by Gavin Lyall
Ranklin nodded, glancing at O’Gilroy. The staging of the “accident” would start from there. “But why,” he said, “are you still fooling about with these codes? You’d far better spend the time running.”
O’Gilroy’s face twisted into a sour smile. “Running takes money, Captain. And ye’d be surprised how much, oncest others know how bad ye need their help.”
“Free Trade in action,” Corinna murmured.
Of course: with Gunther in no state to help, getting hold of the code was Clement’s one hope of escape. A quick sale of that (or, more sensibly, a copy of it) before it was known to be discredited …
“It won’t be any use,” Ranklin said. “Unless I deliver that code, it’ll be changed. Worthless.”
Clement smiled faintly. “And do you think your government, and also the government in Paris, they will say in the newspapers they have lost a code and must change it?”
No, Ranklin hadn’t believed that, just hoped Clement might.
“But,” Corinna said, “when we’re found dead, they’ll sure as hell print my name. And theirs besides. Captain Ranklin of the British Army, travelling to Paris on official business. Somebody could read that and have time to connect it with the code coming on the market. Because if you think you’re going to go into an embassy and roll out with a hatful of gold five minutes later, you know nothing about getting money out of government officials.”
And at last a twitch of doubt showed on Clement’s bony face. Because in all his years of soldiering, he must have learnt a lot about getting money out of officials: delayed back pay, quibbles over deductions and allotments and dates of promotion. That was one war every soldier had fought.
“But you’re in luck, my friend,” Corinna went on. “You want money, we want our lives. Let’s deal.” She plunged her hand, both hands, into her bag and French banknotes fluttered out like big moths. Ranklin could see they were big denominations, and Clement could recognise them even quicker.
“Here,” she said, “take it, take the lot.” And, with both hands still inside, she thrust the bag out towards Clement. He reached with his free hand and the bag boomed smoke in his face.
He was whirled back into his seat by shock, blinded by smoke, and a moment later had O’Gilroy’s elbow rammed in his face, the pistol wrenched from his hand, lifted above his head.
“Stop!” Ranklin roared, and O’Gilroy paused. The heavy revolver would have burst Clement’s head open. Panting more in anger than breathlessness, O’Gilroy settled the gun in his hand and clicked back the hammer. “Say something interesting, Sergeant. Like how ye file bayonets in half.”
Corinna sat with her eyes shut and holding the bag, which was still pouring smoke, in her lap. “Did I kill him?”
“No, ma’am, jest his hand.” Clement’s left hand was dripping blood and his eyes streaming tears. A hit on the hand always does that, as Ranklin had learnt in school long before he saw it again on the battlefield.
O’Gilroy said: “Ah, Jayzus,” passed the revolver to Ranklin and began wrapping a handkerchief around the hand. Ranklin picked up the bag and emptied out its smouldering papers, gloves, handkerchief, more money – and an elderly brass-inlaid pocket revolver with the unmistakable Colt butt.
“Less than Government calibre,” he said, peering into the muzzle. “And black powder besides.”
“Ye hear that, Sergeant? – ye wasn’t more’n tickled. Proper gun like ye had yerself’d tore yer hand right off. Hold yer arm up, me darling; ye can hurt or bleed, it’s yer own choice.”
Ranklin passed over his own handkerchief to add to the bandaging, then went on standing, swaying slightly, with a pistol in each hand.
“You look like Buffalo Bill in a dime novel,” Corinna said with a shaky smile, then: “I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Don’t,” Ranklin ordered. “There’s enough mess in here already.”
She gave him a look of pure hate, but wasn’t sick. The train slowed and rocked around a curve; peering across the inside of it, Ranklin could see the lights of a station ahead, and took a quick decision.
“You get out here,” he told Clement. He dropped Corinna’s pistol back into her bag and picked up a smoke-stained 500-franc note. “Here – I don’t know how far this’ll get you, but just stay out of our sight for evermore. Unless you want to discuss filed bayonets with O’Gilroy.”
