by Gavin Lyall
Then a blast of cold air cut him to the marrow, but he was being helped into a cab and clattered away briskly somewhere, anywhere to outrun the drowsy dullness, to find a fresh live new world . . .
* * *
The Deutsche Bank (or the Embassy or the Railway, they seemed indivisible on this matter) had provided its own porters and another bruiser in a pistol belt to get the boxes of coin into a closed car in the street. They had also put each box into their own canvas sacks, but not with any hope of deceiving passers-by: two strong men carrying something smaller than a shoe box from a bank are unlikely to be delivering cut flowers.
Everything had been signed for prolifically: first by Dahlmann and D’Erlon, then by Corinna, who had read everything carefully, and Ranklin, who signed Snaipe’s name to anything, and finally by Streibl and Dahlmann as the Deutsche pretended to pass over running expenses to the Railway. Then Streibl had driven off with the guard to see the boxes onto a launch for Haydar Pasha station and the south.
Dahlmann looked at his watch. “So. Mr Snaipe, you will be ready to travel at half past two, yes? The motor-car will take you to your Embassy for Lady Kelso also, then Dr Streibl will lead you. You will be ready?”
Ranklin agreed distractedly. He had been hoping to share a cab with Corinna, but D’Erlon was all over her – well, his eyes were – and the most he could do was persuade himself that she was taking it coolly. So he went back to the Pera Palace alone. He wasn’t worried to find that O’Gilroy was still out.
17
“Just a mixture very similar to laudanum,” Bertie was explaining. “Which most likely you have had before as a sleeping draught. It does no damage, I assure you, or I would not have taken it myself. However, over the years, I have built up some resistance to opium – it is the cure to everything in the East – indeed, I believe a true opium-eater can take one hundred grains a day, an amount that would certainly kill an elephant. Quite remarkable. But you have taken perhaps one grain or less . . . Ah, my neck is becoming stiff.”
He gabbled something and the Turk (or whatever) who had been trudging O’Gilroy round and round the room, started marching him to and for instead. They had let him be sick, indeed had given him some foul stuff to bring it on, and since they could easily have killed him already if that was what they’d wanted, he’d taken it without a struggle. Now he felt weak, slow-witted and with a headache coming on, but nothing else. Except murderous, of course.
Seated in a chair in the middle of a room in what seemed to be a private house, Bertie went on: “You will be interested in your future.” He took out his watch. “I am leaving Constantinople this afternoon. When I have gone, and Lady Kelso’s mission has also departed, soon you will be set free. We are, as I said before, allies, and I have no wish to annoy your Bureau too much. I hope you believe that?”
O’Gilroy glowered at him but was forced to keep on walking. “Me master’ll be turning the town inside out looking for me, and with the Embassy to help besides—”
“Perhaps, but I much doubt it. I think a man like that will think that you are a quite normal manservant who has quite normally got drunk. And lost.”
There was no chance of O’Gilroy betraying himself by a sudden change of expression: thoughts took far too long to sink into his sodden sponge of a brain. But it slowly seeped through that Bertie still thought Ranklin was the genuine Snaipe and that the Bureau had sneaked an agent in as his servant. He couldn’t work out how that helped; it was enough for the moment that Bertie had got something wrong.
Bertie had said something more that O’Gilroy had missed, but then came a knock on the door and a woman came in with a tray of coffee pot and big cups. She looked odd to O’Gilroy, yet it took him time to work out that she was unveiled and wore a European skirt and blouse despite her Mediterranean looks of olive skin and bold dark eyes and hair. She gave him a curious look – perhaps it was the closest her strong features could come to impassivity – and set the tray down.
“Merci beaucoup, Theodora,” Bertie murmured. “Noir pour le petit pauvre. . .”
At last O’Gilroy was allowed to sit down and Theodora – was that a Turkish name? – handed him a big cup of real black coffee. The headache apart, he was feeling . . . well, at least better enough to realise it would be a mistake to show it. So he let the cup tremble and slop in his hands.
