We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [7]
Joseph’s brother, Matthew Reavley, was sitting in a bare, impersonal London office opposite Calder Shearing, his superior in the Secret Intelligence Service.
“A month,” Shearing said, pulling his mouth into a tight line. “Possibly a week or two longer, if the Germans hold out around Ypres, but not much more. Prisoners are pouring third repetition across the lines, sometimes ten thousand a day. There’s still hard fighting in Menin, Courtrai—and Verdun, of course. Casualty figures are bad on both sides.” He did not need to look at the names on the map. As Matthew was well aware, he knew them all better than the furniture of his own house or the neglected garden behind it.
“Talks by early November?” Matthew asked. “Cease-fire?”
“Probably,” Shearing replied. “But we’re not ready. We’re still arguing with Wilson and the French.”
His voice was raw with emotion and barely suppressed anger. This had been the most devastating war in history. It had spread to almost every corner of the world. Thirty-five million people were missing, dead, or injured; a continent spread with ruin. The balance of power was altered forever, the old rule swept away. The kaiser was toppled, the Austro-Hungarian Empire crumbling. In Russia a revolution had occurred, even more terrible than that which had swept the Bourbon monarchy from France. America had emerged as a new world power.
“Wilson’s Fourteen Points,” Matthew said grimly.
It was a vexed subject. President Woodrow Wilson of the United States was in effect the chief arbiter between the opposing forces, and as far back as January he had laid out his principles upon which peace should be negotiated.
Shearing’s strong hand clenched on the desk between the two men. “Don’t argue it, Reavley. Not now.”
“He has no grasp of history,” Matthew said yet again. “If we force his terms on Germany, it will lay the foundation for another war just as bloody as this!”
“I know!” Shearing snapped, the muscles of his face tightening. “We all know it, but the man doesn’t listen to us. He has the mind of a country schoolmaster and the soul of an army mule. But what matters is that he has the power of a nation that didn’t join the war until close to the end, when the rest of us were already on our knees. He rescued us, and, very politely, he doesn’t intend to let us forget it.”
“If it was a European country schoolmaster it wouldn’t matter,” Matthew said drily, leaning back in his chair. He had grown comfortable in Shearing’s room only lately, now that he understood why there was nothing personal in it. “He would at least grasp the reasons for our ancient quarrels, and know that we can’t be forced to get over them by common sense, especially an outsider’s idea of what is sensible.”
“I know!” Shearing repeated sharply. “Dermot Sandwell has tried pointing out that if we destroy Germany’s heavy industry with punitive restrictions, we will cripple the economy of the whole continent. Germany in violent recession could create a vacuum, which would suck in all of us, in time. Five or six years from now we could have an economic depression unlike anything we’ve seen before.”
“Is Sandwell right?” Matthew asked with a sudden chill.
“God knows,” Shearing replied. “Probably. And yet if we don’t prevent them from rearming we’ll be back where we started, and deserve to be.” He smiled. It was very brief, but there was warmth in it, even a momentary revelation of something very close to friendship. “I suppose you still don’t know who your ‘Peacemaker’ is?”
Matthew took a deep breath, startled by the sense of defeat in himself. The failure hurt more deeply than he had expected. “No,” he admitted.
“I’m sorry,” Shearing said quietly. “I suppose if I could help, you would have said so?”
Shearing was an intense man who never