by Anne Perry
Matthew took the risk of probing. “I remember him as being completely without guile. Was that true, or just what I wanted to think?”
Chetwin gave a sharp little laugh. “Oh, that was true! He couldn’t tell a lie to save himself, and he wasn’t about to change what he was to please anyone, or to deceive them, even to gain his own ends.” His face became shadowed again, but his dark eyes were unreadable. “That was his weakness as well as his strength. He was incapable of deviousness, and that is a politician’s main weapon.”
Matthew hesitated, wondering if he should admit to being in the intelligence services, and knowing that Chetwin was also. It might be a shortcut to gaining confidences. It would save time, take him nearer the truth. Or should he guard the little ammunition he had? Where were Chetwin’s loyalties? He was easy to like, and the ties of the past were strong. But perhaps that was exactly what had cost John Reavley his life.
“He was very worried about the present situation in the Balkans,” Matthew said. “Even though he died the day of the assassination, so he didn’t hear of it.”
“Yes,” Chetwin agreed. “I know he used to have a considerable interest in German affairs and had many German friends. He climbed in the Austrian Tyrol now and then when he was younger. He enjoyed Vienna, its music and its culture, and he read German, of course.”
“He discussed it with you?”
“Oh, yes. We had many friends in common in those days.” There was sadness in his voice and a gentleness that seemed entirely human and vulnerable. But if he was clever, it would do!
“Did he keep up with them, do you know?” Matthew asked. He was going to trail a faint thread of the truth in front of Chetwin, to see if he picked it up, or if he even noticed.
There was nothing guarded in Chetwin’s clever face. “I should imagine so. He was a man who kept his friends.” He gave a little grimace. “Except in my case, of course. But that was because he did not approve of my change in career. He felt it was immoral—deceitful, if you like.”
Matthew drew in his breath. It was like jumping into melted ice. “The intelligence services . . . yes, I know.” He saw Chetwin flinch so minutely it was no more than a shadow. Had he not been looking for it, he might not have recognized it as such. “I think it was because of you that he was so disappointed when I joined them as well,” he went on, and this time there was no mistaking the surprise. “You didn’t know?” he added.
Chetwin breathed out very slowly. “No . . . I didn’t.”
Matthew was in the presence of a master at guile, and he knew it. But he could play the game, too. “Yes. He didn’t approve of it, of course,” he said, smiling ruefully. “But he knew that we have our uses. Sometimes there is no one else to turn to.”
This time Chetwin hesitated.
Matthew smiled.
“Then he’d changed,” Chetwin said slowly. “He used to think there was always a better way. But I suppose you know that, also?”
“Something like that,” Matthew said noncommittally. He struggled for something else to pursue. He could not leave Chetwin, possibly the best source of hidden information about his father, without trying every conceivable avenue. “Actually, I think he had changed,” he said suddenly. “Something he said to me not long ago made me think he had begun to appreciate the value of discreet information.”
Chetwin’s eyebrows rose. “Oh?” He did not conceal the interest in his face.
Matthew hesitated, acutely aware of the potential danger of revealing too much to Chetwin. “Just the value of information,” he said finally, leaning back a little in his chair. “I never heard the rest of it. I thought it might matter. Whom would he have taken it to?”
“Information about what?” Chetwin asked.
Matthew was very careful. “I’m not sure. Possibly the situation in Germany.” That was probably far enough from the troubles in either Ireland or the Balkans to be safe.
Chetwin thought for a moment or two. “Best to go to the man at the top,” he said finally. “If it was important, it would reach Dermot Sandwell eventually.”
“Sandwell!” Matthew was surprised. Dermot Sandwell was a highly respected minister in the Foreign Office—an outstanding linguist, well traveled, a classicist and scholar. “Yes, I suppose it would. That is excellent advice.Thank you.”
