Tregarron took a deep breath. “How dare you imply that I do not take this threat seriously?” He slammed his fist into the bell on his desk. A minute later there was a brief tap on the door, and Jack came in, closing it behind him and stopping just inside the room.
“Yes, sir?” he said unhappily, deliberately avoiding Pitt’s glance.
“Come in,” Tregarron barked.
Jack walked a few steps closer and then stopped again. “Yes, sir?”
Tregarron stared at him. “Pitt seems to believe that Duke Alois Habsburg is the possible target of an assassination attempt, albeit an ignorant, messy, and pointless one. He doesn’t know who the would-be assassin is, nor the purpose of the exercise, only that the outcome would be very ugly indeed.”
“It would be, sir,” Jack agreed, “and it would also give Austria an enormous weapon to use against us for years to come.”
“For God’s sake, I can see that!” Tregarron snapped. “The point is, we can’t jump at every shadow. We have to exercise our critical judgment, not dance around like puppets on strings to the tune of every fear, real or not, likely or not, even possible or not. What is your assessment of this one, Radley? Do you agree with Pitt, on the basis of this host of minor alterations in behavior of informants, spies, and general hangers-on? Or do you think that they are part of the climate at large and that we should hold steady and not lose our nerve?”
Pitt was seething. “I certainly did not recommend losing our nerve, sir,” he said hoarsely.
Tregarron’s glance did not waver from Jack. “You recommended telling Duke Alois not to come,” he retorted. “That is losing our nerve, Pitt. That is telling the emperor Franz Josef, and the rest of the world, that we cannot manage to protect visiting princelings from mass murder in a train wreck, so they had better stay in Vienna, or Budapest, or wherever the devil it is they come from-where they have the ability to keep their trains safe!”
“Where it is not Britain’s responsibility if they are killed or not,” Pitt countered.
Jack’s face went white. He still avoided Pitt’s eyes.
“Then what do we do?” Tregarron demanded. “Do we make him welcome, or do we tell Her Majesty that we cannot protect her great-nephew, or whatever he is, and she had better tell him to stay at home?”
“We would be the laughingstock of Europe, my lord,” Jack replied very quietly. “I think we should give Commander Pitt all the extra men he may need, regardless of the cost and the inconvenience, in order to protect Duke Alois.”
Tregarron looked at him with surprise and some disbelief. “You think this whole thing could be real?”
“No, sir,” Jack answered. “I think it is so unlikely as to be all but impossible, but we cannot afford to ignore it. Commander Pitt has twenty years’ experience with intrigue and murder, and if we ignore his warnings we will be entirely to blame if something should happen. Our position then would be untenable.”
“But bloody unlikely!”
“Yes, my lord, unlikely, but not impossible.”
“I’m obliged for your advice.” Tregarron turned to Pitt, looking at him sourly. “I suppose you have to come to me with what you judge to be some serious threats, but I can’t be second-guessing you at every turn. You’re supposed to make your own judgments. As soon as you get a little more used to your position, I expect you to do so. Good day.”
Pitt was too furious to speak. He inclined his head very slightly, then turned on his heel and strode out.
Jack caught up with him in the corridor a dozen yards beyond Tregarron’s door.
“I’m sorry,” he said in little more than a whisper. “But he does know what he’s talking about, and the evidence is pretty thin.”
“Of course it is,” Pitt said between his teeth. “People don’t leave a trail that leads back to them. If they did, we wouldn’t need police, let alone Special Branch.” He did not slacken his pace, and Jack had to lengthen his own stride to keep up with him.
“Come on, Thomas,” he said reasonably. “You can’t expect a man in Tregarron’s position to accept a story as basically unlikely as this one, unless you have real evidence. He knows Austria, and he gets regular reports from all the people we have there, and a few others as well. He’s damned good at his job.”
Pitt stopped abruptly and swung around to face Jack. “Would you have said that, in those words, if it had been Narraway who’d come to you with suspicions? Or might you have given him the courtesy of assuming that he also was good at his job?”
The color flushed up Jack’s face. “I’m sorry. That was incredibly clumsy of me. I-”
Pitt smiled bleakly. “No, it was regrettably honest. And that is not a quality you can afford to exercise if you hope to rise in the diplomatic corps. One day you may also be damned good at your job, but it isn’t today.” He started to walk again.
“Thomas!” Jack grabbed him by the arm, hard, forcing him to stop. “Listen. I think you are jumping at shadows, and after the business in St. Malo, and then Ireland and what happened to Narraway, I don’t entirely blame you. But you can’t force Tregarron to go against his own knowledge of the people and the country. If you really believe something is threatened, then I’ll arrange for you to see Evan Blantyre at short notice. I’ll tell him it’s a matter of urgency, even that there could be very unpleasant consequences if we make a bad judgment.” He looked at Pitt expectantly, his eyes wide, his stare direct.
Pitt felt churlish. It hurt that he had to be offered, as if he had never met Blantyre, a meeting that would have been instantly granted to Narraway. Was it his lack of experience, and the fact that Narraway was indisputably a gentleman, while he was not? Or was it that Narraway had amassed a wealth of knowledge about so many people that no one dared defy him? Whatever the case, none of this was Jack’s fault, and Pitt knew he would be a fool to squander the few advantages he had: the strength of family and the bonds of friendship, which Narraway had never possessed.
He forced the resentment out of his mind.
“Thank you,” he accepted. “That’s an excellent suggestion.”
Jack went back to Tregarron’s office with sharply conflicting emotions. He was certain he had done the right thing in promising to arrange for Pitt to speak in depth with Evan Blantyre right away, yet at the same time, he believed that Tregarron would not approve it. He was not even sure why. To some extent Pitt was overreacting, but that was better than reacting too little, or too late. Belittling him and making him doubt his own judgment helped no one.
He reached Tregarron’s door again and tapped lightly. On the command to enter, he went back in.
Tregarron was at his desk. Papers on a different subject were spread out in front of him. He looked up at Jack, his expression still slightly angry.
“I’d like you to look through these and give me your opinion, Radley,” he said, pulling the papers together more neatly. “I think Wishart is right, but I’m predisposed to that view anyway. Do you know Lord Wishart? Good chap. Very sound.”
“No, sir, I don’t,” Jack replied, holding out his hand and taking the papers.
“Must introduce you some time.” Tregarron’s smile lit his face, giving it a unique charm. “You’ll like him.”
“Thank you, sir.” Jack was flattered. Many people wanted very much to meet Lord Wishart, and few did. Emily would be delighted. He could picture her face when he told her. Then he had a sudden, uncomfortable feeling that it was a sop, for having been so abrasive toward Pitt. Tregarron was quite aware that Pitt was Jack’s brother- in-law. He wanted to say something further, but he had no clear idea what it would be.
He looked down at the papers Tregarron had given him. They were to do with a proposed British diplomatic mission to Trieste, one of the Italian cities still under Austrian rule. This matter was largely cultural, with some mention of Slovenia. It was complicated, as was every issue that dealt with the Austrian Empire.
He saw an opinion written in Tregarron’s flowing hand and read the first two sentences. Then he went back and reread it, thinking he had made a mistake. It was in direct contradiction to information Tregarron had received only yesterday.
“By this afternoon, Radley,” Tregarron prompted.
Jack looked up. Should he question what he had just read, or would it be seen as exceeding his duty, perhaps even criticizing Tregarron himself? He decided to say nothing. There would be an explanation for it, some additional fact of which he was not yet aware. If he read the whole report, it would explain the apparent anomaly.
“Yes, sir,” he replied, forcing himself to meet Tregarron’s eyes and smile briefly. “Thank you.”
