All Honourable Men

by Gavin Lyall

  She was looking calm but curious. “Then who d’you think it was?”

  “I think it all happened at the Imperial Ottoman Bank. Not by them, but there. I saw Dahlmann check the coins – dammit, I signed that I’d witnessed that. . . Then we watched the coins being bagged and sealed and nailed into boxes . . . Then I went off to change some sovereigns.” And he’d rejoined the party as they were waiting for the last box to be brought up from the vaults – so Dahlmann couldn’t have been watching all four boxes all the time. “They switched a whole box. At least one.”

  “Yes, but who?”

  Hardly D’Erlon, it was his – one of his – banks’ reputation. So who had muddied the waters by asking a British diplomatist and an American bankeress along to sign that the whole thing had been above-board? – and been careful not to be there himself? “Did you meet a chap they call Beirut Bertie at the Embassy dinner?”

  “D’you think it was him? Yes, I met him. We had a long chat about the Bedouin, he knows the tribes very well. He seems to be very much on their side.”

  “That’s what everybody says. So perhaps nobody thinks he might be working at his real job on the French side.”

  “Could he have arranged it?”

  “If you’ve been around these parts as long as he has – it must be thirty years – and worked for the Imp Ott at one time, I fancy you could arrange anything.” Provided, of course, that you knew well in advance what the money was wanted for.

  “But aren’t the French supposed to be our allies nowadays?”

  “Yes, but are we acting like their allies? On the face of it, we’re helping the Germans get the Railway restarted, aren’t we?”

  “I suppose so,” she said in a small voice.

  Ranklin shook his head wearily. “Everybody’s cooking to their own recipe on this one: Germans, French, ourselves, Zurga’s faction of the Turkish Government. God knows what it’s all going to taste like.” He roused himself: “Look: this may give you an extra card. If we get into Miskal’s stronghold and you’re still there when the ransom looks like arriving, you can warn him in advance that he’s being cheated. Just so he doesn’t get angry with you.”

  “Thank you.” She cocked her head on one side; if she’d had her fan she would have waved it slowly. “When I first met you, I thought you were a bit of a fool. Now . . .”

  Ranklin groaned to himself; he’d let the Snaipe mask slip. He rammed it back in place. “Oh, well, you know . . . I mean—”

  “Yes, saying things like that.”

  “It doesn’t do in the Diplomatic to seem too bright.”

  “It doesn’t do to be too bright. Remember, I was married to one once. Good night, Mr Snaipe.”

  20

  Although he slept deeply, Ranklin must unconsciously have noticed the storm passing because he woke unsurprised that the yacht was leaning but steady. It must have sails set again, and was just pitching slowly in a long swell. Cheerful with the sense of evil safely accomplished, which was turning out to be almost as good as a clear conscience, he went to order breakfast and then up to stroll the windward deck until it was ready. The sun was bright but not yet hot; in the Mediterranean, another month would make all the difference.

  When he returned to the dining-saloon, Streibl was at the table, pale and full of apologies for his weakness of last evening.

  Ranklin waved them aside. “Not your fault, old boy. Why, I had an aunt who used to get sick on trains. Carriages, too. In fact, come to think of it, she got sick whenever she felt she wasn’t the centre of attention. So not really relevant. Forget I spoke.”

  But Streibl was already quite good at forgetting Snaipe had spoken, or even still was. “The steward said we will not be at Mersina until tomorrow night. I will ask if the wireless operator can . . .”

  It sounded complicated, reaching a wireless station in Constantinople or, with luck, a ship in Mersina harbour, then telegraph via the Railway HQ or sub-HQ . . . In a few years’ time the world might be gossiping as between adjacent chairs in a club – that was the sort of bright future O’Gilroy believed in, anyway. Ranklin had his doubts; if it happened at all, did he really want to listen to club bores on a global scale?

  * * *

  Some two hundred nautical miles behind and catching up, the Vanadis was bouncing along through what O’Gilroy thought was a tempest and Corinna a bright, if chilly, sunny day. He spent much of the time in his cabin – being sick, Corinna suspected – but it took more than that to overcome his Army and Irish habit of taking every meal offered.

