Anne Perry_World War One 05 Read online

  John Reavley had been driving to London to tell Matthew about it; given his job, Matthew could bring it to the attention of the right people, making it impossible to carry through. And he had died because of it. But before he left Cambridge, he had hidden the treaty, and no matter how the Peacemaker’s men had hunted for it, they had not found it. Matthew and Joseph had discovered it, on the eve of war. It was still in its hiding place in the barrel of the unused punt gun in their home in Selborne St. Giles. Without both copies, the Peacemaker could not present it to be signed by the king, and there was no time left to get the kaiser’s signature on another.

  Once war had begun the Peacemaker had turned his efforts—and those of his followers—toward making peace again as soon as possible. In the early years his intent had been to sabotage the British recruitment, which was all still voluntary then. Later he had sabotaged the scientific inventions that might have saved thousands of lives at sea, both in the merchant and Royal Navy, and tens of thousands of tons of vital supplies of both food and munitions.

  Still later he had used propaganda again. The reports of failing morale, escalating casualties, the pointlessness of so many deaths for an ideal that had been flawed from the beginning were designed to undermine British resolve and productivity.

  Matthew had wondered if the fearful explosion in Halifax, Nova Scotia, had somehow been the Peacemaker’s doing. It had happened on December 6 of the previous year. The French Canadian ship Mont-Blanc, carrying more than two and a half thousand tons of high explosives destined for the war effort, had struck a Norwegian ship in the narrows at the harbor entrance. Abandoned by her crew, the Mont-Blanc, rather than blowing up immediately as everyone had expected, drifted into the harbor itself until she rested against one of the piers. Then she exploded so violently that her every shred of shattered and burning debris fell on churches, houses, schools, factories, docks, and other ships. More than twelve thousand houses were damaged. Far more importantly, well over four thousand people were killed or injured. It was the biggest man-made explosion that had ever occurred. The devastation was bitter and lasting.

  But of course it was the murders of people he knew and loved that hurt Matthew most sharply—his parents, the man who had stolen the treaty and brought it to England, Augustus Tempany, Owen Cullingford, Theo Blaine. He knew that was foolish. No man or woman had more than one life to give, or to lose, but the death of someone whose face you know, whose voice is familiar, whose laughter and pain you have shared, wounds a different part of you, and reason doesn’t help its healing. He remembered Shanley Corcoran with a unique stab of pain, because his end had been worse than merely death.

  And of course he remembered Detta Hannassey, beautiful Detta who moved with such grace, and would now never walk with ease again. That was different, and perhaps the Peacemaker was not to blame, but that did not lessen the hurt.

  Now, in October 1918, he still did not know who the Peacemaker was, and could only guess at what else he might have done that was outside their knowledge. There could be a hundred other schemes, a thousand.

  He crossed the dark street. A taxi swept by, lights gleaming on black puddles, wheels spraying dirty water high. He leaped backward, hand up as if to ward it off, memory drenching him with sweat for those other times when the Peacemaker’s men had twice so nearly killed him. Once had been in the street in what would have looked like an accident. He straightened his coat and went on, feeling foolish.

  Of course he had spent more hours than he could count trying to find the Peacemaker’s identity and stop him. He had suspected several people and one by one ruled them out, only to find his facts turned on their heads by contradictory information. Most painful, as well as most compromising, was that it could have been Calder Shearing. The evidence had piled up. It was only last year that Matthew finally knew his superior’s innocence.

  Matthew and Joseph had both believed it could be Aidan Thyer, master of St. John’s College, Cambridge. They still had Thyer under suspicion, as well as senior cabinet minister Dermot Sandwell, close to the heart of government.

  Now it looked as if the war was going to end and they would never know. That would mean victory, peace, and a very personal failure. He had let his father down. John Reavley had never wanted his son to enter the intelligence service, had never liked the deviousness, the secrecy and lies it involved, the manipulation and betrayal inherent in its methods of gathering information.

  Soldiers who fight face-to-face have a certain honor. They also endure a kind of physical horror that comes as close to hell as a human being can conceive. The suffering, not only of body but perhaps even more of mind, belongs in a realm outside the imagination of sane men. Matthew had heard it discussed, but even the words of poets—some of the most powerful ever written in the English language—could barely evoke it.

  Men who returned on leave did not speak of it, not even his own brother. John Reavley would have been proud of Joseph—silently, joyously proud of him. Joseph had kept his word to his men throughout, swallowing his own pain and going forward again and again.

  What would John Reavley have said of Matthew? Would he have understood now what vital work the Secret Intelligence Service did? How many lives it saved, silently, unknown and unrecognized?

  He was only a couple of hundred yards from home now. Soon he would be able to take off his wet clothes and make himself a hot cup of tea. He would like to have had whisky, but it was becoming harder to get, and he would save it for later. There were shortages of just about everything: food, petrol, coal, clothes, paper, soap, and candles.

