by Gavin Lyall
That morning he was being visited by Lord Erith, a meticulous hawk-faced man who was rumoured to have turned down honours, ministries, governorships – whatever you cared to think of – to stay in some minor post in the Royal Household where he had the ear of the Monarch and thus everyone else. Mind, rumour also had it that Erith’s influence was waning under the new King, but he was still high on the hill.
The Commander owed him a continuing debt since it was Erith who had chaired a sub-committee in 1909 which had taken the secret decision to set up the Bureau. Not secret from anyone who mattered, of course, just from the voters and Parliament. And even that perhaps mainly from embarrassment, since most people – popular novelists particularly – assumed Britain had had a world-wide and omniscient Secret Service for ages.
Moreover, as long as Erith approved of the Bureau he had invented, and was still listened to by the King, the Secret Service was reasonably safe from the bigger and older predators of Whitehall. So the Commander felt he should be fairly open about his problems.
“I’m still looking for a permanent second-in-command,” he was saying. “Preferably Navy. The Navy’s always had a more world-wide outlook and a Naval officer has to know something, just to keep his ship off the rocks; the Army can get by with merely showing leadership. So if you have influence at the Admiralty . . .”
“Alas, young Winston seems beyond influence, but . . . Who’s doing the job at present?”
“My acting second’s a Gunner. Chap we call, in our secretive way, Captain R. But he doesn’t want the job permanently.”
Erith looked politely puzzled. “Surely, if he volunteered, he must—”
“He didn’t exactly volunteer. I rather helped.” The Commander took his pipe out of his mouth and inspected it for plumbing problems while he considered how much to tell. “He’d had to resign his commission through bankruptcy and gone to fight for the Greeks against the Turks in Macedonia. So—”
“Odd, isn’t it,” Erith digressed, “in a country that prides itself on its patriotism, how respectable it is to go off to war for someone else? Waterloo veterans fighting for Bolivar, our officers running the Egyptian Army—”
“Don’t forget Cochrane,” the Commander said cheerfully. “He commanded the Chilean, Brazilian and Greek Navies – in succession – after we cashiered him. Wound up buried in the Abbey, too, and he wouldn’t have got that by staying at home.”
“You were telling me about your acting number two.”
“Yes . . . I thought I’d made a mistake there, since it turned out it wasn’t this chap’s fault. It was his brother playing silly-buggers on the stock market with the family money, then shooting himself and leaving our chap to foot the bill. So he isn’t really a natural cad, and I more or less had to blackmail him into working here. We pay his family’s debts as long as he does. But it’s worked out well enough.”
Erith had very good control of his expression, but he allowed himself a blink. “And he isn’t a little . . . bitter about this?”
“Oh, of course he is. And by now he’s learnt to be suspicious and mistrusting, too. I don’t want men who’ve gone through life wrapped in cotton wool.”
“Quite, quite so . . . Only, I still wonder . . . if you might do better to pick people who are, well . . .”
“More the clean-cut dashing types who volunteer to Save the Empire in spy stories?” the Commander suggested. “Anyone who thinks like that belongs in a bin. God save me from a man who really wants to be a spy.”
“I think I’ll spare His Majesty that viewpoint. Next thing we know, you’ll be recruiting these Irish blackguards for their skill in outwitting us.” He looked at the secret, clamped-shut smile on the Commander’s face and a horrible thought began to grow. “You don’t mean to tell me—”
“Just the one. Oddly enough, it was Captain R who found him on a mission to Cork – they’d served together in the South African War. Now he’s turned out to be one of the most effective agents we’ve got. In his own way.”
“I shall most certainly spare His Majesty that titbit.” Erith looked around the room, at the sloped attic ceiling, at what showed of his shoes beneath the spats. He was obviously gathering courage to ask something . . . “As regards your agents’ methods . . . Often, I suppose, women can be surprisingly well informed . . . If you see what I mean.”
The Commander didn’t.
