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He took her point immediately. “Not many. Of course, there is always the possibility that someone is a genius at figures and we didn’t know it.”
“And understands the entire system well enough to hide a very large amount of money in it?” she said. “Knows all the departments? Or are they not all implicated?”
Lucas looked at her, then at Stoney. He was beginning to understand why Stoney was so hurt. This was the Service that had been his family during the prime of his life. Some of his friends had died for it, as had some of Lucas’s. Perhaps, at the heart of it, that was the force behind his need to save it now. “What would you like me to do, if I can use so old-fashioned a word, for the sake of honor?” Lucas asked. “Whoever is leading this has to be someone high up. You’ve concluded that already, haven’t you?” It was hardly a question.
“Yes,” Stoney said quietly.
“What would you like me to do?” Lucas repeated gently. “Is there anyone else you trust?”
“Not really,” Stoney began, then looked down at his large hand resting on Toby’s head.
Suddenly, Lucas knew what Stoney was going to say, and it struck him like a dead weight. Stoney was not asking for protection. He was asking for Lucas to advise him, and if he failed, to pick up the burden he had let fall. He could not deny it.
“Would you like me to keep a copy of your work, in case you…can’t finish it?” Lucas could hardly believe he had said it. Of course, he meant in case Stoney died. Someone had broken into his house once. Did they know Stoney had come to Lucas? Was it hard to work out? What about Josephine? If Stoney wasn’t crazy, imagining things, then he had put them both in danger. But Lucas had offered, and he saw a flood of gratitude in Stoney’s face. Then the light faded out of his eyes.
“No, thanks, Lucas. I appreciate it, but that would only put you and Josephine in the same trouble I’m in now, and it’s not your problem. At least, not yet. I feel better for telling you about it. At least someone else knows. There’s no one else I can trust, you see?”
“Yes, I do see,” Lucas admitted. “But surely there are other people you can exclude from suspicion?” He sounded desperate, as if he were looking for a way out, but that was not what he meant. Like Stoney, he did not want to think that the people he had trusted could believe in appeasement, in joining the enemy rather than fighting. It changed everything. Too many of the pillars that held up what he loved were resting on sand. How much would it take to blow away the foundations, a little at a time? A word here, a belief there, something you took as true discarded, one lie at a time.
“Give me a copy of what you know,” he said. “Even if we can’t make anything of it yet, it will be a place to start.”
“It’s time for the truth, Lucas.” Stoney shook his head. “The war’s over, for the time being. At least the most physical part of it is. But it’s still there, under the ground, like interconnected rats’ nests, one leading into another.”
“What a revolting analogy,” Lucas said sharply. “Don’t you believe we learn anything?”
“Frankly, not much,” Stoney replied. “But the bit I believe I would die for, as would you.”
The pattern in Lucas’s mind made him feel faintly sick. Perhaps the more so because he knew it was true. He had not thought of it exactly like that, but he knew the German navy was being rebuilt far faster than the British. They were rearming, building tanks, planes, guns. Churchill was the only one who cried any warning, a voice in the wilderness, and nobody wanted to go into that wilderness again. Too many old wounds were still bleeding.
“What else do you know, Stoney? Even roughly.”
“It has to do with Austria and the Nazis, of course. Everything has to do with them, lately.”
“Everything?”
“Sooner or later. It all comes down to fear and greed. The easiest way to make that respectable is to call it nationalism, as you can’t fault a man for loving his country.”
Lucas answered with what came first to his mind. “Samuel Johnson said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. I’m not quite sure what he meant, but by God we use it to excuse an entire army of sins. And some people get away with it. Despite the scar to the soul and the stain on history, tell anyone he’s serving his country, and that excuses almost anything. We all want to belong. We have a view of the world that validates who we are. What we are. We need it to survive.”
“I know,” Stoney said quietly, “but I’ll take care of these papers. For a moment there, I was prepared to share them with you, but I realize I don’t need to. And it’s an abuse of a friendship I value more than I’ve ever said. I find all I need is to be sure that you know and understand. We have to find the guilty and get rid of them. The innocent trust us, they always did. If MI6 is rotten, who is to protect us from the enemy we can’t see?”
Pushing Toby away gently, he rose to his feet and turned to Josephine. “Thank you for the cake. And for listening.”
Lucas stood up also, waiting.
Stoney shook his head. “Just take care.” His smile faded and he held Lucas’s hand for a moment, hard. Then he walked out through the French doors and across the lawn, toward the place his old car was parked.
“Will he be all right?” Josephine asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Lucas replied, putting his arm around her shoulder. “I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s onto something real or…”
“Or just lonely.” She filled in what he had not wanted to say. “And feeling frightened and old, and like he’s rapidly becoming irrelevant.”
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“Yes, that, too,” he agreed. He felt the coming twilight, soft, filling the air, hiding the things you know are there: trees, fences, the neighbor’s wall. And in the twilight of the mind, old enemies rising again.
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