Spy’s Honour

by Gavin Lyall

  “Well, Private O’Gilroy.”

  A long sigh. “So ye remembered – only it was Corporal and an honourable discharge wid two good conduct stripes – afterwards.” Was it odd that a man could be so flagrantly outside the law and yet remember, with precision and pride, his loyal Army service? Perhaps not: they had been things he had set out to do, and done; real achievements.

  O’Gilroy took a paper packet of Woodbines from a pocket and tossed them to Ranklin. “Light me one – and yeself, if yez a mind. I fancy I owe ye more’n one, not counting the ones we rolled of tea leaves.”

  Ranklin lit two cigarettes and placed one delicately in the muzzle of the shotgun offered towards him. O’Gilroy transferred the cigarette to his mouth, then leant against the flaking whitewashed wall and breathed smoke for a while. “Garrison Artillery, is it now? Isn’t that a bit of a comedown?”

  “As pure gunnery it’s a step up, all barrel wear and air pressure and magazine temperatures – ”

  “ – and beer and more beer; I’ve seen them, bare able to stand for the weight of their bellies even whiles they’re sober. That’s garrison gunners.” He breathed smoke for a while, then said slowly: “I don’t know what to be doing wid yez, Captain, and that’s a fact. I’m not fool enough to take yer parole, nor yet believe ye’ll forget me face oncest we’re gone – so I jest don’t know.”

  “Is it your decision? The foreign gentleman upstairs seemed to be doing the deciding.”

  O’Gilroy’s face was shadowed in the dusty light, but Ranklin saw him stiffen. “Jest helping, Captain, as a friend of Ireland.”

  “Really? He’s certainly a friend of gold.”

  O’Gilroy lifted his face to show his frown, but said nothing. Ranklin went on carefully: “I’ve seen his photograph on posters in London. He’s wanted in Russia, as well, and maybe France and Portugal. I don’t think he was helping Ireland in those places.”

  “I’m no child to think we’re the only ones in the world wid troubles – nor yet that I’d be better off a Russian peasant. He’s talked of them, and I believe him. But there can be friendship in adversity; I fancied ye knew that yeself oncest.”

  “There can be pilfering and hoarding and swindling, too, that doesn’t get into the heroic stories in the newspapers and official histories, and you know that. What’s he taking as his cut?”

  “Are ye trying to spread disaffection in the ranks, Captain? He’s taking no cut.”

  “And that doesn’t make you suspicious? The labourer’s worthy of his hire.”

  O’Gilroy had smoked his cigarette down to a glowing fragment; now he flicked it against the wall and said firmly: “And I think that finishes everything in orders for the day, Captain, so if ye’ll be getting back to cells …”

  Ranklin didn’t argue with the gesturing gun. The cellar was windowless but had a rusty punched-metal grille in the door, impossible to see through, to let some air in to circulate around the racked bottles. Ranklin stayed close to it, listening to the key creak in the lock and then O’Gilroy’s footsteps fade back along the corridor.

  The footman was sitting so far from the kitchen maid that he’d obviously been much closer before Ranklin came in; now both looked at him with the hope on their faces as thin as the light. Ranklin tried a reassuring smile. “So now we go back to waiting. Did the brandy help at all?”

  They over-enthused their thanks, the kitchen maid adding: “But I don’t like to think what the butler will say.” She was a local girl, the footman was English.

  “He’s got other things to worry about. And that being the case, I might take a drop myself. And for you?” From the level in the bottle, they’d had no more than a spoonful each.

  The footman didn’t mind if he did, but the girl shook her head. “Thank ye kindly, sir, but it’s terrible strong stuff.”

  It was also terribly nice stuff, and Ranklin looked for the first time at the label: a forty-year-old Hines worth about twenty-five shillings a bottle, so they’d each drunk a day’s wages already. Well, it was a rare luxury for himself these days, and if the Admiral really wanted to bring the matter up … though his years in uniform had convinced him that a few shillings’ worth of misappropriated brandy was exactly the sort of thing senior officers did like to concentrate on in a crisis.

  “What are your names?” He should have asked that before, if he was in charge. The footman was Wilks, the kitchen maid Bridget.

