by Gavin Lyall
Ranklin smiled and nodded to them and sat in the empty chair. The Admiral stayed seated on the club fender, poker in hand, and with one leg – perhaps a false one – stuck out stiffly. His expression was one of curiosity, an expression that said: “I thought you’d be grubbier.” Ranklin was getting used to it around Whitehall. Hapgood, the rupee expert from not-quite-the-right-family, just sat smiling, a large fair young man looking like the hero of a school story. You were sure that whatever he had done to get his nose broken at some past time must have been an honourable something. Or perhaps Ranklin felt an instinctive sympathy for him as the other social outsider here.
No matter whose office it was, Corbin was clearly in charge. He launched straight in: “Captain, as your Bureau’s Turkish expert, you’re doubtless up to date on the progress of the Baghdad Railway and its recent problem?”
“I’ve no inside knowledge on this at all.” Ranklin decided to be frank. “So this is just culled from the newspapers. The biggest problem seems to be breaking through the Taurus Mountains in southern Turkey, having to build long tunnels and bridges and so on. On top of that, work seems to have stopped because a local bandit has kidnapped a couple of German railway engineers and beaten off a rescue attempt by a Turkish Army detachment that was supposed to be guarding them.”
“Reasonably accurate. However, the ‘bandit’ which the newspapers variously describe as a sheikh or pasha is actually a local chieftain figure who ranks as a bey and is named Miskal. A gentleman of advanced years and at least part-Arab extraction. Now, do you know who I mean by the Dowager Viscountess Kelso?”
“I don’t think I’ve heard of her.”
“Or Harriet Mayhew, as she started life?”
“That rings a bell. Wasn’t she the woman who—?”
“Whatever it was, the answer’s almost certainly Yes. I think she was one of those women who read too much Byron too early . . . sometimes I think there was hardly a carpet in the Middle East without some runaway Englishwoman sprawled invitingly across it, and mostly the fault of that damned poet . . . Anyway, she seems to have made a fairly disastrous early marriage to a diplomatist posted out there, kicked over the traces and ran off with some desert sheikh. Didn’t stick with him, of course; seems to have done the round of sheikhs’ tents more regularly than the milkman.”
Admiral Berrigan chuckled gently. All senior sailors develop some foible, and with a perfectly-cut uniform that had never been near the sea, a non-regulation cravat and pearl pin, he had clearly chosen dandyism. It made a change from drink or religion.
Corbin smiled briefly and went on: “Then – her charms fading, I dare say, and thinking about providing for her old age – she married the fourth Viscount Kelso. He was a widower by then, good deal older than her, and they settled down in Italy – she couldn’t come back to Britain by then, of course. Even the Marlborough House set wouldn’t have touched her . . . He didn’t last long. One likes to think,” he went suddenly pious, “that he died happy. Satiated, anyway.
“Of course, there was a frightful row with the family over his will. In the end, I think, she had to threaten to publish her memoirs . . . Anyway, they let her keep the villa on Lake Maggiore and a reasonable remittance – provided she stayed abroad. And that would be the end of the story, except that in her desert-carpet days she had a fling with Miskal Bey when he was a young officer in an Arab regiment. And our Foreign Secretary, in his wisdom and his quite sincere desire to get the Baghdad Railway off the agenda of Anglo-German disputes, has asked her to use whatever influence she still has with Miskal to get the Railway engineers freed. Nobody knows whether she still has such influence: the point is to show willing on our side. And the Germans have accepted gratefully.”
“The Turks also?”
“Since the prisoners are German nationals, the Turks seem to be giving the Railway pretty much free rein.”
“Tell me, who do you regard as actually running Turkey nowadays?”
Corbin cocked his head and looked at him with a birdy, beady eye. “Isn’t that the sort of the question we should be asking you?”
Ranklin smiled blandly. “Certainly – once our Bureau is as large and well-funded as the Diplomatic Service.”
