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the darling. The boys are saying we’re gonna sail back in tonight and flatten the bloody Casbah.”
“The ‘boys’ have not taken the trouble to consult me,” John replied mildly.
“Ah well, they did ask me to come up and see how the land lies. We’re none of us too pleased at being shown the finger by the likes of them Barbary pirates.”
John looked down at the map he had spent all evening drawing. Jotting down a line of figures, he did the calculation in his head then marked the final arc of fire on the paper. He felt…blank, empty. “Why do they do it, do you suppose?”
With the lines and angles of fire of each of the harbor’s batteries plotted, John dipped his pen again and marked a tiny cross in the centre where all the arcs of fire just failed to intersect.
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Why force a confrontation when we might have talked? For that matter, why steal slaves from Britain, when the African nations are all too willing to sell them? Does he expect us to swallow this insult and simply leave? Or can he really think I’m going to come crawling to him, begging for the return of my man?”
Higgins did his best to look deep for a moment, then turned away to pick John’s folded coat from the back of the chair and stow it in a newly repaired stern locker.
“I think not,” John answered himself, straightening up. “Bring me the Greek brothers, Dion and Cosmo Macronides. Also Duman Naftali and the other Duman—the one with the eye patch. Black Jacob too, if he thinks he’d be safe. Anyone who can pass as not being British.
“Aye sir.”
    The great cabin filled with nervous tars. Acrid with fear, their reek seemed to touch the walls. Crowding together in the center of the room, they looked at John with painfully false innocence, obviously wondering what they had done wrong.
    “Men,” he began, standing up too, in an effort to put them at ease. “I understand your desire to make the Dey regret he ever chose to treat with us thus. But if we sail into the harbor now and set it alight, the result will be death for Mr. Donwell. First things first. We will get him back, and then we will make them pay.
    “You will be landed just to the East of Cape Matafou. From there—passing as Turks—you should proceed on foot into the city, where you will make every effort to discover the whereabouts of the Lieutenant. I imagine—after that debacle this morning—it is a popular source of conversation in the marketplace.
    “The Meteor will stand in to shore every night. Once you have him, or know where he is to be found, return to the cove where we set you down and signal with a lantern. The pinnace will pick you up. Any questions?”
    Dion, a young man who tried to hide his startling beauty beneath an aggressive beard, looked up with cunning eyes. “We will need money for bribes.”
    “I understand,” said John, a slow thud of heartbeat breaking through his white calm. Nausea swept over him unexpectedly and his skin prickled with cold sweat. “You may draw upon Mr. Hall for five hundred pounds. If he objects, send him to me.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
    Ten days… John’s nib spattered blots over his diary as his hand shook. He frowned at it, rolling his shoulders to try and unwind the sinews that kept him on edge—tight as an ill-tuned violin just before its neck breaks.
    And no signal. It was a fight just to get the mission underway: Hall assured me the seamen would just take the money, spend it on liquor and whores, and then desert. Such a greasy fellow! Were he to swim in the slush he could not be more slippery. I represented to him that I could have him discharged for corruption, and he released the money with no more protest. It troubles my conscience to thus blackmail him, but I conceive it to be necessary under the circumstances.
    The same tea-pot stood on the table, the same water jug next to it, John’s reflection looking strained and wild in its side. The same sunlight lay in the same arc across the