Matthew stayed a little longer. Conversation moved from one thing to another: politics, memories, small gossip about Cambridgeshire. Chetwin had a vivid and individual turn of phrase describing people, and a sharp wit. Matthew could see very clearly why his father had liked him.
Half an hour later he rose to go, still uncertain whether his father had confided anything about the document to Chetwin or not, and if he had, whether doing so had been the catalyst for his death.
Matthew drove back to London that evening in heavy, thundery weather, wishing the storm would break and release the gray, choking air into rain to wash it clear.
Thunder rolled menacingly around the western rim of the clouds at about half past six as he was twenty miles south of Cambridge, gliding between deep hedges in full leaf. Then ten minutes later the lightning forked down to the ground and the rain dashed torrentially, bouncing up again from the smooth black road till he felt as if he were drowning under a waterfall. He slowed up, almost blinded by the downpour.
When it was gone, steam rose from the shimmering surface, a silver haze in the sun, and it all smelled like a Turkish bath.
On Monday morning the newspapers told the public that the king had reviewed 260 ships of the Royal Navy at the Spithead base, and that the naval reserves had been called up on orders from the first lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, and the first sea lord, Prince Louis of Battenberg. There was no word whatever of Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia on the reparations demanded for the death of the archduke.
Calder Shearing sat at his desk staring grimly ahead of him into the distance. Matthew stood, not yet given permission to sit.
“Means nothing,” Shearing said to Matthew darkly. “I’m told there was a secret meeting in Vienna yesterday. I wouldn’t be surprised if they push it to the limit. Austria can’t be seen to back down. If they did, then all their territories would think they could assassinate people. That’s the damn shame of it.” He muttered something else under his breath, and Matthew did not ask him to repeat it. “Sit down!” he said impatiently. “Don’t hover like that as if you were about to go. You aren’t! We’ve all these reports to go through.” He indicated a pile of papers on his desk.
It was a comfortable room, but there were no family photographs, nothing to indicate where he had been born or grown up. Even its functionality was anonymous, clever rather than personal. The Arabic brass dish and bowl were beautiful but of no meaning. Matthew had asked him about them once. Similarly the watercolor paintings of a storm blowing up over the South Downs, and another of dying winter light over the London Docks, the black spars of a clipper sharp and straight against the sky; neither carried any personal significance.
The conversation moved to Ireland and the situation in the Curragh, which was still a cause of anxiety. It was far from resolved.
Shearing swore softly and imaginatively, more to himself than for Matthew’s benefit. “How could we be so bloody stupid as to get ourselves into this mess!” he said, his jaw so tight the muscles stood out in his neck. “The Protestants were never going to let themselves be absorbed by the Catholic south. They were bound to resort to violence, and our men would never have fired on them. Any damn fool knows they’ll not shoot their own—and so you’ve got a mutiny!” His dark face was flushed. “And we can’t let mutiny go unpunished, so we’ve painted ourselves into an impossible corner! How stupid do you have to be not to see that coming? It’s like being caught by surprise when it snows in January!”
“I thought the government was consulting the king,” Matthew replied.
Shearing looked up at him. “Oh, they are! They have! And what happens if the king sides with the Ulster Lo
yalists? Has anybody thought of that?”
Matthew clenched inside. He had been too consumed with the murder of his father, and the question of the document and what might be in it, to give deeper thought to such an idea. Now he did, and it was appalling. “He can’t! Can he?” he demanded.
The anger in Shearing’s face was so sharp its power filled the room. “Yes, he damned well can!” he spat, glaring at Matthew.
“When will they reach a decision?”
“Today . . . tomorrow! God knows. Then we’ll see what real trouble is.” He saw the question in Matthew’s eyes. “Yes, Reavley,” he said with level, grating calm. “The assassination in Serbia is bad, but believe me, it would be nothing compared with one at home.”
“An assassination!” Matthew exclaimed.
