The Dakota Cipher Read Free Page A

Pauline, excitedly leaning across from me, bet more recklessly.She lost money I’m sure she’d been given by her famous brother, but then did win a single number at odds of 35 to 1 and clapped her hands, squeezing her breasts together most enchantingly. She was the loveliest of Napoleon’s siblings, sought after by portraitists and sculptors. There were reports she was posing in the nude.
    “Madame, it seems your skill matches your beauty,” I congratulated.
    She laughed. “I have my brother’s luck!” She wasn’t particularly bright, but she was loyal, the kind who’d stick to Bonaparte long after craftier friends and siblings had deserted him.
    “We Americans could learn from a Venus such as you.”
    “But, Monsieur Gage,” she returned, her eyelids flashing like a semaphore, “I am told you are a man of much experience already.”
    I gave a slight bow.
    “You served with my brother in Egypt in the company of savants,” she went on. “Yet found yourself opposed to him at Acre, embroiled with him at 18 Brumaire when he took power, and allied yet again at Marengo. You seem a master of all positions.”
    The girl did make herself clear. “Like a dance, it’s all in the partner.”
    Davie, no doubt seeing banter with the first consul’s married sister as a diplomatic disaster in the making, cleared his throat. “I don’t seem to share the luck of you and the lady, Mr. Gage.”
    “Ah, but you really do,” I said generously—and honestly. “I’ll tell you the secret of gambling, Davie. You lose eventually as certainly as we all die eventually. The game is about hope, and the mathematics about defeat and death. The trick is to beat the arithmetic for a moment, take your winnings, and run. Very few can do that, because optimism trumps sense. Which is why you should own the wheel, not play it.”
    “Yet you have a reputation as a gambling winner, sir.”
    “Of battles, not the war. I am not a rich man.”
    “But an honest one, it seems. So why do you play?”
    “I can improve my odds by taking advantage of the less practiced. More important is the game itself, as Bonaparte himself told me. The play’s the thing.”
    “You are a philosopher!”
    “All of us ponder the mystery of life. Those of us with no answers deal at cards.”
    Davie smiled. “So perhaps we should adjourn to a table and let us supplement your income by playing pharaon . I suspect you can handle your rustic countrymen. I see Bloodhammer over there, and there’s considerable curiosity about these experiments of yours. Moreover, I understand you’ve experience in the fur trade?”
    “In my youth. I daresay I’ve seen some of the world. A cruel, fascinating, rather unreliable planet, I’ve concluded. So, yes, let’s have some claret and you can ask me what you’d like. Perhaps the lady would care to join us?”
    “After my luck turns here, Monsieur Gage.” She winked. “I do not have your discipline to retreat when I am ahead.”
    I sat with the men, conversing impatiently until Pauline—I was thinking of her as a pretty Paulette by now—could drift over. Ellsworth wanted to hear about the Egyptian monuments that were already inspiring Napoleon’s plans for Paris. Vans Murray was curious about the Holy Land. Davie beckoned to the odd bear of a man lurking in the shadows, the Norwegian he’d referred to earlier, and bade him sit. This Magnus was tall like me, but thicker, with a fisherman’s rough, reddened face. He had an eye patch like a pirate’s—his other eye was icy blue—and a thick nose, high forehead, and bushy beard: most unfashionable in 1800. There was that wild glint of the dreamer to him that was quite disturbing.
    “Gage, this is the gentleman I told you about. Magnus, Ethan Gage.”
    Bloodhammer looked like a Viking, all right, as ill fit in a graysuit as a buffalo in a bonnet. He gripped the table as if to overthrow it.
    “Unusual to meet a man from the north, sir,” I said, a little wary. “What