inquiries.”
She took that for consent. “Oh, thank you!” she said.
“Don’t thank me yet. Let me find out how practicable this is.”
“All right,” she said, but he could see that she was already assuming the outcome.
He stood up. “I must get ready for bed,” he said, and went to the door.
“When you’ve put on your nightclothes… please come back. I want you to hold me.”
Fitz smiled. “Of course,” he said.
On the day Parliament debated votes for women, Ethel organized a rally in a hall near the Palace of Westminster.
She was now employed by the National Union of Garment Workers, which had been eager to hire such a well- known activist. Her main job was recruiting women members in the sweatshops of the East End, but the union believed in fighting for its members in national politics as well as in the workplace.
She felt sad about the end of her relationship with Maud. Perhaps there had always been something artificial about a friendship between an earl’s sister and his former housekeeper, but Ethel had hoped they could transcend the class divide. However, deep in her heart Maud had believed-without being conscious of it-that she was born to command and Ethel to obey.
Ethel hoped the vote in Parliament would take place before the end of the rally, so that she could announce the result, but the debate went on late, and the meeting had to break up at ten. Ethel and Bernie went to a pub in Whitehall used by Labour M.P.s and waited for news.
It was after eleven and the pub was closing when two M.P.s rushed in. One of them spotted Ethel. “We won!” he shouted. “I mean, you won. The women.”
She could hardly believe it. “They passed the clause?”
“By a huge majority-three eighty-seven to fifty-seven!”
“We won!” Ethel kissed Bernie. “We won!”
“Well done,” he said. “Enjoy your victory. You deserve it.”
They could not have a drink to celebrate. New wartime rules forced pubs to stop serving at set hours. This was supposed to improve the productivity of the working class. Ethel and Bernie went out into Whitehall to catch a bus home.
Waiting at the bus stop, Ethel was euphoric. “I can’t take it in. After all these years-votes for women!”
A passerby heard her, a tall man in evening dress walking with a cane.
She recognized Fitz.
“Don’t be so sure,” he said. “We’ll vote you down in the House of Lords.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN – June to September 1917
Walter Ulrich climbed out of the trench and, taking his life in his hands, began to walk across no-man’s- land.
New grass and wildflowers were growing in the shell holes. It was a mild summer evening in a region that had once been Poland, then Russia, and was now partly occupied by German troops. Walter wore a nondescript coat over a corporal’s uniform. He had dirtied his face and hands for authenticity. He wore a white cap, like a flag of truce, and carried on his shoulder a cardboard box.
He told himself there was no point being scared.
The Russian positions were dimly visible in the twilight. There had been no firing for weeks, and Walter thought his approach would be regarded with more curiosity than suspicion.
If he was wrong, he was dead.
The Russians were preparing an offensive. German reconnaissance aircraft and scouts reported fresh troops being deployed to the front lines and truckloads of ammunition being unloaded. This had been confirmed by starving Russian soldiers who had crossed the lines and surrendered in the hope of getting a meal from their German captors.
The evidence of the approaching offensive had come as a big disappointment to Walter. He had hoped that the new Russian government would be unable to fight on. In Petrograd, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were vociferously calling for peace, and pouring out a flood of newspapers and pamphlets-paid for with German money.
The Russian people did not want war. An announcement by Pavel Miliukov, the monocled foreign minister, that Russia was still aiming for “decisive victory” had brought enraged workers and soldiers out onto the streets again. The theatrical young war minister, Kerensky, who was responsible for the expected new offensive, had reinstated flogging in the army and restored the authority of officers. But would the Russian soldiers fight? That was what the Germans needed to know and Walter was risking his life to find out.
The signs were mixed. In some sections of the front, Russian soldiers had hoisted white flags and unilaterally declared an armistice. Other sections seemed quiet and disciplined. It was one such area that Walter had decided to visit.
He had at last got away from Berlin. Probably Monika von der Helbard had told her parents bluntly that there was not going to be a wedding. Anyway, Walter was on the front line again, gathering intelligence.
He shifted the box to the other shoulder. Now he could see half a dozen heads sticking up over the edge of a trench. They wore caps-Russian soldiers did not have helmets. They stared at him but did not point their weapons, yet.
He felt fatalistic about death. He thought he could die happy after his joyous night in Stockholm with Maud. Of course, he would prefer to live. He wanted to make a home with Maud and have children. And he hoped to do so in a prosperous, democratic Germany. But that meant winning the war, which in turn meant risking his life, so he had no choice.
All the same his stomach felt watery as he got within rifle range. It was so easy for a soldier to aim his gun and pull the trigger. That was what they were here for, after all.
He carried no rifle, and he hoped they had noticed that. He did have a nine-millimeter Luger stuffed into his belt at the back, but they could not see it. What they could see was the box he was carrying. He hoped it looked harmless.
He felt grateful for every step he survived, but conscious that each took him farther into danger. Any second now, he thought philosophically. He wondered whether a man heard the shot that killed him. What Walter feared most was being wounded and bleeding slowly to death, or succumbing to infection in a filthy field hospital.
He could now see the faces of the Russians, and he read amusement, astonishment, and lively wonderment in their expressions. He looked anxiously for signs of fear: that was the greatest danger. A scared soldier might shoot just to break the tension.
At last he had ten yards to go, then nine, eight… He came to the lip of the trench. “Hello, comrades,” he said in Russian. He put down the box.
He held out his hand to the nearest soldier. Automatically, the man reached out and helped him jump into the trench. A small group gathered around him.
“I have come to ask you a question,” he said.
Most educated Russians spoke some German, but the troops were peasants, and few understood any language other than their own. As a boy Walter had learned Russian as part of his preparation, rigidly enforced by his father, for a career in the army and the foreign ministry. He had never used his Russian much, but he thought he could remember enough for this mission.
“First a drink,” he said. He brought the box into the trench, ripped open the top, and took out a bottle of schnapps. He pulled the cork, took a swig, wiped his mouth, and gave the bottle to the nearest soldier, a tall corporal of eighteen or nineteen. The man grinned, drank, and passed the bottle on.
Walter covertly studied his surroundings. The trench was poorly constructed. The walls slanted, and were not braced by timber. The floor was irregular and had no duckboards, so even now in summer it was muddy. The trench