A village station would hardly have enough staff, especially at night, to man both platforms, so they let Clement down onto the track on the empty side.
As the train pulled out again, Corinna began repacking her bag, which had a charred hole the size of a penny at one end.
Ranklin said: “I see now why you don’t mind driving on French roads at night.”
She stared at her pistol as if seeing it for the first time. “I’ve carried this around for years, but never …”
“Why didn’t you give it to one of us earlier?” Ranklin asked gently.
She frowned. “I guess … I thought … God damn it, I don’t know you! Except you go starting and fighting duels and stuff. Maybe I thought if I gave you the gun, you’d shoot somebody and there’d been quite enough …” She lifted her head with her eyes closed and shuddered. “When I got the thing cocked, I thought: maybe I’m going to kill this guy. And I thought: so? he’s going to kill me. Me. And I shot as straight as I could.”
She put the gun in the bag and snapped it shut. “Is that what happens? What you feel?”
Ranklin and O’Gilroy looked at each other, then nodded.
“Mind, why a couple of spies, of all people, don’t carry their own guns and need so much help from me, I’ll never understand.”
“I keep telling you …” Ranklin began.
“I know you do. Aren’t you going to put away your secret codes before someone else walks off with them?”
Ranklin began stuffing the three books into the pockets that didn’t already hold Clement’s revolver.
Corinna watched. “And why three of them – all different?”
Ranklin hesitated, then said: “Two of them are false.” There was no need to explain it hadn’t been planned just that way.
“And the one you gave me, X, is the real one?” O’Gilroy’s eyebrows lifted for a moment, but he said nothing. “Because,” she went on, “it had damn well better be. I didn’t fancy being a messenger, but if I thought I’d just been a decoy duck …”
Ranklin nodded. “X is the real one.”
At Rouen, they saw Corinna into a taxi and had time to buy a different brand of cigarette, since O’Gilroy believed an entire nation couldn’t tolerate the things he had tried at the Château. Ranklin, who still had some English tobacco for his pipe, said nothing.
When they were settled, alone, in a rather more first-class compartment than the small train’s, O’Gilroy lit a cigarette, scowled, and said: “So ye did send her off as a decoy duck for them to be chasing after.”
“It might have come to that, if I thought it could gain us more time. But they’d never have caught her.”
“’Cept they would, with her turning round like that to come back and blast ye.”
“Damn fool woman.”
“Yer a hard man, Captain.”
“All right, what code am I supposed to be keeping to? Did I get a foul stain on my honour as a spy?” Ranklin knew his face looked childish in anger, but no longer cared.
“It’s ‘spies’ we are now, is it?”
“Of course it is. All that bloody nonsense about ‘agents’ – we’re spies and that’s all there is to it. And not much bloody good at it, not me, anyway. Nearly getting you killed in a duel.”
“Nearly killed, was I now?” O’Gilroy changed gear into high indignation. “I could’ve bested six of him with one hand tied behind me back – and I did have one hand tied, nearabouts, and turned out there was two of them. If’n ye want me killed, try a regiment of cavalry next time, and a few machine-guns besides.”
“Sorry.”
�
�Save yer sorrow for the times we lose. We beat them bastards, Captain, and yer own War Office besides. Only – I’m wondering why ye volunteered for such work at all.”
“Don’t worry,” Ranklin muttered. “I’ll stick with the job.”
“I’m not worried, Captain. Knowing yer a man of honour.”
17
The next afternoon they took tea with Mrs Winslow Finn at the Ritz. Ranklin had expected O’Gilroy to be overawed, but he just strolled in, smiling appreciatively. Perhaps, Ranklin reflected, it was like telling a man you’re going to give him a bucketful of gin: he’s never seen such a thing before, but when he gets it, it’s exactly what he expected. O’Gilroy would simply have been disappointed if there had not been a high decorated ceiling, twinkling chandeliers, potted palms and soft music.