  “And I’m Captain Ranklin, Royal Garrison Artillery. But I’m afraid I forgot to bring any of our big guns with me tonight.” No, he wasn’t good at this sort of thing. But they ha-ha’d dutifully.

  “Wilks – upstairs there was talk of gold, twenty thousand pounds worth. Do you know anything about it?”

  Wilks shrank back from the thought. “It’s not for me to listen to what the officers are saying, sir.”

  Bridget looked at him with contempt. “No, but ye do, me little man, and blether it to the likes of me to show yer importance. Now be telling himself that really needs to know.”

  It was possible, Ranklin reflected, that Bridget’s virtue didn’t need as much protection as everyone seemed to assume.

  “Well, sir, it’s for the squadron. The cruiser squadron in the harbour. There’s talk of them being sent to the Mediterranean.” Ranklin was snobbishly surprised that Wilks pronounced the word perfectly – but of course this was a Naval household where such names were as common as … as gold, apparently. And with a new outbreak of fighting in the Balkans the Admiralty might well be sending flag-showing reinforcements. But …

  “But twenty thousand pounds: how on earth are they going, in taxis?”

  “Ha, ha, sir. No, it’s for the captains, sir. They always take golden guineas to foreign parts.”

  Of course. A warship commander was far more on his own than his Army equivalent. He might need repairs in some out-of-the-way port, or supplies, or just the latest rumours – all easiest bought with gold sovereigns that were recognised worldwide. “But … is it being brought here? Hasn’t the Paymaster got a safe somewhere?”

  “He must do, sir, but it seems it isn’t as safe a safe as the Admiral’s here.”

  So it was all a cunning plan to defeat the very robbery that was now going on. And he could guess at how cunningly it had itself been defeated: the embezzling clerk in the Paymaster’s office had found the money to repay his theft from the sale of that information. Finding such men and exploiting their weaknesses sounded like Peter’s doing. It was just such work that spies and their ilk were expected to be good at.

  But that still left the robbers with a problem: “I wonder how much it all weighs?”

  Wilks shrank back again. “I’m sure I don’t know, sir.”

  “No, no, sorry. I was just thinking aloud.” He took three sovereigns from his pocket and clinked them in his palm: small but heavy, weighing – as much as an ounce? Then he remembered how recently he had been concerned with the price of gold on the market. Depending on its “fineness” it ranged from just under to just over four pounds an ounce. Perhaps that was troy weight, but he only wanted a rough figure. So four pounds times sixteen divided into twenty thousand is just over three hundred pounds in weight. Even split into three loads, no one man was going to stroll out of here with over a hundred pounds of gold in his pockets. They must have a cart or carriage nearby. Or a car.

  Then they heard a car – just a distant growl filtered through an airbrick high on the outside wall. The door creaked open behind them and O’Gilroy was standing there. Holding the shotgun one-handed, he pointed it silently at each of them in turn and held a finger to his lips. It was a macabre little performance.

  Then, above them, the front door slammed and footsteps – many of them – creaked the ceiling. The gold had arrived.

  5

  Ranklin walked to the door and listened. But O’Gilroy would be well away, probably at the top of the cellar steps and ready to intervene up there. Any noise they made down here could be dealt with later, after the
slaughter in the hallway that was all they could cause.

  He turned away and made a brief exploration of the cellar, finding nothing but a drain hole in one corner and a small table with a candle-holder used for decanting wines. But behind one of the tall racks, he was out of sight of anybody else for the first time in hours. He pulled up his left trouser leg and ripped loose the surgical tape that held a tiny pistol just below the hollow behind his knee. It was a two-barrelled derringer, an American gambler’s sleeve gun barely three inches long and accurate no further than the width of a card table, issued to him “just in case”. Just in case, he had reckoned, he needed a false sense of security. But now, maybe … Well, maybe.

  He slid it into a pocket, hoping O’Gilroy and co. would be content with just one search, and went back wearing as cheerful a smile as he could manage.

  “Begging yer pardon, sir,” Bridget whispered, “but would ye be, sort of, knowing the …” She pointed to the door.

