Angels in the Gloom by Anne Perry Read Free Book Online

getting worse,” he said grimly, all pretense at courtesy abandoned. “How much longer before we can act?” There was an edge of desperation in his voice. “We’re being bled to death!”
    “I know…” Matthew began.
    “Do you? The French are being massacred at Verdun. Last month the Seventy-second Division at Samogneux was reduced from twenty-six thousand men to ten thousand. The Russian Front is unspeakable. Sturmer, a creature of Rasputin’s, has replaced Goremykin as prime minister.” His face tightened. “Our people there estimate that a quarter of the entire working age population is dead, captured, or in the army. The harvest has failed and they are facing starvation. We are fighting in Italy, Turkey, the Balkans, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt, and more than half of Africa.”
    Matthew deemed it pointless to declare that they had finally succeeded in extricating themselves from the disaster of Gallipoli, and without losing a single man. The actual evacuation had been a military masterpiece, though nothing could make up for the fiasco of the attempted invasion that had cost the lives of over a quarter of a million men. On the worst days the reconnaissance aircraft had reported the sea red with blood.
    Shearing was staring at him. His eyes were shadowed with exhaustion and a deep, corroding knowledge. His emotion dominated the austere room in which there was nothing of his home, his past, or the man he was outside these walls.
    Matthew was compelled to offer all the brief information he could about his own specific task. “The fact that they are putting smoke bombs in the holds of the ships, in among the munitions, so the captains have no choice but to flood the holds, can be deduced easily enough; it doesn’t need any explanation,” he said. “To trace the money to pay for the bombs themselves and the agents who plant them, all the way from Berlin to America, needs several people. We can fabricate bank clerks, officials, and so on, suggest bribery and betrayal, a degree of carelessness, but it all has to be verifiable.”
    “I know that!” Shearing snapped. “You’ve got men—do it!”
    He was referring to Detta Hannassey, the Irish double agent the Germans were using to test whether their vital naval code had been broken. It was Matthew’s job to convince her, and them, that it had not. Otherwise they would change the code and Britain would lose one of the very few advantages it maintained. All communication from Berlin to their men in the neutral United States hung in the balance. “I am doing it. I can’t just lay it out in front of her. I have to wait until she asks, or something happens to make it natural to talk about it. I’ve got a story about someone turned from their side to ours, but I need a cover to make it believable.”
    Shearing kept his impatience under control with a visible effort. “How long?”
    “Three weeks,” Matthew estimated. “Two if I’m lucky. If I rush it, she’ll know exactly what I’m doing.”
    Shearing’s face was pale.
    “How is our status in Washington?” Matthew asked drily. He had little hope of change. Even rumor of a Japanese base in Baja California and all the violence and chaos in Mexico under Pancho Villa had made no real difference.
    Anger and self-mockery lit Shearing’s eyes. “About equal with that of the Germans,” he said sourly. “President Wilson is still aspiring to be the arbiter of peace in Europe. Teach the Old World how it’s done.”
    Matthew would have used an expletive had he not been in his superior’s office. “What will it take to make him change?”
    “If I knew that, I’d damn well do it!” Shearing told him. “Work hard, Reavley. It can’t be long before they take the next step up and start actually sinking the munitions ships. It only takes an incendiary bomb instead of smoke.”
    Matthew was cold. “Yes, sir, I know.”
    The nightclub where Matthew had arranged to meet Detta was crowded with soldiers on