An Affair of Honor Read online

  Front cover

  An Affair of Honor

  The fifth novel in the Honor Series following the exploits of Lt. Peter Wake United States Navy

  Robert N. Macomber

  Pineapple Press, Inc.

  Sarasota, Florida

  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

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2006 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

  www.pineapplepress.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data available upon request

  E-ISBN 978-1-56164-524-4

  Print and ebook design by Shé Hicks

  Dedication

  This novel is respectfully dedicated to

  Sidi Goudimi Ahmed,

  my incredible Berber driver/guide on the long trek

  along the coasts, through the mountains, and down to the desert of Morocco,

  a good man, a wonderful teacher, a patient friend, and an

  outstanding ambassador for his people, his nation, and his faith.

  Salaamu ’lekum, Sahbi. Shukran bezzef.

  and to

  the magnificent and ancient

  people of Morocco

  We are all the children of Abraham….

  Map 1

  U.S.S. Omaha in the West Indies December 1873

  Map 2

  Ashore in Italy Winter 1874

  Map 3

  Ashore in Spain January 1874

  Map 4

  Northern Africa Spring 1874

  Foreword

  As with all of my novels, I have tried to accurately portray the times and locales that Peter Wake encounters. I picked 1874 for this novel because of the tremendous amount of dynamic change going on around the world. What a time for Wake to head east!

  America was recovering from her self-slaughter the decade before. In the South, the military occupation of the Reconstruction was ending, the Democrats were returning to power, and the newly won freedoms for African-Americans were about to evaporate. Nationwide, the financial panic of 1873 had devastated large parts of the economy, the U.S. Army was fighting Indians out west, and the technological revolution was in full swing.

  The U.S. Navy was a sad, weak shadow of its Civil War strength—neglected by Congress, pitied or laughed at by other navies, and struggling to fulfill its squadron commitments around the world. The most powerful navies were the British, French, and German. Naval technology was advancing rapidly, but American sailors still had to sail.

  The Caribbean had become a fetid backwater of the European empires—sugar values were in decline and the mother countries were concentrating on expanding their holdings in Africa and Asia. The West Indies had become a drain on the empires and were no longer a prestigious posting.

  Europe in 1874 was full of intrigue. The French had been humiliated by the Mexicans in the mid-1860s and by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Napoleon III had been ousted, another republic proclaimed, and the nation was attempting to reestablish its confidence at home and image abroad. The victorious Germans had unified under Bismarck and Wilhelm I, and were becoming global players, expanding their military and naval power rapidly. The Italians, unified by Garibaldi and Cavour for the first time in sixteen centuries, were beaten by the Austrians in the war of 1866 and abandoned by their French protectors. The Spanish, having removed the corrupt monarchy, were trying to start a republic but falling back into the chaos of their perpetual civil war. The Austrians had united with the Hungarians and their empire stretched across much of central Europe and was now facing the Muslim Ottomans. The Ottoman Empire was beginning to crumble, but remained large and very dangerous. The Russians were desperately trying to modernize and keep up with the Germans, unsuccessfully. The smaller countries aligned themselves with their biggest neighbor or proclaimed a neutral stance and hoped for the best. Great Britain’s empire was in her glory, economically sound and protected by the most famous navy the world has known, but even she was watching the new German nation with close attention.

  Africa didn’t have many independent nations, but Morocco was one of them. Even the Ottomans couldn’t conquer the Magreb Arabs and Berbers. The French had a large economic influence there and the Moroccan leadership walked the tightrope of political reality. It was (and still is) a mystical land, in most ways ancient and completely alien to a European or American in 1874. Marrakech and Fez were the fabled cities of the caravan trade routes, the stuff of dreams and legends.

  Peter Wake ends up seeing all of this—a wary American naval officer suddenly adrift in Machiavellian Europe and mysterious Morocco. The dead-eyed oddsmakers of Monaco probably wouldn’t back him one centime, but my money’s on our hero.

  He has the wonderful American habit of beating the oddsmakers.

  Onward and upward!

  Bob Macomber

  Marrakech, Morocco

  Northwest Africa

  1

  Déjà Vu

  20 December 1873

  San Juan, Puerto Rico

  Spanish West Indies

  “More sangria, señor?” asked the waiter.

  Lieutenant Peter Wake, United States Navy, nodded and shifted his lanky frame back in the chair, reveling in the warm sea breeze. Seated at a stone patio table at the Café Réal, overlooking the jade-colored waters of San Juan’s bay, he savored the aromas of salt air, white frangipani flowers, and citrus-marinated grouper cooking on coals. Downing the drink in one long swig, he glanced over his shoulder, and immediately the waiter refilled the fruit wine that was enhanced by strong dark rum.

