At Some Disputed Barricade (6 page)

But Matthew still found he was striding out even more rapidly, with his anger against the Peacemaker, alive or dead, so hard inside him it hurt his chest to breathe.

Now he had enough information to report his findings to Calder Shearing, the head of his branch of Intelligence.

“Morning, Reavley,” Shearing said as Matthew came into his office. “Anything on the sabotage in the factory in Bury St. Edmunds yet?” He looked up from his desk. He was a man of barely average height. His black hair was receding severely, but his face was so dominated by his dark eyes and powerful, expressive brows that one did not notice the expanse of his forehead. His nose was aquiline, his lips delicate and unusually sensitive.

“Yes, sir,” Matthew replied, still standing at attention. One did not relax until Shearing gave his permission to. “I have sufficient evidence for the police to deal with it now.”

“Then give it to them,” Shearing ordered. “There’s plenty more to be getting on with. There’s an unusually high number of accidents at the munitions factory in Derby—Johnson Heathman and Company. I—”

“I’ll give it to Bell,” Matthew interrupted him almost without realizing that he did so. “Tom Corracher came to see me two days ago with something far more urgent.”

Shearing’s brows rose and his eyes were bright and cold. “More urgent than sabotage of our munitions factories, and yet you left it for two days to come and tell me?”

Matthew remained at attention. He had worked with Shearing since before the war, and at times their tacit understanding of each other was like the best sort of friendship. They did not speak of emotions. Even last week when they had sat up all night together over merchant shipping losses, bruised at heart over the deaths of hundreds of men, no words had been necessary. To Matthew these losses were infinitely more vivid since his experiences during the Battle of Jutland. Now he knew the slow, crawling fear of night patrol when the enemy could be anywhere under the dark water and fire, explosion, and drowning came without any warning at all. He knew the head-splitting noise of the great guns, the smell of blood and fire.

And he knew what it was like to sink an enemy ship and watch it go down, with a thousand men just like yourself, to be buried in the darkness of the ocean forever.

What he did not know was anything of the nature or the passions, the background, the home or family of the man sitting behind the desk now, waiting for his explanation. He did not even know if Shearing had ever personally seen anyone die. Perhaps for him it was numbers, something all in the mind, like a chess game.

There was one picture in Shearing’s office, a painting of the London docks at twilight, and nothing else that betrayed his taste, his feelings, his own inner life. There were no books except those of a professional nature; no novels, no poetry. There were no photographs on the desk or the walls. He never mentioned his family, if he had any, or where he lived or had grown up, his school or university—nothing.

There had been many times when Matthew had wondered if Shearing himself could be the Peacemaker, before he knew it was Hannassey. It was a fear that had gripped him with an acute sadness. He had wanted to like Shearing. He found it easy to admire him. The suppleness of his mind, his occasional dry wit, the self-mastery and the dedication which kept him at his desk all day and half the night. It was the ability to trust him that had eluded Matthew, until Jutland had proved that the Peacemaker was Hannassey. Then suddenly relief, sweeter than he had expected, swept away suspicion. Now the trust was eroded again. Still he had no choice but to tell Shearing what he was doing; to attempt it secretly would betray his doubt, and he could not afford that.

“Reavley!” Shearing’s voice cut across Matthew’s thoughts impatiently.

“Yes, sir!” Matthew snapped his attention back. “It was a story I needed to investigate before I brought it to you. I couldn’t judge the importance of it without making some careful inquiries.”

“And you found it true.” That was a statement.

“It seems to be.”

“Then sit down, man, and tell me!” Shearing snapped. “Don’t stand there like a damn lamppost!”

“Yes, sir.” Matthew pulled up the chair and sat down. He recounted everything that Corracher had said, and how much of it he had been able to verify.

“And you believe that the removals of these four men are connected?” Shearing asked when Matthew finished. “Who do you consider responsible? Hannassey is dead.”

“Yes, sir,” Matthew responded, knowing the words were meaningless.

There was a wry amusement in Shearing’s eyes. “One of his disciples taken his mantle of power?”