  So at least they met at the dining table. “It’s all in the mind, you know,” she said, knowing that wouldn’t help but unable not to say it.

  He just grunted. Repentant, she said: “I’m sure the Captain and Chief Engineer would be happy for you to look at the engines if you liked. Shall I ask?”

  It was a canny offer: Corinna, too, knew his love of machinery and belief that it would bring an earthly paradise.

  “And the bridge, and the wireless office and . . . the steering gear . . .” When she repented, she didn’t stint.

  * * *

  Perhaps it is a maritime tradition that a fine day at sea should be spent inspecting the ship’s stuffiest, smelliest compartments. Or possibly this is when the officers have time to spare for the passengers. Anyway, after lunch Ranklin, Lady Kelso and Streibl were given a briefer tour of the Loreley, just the bridge and engine room. She was impressed by everything and charmed everybody; Streibl asked some mechanically intelligent questions about the steam engine, but what struck Ranklin was the number of stokers needed in the boiler-room. All technical matters aside, the sight of those men sweating over their shovels, and knowing that when they reached port they must go on doing so to “coal ship”, made a powerful case for switching to oil fuel.

  And that, after all, was why he was here. That, and the fact that the world’s greatest Empire didn’t include a drop of useable fuel oil.

  * * *

  Corinna had got O’Gilroy’s lost overcoat and headgear replaced from the ship’s slop chest so that he could now look like an out-of-work sailor in dark-blue pea-jacket, muffler and peaked cap. Could because she had only once got him to put it on and take a walk on deck; now they sat at the round table in the saloon, each with a patch of paperwork spread in front. “Just like two children doing their assignments,” Corinna commented, sitting back and stretching. “When do I get to mark yours?”

  O’Gilroy looked up, hesitated, then said: “One thing mebbe ye don’t know ’bout this Railway business—”

  “I’m sure there’s a lot I don’t know and I prefer it that way.”

  “This bit isn’t our doing . . . Ye know the money, the gold, ye saw at whatever-it-was bank? S’for a ransom on these Railway fellers, if’n Lady Kelso don’t get them loosed.”

  “You mean this bandit is demanding a ransom? Then he’s not going to settle for sweet talk from Lady Kelso. Does she know all this?”

  “Surely. But seems she gave her promise to the Foreign Secretary, so she’s got to go through with it.”

  “Poor woman . . . Bloody men,” she added unspecifically. She thought about it, then: “But that isn’t what you want to reach Matt to tell him . . . What is it?”

  “I think it’s that the Germans’n’Turks, they’re planning to take artillery up into the mountains to deal with this bandit feller.”

  “Artillery into the mountains? Can they do that?”

  “Mountain guns, special ones made so’s they break down into mebbe half a dozen loads ye pack onto mules . . .” Loads that could also be boxed up and manhandled into a luggage van, an ox-cart, a launch, a yacht. “Our Army uses ’em in India, so probly the Germans make ’em, too.”

  “Are you saying that they could start bombarding this bandit hideout when Lady Kelso and Matt are still there?”

  “I wasn’t saying jest that, but . . . mebbe . . .”

  Corinna took a careful breath, then pushed aside her own papers and assumed
a formal, almost judicial, manner. “Right. I am now in session. You may tell me everything you know’s going on, or can even guess at.”

  “I thought there was things ye didn’t want to know—”

  “I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Well, setting aside what the Captain and me’s supposed to be—”

  “No, not setting that aside, because I’m sure that’s fundamental to this whole damn snake-dance. I want a full confession from you, Conall, and in case it helps, I’ll make the position – your position – quite clear: you are not going to get off this yacht at Mersina until you have convinced me you’ve told me all you know or think you know.

  “And,” she added, “I am going to take a lot of convincing. You may start now.”

  * * *

  It was the steward’s idea that English ladies (particularly Ladies) took tea at four o’clock, rather than any hint from Lady Kelso, that had them sipping from the German Navy’s best china when Streibl came in with a handful of papers. “I have been sending and getting messages . . . One is for you, Mr Snaipe . . . Had you lost your servant?”