Shearing’s eyebrows rose. “Why not?” he challenged. “What’s the difference? Serbia is a subject part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and some of its citizens think assassination of a royal duke is the way to freedom and independence. Ireland is part of the British Empire. Why shouldn’t some of its subjects assume that the assassination of a king might earn them the freedom they want?”
“Protestant Northern Ireland wants to remain part of the British Empire,” Matthew replied, keeping his voice level with difficulty. “That’s what the term Loyalist means! They don’t want to be swallowed up in Roman Catholic Ireland!” But even as he was saying it he knew the words were empty.
“Very rational,” Shearing said sarcastically. “I’m sure if you say that a little louder all the madmen with glory in their brains will put their guns away and go home again.” He pulled a thin sheaf of papers out of the drawer in his desk and held it out. “Go and look at those, see what you make of them.”
Matthew took them from him. “Yes, sir.” He went back to his own office with his fingers numb, his head singing with ideas.
Matthew attempted to work on the papers all day. They were the usual notes on intelligence information intercepted, reports of the movement of men either known or suspected of Irish independence sympathies. He was still looking for any threat to Blunden and his appointment to the War Ministry, with the obvious effect it would have on further military action in Ireland, the need for which seemed almost certain.
If the position went to Wynyard, with his robust opinions and more volatile judgment, it might not only hasten the violence, but make it worse, possibly even spreading it to England itself.
He found it difficult to keep his mind on the subject. It was too nebulous to grasp, the connections too remote. And one name occurred a number of times: Patrick Hannassey. He had been born in Dublin in 1861, the second son of a physician and Irish patriot. His elder brother had gone into law, and died young in a boating disaster off the County Waterford coast. Patrick also had studied law for a while, and he married and had a daughter. Then tragedy had struck again. His wife had been killed in a pointless exchange of violence between Catholic and Protestant, and Patrick, in his grief, had abandoned the slow-moving workings of the law in favor of the swifter struggle of politics, even of civil war.
It would suit his avowed purpose very well to succeed to the War Minister’s post, where he could be taunted, defied, and mocked into action that would seem to justify armed retaliation, and the beginning of open warfare. He preached uprising, but he did it subtly, and he was a hard man to catch: elusive, clever, never overreaching himself with arrogance, never betraying those who trusted him, not looking for personal power and certainly not for money.
A little before six Matthew went back to Shearing’s office, knowing he would find him still there.
“Yes?” Shearing looked up. His eyes were red-rimmed, his skin colorless.
“Patrick Hannassey,” Matthew replied, placing the papers on the desk in front of him. “I’d like your permission to go after him. He is the most serious threat to Blunden, because frankly he’s far cleverer. Blunden doesn’t react instinctively, but Hannassay’s capable of making him look like a coward, compared with Wynyard.”
“Denied,” Shearing answered him.
“But he’s—” Matthew began.
“I know,” Shearing cut him off. “And you’re right. But we don’t know where he is, and his own men will never betray him. For the time being he’s disappeared. Learn what you can about him, but discreetly, if there’s time. Go after Michael Neill, his lieutenant—you’ll get plenty of cooperation on that.”
There was a flatness in his voice that alarmed Matthew, a sense of defeat. “What is it?” he asked edgily.
“The king has backed the Loyalists,” Shearing answered, watching Matthew, bleak misery in his eyes. “Go and see if you can find out what Neill is up to, and if there’s anyone willing to betray him. Anything that will help.”
“Sir . . .”
“What?”
Should he mention John Reavley’s document? Was this what it was about, and he had the chance now to make it matter? Perhaps even to save the country from plunging into civil war? But Shearing might be part of it.
“Reavley, if you’ve got something to say, then say it!” Shearing snapped. “I haven’t got time to play nursemaid to your feelings! Get on with it, man!”
What could he say? That his father knew there was a conspiracy?
Shearing drew in his breath sharply, with a little hiss between his teeth, impatient, scratchy.
“Only that I think you’re right, sir,” Matthew said aloud. “One of my informants believed there was a conspiracy.”