Bertie drank half his coffee, then went and conferred privately with Theodora. They glanced around the walls, which were hung with rugs instead of pictures, then went out. The Turk stood by the door and watched O’Gilroy impassively. He had a big curved knife shoved into his cummerbund.
* * *
By two o’clock, Ranklin was really worried – the more so as he was limited to doing what Snaipe would have done, which wasn’t much. He thought about telephoning the police, but then called the Embassy instead to let them, with their greaterclout, do so. He wrote a cryptic note to Corinna, who hadn’t come back yet, and a formal letter to O’Gilroy telling him to catch up if he could. There was never any doubt that he himself had to go on: the job came first, and O’Gilroy would know it. It was an odd consolation that they shared that knowledge across a gulf that just might now be as wide as death.
“Gorman’s got himself lost, the damned fool,” he told Dahlmann, when the German Embassy car arrived. “He might come along later, I’ve left him some money—”
“Do you not want to stay to be sure he is unharmed?” Dahlmann asked hopefully.
“Oh, no, duty comes first, what?”
The car was a big closed Benz with a roof rack for luggage and hung about with spare tyres and petrol cans, so it was probably used more as the Embassy workhorse than for diplomatic visiting. A few hundred yards up the hill Lady Kelso was waiting at the British Embassy. So was a stormy-looking Jarvey; he herded Ranklin aside.
“Damn it, man,” he raged quietly, “it isn’t enough that you go off signing God-knows-what at the Imp Ott – yes, we know about that – but now you can’t even find your own manservant. Just think how it reflects on us, going cap in hand to the Turks saying ‘Please, one of our chaps has lost his servant, can you find him for us?’ The Ambassador is most—”
“He’s usually very reliable, so he could have run into trouble.” By now, Ranklin was sure of this, but daren’t say so.
“Then if you’re so worried, you’d best stay here and help find him. Young Lunn can take your place. The Ambassador and I have talked it over and—”
“Be damned to that,” Ranklin said flatly. “Sir Edward Grey sent me on this mission – and briefed me –” he was inventing desperately now; an Ambassador has an awful lot of power in his own bailiwick, despite the speed of the telegraph “– and you’ll have to clap me in irons to stop me.”
“Mutiny!” Jarvey’s cry brought the loading of the German car to an interested stop. He toned down to a venomous hiss. “By God, you can forget any career in the Diplomatic and go back to farming your Irish bog after this. We’ll be sending an absolute stinker about you to London.”
“I’m sure we’re both doing what we think is right and proper,” Ranklin said stiffly.
Looking very much like a frock-coated cobra, tall, stooped and poisonous, Jarvey glared the big car out of the gate and on its way.
“Mutiny?” Lady Kelso asked cheerfully.
“Just a little disagreement on protocol.” Ranklin was trying to wriggle back into the persona of Snaipe, like donning an overcoat while sitting down. “I say, have you heard what that fool of a manservant of mine has done? . . .”
* * *
The room had the dark, crammed look of a bygone European age, but – apart from antimacassars and such – most of the cramming was Eastern. There were carpets and rugs everywhere and half the furniture was heaps of cushions. The few chairs and tables were of elaborately carved wood with the legs in the wrong places, and every surface was scattered with brass bowls, ashtrays and paraffin reading-lamps. A large cast-iron stove sat under a tiled conical flue in one corne
r. They hadn’t let O’Gilroy near the windows, but if the corner of building he could see was part of this house, it was all made of green-painted wood and he was on the first floor.
He was still alone with his guard, who didn’t look like the average Turk, being bulky, bearded and wearing some sort of turban rather than fez, a padded and embroidered jacket and baggy white trousers. These were probably clues enough for an old Eastern hand to say “Ah, a Hobgoblin from the Blarney region” but O’Gilroy had regressed to his Army days and saw him as just another bloody native.
The Hobgoblin hadn’t displayed a pistol, but had made a point of expertly-casually carving up an orange with his curved knife, and O’Gilroy had got the message. But the man’s build would have made him a handful anyway.