  “Has he been found?”

  Streibl recoiled from Ranklin’s vehemence. “Er, ja, yes . . . The message is that he will try to catch us up.”

  So O’Gilroy was all right – alive, anyway. “I’m sorry I jumped at you . . . Been a bit worried, you know . . . Feel such a fool, losing a servant . . . Er, it didn’t say any more? – how he’s going to catch up?”

  Streibl re-read the message. “Only your Embassy told the vice-consulate at Mersina, and they told the Railway company.”

  Anyway, O’Gilroy was alive. Lady Kelso leant forward and laid her hand on Ranklin’s. “You were worried, weren’t you?”

  “Well . . . Constantinople isn’t London, or Dublin.”

  Lady Kelso nodded sympathetically, then turned to Streibl. “Would you like a cup of. . . well, more-or-less tea? No? And is there any news about Miskal Bey? He hasn’t let the hostages go?”

  Streibl looked startled. “Was? Er, no, not at all. . . He says, I think, that he will kill them if he does not have the ransom in two days.”

  “You think?” she demanded.

  Streibl had been reading from a form; now he consulted it again. “That is what it says. In two days.” He checked the paper yet again. “It is most sad. For their families . . . It is most important.” He looked puzzled, then embarrassed, then hurried out.

  Lady Kelso looked at Ranklin. “If he is threatening to kill the hostages, and the ransom is . . . spoiled, then he may kill them. Oh Lord.”

  “I thought you didn’t think Miskal behaved like this.”

  “I still don’t, but now I don’t know . . .”

  “But I do know that Streibl’s holding something back, or lying, or both.” It was an unSnaipeish comment, but it seemed more important to calm Lady Kelso’s fears. “He was reading that stuff, telling us what he’s been told to tell us. He’s out of his depth in this business; his job’s steel rails, not people.”

  She certainly agreed with that. “Then what do you think—?”

  “Just that we should wait and see.”

  She thought for a moment. “Perhaps we should—”

  “Neither of us is going to search his cabin for those telegrams. Anyway, he’ll probably keep them in his pocket.”

  She smiled, almost impishly. “He does seem to keep everything there. All right. We’ll wait and see.”

  * * *

  O’Gilroy was saying: “. . . and the way I see it, in the end they know there’s only one way of dealing with this feller Miskal, and that’s put him out of business permanent. I’m guessing, mind, but it seems good sense, they’ll wait until he’s got the ransom and let go the engineers, then . . .”

  “And you think this is being run by a man Matt knows?”

  “Not knows, exactly. Not met. Ye know he was fighting on the Greek side in that war in 1912? He was up against a Turkish gunner commander they called the Tornado, and that was all the Captain knew of him. So then there was this feller Zurga coming from Germany in the train with us, an Army officer but hiding it, we couldn’t reckon what he was doing. Turns out it’s the same feller, the Tornado, and him a gunner. And in the luggage van all these boxes, so now I reckon that’s his guns, mountain guns.”

  “Where are they now, those guns?”

  “Went on ahead by train to t’other side of the mountains. Mebbe in place by now, I don’t know how far they have to be carried by mule.”

  “So they won’t have to go through this Railroad camp?”

  “Mebbe the Captain’s gone by boat so’s he won’t meet the guns on the train. And mebbe there’s another camp on the north side—”

  “There’ll be one wherever the Railroad’s reached on either side.”

  “Sure . . . But guns alone won’t do it,” O’Gilroy said. “Never mind what the Captain would say. If’n that monastery’s like I’d think it is, thick stone, those little mountain popguns won’t knock it down. Not in a month. Not in a year. The bandit fellers’ll hide in the cellars – I never yet heard of a monastery didn’t have cellars – all snug and sound.”

  “Then—”

  “—only they can’t do that if there’s troops likely to come charging in the front door. So they’ve got to stick their heads up and start getting them blowed off. That’s when ye get the difference between a monastery and a fort: a fort’s built to be shooting back when it’s being shot at.”

  Corinna nodded. “So there’ll have to be troops as well. How many?”

