“Bad journey?” the Peacemaker asked, also sitting.
Mason did not hide his feelings; perhaps he couldn’t. “Trains are full of wounded,” he replied, his voice quiet and precise as always, but the pain in it undisguised. “Mostly from Passchendaele. Hundreds of them, gray-faced, staring into space. Some are straight from the schoolroom—fifteen, sixteen, slaughtered before they’ve tasted life.” He stopped abruptly, his breathing ragged as he tried to block the memory from his mind and think of the present: the Peacemaker and the quiet rooms where at least for a few hours he was comfortable and safe.
There seemed nothing to add, and trivialities would have been offensive to both of them. They waited a few moments with no sound but an occasional car in the street and the steady ticking of the clock on the mantel. It was now completely dark outside. The manservant brought tea and sandwiches, apologizing for the liberty.
“Fish paste, sir, and cucumber. I hope it is acceptable?”
Mason gave him a bleak smile. “After the rations I’ve had, it’s food for the gods. Thank you.”
“You’re most welcome, sir.” He inclined his head, then withdrew, closing the door.
The Peacemaker passed the tea and pushed the plate of sandwiches toward Mason. His stomach was tense and his mouth dry, but he sat calmly, as if there were all the time in the world. He would not ask for the article yet, with its encoded message from Berlin. He forced himself to wait until Mason had eaten, before he spoke again.
“What is the news from Russia?” he said when finally Mason put down his cup. “Has the revolution progressed since you were there before?” He made it sound as if he were no more than interested, not that the fate of the war might depend upon it.
Mason’s face was motionless, looking within himself, as he answered. “Yes, it has progressed, not as I had hoped. Kerensky is an intelligent man, a visionary, a moderate who wants to build the new without destroying the old.”
“The tsar will not give in,” the Peacemaker said with some distaste. He had little respect for Nicholas II, or for his tsarina Alexandra and her absurd dependence upon the filthy monk Rasputin. “What is Kerensky doing to hasten his complete control? He cannot wait forever!” His voice was sharper than he had meant it to be. With an effort he steadied it. “Russia is bleeding away in this senseless war, just as we are. And God knows their people deserve freedom from the centuries of oppression they have suffered. Don’t tell me about the hunger and the deaths on the Eastern Front, or the poverty across the land. Any dispatch can tell me that. What is the mood in St. Petersburg? Moscow? Or Kiev? What of Lenin, or Trotsky, or any of the men of real vision? When will they move to take over the leadership?
Mason was somber. He met the Peacemaker’s eyes at last. “I wish I didn’t have to say this,” he answered quietly, “but Kerensky is out of his depth. He is in many ways a man of both vision and morality, but history has overtaken him. He has neither the fire nor the obsession to match the mood of the people now, or their needs. It has passed beyond his kind of moderation.”
The Peacemaker sat still. Suddenly the restlessness was gone inside him, replaced by something like a solitary fire. If Mason was right about the mood in Russia, then his hope would be realized, perhaps soon. With the Eastern Front no longer a threat, Germany could turn all its men and forces toward the west. The German plan to ship Lenin into Russia in a sealed train had worked. They were on the brink of harvesting its fruits.
“I see,” he said aloud. He had never intended to tell Mason anything of the secret diplomacy that had brought some of this about. Mason hated war with a passion and a horror equal to anyone’s, but he was an Englishman, and the thought of England beaten would reach his emotions with unpredictable effect. It was prudent that he know only what was necessary. “You look tired,” the Peacemaker went on. “Have you an article for me?”
Since the American entry into the war in January he could no longer route his communications with Berlin through Washington. Now he relied on Mason to meet secretly with Manfred von Schenckendorff in any of the neutral territories Mason visited. He encoded his information within his articles, so nothing could ever be betrayed, and gave them to the Peacemaker on his return. The Peacemaker altered them slightly to remove the information and gave them back. It worked in reverse with copies of notes as if for an article yet to be written.
Mason pulled half a dozen slips of paper out of his pocket and passed them across.