  Inside, the flat was cold. He put on the kettle and cut himself a couple of cheese sandwiches, piling on Hannah’s homemade chutney brought back with him from his last visit to Cambridgeshire. She had wanted to give him more, offering him all sorts of things he knew she could not really spare.

  She was lonely, with Archie at sea almost all the time. They had grown much closer since the summer of 1916, when she had seen so much loss, and forced him to tell her far more of the truth of his life as a destroyer commander in the North Atlantic. Before that she had been happy not even to imagine it in any realistic detail.

  Matthew understood why, and he admired her for at last taking that great step forward. But she had hated most of the changes the war had brought. She had never wanted the rights—or the responsibilities that went with them—that so many women now were forced to accept, willingly or not. She was nothing like Judith, who had gone without hesitation to France to drive an ambulance. Hannah was happy with her children and the village. She had stepped into her mother’s shoes, taking on the organization of village affairs, the knowledge of families’ loyalties and needs, the constant small kindnesses that bind a community together and make it possible to survive shattering loss. The end of the war would be a blessing for Hannah. At last she would be able to sleep without nightmares about Archie, or about her eldest son joining up, as he was so keen to do before it was too late to fight for his country.

  Matthew ate the sandwiches slowly. The cheese was a little stale, but the chutney masked it. He thought about having a whisky, and knew tea would be better. It was too easy to let one whisky become a second, and a third.

  For Judith the end of the war would be quite different. Suddenly she would be purposeless again, a single woman nearly thirty, in a marriage market almost bereft of young men. Those there would want someone more comfortable to be with: less passionate than Judith, less demanding, possibly even less brave or clever. The nation was tired. Beauty, even like hers, was good to look at, but disturbing and exhausting to keep. What would she do with all that fire that burned inside her?

  He was jerked out of his thoughts by the sound of the doorbell. It startled him, and it rang again before he stood up and walked into the hallway to answer. Even then he hesitated. He spent very little time in his flat. He worked long and irregular hours, and when he had a day or two off he went home to Cambridgeshire. It was most unusual to receive a visitor here.

  He opened the door slowly, keeping his weight at least half behind it so he could force it shut hard if necessary.

  “Major Reavley.” It was a statement, not a question. The bland face of the man in front of him held no doubt at all. He was of average height, his hair dark but thinning, his brows colorless, his features unremarkable, except possibly for his eyes. They were steady and penetrating. He wore the drab suit and white dog collar of a man of the church.

  “Yes?” Matthew answered without moving to allow him in.

  The man smiled very slightly, more with his eyes than his mouth. “I have a message for you that might have very little meaning for anyone else, but if it fell into the wrong hands could cost me my life,” he said quietly. “Very much more important, if it did not reach you, it could alter the peace that faces us. The outcome of the war is now inevitable, but what follows it is not. There is still much to play for.” This time the smile reached his lips as well. “I daresay it is just as cold inside, but it will be more discreet.”

  For Matthew there was only one decision possible. “Come in,” he offered, stepping back and allowing the man to pass him before closing the door again and making sure the lock was fast. “If you are cold, perhaps you would like tea, or whisky? How about a sandwich? It’s only cheese and chutney, but the chutney is good.”

  “Thank you. I have little time. I do not dare wait here too long, but a sandwich would be welcome.” The man had a very slight accent, as if German was his native tongue.

  Matthew boiled the kettle again while he made a sandwich, and then took the plate and tea together. “What is your message?” he asked, sitting down opposite the man. In the light from the lamp it was clear that he was well into his forties, and there were lines of strain and weariness in his face, especially around his eyes and mouth. “Is there any point in asking your name?”

  “Not really. I am only a messenger,” the man replied, swallowing hungrily.

  “Army chaplain, by your clothes,” Matthew remarked. “Does that mean anything?”

  “No. It’s just a convenient way to travel. But like you, I have a brother who is, or was. He was killed on the Somme last year.”

  “I’m sorry.” Matthew meant it. He could imagine losing a brother very easily. He always read casualty lists. He had nightmares about it.

  The man finished the whole sandwich and drank the last of the tea before speaking again. “Thank you. I imagine you are still interested in knowing the identity of the Peacemaker, as I believe you have called him?”

  Matthew felt the sweat stand out on his skin, and yet inside he was suddenly cold. No outsider could know the name they had given him. Who was this man? The silence in the room was so intense, he could hear the faint sounds of footsteps outside in the street.

  “For the death of your parents,” the man went on, watching Matthew’s face. “But also because he will have a very great effect on Britain’s demands at the peace negotiations, which cannot be more than weeks away now. I would estimate about the second week in November. If we make the wrong decision, we will pay for it in pain all over Europe, perhaps in a world far bloodier and more terrible than this one. Not only this generation will be lost, but our children’s generation as well, with weapons we have not dreamed of yet.”

  “I know!” Matthew said harshly. His chest was hurting. It was hard to breathe. The weight of grief seemed almost crushing. He remembered his father so vividly that he could hear his voice and smell the faint, familiar aroma of pipe tobacco and Harris tweed. Fragments of a dozen rambling jokes filled his mind. He was conscious of the man in the other chair watching him, seeing his intolerable hurt, and he resented it.

