Assassin's Honor (9781561648207)
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Authors: Robert N. Macomber
The Assassin's Honor
The Honor Series
By Robert N. Macomber
At the Edge of Honor
Point of Honor
Honorable Mention
A Dishonorable Few
An Affair of Honor
A Different Kind of Honor
The Honored Dead
The Darkest Shade of Honor
Honor Bound
Honorable Lies
Honors Rendered
The Assassin's Honor
The Assassin's Honor
A Novel of
Cmdr. Peter Wake, Office of Naval Intelligence, USN
12th in the Honor Series
Robert N. Macomber
Copyright © 2015 by Robert N. Macomber
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Inquiries should be addressed to:
Pineapple Press, Inc.
P.O. Box 3889
Sarasota, Florida 34230
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Macomber, Robert N.
The assassin's honor / Robert N. Macomber. -- First edition.
pages ; cm. â (Honor series ; 12)
ISBN 978-1-56164-798-9 (hardback : alk. paper) â ISBN 978-1-56164-795-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Wake, Peter (Fictitious character)âFiction. I. Title.
PS3613.A28A9 2015
813'.6âdc23
2015021726
Design by Jennifer Borresen
Printed in the United States
This novel is respectfully dedicated to the dean
of Florida's contemporary novelists
Randy Wayne White
My friend and mentor, who long ago listened to my dream
and didn't laugh.
Over the ensuing years he has provided me with remarkable
rum, intriguing conversations, helpful introductions
around the world,
and great advice about this bizarre business.
Thank you, Randy. You turned out to be right on all of it.
Robert N. Macomber
A Preliminary Word with the Reader
22 The First Evening of the Rest of My Life
38 The Necessary Accoutrements
39 The Goat Locker's Retribution
47 Ambrosia, Anticipation and Decision
49 An Idea on the Edge of Propriety
52 A Most Incongruous Turn of Events
54 Discipline in the Face of Evil
56 The Curious Redemption of Honor
I think a little background about Peter Wake and this novel, the twelfth in the Honor Series, is in order for both new readers and for longtime Wakians (self-named fans of these novels).
The Assassin's Honor
is set in late 1892 and early 1893. President Benjamin Harrison (Republican) has just lost re-election (his beloved wife Caroline died two weeks before the vote) and President-elect Grover Cleveland (Democrat) will be inaugurated on 4 March 1893. Cleveland was already president from 1885 to 1889, but lost his re-election bid to Harrison. Now, Cleveland is coming back to be commander in chief. The country faces serious economic, social, political, and foreign policy challenges.
Commander Peter Wake is fifty-three years old, and has been in the U.S. Navy for twenty-nine years, beginning with his combat duty in the East Gulf Blockading Squadron in the Civil War. His twenty-eight-year-old daughter Useppa has been a Methodist missionary in Key West for the last nine years. His twenty-four-year-old son Sean is an ensign in the navy and at sea in the U.S.S.
Yantic
; he graduated from the Naval Academy in 1890, a feat his father never accomplished.
Wake's dear friend and trusted colleague, Boatswain (usually pronounced and spelled “Bosun”) Sean Rork, for whom Wake's son was named, is now sixty-one years old. Born and raised in County Wexford, Ireland, Rork shipped out to sea at age thirteen and has been there ever since. He joined the U.S. Navy in 1861 at Boston after jumping his previous ship. Rork is the kind of fellow you want beside you when drinking in a pubâor fighting for your life in the alley behind it.
Wake and Rork have served mostly together since 1864. From then until 1881 they served in ships, mostly frigates and gunboats, in the West Indies, South America, and the Mediterranean. From 1882 until 1892 they served in the newly established Office of Naval Intelligence, the first foreign espionage agency of the United States. This work took them to
Southeast Asia, South America, the Caribbean, the South Pacific, and Europe. It was sordid, shadowy, perilous work, shunned by most naval officers as beneath the dignity of an officer and a gentleman. Wake didn't like it at all, especially some of the things he had to do, but he is the kind of man who will get the mission accomplished.
Now he is out of that work, and back in the clean air of the ocean, as a proper naval officer should be. His career, so long stymied by his lack of formal academy education, wealth, and political supporters, has finally gotten on track. In his personal life, melancholy for so long, he has found contentment.
But Wake is about to learn that the past is always right behind you, even when you prefer to forget it.
The Unpleasant Truth
Patricio Island, Florida
Friday evening
5 May 1893
I have learned the truth is the rarest of possessions. So rare that it is often hoarded, frequently denied. Seldom is it shared, even when it is kind or even crucial to do so. That thought echoed in my mind when Maria asked the question. With a petite finger, she had been lightly tracing the remnants of the wounds I've accumulated over the last thirty years. The brush of her lips over the scar on my right temple was followed by a whisper, the words trembling with tears, “Peter, when will this madness end, so we can live in peace?”
Holding her closely against the chilly night, I decided to tell her the unpleasant truth. There would be no deceit with her, even of the gentle kind.
“It ends when they think we aren't a threat anymore. And that may be a long time.”
She nodded slowly, for it was simply confirmation of what
she already knew and feared. Our future would be as dangerous as the recent past. “At least we are finally together, Peter, to face whatever comes.”
The mood clearly needed to change, so I conjured up some mock naiveté just to hear that delicious laugh of hers. “Really, madam, aren't we supposed to be doing something other than
talking
tonight?”
Molding her body to mine with tender caresses that conveyed far more than words ever could, her laugh emerged as a subtle blend of naughty and nice. But even as I smiled in appreciation, her desperate question brought memories from the chaos of the previous six months. Disturbing memories.
They began at an anchorage in Jamaica.
The Summons
U.S.S. Bennington
Kingston, Jamaica
Thursday morning
8 December 1892
Even in December, at the start of the dry season, the indolent climate of the tropics can sap one's energy by midmorning. Around me, the men working on deck in the sun moved slowly, wasting no motion, the sweat on their bare backs streaked with grease and coal dust. Officers had no special immunity from the climate and were starting to wilt as they paced the bridge wing and pulled at their white chokers, which by custom they were expected to wear. The senior petty officers, the oldest and smartest of any in the ship, had already sought the shadier places, from which they silently watched over everyone else.
I am well versed in tropical weather and have suffered my share from it. But the muggy air held no deleterious effect on me this time, for within my constitution was an energy no temperature or humidity could diminish. For months, while
steaming through the sun-broiled Caribbean, I'd looked forward to what each day would bring. This was, of course, a pleasant symptom of my present statusâafter twenty-nine very long years, I had finally reached the pinnacle of a naval officer's ambitions: independent command at sea of a newly built ship.
Not only that, but my personal life knew happiness for the first time in eleven years as a widower. Genuine love had reentered my life, giving me hope I wasn't doomed to a bachelor's loneliness for the rest of my mortal life. Hard as it was for a cynical soul like me to admit, the future was actually positive, and my chronic melancholia of the past had become merely a memory.
