by Gavin Lyall
Streibl was nervous and self-contained throughout the meal. Ranklin left him to the First Officer opposite, who tried hard but didn’t get much beyond With Survey and Shovel Through East Africa. They went up to the saloon proper for coffee, one cigarette and one glass of cognac, then the officers clicked their heels and left. Almost immediately Streibl decided he had some papers to read, and went to his cabin.
“Yes, I don’t think he does want us cross-questioning him,” Lady Kelso said. “What on earth does a man like that read himself to sleep with?”
“Der Kinderbuch von five-eighths hexagonal nuts and bolts?”
She laughed. “Of course.” She looked around the big, officially comfortable, saloon. It was arranged like a club-room, for a large party that might want to split into smaller conversational groups; unfocussed. “Can’t we make this place look a bit more cheerful?” She turned on the only light that wasn’t on already, a standing lamp bolted to the floor near a long leather sofa. Ranklin found a panel of switches and played around with them until he had the sofa isolated in light and just a few small wall lamps glowing between the portholes.
“Well done,” she pronounced, and sat at one end of the sofa. She didn’t sprawl as Corinna would have done, just relaxed her neat little body. “So we’ll be at the Railway camp by this time tomorrow—”
“That’s the plan. And until then, we wait and see.” He sat down at the other end of the sofa.
“Then let’s forget it for tonight. Tell me about yourself, Patrick.”
Of course, most men would jump at such an opening. But for Ranklin it meant dredging up a lot of fiction about Patrick Snaipe and being alert for errors. And Ranklin didn’t want to be alert; he just wanted to slump, conscious of her as a woman just a few feet away.
You do remember she’s twenty years your senior, don’t you? said some small inner voice. So what? – as Corinna would say. Ah, I’m glad you mentioned Corinna – Corinna is going to marry this French banker, we’ve said our good-byes, I’ll probably never see her again.
“Are you married?” she prompted.
“Me? No. I—” He was going to say something about Army officers marrying late, which was true, before he remembered he wasn’t an Army officer now. “I . . . just never . . .”
“Not every marriage is the right shape for the people in it. . . Did you meet that Mrs Finn at the British Embassy?”
“Er, yes. Yes, I did.”
“I believe she’s a widow, but she’s the kind who could make a happy marriage because I’m sure she’d stand up and say what she wants. You can only accommodate so far . . . then you begin to lose what you really are yourself. Of course, most women aren’t encouraged to have real selves . . . And most men don’t want them to have, either.
“Mind you,” she added, reverting to Corinna, “she could also make a disastrous one, far worse than an accommodating wife.”
Ranklin didn’t feel comfortable talking about Corinna. He wanted her out of his mind, leaving him in the present of that (fairly) cosy saloon, glass in hand, with the ship swaying and throbbing gently around them; not intrusively, just enough to remind them their surroundings were alive.
“Was your –” he’d been going to say “second marriage”, but had it been only that? Had she “married” any of the Arab sheikhs she was credited with? “– your marriage to Viscount Kelso what you hoped for?”
She smiled reminiscently. “He was a sweet old thing. And pretty shrewd, not the fool he . . . well, his family thought he was. I think his son Henry never grew out of that stage when boys think their fathers are embarrassing old dunces. He – more likely his wife – had packed James off to visit the Holy Land – that’s where we met – I think hoping it would kill him. So Henry could inherit the title and get on with a political career in the Lords. Political career!” She snorted delicately. “I suppose they might have put him in charge of Dog Licences if the Liberals hadn’t swept the board, I think he could just about tell the difference between a cat and a dog. Though one can never be sure, since he married a mixture of both.”
Ranklin grinned, despite a warning feeling that Snaipe should have looked shocked. “And were you happy?”
She didn’t answer immediately. She sipped her cognac, cocked her head, looked slowly around the saloon. At last she said: “I was content, I think. I thought all of this –” the wave of her hand might have encompassed the whole of the Near East “– was behind me. I ought to settle down to a dignified old age – as near as I could get, anyway.
