haven’t got anyone to spare. But I wouldn’t know who to tell him to watch, and the intelligence people wouldn’t let me anyway. There’s nothing to do but find the bastard and see that he’s hanged! And they will hang him, for what he did to poor Mr. Blaine, apart from anything else. I’d like to know what ideas you have, Captain. I know you’ve been thinking on it a great deal.”
Joseph nodded. It was a miserable thought, but an inevitable one. He wished with a savage depth that he had more to tell Perth, something of meaning. “I’ll go and talk to Francis Iliffe, and see what I can find out,” he said. But he resolved first to go and try to comfort Shanley Corcoran.
In the house on Marchmont Street the Peacemaker received a visitor. It was the same young man who had called before to bring him word from Cambridgeshire. He stood in the upstairs room, his young face tired. He was trying to hide at least some of his unease, but it was more out of courtesy than any hope to deceive.
“Have the police discovered who killed Blaine?” the Peacemaker asked.
“No,” the young man replied. “To begin with, they considered the probability that it was a domestic matter. Blaine was having an affair with Lucas’s wife. But Lucas couldn’t have killed him. He can prove quite easily that he was somewhere else.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes. I checked it myself.”
“What about Blaine’s wife?” the Peacemaker asked.
“Possible. But they aren’t considering her seriously, I don’t think. . . .”
“Couldn’t be a woman’s crime?” the Peacemaker said with derision. “Rubbish. A strong, healthy young woman, driven by jealousy, could easily have done it. From what you say, it was a crime of opportunity and passion anyway. The weapon was already there. No one brought it! That’s hardly planned.”
“I know that.” A flicker of impatience crossed the young man’s features. “But someone broke into the Establishment the day before yesterday, late in the evening, and smashed the prototype. . . .”
“And you come to tell me now?” the Peacemaker demanded, his hands clenching, fury rising inside him like bile.
The young man’s eyebrows rose, his eyes wide. “And if I’d come racing up to London the morning after, don’t you think Inspector Perth might have regarded me a great deal more closely than either of us want?” There was no respect or fear in his voice. That was a change the Peacemaker noted with interest.
“Smashed it?” he asked. “Didn’t take it?”
“Exactly.”
“Why? Any ideas?”
“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought,” the young man answered. “The actual guidance system is not too large or too heavy for one man to carry, and that’s all you would need. The rest of it is pretty standard—that’s the beauty of it. It could be used on anything: torpedo, depth charge, even regular shell, if you wanted.”
“I know that!” the Peacemaker snapped. “Is that the best you can do?”
A flash of temper lit the young man’s eyes, but he controlled it. “The Establishment would be extraordinarily difficult to break into. They have doubled the guards, but no one was attacked.”
“Bribery?”
“It’s possible, but they’d have had to bribe at least three men in order to reach where the prototype was.”
“Money would be no object,” the Peacemaker pointed out.
“But the more people you bribe, the more chance of one of them changing his mind or betraying you. And you’ve not only got to get in, you’ve got to get out again. And what about afterward? Do you want to leave three men who have that knowledge?”
The Peacemaker waited.
“I think no one came in or went out,” the young man said. “It was someone inside all the time.”
The Peacemaker relaxed. It made perfect sense. “And I assume if it were you, you would tell me?” he said with an edge to his voice—half humor, half threat.
“I wouldn’t smash it before it’s finished,” the young man replied levelly. “If you don’t believe my loyalty, at least believe my intellectual curiosity.”
“I hadn’t thought to question your loyalty,” the Peacemaker said very carefully. “Should I?” There was something in the young man’s manner, a change in the timber of his voice since the last time he had been here. Or perhaps, on reflection, it dated further back.
“I still believe exactly as I did when we first met,” the young man said intently, his concentration sudden and very real. “More so, if anything.”
The Peacemaker knew that that was the literal truth, but was there some double edge to the meaning of the words? “Then it seems we have a third player in the game,” he said very slowly.
The young man paled. “I think perhaps we have. And before you ask me, I have no idea who.”
“Are they still going forward?”
“Yes. Corcoran is determined, whatever the cost. He’s working all day and half the night as it is. I don’t know when he eats or sleeps. He looks twenty years older than he did two months ago.”
“Were you close to success?” It was a question he hardly dared ask. If Corcoran did succeed, then Britain would gain a whole new lease on life at sea. It could prolong the war another year, even two—and God alone knew how many more lives would be lost.
The young man did not answer the question. His face was bleak, his eyes unhappy.
“If he does, you must take it for Germany,” the Peacemaker said with a sudden flare of passion. “Tell me when he’s anywhere near it, whatever it costs you! I’ll see the prototype is taken, if I have to burn the place to the ground.”
The young man nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll watch. I’m working on it myself. Unless Corcoran gets a sudden breakthrough, I’ll be able to see it in advance.” His voice was oddly flat, possessing none of the hunger there used to be. Was he tired, harassed by the police presence, the questions intruding on his work, the suspicion? Or was he really afraid there was a third player, and his own life was at risk?
Or was he going soft, learning to become too much part of one small village in Cambridgeshire, and its people? He must be watched. The work, the goal was too important to indulge any individual.
Two days later the Peacemaker had a very different visitor. This was not a young English scientist with a pleasant freckled face and brown hair that waved off his brow. It was an Irishman closer to fifty, of average height, lean-bodied, his hair neither dark nor fair. If one did not study the expression in his face, he was unremarkable. Only his eyes reflected his intelligence, and then only if he chose that they should.
He stood in front of the Peacemaker, carefully balanced as if to run or to strike, but it was only habit. He had been here many times, and his weapons in this battle were of the intellect.
“Have they the code?” the Peacemaker asked him bluntly.
“No,” Hannassey replied. “They’ve worked out how the saboteurs get their funding and who they are by turning a German agent in the docks, and using a double agent in the banking system.”
“Are you sure?” the Peacemaker asked with a lift of interest.
“Yes. The double agent was murdered,” Hannassey replied. “We found the body. The main thing is that our plans in Mexico can go ahead. The code is safe. We can run rings around the Americans, keep them busy on the Rio Grande for another year at least. Bleed them dry. After that it won’t matter whether or not they enter the war.”
“And you trust Bernadette—not just her loyalty, but her judgment?” the Peacemaker persisted. There was an arrogance in Hannassey that he did not like.
Hannassey smiled, a cold expression of mirth without pleasure. “Sure, I’d trust her loyalty to the end of the earth and beyond,” he replied. “She has the courage to take on God Himself.” There was a shadow in his face, but he did not explain it. Bernadette was his daughter. If he saw a flaw in her he would admit it to no one else, least of all his men.
The Peacemaker offered no comment. He had assessed Bernadette for himself. He trusted no one else’s judgment.
Hannassey was motionless. His intense, controlled stillness was one of the few things that marked him out
