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Lucas could feel the ache of fear inside him tighten into a hard knot. “Ian Newton? The man murdered on a train? How do you know she’s unhurt?” he demanded. “If she was there she can’t be all right.” He felt the fear twisting inside him. “And what do we know about Cordell now?”
“Wherever Cordell’s deepest loyalties lie,” Howard responded, “he isn’t a fool. She made her way from the Paris train all the way to Berlin, eluding detection at the border, and got to the embassy in time to give the warning, in spite of the way she must have felt.”
Lucas ought to apologize. Of course she would be all right. Cordell would betray himself if he did not look after her. And clearly he was not ready to do that yet, if at all. “What do we know about Cordell, for certain?” he asked more levelly.
“Nothing indisputable,” Howard replied, his face grave, the usual light of humor gone. “It’s a bad situation. Three men are dead, all murdered, and apparently connected. Cossotto, our man in Amalfi, was found with a broken neck in the hotel linen cupboard where Newton was staying. Then Newton was knifed to death in the train from Milan to Paris. Finally, Scharnhorst was shot by a sniper at the rally in Berlin.”
“Indisputably connected?” Lucas asked.
“It seems so. As I told you, Newton was given a message, purportedly from MI6, to go to Berlin and prevent the assassination. But he couldn’t check with Cossotto, because he was dead. Newton got on the train with Elena and was killed on the way to carry out his instructions. As he was dying he passed on the instructions to Elena—”
“Is that true? All of it?” Lucas interrupted. He could feel his whole body tighten with horror at the thought of how she must have felt.
“Cordell says that’s what she told him, and it’s the only thing that makes sense,” Howard said. “She was shocked, and grieving, but she carried out the mission to warn him.”
“But he failed?” Lucas shifted his position slightly. “Is he telling the truth?”
“I don’t know. But it’s possible.”
Lucas frowned, worried by a new thought. He looked at Howard and saw the rigidity of his body, for all the calm on the surface. Did the man never relax his guard? He did not used to be so tightly strung. Had Lucas himself been like that when he was in the service? When a mistake could cost so much. He remembered it now. Yes, perhaps he had. He had escaped it, for a while. He did not want it back again. And yet what was he worth if he could watch it all unravel again, and do nothing? A man who watched was as guilty as those who took part. If he could have stopped it, even a small amount of it. Perhaps that was what he had implicitly taught Elena. He would have told Howard that, if their roles had been reversed. “Peter! Is Cordell lying to himself, or to us? Or daren’t he even think about it?” he said.
A wisp of a smile crossed Howard’s face, and perhaps of pity also. “I don’t think he’s faced it yet,” he answered. “Maybe he really did try. But the other thought is that Cordell may know more about Scharnhorst than he’s told us, and it could be the Germans are only too pleased to see the bastard shot, whoever did it. What could be better?”
“The Germans shot Scharnhorst? Really?”
“If you were back with us, you’d know enough not to be surprised,” Howard said bleakly. “Hitler’s quite capable of having done it himself. Scharnhorst was a liability.”
“I thought Hitler was for the pure Aryan race, by whatever means necessary. That’s the subtext I keep hearing.”
“He’s not clumsy, Lucas. Raving mad under the surface, but clever. He won
’t take the people faster than they’re willing to go. Scharnhorst was moving too quickly, and I think Hitler might well have seen that. And there were rumors he had his sights on Hitler’s job. You do know that Hitler got about ninety-four percent of the vote in the election at the turn of the year? If he knows anything, he knows his power…and his people. That’s what scares the hell out of me. He could have been informed by Cordell, or whoever else, and let the assassination go ahead. A good, clean way of getting rid of this rival. And blaming us at the same time.”
“And you really think Cordell would have been complicit in this?” Lucas asked.
“Like most of us, if not all, he passionately wants to believe there will never be another war like the last one,” Howard answered.
“From the outside?” Lucas said quietly, forcing the words, like walking into darkness.
Howard blinked, puzzled.
“Or the inside?” Lucas elaborated. “Do you want your enemy wearing a German uniform, or a British one? A brown shirt or a black one?” He was exaggerating, and he knew it, but not by very far. The possibility was closer than they thought…far too close.
“We’re not…” Howard began, and then stopped. “Cordell’s not stupid, and I believe he’ll see them for what they are, but whether it will be soon enough to save himself…I’m sorry.”
“I can’t leave Elena there,” Lucas said immediately. “I wanted to know about Cordell because I would like to have been able to trust him.”
Howard’s body stiffened. Before he could interrupt, Lucas went on.
“I want to go there and find her.” Had it been anyone but Elena, he would have accepted the facts and futility of his own actions immediately. Was he getting old, losing his touch? Or was it just that this was family, a child he had known since the day of her birth, a tiny scrap of life wrapped in a dress like something a doll would wear, staring at him with wide, blue eyes that had just opened on the world? She had not changed so much. “Where was she last seen?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Howard replied. “And neither do any of my sources. She was staying in a hotel we often use. It seems that, too, is now compromised, because the Stormtroopers went there for her almost immediately, but she escaped. Apparently, she went up the stairs to the top floor, then down the ancient fire escape into an alley, and there they lost her.”
“In an alley?” Lucas was filled with alarm. Surely that must mean they had captured her, but were now denying it. Why? Proof of British guilt was doubtless the purpose of it all, at least on the face of it. So they could ignore what darker political purpose Hitler might have. “Peter—”
“No,” Howard said quickly. “They don’t have her. She must have gone forward into the crowd instead of running for cover. Clever. They lost her among the people in the street, and now there is a full-scale manhunt for her.”
Lucas could not remember anything that had shaken him so badly, except the news of Mike’s death. In a way this was worse. There was no finality to it. He had not known Elena was in any danger. He was seared by the terror she must be feeling, alone and hunted in a city that toppled on the edge of depravity, teeming with Brownshirts, everyone afraid of them, and they becoming more and more drunk with power. He could not imagine what they would do to a woman they believed guilty of killing a man they adored, hysterically, fanatically, as they had Scharnhorst.
