and I crawled out onto the fishing vessel, clambering from one to another until we were on the stone platform of the harbor. The Nautilus sank out of sight.
Yussef’s palace was ugly as a chopping block, and everywhere there were ramparts with the black snouts of artillery poking toward the sea. Up on a fortified platform just north of the castle, facing the harbor, was a shrouded round disk that was a deeper black against the stars. That would be the mirror, I guessed, and very likely a thousand pirates and janissaries were between it and us.
Pierre looked at the looming walls. “We have to climb these? Perhaps you are not a donkey, but a spider.”
“I propose that we drink our way into the dungeons instead, and make our way upward from our old home by the stairs. Do you remember the taverns, Robert?”
“Aye, the ones run by the Christian slaves and prisoners for Muslims forbidden to sell alcohol on their own.”
“I thought Muhammadans weren’t supposed to drink, either,” said Pierre.
“And cardinals aren’t supposed to have mistresses,” Fulton said, “and yet half could give lessons to Casanova. All men are pious, but find a way around their strictures. Have they repealed human nature in Canada?”
“We men of the woods have limited experience, but not that limited. So we’re to become pious drunkards?”
“To get ourselves in the door,” I said.
He looked up. “A cleverer idea than scaling this fortress.”
Like all cities in all cultures, Tripoli had made accommodation between what men were supposed to do and what they want to do. Islam frowned on usury, so the Jews exiled from Spain had become the bankers. Alcohol was forbidden, so Christian slaves could make an extra living by quietly providing it. The practice had spread to the prisons themselves, where entrepreneurs also provided the chance for the devout to obtain a prostitute, pawn booty hidden from taxation, or buy literature more stimulating than the Koran. The Muhammadan town might be more orderly than a Christian city, but sin could be found among the jailers and janissaries as easily as at the Palais Royal. Accordingly we crept along to the courtyard that abutted Yussef’s prison and slipped into one of the grog shops on its periphery. I ordered in Arabic while scouting for our chance to get beyond the dungeon gates.
Two guards in a corner were very quietly becoming inebriated, and once I was sure they’d become sufficiently muddled, I approached to refill their cups and propose a sale of opium. Drugs go with prisons like hand to glove, with the cottage industries of the inmates devoted mostly to paying for the narcotics needed to make hopelessness tolerable. A dishonest jailer can make more money selling to thieves than a thief can ever get stealing, and guarding the miserable bagnios of North Africa was a sinecure as valuable as being bookkeeper in a treasury. These guards didn’t trust me, of course, but they sensed opportunity and were greedy enough to beckon me to a locked door. When passing through I jammed the keyhole with a nail to prevent the latch from closing. And when the jailers bent to inspect my narcotic—flour and ground tea I’d brought from Sterett’s schooner—my companions crept in and clouted the drunken fools with socks we’d filled with sand from the streets.
We hesitated then, silently debating what to do with the two unconscious guards, until I reluctantly drew my naval cutlass from under my robes and thrust it through both their bodies, finishing them. Fulton gave a little groan.
“We are at war, gentlemen, with fanatics who are holding hostage my innocent son and who hope to declare war on all civilization,” I said. “Steel yourselves. It’s going to be a long night.”
“They won’t show us mercy, either,” Pierre said.
“Certainly they haven’t yet.”
“Let’s get on with it, then,” said Fulton, swallowing as he looked at the dead. Apparently practicing war close-up was not the same as designing its machines, and the deadly consequences of his genius were just occurring to him. I wondered if Archimedes had discovered that, too? Had the old Greek ordered the dismantling of his mirror to not just keep it from the Romans, but from mankind itself? Could his own king have killed him in frustration?
“But first we take their pistols,” said Pierre. “With the mood Ethan’s in, I have a feeling we’re going to need them.”
“And their keys,” I added. “Help me drag the bodies out of sight.”
I felt nauseated as we crept back into the labyrinth of dungeon tunnels under Yussef’s castle. The smell of earth, sewage, and lightless corruption came back like a slap, triggering old fear, and we could hear moaning and the occasional insane scream. Then I reminded myself of Astiza and little Harry, captive somewhere in the harem far above, and resolved to blow this mouth of Hades permanently shut by bringing Yussef’s fortress down on top of it. Let slip the dogs of war!
We passed several iron corridor gates, locking them again to discourage interference or pursuit. Then a flight of stairs upward that I recognized as the way I’d been taken to Yussef’s palace to meet Astiza.
“I think our army of three needs to divide at this point,” I said. “Robert, somehow we’ve got to get your torpedo, or mine, to where the mirror is and set it off.”
“Archimedes might have used a catapult,” he said. “Perhaps something similar will occur to me. How do I get within view?”
“If we can get you to the roof of Yussef’s storage rooms you may be able to look across. Follow this tunnel and hunt for stairs, if you don’t meet a sentry.”
He drew his own cutlass. “Or kill one if I do.”
“What is your assignment, donkey?” Pierre asked.
“Go to the harem where the women are.”
“Of course.”
“That’s where Harry and Astiza should be. I’ll slip in, find them, and bring them down to go out the way we came.”
“And brave Pierre, who never seems to be given the job of rescuing harems of young, nubile, enticingly captive women?”
“Brave Pierre has the most important job of all. Take these keys and release as many prisoners as you can. When we retreat, their escape will create confusion while we make for the plunging boat. Beware, Pierre, an ogre lives in these tunnels. He’s a brute known as Omar the Dungeon Master and we want to avoid him.”
“A presumptuous title. Is he big and ugly, like you?”
“Bigger. And uglier, I dare say. Even homelier than our late giant friend Magnus Bloodhammer.”
“Then I shall be David to this behemoth’s Goliath. I am the great Pierre Radisson, North Man and voyageur, who can stroke twenty hours in a single day and travel a hundred miles before sleeping! None can portage more weight than I, or drink more, or dance more splendidly, or jump higher, or run faster, or more quickly charm a woman! I can find my way from Montreal to Athabasca with my eyes closed!”
I’d heard all this several times before. “Then you’ll do fine in the darkness down here. Quickly, Pierre, and quietly, and run like a deer if Omar hears you. We need you in our submarine to remind us again of your prowess.”
“Of course you need me! Those two savants you left there, while they have undoubtedly concocted eight new harebrained theories of the history of the earth, have probably by now lost all sense of direction, if they haven’t sunk already. Well, Pierre will do all the real work as usual, and meet you at the gates that lead out of this dung hole. Then we will work on your reform!”