by Gavin Lyall
The hallway became a brief flummox of departure as the manservant carried out Corinna’s cases and bags, Sergeant Clement strapped them onto the back of the Renault, and Corinna’s maid, a small, fair and bossy girl, told him he was getting it wrong. Ranklin joined in, carrying out the smaller bits of Corinna’s baggage train and putting them in the wrong places, too.
Little puffs of drizzle came scurrying round the corners of the house as Corinna wriggled into her long car coat and fitted herself into the driving seat. “I’ll see you around,” and she gestured to Clement. He cranked the engine, the General saluted from the doorway, and Ranklin muttered: “How many servants?”
Surprised, O’Gilroy muttered back: “Not enough for a place this size.”
“How many men?”
Realising that Ranklin was counting a potential enemy, O’Gilroy reconsidered. “What we’ve seen – three – and what’s in the kitchen. I’ve seen no outside staff at all.”
“And Gunther at least.” He waved as the little car clattered stiffly out onto the drive and round the corner. They followed the General back into the house, Ranklin pausing to give the Duke’s portrait a sour glance. This problem was a poor return for Britain having given the Duke a birthplace, a Sandhurst education and a commission in the 60th. Bloody Greenjacket.
They found that, for the moment, they had the drawing room to themselves.
“’Tis a shame she’s not staying on,” O’Gilroy said quietly. “Unless yer thinking she’s one of them.”
“It doesn’t seem too likely.”
“And did ye not think of suggesting the Sergeant could take them in the big car, warm and dry, and us take her little one?”
“I thought of it.” And he had, too. “But we don’t know they suspect we know who they are, yet. If they fall for that single code book they’ll be anxious to have us on our way happy and unharmed. And we’ll have succeeded better than anyone hoped. Planting a false code on an enemy – prospective enemy – that’s quite a coup. And if they do suspect … Can we involve her?”
“They’d never …” Then O’Gilroy paused to think, perhaps about Devil’s Island. “Mebbe, mebbe … It’s a mite more difficult than saying ‘Range one thousand, fire,’ I fancy.”
“It is,” Ranklin said shortly.
“And I suppose ye wasn’t lying when ye said ye didn’t have yer little gun with ye?”
“Unfortunately not. If it comes to it, and they don’t suddenly up and cut our throats – and I don’t think they will: they’d be better off making it seem an accident, and that might take time – try and play for more time. Spin it out.”
“I’ve no argument agin living another minute, Captain. Or for ever, anyone gives me the chance.”
Soon afterwards, the General came back, punting his way with the walking stick across to his unfinished drink. They watched him cautiously as he sipped and put the glass down with a shivery hand.
“Mon Capitaine, you spoke of these dark times. And you are correct. The government of France is a rabble. The Army – my Army – is led by opportunists. Anarchists are on the streets of Paris, bandits on the highways – where is the discipline?” He grunted angrily. “You are too young to recall General Boulanger.”
“The ‘Man on Horseback’?” Ranklin said. “He was elected a deputy for Paris, I believe.”
“That same man. And that night – it is more than twenty years – he could have rallied other deputies. The generals were with him. And they could have restored the King – the father of the Duke. It needed only for Boulanger to take the lead – and where was he that night, Captain?”
Ranklin suddenly remembered the story, but let the General tell it.
“On top of his mistress!” the General hissed.
They waited in polite silence. “His mistress,” the General repeated, staring fiercely into the might-have-been. “One night, one woman – and the destiny of France. That is how weak our government has become. Enfin, there will come another night, and no woman.”
There didn’t seem anything to say. The wind rattled tentatively at a window. Then Gaston coughed discreetly from the doorway and announced: “Le Comte est servi.”
Hanging back as the General led the way out, O’Gilroy whispered: “Was that the truth, then?”
“About Boulanger and his mistress? Oh yes. I think he was in love with her – you might say he’d better have been. Anyhow, he shot himself on her grave a few years later.”
