At Some Disputed Barricade (27 page)

Sandwell’s face was bleak. “He wouldn’t,” he answered, motioning Matthew to sit down and sitting opposite him. “He sounds like an Englishman because he’s taught himself to, and he’s nothing if not thorough. Actually he’s an Austrian Jew. Settled here thirty years ago. No idea what happened to his family. None of them are here in Britain, or ever were.” He sipped his brandy. “Unless they came in under forged papers, but I’m as certain as I can be that they didn’t. His name was originally Caleb Schering.” He spelled it out, in the German way.

Matthew drank a mouthful of his brandy. It was a waste of a fine spirit, but he needed its fire more than its savor. “How in God’s name did we come to have him in the Secret Intelligence Service at all, let alone as head of it?”

“Because he started when we had no cause to fear Germany, let alone the Austro-Hungarian Empire,” Sandwell said simply. “And there’s no proof of a single error or slip of any kind against him. English sense of fair play, I suppose!” He shrugged slightly. “Added to which, I daresay he knows where a few bodies are buried. No one will want to be the first to suggest anything. He’s an agreeable man. People like him. One doesn’t want to seem paranoid, seeing ghosts where there are none.”

“God Almighty!” Matthew swore. “How…how bloody amateur!”

Sandwell smiled, his expression suddenly warm and extraordinarily charming. “The English disease,” he said ruefully. “And at times our genius.”

Matthew closed his eyes. “Not this time.”

“What are you going to do?” Sandwell asked after a moment or two.

“Collect evidence,” Matthew replied. “There’s nothing else I can do.”

“Where will you take it?” Sandwell’s face darkened. “Be careful, Reavley. There have been murders already. I don’t know how many, but he is playing for empires, even millions of lives. Yours would be nothing to pay for victory.”

Matthew grimaced. “I’ll remember.”

Matthew spent a wretched night. Unable to sleep, he sought every kind of escape from the only conclusion now possible.

He lay staring at the ceiling. He was safe and comfortable in his own bed. The silence surrounded him, cocooning him from the world. He began to think about his brother.

Joseph, if he was sleeping at all, would be in a hole dug in the sodden earth of Flanders. There would be no silence there. The guns never entirely stopped, least of all now with the battle for Passchendaele raging on. Now and then phosgene or mustard gas would be pervasive. Death and decay would be everywhere—the smell of it, the taste of it. Those Joseph shared tea and bad jokes with tonight might be torn apart by shrapnel tomorrow, and he would bury what was left of them.

And here was Matthew in silence and clean sheets, tossing and turning because tomorrow he would begin proving that Calder Shearing was the Peacemaker, the idealist turned betrayer who had killed John and Alys Reavley.

He finally gave up trying to sleep and made himself a cup of tea. Then he sat in his armchair noting all he knew already, and what he needed to learn from a reputable source who would not take the inquiry back to Shearing.

The second was the more difficult. He remembered Sandwell’s warning that Shearing would not hesitate to kill if he was threatened. Matthew already knew that. He had never forgotten Cullingford, and his loss still hurt. Looking back now he was certain that the attack in the alley when he had so nearly been knifed himself was not an attempted robbery but a murder foiled more by luck than skill.

Why? He had not suspected Shearing then. In fact it was barely twenty-four hours since they had eaten a hasty supper together of ham sandwiches and coffee, set up over maps of safe houses and escape routes for saboteurs. He could see it exactly in his mind’s eye: the lamplight on the table, Shearing’s dark head bent over the diagrams, his sudden smile when he had seen the solution, and then the eagerness in his voice. It had been one of the rare betrayals of emotion in him. Matthew had felt an intense companionship at that moment. They had even joked afterward; Shearing had told some long-winded story about a dog and a newspaper. They had laughed, mostly from relief.

There was really only one person he could speak to, and that was Admiral “Blinker” Hall, the head of naval intelligence. He had gone to him before when he had had knowledge that was sensitive and painful. He was used to harboring secrets that would make or break nations, and that could never be revealed.

It was still a little after one the following afternoon when Matthew was shown into Admiral Hall’s office. Hall was sitting behind the desk, papers spread in front of him. He was a stocky man with an eaglelike face and thick white hair. His narrowed blue eyes blinked rapidly every now and then, as if he could not help himself.

“Well, Reavley, no preamble. No time. What is it that you must tell me that cannot wait?”

“Not tell you, sir,” Matthew corrected him. “
Ask
you.”

“You had better know a good reason for this. Sit down, man. I’m not spending my time straining my neck looking up at you! Spit it out.”

Matthew sat obediently.

“Information has come to me, sir, from a source high in the government that casts doubt on some of Colonel Shearing’s actions and decisions.” He felt like a traitor saying it aloud.

“For example?” Hall asked, blinking several times.

“His explicit approval of Lieutenant Colonel Faulkner as prosecutor in the court-martial against Captain Cavan, and the other men, if they are caught,” Matthew answered. “Faulkner is an absolute hard-liner, and if Cavan is found guilty and shot, it will be a disaster to morale, possibly beyond our ability to cope with. It could even become a full-scale mutiny.” He had no need to elaborate for Hall what would follow that disaster.

“Have you asked him?” Hall raised his eyebrows.

“No, sir. I realize I know nothing about Colonel Shearing except that he is an Austrian-Jewish immigrant. He arrived some thirty years ago, and none of his family is in this country, as far as we know.”

“No, they aren’t,” Hall agreed, leaning back a little and making a steeple of his fingers on the desk. He regarded Matthew over the top of them. “All his family are dead. Both his parents were killed by the Austrian police. The woman he loved—Ingrid, I believe her name was—was raped and killed in a particularly brutal incident on the Serbian border. He and his brother, Baruch Schering, escaped to England, but Baruch went back, working for British Intelligence, to see what information he could gain about political alliances in the Balkans at the time. He was especially concerned about Austrian treaties with Russia which might affect us in the future.”

