one at a time. It was a letter from his cousin in Berlin, one of the few men in the world he trusted absolutely. It was wiser to leave nothing to chance. German plans for the United States were crucial to success in the war. If America could be persuaded to join the Allies, the forces against Germany would be vastly increased. The American army was small as yet, but their resources were virtually inexhaustible. They had coal and steel enough to supply the world, and food, of course. In time it would tip the balance of the war fatally against Germany.
That was why America had to be kept occupied with the Mexican threat at its southern border, and possibly even with a Japanese base on the Pacific coast, just to the south in Baja California. Germany had brilliant men throughout the North American continent, agents who kept Berlin constantly in touch with every move of President Wilson and of the Congress, of public and private feeling in every state. With great skill and secrecy they moved money and guns into Mexico and judged the ambition and the violence in that turbulent country to an exactness.
The Santa Ysabel massacre was a piece of extraordinary good fortune, but with care it could be repeated on a scale large enough to keep America’s attention focused entirely on their own affairs, but not so large as to precipitate a full-scale invasion of Mexico.
Detta Hannassey was becoming more and more useful. No doubt her principal aim was to free Ireland, but she was a far better tool in helping Germany to keep control of the sabotage in America than he had thought she would be. She was resourceful, clever without arrogance, and she had sufficient sense of humor never to betray herself by posturing or losing her temper. She was not as dangerous as her father, and therefore in many ways a better weapon to use.
He took the poker and crushed the ashes of Manfred’s letter so there was nothing left.
The war at sea was the more urgent issue now. That could be won or lost on the invention being worked on in the Establishment in Cambridgeshire. He knew about its progress from the agent he had planted there over a year ago, a highly intelligent, eager man, as passionately against the war as he was himself. But he did not entirely trust him. Lately he had sensed a different mood in him, something more personal, a more particular emotion rather than the general horror against the destruction of war. It might be a weakness.
But it was Russia, that other giant not yet fully awake, that crowded his mind now. Europe had never conquered it with armies. Napoleon had tried, and it had been for him the beginning of the end. Now, a century later, it was a slow attrition eating away at the might of the German Empire, bleeding men and materials it would be far better to use toward the west, where victory could be complete and fruitful, the beginning of lasting peace and all that that meant.
What of Tsar Nicholas II, and his queen with her obsession with that unwashed lunatic, Rasputin? And the only heir to the throne a hemophiliac boy who bled at the slightest bruise! The whole vast, sweeping country was riddled by centuries of oppression and corruption, injustices crying out for retribution, factions fighting one another, hunger and war slaughtering people by the thousands. The whole rotten structure was ready to collapse, and there were men who longed to bring it about, men of passion and dreams only awaiting the chance.
Whatever it took, however much latitude he had to give him, whatever flattery or yielding it required, he must get Richard Mason back. He had the passion, the courage, the intelligence, and the supreme daring to pull together the pieces of the plan that was beginning to form in the Peacemaker’s mind. As yet it was just a vague shape—huge areas were missing yet—but so supreme, so sublimely daring it would change the tide of history, carry it forward not only to peace, but to a justice undreamed of before.
He strode
That was why America had to be kept occupied with the Mexican threat at its southern border, and possibly even with a Japanese base on the Pacific coast, just to the south in Baja California. Germany had brilliant men throughout the North American continent, agents who kept Berlin constantly in touch with every move of President Wilson and of the Congress, of public and private feeling in every state. With great skill and secrecy they moved money and guns into Mexico and judged the ambition and the violence in that turbulent country to an exactness.
The Santa Ysabel massacre was a piece of extraordinary good fortune, but with care it could be repeated on a scale large enough to keep America’s attention focused entirely on their own affairs, but not so large as to precipitate a full-scale invasion of Mexico.
Detta Hannassey was becoming more and more useful. No doubt her principal aim was to free Ireland, but she was a far better tool in helping Germany to keep control of the sabotage in America than he had thought she would be. She was resourceful, clever without arrogance, and she had sufficient sense of humor never to betray herself by posturing or losing her temper. She was not as dangerous as her father, and therefore in many ways a better weapon to use.
He took the poker and crushed the ashes of Manfred’s letter so there was nothing left.
The war at sea was the more urgent issue now. That could be won or lost on the invention being worked on in the Establishment in Cambridgeshire. He knew about its progress from the agent he had planted there over a year ago, a highly intelligent, eager man, as passionately against the war as he was himself. But he did not entirely trust him. Lately he had sensed a different mood in him, something more personal, a more particular emotion rather than the general horror against the destruction of war. It might be a weakness.
But it was Russia, that other giant not yet fully awake, that crowded his mind now. Europe had never conquered it with armies. Napoleon had tried, and it had been for him the beginning of the end. Now, a century later, it was a slow attrition eating away at the might of the German Empire, bleeding men and materials it would be far better to use toward the west, where victory could be complete and fruitful, the beginning of lasting peace and all that that meant.
What of Tsar Nicholas II, and his queen with her obsession with that unwashed lunatic, Rasputin? And the only heir to the throne a hemophiliac boy who bled at the slightest bruise! The whole vast, sweeping country was riddled by centuries of oppression and corruption, injustices crying out for retribution, factions fighting one another, hunger and war slaughtering people by the thousands. The whole rotten structure was ready to collapse, and there were men who longed to bring it about, men of passion and dreams only awaiting the chance.
Whatever it took, however much latitude he had to give him, whatever flattery or yielding it required, he must get Richard Mason back. He had the passion, the courage, the intelligence, and the supreme daring to pull together the pieces of the plan that was beginning to form in the Peacemaker’s mind. As yet it was just a vague shape—huge areas were missing yet—but so supreme, so sublimely daring it would change the tide of history, carry it forward not only to peace, but to a justice undreamed of before.
He strode
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