“That is to say,” Erith went on, “do you encourage your people to contract liaisons to extract information?”
So that’s what he was driving at. Erith, whose private life could probably bear the closest inspection, seemed never to have grown out of a schoolboy voyeurism. Now he wanted detailed tales of spies seducing the mistresses of foreign diplomats. Oh Lord.
“I rather leave that to their personal inclinations. And talents.”
Erith looked disappointed, almost rebuffed, and the Commander didn’t want that. He trawled his memory. “Of course, one of our chaps seems very close to the daughter of Reynard Sherring, the American private banker.”
Erith went on looking disappointed. The Commander said: “International banking has very good information. It’s a good source.”
“I dare say, but—”
“We got something of great interest to the Admiralty that way.”
“—but do you mean they’re really close?”
The Commander’s patience snapped. “They’re probably fucking each other blind, for all I know.” There, that was what you wanted to hear, wasn’t it? “All I care about is that we got a tip on an oil matter in the Gulf . . . Anyway, she’s a widow, so it’s perfectly respectable.”
“Fascinating,” Erith murmured. “Ah – does she know what your chap actually does when he isn’t. . . When he’s working?”
“I have to assume so. But –” he shrugged his heavy shoulders “– it’s all a profit and loss account with invisible figures. You just hope you’re getting invisibly rich.”
“Quite so . . . So you’re involved in the Oil Question. I presume you know of Winston’s plans – do they concern you?”
“So far, only marginally. I’ve a feeling it won’t stop there.”
“No, I fear not.” A small fastidious frown flickered across his brow. Conniving, even fighting, for the silk and spice trade had a certain something. . . Something that oil didn’t have, anyway. He sighed. “But I can say that you are . . . would ‘fully aware’ cover it? Excellent.” He stood up, quite unconsciously brushing invisible spy-dust off his perfectly-fitting frock coat. “Then I thank you for letting me intrude. I can presume to say that His Majesty will be well satisfied if he hears nothing of your continued progress.”
The Commander escorted him out through the sound-proof door and the outer office. This was furnished with unmatched but comfortable-looking chairs, small tables with ashtrays, a scatter of newspapers and magazines. It might have been any small club – and Whitehall Court was full of them – devoted to owning a certain make of motor-car or shooting a particular breed of animal. Three men stood in a huddle by a window. They glanced at Lord Erith, showed no hint of recognition, and went on talking.
He was disconcerted; surely they must recognise who I am, he thought. Then he remembered that they would be carefully trained not to show any reaction, and went his way content.
The huddle was still in session when the Commander came back. O’Gilroy had been able to change out of chauffeur’s uniform in Ranklin’s – actually the Bureau’s – flat downstairs, but Lieutenant J still wore his funereal City solicitor clothes. The Commander asked: “Is it all wrapped up, then? Succesfully?”
They let Ranklin, as senior, answer: “As far as we’re concerned, yes, sir.”
“Come in and tell me about it.”
* * *
“So,” the Commander summarised, “we assume Mr Göttlich/Divine is really off to Switzerland by now.”
“I think Budapest’s more likely, but yes in principle,” Ranklin agreed.
“Have you bo
th moved out of your respective hotels?”
Ranklin nodded, looking regretful. He had felt he could get accustomed to the Savoy. O’Gilroy, recalling the aspidistra’d tedium of the Gloucester Road, lowered at him.
“And you’re sure the Foreign Office paid all your bills?”
“With no more than a murmur about alcoholic beverages,” Lieutenant J said. Then, affecting the innocent air of the young new boy, he added: “You wouldn’t believe how generous they get in the company of the oil business, sir.”
The Commander shoved his pipe into the narrow gap between the tips of his nose and chin and glared. But that did no good; the three looked back calmly, and he knew they would quietly snoop and ponder until they had their answers. Dammit, that was their job.
So he sat back in his chair, struck a match, and said: “All right, tell me what you think you know.”