Corbin considered this. “Perhaps we’ll neither of us live to see that. . . ah, happy day . . . Then, to answer your question: officially, the Committee of the Young Turks – number and composition a secret, but according to our Embassy in Constantinople, dominated by Jews and Freemasons.” He paused, then smiled wryly. “Which seems, one has to admit, rather unlikely for a Muslim country. Perhaps we should remember, charitably, that our Ambassador there is rather new . . . However, of this Committee, a handful seem to be taking over, as one would expect: Talaat, Enver, Djavid, the ones who get their names in the papers. And I dare say it’ll eventually boil down to one strong man, it usually does. Or another revolution, of course . . . May we get back to Lady Kelso?”
Ranklin nodded. “How old is she by now?”
Corbin blinked at this lapse in taste, but perhaps decided that Lady Kelso’s reputation wouldn’t suffer too much damage. “In the region of sixty, I believe . . . And in undertaking this mission, she becomes effectively a nominee of the Foreign Office, so it is quite logical that we should provide a Diplomatic Service escort . . . Perhaps you follow my drift?”
“Ah . . . yes, I think so.”
“Excellent.” He took out his watch and glanced at it. “I must apologise, I’m keeping some tedious but self-important visitor waiting. But I think we’ve covered the broad picture. My colleagues will fill in the details for you.” They shook hands and he scuttled away.
Bewildered, Ranklin looked around the remaining three. But nobody else seemed surprised at Corbin’s disappearance. Fazackerley, still looking young but anxious beyond his years as he had at the Savoy, re-arranged a sheaf of papers, peeked over his spectacles, and took up the thread. “Returning to the Railway itself for the moment. . . The mountains there aren’t especially high, no more than ten thousand feet, but they are, it seems, very steep and jagged. And the winter weather must have made things very difficult. So while everyone seems to know just where Miskal Bey and his captives are – apparently in an old hilltop monastery – it would still take an army to dislodge him. Particularly since someone seems to have sold him repeating rifles.”
“Pity they didn’t make it Maxim guns,” Admiral Berrigan muttered.
A little frown, as if he’d seen someone pass the port the wrong way, crossed Fazackerley’s face. “So if we might return to policy matters . . .”
“Difficult,” Hapgood suggested.
Fazackerley nodded briefly. “Traditionally, Britain has never really liked the Baghdad Railway. The possible threat to India—”
“Dammit,” Berrigan whacked the poker into the fire, “it’s far more of a threat to our oil in Persia, and . . . anywhere else.”
There was a pause while nobody mentioned Kuwait.
“Quite so,” Fazackerley agreed. “And while we all applaud the Foreign Secretary’s desire to reassure Germany, it still might be that the national interest would not suffer from a prolonged delay in completing the Railway. If you follow me.”
Young he might be, but Fazackerley had learned the Foreign Office’s elliptical manner well. And suddenly Ranklin saw why Corbin had left: he was going to be asked to sabotage the Railway – somehow – and there are some things a man of honour cannot bear to hear himself saying.
But then there was a discreet knock on the door, the Admiral called: “Come!” and a messenger came in with a tray of tea things. Berrigan said: “Ah, tea,” in a ritual way, and heaved himself onto his stiff leg to do the pouring. The messenger checked the coal scuttle, then the windows and said: “I expect you’ve seen enough of today, haven’t you, sir?” and pulled the heavy red curtains across a view of the forecourt. He turned on a couple more desk lamps, asked if there was anything more and went out.
The ceremony left the room feeling even
more warm and grandly cosy, and while Fazackerley and the Admiral took it in their stride, Hapgood clearly relished it. Similar rituals would be going on all over Whitehall – in rooms of a certain rank and above – but Ranklin felt unsettled; the drawing of the curtains against the outside world had been too symbolic. He and the Bureau belonged on the outside.
Setting aside his cup, Fazackerley glanced over his spectacles. “If we might return to the kidnapped engineers? – What the newspapers do not know, and we’ve only just learned, is that a fortnight ago this Miskal sent a message to the builders demanding a ransom equivalent to £20,000 in gold coin. So, if this is paid, tunnelling could be restarted very soon.
