The Secret War

8

Love and loyalties

The car sped at a furious pace back down the hill towards Athens.

`I couldn't do it,' Christopher sobbed, his head on Valerie's breast. 'I couldn't do it! He was an old man and quite defenseless. He stood there waiting for me to kill him and my courage failed me.'

'Darling ! She sought to comfort him as they rocked together in the back of the car over the bumpy road. 'I understand. Please, please, don't give way so. I think I'm glad.'

`Glad? But you don't understand!' he exclaimed angrily. `Paxito Zirrif deserved death. The Millers of God appointed me to be his executioner, and Lovelace took a big risk to give me a perfect opportunity. Then, just because I found Zirrif to be frail and old, and he stood up to me, I chucked my hand in and ran away.'

Lovelace, in the driver's seat, threw a quick glance over his shoulder. The alarm gongs were still ringing in his ears and he expected to see a car crammed with Zarrif’s gunmen hot on their trail; but only the empty silver road showed bright in the moonlight behind them. 'Didn't you even take the precaution of knocking him out?' he asked curtly.

'No,' Christopher admitted shamefacedly, 'as I hadn't the heart to kill him I just bolted and skedaddled down the rope from the window. Directly I turned my back he must have roused the house. I was lucky to get over the wall and reach you so quickly.'

'Have you got the rope, or did you leave it dangling?' Lovelace shot out as he jammed down the accelerator.

Christopher sat up. `I remembered what you told me about pulling one end of it instinctively, I think, and it came running dawn all over me. It's here in the car. I left the short one over the wall, though.'

`That doesn't matter. I don't know that anything does now; but at all events they won't know how you got into the house. You might have been hiding in his bedroom for hours.'

As they swerved round the corner into the main road Lovelace looked back again. No car was following. Evidently Paxito Zirrif was satisfied to have got rid of his murderous visitor without ordering his henchmen to give chase. Those tense moments when the alarm bells had shrilled out their warning and Christopher was scrambling breathlessly up the hill towards the car were still fresh in his memory, but he eased the car down as they came into the suburban traffic.

When they reached the heart of the city he pulled up on a corner two hundred yards from their hotel.

`You'd better get out here, Christopher,' he said. `I know you don't care about drink in the ordinary way, but if you could manage a nightcap, make it a stiff one and get to bed. I'll be back later when I've returned this hired car but first I'll take Valerie out to the airport in it.'

`Good night, darling.' Valerie kissed her fiancé again before he scrambled out.

Christopher came round to the front of the car. His dark eyes looked larger than ever and his face paler as he said hesitantly: `Good night, Lovelace. I'm so sorry I let you down.'

`Good Lord, you didn't let me down.' Lovelace laughed now that the abortive affair was over. `I did no more than pave the way for you. I'm not a Miller myself, remember, and I never promised to do more than stand by because the opposition crowd had threatened to do you in.'

`You ran a big risk getting into Zarrif’s house to spy out the land under the pretence of being Jeremiah Green; and an even greater one when you faked illness to fix that rope for me.'

'Oh, forget it.' Lovelace grinned again. 'You get to bed and in the morning I'll probably persuade you to join the relief organization which I was going out to when we first met. That's all above board, and the poor devils behind the lines in Abyssinia need all the help they can be given.'

Christopher threw back his head. 'You'll do fine work, I know, but that's only bandaging the wound after it's been made. Someone has got to get at the root of this thing and stop the wounds ever being inflicted. I failed the Millers tonight, but I won't fail the second time. Even if you refuse to help me further, I've got to find another opportunity.'

`So you mean to have another go at it,' Lovelace said slowly.

`Yes. I pledged myself to kill Zirrif, and if I don't I'll never be able to respect myself again.'

Valerie leaned out of the back of the car. 'Please go in now, darling, and get to bed. You're so terribly overwrought. We'll talk it over quietly tomorrow.'

`You angel!' He smiled suddenly and, seizing her hand, kissed it. 'What should I do without you? Sleep well, my sweet.'

Lovelace drove Valerie out to the airport hotel, but it was still early, only a quarter past ten, and her nerves were so strung up that she did not wish to go to bed.

`Park the car and stay with me for a little,' she said.

`All right,' he agreed. `We'll get a drink in the lounge and, God knows! I need one,'

They had their drinks, but the lounge was stuffy and overheated, and a too attentive waiter hovered within earshot, so Valerie suggested that should go outside where they could talk freely,

There was no wind, so the air was clear of the dust that fought a daily battle with the struggling vegetation in the arid garden. The moon was now high in the heavens, bathing the plain in its brilliant light, yet softening the modern contours of the distant city so that it seemed a fairy town illustrating some old romance. The Acropolis, its ruined state no longer perceptible, and seeming as magnificent as when it was first built, dominated the scene upon its rocky crag. For an hour or two ancient Athens lived again, clothed in the still warmth of the southern night with all the splendour of the past.