His eyes were steady, the blink forgotten. “He was caught and tortured, but he died without giving away any of our other men, although he knew the names of at least a dozen of them. It is because of Baruch and our debt to him that we trusted Caleb…Calder Shearing. He has never let us down. I am prepared to stake Captain Cavan’s life, and the outcome of the court-martial in Passchendaele, on his honor in this, if not his judgment. If, indeed, he really did propose Faulkner.”

Matthew sat still, his face burning, his brain trying to accommodate all he had heard, and decide what he believed. He had come in accepting at last that Shearing was the Peacemaker. Deeply as that hurt, he no longer fought the idea. Now all was confusion again.

Hall must have seen it in his face. “I understand your concern, Reavley. On the face of it, to send Faulkner seems the worst possible choice. He may have reasons we are unaware of. Find out, and bring me the answer.”

“I have no authority with which to question him, sir,” Matthew began.

“I said find out, Reavley, not ask him,” Hall snapped. “Learn what you can about any friendship between them. Is it possible Shearing is so burdened with other issues he has been misled, careless, or used by someone else? And do it quickly. We have no time to spare. Report to me in forty-eight hours. Or less, if you find a satisfactory answer.”

Matthew stood up. “Yes, sir.” His head was swimming. He heard every tick of the clock on the desk as if it were consuming the seconds until Cavan should be shot, and the whole Western Front collapse.

Judith also had very little sleep, and even in those brief hours snatched here and there she was troubled by memories and fears. She was accustomed to physical exhaustion and the discomfort of being bruised by the constant jolting of the ambulance over rough ground, her muscles aching from floundering in mud and trying to lift stretchers awkwardly. She was also, like everyone else, accustomed to being wet most of the time, having her feet hurt as her rough shoes scraped where the leather had become twisted and hard from being soaked and caked with mud. She felt permanently filthy. Like everything along the entire Western Front, she almost certainly smelled stale and dirty. She felt about as feminine as a road navvy or railway stoker…or a soldier.

Over the last year, that had not mattered. Seeing the wounded, thinking about the war in general and this Salient in particular was all that anyone had time for; helping friends, and friends were whoever was near you. But Mason had looked at her with that tender, aching intensity, the softness in his eyes so naked it tore through her like a fire, destroying complacency and balance.

Before the war she had been beautiful. She knew it from the reflection in men’s eyes. Now they looked on her as one of the chaps, something of a mascot even: a good driver, a good sport, brave, reliable, someone to trust. And yet still not really one of them.

As she lay curled up in the back of the ambulance, she could dimly see the outline of Wil Sloan a few feet away. He was breathing evenly, almost certainly asleep. She had never admired anyone more. Wil was brave with a casual air as if it were ordinary, and he made off-beat silly jokes, told long stories about the American West that no one else understood. But he laughed at the English tales that must have been equally obscure to him. He shared his food and blankets, when there were any, and he never complained. She would have trusted him with anything except the vulnerability of her emotional need and confusion at the moment.

He had helped her free the accused men from the farmhouse, and that could have cost him his life. It still might, for that matter. Colonel Hook had asked Joseph to find out how the escape had been effected, and he had been so obviously dilatory that Faulkner had insisted he be imprisoned for his collusion.

She turned over in bed carefully as her muscles tweaked with pain. Poor Joseph. He had been so wretched over realizing that Northrup had been shot by his own men, even though this time there was no way he could have avoided it. Mason knew, and that was the end of his chance to conceal it.

The last time she had seen Mason there had been a bitterness in his words, an anger that was not at the Germans just beyond the ridge, or at circumstances that had brought them all here. It was as if he had expected incompetence and futility, and hoped for nothing better. His faith in the world was gone.

She huddled a little tighter, remembering their conversation.

“Do you know
Through the Looking Glass
?” he had asked wryly.

“Yes, of course I do,” she had answered. She had loved it, possibly even more than
Alice in Wonderland
. There was an extra absurdity to the logic, and the poetry stayed in her mind, especially the White Knight. “‘…fingers in a pocket full of glue. Or madly pushing my left-hand foot into my right-hand shoe.’” Aloud she had said “Why?”

“‘Walrus and the Carpenter,’” he had replied. “Walking along the beach, ‘wept like anything to see such quantities of sand.’”

She picked it up. “‘If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year. Do you suppose, the walrus said, that they could get it clear?’”

“‘I doubt it, said the carpenter, and shed a bitter tear,’” he finished. “How many women, in how many factories, their backs aching, feet sore, labor all day and all night, to make the shells that are shattering this land and sending mud into new piles, for someone else to blast all over a slightly different place tomorrow, and tear apart a few more human bodies in the process? That’s real absurdity. A world that makes no sense.”

She had longed for something to say that would explain to him the will to fight, the love of all the remembered sweetness of life: small things like a walk in the woods at bluebell time; lark song early in the morning; sunlight on shaven fields in autumn when the air is gold; and big things like laughter with friends, and faith in tomorrow. But she did not want him to damage her faith with his disbelief, and paint gray over her dreams. They were too precious to risk. Without them she might not survive.

Now there was a darkness in Mason that saw no point in their efforts, almost as if he derided them in his own way. She remembered his words as they had stood together in the dark, talking in between the crashes of mortar fire and the heavy shells exploding less than a mile away. Even in the clouded night they could see the great gouts of earth and mud flying into the air. Judith perceived his anger—not only what he said, it was the edge of despair in his voice.