“Corbin told you the Turks were giving the Railway pretty well a free hand. However, one faction of the Committee regards paying the ransom as giving in to brigandry and prefers to let the engineers take their chances. In addition, neither the Railway-builders, the Deutsche Bank nor the German Foreign Office – which is deeply if not openly involved – can agree who should put up the money and take the risk of defying the Turks.
“But it seems that an agreement has now been reached in Berlin. They still hope Lady Kelso will get the men freed without it costing them a penny – but if she doesn’t, they’re ready to pay up. Without the relevant faction in the Turkish Government knowing, of course. And for that reason the money will have to be moved covertly. You still follow me?”
Ranklin nodded.
“Good. Now, Hapgood has a little scheme which I’ll let him explain himself.”
Hapgood sat up straighter, cleared his throat, and launched into his Big Moment. “What I thought was, if we can slip you into the affair as Lady Kelso’s escort, you could then intercept this ransom payment and replace a fair part of it with – let’s say – lead. So when Miskal Bey comes to count it, he’ll think the Germans have cheated him, become even more obstreperous, and the tunnelling – and hence the whole Railway – will be delayed yet further.”
And, after quick looks at the other two, he sat back smiling. Ranklin was doing his best not to gape; all his sympathy for Hapgood the outsider had vanished. Dazed, he instinctively looked to the Admiral, who should have some experience of making realistic plans. But Berrigan was studying the fire with deep concern. And Fazackerley was showing just as great an interest in his own finger-nails.
“I see,” Ranklin said slowly. “But . . . just suppose Lady Kelso manages to get the engineers set free and the ransom doesn’t come into it?”
“We regard that as rather unlikely,” Fazackerley said, still intent on his nails. “Particularly with a man of your ingenuity at hand.”
In short, his first task might be to sabotage Lady Kelso.
“Does the Foreign Secretary know about the ransom demand?”
“Sir Edward sees everything that comes in from diplomatic sources.”
So they’d learnt of the ransom from some back-door source . . . Gunther? he wondered. And whose office would he have come to: the FO, India or the Admiralty?
“Bound to be problems,” Berrigan said, waving the poker in slow circles, “but that’s what you chaps are trained for, isn’t it?”
And in his way, the old bastard was right – if I’d had any training worth the name, Ranklin thought sourly. He said: “Naturally I can’t commit the Bureau myself, that’ll be up to my . . . Chief. But I’ll put the whole thing to him as fairly as I can.”
“We quite understand,” Fazackerley said. “And in the light of other matters, we hope you’ll emphasise the importance of this.”
“And its urgency,” Berrigan said. “The Germans are in a hurry, so we can’t afford to dawdle.”
Fazackerley nodded. “Now, as to details . . .”
* * *
The Commander listened to the story without interrupting, or not often. When Ranklin had finished, he said thoughtfully: “I’ve expected to be asked to do something about that blasted Railway for the last couple of years. . . And they’re quite right, of course; it isn’t just Foreign Office jingoism. We trapped ourselves when we decided to change the Navy from coal to oil and the only place we could find our own source was in the Gulf. So we’re bound to protect it when we see the Germans driving a railway down to that part of the world. Their intentions may be entirely peaceful – in peace. But come a war, they’ll use every weapon they can, and that Railway’s one of them.”
“Then you want to take this on?”
“I don’t think we have a choice. I’ve been saying that we’re here to do dark-alley jobs like this, that this is how we can coexist with the Foreign Office – and now they’ve taken me at my word. I don’t think we can say No.”
“The FO may be right,” Ranklin said, “but the the idea of interfering with the ransom is sheer lunacy. The Germans aren’t going to carry a load of gold coin into brigand country in a shopping basket. It’ll be shut up in safes or strongboxes, under armed guard probably.”
“You’d better make a quick study of safe-cracking before you go. But yes, I agree . . . You say that idea came from Hapgood? Perhaps, with his background, he’s trying a little too hard.”
