“Educated by the Jesuits,” Winters continued. “But the interesting thing about him is that to the eye or ear he is not obviously Irish. He has no accent, or at least when he wishes to he can sound like an Englishman. He also speaks fluent German and French, and has traveled very considerably over a great deal of Europe. He is reputed to have good connections with international socialists, although we don’t know if he sympathizes with them or merely uses them.”
“What about other nationalist groups?” Matthew asked, not sure in which direction he was driving, but thinking primarily of the Serbians because of their recent resort to assassination as a weapon.
“Probably,” Winters answered, his cadaverous face furrowed in thought. “Trouble is, he’s very difficult to trace because he’s so unremarkable to look at. I don’t know that he deliberately disguises himself. Nothing so melodramatic as wigs or false mustaches, but a change of clothes, parting the hair on the other side, a different walk, and suddenly you have a different person. No one remembers him or can describe him afterward.”
A young man in a Guard’s uniform walked past them whistling cheerfully, a smile on his face.
“So he has a sense of proportion, no theatrics,” Matthew observed, referring to Hannassey. “Clever.”
“He’s in it to win,” Winters affirmed. “He never loses sight of the main purpose.”
“And the main purpose is?”
“Independence for Ireland—first, last, and always. Catholics and Protestants together, willing or not.”
“Obsessive?”
Winters thought for a moment. “Not so as to lose balance, no. Why are you asking?”
“I’ve heard rumors of a plot,” Matthew said with studied casualness, adding, “Wondered if Hannassey could be involved.”
Winters stiffened slightly. “If it’s an Irish plot, you’d better tell me,” he said, keeping up his steady, easy pace as they passed an elderly gentleman stopping to light his cigar, cupping his hands around the flame of his match. The breeze was only a whisper, but it was sufficient to blow out the match.
The hurdy-gurdy man changed to a love song, and some of the young people started to sing with him.
“I don’t know that it is.” Matthew was sorely tempted to tell Winters all he knew. He desperately needed an ally. The loneliness of confusion and responsibility weighed on him almost suffocatingly. “It could be any of several things,” he said aloud.
Winters’s face was bleak. He was still looking straight ahead and avoiding Matthew’s eyes. “How much do you really know what you’re talking about, Reavley?”
It was the moment of decision. Matthew took the plunge. “Only that someone uncovered a document outlining a conspiracy that was profoundly serious, and he was killed before he could show it to me,” he answered. “The document disappeared. I’m trying to prevent a disaster without knowing what it is. But it seems to me that with the Curragh mutiny, the failure to get any Anglo-Irish agreement, and now the king coming out on the side of the Loyalists, a plot against him fills the outline too well to ignore.”
Winters walked in silence for at least fifty yards, which took them around the end of the Serpentine. The sun was hot, baking the ground. The air was still, carrying the sounds of laughter from the distance, and a thread of music again.
“I don’t think so,” he said at last. “It wouldn’t serve Irish purposes. It’s too violent.”
“Too violent!” Matthew said in amazement. “Since when has that stopped the Irish Nationalists? Have you forgotten the Phoenix Park murders? Not to mention a score of other acts of terror since! Half the dynamiters in London have been Fenians.” He barely refrained from telling Winters he was talking nonsense.
Winters seemed unperturbed. “The Catholic Irish want self-government, independence from Britain,” he said patiently, as if it were something he had been obliged to explain too many times, and to men who did not wish to understand. “They want to set up their own nation with its parliament, foreign office, and economy.”
“That’s impossible without violence. In 1912 over two hundred thousand Ulstermen, and even more women, signed the Solemn League and Covenant to use all means necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule parliament in Ireland! If anyone thinks they’re going to suppress Ulster without violence, they’ve never been within a hundred miles of Ireland!”
“Very much my point,” Winters said grimly. “To have any hope at all of succeeding, the Irish Nationalists will have to win the cooperation of as many other countries outside Britain as they can. If they assassinate the king, they will be seen as merely criminals and lose all support everywhere—support they know that they need.”
