Back in France, 051 was overseeing the entire operation from a townhouse in Le Havre, under the alias of a maritime insurance broker. His network stretched from the French coast to the docks of Portsmouth and Plymouth, and every week, his couriers risked the gallows to deliver updates to Versailles.
He had once been a naval officer, discharged for reasons that no record would ever reveal. His loyalty now belonged to the Ghost Cell alone — and, by extension, to the child-prince who had conceived of the operation's broader design.
"Our advantage," 051 wrote, "lies not in our numbers, but in our patience. The British act as though the sea belongs to them. We act as though time belongs to us."
In one intercepted letter, a British quartermaster complained of delays and "unexplainable" deficiencies in supplies. Timber seemed to arrive warped. Nails rusted faster than expected. Sails mildewed in storage. All accidents, of course.
Every inconvenience was a whisper of French interference — a quiet revenge for centuries of maritime rivalry.
That same week, as the sun dipped low over the gardens of Versailles, the Dauphin stood on his balcony, the report still fresh in his hands. Below, the fountains sparkled like molten gold in the evening light. The boy's mind, though biologically young, moved with the precision of an engineer.
He was thinking — not boasting, not celebrating — just thinking.
A new world was being shaped across the oceans, and even as Britain planted her penal colony, he imagined what might one day grow in its shadow: a French presence disguised as absence, a network seeded within the bones of the British project itself.
To most, he was just a prince playing with wooden ships. To those who knew, each toy vessel was a model of strategy — a symbol of how even empires could be hollowed from within.
Within the report, 051 included one final message — coded in a way only Dupri could read aloud to the Dauphin in privacy:
"We are ghosts aboard their ships, and soon ghosts upon their shores. When they arrive in that distant land, they will bring with them not only their convicts, but our will."
"Their foundation is salt and sickness. Their colony will survive — but only as a wound that will never heal."
The Dauphin said nothing for a long time. Then, in his precise, boyish handwriting, he wrote his reply:
"To 051: Continue as planned. Let the sea judge the pride of rebels."
Dupri sealed the letter and left the room silently, disappearing into the growing dusk.