“I was pretty good at being accommodating by then, too,” she added. She looked at her glass. She had placed herself with the light behind her, outlining her delicate profile, putting her face in soft shadow when she looked towards him. And why not? She really was deliciously seductive in a plain blouse and skirt; she didn’t need the dressiness she had favoured on the train.
“And why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
“You’re a very attractive woman.”
She smiled and looked away. “A lot of men, when they know something of my past, they make certain assumptions about me and just – try to – pounce.” She looked back at him. “But not you. Does that mean you’re an honourable man, Patrick?”
“Perhaps they think they are.” It was certainly “honourable” to categorise women in such a way; only dishonourable to get it wrong.
“But you?” she persisted.
“I think I used to be, once. I tried, anyway.”
She thought about that for moment, then asked: “Could you get me just a spot more cognac, please?”
He fetched the decanter and when he had refilled her glass, she laid a hand on his wrist. “I don’t think you’re really what you pretend to be. No, I’m not prying; I prefer you being a bit . . . mysterious. But if you wanted to, you could take the Honourable Patrick Snaipe’s clothes off, as it were, just for tonight.”
He took her hand and the pull she gave was so slight it could have been ignored without offence. Accommodating.
* * *
On Vanadis O’Gilroy was taking an after-dinner cognac, too. Actually, he was just finishing his second, or he might have felt too circumspect to ask: “Are ye going to marry this French banker feller, then?”
Billings had laid out his saloon far more personally, and for smaller groups. They were at the far end of it; in a house it would have been around a fireplace, but here it was just an alcove of dried flowers. Corinna, stretched out on a sofa, looked up from her book. “Yes, of course I am. Have you met Edouard? – no, probably not.”
“Never at all . . . Ah, ’tis a good thing.” He nodded. “Ye ought to settle down.”
She sat up and swung her feet to the floor. “What d’you mean, settle down? It’s as much a merging of interests, banking interests.”
“So that’s the way of it, is it?” He nodded again; a marriage that blended two plots of land to form one viable farm was understandable, too.
“I’ll become a full, paid-up partner in Pop’s Bank and in the merged one, if we go ahead on that.”
“Ye mean, jest the same as yer husband?”
“Of course just the same.”
“If ye say so.” The disbelief in his voice was tangible.
“Now look: as far as capital and clients go I’ll be bringing in just as much of a stake as he will. And I’ve just as much experience as— Why the hell do I have to explain myself to you?”
“Ye don’t. Jest, I never knew a farm that worked with two farmers on it, is all.”
“We’re not talking about farms.”
“Sure. Must be different entirely.”
“You think just because Edouard’s a man — Did Matt put you up to this?”
“Himself? He never said a word, ’cept that yer marrying this feller.”
“I don’t believe you.” But she did; she just wanted to annoy him as much as he was annoying her.
It didn’t work; he only shrugged philosophically. “Anyways, I think yer do
ing the right thing. Ye had yer bit of fun with the Captain, and—”
“It wasn’t just a bit of fun! I—” So now she’d got her argument firmly facing both ways. “And what fucking business is it of yours, anyway?”
There, she’d done it: shocked him. But only by descending to bar-room language. She felt furious, and ashamed and. . . . furious. If she’d been shorter, she could have flounced out; with her height, she had to sweep. And if she’d gone onto the deck she’d have frozen, so it had to be down the curling steps to the cabin deck, and going down was ignominious. So she reached her cabin in no better temper. Even slamming the door didn’t help.
Damn it, she was going to marry Edouard. Even if Conall O’Gilroy . . . well, even if he approved of it. What the hell did she care about his opinion? He was so conventional, apart from being a spy and a gunman. And that went for Matt Ranklin, too. Just let them come around and see, ten years from now, if she wasn’t happily married and an equal partner in the merged bank.
Ten years of being married to that man?
* * *
Her body was smaller than . . . More yielding, not leading, but instantly responsive to his every move, taking and multiplying his fierce joy . . . A small voice kept asking What did he think he was doing? But he wasn’t thinking now, only doing . . .