  “Yes, but for God’s sake don’t mention it. He doesn’t seem to want his … colleagues to know, so let’s leave it that way.” He was pretty sure by now that Bridget wasn’t one of Peter’s or O’Gilroy’s informants, and sharing confidences was a good way to raise morale (though raise it for what, he had no idea).

  “He was a soldier in an Irish regiment at the South African War. Before your time,” he added. He might think of himself as still young, but these two had barely been of school age when that war began. “His battalion got chopped up before Nicholson’s Nek, where I had a troop of field artillery, I was a subaltern, then. He was probably lucky that he got wounded and dropped out early: we picked him up in the retreat and …” They might be listening, but he could be describing the battle of Agincourt for all they understood or could imagine. “Anyway, we ended up besieged in Ladysmith with him attached unofficially to my troop, sharing roasted rat and horsemeat soup until General Buller condescended to relieve us four months later.”

  They might imagine that – the diet, anyway. Not the heat and flies and bombardment from guns better than their own, nor the daily death list from sickness … No: born in an Irish city, Bridget could probably understand that list.

  “It must have been frightful, sir,” Wilks said, as convention demanded.

  Less conventionally, Bridget said: “And now he’s the man ordering yez around wid a gun? And yeself an officer? It shouldn’t be allowed.”

  “Er – yes. Quite.” Class distinctions weren’t uppermost in Ranklin’s mind just then. He was grateful for the distraction of more footsteps overhead, another slam of the front door and, soon after, the rattle and chug of a car engine. The delivery of gold must be complete and the curtain ready to rise on the last act. How did they plan to get the gold out of the house? Carry it down the back garden and over the wall into someone else’s garden and …? He didn’t know what, but it seemed chancy. And there were two sentries – Army, not Marine – at the front gate, mostly symbolic, but likely to ask questions of any cart or car at that time of night. And even then –

  “Wilks,” he said, speaking low and quickly, “they must have some vehicle to carry the sovereigns. Now, if they want to get it out of Queenstown, how would they go?”

  He had asked the wrong person; without a local upbringing or any military training, Wilks had no concept of seeing himself at a geographical point. He could think of two roads out of town, no, three or maybe …

  Bridget rescued him. “There’s jest the one road off’n the island, sir.”

  “Island?”

  She couldn’t suppress her grin. “Did ye not know yez on an island, sir?”

  So with all his military experience, Ranklin had managed to miss that simple fact. His one glance at a map had suggested Queenstown was on a peninsula, with a lot of shallow creeks around.

  “Just one road?”

  “Aye, sir, the road to Cork over Belvelly bridge, next the railway.”

  So whoever held that bridge could keep the gold on the island – if Peter wanted to get it off, of course.

  “Mind, sir,” Bridget added, quietly enjoying herself, “Wid a rowing boat ye’d be jest ten minutes acrost to Monkstown or Glenbrook. Or An Pasaiste or East Ferry on t’other side, and if’n the tide’s over the mud, then anywheres …”

  In other words, you were on an island. And, by boat, could get off it in any direction. He was still thinking like a landlocked soldier.

  A yell, abruptly cut off, came from upstairs, followed by scuffled footsteps and a thump. The front door slammed again.

  “What was that, sir?” Wilks asked, wide-eyed.

  “Don’t know, but keep quiet. And calm.” Whatever it was, it had been something nasty. Ranklin fingered the hard cool metal of the derringer in his pocket. It might not profit himself, but he could leave one body as evidence for the police …

  Footsteps clattered on the stairs and corridor and the door opened wide. The Secretary, the butler and a private soldier in a blue-grey greatcoat were pushed inside. The soldier had lost his cap, the butler was white-faced and clutching his stomach.

  Ranklin got a glimpse of O’Gilroy and Mick in the corridor before the door slammed on them all.

  The soldier burst out wildly: “They killed me mate! Just stuck a knife in him, the bastards!” He was young and pale and shaking.

  “Steady, lad. I’m Captain Ranklin, Royal Artillery. Now, who did it?”

  The soldier calmed down, but seemed struck dumb. The Secretary said: “That damned German or Russian or whatever he is. Just cut his throat from behind, when … and they made me call them in to be murdered! God, I’d like too …”

  Bridget let out a sobbing squeal and clutched at Wilks. He put his arm awkwardly round her shoulders.