  “Dunno. Haven’t seen the place. But not less’n a hundred, a half-company, anyways.”

  “A hundred soldiers . . . There’s probably garrisons in the towns around there, Mersina and Adana.” She assembled the thoughts in her mind. “And how much of this d’you think Beirut Bertie knows?”

  “I reckon he started the whole kidnap-ransom end of it. . . He didn’t know ’bout Zurga, not before he left, but the woman keeps his house in Constantinople, she worked it out and was going to telegraph him. Now I wouldn’t be knowing how much she can say in a telegram, with the Turks reading it—”

  Corinna shook her head, dismissing the problem. “If she can go through the French Embassy they can legally use code to their vice-consulate in Mersina. They might even get direct to the ship he’s on if it’s a French one, and it could be. One way or another, I think we assume he knows what she knows. Did that include the artillery?”

  O’Gilroy swayed his head uncertainly. “Dunno . . . I don’t think she knew Zurga was a gunner, jest an officer. And anyways she’d have to guess about them boxes being mountain guns, like I did, but – begging yer pardon – it doesn’t seem a thing a woman would guess at.”

  Normally Corinna bristled at remarks like that, but in all honesty she couldn’t this time. She herself wouldn’t have guessed it in a month of Sundays. “Then what d’you think Bertie will do?”

  “If he’s going there, it’s surely to see Miskal. Now he can warn him they’re setting Zurga on him, but not about the guns.”

  Corinna nodded. “Then – I hate to say this – doesn’t that make Bertie at least temporarily a good guy and if we meet, you’re going to have to postpone hitting him with an axe?”

  O’Gilroy nodded – grudgingly, since Bertie’s attitude to him wouldn’t have changed.

  “And what,” she went on, “are you going to do?”

  “Get to the Railway camp and warn the Captain – if’n he hasn’t gone to see Miskal already.”

  She considered this. “But if he has gone, our Turkish chums could start bombarding the place when they’re still there?”

  “Like I say, I’m not thinking it’s likely—”

  “How do you know? You only have to make one wrong guess and she’ll be blown to bits.”

  “Now jest hold on.” O’Gilroy felt he had been pushed, not fallen, into a trap. “The way I see it, the whole idea’s they get their own fellers away from there, that’s
what the ransom’s for, before they start shooting. And getting them away means getting her’n the Captain away, too.”

  Corinna was silent for a while. Then she said, more gently: “I spend my life helping people put together deals – agreements. Because that’s what they are, they want to agree because it’ll be good for both of them. And these are honourable people I’m talking about, doing business in a familiar way, wanting everything clear and above-board. And have you any idea how much sweat and fine print we have to go through and then how often it goes wrong in some particular?

  “Now, here we have a rather different situation, on account it starts with a kidnapping and shooting, which is not a normal basis for agreement. But on top of that, there’s you and Matt trying to foul it up, and Bertie trying to foul it up, and now this Tornado character bringing in artillery and troops to foul it up de luxe and –” she threw her hands in the air “– just don’t tell me this is all somehow going to go right. This could be a catastrophe to make Noah think he just stepped in a puddle!”

  But O’Gilroy didn’t seem as impressed as she’d intended him to be, and she realised how pointless it was to talk to him of agreements and above-board deals. His life simply hadn’t been like that.

  “All right,” she said. “But can we agree there’s things we can’t know or guess at?”

  O’Gilroy shrugged and then nodded.

  “Still,” she conceded, “I do know the ransom is real. So I dare say we can count on them getting that to Miskal.”

  “And probly getting it back again,” O’Gilroy suggested. “Shells don’t kill gold.”

  No, she thought, this is not my world of gentlemen’s agreements.

  * * *

  Even with the Captain and First Officer joining them at dinner they were still a small camp-fire group eating in the wide desert of a dining-saloon that could have seated twenty easily. Watching Lady Kelso as she smiled, listened, and commented in good German, Ranklin tried to imagine her at a real camp-fire in a real desert. He couldn’t, though he was sure she would have been equally at home. The calm weather, presumably why the officers were there, had also been good for the cooking and German white wine didn’t suffer from storms anyway.