“The one that Peel wants me to help with,” Lewrie said. “Before I sailed, I wrote him and told him that my ship’s too big and deep-draughted t’do you much good close inshore, but I never heard back. Now that I’m here, just what is it that you need from me?’ And just what is your main task?”
“London has charged me with turning the Spanish against the French, and getting them out of the war, perhaps even gaining them as an ally,” Mountjoy baldly told him.
“You’re joking,” Lewrie said, gawping.
“With the carrot, and the stick,” Mountjoy added, looking sly again. “Sweet talk and sympathy on the one hand, and promises of free trade, and on the other hand, making the lives of everyone from here to the French border miserable, with chaos and mayhem.”
“And my part is…?” Lewrie posed.
“The chaos and mayhem,” Mountjoy said with a chuckle.
“Hmm,” Lewrie said, with a shrug. “I can do chaos and mayhem … I’ve been dined out on it for years. Landings and raids, I’d suppose? Bring all Spanish coasting trade to a stop?”
“Sink, take, or burn everything that floats, yes,” Mountjoy agreed. “And quick cut-and-thrust raids on coastal ports and villages. Along the way, to and from, I’ll also need you to drop off some of my field agents, now and again. Picking them up and fetching them back may be too much to hope for, but I have managed to put together a few ways for their reports and informations to reach me, somewhat timely. It would really help, though, if, upon your first venture, you could obtain for me a small coasting vessel or fishing boat.”
“Steal you a boat, right,” Lewrie said. “Simple enough.”
“Something dowdy and un-remarkable, and easily manned by as few people as possible,” Mountjoy went on. “From the times of old General O’Hara, the ‘Cock of The Rock’, everyone talks of protecting the town and the bay with gunboats and cutters, but no one has built, or bought, or followed through on the plan. When Nelson commanded the Mediterranean Fleet, he planned for twenty gunboats, but that came to nothing, either. Individual ships sailing into the bay are easy pickings for all the Spanish gunboats at Algeciras, and the mouths of the Palmones and the Guadananque Rivers. There’s nothing for me to work with.”
“Something that could be handled by a Midshipman and seven or eight men,” Lewrie schemed. “All of whom can speak decent Spanish, I suppose? I can get you some sort of boat, but…”
“I’ve a man coming to do the talking, if it comes to it,” Mountjoy promised quickly. “In the Andalusian dialect, and high Castilian to boot … with lisp and all!”
“Even so, it might be best did Sapphire see your new boat near where you wish to land or recover agents, but stay safely offshore,” Lewrie told him, going to one of the chairs and sitting down on a faded green cushion. “Best that we’re not seen too close together.”
“That makes sense,” Mountjoy agreed with a nod or two. “Lord, what a poor host I am! I’ve a very nice and light white wine. Smuggling can go both ways, what? It’s a Spanish tempra … tembrani … well, whatever it’s called, it’s quite good.”
Mountjoy went into the bedroom adjoining and fetched a bottle from a dim corner, where he kept a tub of water with which to cool his wine. “Now where’s the bloody cork pull?” he grumbled.
Thomas Mountjoy had been an idle and direction-less young man when he’d been Lewrie’s clerk, a pleasant but callow fellow whom his elder brother, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy of London—Lewrie’s solicitor and prize agent—had foisted upon him when Lewrie had the Jester sloop. It was hard for Lewrie to picture Mountjoy in the same trade as the thoroughly dangerous Zachariah Twigg, or James Peel. Mountjoy just didn’t look the part; he was the epitome of a nice, inoffencive scion from the Squirearchy, who didn’t have to really work at anything.
He was brown-haired and brown-eyed, and his eyes and expression seemed too merry and innocent for skullduggery. He did not give off a sense of being capable of murder, or of being dangerous.
Well, maybe that’s his best asset, Lewrie thought; No one would suspect him of anything. Not strikingly handsome, or remember-able. Christ, is that even a word?
“Deacon?” Mountjoy called out. “Where did I leave the cork pull?”
A well-muscled and craggy-faced man came out of an inner room, a fellow who did look furtive, and very dangerous, from the way that he carried himself. “Here, sir,” he said, handing it over. “You left it on the side-table, from last night’s supper.”
“Daniel Deacon, one of my assistants, and my bodyguard when such is needed,” Mountjoy said, doing the introductions.
“Much danger to you, here on the Rock?” Lewrie asked, “With so many soldiers patrolling the town, I’d expect that it’s better guarded than Saint James’s Palace.”
“With so many foreigners here, sir, and so many traders coming and going with temporary passes, it’s best to be overly cautious,” Mr. Deacon said, most seriously and earnestly, not waiting for his superior to answer the question. He had a way of glaring that could be quite dis-concerting, and held himself like a taut-wound watch spring.
“Daniel’s another one of James Peel’s protégés,” Mountjoy said, “recruited from Twigg’s informal band of Baker Street Irregulars.”
“Formerly a Sergeant in the Foot Guards,” Deacon added.
“Saved my bacon once, the Irregulars did,” Lewrie told Deacon. “A damned efficent group.”
“Thank you, sir,” Deacon said, with a faint hint of a smile. “I will go out and attend to that … other matter?”
“Make it seem casual,” Mountjoy cautioned, and Deacon departed. “A little surveillance on a new-come trader,” he explained to Lewrie. “Now, let’s sample this wine!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“First step, then,” Lewrie summed up, after a convivial, but business-like, half-hour of plotting and savouring the light, fruity Spanish white wine. “I capture you a boat. A large fishing boat will do quite nicely, about fourty or fifty feet overall. She’d be large enough t’live in if the weather goes against you, and would be the sort that ventures further out to sea than the type employed by coastal Spanish fishermen.”
“And, could plausibly explain her presence near any Spanish village along the coast,” Mountjoy happily agreed. “Up by Almeria, we can claim to sail from Málaga, up near Cádiz on the West, we could claim to be from Cartagena … chasing after the herring, or something.”
“Her crew would have to actually put out nets, and have a catch aboard, if they run afoul of a Spanish garda costa,” Lewrie cautioned. “Not that there are too many of those who’d dare set out, these days, with our Navy prowling about.”
“Troops to re-enforce your people,” Mountjoy eagerly prompted, making a list with pencil and paper. “Garrison duty is so hellish-boresome, I’d imagine thousands would volunteer. Though, Sir Hew the Dowager might be loath to give up a corporal’s guard.”
“Perhaps you can sweet-talk him,” Lewrie said, snickering.
“He’s a reasonable-enough old stick,” Mountjoy agreed, again.
“I’ve fifty private Marines, and can put another fifty sailors ashore, without harming the operation of the ship,” Lewrie volunteered. “Can I lay hands on one troop transport, of decent size, she’d be able t’carry about one hundred and fifty soldiers. Any more, and they’d be arseholes to elbows. That’s what, three companies? Light infantry’d be best. Perhaps fewer,” he said, after further musing, “since I would have to put enough sailors aboard her t’man the boats. The average is about three hundred tons, with only fifteen merchant seamen to handle the ship.
“Get them all ashore in one go,” he schemed on, “and more importantly, get them off all together … in, raise Hell, then get out as quick as dammit … I’d need six boats. Barges, or launches, with at least eight men in each to row and steer. Scrambling nets.”