  Ranklin said: “Right, at least now we don’t have to guess at how serious they are. Here – ” he poured the soldier a tot of brandy and looked around for the butler, who was suddenly sick against the wall.

  “That’s the Admiral’s brandy,” the Secretary said, confirming Ranklin’s view of senior officers in a crisis. He just said: “Yes.”

  The Secretary coughed. “The one with a beard butt-stroked him with the shotgun. The man’s been a soldier to know how to handle a weapon like that.”

  With a warning glance at Bridget and Wilks, Ranklin said: “Perhaps, but I don’t advise speculating out loud. You’re witnesses to a murder, now. Not the safest job on the market.”

  The Secretary had calmed down. “I want a word, Captain.” He led Ranklin behind a rack of wine to the furthest corner just a few feet from the servants and other ranks, but now Officers’ Territory.

  “What do you think they’ll do with us?” he whispered. Just asking a question was a slight transfer of authority.

  “First,” Ranklin whispered back, “how will they get the gold away?”

  “They’ve got the keys to the stable where the Admiral keeps his car.”

  “Ah.” Ranklin hadn’t thought of that possibility. But that car, easily recognised, could be a passport to – where? O’Gilroy had said Peter wasn’t even taking a share of the gold, which had to mean he planned to take the lot. Some to America now, and bury the rest, probably. He could recover it in just a two-week return voyage – or leave it as a nest egg in case he got chased out of America, too. “Where are all your people and Marines and so on?”

  “Guarding the Maggie Gray and the ammunition. We all assumed the gold would be safe once it was in this house.”

  Feeling that any comment would be unhelpful, Ranklin asked: “What’s the state of the tide?”

  “The tide? Just past full, I think. Ah, you think they plan to use a small boat, away from the harbour. Yes, they could do that in the next hour or two.”

  Distantly, they heard the sound of a different car engine and the squeal of brakes; Ranklin wondered which of them could drive. “Are you prepared for me to take the lead?”

  “I don’t see what you might do that I can’t,” the Secretary said stiffly.

  “
Nevertheless.”

  The Secretary was two ranks senior to Ranklin, but only in the Navy’s Civil Branch. He frowned at Ranklin in the blotches of dusty light coming through the rack of bottles and Ranklin smiled his optimistic smile back.

  “You’ve seen action, I trust?” It was an abdication.

  “Yes.”

  “Very well, then. I suppose you and that young soldier …”

  “They’ll be watching for that combination. Just let me make the first move.” It wasn’t that he had any move in mind, just making quite sure the Secretary had none either.

  They heard the key in the lock once more and moved back to meet O’Gilroy in the doorway. He pointed the shotgun at Ranklin. “Ye come wid me. There’s heavin’ and carryin’ to be done.”

  In the corridor, Ranklin asked quietly: “Why me?”

  Just as quietly, O’Gilroy said: “I know ye for a quiet man, Captain. Not excitable. And one that can start plotting if he’s got time to think.”

  So O’Gilroy had assumed he would take charge in the cellar and wanted to leave the group leaderless. It was an odd compliment.

  He stepped through the traditional green baize door at the head of the stairs – and into a puddle of blood. He shivered and stopped, but there was no avoiding it: cutting a man’s throat leaves a floor like that. The soldier’s shrunken body lay scooped aside against the wall.

  “Why did you bring him?” Peter demanded loudly; he stood just beyond the blood pool.

  O’Gilroy didn’t dare to explain the real reason. “Ye gave me the choice.” There was a tightstrung tension in the hallway; Mick stood with his back to the front door, unable to keep his hands still on the rifle. And the very fact that none of them was willing to lay aside his weapon to carry the gold suggested an apprehension, perhaps mistrust, that could have started with the murder of the soldier. Ranklin didn’t think the Irishmen had expected that: perhaps a mistrust he could exploit.

  But first he had to carry twenty sealed bags of sovereigns from the safe in the Admiral’s office out to a blue Vauxhall tourer that sat rumbling under the lamppost in the carriageway. He stowed them on the floor by the back seat, and when the last had gone in there was a noticeable sag of the rear springs.