  The mold-covered, faded pink buildings of the declining Spanish empire were the same on this visit, but Wake felt a new air about the place. And not just because the ominous annual huracán season was ending. No, a momentous event had occurred just months earlier—slavery had been ended forever. Wake smiled at the thought of it as he drank the sangria, slower now, for he didn’t want to get drunk.

  The waiter’s dark face, leathered by time and toil, crinkled into a sly grin. “You are perhaps waiting for a beautiful lady to arrive, señor?” he asked.

  Wake laughed and answered with a mock sigh. “No, Jorge. I am expecting only a man. But it would be nice if a beautiful woman were with him.” Wake waved his hand around. “And yes, Jorge, it would complete this scene as a perfect memory for my old age.”

  “Sí, señor. A day like today should include a woman. And that memory,” the waiter sighed also, “would make you warm on a cold night when you are old, like me.”

  “Yes, you’re right. Please tell me, Jorge, just how did your English get so good?” Wake had wondered that since the waiter first greeted him at the café.

  “My original master was a British man in St. Augustine, up in Florida, señor. When the Americans bought it from Spain, he sold me to a Spanish family that was moving to San Juan. Then they sold me to this café owner’s father,
who bequeathed me to his son. I was twenty years old when I left Florida all those years ago, but I never forgot my English. My master here used me as a translator with American sailors in the port.”

  Wake did the mathematics and realized the man would be about seventy-three. “But now you are free,” he said.

  “Yes, señor. God has allowed me to live long enough to be a free man. I still work for my master here at the café, but now I do so willingly.”

  “And, of course, now they pay you for working.”

  “Oh no, señor. My master has no money to pay me, but he lets me stay in my old room and still lets me eat in the kitchen.” Seeing Wake’s reaction, the waiter shrugged, paternal softness coming into his voice. “Slavery is a state of mind and heart, señor. Money does not matter—my mind and my heart are now free.”

  As the waiter went back to the kitchen, Wake remembered the former slaves he had seen in Pensacola after the recent war in his country. The Republicans were trying hard to assimilate them into society as freedmen, but the problems of that lofty endeavor were far more difficult than anything a legal proclamation or the recent Constitutional amendment could overcome. Politics had a way of slowing the best of intentions and Wake wondered how much longer the effort would continue before the Democrats in Congress would grind it to a halt. In addition to all of that, corruption was widespread in the Reconstruction, with a lot of people—except the new black citizens—getting rich off the government. The thought of the whole mess depressed him. A lot of men, some of them his friends, had died in that war. Liberating the slaves was the one tangible outcome he could point to with pride.

  “You are looking very pensive, my old friend.”

  Wake turned around. Standing there was a slender, handsome man in his late forties, silver hair flowing over his collar. The man moved easily and could pass for a local, for he was wearing a guayabera, the Latino white shirt of the tropics that was so much more comfortable than Wake’s wool coat. His smile was accented by crinkled eyes and one eyebrow cocked high in a mien of mock concern. This was the man who had sent Wake the invitation for lunch.

  Jonathan Saunders was a former Confederate blockade runner and wartime foe turned friend. Wake had chased Saunders for two long years in Florida, the Bahamas, Mexico, and Cuba—catching him twice and thinking him surely dead once, but the devious rebel always escaped. Both had developed a grudging respect for the other, and after the war, in January of 1866, Wake had conducted an official naval visit to Saunders’ colony of former Confederates on the west end of Puerto Rico. The two men finally became friends and had stayed such in the years since.

  “Just thinking of the old days, Jonathan. It’s good to see you,” replied Wake. They shook hands and he beckoned Saunders to sit. “Been far too long. Now, how in the world did you know I was here? We just pulled in yesterday.”

  “Whenever I come to San Juan for business I always check the harbor to see if any American naval vessels are in. If they are, I always ask for you. But lately there haven’t been any, what with the war scare and all. Then this morning I saw the Omaha, asked, and heard you were aboard. It’s been, what, two years? You were just coming home from the Panamanian jungle then.”

  “Ah, yes, the Selfridge Survey Expedition. I was damn near dead from the fever when I saw you in seventy-one.”

  Saunders nodded at the memory. “You did look pretty bad. I was worried about you. It’s amazing, Peter—you managed to avoid yellow fever all those years in Florida, but it nailed you good in Panama.”

  “Enough of that story, Jonathan,” said Wake with a visible cringe at the memory of the pain endured while nearly dying from what the Royal Navy called the “black vomit.” It was time to change the subject. “Tell me, how’s your colony at Por Fin doing?”

  “Well, the sugar cane’s doing fine. Of course, people’ll always drink rum, so we’re making it through the money panic without too much trouble,” said Saunders, referring to the economic depression caused by the failure of financier Jay Cooke’s Northern Pacific Railroad three months earlier in September. By November, the panic that devastated the United States’ banks had spread worldwide. “We didn’t use slaves anyway, so emancipation hasn’t hurt us like it did some planter folks. As far as socially, the people at Por Fin have settled in with the surrounding towns pretty well, I think. You know, the west coast is a world away from the bureaucrats here in San Juan, so we just don’t have the same problems as many of the immigrants on the island.”

