At Some Disputed Barricade wwi-4

by Anne Perry

  Of course he had tried to find ways to bring about peace since then—he had never stopped trying. It had become a passion that devoured everything else in him, overtook his life and cost him every other wish or dream, every principle or ideal he had treasured, certainly all personal happiness. But what was that when balanced against the ruin of Europe and its centuries of beauty, its magnificence of thought, its philosophy and dreams, not to mention the loss of human life?

  Every attempt had been foiled either by tides of circumstance or the intervention of an individual. In at least three instances that he knew of he had been frustrated by the sons of John Reavley, who were still bent on avenging his death, and still held his foolish idealism.

  After the first poison gas attack in the trenches at Ypres in 1915, and the slaughter on the beaches of Gallipoli, Mason had written a brilliant article exposing the arrogance and extreme incompetence of the command in the second instance. Joseph Reavley had been briefly at Gallipoli also. He had pursued Mason back toward England and finally caught up with him in an open boat in the English Channel when they had survived the sinking of the ship they had been in.

  What conceivable part of Reavley’s shortsighted philosophy could have changed Mason’s mind and persuaded him to abandon not only his article but also the entire cause? It had taken the Peacemaker more than a year to win him back and make him see the greater cause again.

  It was Matthew Reavley who had caused the death of Patrick Hannassey, but this had not been unwelcome. Hannassey had been extremely useful, but by the summer of 1917 he was becoming a liability—greedy and unreliable. Corcoran had been one of the Peacemaker’s successes. Other plans were almost ripe as well.

  So he paced the floor of his room trying to compose his mind as he waited for Richard Mason and the report he would bring from Russia, and even more important, from Germany itself. The Peacemaker had seen a year ago that the key might lie in the deluge that was about to break over the tsar’s government and bring it to an end. Now it had happened. Kerensky was in control now. He was a man of vision and humanity, a man of compromise. Lenin was there now, too, and Trotsky—but they were extremists. In time they would take Russia out of the war. There would be no more Eastern Front to bleed away German strength and crush its men with the deadly cold and hunger, and the useless marches and sieges that had ruined every army that had tried to conquer that vast country. Dear God, even Napoleon had learned that at crippling cost. Did the kaiser really delude himself he could do better?

  God knew Germany tried hard enough to keep the United States out of the war, knowing how their strength would renew the almost beaten forces of Britain and France. Until January of this year, 1917, they had succeeded. But Zimmerman, the German foreign secretary, had sent that idiotic directive to Mexico to attack the United States. The telegram had somehow found its way to President Woodrow Wilson. America had had no choice but to declare war on Germany and join the Allies.

  Tens of thousands more lives would be lost as the war dragged on for another year, and another. The blind, insensate stupidity of the leaders who sacrificed men for nothing but their own arrogance, their petty “little England” mentality, brought the hot rage to his mind. The sweat stood out on his body and he could feel his heart pounding. Britain and Germany were natural allies. Together they could have brought peace and safety to half the world, prosperity and civilized government, and the highest culture mankind had ever seen.

  Instead Britain in its imperial conceit had loosed a storm of destruction that threatened to bring back the Dark Ages, and leave Europe all but uninhabited, except by the old, the crippled, and the lonely women whose men were buried in the blood-soaked earth.

  He steadied himself with difficulty, breathing in slowly and out again, counting the seconds. There was still hope. He must be in total control when Mason arrived.

  He heard another car go past and whirled around to stare at the door, then was furious with himself for giving in to such impulse.

  And it was meaningless. Mason would not drive past this house. He would stop at least a hundred yards away.

  Then there was the knock on the door.

  “Come,” he said quietly.

  The manservant came in. “Mr. Mason is here, sir,” he said respectfully. “Would you like tea, or perhaps a glass of whisky? There is Glenmorangie in the decanter, sir.”

  “Bring tea and then leave us,” the Peacemaker replied. Mason would be tired and cold. There might be something to celebrate later, but not yet. It depended very much on what news he also brought from Germany.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mason’s footsteps sounded on the stairs, and a moment later he came into the room. He was thinner than when the Peacemaker had last seen him, but he still moved with a certain grace in spite of the fact that he must have been exhausted. It was an energy of mind rather than of body that kept him going. It burned in his dark eyes now, and the power of his emotion was suggested in the lines of his face, the broad cheekbones and wide mouth.

  “Have a seat, Mason,” the Peacemaker said calmly, as if it were only days since they had last seen each other, and not months. “I’ve sent for tea, but if you’d rather have whisky, it’s here.”

  “Tea, thank you.” Mason sat down in the armchair opposite him, and only as he eased himself into it did his tiredness show. There was clearly a stiffness in his back, and the light of the lamp above the mantel accentuated for an instant the hollows around his eyes.

  “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.”

  “Rubbish!” the Peacemaker snapped. “He’ll only dig himself in deeper. No one’s going to believe him.”

  “This man did,” his visitor replied. “Started asking a lot of questions, getting police records—times and places. He was very thorough.”

  The Peacemaker felt a tiny flash of anxiety, nothing more than a cold touch inside, there and then gone again. “Any idea who it is?”

  “The man from Intelligence? His name is Matthew Reavley.” The man said it without expression, as if it meant nothing to him.

  “Thank you.” The Peacemaker’s voice was little more than a whisper, and he stood perfectly still in the room. Reavley again. The name was like a curse. He cleared his throat. “I doubt he will do anything, but I will attend to it. I am obliged to you that you had the foresight to tell me. Good night.” He led the way down toward the front door, holding it open for the man to leave, then he locked and barred it behind him.

  He returned to the upstairs room with an inexplicable sense of loss. It disturbed him. Of course Matthew Reavley would have to be killed. There was now no choice. Getting rid of ministers like Corracher was vital to the peace negotiations when they came. His Hungarian connection had proved far better than the Peacemaker had foreseen. He was striving for unity! A single state, led by Britain and Germany. A renegade Hungarian leadership waiting to break up the old Austro-Hungarian Empire was the last thing needed.

  It was also vital that the right men guided the peace. A
fter the defeat of the generals on both sides, the ordinary men might still ally and lay the foundations of an empire that would begin to rebuild with justice, bring order and finally prosperity again and beauty out of the present chaos.

  Why should he grieve that it cost the life of Matthew Reavley? That was a sentimental weakness he must not allow himself. He was bone weary, but far deeper than that he was heartsick. What on earth was one life more? Passchendaele was costing thousands a day! Every day!

  But London was still outwardly civilized, so it must be done with care. He would set the act in motion tomorrow, speak to the right man for the task. If he allowed personal regret of any kind to hold him back he was despicable, not fit to lead. The best men in the country had lost sons and brothers.

  He sat down at his desk and encoded a short letter to Manfred for Mason to take tomorrow. Manfred von Schenckendorff had been the Peacemaker’s ally from the beginning, when it had still seemed possible that they might have won peace with honor, and avoided this whole misguided tragedy of war between two nations who should have been brothers—together. Manfred would understand the pervading sense of loss he felt that he had to destroy a good but stubborn man, as he had had to destroy Reavley’s father before him. He would so much rather have won him to the cause.

  This new turn of events with Corracher had left him no choice. Manfred would appreciate that; they had always understood each other in the subtler ways of honor and logic and the wounds of unnecessary tragedy.

  He walked over to the gramophone, wound it up, and placed a record on it: Beethoven, the last quartets, composed after he was deaf—complex, subtle, marvelously beautiful, and full of pain.