Bride of Fortune (49 page)

      
“Good evening, Mr. Fortune, or should I call you Don Lucero?” His voice was measured and resonant. The president was a man used to weighing each word before uttering it.

      
“Since I ‘volunteered’ for your service only to keep Gran Sangre, I imagine Don Lucero would be more appropriate,” Fortune replied, not without wry humor.

      
Juarez smiled, appreciating the irony of the situation, then gestured for Fortune to take a seat before reseating himself. “I understand you've ridden long and hard to bring me information of some importance.”

      
“Porfirio Escondidas is dead. Ambushed by agents of Mariano Vargas, who is the real leader of the insurgents trying to kill you.” Quickly and succinctly Nicholas outlined everything that had transpired at
Hacienda
Vargas, including the rendezvous between Mariano and the scar-faced man and the way Don Encarnación had died, concluding with the details contained in the papers he had found in the hidden compartment of the old man's desk. “I could look around your camp for the man who met Vargas,” he offered.

      
“I already know who he is,” the president replied gravely. The lines of his heavy features seemed deeper, his expression haunted by the betrayal. “Emelio Jaról. He was with me when I was governor of Oaxaca. It is difficult to believe he could do this…but time and war have ways of changing men.” His liquid black eyes studied Fortune intently.

      
“If you're implying time and war have changed me, you're right. A year ago I would never have imagined being a landowner, much less a republican.”

      
“And now you are both.” It was not a question.

      
Fortune did not respond, but asked instead, “What are you going to do about Emelio?”

      
“Nothing, Don Lucero. Nothing at all—for now.”

      
Nicholas stiffened, surprise and anger registering on his face. He was saddle-sore and too tired to think straight. “After nearly ending up bushwhacked with Escondidas and then coming all this distance, you mean to say you don't believe me?”

      
“What the president means, Don Lucero, is that we want Emelio Jaról to believe you never reached us with this information, that the conspirators' plans are still a secret. Then we'll tell him what we want him to know and use him to bait a trap for Don Mariano and his friends.”

      
Nicholas turned around when he heard the familiar voice. “McQueen. I wondered when you'd crawl out of the woodwork again.” He watched as the pale
Americano
moved out of the shadows and took a seat across from him.

      
“I thought you'd be an asset to us, Fortune, but even at that, you had the devil's own luck stumbling on those documents.”

      
“Exactly how do you plan to convince Mariano Vargas and his friends that I never reached you?” Nicholas asked. A prickling sense of foreboding raced up and down his spine as McQueen almost smiled.

      
“You're going to disappear,” McQueen replied affably.

      
“I'm going home to Gran Sangre,” Fortune said firmly. “I kept my part of the bargain—went a hell of a lot of extra miles, in fact, to give you some very valuable information. Now I have a
hacienda
to run. Dozens of people are depending on me.”

      
“Including the lovely Doña Mercedes?” McQueen's tone was mild but the implied threat was palpable.

      
Fortune stood up. “If you're planning to expose me as a
gringo
impostor, you're too late. She knows I'm not Lucero. So does his mother—and, rather obviously, so does Hilario.” He walked over to McQueen, who remained seated, completely unruffled by the dangerous glint in Fortune's eyes. “I told you before, I don't take kindly to blackmail. And I told you I was through after I completed this assignment.” His voice was soft and deadly.

      
Juarez, who had been observing the exchange between the two dangerous Americans in judicial silence, now stood up, tossing a sheaf of papers across his desk. “I have here, Don Lucero, orders for our march to Chihuahua City, beginning the first of the year. According to your information, Vargas will strike after we leave the state capital, most probably near the Chihuahua-Durango border. If they believe you are dead, they'll go ahead with their plans—but if you return to Gran Sangre, they will change them. And”—he shrugged eloquently—“I might die. A small matter if it were only one man's life, but at this point in the war, I believe my death would throw the forces for constitutional government into disarray.”

      
Juarez gazed serenely at Fortune.

      
“You have an annoying way of understating a case and still cutting directly to the heart of the matter,” Nicholas said sourly. He felt for all the world as if he were the spoiled boy Luce, caught riffling the church poor box.

      
“Does that mean you'll remain in hiding while we arrange for word of your death to reach Mariano Vargas?”

      
Fortune sighed in defeat. With an oath he said, “Yes. But I want to send word to Mercedes that I'm alive. She's with child and I don't want to frighten her.”

      
McQueen started to object but the president raised his hand. “I will send a trusted messenger to her.” Benito Juarez, who had a wife and large family living in exile in the United States, understood how hard war was on women and children.

* * * *

January 1867

      
Mexico City was still festive but the frenetic gaiety was born of desperation. Brilliantly uniformed French and Austrian troops still drilled on the Zocolo, but everyone knew General Bazaine had received his orders to evacuate the capital shortly after the first of the year. Foreign embassies for the most part remained open, but many European diplomats started sending their families home.

      
At Chapultepec Castle the court festivities took on a tense, somber undertone in spite of the more lavish and hedonistic displays at balls, masquerades and picnics on the castle grounds outside the city. With the prim censure of Carlotta now removed, Maximilian's sycophants celebrated in his lavishly redecorated palace as if each day were their last. And their days were numbered.

      
Eighteen sixty-six had waned to an inglorious close for the Empire of Mexico with all the major seaports on both coasts as well as every northern capital city falling to the Juaristas. In the south, the bishop of Oaxaca petitioned General Díaz asking what clemency he might expect if he surrendered, to which the triumphant Juarista general had replied, “I'll shoot you in your golden robes.”