So he just sat and smoked and thought through his headache. He had to start with the idea that he had made a mistake. But Bertie had been following him anyway – or been close behind some inconspicuous Hobgoblin who had followed him to the Bazaar – which meant he had been suspect already. So was it Bertie’s men who had been watching the launch last night and brought back a description of him? Probably; firing off that pistol had spoiled his pose as a tourist. And there didn’t have to have been only two of them: maybe another on the waterfront, studying him as he talked to the Germans afterwards.
But then where had he gone wrong? He reckoned he had played his part cleverly enough in the Bazaar coffee-house, hinting at his own corruptibility, ready to listen as Bertie revealed his own schemings . . .
And that, he suddenly saw, had been wrong. He hadn’t hit a false note, he’d been playing the wrong tune. Instead of being upright, loyal to his master, touch-me-not, he’d been clever. One hint of cleverness was all Bertie had needed to confirm his suspicions – and here he was.
So now would they really let him go? The French – still assuming Bertie really was working for them – were allies, of a sort, and maybe they just wanted him out of the way while they got on with their own plans. But he wasn’t going to count on it. He wasn’t going to count on anything but his own nastiness from now on.
* * *
Wherever they were going, it didn’t seem to be to the crossing to Haydar Pasha station; the car was heading north-east alongside the Bosphorus.
“I can tell you now,” Dahlmann told them now, “that you do not go by railway: we said that to deceive anyone who . . . anyone. Instead, you will go in the Loreley, the stationnaire. You understand?”
Lady Kelso seemed to, Ranklin didn’t. “When I come first to Constantinople,” Dahlmann explained, “all the Powers had stationnaires here. Yachts for the Ambassador, like Herr Billings’s yacht, but sailed by the Navy.”
“Are we catching her at Therapia, then?” Lady Kelso asked, looking out of the car windows.
“That is correct, Lady Kelso. I hope you do not object to sea travel.”
“I’m sure it’ll be more comfortable than the train – but how long will it take?”
“Perhaps three days. But by the Railway to the camp on the north of the mountains needs also a long time, more than a day, by horse. And more uncomfortable for you.”
He smiled at her but got only a twitch of a smile back. She might be feeling a bit like a secret parcel. And that reminded Ranklin: “So we’ll arrive on the south side of the mountains; what about the gold?”
Dahlmann peered at the glass partition that kept the driver in his place but seemed reassured. “Always it was to go in the Loreley. The boxes Dr Streibl sent to Haydar Pasha were – how do you say?”
“Dummies?”
“Yes. Dummies.”
“Very clever,” Ranklin said. “But if you do have to give Miskal this ransom, I assume you’ll want him to sign something saying he promises to leave the Railway alone in future?”
After a moment, Dahlmann said: “That is a matter for the Railway.”
“Quite an important matter, I’d think.” He’d more or less raised this on the train; he was interested to see if they’d followed it up. It seemed not.
Lady Kelso said: “If he gives his word, that’s what matters. Not legal agreements.”
“Honourable man, is he?”
“Yes . . . In his own way,” she conceded.
“Oh, I think that’s true of most people,” Ranklin said blithely. “Just odd how often that way turns out to be what they want to do anyhow.”
He felt her, sitting next to him on the car’s back seat, lean away so that she could stare back at him more intently. He went on smiling innocently straight ahead.
Therapia was perhaps ten miles up the Bosphorus, a one-time fishing-harbour which had become a resort since the nations began building their summer embassies there, away from the heat, smells and infections of Constantinople. The German one was a whole walled compound of white-painted wooden buildings, now shuttered and looking empty, just across the road from the water. Moored a hundred yards off-shore was what must be the Loreley.
She had the sleek beauty of all steam yachts, with a clipper bow and overhanging stern, but in her case a rather middle-aged beauty (later, he learnt she had been launched nearly thirty years ago at Glasgow as the Mohican). The single funnel was rather tall and thin and she had three masts with sails furled along their booms, so probably she wasn’t shy of using some help from the wind. Being Navy, there were two tarpaulined shapes right forward and aft – probably small-calibre quick-firers – and despite being Navy she was painted white with yellow funnel and masts and some gold fiddlededee around her bows.