`Mind if I smoke my pipe?' he asked, producing it from his pocket as they sat down on a bench.

'No, you love it, don't you? I've noticed you always smoke it in preference to cigarettes when you want to think.'

'Yes, and I've got some pretty hard thinking to do at the moment.' He offered his cigarette case.

`Thanks.' She took one. 'About Christopher, you mean, and his determination to go on with this?'

He nodded. 'That's it. I want to think up some really telling arguments against his attempting another cut at Zirrif tomorrow. If Christopher's left to his own devices it's a hundred to one on his bungling it.'

'You you don't mean to give him any further help, then?'

'No. I've done all I promised, so now I'm through. I don't see the fun of risking my neck in some wild scheme that would probably end in the deaths of both of us, and for all our sakes I'd give a lot to prevent him attempting Zarrif’s assassination on his own. D'you think there's any chance of my being able to persuade him to chuck his hand in and sever his connection with the Millers?'

`Not a hope. As I told you once before, Christopher

Penn is Christopher Penn, the most pig headed, quixotic darling ever born between Panama and Alaska, No one can make him change his mind once it's made up.'

`Except yourself. He's in love with you, so he'd stop this murder game if you asked him to for your sake.

`Perhaps. I don't know. But I'm not certain that I want him to.'

`I see,' he hesitated, `you still think of it as a sort of Crusade, then?'

She drew slowly on her cigarette. `The cause of the Millers of God is a just cause. Their systematic execution of the men behind the scenes, the war makers who deliberately manipulate the Press and national feeling for their own profit, is the only practical scheme ever devised which may in the end stamp out war altogether.'

`It's murder all the same you can't get away from that.'

`No, it's justice. Nothing has ever been more just than the secret execution of these men who are responsible for limitless human suffering.'

`You won't try and dissuade Christopher from going on, then?'

`I can't. It's a matter of his conscience. Besides, I know he's right, you see. If he loses his own life in another attempt on Zirrif he will deserve a martyr's crown as much as any Christian saint who suffered death for an equally high principle.'

`I agree with the principles of the Millers all right in theory,' Lovelace fidgeted with his pipe, `but I hate the whole business when it comes down to brass tacks.'

She turned to him quickly. `So do I. The personal side of it is horrible horrible. Yet you'd do a lot to stop the criminal stupidity of war once and for all wouldn't you?'

`Yes. I once formulated a plan which entailed death for certain people in the event of war. Wrote an article on it called “Pills of Honour”, but, of course, none of the papers I sent it to would publish it.'

`What was your idea? Tell me about it.'

`Welt, it would sound quite mad to many people, but it won't sound mad to you. The statesmen of Great Britain are always talking of setting an example to the world and I wanted either to call their bluff or give them a real opportunity to do so. The people as a whole are dead against war and, if they liked to agitate enough, they could force their Members of Parliament to push a Bill through the House of Commons. There's no reason why the Members should object either since it would not affect them only the Cabinet. My Bill would make it law that the Chief Government Analyst should be in waiting at any Cabinet meeting when the question of plunging the country into war was under discussion. With him he'd have a little box of pills one for each member of the Government.'

'If they decided that no other possible course was open to them than the step which would ensure certain death for hundreds of thousands of their countrymen, and misery for millions more, the Government Analyst would hand round his little box of pills and the Ministers would endorse the absolute necessity for their decision by their own rapid and quite painless death ...'

`I see,' she nodded, `but wouldn't that be robbing the country of all its natural leaders at one fell swoop?'

'I don't think so. If someone dropped a bomb in Downing Street while the meeting was on and the Cabinet was blotted out the very greatest sympathy would be extended to their relations, but it wouldn't stop the British Empire from functioning for one moment. Equally able men with the possible advantage of better health, from being just a little younger, are available to fill their places immediately. Most Cabinet Ministers are men of a certain age who have the best part of their lives behind them. They've been fortunate too in achieving success and fame. If they're ready to send young men, with all their lives before them, to be torn to pieces by high explosives or choke out their hearts from poison gas, because they find it vital to their country's welfare, surely they shouldn't flinch from sacrificing their few remaining years as an endorsement of their absolute belief in the rightness of their decision.'