21
Ranklin woke, in his own bed, slowly, luxuriously – and a bit guiltily. But why guilt? You know perfectly well why. That’s nonsense; it’s over. She ended it, anyway. Did I mention a name? Perhaps I was talking about being true to yourself, to your own feelings – So my feeling is that it’s over and last night proved it – it isn’t as though you’ve much else to be true to, in this job . . .
Lady Kelso didn’t appear until midway through the morning, and then greeted him with just a warm smile. Yet it wasn’t as if she were dismissing last night; he felt she was giving him the chance to dismiss it. If he wanted to recall it, she’d help; if he wanted it forgotten, she’d forget.
Feeling a coward, he said nothing and the day passed calmly, quiet as the sea and its misty horizon.
The Loreley eased cautiously into Mersina harbour soon after dark, and anchored a couple of hundred yards off-shore. The town was no more than a long jumble of yellow lights, dimmed by a mist gathering in the still air.
But the yacht itself was brightly lit and, standing by the rail, Ranklin and Lady Kelso had a good view of Streibl as he bustled up to them. It was a remarkable sight: he was wearing a yellow-and-bright-green check shirt over faded whipcord trousers and calf-length boots, topped by a black leather coat and a stained wide-brimmed hat. Ranklin’s first thought was that Streibl had got his geography wrong and dressed for some Crossing-the-Line ceremony. His second was that this was how the railwayman dressed to build railways. And for the first time, Streibl didn’t look rumpled; or rather, any rumpling looked right, as if this was the real him.
“We go ashore to the camp soon,” he announced. “Please to dress in warm and not-so-good clothes.”
Lady Kelso gave him a polite but definite Look; she didn’t go in for not-so-good clothes. “I shall dress warmly.”
But Ranklin could almost match Streibl. In his cabin he stripped and threw on a flannel shirt, riding breeches, ordinary boots, a fisherman’s sweater and finally his armless mountain coat, a knee-length waistcoat of patchwork sheepskin. It had tufts of wool sprouting from every join and edge and when he had bought it in Peshawar bazaar it had been off-white. Now it was much further off.
He packed a bag of shaving kit, nightshirt and riding boots and little else, and took it on deck.
One of the cutters had been lowered and was being loaded, quite openly, with the boxes of ransom money. Ranklin looked away: now he knew the ransom was flawed, he wanted no part of it. Lady Kelso reappeared in remarkably short time, but all he could see of her dress was a long blue-brown fur coat. She was an experienced traveller and he fancied it would spend the night as a counterpane on her bed.
Ashore, there were cabs waiting to take them and the ransom – guarded by a couple of sailors with rifles – to the railway station where a tank engine and single carriage were waiting. Of Mersina itself, Ranklin got very little impression; he just assumed there must be a dazed fishing village lurking somewhere behind the piles of Railway ironware and half-finished European-style houses.
The carriage was short, with platforms at both ends, as used in German mountain railways, and the train started as soon as they and the ransom were aboard. For a while they ran straight and flat on a stretch of track that joined Mersina to the regional capital of Adana, forty miles off. Roughly halfway along, the Baghdad Railway would join it from the mountains to the north, and the actual junction had already been built: a spur that wriggled and climbed through a wooded river valley and ended at the work-camp itself.
The mist was thicker here, hiding any view or sense of landscape. The camp itself was – well, “built” sounded too permanent a word – it lay on perhaps the last flat land at the head of the valley, and it was a shapeless mess studded with flaring hurricane lamps.
Men swarmed around them waving more lamps, grabbed their bags, and straggled off into the darkness. They followed, across temporary sidings with rows of railway wagons, past a paddock with every sort of cart, past bales of hay, heaps of broken stone and more piles of railway ironware, and reached what must be the camp’s high street. This was lined with a few wooden huts and a lot of ramshackle stalls and coffee-houses built of draped tarpaulins and carpets, all crowded with dark well-wrapped figures who were squatting, sipping and haggling as in any other bazaar. Blue woodsmoke drifted through the patches of lamplight, mingling with the smells of cooking, of paraffin, of animals and latrines. The street itself was water-filled ruts and everywhere the underlying motif was half-frozen mud.
