The Golden Flask (5 page)

Jake took a step to give chase, but Hamilton caught
him by the shirttail.

"Our mission is too important to risk following him,"
he said between winded puffs for air. "We've already lost too much time."

* * *

"That's quite a little pistol you have there," said Hamilton when he had caught his breath. "It fires four shots?"

"Two, then you have to twist the barrel around to fire two more," said Jake, inspecting the dead men's bodies for papers or other signs of their mission. He found nothing incriminating besides a small collection of coins,
which he left in their pockets
. "The bullets are small but effective at close range
. These were poisoned by an old acquaintance."

The irony encased in the last word escaped Hamilton. The poison had been supplied by one of Jake's most severe enemies — the now-deceased Keen.

"Effective. The men seemed to be farmers."

"That's just their dress. They are British soldiers, ex
cept for the one they called Egans."

"Why would a white dress as an Indian?"

"Possibly adopted as a boy. Or simply a renegade. It
doesn't make much difference, at the moment."

Under different circumstances, Jake would ride to
the nearest militia unit and alert them of Egans's pres
ence. But there was no time to alert anyone or even bury the
dead men. He restored his pocket pistol to its
hiding place and dragged the bodies to the side of the
road. Then he bowed his head.

"Don't tell me you're praying for them," said Hamil
ton, incredulously. "They're the enemy."

For every hard inch of callus applied to Jake's body
by these years of struggle, another part of his inner self
had softened. Enemy or not, he could not help but feel
remorse at the death of a fellow human being.

Someday, this growing well of sorrow might prevent
him from fighting, despite the great justness of his
cause. For now, he merely finished his silent memorial and walked to where Hamilton was sitting on his horse.
As Egans had made off with the animal Jake had been
riding, their remaining horse would have to be pressed
into double duty. Fortunately, they were to change
mounts only a few miles down the road, and then press
on to New Paltz, where another fresh pair awaited.

Jake grabbed hold of Hamilton and hauled himself
up behind him. "If you have any influence with this
horse," said the spy, squeezing onto the saddle, "ask
him to avoid the bumps. My ribs feel as if they've just
been broken again."

"I'm afraid we've only just met," said Hamilton, spurring the stallion.

Chapter Four

Wherein, a carriage and traveler stop along the road, with unpleasant consequences.

H
elios had not long
strung his bow in the eastern
sky — nor had the sun been up very long — when a
mahogany-paneled carriage happened to pass on the road near where Jake had placed the bodies. As the
patriot spy had surmised, the dead men quickly caught
the attention of these passers-by, and an order was given from within for the driver to halt.

The large, gilded wheels skidded to a stop in the dirt
as the horses were curled back sharply at the bit; though he had held his position as driver and guide only a short while, the Indian whose hands were
wrapped around their reins knew his master was best
obeyed promptly.

Even so, the door had swung open before the car
riage stopped. As if caring little for his fine, bright blue
jacket and buckskin breeches, the vehicle's occupant
dashed into the swirling dust. His energy belied his age, which was now past fifty. Though he had lately spent
considerable time recuperating from a variety of
wounds, he sprung forward with great energy to inspect
the dead men. Brandishing his walking stick, he waved
it over them as if it were a bishop's scepter, imparting
some blessing to the already vanquished souls.

But the man had not stopped to administer Christian niceties. He was instead a connoisseur of death, con
genially interested in examining the nuances of each individual tragedy,
hoping to increase his already con
siderable stock of knowledge on the subject. For the
man who now pushed the bodies back and forth like so many laboratory specimens was no less than Major Dr.
Harland Keen.

The very same man Jake had seen fall over the
Cohoes Falls to the bottom of the Mohawk River less
than a fortnight before.

* * *

The reader is entitled to some explanation for the
shock of that last line, and we shall here deliver it as
succinctly as possible, to avoid losing the thread of our
present tale.

As a young man, Harland Keen had left his native
London to tour the world, gathering the esoteric
knowledge that would supplement the skills he learned
at Edinburgh and render him among the most brilliant
practitioners of the medical arts in Europe. He had not
yet become the evil-hearted assassin who would even
tually forget his fraternity's oath against causing harm,
though already his character shaded toward Life's darker vales.