      
Then word from Paris reached the emperor that his wife had gone mad. Always driven and insecure, the empress had broken down in the midst of an audience with Napoleon III. She had been placed under physical restraint after a series of interviews with the French emperor and his Holiness Pope Pius IX. Maximilian vacillated. Should he fight on or should he abdicate and go to Carlotta's side? His indecisiveness left his courtiers in a quandary. Some were fearful, others cynically determined to take advantage of the “Austrian Dreamer” for as long as he lasted. After all, there was still considerable wealth remaining in the imperial treasury.

      
One such pragmatic individual was General Leonardo Marquez, a military advisor instrumental in persuading the emperor to stay in Mexico after the impending French evacuation. The Tiger of Tacubaya was a short, intense man with burning black eyes and a cunning yellow-toothed smile. At the moment, he stood surveying a sheaf of papers and gazing across the Zocolo from the balcony of the imperial palace.

      
“The way I see it, we have perhaps six weeks to wait before Bazaine leaves. Then”—he shrugged eloquently—“it is in the hands of the gods.”

      
His companion threw back his head and laughed heartily. “You mean the imperial treasury will be in the hands of the tiger!”

      
Marquez regarded his young subordinate with desultory fascination. Tossing the documents he held onto the top of an ornately carved oak table, he prowled languidly across the room, approaching Colonel Lucero Alvarado, who had by now earned his own nickname,
El Diablo
. Luce had become a satanic figure who dressed entirely in black, riding a great ebony stallion through the hearts of Juarista villages bringing terror and death.

      
“You want to be rich, Colonel? And here I believed you had joined the imperial cause for patriotic reasons.”

      
There was a sly teasing note in Marquez's voice that grated on Lucero's nerves, but he let it pass. The general was his key to escaping what was rapidly becoming an untenable situation. “I'm as much a patriot as you, my general,” he replied baldly, raising a glass of fine French cognac to his lips.

      
Now it was Marquez's turn to laugh. “Well said. Why do we fight then, if not for love of Mexico?”

      
“Silver?” Lucero ventured.

      
Marquez poured himself a crystal goblet of the cognac. “I don't think so—at least not you. No, you enjoy the thrill of danger, the blood sport of war. You enjoy it far more than I and they named me the tiger. You are the very devil. What demons drive you, I wonder?”

      
Alvarado's voice was flat when he replied, “Best not to tempt the devil, my general.”

      
“And the devil you are. Wrapping that Juarista general up in wet rawhide and letting the skin dry in the sun was an inventive touch worthy of me. The life was squeezed out of Aranga ever so slowly as it tightened.”

      
“You were my inspiration,” Luce replied dryly. “A pity the general didn't talk before he died. That silver shipment his soldiers stole from the imperial army would have been well worth recovering.”

      
“There is a good deal more in Maximilian's storerooms, believe me. After the French are gone, it won't be long before his dithering will deliver him into the hands of his enemies. Already he's considering a strategic move of his ‘Mexican Army’ to Querétaro, a more defensible position against Escobedo's armies.”

      
Alvarado noted his chief's thinly veiled gloating satisfaction. “And you, of course, concurred that the capital cannot be fortified and the best place to make a stand is at Querétaro.”

      
“We couldn't let the republican rabble lay ruin to all these splendid buildings our emperor has refurbished. What if they bring up siege guns? The
gringo
s have supplied them with some formidable weapons, after all.”

      
“So, Maximilian leaves and his treasury remains behind...with you to guard it.” Luce's smile was sharkish.

      
“Alas, I won't be able to convince him to let me stay, since he expects a great pitched battle and wants all his generals united under his command, but I'll find a way to return here when the time is ripe, believe me.”

      
“You can assign me to permanent duty here.” Luce waited expectantly for Marquez's response.

      
“I don't think that would be wise right now. You have acquired a rather, shall we say, unsavory reputation in central Mexico over the past few months. If you hadn't captured General Aranga, I would never have been able to secure your promotion.”

      
Luce's eyes flashed dangerously as he stared at the shorter, older man. “I did no more to earn my name than you did yours at Tacubaya. You had an entire city decimated and turned the women over to your troops as spoils of war. I'm leading guerrilla fighters, desperate mercenaries who expect plunder. The emperor hasn't exactly been prompt with payrolls of late. Something about the Juaristas capturing too many of the supply trains.”

      
The general waved his hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, so you give them their booty in the form of women and allow them to loot churches and local shopkeepers. Well and good, but you've been so efficient at your job the Juaristas have placed a price on your head. Your rather ingenuous method of execution for Aranga was the final straw for Díaz. The two men were old comrades at arms. I fear Díaz’s army is moving north with alarming rapidity, and he has promised to personally see to your execution.”

      
Luce cursed. “Peasant scum! Mixed-blood mongrels. We'll be long gone from Mexico with a fortune in silver before Díaz and his ragtag army ever reach the capital.”

      
“Colonel, I see I must speak a bit more bluntly. At the moment you are a liability. Even some of my comrade generals on the emperor's staff would not mind seeing you stand before a firing squad. Capturing the enemy's generals is commendable. Torturing them to death is not...at least for some of the more ‘civilized’ members of Maximilian's staff. For now, I want you to retire someplace obscure. Someplace I can reach you when the time is ripe.”

      
“I know the emperor has forbidden me to show my face at court.” Luce's expression was bitter. “I didn't expect you to insist on my utter banishment.”