“Yer fooling me.”
“No, all of that’s true. Mind, I’m not saying the coup would have worked, the King would have come back. But it gives you an idea of how fragile French politics can be. And still are.”
13
They sat around the end of a long walnut table, waited on by Gaston and the manservant: vegetable soup, trout, and lamb cutlets – the first Ranklin had seen that year – in aspic. The aspic was probably new to O’Gilroy, but he would have eaten the cutlets with the wool still on. The General merely picked at his food; like most men of his age, he lived in short bursts of energy and talkativeness, and being gallant to Corinna and angry about Boulanger had exhausted him. Ranklin made one attempt to ask about Corinna’s husband and was told one did not talk about ladies at table. He went back to twiddling his wine glass.
Although it was still light outside, and they were eating absurdly early, the heavy curtains had been drawn and the room lit by silver candelabra. The colours enriched by the half-dark, the glints of light on china and glass, the shadows wavering in the slight draught – all gave a stagy effect. Perhaps doubly so, because Ranklin guessed that in daylight the room would seem as tawdry as stage scenery. And weren’t they in a play – acting parts and speaking meaningless lines until – until what?
It came when Gaston leant down to whisper a discreet something in the General’s ear and the old man gazed sombrely first at Ranklin, then O’Gilroy. Somebody, Ranklin thought grimly, has searched our room and not found what he was looking for. The General sighed. “Gentlemen, you are both royalists also.”
Since O’Gilroy probably hadn’t believed in any king since Brian Boru, Ranklin said quickly: “I am an officer in His Britannic Majesty’s Army.”
The General grunted. “In the past our countries have fought many times, honourably. Now, soon, we will fight together. But victory is only possible if France is led by a true king, His Majesty Philippe. I comprehend, Captain, that you carry to Paris a code for our Army. On behalf of His Majesty I will accept the code and you may report that it has been correctly delivered.”
That simple statement would have silenced a Welsh politician; it struck Ranklin dumb as a statue. The implications of it swam blurred and dreamily round his mind; the only hard-and-fast thought he could cling to was that the General was monumentally loony.
And the only thing he could think of to do was to play – indeed, overplay – his own part in this farce. “General, you must understand that I have my orders, and as I hold the King’s Commission, these orders come, in effect, from my King. I am ordered to deliver the code to Paris.”
“Paris is full of traitors.”
Perhaps so, Ranklin reflected, since the General shouldn’t have heard of the code at all.
“The code will be safe,” the General went on, “only in the hands of a loyal servant of His Majesty.” And he held out one such quavering hand.
Trying not to break down into wild and disastrous laughter, Ranklin stiffened in his chair. He knew his chubby figure didn’t play dignity well, but he did his best. “General, I am an officer entrusted with a mission. You have warned me that my mission is endangered, and I am deeply grateful. Now, if you would kindly permit me to contact my superiors in London and inform them of the situation, I shall obey their new orders.”
The General sipped his wine, wiped his mouth on his napkin, and nodded to Gaston, who nodded towards the door. Ranklin saw O’Gilroy tense.
Gunther Arnold came into the room with Sergeant Clement close behind.
&
nbsp; “You have met M’sieu van der Brock,” the General said.
“Yes,” Ranklin agreed. “But perhaps I misheard the name.”
Gunther, wearing a dark suit straining at its buttons and a floppy bow tie, just smiled and slid into a chair opposite Ranklin. Gaston brought a glass and poured him wine. Clement stayed back in the shadows.
Realising they were waiting for him to speak, Ranklin ignored Gunther and said to the General: “Do you believe my superiors in London are also traitors? If so, they could have given the code to an enemy directly. They still can. Instead, they entrusted it to me to deliver to Paris.”
“To the traitors in Paris,” Gunther said smoothly, and Ranklin saw his argument crumble like Jericho’s walls.
“This,” O’Gilroy observed, “is getting a mite more tangled than who owns M’Ginty’s cow.”