Obviously of her own choice, Corinna was tucked away at a quiet corner table talking to a young man in a dark suit who was taking notes. She wore a peg-top dress in ultramarine silk – most of the women around the room were in pastel shades – with a short white jacket and flowerpot hat. The young man got up and melted away as the Maître brought them across.
“One of Pop’s assistants,” she introduced the retreating back view. “You boys have been shopping.”
Ranklin smiled painfully; she could only be referring to a rather erroneous tie O’Gilroy had insisted on buying in the Avenue de l’Opéra.
“Yes, we had to replace quite a lot of kit that we’d left at the Château.”
“And did you deliver your precious code?”
Ranklin nodded. Last night he had handed over the W code to a professionally gloomy Colonel Huguet who was on the brink of giving it up as compromised – and still needed a lot of persuading that it had never left Ranklin’s person. But he had listened, puzzled, intrigued and finally outraged, then launched Ranklin into a long night of interviews with officers of the Service de Renseignments, who knew something of “van der Brock” already, and an artist who drew Clement’s face from Ranklin’s description.
Ultimately they had agreed that the War Office’s “little error” (about which Lieutenant Spiers and the other agent knew nothing, having delivered their parcels intact) just about balanced out the French carelessness about the General and the royalists in the Ministère, and that perhaps written reports would cause needless worry … Huguet had sealed the pact by giving him the X code-book as a souvenir. And Ranklin had drunk too much coffee and cognac and slept badly.
“And you had to tell them about the General?”
O’Gilroy looked up from his lemon tea. “Was ye thinking we owed him any better, then?”
“Fools on that scale are dangerous,” Ranklin said. “He was trying – unwittingly, perhaps – to commit a blatantly treacherous act. Next time …”
Corinna nodded and smiled sadly. “I suppose so. But he was kind of sweet, with his old-fashioned honour and duelling …”
“If you look carefully at any history of duelling,” Ranklin said, “you’ll find that, except where both parties were just drunk, most were legitimised murder forced by an expert swordsman or pistol shot.”
O’Gilroy stared, then chuckled to himself. Corinna said: “Bye-bye King Arthur. But what’ll happen to the old boy?”
“They daren’t have a trial, it would get the royalists up in arms. So, a few nods and winks behind closed doors, perhaps somebody of more certain loyalty taking over Clement’s job – and no, nothing heard of him.” Then, trying to change the subject: “Was your father taken with any of the châteaux you saw?”
“Was he –?” For a moment she looked blank, then remembered the reason she’d given for being at the Château. “Oh, yes, well … I don’t know that he’s very serious about it. What he might be serious about is knowing just how cosy the British and French armies are, and how close they think a war is.”
“Armies always think a war is close,” Ranklin said quickly. “It’s their job. And we’d rather yesterday’s doings weren’t shouted from the rooftops.”
“Just nods and winks behind closed doors? Well, that’s how Pop usually does business. And you press-ganged me, Captain, when you slipped me that code: I’d say you owe me pay for the voyage. I’d also say I’d got you boys over a barrel, knowing how you earn your daily bread.”
O’Gilroy stopped eating tea biscuits – just for a moment – to stare hard at her. Ranklin said amiably: “If I understand the expression aright, you may well have. But if you really wanted to help your father, why not suggest he tries to get involved in placing French Government bonds in America? – as Pierpoint Morgan would be doing if he hadn’t just died? They’ll need a new issue to pay for the third year of conscription they’re proposing. Mr Sherring would be delighted to know what an intelligent – sorry, smart – business-woman he’d got for a daughter.”
That lunchtime Ranklin had had a friendly chat with a man from the Paris branch of an English bank. They had touched on the career of Reynard Sherring, private banker: not in the class of a Rothschild or the late J. P. Morgan, perhaps, but well respected and with no worries about where his next steam yacht was coming from. And now his daughter sat and listened, a polite smile held on her usually mobile face.
