“Others have done this—they have traveled back here?”
“Not here. This is my keyhold, and I paid handsomely for it, believe me. But there are other places like Lindisfarne in the world, and they open hidden doors like the one you and I just went through. I only know of a very few, but they are there.”
“You’re telling me these doorways and passages exist elsewhere?”
“They do. There’s one in the Great Pyramid, and others in Greece and China. There may be more that I do not know of, and each one leads to a different place—or I should say, a different time. This one led us here to the eve of a great moment in history, and it was much coveted. I had to pay a great deal for the key, and there it is.” He touched the chain that held the key where it hung about his neck.
It was not long until his arch rival Fortier became aware of that key’s existence, and of the fact that others existed as well. Not to be upstaged by Ames, Fortier committed all his efforts to finding and securing his own key, one that had been hidden in the history for ages, until it was inadvertently discovered by French troops in Egypt in the year 1799. It was his eventual acquisition of that key that finally evened the odds, for the game had begun to focus on a bet he had made with the Duke.
“I’ll see England under Bonaparte’s foot, come hell or high water,” said Fortier. “And there will be nothing you can do about it.”
Ames took that for wanton braggery, until a certain book was delivered to him one day, dating to the mid-1700’s. Fortier had vanished, undoubtedly off on some nefarious safari to get one up on the Duke. On that day, however, Sir Roger was shocked to open the book to a place that had been carefully marked, and there to see his great rival’s face staring at him with a wry smile, a man standing behind one Count Maurice de Saxe in a portrait. There, inscribed below, was the last will and testament of the Count, which read in part:
‘I likewise bequeath my great diamond named Prague, now in France, in the hands of Mr. Fortier, Notary, to my nephew, Count Frife. And I beg his most Christian majesty to grant him my regiment of light horse, and my habitation at Chambord…”
That widened the eyes of Sir Roger Ames, for it was Fortier who had often boasted about his possession of the Prague Diamond, given to Count Maurice de Saxe, a Marshal of France, after his first great achievement in the capture of Prague. It was bestowed upon him by the people of the city itself as a gift for preventing his soldiers from looting, but it had come into the possession of Jean Michel Fortier, and now Ames finally realized how he had acquired the jewel. But how? How did Fortier get back to that place and time to worm his way into the graces of the Count, and become his “Notary?”
Before he could learn that, both men became aware of the existence of yet another key, and each was now trying to find it. So the journey Ames was undertaking with his footman was more than an escape, and more than a mere safari for sport. It had a most sinister purpose. That was a move in the game made by Fortier that the Duke was now seeking to counter, and it would soon lead both men to settle their differences on the same fields of glory that settled the enmity between Britain and France…. In the early 1800’s.
The fate of one of history’s most significant and colorful despots, Napoleon Bonaparte, was riding in the balance. For the game these two men were playing was a kind of tug of war on the history itself. It could only end with that history taking one of two pathways. The first led to the royal halls of London, where Bonaparte would sit in triumph over his most stubborn and tenacious enemy, the British Empire. The other path led to Elba, Waterloo, and eventually the far forsaken Island of St. Helena, the place where Britain buried its monsters, and the resting place of French Imperialism once and for all time.
History knows well the path that was actually trodden. France fell to the combined might of her enemies, and not even Bonaparte could prevail with all his skill and prowess on the field of battle. But things change, and in ways many would never give a moment’s thought.
Things change…. As Elena Fairchild knew all too well.
Part XII
The Mission
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
Chapter 34
The great ship eased around the headland of Cape Agustin, Mindanao, and into the deep sanctuary of Davao Gulf. Battleship Yamato was always an awesome spectacle on the sea, it sheer mass conveying power, and equal grace in the smooth lines of its clipper bow and hull. It was accompanied that day by a pair of heavy cruisers, one light carrier for air cover, and a flock of destroyers.
The battleship was carrying the Admiral of the fleet, Isoroku Yamamoto, who had canceled his planned tour of bases in the Solomons at the urging of Captain Harada, and instead traveled by sea to this place for a most secret and fateful rendezvous. That was a decision that had saved the Admiral’s own life, for the Americans had gotten wind of his planned itinerary, and they were going to send long range fighters out to look for him, and end his life. So now Yamamoto was a Zombie, the walking dead, and living a life he had never been meant to experience. Soon it would be his turn to stare in awe, for his forward air reconnaissance soon reported ships ahead, a full task force, and with two carriers.
That alone was surprising enough, for Yamamoto knew the locations and missions of every carrier in his fleet. They were the vital backbone of the navy, in spite of the power of his battleship, and he knew the fate of the Japanese Empire as it now existed rested on the integrity of those flight decks. And suddenly, unaccountably, here were two more!
This Captain Harada had called and reported the loss of his destroyer, Takami, but he nonetheless urged me to come to this place, thought Yamamoto. He stepped out onto the broad weather deck off the bridge of Yamato, to raise his field glasses and see for himself. There they were, unmistakably carriers, and around them was a small group of what appeared to be light cruiser escorts.
He was reminded of the old Zen proverb of a farmer’s only plow horse which ran off one day. The neighbor lamented the loss with him, for how would he ever sew and harvest his crop, but the farmer was steadfast. “Who knows what is good or bad,” he said quietly.
The simple wisdom of that statement was proved a few days later, when the horse returned from a foray in the wild, but with two others it met along the way! Again the neighbor came to rejoice with the farmer, telling him that his great good fortune would now allow him to complete his work three times faster. But he received the same reply: “Who knows what is good or bad.”
There is no end to that proverb. The farmer’s son breaks a leg trying to tame one of the new wild horses, but who knows what is good or bad, for the next day, when war came to the province, all the able bodied young men were rounded up—except that of the farmer…. And on and on it went.