  “Then a toast is called for to celebrate continued success in your new life, Jonathan,” offered Wake when his friend’s drink arrived.

  “Thank you, my friend—”

  Saunders was interrupted by a Southern-accented feminine voice from behind Wake. “Oh my Lord, I do declare! If it isn’t my heroic savior, in the flesh and blood. Peter, my dear, how are you?”

  Cynda Denaud Williams swept onto the patio and caressed Wake’s right arm as she leaned over and embraced him, her bosom, mostly exposed by her low-cut dress, only inches from his eyes.

  Saunders tried not to laugh as Wake recovered from the shock of seeing the woman he had rescued from enemy territory near the end of the war. At the time he had fallen for her damsel-in-distress portrayal, even briefly starting to fall under her sexual spell until he came to his senses. She was a woman who could make men believe—and do—anything, and Wake couldn’t imagine that she had changed. Even though it had been eight years since he had last seen her in Key West she looked exactly the same—a beautiful blonde with a perfect figure and a honey-dipped voice.

  “Ah, hello, Mrs. Williams,” Wake said. “It is truly quite a surprise. I knew you had gone to Por Fin but didn’t expect to see you here in San Juan.”

  “Oh, Peter. We know each other far too well for such formalities.” She brushed away a lock of his brown hair and touched the scar on his right temple. “If you call me anything other than Cynda I do declare I shall cry. You don’t want to make me cry, do you, Peter?”

  Saunders held up a hand. “It’s my fault, Cynda. I forgot to tell him you were here in San Juan and would be with us for lunch. Now sit down, dear, while I explain. By the way, Peter, Cynda is no longer named Williams.”

  Wake wondered whom she had hooked. “Oh?”

  Saunders laughed. “Yes. Her divorce came through last year and we married in October. Her last name is Saunders now.”

  “Oh . . . well, Jonathan,” stammered Wake, stunned by the news and worried for his friend. “I certainly am surprised yet again. You never mentioned this the last time we met, or in your letters.”

  “Yes, well,” Saunders chuckled, “we just became serious this last summer, Peter.”

  “Then another toast is in order,” said Wake as the old waiter poured the lady’s wine. “To your life shared together. May it bring health, wealth, and love, and all the time to enjoy them.”

  “Oh, Peter, that was so very beautiful. Thank you,” gushed Cynda, clutching both Wake’s and her new husband’s arms as she sat between them. “Now, you simply must tell us how your life has been going for the last few years. Please start with your lovely wife, Linda.”

  “Linda’s doing just fine with the children in our house in Pensacola. Sean is growing up fast and learning all kinds of new things, and Useppa is having fun playing the big sister. She’s eight years old now, almost nine, and actually becoming a real help to Linda. Sean is six.”

  Saunders asked, “How is little Useppa’s leg doing? Were the doctors able to help her?”

  It was a subject that broke Wake’s heart. His little princess had pain in her lower right leg, making her limp and also causing some of the other children to make fun of her.

  “We’ve had her to several doctors, but they can’t determine what’s wrong, much less how to correct it. One suggested a heavy brace, but the others said that would make it worse. Linda and I are really worried for her.” br />
  Cynda squeezed his arm with obvious empathy. “Oh, Peter. I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you, Cynda. The good news is that Useppa’s young and strong. So there’s still a lot of time for her to get help. Say, how’s your little sister Mary Alice doing?”

  “She married a man named Pickett, of the famous family, and lives in Virginia. You heard about those scamps, the Yard Dogs?”

  Three former soldiers who had formed a minstrel troupe in Key West, the Yard Dogs had been friends of Wake during the war. They had been playing during the infamous tavern brawl of 1864, which was inadvertently started by Wake while defending the honor of his squadron. He escaped, seriously hurt, and was nursed overnight by a prostitute—he couldn’t remember her name—but the Yard Dogs had ended up in the Key West jail. It was a fact they later used to get rum out of him. “Come to think of it, I didn’t see them in Key West when I was there lately. What’s happened?”

  “Run out of Key West for a while by the Monroe County sheriff.” Cynda shook her head. “Those boys got into one bar fight too many at Schooner’s Wharf. Now they’re reduced to playing at fish camps along the Gulf coast. More their style, if you ask me.”

  Wake laughed. “Kip was always a good one at rousing the crowd, no doubt on it. Of course, Charlie and Brian were no slouches either. They’ll be back once the sheriff calms down.”

  “So how’s the naval career going?” interrupted Saunders. He was an old seaman and always interested in naval matters. “I hear the American navy’s going downhill fast. Is that true?”

  “The navy? Well, it’s surely not what it was during the war, or even doing well compared to the Latin American navies now.”