The Tide Watchers by Lisa Chaplin Read Free Book Online Page B

using time-lock devices on naval barrel bombs, to give them time to escape. If they blow up the tunnel beneath Parliament . . .”
    Duncan’s stomach dropped. The tide must come and go without him. He had to find Windham, in whichever part of the British Isles his spymaster had gone in this inclement weather, and report this posthaste. “I’ll look into this plot. That I promise you.”
    â€œI’m not finished,” Narbonne said when Duncan stood. “What ifit’s only the start of their revenge, and they destroy Buckingham Palace, London Bridge, or the Tower of London to begin a collaborative Irish-Scots uprising throughout Britain?”
    Duncan closed his eyes. Given Irish history, and the brutal abuse of power the English had used against the Scots and their lands since Culloden, it was horribly plausible.
    â€œ. . . you’ve been scouring the Channel Coast. I want to know what you found there.”
    Too late Duncan caught what Narbonne said, and he stiffened.
    â€œYes, I’m an Irish-French Catholic with an ax to grind.” Narbonne’s voice turned gritty as he lay bare every reason for reticence on Duncan’s part between them. “So I’ll tell you what you found. There were soldiers everywhere stopping entry to Boulogne-sur-Mer. The area’s flooded by spies of too many persuasions and plots. You suspect Bonaparte has more infantry—and possibly far more warships—than the Treaty of Amiens allows, and you need to find out why he’s blocked off every approach to Boulogne by land and sea.”
    Duncan leaned forward. “You have royalist spies inside Boulogne?” Narbonne’s loyalties had been obvious from the moment he gave Duncan the information.
    Narbonne whispered, “Not now. Nonresidents without official permission have been forcibly escorted outside Boulogne, and newcomers refused entrance. My man was killed.”
    Duncan’s innards were going through the Labors of Hercules today. Hell in a bloody handbasket, he’d tossed a raw recruit like Peebles into Boulogne alone. “Why? What’s going on?”
    Narbonne shrugged. “Any proofs I have, your government would want verified. My speculations are useless to a government that does not want to know what Bonaparte is up to. It is convenient to them to suspect my connections, and my religion,” he said in a wry voice.
    Duncan waved that aside. Any Englishman with a brain in his head couldn’t trust a French-Irish Catholic, especially one with a religious ax to grind. He wouldn’t believe it now but for the evidence of his own eyes. “How long have you known of this?”
    Narbonne’s chubby face darkened until he was as purple as his gums. “I sent men across France after Bonaparte paid his thirty pieces of silver and the pope sold the faith there. Now Bonaparte gives bishoprics to his sycophants or those with gold enough to pay for his army!”
    Narbonne didn’t answer the real question. The Concordat had been proposed over a year ago, and a man of Narbonne’s standing would have been warned early on from someone in the Vatican. Early enough to send spies throughout France to spike whatever guns Boney had set up. “You must have impeccable sources.”
    â€œI do.” Grabbing Duncan’s cravat, he pulled them face-to-face, blowing out the scent of rotting meat, and Duncan’s stomach churned. “All Channel ports apart from Calais were closed this week. The coastal roads are guarded and blocked, and warships patrol all French waters from Jersey to Calais. I’ve heard whispers of a planned assassination of the first consul on the Channel Coast in late October. My sources say he’s coming, but Bonaparte has no visit marked on his official agenda.”
    With a chill, Duncan remembered the whispered October twenty-ninth. If royalist spies knew the date, it meant everyone in charge at the Alien Office