This didn’t surprise Ranklin with his military background. He was convinced that an army could camp on the driest part of the Sahara or an Arctic ice-floe, and within hours the place would be trampled mud. It was obviously a law of nature that touched armies of workmen too.
He had taken Lady Kelso’s arm as she carefully placed her button-booted feet. “Would you mind frightfully,” she asked, “if I said ‘bloody hell’?”
“Please do.”
“Bloody hell.”
Then they were ushered up wooden steps – all the huts were placed well above the mud – and into what must be the German mess hall. It was bright and functional, with some small tables and chairs, some long tables and benches, a couple of stoves and, at the far end, a half-hearted attempt to create a lounge area of padded chairs, carpets and brassware.
Streibl had undergone an odd snowball effect, gradually becoming a small crowd of men in similar hats, shirts and leather coats who hurried up to clasp his hand; in his own world, he was obviously a grand panjandrum. Now the little crowd split, pulling out chairs for Lady Kelso and Ranklin, fetching them coffee, and introducing themselves. Streibl himself had vanished.
“Is this,” their self-appointed German host asked, “how you expected it to be?”
“I don’t expect things,” she said pleasantly. And that, Ranklin thought, is probably true: her self-sufficiency lies in her talent to go from place to place, person to person, hoping for nothing but courtesy.
“We have for sleeping,” the host went on, “the huts and the new tents. Do you choose . . .?”
“You say the tents are new? – so the insects may not have moved in yet? I’ll take that.”
He smiled at her foresight and, when Ranklin had also chosen a tent, went off to arrange it. The mess hut was gradually filling up – it must be nearing dinnertime – with German railwaymen, most dressed in Streibl’s style. For a formal people, they really let themselves rip in the back of beyond – or perhaps they were copying pictures of American railway pioneers. Masculine groups were more susceptible to that than they admitted.
Then an exception was striding towards them in a long dark coat and a semi-official-look
ing black lambskin cap. He looked vaguely familiar, but Ranklin would surely have remembered that long ragged scar on the left jawline.
The man smiled and said: “Good evening, Lady Kelso, Mr Snaipe.” It was Zurga without his beard.
He sat down. “In Germany I got tired of always telling how I got this.” He tapped the scar. “So I grew the beard.”
Ranklin nodded. “Quite . . . er, how did you get it?”
Zurga smiled thinly and, now that Ranklin was noticing, slightly lopsidedly. “A shell fragment when I was too near the battle for Constantinople fifteen months ago.” So he was still pretending that he wasn’t an army officer and hadn’t been part of that battle.
Lady Kelso said firmly: “You look much more handsome without the beard – and quite dashing, with that scar. How did you get here?”
“I have been here since two days. I came by the Railway to the far side of the mountains and by horseback from there. You go to see the bandit Miskal tomorrow?”
“I believe that we’re going to see Miskal Bey – as you are, of course? If I fail, that is.”
Zurga nodded, a quick and then prolonged affair, as if he’d forgotten he’d started his head moving. Then he said: “Do you truly think I can persuade him if you cannot?”
She barely hesitated. “Not if you regard him as a bandit, no. Nor by appealing to any Ottoman patriotism. If you want to try arguing Islam with him . . .”
Zurga smiled. “He may not see me as a True Believer . . .”
Wasn’t this just what she’d said to Ranklin on the train? But she could go no further with Zurga; women had no place arguing Muslim doctrine.
He nodded again, or perhaps he’d never quite stopped. “You think so also?. . . So perhaps, to save time, it is best I do not go, we just send the ransom – if you should fail. I must tell Dr Streibl . . .”
When he’d gone, Lady Kelso asked: “Were you expecting him to drop out?”
“More or less. We never really believed in his mission, did we? But he’s here for some purpose, and that could make it more dangerous for you.” He was in trouble here; the ransom had, through no doing of his, been sabotaged. But that might no longer be enough to keep Miskal delaying the Railway, not if Zurga was plotting something dire. He wanted to meet Miskal, see the situation . . . only perhaps that meant shoving Lady Kelso’s neck into the noose . . .