No Graves as Yet_ A Novel - Anne Perry [109]
The doorbell rang, and a moment later it was opened by the butler. There followed a short silence, then footsteps up the stairs—soft, light, those of a man used to climbing the fells and dales—then a tap on the door.
“Come,” he answered.
The door opened and Richard Mason came in. He was almost six feet tall, an inch or two less than the Peacemaker, but he was more robust, and his skin had the wind and sunburn of one who travels.
“You sent for me, sir?” he said. His voice was unusual, his diction perfect, as if he had been trained for drama and the love of words. It had a sibilance so slight one was not certain if it was there or not, and one listened to catch it again.
“Yes,” the Peacemaker assured him. They both remained standing, as if to be seated was too much a sign of ease for the situation that brought them together. “Events are moving very rapidly.”
“I am aware of that,” Mason said with only the merest touch of asperity. “Do you have the document?”
“No.” That was a tight, hard word carrying a burden of anger in it so great one expected to see his shoulders bend under it. But he remained upright, his face pale. “I’ve had men searching for it, but we have no idea where it went. It wasn’t in the car or on the bodies, and we’ve tried the house twice.”
“Could he have destroyed it?” Mason asked dubiously.
“No.” The answer was immediate. “He was”—he gave the merest shrug—“an innocent man in some ways, but he was not a fool. He knew the meaning of the document, and he knew no one would believe him without it. Under his calm manner, he was as stubborn as a mule.” His face tightened in the sunlight through the bay windows. “He would never deliberately have defaced it, let alone destroyed it.”
Mason stood still, his pulse beating hard. He had some idea of how much was at stake, but the enormities of it stretched into an unimaginable future. The sights of war still haunted his nightmares, but the blood, the pain, and the loss of the past would be no more than a foretaste of what could happen in Europe, and eventually the world. Any risk at all was worth the price in order to prevent that, even this price.
“We can’t waste any more time looking,” the Peacemaker went on. “Events are overtaking us. I have it from excellent sources that Austria is preparing to invade Serbia. Serbia will resist, we all know that, and then Russia will mobilize. Once Germany enters France it will be over in a matter of days, weeks at the most. Schlieffen has drawn up a plan of absolute exactitude, every move timed to perfection. The German army will be in Paris before the rest of the world has time to react.”
“Is there still a chance we will remain out of it?” Mason asked. He was a foreign correspondent. He knew Austria and Germany almost as well as the man who stood opposite him, with his background, his aristocratic connections stretching as high as the junior branches of the royal family on both sides of the North Sea, his brilliance with languages. They shared a rage at the slaughter and destruction of war. The highest goal a man could achieve would be to prevent that from ever happening again, by any means at all.
The Peacemaker chewed his lip, his face strained with tension. “I think so. But there are difficulties. I’ve got an SIS man breathing down my neck. Reavley’s son, actually. He’s not important, just a nuisance. I doubt it will be necessary to do anything about him. Don’t want to draw attention. Fortunately he’s looking in the wrong direction. By the time he realizes it, it won’t matter anymore.”
“Another copy of the document?” Mason asked. The idea in it was brilliant, more daring than anything he could have imagined. The sheer size of it dazzled him.
When the Peacemaker had first told him of it, it had taken his breath away. They had been walking slowly along the Thames Embankment, the lights dancing on the water, the smell of the incoming tide, the sounds