“I don’t know, sir. That is first among the many things I would like to find out. But whoever it is, his purpose seems to be broadly the same, and his skill is obviously formidable. And I’d like to save Corracher, if possible.”

Shearing’s mouth pulled tight. “Not likely,” he said bitterly. “If the man behind this is as clever as you think, he’ll have made provision for Corracher fighting the charge. Wheatcroft’s wife has powerful family connections. They’ll all want to believe her, and take the blame off Wheatcroft, true or false. Think carefully before you act, Reavley—and keep me informed. You might end by making it even worse.”

It was a dismissal, but Matthew refused to stand up. “Are you telling me not to do anything, sir?” he said between his teeth.

“No, I’m telling you to use your brain, not your emotions!” Shearing said tartly. “Be as angry as you like. Go home and smash the china, swear at the neighbors, punch the furniture. Then grow up and do your job.”

Matthew sat motionless.

“Now!” Shearing shouted suddenly. “It’s a filthy thing to do! It’s deceit and betrayal and it soils everything it touches. Don’t sit there like a grave ornament! Do something!”

“Yes, sir.” Matthew stood up. Quite unreasonably, it made him feel better to see Shearing’s temper snap, too, and to know that under his tightly controlled surface he was just as furious and offended as Matthew himself.

That evening the man whom Matthew had referred to as the Peacemaker stood at the window of an upstairs room in his house on Marchmont Street, only a few miles away from Matthew’s flat. He was waiting for a visitor and uncertain when he would arrive. It was no longer possible to rely on steamers or trains. The German Grand Fleet had not left harbor since the Battle of Jutland, but U-boats still patrolled the seas, necessitating that British warships guard troop carriers bringing back the wounded from France and Flanders.

It grew darker. The soft colors of the sky were fading, light reflected on windows opposite. The fire watch would be out soon, looking for zeppelins, waiting for the explosion of bombs. The streetlamps would make the city an easy target from the air.

His hands clenched and unclenched, his nails digging into his palms when he saw a taxi slow as it passed his house, then speed up again. He had known it would not be Richard Mason; he would not be foolish enough to get out right at the door. However, he would be tired after the long, dangerous, and heartbreaking journey. He might be careless. He had been once before.

The Peacemaker drew the curtains closed and turned away from the window, impatient with himself and the emotion raging inside him, which locked the muscles of his arms and chest, making them ache. Mason, the man he was waiting for, was possibly the best of all the war correspondents. He had sent dispatches from all the places where the fighting was fiercest: France, Flanders, Northern Italy, Bulgaria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia. He did not quote figures of men dead or wounded, or yards of mud-soaked land gained. He wrote with passion of individual experience, one act of heroism, one victory, one death. He described the weariness, the disgust, the hunger he himself felt, or the laughter, the letters from home, the silly jokes and terrible food. He hid nothing. Through the human suffering and tragedy of a few he painted the whole. In his words the destruction of Europe, now spreading across the Near East, North Africa, India, and America as well, was brought to life.

The Peacemaker had always known that the human cost of war was beyond measuring. As young men during the Boer War, he and Mason had both seen the concentration camps, the brutality, the degradation of the spirit. They had not known each other then, but the experience had given them a common goal. Both were consumed by an ideal that war should never be allowed to happen again, but the Peacemaker was willing to go to any lengths. One man, ten men, a hundred were a price not worth the counting if it could prevent the slaughter of ten million and the ruin of nations.

The Peacemaker had conceived a plan, and but for a collision of events no one could have prepared for, he would have succeeded. The treaty that would have bound Britain and Germany in an alliance unbeatable by any other axis of nations had been found by John Reavley, and seeing its potential with short-sighted patriotism rather than a world vision, he had stolen one of the copies to expose it. There was no time to write it out again, and have the kaiser sign it. The assassination in Sarajevo had altered everything. Even killing Reavley had not retrieved the document, and the buildup to war had become unstoppable.

Of course he had tried to find ways to bring about peace since then—he had never stopped trying. It had become a passion that devoured everything else in him, overtook his life and cost him every other wish or dream, every principle or ideal he had treasured, certainly all personal happiness. But what was that when balanced against the ruin of Europe and its centuries of beauty, its magnificence of thought, its philosophy and dreams, not to mention the loss of human life?

