“None at all,” Pitt replied. “The information being changed is trivial. Hathaway knows the truth, and so will the Foreign Secretary. No decisions will be implemented without reference to one or the other of them, probably to both.”
“Possibly,” Farnsworth said reluctantly. “All the same, it was damned high-handed of you, Pitt. You should have consulted me before you did this. I doubt the Prime Minister will approve of it at all.”
“If we don’t provoke something of the sort,” Pitt replied, “we are unlikely to find out who is passing information before the treaty has to be concluded.”
“Not very satisfactory.” Farnsworth bit his lip. “I had hoped you would have learned something definite by ordinary investigation.” They were in Farnsworth’s office. He had sent for Pitt to report on his progress so far. The weather had changed and sharp spring rain was beating against the windows. Pitt’s trouser bottoms were damp from the splashing of passing carriages and cabs. He sat with his legs crossed, deliberately relaxed.
Farnsworth leaned over his desk, his brows drawn down. “You know, Pitt, you’ve made one or two foolish mistakes, but it is not too late to amend them.”
“Too late?” For a moment Pitt did not understand him.
“You have had to do this alone, against a largely hostile and suspicious background,” Farnsworth went on, watching Pitt’s face earnestly. “You have gone in as an intruder, a policeman among diplomats and politicians, civil servants.”
Pitt stared at him, not sure if he were leaping to absurd conclusions, a familiar darkness now at the edge of his mind.
“There are those who would have helped you!” Farnsworth’s voice dropped, a more urgent note in it, deeper, wavering between harshness and hope. “Men who know more than you or I could expect to learn in a year of investigation with questions and deductions. I offered it to you before, Pitt. I’m offering it again.”
The Inner Circle. Farnsworth was pressing him to join the Inner Circle, as he had almost as soon as Pitt had succeeded Micah Drummond. Pitt had refused then, and hoped the offer would not be repeated or referred to. Perhaps he should have known that was a willful blindness, a foolishness in which he should not have indulged. It was always there to be faced now or later.
“No,” Pitt said quietly. “My reasons are still the same. The help would be at too high a price.”
Farnsworth’s face hardened. “You are very unwise, Pitt. Nothing would be asked of you that a decent, patriotic man would not willingly give. You are denying yourself success, and promotion when the time comes.” He leaned forward a fraction farther. “With the right help, you know, there is no limit to where you could go. All manner of doors would eventually be opened to you! You would be able to succeed on merit. And you have merit! Otherwise the rules of Society will make it impossible for you. You must be aware of that! How can you not see the good in such a thing?” It was a demand for an answer, and his blue-gray eyes met Pitt’s unflinchingly.
Pitt was aware not only of the strength of will behind the calm, almost bland countenance, but suddenly of an intelligence he had not previously suspected. He realized that until that moment he had had a certain contempt for Farnsworth, an unconscious assumption that he held office because of birth, not ability. Farnsworth’s lack of understanding of certain issues, certain characteristics or turns of phrase, he had taken for slowness of mind. It came to him with a jolt that it was far more probably a narrowness of experience. He was one of the vast numbers of people who cannot imagine themselves into the class or gender, least of all the emotions, of a different person. That is lack of vision or sensitivity, even compassion, but it is not stupidity.
“You are favoring one closed group which favors its own, over another doing just the same,” he replied with a candor he had not shown Farnsworth before, and even as he said it he was aware he was treading on the edge of danger.
Farnsworth’s impatience was weary and only peripherally annoyed. Perhaps he had expected little more. “I’m all for idealism, Pitt, but only to a point. When it becomes divorced from reality it ceases to be any use and becomes an encumbrance.” He shook his head. “This is how the world works. If you don’t know that, I confess I don’t understand how you have succeeded as far as you have. You deal with crime every day of your life. You see the worst in humanity, the weakest and the ugliest. How is it you are so blind to higher motives, men who cooperate together to bring about a greater good, from which in the end we shall all benefit?”
Pitt would like to have said that he did not believe the motives of the leaders of the Inner Circle were anything of the sort. Originally, perhaps, they had had a vision of good, but it was now so interwoven with their own power to bring it about, and their own glory in its achievement, that too much of it was lost on the way. But he knew that saying as much would not sway Farnsworth, who had too much invested in believing as he did. It would only produce denial and conflict.
And yet for an instant there was understanding on the edge of his mind, a moment when some sympathy between them was possible. He should grasp it. There was a moral and a human imperative to try.
“It is not a question of the justice or honor of those goals,” he replied slowly. “Either for themselves or for others. And I don’t doubt that many people would benefit from much of what they bring about….”
Farnsworth’s face lit with eagerness. He almost interrupted, then disciplined himself to wait for Pitt to finish.
“It is that they decide what is good, without telling the rest of us,” Pitt continued, choosing his words with great care. “And they bring it about by secret means. If it is good, we benefit, but if it is not, if it is not what we wanted, by the time we know, it is too late.” He leaned forward unconsciously. “There is no stopping it, no redress, because we don’t know who to blame or to whom we can appeal. It denies the majority of us, all of us outside the Circle, the right or the chance to choose for ourselves.”
Farnsworth looked puzzled, a crease between his brows.
“But you can be in the Circle, man. That is what I’m offering you.”
“And everyone else?” Pitt said. “What about their choices?”
Farnsworth’s eyes widened. “Are you really suggesting that everyone else, the majority”-he raised his hand to indicate the mass of population beyond the office walls-“are able to understand the issues, let alone make a decision as to what is right, wise, profitable … or even possible?” He saw Pitt’s face. “No, of course you aren’t. What you’re suggesting is anarchy. Every man for himself. And God knows, perhaps every woman and every child too?”
Until now Pitt had acted on a passionate instinct, not needing to rationalize what he thought; no one had required it of him.
“There is a difference between the open power of government and the secret power of a society whose members no one knows,” he said with commitment. He saw the derision in Farnsworth’s face. “Of course there can be oppression, corruption, incompetence, but if we know who holds the power, then they are to some degree accountable. We can at least fight against what we can see.”
“Rebellion,” Farnsworth said succinctly. “Or if we fight against it secretly, then treason! Is that really what you prefer?”
“I don’t want the overthrow of a government.” Pitt would not be goaded into taking a more extreme position than he meant. “But I have no objection to its downfall, if that is what it merits.”
Farnsworth’s eyebrows rose.
“In whose judgment? Yours?”
“The majority of the people who are governed.”
“And you think the majority is right?” Farnsworth’s eyes were wide. “That it is informed, wise, benevolent and self-disciplined or, God damn it, even literate-”
“No, I don’t,” Pitt interrupted. “But it can’t ever be if it is governed in secret by those who never ask and never explain. I think the majority have always been decent people, and have the right, as much right as you or anyone else, to know their own destiny and have as much control over it as is possible.”
“Consistent with order”-Farnsworth sat back, his smile sardonic-“and the rights and privileges of others. Quite. We have no difference in aim, Pitt, only in how to achieve it. And you are hopelessly naive. You are an idealist, quite out of touch with the reality both of human nature and of economics and business. You would make a good politician on the hustings, telling the people all the things they want to hear, but you’d be hopeless in office.” He crossed his hands, interlacing his fingers, and gazing at Pitt with something close to resignation. “Perhaps you are right not to accept the offer of membership in the Inner Circle. You haven’t the stomach for it, or the vision. You’ll always be a gamekeeper’s son at heart.”
Pitt was not certain whether that was intended as an insult or not; the words were, judging from
