“…has no idea,” Lucas finished.
Howard gave a very tiny, twisted smile. “She probably doesn’t want to know,
but she is aware of who you are. She was a decoder during the war, remember? Josephine doesn’t ask because she knows you can’t discuss it, but she also knows why.”
“Yes…yes, I suppose she must.” Looking at it as Howard was doing, it was pretty plain. Lucas considered whether he had taken her silence for granted, instead of wondering why she had never questioned him, nor appeared to resent his secrecy. It seemed their worlds were nowhere near as separate as he had allowed himself to believe. As a decoder she had kept her secrets and now she was keeping his. He was rather relieved. And proud of her! Her intelligence and her discretion. She had never given the slightest hint.
Who else knew? Certainly not Charles. And there was no one else.
He turned his attention back to Ian Newton. He had joined the service after Lucas had left, but Howard had spoken of him often, repeated instances of his light, wry humor and his insights. In ways, Ian had reminded Lucas of Mike. Mike would have been Newton’s age now, or perhaps a little older, but the same generation. And now Ian, too, was dead. Not on the battlefield, but on the floor of a railway carriage somewhere in France.
Would Howard be the one who had to tell his family? That was the worst job of all, worse even than identifying the body. He would never forget hearing about Mike. None of them would. Nobody across Europe would ever forget receiving that kind of news. There was far more that united a German mother who had lost her son and an English mother who’d lost hers than ever divided them. Did those who talked about war so easily even think about that?
“Thank you for telling me personally about Newton. I’m very sorry indeed,” Lucas said quietly.
“There’s a lot more to it than that.” Howard sat down at last, in one of the old comfortable chairs, and Lucas did the same.
“What? What was he doing in France? Do you know? Was he there for you?”
Howard looked bleak. “No. That’s the part that has me most concerned. Someone apparently gave him orders, and he assumed it was me, so he started to obey them. I told you he wired to let me know he was on his way to Berlin to prevent the assassination of Friedrich Scharnhorst. I had no notion that he thought I had given him those instructions, but none of our other men instructed him either.”
“Started to obey?” Lucas sat a little farther forward in his chair. “How far?” he asked, when Howard did not answer.
“He’d left Amalfi and started on a journey to Berlin,” Howard answered. “He must have changed trains at Rome and Milan, I assume, because his body was found on the train from Milan to Paris, rather more than halfway.”
“And do you want to prevent this assassination?” Lucas asked. “Scharnhorst’s a monster, deformed in mind, if not in body.”
“On principle, I’d love to see the man got rid of, but not in public, or with MI6 blamed for it. I dare say the rest of the world would be delighted, but it would give the Germans a first-class excuse to make a martyr of him and cause an extremely unpleasant international incident. Everyone would have to pretend to be shocked, whatever they actually felt. We would look to be interfering in the internal affairs of another country, and being damned incompetent at it.” Howard’s face was pale, lines of tension visible in the sharp May sunlight. He looked older than his forty-eight years.
“I see,” Lucas said slowly. “Yes. There are a few people who would seize the chance to ‘take offense’ and make a meal of it. I can think of a few here in England! I suppose we have no idea who’s behind it?”
“Not precisely, though there are many cells of anti-government factions where we have useful contacts. But I didn’t contact Newton, and no one from my command did.”
Lucas’s mind raced, trying to work out what could have happened, to think of all the possibilities. None of them was good.
“We can’t trust Cordell with any of this,” Howard reminded him quietly.
“Or anyone else,” Lucas added. “They’d take it to him, eventually. Is he involved in the assassination plot, do you know?”
“It’s possible, I suppose. But I have no proof. I’m still working on a plan to test him. If I move too fast, it will be obvious.”
“Then I think the best we can do is damage limitation,” Lucas replied grimly. “We haven’t time to prevent the plot. I assume we’ve no idea who’s going to do it, or how, or you would have mentioned it.”
“Sniper, probably,” Howard said, his face tight. “But at a rally it could be anyone from anywhere. If we interfere, we could be playing into their hands, making it easier for them.”
“There will be security.” Lucas was following another thread. “Whoever it is could well be part of that…”
“But that would be suicide.” Howard looked at him. “Someone who’s so desperate he’s prepared to sacrifice himself?”
“Possibly. Who’s planning it, that’s the key. And who gave Newton the information, and why?” Lucas asked.
“And is it even true?” Howard raised his eyebrows. “Is there a plot at all, or is it a plan to make us react, and provoke a reaction we can’t contain? There are all sorts of possibilities, none of them good.”
Lucas’s mind raced over all the facts they knew. What had they missed? Was the planned assassination real, and if so, was it the act of someone inexperienced, with an agenda of their own, even an agent provocateur? More than one disaster had been triggered by an error of judgment, a reaction ill thought through. “What exactly did Newton say when he contacted you?” he pressed.
Howard was sitting perfectly still, as if his muscles were locked. “He wired me from Rome,” he replied. “It was definitely him, no possibility of error there. He responded obliquely, in code. He explained little because he assumed the message to him had come from me.”
“And there was no mistaking the meaning? Definitely an assassination attempt on Scharnhorst, to be blamed on us?”