“Because it struck me,” Ranklin went on, “that a smart businesswoman might have a smart business reason for wasting time in that crumbling old Château. Such as finding out whether the royalists really have any political future. Not directly from the old warhorse himself, but from the names he’d let drop when trying to impress a pretty young face. Stuff that your father would like to know but daren’t be seen trying to find out, not if he wanted any slice of the French bond pie or anything else from the government. Because if there was even a whisper of royalist sympathies, they’d rather dig up poor Mr Morgan than give any business to your father … you’re letting your tea go cold, Mrs Finn.”
She sat back and stared, apparently at nothing. Around them, the waiters glided as if on skates, the music soothed, the laughter twittered like the bird house at the zoo. Just another Ritz teatime.
“You know something?” she said finally. “I just clean forgot something Pop once told me: never try to skin a live wolf. Stupid of me.” She leant forward, smiling. “It’s Matthew – Matt – isn’t it? And Conall. I’m Corinna. We must take tea again, some time.”
WHITEHALL COURT
18
“It is very good of you to see me,” Lord Erith said, smiling gently as he looked around for a place to put his silk hat. In fact, it was very good of him to say that, because the Commander had had no choice but to see him. He could fend off politicians and diplomats by threatening to tell them secrets, but Lord Erith came – at least on this occasion – from the Palace, and saying No to him would be saying No to the King.
“I suppose,” Erith went on, “that since your Bureau does not exist, neither does this room. A most remarkable illusion of reality.”
The Commander found a space for Erith’s hat and gloves between a model of a futuristic warship and an experimental chronometer on the work-table. The whole attic room was cluttered with such things, together with a shelf of technical books, a row of telephones, and a flock of maps, charts and seascape pictures roosting on the walls.
It looked, as the Commander had intended, like the office of the Chief of the Secret Service Bureau.
Erith seemed about to flick invisible dust off the padded dining chair kept for visitors, but then just sat, draping the skirts of his frock coat away from his thighs. He had a face that was very fashionable at the time, virtually just a profile with a thin beaked nose, high forehead and sharp chin. Senior diplomats, generals and some admirals all wore it, although not so many politicians; perhaps the voters needed some way of telling them apart. Erith’s version was balder than most, but with a fuller moustache.
“Are you to be involved in Monsieur Poincaré’s visit?” he asked politely, but rather hoping not, if the Commander would be wearing what appeared to be a mechanic’s uniform. Whoever had designed
the Naval officer’s working dress had held a bitter grudge against sailors.
“No, My Lord, no reason for me to be embroiled in pomp and circumstance.” The Commander pulled his own chair out to sit beside rather than behind his desk. He didn’t mind looking like a mechanic, but never like a blasted banker.
“And I trust that none of your, ah, agents will be doing anything interesting in France at the time of the visit?”
The Commander lowered his brows and reached for his briar pipe, rather like a man instinctively resting his hand on his sword hilt. “None of that got into the newspapers, not even the French ones.”
“So we were pleased not to see. But your profession seems to be rather in the public eye at the moment, with the Colonel Redl affair in Vienna, and now the release of … dear me, I forget the names – ”
“Brandon and Trench.” Three years ago these two, one a Marine, the other a Naval officer, had been imprisoned for snooping round the forts of North Germany. Last month they had been released as a gesture when the King went to Berlin for the wedding of the Kaiser’s daughter. The British press had made quite a fuss of the two men; the Admiralty had not.
“I know they were none of your responsibility, but still …”
The Commander growled: “Damned Naval Intelligence sending out total amateurs who think it’ll be a jolly jape to spend their leave doing a bit of spying. Mind, the Army can be just as bad.”
“My dear Commander, I do so agree with you (please light that pipe if you want to). For years I’ve been arguing for a secretariat that wasn’t dominated by generals and admirals to handle cooperative planning and intelligence.”
The Commander knew that was true. Somehow Erith, holding just some obscure post in the Royal Household, and with no background as soldier, sailor, diplomat or governor of this or that, managed to be in the centre of everything, including, from its inception, the Imperial Defence Committee. Too fastidious to be a leader, too intelligent to be a docile follower, what he clearly enjoyed was being an Influence.