Ranklin glared angrily at him and, now desperate, tried again with the General: “But if we have traitors in London who know the code, then it becomes valueless – worse, a liability – to your King. ”
But Gunther was wearing a small, satisfied smile and, looking at the General, Ranklin suddenly guessed why: the old relic simply didn’t know the first thing about codes. In his campaigns, which in the last forty years could only have been against tribesmen in the French colonies, he wouldn’t have needed codes. He might just know what they were, but saw them as things that kept an intrinsic value no matter who owned them, like a sword or a barrel of gunpowder.
And he also saw that, loony or not, the General was completely sincere. He simply wanted the code for his “King”, and presumably believed it was going to get there. How? By hand of Gunther, probably, on his travels as a cigar merchant. Which in turn meant that Gunther was manipulating the General, using his royalist connections in Paris – in the Ministère de la Guerre especially – and …
Perhaps he let something show in his face, because Gunther said quickly: “Perhaps I might talk to Captain Ranklin alone for a moment? As a young man, an officer of little experience, he does not have the instinct of duty and honourable behaviour that you expect. As someone closer to his age, perhaps I can persuade him where his duty lies.”
Ranklin was about to say in frozen terms that no rotten spy could teach him anything about duty and honour when he remembered that he was a rotten spy himself and that such words would mean nothing to Gunther anyway. And there was always a chance that Gunther didn’t know Ranklin was a spy and not an ordinary officer picked by chance for a courier’s job. Not that the amount of training he’d been given made that much difference, he thought sourly. But there still had to be a reason why they hadn’t just been scragged, and Gunther was the man in charge.
So he said: “If the General allows it, I will listen to Heer van der Brock.”
When they were outside the dining room, standing in front of the portrait of the Duc d’Orléans, who, Ranklin now realised, knew nothing of this affair, of Gunther and perhaps even the General, but had still been a bloody Greenjacket, Gunther lit a small cigar.
Then he said abruptly: “We know there should be three copies of the code and unless you show me two others, we must believe the one you left upstairs is false.” His English had improved, Ranklin noted, since he became a Dutchman.
“You are new to these matters,” Gunther continued. “So I will explain how they are conducted: the code is already compromised by your unfortunate delay. Would you trust the lives of men, of armies, to a code that has unaccountably vanished for a few hours? I think not. I think also it will not be of helping your career. So I will help you: you must sell me the code.”
Ranklin had been determined to keep a face of stone, but this offer chipped it badly. He may even have gaped.
Gunther smiled, leaking cigar smoke. “Consider the result: you will have the assurance that I will not betray you because it would be to betray myself. And I will have the assurance that you will not betray me because I can say you sold the code for money. It will be in both our interests to pretend that nothing has happened. No?
“You look worried. I know! You think I am a German spy. Ach, that I should be so insulted. They are as clumsy and incompetent as … as your own new Secret Service. Romantics, adventurers, the misfits of the officer corps – cads and bounders, you would call them.”
It seemed reasonable to suppose that Gunther did not think Ranklin was a spy.
“But I am a professional. You may choose to despise that, but be assured that your superiors do not. I have had many dealings with them, and they recognise work of quality.”
That, Ranklin knew, was at least partly true. The Bureau did shop for information in the mercenary markets, notably in Vienna and Brussels.
“Also, you are thinking I will sell the code to Germany, to Austria-Hungary. Most certainly that is my plan. But consider: your War Office knows the code is no longer to be trusted; they must make a new one anyway. What I sell will be genuine; my reputation, my business, depend on that. But it will not harm your country.”
“But they’ll still suspect me.”
“Because of the delay, what else can they do? The moving finger has written, the delay exists. But they will still prefer to blame the French Ministère than a British officer – and this way, you can tell of the General and his gang of royalist dreamers who are a danger to all secrets you share with France, not just one code. When you tell your War Office of them they will not suspect you of anything but a little foolishness. They should thank you – but perhaps that is to expect too much, no?”