Every attempt had been foiled either by tides of circumstance or the intervention of an individual. In at least three instances that he knew of he had been frustrated by the sons of John Reavley, who were still bent on avenging his death, and still held his foolish idealism.

After the first poison gas attack in the trenches at Ypres in 1915, and the slaughter on the beaches of Gallipoli, Mason had written a brilliant article exposing the arrogance and extreme incompetence of the command in the second instance. Joseph Reavley had been briefly at Gallipoli also. He had pursued Mason back toward England and finally caught up with him in an open boat in the English Channel when they had survived the sinking of the ship they had been in.

What conceivable part of Reavley’s shortsighted philosophy could have changed Mason’s mind and persuaded him to abandon not only his article but also the entire cause? It had taken the Peacemaker more than a year to win him back and make him see the greater cause again.

It was Matthew Reavley who had caused the death of Patrick Hannassey, but this had not been unwelcome. Hannassey had been extremely useful, but by the summer of 1917 he was becoming a liability—greedy and unreliable. Corcoran had been one of the Peacemaker’s successes. Other plans were almost ripe as well.

So he paced the floor of his room trying to compose his mind as he waited for Richard Mason and the report he would bring from Russia, and even more important, from Germany itself. The Peacemaker had seen a year ago that the key might lie in the deluge that was about to break over the tsar’s government and bring it to an end. Now it had happened. Kerensky was in control now. He was a man of vision and humanity, a man of compromise. Lenin was there now, too, and Trotsky—but they were extremists. In time they would take Russia out of the war. There would be no more Eastern Front to bleed away German strength and crush its men with the deadly cold and hunger, and the useless marches and sieges that had ruined every army that had tried to conquer that vast country. Dear God, even Napoleon had learned that at crippling cost. Did the kaiser really delude himself he could do better?

God knew Germany tried hard enough to keep the United States out of the war, knowing how their strength would renew the almost beaten forces of Britain and France. Until January of this year, 1917, they had succeeded. But Zimmerman, the German foreign secretary, had sent that idiotic directive to Mexico to attack the United States. The telegram had somehow found its way to President Woodrow Wilson. America had had no choice but to declare war on Germany and join the Allies.

Tens of thousands more lives would be lost as the war dragged on for another year, and another. The blind, insensate stupidity of the leaders who sacrificed men for nothing but their own arrogance, their petty “little England” mentality, brought the hot rage to his mind. The sweat stood out on his body and he could feel his heart pounding. Britain and Germany were natural allies. Together they could have brought peace and safety to half the world, prosperity and civilized government, and the highest culture mankind had ever seen.

Instead Britain in its imperial conceit had loosed a storm of destruction that threatened to bring back the Dark Ages, and leave Europe all but uninhabited, except by the old, the crippled, and the lonely women whose men were buried in the blood-soaked earth.

He steadied himself with difficulty, breathing in slowly and out again, counting the seconds. There was still hope. He must be in total control when Mason arrived.

He heard another car go past and whirled around to stare at the door, then was furious with himself for giving in to such impulse.

And it was meaningless. Mason would not drive past this house. He would stop at least a hundred yards away.

Then there was the knock on the door.

“Come,” he said quietly.

The manservant came in. “Mr. Mason is here, sir,” he said respectfully. “Would you like tea, or perhaps a glass of whisky? There is Glenmorangie in the decanter, sir.”

“Bring tea and then leave us,” the Peacemaker replied. Mason would be tired and cold. There might be something to celebrate later, but not yet. It depended very much on what news he also brought from Germany.

“Yes, sir.”

Mason’s footsteps sounded on the stairs, and a moment later he came into the room. He was thinner than when the Peacemaker had last seen him, but he still moved with a certain grace in spite of the fact that he must have been exhausted. It was an energy of mind rather than of body that kept him going. It burned in his dark eyes now, and the power of his emotion was suggested in the lines of his face, the broad cheekbones and wide mouth.