Valerie smiled. `That would be a great step. If your Bill went through your Government would do some very hard thinking before they pledged their country to any more dangerous pacts. It would have the advantage too that if war had to go on and they did commit mass hara kiri to save the honour of their nation it would be such stupendous evidence of their conviction that there was no alternative that the whole country would rise, as one man, to destroy the aggressors. Anyhow, there would never be any more fear of your Cabinet plunging you into some wholesale slaughter because a Ruritanian had shot a Graustark frontier guard.'

`Exactly! And I believe any Government which had the courage to pass that Bill would go down to posterity as having made the greatest contributions to permanent peace in history. Once it'd gone through the British Parliament other States would force it on their rulers too, because the masses in other countries don't want war any more than we do.'

`I wonder.' Valerie lit another cigarette. `Your dream moves in the right direction but there's one big snag in it. The final responsibility for starting a war may rest with National leaders but nearly always they're forced to it by the pressure of public opinion. The poisoning of a national mind is as necessary to the creation of war as the murder of millions of deluded people is to its fulfillment. The way of the Millers is terrible but sane. There can't be any lasting peace until the concessionaires, the armament racketeers and all those soulless ghouls who deliberately foment trouble for their own gain, are wiped out.'

For a moment they sat in silence. `How long have you been engaged to Christopher?' Lovelace asked suddenly.

`Three, no, four months, but our friendship goes back much further. We've known each other since we were children. Our homes on Long Island lie side by side and neither of us had any brothers or sisters.'

`Yes,' Lovelace murmured, `he told me that.'

`I worshipped him when he was little,' she went on slowly. `He wasn't rough like the other boys, but gentle and idealistic. Yet he could fight like a tiger when he was roused. He did once for me. A bigger boy had teased me over some stupid thing till, like a little fool, I began to cry. Christopher found us like that and half murdered him. That was when I was nine.'

`Later, in our teens, I came to think him just the handsomest boy that ever walked. His dark, curly hair and pale skin, and those wonderful eyes, you know. Lots of other girls thought the same, of course, but he never gave them a look. I honestly don't think he's ever kissed a girl in his life except me. He was more dreamy, more impractical than ever, and it was then I began to mother him.

`We had to part to go through college, but it was already an understood thing that we should marry when we were older, and our first thought when vacations came round was always to be together again. When he was twenty one all his great business interests were handed over to him formally. For a few years he worked terribly conscientiously on the boards of his companies and travelled all over the States to make a thorough personal investigation of his affairs. That was when I took up flying and began breaking records because, you see, we were separated for a bit. He wasn't very successful as a business man. He wasn't practical enough and he placed the well being of his work people before the piling up of profits. That couldn't go on indefinitely, his companies began to suffer; his shareholders began to kick. Eventually his co directors combined against him and he was practically forced into retirement. He came back to me as handsome and attractive as ever but well, just a bit shattered. He needed me more than ever and he took it for granted that we were to carry out our boy and girl understanding. One night he just said, “Isn't it about time we thought of getting married?” and I agreed that it was.'

`Did nothing occur before then to make you feel that one day you might prefer someone else?' Lovelace asked slowly.

She turned to him sharply. `Why do you ask that?'

'I don't know,' he shrugged. 'Your flying must have taken you about the world a bit I only wondered.'

'I'll be quite truthful,' she confessed after a moment. 'There was just one episode, years ago, when I was travelling in Europe with my father and mother before I went to college. That changed me from a child into a woman, I think. It haunted me for a long time but it was only a sort of schoolgirl dream.'

'Have you ever met the man again?'

`Yes, but he didn't even know me. After the first shock I wasn't really surprised either. It was only a silly incident that happened to make a tremendous impression on a little girl but could have had no significance at all for a grown man.'

'How strange life is strange, isn't it?'

She nodded. 'Anyhow, that's all over. It never happened except for the things my imagination built round it. Nothing has ever really come between Christopher and myself and I'm glad. I've never realised until these last few weeks quite how desperately he needed me. He needs you too.'

'Valerie.' He placed a hand gently on her shoulder and turned her towards him. `Where did we meet before? Why do you make such a mystery of it? I know we did won't you tell me?'

The bright moonlight glinted on her smooth chestnut hair as she shook her head. 'It was in the land of dreams perhaps, but this is Athens and Zirrif is leaving here tomorrow to obtain his Abyssinian concession. If he succeeds we know that it will be used to bring about another European war. Christopher means to try to stop him, but what chance will he have unaided? Poor, flame like, impractical Christopher is standing alone as the sole defence of the peace and happiness of ten million homes. He needs us, Anthony both of us and we can't let him down.'

`No,' said Lovelace slowly. `We can't let him down.'