“You’re ready to ditch the General?”
“Fools are dangerous people. Who knows what his next dream of chivalry will make him to do? You see already he plans to take the code from you. I offer to buy it for, shall we say, four hundred pounds?”
Ranklin saw that four hundred pounds – nearly two years’ pay – and he wanted it. But he also saw Gunther taking it back from his corpse, because he now knew for sure that he planned to kill them. No businessman would give up a prize like the General and the royalist network.
“There are two of us,” Ranklin said, and then realised that was a mistake. He had been trying to sound properly mercenary, but had forced Gunther to reconsider O’Gilroy’s position. Probably he had assumed Ranklin had brought him along as an innocent disguise: two pals out on a jaunt to Gay Paree. Now he was thinking of two couriers, and it must seem odd.
“There is only one code,” Gunther said, temporising.
Ranklin had to go through with it. “I must talk to him.”
Back in the dining room, the General looked up under his eyebrows with a stern, inquiring look. Gunther said: “Mon Général, the Captain wishes to explain certain matters to his friend,” and Ranklin beckoned O’Gilroy over.
However, nobody was letting them out of sight. Sergeant Clement, still in his tight chauffeur’s jacket but with a large and heavy bulge in the right-hand pocket, stood blocking the door. They backed off into a corner shared with a plinth and a bust of (Ranklin guessed) Louis Philippe.
“Gunther claims he’s a mercenary spy,” Ranklin whispered. “He tried to buy the code off me.”
O’Gilroy nodded, unsurprised. “How much?”
“Doesn’t matter. If he’s telling the truth, it just makes it more sure he’s going to kill us. A mercenary spy won’t have any feeling he’s in jail for his country’s sake, no back pay waiting at home. He’ll just see his business going to pot and coming out to starve on the street.”
“Like enough. So what did ye say?”
“I’d talk to you. What I don’t see is why we haven’t been scragged already.”
“Ye think the General would allow it?”
It was as if a photographic flash had been set off, freezing the tableau so that Ranklin could see the relationships clearly for the first time.
He nodded gently. “You’re right, of course. The old fool may not know anything about codes, but he’d know a stab in the back if he saw it. And you don’t do that in a house of chiv
alry and honour – so Gunther’s got to get us out of the house first.”
“Mind, I don’t say the General wouldn’t have his fellas just take the code off’n ye.”
“Yes, I don’t think that would offend his honour. All right, I don’t know how we’ll manage this, but we know what we want.” They walked back to their places.
“So, mon Capitaine,” the General said, “have you understood where your duty lies?”
Ranklin took a sip of wine and touched his lips with his napkin, determined to do everything as slowly as possible. “Was it at your suggestion that Heer van der Brock should insult me by offering money for the code?”
The General frowned thoughtfully, and looked at Gunther.
“A simple test,” Gunther said easily. “To see if the Captain’s loyalty lay in his wallet. Unfortunately I failed to offer enough money.”
“That,” Ranklin said, “is the sort of lie one expects from a bourgeois cigar-peddler.”
Despite himself, Gunther stiffened and gave Ranklin a grim look. Unfortunately, the insult misfired with the General. “The lowness of birth is of no consequence in matters of loyalty. His Majesty has chosen M’sieu van der Brock as his loyal servant. I should not presume to argue with His Majesty’s choice.”
Gunther bowed his head to the General, and came up with a new idea. “Mon Général, perhaps the Captain doubts that I truly am the servant of His Majesty. If so, it is a motor journey of only some hours for me to bring him before His Majesty. He cannot have any doubts about handing over the code to His Majesty in person.”
It was stupendously bold, and it left Ranklin speechless – partly with admiration. And it was a winner with the General. “Parfait.” He slapped a hand on the table. “You are most honoured, mon Capitaine. And surely you can have no doubts any longer. Sergeant Clement! L’automobile est préparée, n’est ce pas?”
“And what about meself?” O’Gilroy asked.