“Then why the hell didn’t you mention it?” Shearing’s eyes were hot and black.
“Because he had no facts,” Matthew retorted with equal tartness. “No names, no dates, places, nothing but a belief.”
“Based on what?” Shearing glared at him, challenging him for a reply.
“I don’t know, sir. He was killed before he could tell me.” How hard the words were to say, even in anger.
“Killed?” Shearing said softly. Death of one of his own men, honor indirectly so, always hurt him more than Matthew expected. “How? Are you saying he was murdered for this piece of information?” His fury exploded in a snarl, full of helplessness he could no longer conceal. “What the hell’s the matter with you that you didn’t tell me? If your parents’ deaths have robbed you of this much of your wits, then . . .” He stopped.
In that instant Matthew knew that Shearing understood. Had he gone too far? Had he done precisely what his father had warned him against?
“Was it your father, Reavley?” Shearing asked, regret in his face now, something that might even have been pity.
There was no purpose in lying. Shearing would know, if not now, then later. It would destroy his trust and make Matthew look a fool, and it would gain nothing.
“Yes, sir,” he admitted. “But he was killed in a car accident on his way to see me. All I know is that he spoke of a conspiracy that would dishonor England.” It was ridiculous—he had trouble keeping his voice steady. “And it went as high as the royal family.” That was not all of the truth. He omitted the involvement of the world. That was only his father’s opinion, and perhaps he put too much importance on England’s place in things. He said nothing of the scars on the road and his certainty that it had been murder.
“I see.” In the low, slanting sunlight through the windows the tiny lines in Shearing’s skin were etched clearly. His emotion and his weariness were naked, but his thoughts were as hidden as always. “Then you’d better follow it up, find out all you can.” His lips tightened. It was impossible to imagine his thoughts. “I presume you will anyway. Do it properly.”
“And Neill?” Matthew asked. “Blunden?”
Shearing’s eyes were bright, as though with amusement he could not share. “I have other men who can do that, Reavley. You are not indispensable. You will be of more use to me doing one job properly than half doing two.”
Matthew did not allow his gratitude to show. Shearing should not think him too much in debt. “Thank you, sir. I�
��ll report when I have something.” He turned on his heel before Shearing could add anything, and went out, closing the door behind him. He felt a curious sense of freedom, and of danger.
Matthew began immediately and his first call was exactly as Chetwin had suggested, to Dermot Sandwell. Matthew asked if he might see him as a matter of urgency, to do with the king’s announcement today of his support for the Ulster Loyalists. He gave his name and rank, and that he was on assignment to the Secret Intelligence Service. There was no point in hiding it because Sandwell could very easily find out and would be extremely unlikely to receive him at all otherwise.
He had to wait only fifteen minutes before he was taken into first the outer office and then the inner. It was a handsome room overlooking Horseguards’ Parade, furnished with an extremely individual and pleasing mixture of classical and Middle Eastern styles. A burr walnut desk was flanked by Queen Anne chairs. Turkish brassware sat on an Italian petra dura table. Persian miniatures painted on bone decorated one wall, and above the fireplace was a minor Turner of exquisite beauty, and probably worth as much money as Matthew would earn in a decade.
Sandwell himself was tall and very slight, but there was a wiry grace to him that suggested strength. His hair and skin were fair, and his eyes were a uniquely vivid blue. There was an intensity to his face that would have made him unusual even were the rest of him ordinary. It would have held the attention of anyone who had been in his company for more than a few moments.
He came forward and shook Matthew’s hand, his grip firm, then he stepped back.
“What can I do for you, Reavley?” He waved at the chair to indicate Matthew was to sit, then sat back again in his own, his eyes not leaving Matthew’s face. He continued to create a life and a tension in the room while remaining perfectly motionless. Matthew noticed that there was a mosaic ashtray on the desk, with at least half a dozen cigarette ends in it.