Again they looked at Ranklin to answer for them. He said politely: “What we guess will happen is the Oriental Pearl’s new owners will sell off its assets – such as the foreshore lease in Kuwait – seemingly to try and satisfy the creditors and keep out the receivers. But they’ll fail, and let the company go down. Which is hard luck on the other shareholders, but what would have happened anyway. And the obvious people to sell the lease to is Anglo-Persian Oil, who are already in the Gulf area.”
Lieutenant J took up the story. “And by a singular coincidence, the registered office address of Albemarle and Dover Trust Co. is that of a director of Anglo-Persian. I’m afraid I got carried away when I was playing solicitor, and looked up a bit more than I was supposed to in company registers and so on. You know how it is, sir.” He smiled winningly.
Ranklin resumed: “We can see why Anglo-Persian used back-door methods to get the concession. Göttlich would have got greedy if he knew they were interested, and the Turks might have remembered they really own Kuwait if they’d heard of Anglo-Persian buying in there. But we are slightly puzzled at why Anglo-Persian can’t stage its own swindles without asking the help of the Foreign Office and ourselves.”
“And even more puzzled,” J said, “why the FO gave that help – unless they’re most frightfully chummy with Anglo-Persian.”
“Like,” O’Gilroy topped it off, “they, or the Government, was going to buy Anglo-Persian. Jest so’s the Navy’d have some oil of its own.”
“Stop,” the Commander said. “Stop where you are.” He glowered at his table-desk with his pipe sending up war-dance signals. Finally he said: “Young Winston’s going to put this to Parliament as soon as he reckons he can persuade them. But it’ll cost a hell of a lot and he’ll have a hell of a job, and the whole thing could go smash if somebody gossips about it beforehand. Especially to a friend in the City, no matter how close.” He had shifted his glower to Ranklin for that.
Ranklin gave a nod and smiled placidly back. In fact, all three were smiling.
“Smug buggers,” the Commander muttered. “Go on, get out. Not you, Ranklin, I want a word.”
When the other two had gone, the Commander relaxed and grinned. “And you think the Foreign Office ended up happy?”
“As happy as that chap Fazackerley ever seems to get. Was that what it was all about?”
“Mostly. If we can get them turning to us in their hour of need . . . well, it may stop them trying to strangle us in our cot.” Normally, the Foreign Office resented the upstart Bureau, and not entirely without reason. Ambassadors disliked sharing their job with spies, particularly when the spies got caught and undid years of diplomacy with a single blaring headline.
“But we’ll see what happens next time,” the Commander added. “Meanwhile, thank your girl-friend for the tip that Göttlich was trying to unload his shares; I assume that’s where you got it? Did I hear that she – at least her father – is interested in getting involved with the French on a new Turkish loan?”
“Did you, sir?” Ranklin said coolly. But the Commander, thanks to his second wife, was himself in the world of yachts and Rolls-Royces, so he could well have City friends of his own.
“I’m sure I heard something . . . But that being the case, you’d better become our Turkish expert.”
“For Heaven’s sake, I’ve only been to Constantinople, and that for just a few days as a tourist years ago.”
“And you fought against them in Macedonia, didn’t you?”
“Pitching shells onto people’s heads at four thousand yards doesn’t give you a great insight into their national character.”
“Every little helps,” the Commander said. “You’re still the closest to a Turkish specialist that we’ve got.”
And that, Ranklin had to accept, was true. In the tiny Bureau, you were well-versed if you knew one fact about a foreign country, while knowing two made you an expert. So in the next days he took to noting every reference to the Ottoman Turkish Empire in the newspapers, and even read several books on the Eastern Question, although without finding out exactly what the question was, let alone the answer.
He had the time to spare, particularly in the gloomy March evenings. O’Gilroy had gone back to their pension in Paris and Corinna was either on her way to Constantinople or already there, indeed involved in a possible Turkish loan. Their last meeting had been one of the strangest episodes of his life.