It was during a stay in Venice that he came upon an
old woman, reputed of Borgia stock, who had gained great fame as a reader of the Egyptian cards. On a
cloud-besotted day on an obscure piazza overlooking the Grand Canal, the woman plucked the Magician
from the deck and nodded approvingly. But then she
found Temperance inverted, and crossed severely by
the Moon. Keen himself shuddered when the next card of her divinatory layout proved to be Death, mounted
aboard a white charger with the red rose as his banner.

Even a reader unfamiliar with the portents must
sense the message the cards foretold. As the reading
proceeded in a progressively darker vein, Keen felt his
anger grow. He had never been superstitious, yet
something in the woman's manner convinced him not only to believe what she said, but to take it as a curse
rather than an objective interpretation of Fortune’s wheel.
He pounded the table and upset the cards, de
manding to know what, if any, good news she had for
him.

"You shall not die a water death," proclaimed the
woman. "You cannot be killed by water."

Suddenly, he was seized by a fit. "Let us see if the same is true of you," he shouted, picking the woman up and throwing her into the canal.

Immediately, he repented, threw off his boots and coat, and dove into the dark water to save her. But
despite the long hour he searched in the putrid stream,
he could not retrieve her body.

The full explanation for the dark roiling of his soul is perhaps more complicated, involving other choices and decisions as well as personal reverses. But it is none
theless true that his path took a severe turn that after
noon. The woman died without relatives. Keen found
himself not only free but in possession of her consider
able texts and potions, and in a few hours gained
knowledge his instructors at Edinburgh could not have
dreamed in a lifetime.

His career progressed, and at length he returned to
London and became doctor to the highest elements of
society, including the king himself. Despite his fame, his experiments brought him disrepute. He was ac
cused of heinous crimes before King George III exiled
him to America, in exchange for his life. By then, he
had joined the king's secret department, sworn to carry
out assassinations and other assignments in utter secrecy.

Once a member of the department, there is no resignation short of death. Keen continued to carry out assignments under the direction of General Bacon, who
besides being the intelligence chief was the king's per
sonal representative at the head of the clandestine order of assassins.

A few months after his arrival in New York, Keen
was given the red-jeweled dagger signifying a mission —
and told to kill Jake Gibbs and his friend Claus van Clyne.
The doctor was bested by the pair below the
great iron chain that spans the river at Peekskill, but he
did not despair. Instead, he traced the two men north,
and as they worked on a mission among the Mohawk he struck again.

Keen believed van Clynne perished in a burning building, where he had left him tied and gagged. In
fact, the Dutchman had escaped through a basement
passage used by an earlier occupant as a beer cellar.

Jake, meanwhile, proved harder to find, let alone
kill. Keen joined forces with the local Mohawks, and
was able to trick the American spy into a meeting just
above the Cohoes Falls. The two men fell upon each
other and engaged in a death struggle. Keen, aided by
drugs that increased his stamina and natural strength,
throttled Jake, then had him bound and gagged, placed
into a canoe and sent tumbling over the falls.

But the doctor himself became tangled in the tackle
trailing from the boat, and plunged over in the torrent.
The canoe, loaded with heavy supplies, sank at the foot
of the falls — as Jake had seen.

Jake saw this because he had not been fooled by
Keen, but rather played the trick back to ensnare the
doctor. With the aid of a confederate ... ah, but we
do not wish to give the plot away to those who have not
read the adventure. Suffice it to say Jake watched Keen
fall, and observed the commotion on the riverbank below as the doctor's Indian allies debated what to
do. By the time Jake left to complete his mission, Keen
had been underwater ten minutes at least; no one,
he thought, could have survived the tumult without
drowning.

But he had not counted on the Borgia curse or pre
diction — whichever it might be. Nor did he know that
Keen had found a pocket of air within the overturned
canoe. The British assassin reached the shore intact. His Indian cohorts were dumbstruck to see him. As fooled as Keen by Jake's plot, they assured him the white man had died, and after a lengthy search produced a blond scalp to back up their claim.

The hair now rested on the bench of Keen's carriage.
He was fully confident that it belonged to his nemesis.
But how to explain that one of the dead men bore the
unmistakable signs of having been killed by a poison few men besides Keen himself could concoct?

A poison that had been on the bullets when Gibbs stole his Segallas pistol back in their fateful fight before the falls?

There might be many theories. Perhaps one of the Indians had managed to find the gun on the body and
then used it here.

But why? The man's rough outer clothes were not
exceptional, but he had on a silk undershirt. That and his pocketful of coins suggested he was an English agent, but not a robbery victim.