They passed an elderly couple walking arm in arm, and nodded politely to them, raising their hats.
“Hannassey is not a fool,” Winters continued when they were out of earshot. “If he didn’t know that before the assassination in Sarajevo, he certainly knows it now. Europe may not approve of Austria’s subjugation of Serbia, and they may get into such a violent and ill-balanced tangle of diplomatic fears and promises that it ends in war. But the one group who will not win will be the Serbian nationalists. That I can promise you. And one thing Hannassey is not is a fool.”
Matthew wanted to argue, but even as he drew breath to do so, he realized it was to defend his father rather than because he himself believed it. If Hannassey was as brilliant as Winters said, then he would not choose assassination of the king as a weapon—unless he could be certain it would be attributed to someone else.
“The Irish wouldn’t be blamed for it if it appeared to be . . .” He stopped.
Winters raised his eyebrows curiously. “Yes? Whom did you have in mind? Who wouldn’t be traced back or betray them, intentionally or not?”
There was no one, and they were both aware of it. It did not really even matter whether the Irish were behind it or not, for they would still be blamed. The whole idea of such a public crime was one they would abhor. They might be even as keen to prevent it as Matthew himself. He was at a dead end.
“I’m sorry,” Winters said ruefully. “You’re chasing a ghost with this one. Your informant is overzealous.” He smiled, perhaps to rob his words of some of their sting. “He’s an amateur at this, or he’s trying to make himself more important than he is. There are always whispers, bits of paper floating around. The trick is to sort out the real ones. This one’s trivial.” He gave a bleak little gesture of resignation. “I’m afraid I’ve got enough real threats to chase. I’d better get back to them. Good day.” He increased his pace rapidly, and within a few moments he was lost to sight among the other pedestrians.
Shearing called Matthew into his office the next day, his face grave.
“Sit down,” he ordered. He looked tired and impatient, his voice very carefully under control, but the rough edge to it was still audible. “What’s this Irish assassination plot you’re chasing after?” he demanded. “No, don’t bother to answer. If it’s not important enough for you to have told me, then you shouldn’t be wasting your time on it. Drop it! Do you understand me?”
“I have dropped it,” Matthew said tersely. It was the truth, but not all of it. If it was not Irish, then it was something else, and he would continue to investigate the matter.
“Very wise of you,” Shearing said. “There are strikes in Russia. Over a hundred and fifty thousand men out in St. Petersburg alone. And apparently on Monday there was another attempt to murder the czarina’s mad monk, Rasputin. We haven’t got time to chase after private ghosts and goblins.” He was still staring at Matthew. “I don’t consider you to be a glory seeker, Reavley, but if I find I am mistaken, you’ll be out of here so fast your feet will barely touch the ground on your way.” There was challenge in his face, and anger. Matthew was overcome for a moment by the chill realization that there was also a shred of fear in it as well, a knowledge that things were out of control.
“The situation in the Balkans is getting worse almost by the day,” Shearing went on harshly, glaring at him. “There are rumors that Austria is preparing to invade Serbia. If it does, there is a very real and serious danger that Russia will act to protect Serbia. They are allied in language, culture, and history.” His face was tight, and his hands, dark-skinned, immaculate, were clenched on the desk until the knuckles shone white. “If Russia mobilizes, it will be only a matter of days before Germany follows. The kaiser will see himself as ringed by hostile nations, all fully armed, and growing stronger every week. Unbalanced as he is, to a degree he is right. He will face Russia to the east, and inevitably France to the west. Europe will be at war.”
“But not us,” Matthew said. “We are no threat to anyone, and it’s hardly our concern.”
“God knows,” Shearing replied.
“Isn’t that exactly the time the Irish Nationalists would strike?” Matthew could not forget the document and the outrage in his father’s voice. He could not let go. “It would be if I were their leader.”
“I daresay God knows that, too,” Shearing said waspishly. “But you will leave it to the Special Branch. Ireland
