“Travel?” Barrington was surprised. “Europe. He had some sort of diplomatic position regarding Anglo-Irish interests.”
“Including Germany?”
“Naturally. Hadn’t you better tell me what this is about, Reavley?”
“I don’t know what it’s about yet,” Matthew evaded. “Still in the stage of seeing if it’s anything at all. Diplomatic service in Germany?”
“If you’re asking me if he’s a German sympathizer, yes, of course he is. Sympathizes with anyone who’s against us.”
“I took that for granted, given other circumstances. Would he know anyone connected with the kaiser?”
Barrington frowned, twiddling his coffee spoon in his fingers.
“Yes. He’s a very personable man, highly intelligent and if he wants to be, very cultured. Certainly the kaiser. King too, come to that.”
“And members of our Parliament?” Matthew persisted.
“He might have known pretty well anyone of influence.” Barrington shook his head. “Who do you have in mind, Reavley? You are being very evasive. Are you sure this isn’t something we should know?”
“It’s to do with something my father said before he died.” That was obliquely true, more or less.
“I heard about that. Road accident, wasn’t it? I’m very sorry.”
“Yes. Rather got swallowed in the news at the time.”
“Oh?”
“Same day as the assassination in Sarajevo.”
“Oh. That’s too bad. Do you think he knew something about Hannassey that still matters?”
“I’m chasing a possibility. Do you keep tabs on Hannassey?”
“Sometimes. Lose him pretty regularly. He’s a master of looking so damn ordinary he disappears. What dates are you interested in?”
“Late May, early June last year.”
“London, mostly. Can’t tell you where exactly.”
“Thank you. Last question: Has he any influence with the press?”
“None that I know. I should doubt it very much.”
“Not even local press, small papers in the north?”
“No idea. Why?”
“I’ll tell you, if it comes to anything.” He drank the last of his coffee. “Do you fancy a brandy?”
In his office again, Matthew received a wireless message from America and decoded it. He read it with acceptance and perhaps a kind of satisfaction, grim as it was. A stevedore in the New York docks had been murdered.
He wrote his reply. It was not necessary to say much. His man already had his instructions. The corpse was to be made to appear a spy, trained by Germany and then “turned” to betray their plans to Britain. His murder was payment for that act, an object lesson to would-be traitors.
Now also was the time to show the evidence on paper of a fictional agent in the German-American banking system who had revealed the details of all the transactions paying the man in the docks who had placed the bombs in the ships’ holds.
Matthew reread his letter once more, making certain of every detail, then encrypted it and gave it to the operator to send.
He reported to Shearing in the late afternoon as if no thoughts teemed in his mind except those of the allied shipping crossing the Atlantic with smoke bombs hidden among the tightly packed munitions. He forced away all thought that he was on the verge of exposing the Peacemaker at last, and the deeply painful knowledge that it was Detta’s father. The knowledge of how she would be hurt was something he could not face. He concentrated instead on the vast entanglement of loyalties, political office, and judgment that made up the Anglo-American relationship.
“Well?” Shearing asked. He looked tired. His usually immaculate suit was creased and his tie was not quite straight. Once again Matthew wondered where he lived, and why he had never mentioned even a parent or a brother. Why was there nothing in his office that betrayed any love or memory, any ties to place or culture? He seemed a man without roots. That very anonymity was vaguely frightening. It made him less than human. Every other man had a photograph, an ornament, pictures—some ties to who he was. At least the fear had gone that he could be the Peacemaker. Matthew realized only now that it was gone how much that had hurt.
“We have a suitable body for the double agent,” he said briefly. “I’m going to tell Detta Hannassey about it this evening.”
Shearing nodded. “She’ll know if she’s being fed, Reavley. Don’t do it all at once.”
“I won’t.”
Shearing smiled with a bleak humor. “On the other hand, time is short.”
“Yes, sir.” Matthew stood to attention for a moment, then turned and left. As so often before, he wished profoundly that he could trust Shearing. Perhaps now he could, but the old caution was too deep to cast aside. John Reavley’s last words to him had been that the conspiracy reached right to the top. Who also was tainted? And if he did trust, who else would die?
There were moments when he missed his father with exactly the same desperate, incredulous pain as on the very first day. There was an emptiness inside him that no one else could fill. They would have sat together, probably on a bench in Regent’s Park, watching the ducks, and talked about whatever the problem was. They might have walked around an art gallery, seeing what was for sale, looking for bargains, old watercolors that needed cleaning and restoring, the foxing taken off, and refreshed to show their beauty.
Matthew would have wanted to tell him of his strange relationship with Detta Hannassey, and how they knew that each was playing a game with the other, with a mixture of lies and truths. In the big matters—the ideals and the battles—they were against each other, even to the extent of using deceit and counterdeceit. In the little things—the jokes and the teasing, the tenderness, even the fleeting pleasures of flowers or music, a moment of sunlight on the water, the flight of a bird—they were passionately honest. But Matthew could not have told his father this. John Reavley would have seen it as one more example of the loathsome duplicity and betrayal innate in espionage. Would he ever have understood how many lives it saved? Matthew wished he could have told him! It would have undone an ache inside him if he could.
This was all in his mind when he met Detta at the theater that evening. He never collected her from her home, as he would have with another woman. She did not permit him to know where she lived. He thought it more than possible she did not always sleep in the same bed each night. He preferred not to know. Jealousy would be ridiculous, but he knew its taste well enough to avoid even the suspicion.
He had intended to be there well before she was, which ought not to be difficult. She was often late, arriving casually at the last moment when he was on the point of giving up, her smile as bright as usual. But this evening she was there already. He saw her standing in the foyer as soon as he was through the doors. She was dressed in dark blue. She tended to choose cold colors, but she never looked cold. They heightened her drama, as if she did not belong in the everyday world but was merely visiting it from a more mystical place. Her gown was very simple and she wore a dark cloak over it, as the evening would be cooler after the performance.
She did not come toward him. She stood quite still, smiling, until he should reach her. He wondered if she was always as intensely sure of herself as she seemed. Perhaps her doubts were more of others, of life itself.
“Hello, Matthew,” she said warmly. She never abbreviated his name. “This was a fine choice. I’m in the mood for farce.” She looked up at him, her eyes so dark he could see the laughter in them, and the pain as well.
“Hello,” he replied. “Yes. It’s supposed to be a good production.”
She glanced around at the other people coming in. As so often these days, they all seemed very young, no more than in their mid-twenties, but there was a gauntness to their faces that was deeper than hunger or tiredness. It was something in the skin, a certain look to the eyes. They were men on leave from the trenches, for a few days pretending nothing existed but these lights and laughter, the jokes, the music, the girls on their arms. They wanted to have fun, to taste youth and irresponsibility again, gulping at it like a diver coming up for air.
“Poor devils,” Detta said quietly. “They know, don’t they!” She did not add any more; the soft lilt in her voice told of a long familiarity with the dark side of love. “They’re as Anglo-Saxon as you are.” Then her mouth twisted in