There was a large steam launch waiting beside a wooden quay and sailors immediately started putting their luggage on board, so perhaps there really was some hurry. When they had got out of the car, Dahlmann announced: “I shall leave you here. Dr Streibl is now your guide.”
Nobody said how much they regretted the parting, so he went on awkwardly: “I must wish you much luck in your errand of. . . mercy. Mercy,” he repeated, trying to convince himself he’d got it right.
Lady Kelso looked to Ranklin and the Foreign Office for some appropriate and flowery words.
“Jolly good,” Ranklin said, and they all shook hands and climbed down into the launch. Before they even reached the yacht, its funnel had begun to boil black smoke.
* * *
Bertie reappeared after about an hour, along with a second Hobgoblin carrying something that O’Gilroy didn’t recognise but did not like at all.
“All is arranged,” Bertie smiled. “I am afraid tonight you must spend under my poor roof, and tomorrow you will be free. And so you will not be tempted to flee, and to make life simpler for my servants, I must ask you to wear this. . . rather medieval object.” It looked like a hinged dog-collar and chain but made of old and heavy iron. “I believe it is a true antique, at least two hundred years old, so perhaps you will regard wearing it as historical research and do not resist?” O’Gilroy had already decided not to: the two Hobgoblins would get it on him anyway, plus perhaps a broken arm. “Ah, splendid. I can assure you that Ibrahim has just cleaned it, quite possibly spoiling its value. . . I will not ask if it is comfortable, but it is quite becoming. And who knows what famous prisoners of past sultans may have worn it? You may care to feel honoured – but I will understand if you do not. But I forget my manners: Ibrahim I have named, your other guardian is known as Arif the Terrible.”
“What’s he so terrible at?”
“I hope you will not find out. Now, before I catch my ship, we must have a little talk.” He pulled up one of the few chairs and sat facing O’Gilroy. “We all know Lady Kelso will talk to Miskal the famous bandit who was also once her lover. But suppose she does not persuade him to release the engineers? – what will the Railway do then? Remember – we are allies.”
O’Gilroy stuck a finger inside the iron collar. “Funny how that keeps slipping me mind.”
Bertie smiled his lazy smile. “I assure you . . . But what will the Railway do?”
O’Gilroy tried to shrug but the weight on his shoulders
was too much. “No idea.”
“Perhaps they would offer money, that seems logical. Was there a hint of that?”
“And me stuck away with the other servants in the guard’s van.”
Bertie nodded. “But of course.” He made as if to get up, then: “And when were you told of this task you must do?”
“I jest came with me master . . .” But O’Gilroy realised he mustn’t harp on his “master”; best to keep Ranklin out of it, and out of Bertie’s suspicions. “I think . . . when the fellers decided to ask Lady Kelso . . . they naturally wanted to send someone to help . . .”
“But when did they decide?”
What on earth was Bertie after? “Ye think the High-and-Mighty tell me things like that?” He could half-admit to being a spy and still be a fairly mere hireling.
And Bertie seemed to accept that. “I am late. Au revoir, Mr Gorman, and please give my apologies to your Chief.”
He went out with Theodora and Ibrahim, leaving O’Gilroy seated on a chair in the middle of the room, a dozen feet of chain in his lap and a puzzle on his mind. Did Bertie really not know about the ransom? Or had he wanted to know if the Bureau knew of it?
And how and when it had learned?
Downstairs, the front door slammed. Watched by Arif, O’Gilroy went on sitting for a while, then decided What the hell? – he was never going to be left alone, so he’d best find out now what wearing this thing did to his movements. To shorten the amount of chain dragging on his neck he hung as much of it as possible on his shoulders and cradled the rest in both arms when he walked. Alternatively, he could just manage with only one hand holding up the weight and the end of the chain dragging on the floor, but it made a grinding clanking noise and was liable to catch on things. He had never thought of a collar and chain being such a handicap even when not locked to a wall. Mind, he couldn’t recall thinking about such a thing anyway.
Arif watched – from a distance. He didn’t look the imaginative type, but at least he could envisage O’Gilroy clouting him with a length of chain. So could O’Gilroy: the problem was that it could only be with a short length at close quarters. Anything longer would take time to get started.