Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [78]
Matthew felt the room swim. His head was pounding. It was almost as if he were back in Sandwell’s office again, with fear of traitors within, suspicion, doubt everywhere.
“Reavley!”
“Yes, sir!”
“What the hell’s the matter with you, man? Are you drunk?” Shearing demanded, his frayed temper unraveling. “The situation is desperate, a lot worse than we can afford to let the country know. We need to stop the German navy, that’s where the real war is. The sea is our greatest friend, and enemy. We have to hold it to survive.”
Matthew stared at him, mesmerized. There was a hideous truth to what he was saying, and yet it supposed defeat in France, and Europe dominated by Germany. Was he really preparing for that kind of disaster? The thought was deeply and painfully frightening. He pulled his attention together with an effort, waiting for Shearing to continue.
Shearing had not moved his eyes from Matthew’s face. “We need something to stop the submarines, a missile that hits every time, instead of one in a score,” he stated. “Ships are made of steel, so are torpedoes, and depth charges. There must be some way; magnetism, attraction, repulsion, electricity, something that will make a missile find a target with more accuracy. Imagine it, Reavley!” His dark eyes were blazing now, wide, almost luminous. His hands described a shape in the air, delicately, fingers spread. “A torpedo that changes course, if necessary, that searches out a U-boat through the water, and explodes when it strikes! Have you ever played with magnets on either side of a piece of paper? Move one, the other moves with it! Something like that must be possible—we just have to find the way. If any man can do it, it will be Corcoran!”
Matthew saw the brilliant possibility of it! Then at the same instant, like the crash of ice, he saw total surrender if the Germans obtained such a weapon. Never mind before Christmas, the war could be over in weeks.
“You see?” Shearing was leaning across the desk.
“Yes . . .” Matthew breathed out shakily. “Yes, I see.”
Shearing nodded slowly. “So you will go to Corcoran and brief him to put all other projects aside, reassign them to his juniors, and give this priority. He must put each part of it to different people, so no one knows the entire project. All must be sworn to absolute secrecy, even so. I will see that it is funded directly from Whitehall, nothing through the treasury or the War Office. He will report only to me, no one else at all! Is that understood—absolutely?”
“Yes, sir.” Matthew could see it was imperative, there was no need to add any explanations. He could also see, with a wave of nausea that made his gorge rise, what it would do if Shearing were the Peacemaker. It was an irony of exquisite proportions. He could be getting England’s finest brain to create a weapon for German victory, and stealing it at the precise moment it was ready for use. And no one but Matthew Reavley would know, because he would indirectly have helped create it. The irony would be sublime; the vengeance for foiling his first plan!
He had no alternative. His heart was pounding, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. “Of course I will.” He could not refuse. At all cost he must keep it in his own hands. “I’ll go tomorrow.”
Shearing nodded. “Good.”
Matthew drove to Cambridge, leaving London before six in the morning when the traffic was light, and he was well on the way north by the time he stopped for breakfast a little after eight. It was a bright clear day with white clouds riding the horizon and the sun bathing the landscape in an illusion of peace. Looking at the fat lambs in the fields, the cattle grazing, and the great trees towering into the air, green skirts brushing the high grasses, the whole idea of war seemed like an obscenity that belonged in the madness of dreams.
But in the village where he stopped there were only girls and old men in the pub, and their faces were strained,