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“And you have one,” Peter interrupted, knowing that Lucas did not need to be modest about it.
“I might understand the figures, yes,” Lucas agreed. “But not the coding of it, nor the reason why the movement of the sums is hidden. And I mean hundreds of thousands of pounds, at least.”
Peter felt a chill, as if the sun had gone behind the horizon, although actually it was still crimson in the west and staining all the clouds around it, as if dripping fire on the small patches of water, the ponds and streams, in the field. “Laundering money through MI6? For God’s sake, why?” he asked, although a fear was settling at the corners of his mind.
Lucas looked at him for a moment and then far away across the fields. He could see Toby and called him several of times, until he saw him running toward them and was satisfied.
“Funding for one of Hitler’s schemes,” he replied. “A very big one. I don’t know which, but my guess would be the Fatherland Front, to squeeze Dollfuss until either he breaks or they kill him.” Lucas paused for several moments.
Was he marshaling the reasons in his head? The evidence? Or was he wondering how much to tell Peter…or not to tell him?
“Margot went to Berlin for Cecily Cordell’s wedding, you know,” Lucas said at last.
There was silence for a few more moments. Toby arrived, running straight into Lucas, whose legs were, as usual, braced for it. He bent and patted the dog. “She overheard several conversations,” he told Peter. “She told me about it after her father had dismissed it as nonsense, young men boasting and of no importance. At least, that’s what he told her.” He straightened up and met Peter’s eyes frankly. He relayed what Margot had said.
“That’s not nonsense,” Peter answered. “I’m afraid it’s true. It’s a matter of exactly how and when. It looks like they’re not quite ready yet, maybe sometime early next year, but I’ve got other information that it could be sooner than that. There seems to be a splinter group within their own body, like a cancer eating the heart out of them. Likely to preempt them in late October this year.” He was still debating telling Lucas the whole truth. Perhaps that would jeopardize a job, or worse, break a trust he needed to keep. Trust was the breath of life to a man who was alone and surrounded by enemies. That was one reason he had sent Elena to get Aiden Strother back alive. It was not just to show his whole support for Aiden, but for every other agent in the field. If you deliberately let one go, morally you have to let them all go. Trust was built up…or it went nowhere.
Lucas was waiting.
Peter made the decision. “That’s why we have Aiden Strother in Trieste. He’s sent a lot of good information back, but now we’ve got to get him out.”
Lucas’s face was tight. Neither of them mentioned Elena, but the fact of her mission was there between them, as if she were beside them in the field.
“You trust him?” Lucas asked quietly.
Peter could either answer honestly or commit a betrayal that could never be mended. “He’s been planted deep, for years. All his information—and there’s been a lot of it—has been good.”
“So far…” Lucas said. “Do you still trust him?” He waited.
A flock of starlings whirled up in the sky, curved, and came down again.
“I don’t know,” Peter said honestly. “I have no grounds not to. I just…”
“Did you send him to Germany?”
“I picked him out,” Peter admitted. “But Bradley actually sent him. He denies it, which is interesting. But he has to have authorized continuing it, not to mention getting the reports.”
Lucas’s face was as tight and hard as Peter had ever seen it, and yet he understood perfectly. “Was it Bradley who used Elena in the original, pretended, betrayal?”
“Yes…” There was nothing he could add. It was six years ago.
“I see.” Lucas did not make excuses. There was a world of knowledge unspoken between them. “When did you last hear from her?”
“Not since she found him. Pretty quickly. She’s good.”
“Don’t make—” Lucas snapped, then broke off as quickly. “Good,” he repeated. He looked away. “What now?”
“Strother has a list of the donors of money collected in Austria, Italy, and America, all for the Fatherland Front. A complete list. Ours is good, but only partial. That’s why we have to get him out, apart from the morality of not leaving him there, now that his contact has disappeared. Elena’s instructions are to bring him out with his information, if she possibly can.”
Lucas looked back at him at last. “That might make sense, of course. Stoney’s list, that’s the other half of it: the sums involved.” He sounded as if it hurt even to speak, but clearly it was making sense to him.
A different thought was forming hard and deep in Peter’s mind. Aiden Strother was Bradley’s man, not Peter’s. Bradley had contacted him only because he was interested in what Peter knew and Bradley did not. At least he said he did not, but someone here in London might be responsible for Stoney Canning’s death, if Lucas was right. “Who do you think killed Stoney?” he asked abruptly.
“I don’t know,” Lucas replied, “but I mean to find out. That’s really what I wanted to ask you.”
Peter held up his hand. “If you were running an inquiry into European money given to Hitler to bring down the Austrian government, would you trust the murder of Canning to someone else? Leave it incomplete? Or give them that much power over you?”
Lucas did not have to hesitate. “One golden rule for anything: never involve anyone you don’t have to.” He drew in his breath, then let it out again in a sigh. “I have a feeling Stoney knew the man who killed him.” A shadow crossed his face. “Perhaps even knew that he had come for that reason.”