3
The Commander had got one thing wrong: “Mrs Finn”, née Corinna Sherring, was not a widow. The San Francisco fire of 1906 (which did not involve an earthquake, as any resident without earthquake insurance could tell you) destroyed so many public records of births and marriages that it became, retrospectively, where most of America’s confidence tricksters had been born or married. But what (a kindly judge asked himself) could a millionaire’s daughter gain from falsely declaring she had lost both husband and his birth certificate in the flames when no inheritance was involved? The judge’s wife might have pointed out that society – particularly in Europe – allowed widows far more licence than unmarried girls, but more likely she’d have kept such knowledge to herself. Anyway, the judge hadn’t asked her.
Corinna had not, in the eyes of society, abused her freedom. She did not steal others’ husbands, however obvious the offers from the husbands (and occasionally their wives). She had simply set out to enjoy the full life she had heard whispered about at her Swiss finishing school. And if anybody said she could only do that because her father was very rich, she readily agreed and pointed out that, since he was rich, she’d be silly to pass up the chance.
Her interest in making as well as spending money was a different matter. For as long as she could remember she’d been intrigued by what her father actually did, and when her brother Andrew showed no interest at all, he nurtured her curiosity into a fascination with the world where money was not pennies and dollars in your purse but something as invisible as the breeze, as powerful as the typhoon – and as vital as the trade winds.
Meanwhile, her mother, long deserted by her husband and now apparently by her daughter as well, took to drinking even more heavily. It was, Corinna now realised, terribly unfair that the effect was so obvious when she didn’t understand the cause. And when she understood that the cause was her father, she had to cope with hating him for that whilst loving and admiring him for the rest. She found she could manage that. But it left her very, very wary of marriage.
Perhaps she felt safe with Ranklin just because they had no future together. And she could be honest with him – even about the late, fictitious Mr Finn – because they had swapped hostages and she knew, and kept, his own more dangerous secret. With him, she didn’t have to face the forever.
She had summoned Ranklin to meet her at the end of a grey March afternoon in an upstairs room of a Bond Street gallery, one of those places dealing in beaux arts which could be anything from probably Venetian crystal to an attributed Gainsborough via a restored Hepplewhite commode. She was talking to one of the staff “experts” (salesmen), who had manoeuvred her near to a comfortable chair and obviously wanted her to sit do
wn and give him a turn at dominating. He had Ranklin’s sympathy.
Corinna – several inches taller than Ranklin – had literally a head start when it came to dominating, and her clothes did the rest. She bought mainly from someone called Poiret in Paris, so while the rest of Bond Street tottered along in pastel hobble skirts and small feathery headgear she wore a loose kimono-like coat of purple-red and a black matador’s hat.
Most women would have become invisible inside such clothes; Corinna got away with it because of her vivid and rather actressy exaggeration of eyes, mouth and black hair. She saw Ranklin and blazed a wide grin at him. Standing too close, the “expert” recoiled from the muzzle blast.
“Hello there. You know Constantinople, don’t you?”
“I’ve been there.”
“What d’you think of this, then?”
“This” was an oil painting placed on a display easel to catch what little light came from the window over the street. Ranklin couldn’t see if it were signed by an artist he should admire, but with its minarets and Byzantine domes and small boats it was unmistakeably Constantinople.
“It is,” he pronounced, “unmistakeably Constantinople. At sunset,” he added.
“Ignorant yahoo,” Corinna said. “That could be by Van-mour, painter to the French Embassy in Constantinople in the eighteenth century. You didn’t even know embassies had artists in those days, did you?” She spoke with the confidence of very new-found knowledge.
The “expert” said hastily: “I’ll leave you to discuss it then, madam, sir.” He bowed slightly and vanished downstairs.
“I know nothing about art,” Ranklin said, “but they sell those by the yard in the souvenir shops of the European quarter. Why the interest?”
“I’ve got to go there.”
Ranklin looked at the picture again. “Well, if you add the smell of someone brewing coffee with sewer water and the sound of a street fight in Greek and French, staring at it might help. Got to? – why?”