“Thank you.” The Peacemaker accepted them. He had difficulty keeping his fingers from shaking, but he forced himself to leave the papers closed. He would read them later, alone.
“I wish I could say there is nothing urgent to discuss, and allow you to rest,” he said quietly. “But Passchendaele is a disaster.” He had no need to act to thicken his voice deliberately with pain; it was real enough, gouging into him, bringing back memory of Africa and a wave of nausea at sight of the dead, obscene and helpless. “It looks as if it is going to be worse even than the Somme,” he went on hoarsely.
Mason must have caught the sudden, ungoverned pain in him. “I know,” he answered softly.
The Peacemaker straightened a little in his chair, needing to mask the nakedness of his momentary lapse.
“Of course you do—at least from the figures, and the trainloads of wounded you’ll have seen. But that is not all. It is not widely known, at least to the public, but part of the French army mutinied….”
Mason jerked his head up, his eyes hot and angry. “The poor devils had just cause,” he said, as if the Peacemaker had leveled an accusation.
The Peacemaker nodded slowly. “I know that. They are brave and patriotic men, like ours, but their conditions are intolerable, and now they are being driven onto the enemy guns in pointless suicide. And it’s happening again all along the Flanders Front. We need an honest voice to tell us what is happening to our own men. This is no longer a war of the people, Mason, it’s become a senseless destruction the leaders are too blind or too incompetent to put a stop to. Get a good night’s sleep. See me in the morning and I will give you back your article. Then go to Ypres again. Forget the propaganda and the figures, and what the commanders say. Find the truth of what the men who are fighting and dying really think. We have to know!” Without realizing it he leaned forward. “We have the moral need to know, and they have the moral right that we should. If you won’t speak for them, who will?
Mason did not argue. “I’ll go tomorrow night, after I’ve reported to my paper,” he said simply. His face hardened as he smothered the weakness within himself, the momentary faltering, the longing to turn away. “There’s no reason to delay.”
“Good,” the Peacemaker said simply. He looked at the empty tea tray, sandwiches all eaten. “Would you like a Glenmorangie?”
“Yes,” Mason accepted. “Yes, I would.”
Richard Mason was not the last visitor to the house in Marchmont Street that evening. At close to midnight, after he had read the article and deleted Schenckendorff’s message the Peacemaker stood in the dark before the uncurtained window, his mind racing with new ideas. Hope had rekindled in him for an end to the madness of the battlefield. It might even be that the ordinary soldier himself at last could take control of his destiny. Most men who were actually commanded to kill the enemy, to fire the bullets, to let off the gas, who charged with the bayonets fixed, had no personal enmity toward the German soldiers in the lines opposite them. They knew they were just ordinary men like themselves. If the French could mutiny, then surely so could the British. Mason would bring him back the truth of morale in Flanders. Then perhaps there would be an end to it.
There was a knock on the door again, tentative at this late hour.
The Peacemaker swung around angrily. “What is it?” he demanded. He was inwardly exhausted by the unceasing emotional soar and plunge between despair and the blindness and the folly of those with whom he had to work. Time and time again he had been on the brink of success, the beginning of the end, only to have it dashed from his hand. “What is it?” he said again.
The manservant opened the door, looking apologetic. “It is a gentleman to see you, sir. He won’t give his name, but he says it is to do with a certain event on Hampstead Heath. Shall I ask him to leave, sir?”
“No. Tell him to come in,” the Peacemaker said quickly. “Do not disturb us. We shall require no refreshment. You may retire. I shall show him out.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll send the gentleman up.”
The man who arrived a moment later was thin, with a dark mustache and large, red-knuckled hands. He closed the door behind him. He met the Peacemaker’s eyes without flinching, as if they were equals. The Peacemaker did not like him. They were on the same side by force, not idealism. There was no passion for humanity in this man, only for himself and his own profit, but he was useful. “Yes?” he said curtly.
“Corracher’s been talking to someone in the Secret Intelligence Service,” the man told him. “He’s seen the pattern, and it looks as if he could make a fight of it.”
