“The admiral told us she sails on the twenty-seventh.” Hawkwood said.
James Read nodded. “Today, Hawkwood. She sails today! With the Prince of Wales on board!”
Hawkwood’s first reaction was to contradict and say it wasn’t possible, but the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. Lee’s devil-may-care attitude, his off-hand response to Hawkwood’s revelation that his plan had been found out, his farewell remark; they all added up to one thing. They had thought they were one step ahead of the American. In reality, they were two steps behind.
“Which means the submersible’s here,” Hawkwood said.
Silence filled the room.
“So, where the hell is it?”
The Chief Magistrate placed his palms on the desk and pushed himself to his feet. “That, Hawkwood, is what we must find out. There’s no time to lose.”
“But it could be anywhere!”
“Then we must think carefully. We must apply logic.”
“Logic?”
“We must narrow the field of search.” James Read swung towards his clerk. “Mr Twigg, we’re going to need maps. If you’d be so kind as to fetch Master Horwood’s plans of London; the sheets covering the immediate vicinity of the river will suffice. Sharply now!”
“He must be mad if he thinks he can get away with it,” Jago said, as the clerk hurried away.
James Read shook his head. “Not mad, Sergeant. Imagine if the situation was reversed and it was one of our own captains who’d managed to infiltrate a fireship filled with explosives up the Seine. We wouldn’t call him mad. We’d call him brave, audacious, a hero!”
Not me, Hawkwood thought. I’d call him a bloody idiot. Unless, of course, he got away with it.
Hawkwood thought about the consequences if Lee’s daredevil plan succeeded. Frankly, they didn’t bear thinking about. If, or when, the public learned that a French secret weapon had destroyed a British warship a stone’s throw from the seat of government, there’d be panic in the streets. And the terror wouldn’t end there. No vessel would dare leave harbour for fear of being similarly attacked. And how could Britain command the seas if she couldn’t even protect her own ports or rivers? The effect on trade would be catastrophic. And if the French built a fleet of submersibles, what then? How would the country combat such a deadly threat? How could it re-equip its armies abroad?
Bonaparte had tried to choke Britain into submission before, through decrees issued in Berlin and Milan, forbidding countries under his rule to trade with his mortal enemy. Britain had retaliated by blockading foreign ports and the nations that had implemented the decrees. Admiral Gambier had even destroyed the Danish fleet at Copenhagen. As long as Britain retained mastery over the oceans, Bonaparte’s plan would fail; but if the actions of just one submersible managed to bottle up the entire British Navy, the Emperor could start to breathe again. The balance of power would shift dramatically. The fabric of the nation was at stake.
Ezra Twigg returned, bearing maps. There wasn’t room on the desk so they had to spread them out on the floor. By the time they had been laid out, there wasn’t much carpet visible, but what they had amounted to a bird’s-eye view of the Thames, stretching from Cheyne Walk to the River Lea.
Hawkwood looked despairingly at the distances involved. Nearly eleven miles of waterway, not to mention tributaries, canals and docks. How could they be expected to find one small boat, twenty feet in length?
“By elimination,” James Read said. “For example, a hiding place upriver beyond the London dock is unlikely, otherwise he’d be giving himself too much water and too many vessels to negotiate.”
“If I were Lee,” Hawkwood said, pointing, “I wouldn’t attack from downstream either. It would make more sense to run with the current. Once I’d destroyed the ship, I’d want to get out as quickly as possible.”
The Chief Magistrate stared at the mosaic on the floor. “I agree. But where does that leave us? The area between Bermondsey and the Isle of Dogs, perhaps? A little over three miles, I fancy. So, where would be the best place to conceal a submersible?”
Hawkwood was trying to remember Colonel Congreve’s estimate of the submersible’s speed. Lee probably wouldn’t want to expend too much energy or time manoeuvring the craft into position, and three miles still seemed an awful long way. But then, what else was it the colonel had said? Stealth was more important than speed.
Hawkwood looked down at the remaining map sheets. “The vessel was damaged. That’s why they needed the clockmaker. They couldn’t carry out repairs in the open, it would attract too much attention, too many prying eyes. Which means the thing has to be under cover somewhere. So we’re looking for a shelter, a building, something opening on to the river—a warehouse, for instance. Lee isn’t acting on his own. We know that. He has contacts. Which of them is most likely to have access to a warehouse? Someone who deals with cargoes and such? Some sort of trader? A merchant type, perhaps?” Hawkwood looked pointedly at the Chief Magistrate.
The Chief Magistrate slammed his palm on to the desk. “Of course! It’s been staring us in the face!”
“It ’as?” Jago said.
The Chief Magistrate grabbed his clerk’s arm. “Fetch the file on Lord Mandrake, Mr Twigg. We are looking for property owned or rented by his lordship, with river access.”
“Very good, sir.”
Jago caught Hawkwood’s eye and grinned. “I can see why they made you an officer,”
Twigg left the office once more. He was gone less than two minutes. When he returned he was clutching a bundle of documents bound in black ribbon. Even Hawkwood, familiar with Ezra Twigg’s uncanny knack for accumulating and evaluating intelligence, was impressed. The Chief Magistrate, on the other hand, clearly took his clerk’s abilities for granted.
“Very good, Mr Twigg. Locations, if you please.”
As Twigg read out the details, Hawkwood’s hope’s began to fade. All the warehouses used by Lord Mandrake’s trading companies were situated inside the new docklands.
London was the busiest port in the world. Because of their size, large cargo ships were unable to sail upriver beyond London Bridge, so unloading had been restricted to the north and south banks below the bridge, which meant, as trade increased, the buildings and wharves had extended downriver. As the size of vessels grew larger, so did the congestion in the port area. The wharves became crowded and confused. Ships sometimes had to wait weeks for their cargoes to be checked and for customs dues to be paid. Added to which was the problem of river pirates and all the other criminals who preyed on shipping. The profits from crime were huge. It was to ease the overcrowding and protect vulnerable and valuable cargoes that the first commercial docks had been built.
Ships could now come up the river at high tide and enter the dock basins. Cargoes could be unloaded and either stored in warehouses or transferred to smaller, shallower draughted vessels for immediate distribution.
Mandrake’s warehouses were spread evenly between the London Dock in Wapping, the West India Docks, north of the Isle of Dogs, and the Grand Surrey Docks in Rotherhithe.
“Looks as if we were wrong,” Hawkwood said, unable to hide his disappointment. “There’s no way Lee would risk taking his submersible inside the dock area. Too impractical, too damned public.”
James Read nodded glumly. “I fear you’re right. Even our Mr Lee wouldn’t be that presumptuous. Though, perhaps we should have the buildings investigated anyway. I’ll contact the River Police and have them make searches—discreetly, of course.” Still despondent, Read turned to his clerk. “Thank you, Mr Twigg. As always your files have proved most illuminating. However, it appears we must look elsewhere for our information.”