  “We must not let that happen,” the man said softly. “And if you do not stop the Peacemaker, he will rebuild his plans to create an Anglo-German Empire out of the ashes of this war, and then there will be another war, because Europe will never let that happen. Britain at least will not. We know that now. Perhaps if we had been wiser, we would always have known it.”

  “The Peacemaker—who is he?” Matthew demanded.

  “His name is no use to you without proof.”

  “Then what are you here for?” Matthew knew he was being unfair, but he had waited four long, bitter years for this and seen too many good friends die by the Peacemaker’s hand. To be offered knowledge at last, only to grasp it and find it a mirage, was like being openly taunted.

  “To tell you that his counterpart in Germany is willing to come through the lines and travel to England to expose him, at the cost of his own life if necessary, rather than see this holocaust descend on Europe again.”

  Matthew’s mind raced. Could it be true? Or was it one more chimera, another trick to obtain a final chance at destruction?

  “You have nothing to lose by bringing him through and listening to him,” the man said with infinite weariness in his eyes. “We are beaten. Germany has lost more than a million and a half men on the battlefield alone. The people are starved and broken, the land devastated, the government in ruins. No one who loves Germany, and is sane, wants to see that again. Manfred will come through the lines, if you tell him where and when. But it must be soon; we have no time to debate, or to weigh and consider. If you meet him, give him safe conduct, he will come back to London and tell your prime minister of the entire plot from the beginning. You already know much of it yourself. I imagine you still have the original of the treaty, or at least you know where it is.” Again it was not a question. He probably did not expect Matthew to answer.

  “What is his name?” Matthew repeated. Should he hesitate? Was there anything else to ask, any answer he could check? He was used to the double cross, the triple cross—it was the nature of his business. If this man was setting up some trap, he would carry with him at least one fact that could be checked. Its accuracy meant little. Even an amateur used one truth to disguise his other lies.

  The man hesitated.

  Matthew smiled. There was an irony in their situation, an absurdity, at this last stage with seas of blood already spilled.

  “Manfred von Schenckendorff,” the man answered. “Where should he come through the lines?”

  There was only one possible answer. Joseph was in Ypres, as he had been since the beginning. He had friends there, people he could trust. “Ypres,” Matthew answered. “Wherever the Cambridgeshires are. It changes from day to day now.”

  “Of course. Your brother.”

  “You knew he was there?” Matthew was surprised, and slightly disconcerted. This man had too much knowledge to be simply a messenger. Was this a last chance at vengeance by the Peacemaker, because Matthew and Joseph had been responsible for too many of his failures? No, that was impossible! He must have had far more plans than they could ever imagine. Countless people must have helped, or hindered. It was naïve to think Matthew and his family were high in the Peacemaker’s mind, now of all times.

  And yet it was John Reavley who had seen the original treaty and taken it, foiling the plot that would have betrayed France and prevented the war in the first place. Perhaps the Peacemaker would never forgive that.

  The man was waiting for him, watching his face. “We planned carefully,” he said at last. “We assumed it would be the Cambridgeshire lines at Ypres. But if you had preferred somewhere else, we would have made it so. It will be as soon as he can come. It is not easy. Two days, perhaps three. We cannot afford more.” He rose to his feet and stood still for a moment, then offered his hand.

  Matthew rose also and grasped it, holding it hard for a moment. He was tempted to ask who he was, and how he knew so much, but he was already certain he would receive no answer but the same tired, enigmatic smile. Then he let it go and walked the man to the door.

  Afterward, alone again, he stood in his silent flat, looking at the familiar, rather worn furniture, his favorite painting of cows on the wall, his shelves of books. In a few days he would know the identity of the Peacemaker at last. This time he would not know it through deduction, with its potential for error; he would have certain knowledge. How fitting that in the end the Peacemaker should be betrayed by his own, a man choosing compromise rather than dominion, honor rather than power, a hard peace that might last.

  Tomorrow morning Matthew would go to Shearing and tell him the news, then leave immediately for the Western Front and Ypres. He must be there when Schenckendorff came through. This really was the beginning of the end.

  He thought of his mother and father driving along the Hauxton Road to tell him about the treaty nearly four and a half years ago, on that last golden summer when the world had seemed so unbreakably innocent. In spite of himself, his eyes filled with tears.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  Across London, in Marchmont Street, the man Matthew thought of as the Peacemaker was standing in his upstairs sitting room with the lights out and the curtains wide open, staring down at the street. There was very little he could see, even though his eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, really no more than the occasional gleam of hooded headlamps on the glistening wet road as now and then a car passed by.

  It was nearly the end of the struggle. There was just one more big hand to play, and then it was over. Peace was inevitable now—of a kind, but nothing like the peace the world could have had if his plans had succeeded in 1914. He had seen the horror of the Boer War at the turn of the century. The slaughter, the waste, and the shame of it had never left him. He had sworn that such things would never happen again if there was anything he could do to prevent them—any price at all he could pay.