The Truth is Dead Read Online Free PDF

came to nothing. I was defeated in the end, but not by Russia. By the weather. The winter!
    “My God, Lavoisier, you have never seen anything like that. You, the great scientist! In all your wanderings around Europe, you never saw what I saw in Russia in 1812. We captured Moscow, and then? What? I didn’t have the men to hold it, and I … may have hesitated. We pulled out of the city, putting it to the torch, only to find the Czar’s men coming at us from the south. We engaged, it was bloody, and then we began the long walk out of Russia, but the winter beat us to it. And the cold… Holy Christ, the cold. The snows came early, they said, and caught us while we were still halfway to Vilna. The temperature dropped and kept dropping. Forty below zero! For three weeks.
    “You have never seen anything like that, Lavoisier, with all your science. You should have been there, to learn what the cold will do to a man who tries to keep walking until he freezes on his feet. There were those who made the mistake of taking their boots off; they would never get them back on again, and frostbite took their toes in days. There were those who lay down in the cold and went to sleep; but the ones who kept walking were worse. Their faces! Their faces were red, flushed with blood, as if their veins had frozen and blocked, but still they walked until their noses and ears bled. I saw tears of blood, Lavoisier – is such a thing possible? Yes, I saw it. And still they would walk until they froze where they stood. And if they made it to the bivouac each evening, still they were not safe. I saw men walk straight into a campfire and lie down, oblivious to the fact they were burning to death. And no one tried to stop them. There was precious little firewood to be had…”
    He stopped, the force of his vitriol seeping away among the awful memories.
    “And then, just before they sent me to this prison island, one of my spies heard an interesting story about a scientist in England who had a trace of a French accent…”
    Lavoisier inclined his head slightly. He didn’t mind the Emperor’s rantings. He knew him of old, and he had of course heard of his developments.
    “ Et voilà! Your servant, ready to do your bidding.”
    “At a price.”
    “Naturally.”
    Napoleon thumped the table. “Dammit! This is France we’re talking about.”
    “No, it isn’t,” Lavoisier said. “It’s you we’re talking about.”
    Napoleon stood. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. I am going to bed. A room has been prepared for you. Eat something if you will.”
    Lavoisier stood. “Thank you, no. I am not hungry.”
    Over breakfast two days later, the two men met again. Lavoisier had spent his time supervising the transportation of what passed for his laboratory from the docks up to the house. Napoleon had turned over an unused kitchen to the stranger, with the strictest instructions that no one was to enter the room or disturb him in any way.
    “What is it that you want?” Lavoisier asked, though he had more than a rough idea.
    Napoleon regarded the face opposite him. Now impossibly wrinkled, its characteristic almond shape, long nose and wide eyes were still the same as ever, though there was a touch of death in those eyes that had not been there before. Lavoisier, for his part, was studying the eyes of the Emperor, thinking that even when he smiled, there was always the look of death about him.
    “When I knew you first,” Napoleon said, “I was a student at the École. You were ending your time at the Royal Gunpowder Administration. Was it 1787? The accident?”
    “It was 1788,” Lavoisier said testily.
    “What happened? I heard you were experimenting with some new explosives.”
    Lavoisier said nothing.
    “They must have been … efficacious. Mademoiselle Chevraud was killed in the explosion, was she not?”
    Lavoisier had been goaded enough. “Yes,” he spluttered. “And that fool Le Tors. He would never listen to my instructions. And yes, it was