Tom Clancy, Martin Greenberg, Jerome Preisler
Wild Card
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Marc Cerasini, Larry Segriff, Denise Little, John Helfers, Brittiany Koren, Robert Youdelman, Esq., Danielle Forte, Esq., Dianne Jude, and the wonderful people at Penguin Group (USA) Inc., including David Shanks and Tom Colgan. But most important, it is for you, my readers, to determine how successful our collective endeavor has been.
— Tom Clancy
PROLOGUE
Morpaign supposed he might have known it would turn to his advantage. When all was said and done, he could rely on his sharp nose for profit, and his knack for finding opportunity even in ill circumstance, to take him far along in the world.
Looking out over the water, Lord Claude Morpaign truly might have realized the flames would burn a pathway to bigger and better things. But he didn’t pause to consider the larger picture, not right at once, standing there in his moment of stunned discovery. His thoughts, like the merchant vessel, were on fire, seething with inexpressible anger. There had been no call for the sea wolf to flex his muscle in so brutal a manner. He could have made a persuasive offer without setting the ship ablaze and, worse, putting two able-bodied slaves to their violent deaths. Whatever the reasons, his tactics were excessive… unless the killing and destruction were carried out solely for his own relish, putting his bloodthirsty nature into full view.
While Morpaign would never have certain evidence of this, the suspicion later grew strong within him. And no man’s heart would prove more like Redbone Baxter’s than his own in the final reckoning.
Leaving the main house at twilight, Morpaign had anticipated an uneventful, matter-of-course run. His chief overseer, Didier, had met him at their prearranged spot with a team of slaves handpicked for their trustworthiness and experience working in the tunnel. As usual, a separate pair of slaves had brought a horse-drawn wagon around the skirts of the forest, ready for their fellows to emerge from down below. Once the load was on the wagon, the entire group would ride a short distance up the strand and transfer the barrels from their carriage to waiting longboats. From there the laden boats were to head out toward the New England — bound merchant vessel under Morpaign’s attentive eye.
Routine as routine could be, such was his business at the start.
The head of the tunnel was just past the edge of the woods near the southern boundary of Morpaign’s vast estate, its opening screened by tropical underbrush and covered with a mat of packed sod and twigs. Thirty or forty feet beyond the entrance a stone chimney top projected from the forest floor amid the obscuring vegetation.
Didier had led the group through the woods in his tattered, begrimed muslins and laborer’s cap, a lantern swaying in his hand as dusk fell heavily over the island. He’d come to the loose section of turf, flapped it back, raised the hinged trapdoor underneath, and descended some narrow wooden stairs, followed in single file by the slaves.
Morpaign took up the rear, careful to avoid brushing his embroidered silk dress frock against the moist, grubby walls of the passage. Although he’d rather have worn clothes more befitting the night’s task, an unexpected late-day visit by his father-in-law, the Spanish governor, had left him rushed and unable to change into them before his rendezvous, squandering much of the afternoon besides.
As he reached the tunnel floor, Morpaign had taken some fair consolation knowing his night would not be likewise wasted.
Still leading the rest by several paces, Didier had moved on through the gloom, removed the candle from his lantern, and, one at a time, lit the oil lamps hanging in niches along the masonry walls to either side of him. Their rag wicks ignited with little flumps of displaced air as he went down the line.
“These lamps are quick to take and brighten, never mind the dank,” he said to Morpaign. “The stuff fueling’em ought to be bottled and sold.”
“So you’ve urged in the past.”
“And will again, seigneur. You could price it cheaper than whale oil an’ still outprofit those who market it abroad… cheaper by more’n half, I’d think,” Didier said. “The pitch lake’s near bottomless, and skimming barrels of mineral oil from its surface would take naught but labor that’s already been put t’work there dredging caulk. Best of all, you’d have no middleman showing his eager palm for a commission.”
Morpaign gave the Breton a look of mildly amused condescension. In his hire for many years, Didier spoke a coarse rustic French that still sometimes thwarted an ear attuned to the more refined speech of Versailles aristocrats. Yet for all his lowbred crudity he was valuable for his protective instincts — like some loyal and duteous mongrel dog.
“It is one thing to separate enough of the bitumen for our own use,” Morpaign said. “Show me how to filter it from that stinking tar in volume and I’ll heed your suggestion.” And praise the superior intellect behind it, he thought with a pinched little smile. “Until then I shall be content to market the spirits we’ve drummed up beneath the ground.”
He waved a fleshy hand toward an archway in the wall to his right. Large enough for three big men to pass through abreast, it was swamped with shadows, as was the recess beyond.
The overseer merely shrugged and then turned into the darkened chamber. Putting his candle to its lamps, he motioned for the carriers to join him.
Again, Morpaign went last, in his perpetual caution.
An approximate rectangle, the chamber was much deeper than wide. Charred oak casks lined the walls to either side of Morpaign, resting on their flat, round heads in even rows. In a corner near the entrance was a stall holding some open-framed wooden pushcarts.
Morpaign paused beneath the arch, his nostrils tickled by the smell of burned tinder… and more faintly underneath it, the pungent, mingled aromas of cinnamon and bay.
He strode past the carts in the lamplight then, his gaze reaching out to a pair of great brick kettles across the chamber. The double firebox base on which they stood off the dirt floor had been similarly built of bricks; behind it, a shared flue rising aboveground matched the sooty gray stone-and-mortar construction of the tunnel walls. Two wooden barrels, each taller than a grown man, stood flanking either end of the base, their lids connected with an array of thin, curved iron pipes.
Morpaign went over to the assembly and regarded it with quiet satisfaction. His pot distillery was small, its production far surpassed by others in the islands — but it had been barely a year since he’d relocated from Haiti at his father-in-law’s invitation, and most of his efforts since had been directed toward settling his household. Even when the still reached peak output, moreover, there would be limits imposed by the need to keep it buried out of sight. While the British navy and Morpaign’s hosts from the Spanish capital were generally at violent cross-purposes, it was ironic that they might have a common will to block his illicit trade.
He rubbed his chin in thought, his back toward Didier and the slaves. “How much of our stock is ready to go tonight?”
“There are twenty-two aged barrels in the storeroom, besides the fourteen you see around us,” Didier said.
Morpaign did a hasty mental computation.
“Over six thousand liters of spiced, total,” he said. “Very good.”
“Oui,” Didier said. “We’ll be moving the rum in two or three trips. And I expect those rowers will have to do the same before our full cargo’s loaded aboard their ship.”
“My only concern is that the lute has arrived without delay.”