Comments like that about Hapgood made Ranklin feel a little awkward. He must have worked far harder than Corbin or Fazackerley to get where he was, he deserved every credit and so forth . . . and yet, damn it, this involved people’s lives. Come to that, he wondered, why did the Foreign Office let the India Office in at all if it was the threat to the Navy’s oil, not to India, that mattered?
He set that thought aside and said: “None of this seems to be sanctioned by any of the ministers involved.”
The Commander eyed him curiously. “You have a latent streak of democracy that you should keep an eye on . . . Ministers don’t soil their hands and minds with the likes of us. My chosen interpretation of the situation is that Sir Edward wants the Railway delayed, and that sending the Kelso woman is just an empty gesture of goodwill. So his civil servants are doing their proper job of ensuring that the Railway is delayed, and not bothering him with the details.”
“Such as the problem of the ransom. And us.”
“Exactly. And if my interpretation is wrong, it doesn’t matter because it isn’t politicians we have to please; they could be gone next week. Civil servants last longer and it’s the Corbins we have to live with – if we want this Bureau to survive. So just think of the Royal Navy running out of puff in mid-ocean, and remember that anything you can do to bugger up this Railway puts us in profit . . . Now, how much d’you know about railways? D’you think it would really be better just to dynamite it? – anonymously, of course.”
Ranklin shook his head slowly. “In South Africa, the Boers kept on cutting our lines, tearing up rails, derailing trains – but our chaps usually had things working again in a day or two. I learnt that once a railway’s in place, it’s a pretty tough thing. Stopping it being built at all seems a better way.”
“Then just go along, and if a chance to do evil crops up, seize it. Perhaps Lady Kelso will introduce you to this brigand and you can bribe him to kidnap a few more Germans.” He thought for a while, chewing on his pipe and rattling a matchbox. “Did they say how they found out about this secret stuff, the ransom and so on?”
“Gunther van der Brock.”
“Did they say that or are you guessing?”
“I’m guessing. But the timing fits, and the story’s from the German end, not the Turkish. And I remember that when I tried Gunther on the Eastern Question, he shied away from it. Normally he’d at least have discussed it, to see what we’re after.”
The Commander’s chomping on his pipe got positively carnivorous. “So van der Brock was selling us a German secret, which suggests the Germans were behind his murder. So won’t they be watching to see if we interfere?”
“It sounds possible.”
The Commander grinned again. “D’you still want to go?”
Ranklin shrugged. “If it was ever worth doing, it still is. But if I get caught working under a diplom
atic alias, then it’ll look as if we’re doing the sweetness-and-light bit with one hand and knifing them with the other.”
“The FO will disown you, say you’re an impostor. And the Prime Minister will say we have no Secret Service, so you must just be some patriotic but barmy officer acting on your own.”
“That may fool our journalists and their readers,” Ranklin persisted, “but the Germans won’t believe a word of it. It could make the international situation worse.”
“The FO must have considered that.”
“Perhaps. I just wonder if the FO has considered what a European war could mean in this age.”
Ranklin was one of the few Britons who thought he did know, had learnt fighting for the Greeks in the 1912 Balkan war – and, the Commander felt, it was about time he bloody well forgot it. “You shouldn’t let your adventures in Macedonia colour your whole view of warfare.”
But Ranklin also thought the Commander saw such a war as largely a naval event; perhaps as most Britons did. Fleets pounding each other to pieces in a few glorious hours, not men cowering for weeks in the mud, with their feet and lungs rotting. And where stray shells might kill a passing herring, not women and children, nor grind down the houses, factories, roads, all the complex heart of twentieth-century civilisation.
But the Commander had heard all that before and wasn’t about to hear it again. “You cannot be an agent and fool yourself that you’re working for some abstraction, like clergymen serving God or lawyers saying they’re doing it for Justice and Truth and not the money. An agent works for his country – that’s all. And there’s no doubt that buggering up this Railway is in our national interest. Also there’s a long distance between a piddling little agent like you getting caught and starting a European war, so don’t put on airs. Just do the job and concentrate on not getting caught. Now –” briskly “– what d’you need for that?”