Yes, of course, Papa would see it in those terms, she thought. “It’s awful,” she said. “Why don’t you tell people? Expose the whole thing-shout it from the rooftops!”

“Who would listen?”

“Wouldn’t they listen in Russia?”

“They will if we can find a dramatic way of bringing the thing to their notice.”

“Such as?”

Feliks looked at her. “Such as kidnapping Prince Orlov.”

It was so outrageous that she laughed, then stopped abruptly. It crossed her mind that he might be playing a game, pretending in order to make a point; then she looked at his face and knew that he was deadly serious. For the first time she wondered whether he was perfectly sane. “You don’t mean that,” she said incredulously.

He smiled awkwardly. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

She knew he was not. She shook her head. “You’re the sanest man I ever met.”

“Then sit down, and I’ll explain it to you.”

She allowed herself to be led to a seat.

“The Czar already distrusts the English, because they let political refugees like me come to England. If one of us were to kidnap his favorite nephew there would be a real quarrel-and then they could not be sure of each other’s help in a war. And when the Russian people learn what Orlov was trying to do to them, they will be so angry that the Czar will not be able to make them go to war anyway. Do you see?”

Charlotte watched his face as he talked. He was quiet, reasonable and only a little tense. There was no mad light of fanaticism in his eye. Everything he said made sense, but it was like the logic of a fairy tale-one thing followed from another, but it seemed to be a story about a different world, not the world she lived in.

“I do see,” she said, “but you can’t kidnap Aleks; he’s such a nice man.”

“That nice man will lead a million other nice men to their deaths if he’s allowed to. This is real, Charlotte, not like the battles in these paintings of gods and horses. Walden and Orlov are discussing war-men cutting each other open with swords, boys getting their legs blown off by cannonballs, people bleeding and dying in muddy fields, screaming in pain with no one to help them. This is what Walden and Orlov are trying to arrange. Half the misery in the world is caused by nice young men like Orlov who think they have the right to organize wars between nations.”

She was struck by a frightening thought. “You’ve already tried once to kidnap him.”

He nodded. “In the park. You were in the carriage. It went wrong.”

“Oh, my word.” She felt sickened and depressed.

He took her hand. “You know I’m right, don’t you?”

It seemed to her that he was right. His world was the real world: she was the one who lived in a fairy tale. In fairyland the debutantes in white were presented to the King and Queen, and the Prince went to war, and the Earl was kind to his servants who all loved him, and the Duchess was a dignified old lady, and there was no such thing as sexual intercourse. In the real world Annie’s baby was born dead because Mama let Annie go without a reference, and a thirteen-year-old mother was condemned to death because she had let her baby die, and people slept on the streets because they had no homes, and there were baby farms, and the Duchess was a vicious old harridan, and a grinning man in a tweed suit punched Charlotte in the stomach outside Buckingham Palace.

“I know you’re right,” she said to Feliks.

“That’s very important,” he said. “You hold the key to the whole thing.”

“Me? Oh, no!”

“I need your help.”

“No, please don’t say that!”

“You see, I can’t find Orlov.”

It’s not fair, she thought; it has all happened too quickly. She felt miserable and trapped. She wanted to help Feliks, and she could see how important it was, but Aleks was her cousin, and he had been a guest in her house-how could she betray him?

“Will you help me?” Feliks said.

“I don’t know where Aleks is,” she said evasively.

“But you could find out.”

“Yes.”

“Will you?”

She sighed. “I don’t know.”

“Charlotte, you must.”

“There’s no must about it!” she flared. “Everyone tells me what I must do-I thought you had more respect for me!”

He looked crestfallen. “I wish I didn’t have to ask you.”

She squeezed his hand. “I’ll think about it.”

He opened his mouth to protest, and she put a finger to his lips to silence him. “You’ll have to be satisfied with that,” she said.

At seven-thirty Walden went out in the Lanchester, wearing evening dress and a silk hat. He was using the motor car all the time, now: in an emergency it would be faster and more maneuverable than a carriage. Pritchard sat in the driving seat with a revolver holstered beneath his jacket. Civilized life seemed to have come to an end. They drove to the back entrance of Number Ten Downing Street. The Cabinet had met that afternoon to discuss the deal Walden had worked out with Aleks. Now Walden was to hear whether or not they had approved it.

He was shown into the small dining room. Churchill was already there with Asquith, the Prime Minister. They were leaning on the sideboard drinking sherry. Walden shook hands with Asquith.

“How do you do, Prime Minister.”

“Good of you to come, Lord Walden.”

Asquith had silver hair and a clean-shaven face. There were traces of humor in the wrinkles around his eyes, but his mouth was small, thin-lipped and stubborn-looking, and he had a broad, square chin. Walden thought there was in his voice a trace of Yorkshire accent which had survived the City of London School and Balliol College, Oxford. He had an unusually large head, which was said to contain a brain of machinelike precision; but then, Walden thought, people always credit prime ministers with more brains than they’ve got.

Asquith said: “I’m afraid the Cabinet would not approve your proposal.”

Walden’s heart sank. To conceal his disappointment he adopted a brisk manner. “Why not?”

“The opposition came mainly from Lloyd George.”

Walden looked at Churchill and raised his eyebrows.

Churchill nodded. “You probably thought, like everyone else, that L.G. and I vote alike on every issue. Now you know otherwise.”

“What’s his objection?”

“Matter of principle,” Churchill answered. “He says we’re passing the Balkans around like a box of chocolates: help yourself, choose your favorite flavor, Thrace, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Serbia. Small countries have their rights, he says. That’s what comes of having a Welshman in the Cabinet. A Welshman and a solicitor, too; I don’t know which is worse.”

His levity irritated Walden. This is his project as much as mine, he thought: why isn’t the man as dismayed as I am?

They sat down to dinner. The meal was served by one butler. Asquith ate sparingly. Churchill drank too much, Walden thought. Walden was gloomy, mentally damning Lloyd George with every mouthful.

At the end of the first course Asquith said: “We must have this treaty, you know. There will be a war between France and Germany sooner or later; and if the Russians stay out of it, Germany will conquer Europe. We can’t have that.”

Walden asked: “What must be done to change Lloyd George’s mind?”

Asquith smiled thinly. “If I had a pound note for every time that question has been asked I’d be a rich man.”

The butler served a quail to each man and poured claret. Churchill said: “We must come up with a modified proposal which will meet L.G.’s objection.”

Churchill’s casual tone infuriated Walden. “You know perfectly well it’s not that simple,” he snapped.

“No indeed,” Asquith said mildly. “Still, we must try. Thrace to be an independent country under Russian protection, something like that.”

“I’ve spent the past month beating them down,” Walden said wearily.

“Still, the murder of poor old Francis Ferdinand changes the complexion of things,” Asquith said. “Now that Austria is getting aggressive in the Balkans again, the Russians need more than ever that toehold in the area, which, in principle, we’re trying to give them.”