Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [100]
The young man paled. “I think perhaps we have. And before you ask me, I have no idea who.”
“Are they still going forward?”
“Yes. Corcoran is determined, whatever the cost. He’s working all day and half the night as it is. I don’t know when he eats or sleeps. He looks twenty years older than he did two months ago.”
“Were you close to success?” It was a question he hardly dared ask. If Corcoran did succeed, then Britain would gain a whole new lease on life at sea. It could prolong the war another year, even two—and God alone knew how many more lives would be lost.
The young man did not answer the question. His face was bleak, his eyes unhappy.
“If he does, you must take it for Germany,” the Peacemaker said with a sudden flare of passion. “Tell me when he’s anywhere near it, whatever it costs you! I’ll see the prototype is taken, if I have to burn the place to the ground.”
The young man nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll watch. I’m working on it myself. Unless Corcoran gets a sudden breakthrough, I’ll be able to see it in advance.” His voice was oddly flat, possessing none of the hunger there used to be. Was he tired, harassed by the police presence, the questions intruding on his work, the suspicion? Or was he really afraid there was a third player, and his own life was at risk?
Or was he going soft, learning to become too much part of one small village in Cambridgeshire, and its people? He must be watched. The work, the goal was too important to indulge any individual.
Two days later the Peacemaker had a very different visitor. This was not a young English scientist with a pleasant freckled face and brown hair that waved off his brow. It was an Irishman closer to fifty, of average height, lean-bodied, his hair neither dark nor fair. If one did not study the expression in his face, he was unremarkable. Only his eyes reflected his intelligence, and then only if he chose that they should.
He stood in front of the Peacemaker, carefully balanced as if to run or to strike, but it was only habit. He had been here many times, and his weapons in this battle were of the intellect.
“Have they the code?” the Peacemaker asked him bluntly.
“No,” Hannassey replied. “They’ve worked out how the saboteurs get their funding and who they are by turning a German agent in the docks, and using a double agent in the banking system.”
“Are you sure?” the Peacemaker asked with a lift of interest.
“Yes. The double agent was murdered,” Hannassey replied. “We found the body. The main thing is that our plans in Mexico can go ahead. The code is safe. We can run rings around the Americans, keep them busy on the Rio Grande for another year at least. Bleed them dry. After that it won’t matter whether or not they enter the war.”
“And you trust Bernadette—not just her loyalty, but her judgment?” the Peacemaker persisted. There was an arrogance in Hannassey that he did not like.
Hannassey smiled, a cold expression of mirth without pleasure. “Sure, I’d trust her loyalty to the end of the earth and beyond,” he replied. “She has the courage to take on God Himself.” There was a shadow in his face, but he did not explain it. Bernadette was his daughter. If he saw a flaw in her he would admit it to no one else, least of all his men.
The Peacemaker offered no comment. He had assessed Bernadette for himself. He trusted no one else’s judgment.
Hannassey was motionless. His intense, controlled stillness was one of the few things that marked him out physically. “Who are the leaders of British Naval Intelligence?” he asked with the slightest smile. “One superannuated admiral who blinks like an owl, a chief with a wooden leg, and a couple of dozen assorted academics from this college and that.” He was not being dismissive; it was simply fact. The British were amateurs.
The Peacemaker relaxed. He knew the men of British Intelligence. “Tell Bernadette we are grateful,” he said generously. “It’s a fine piece of work.”
“She didn