by Gavin Lyall
The Commander said: “It may also happen that one of my agents needs to send a very urgent and secret message. In such very rare circumstances, in the interest of the nation as a whole, would you agree …”
Corbin understood perfectly and disagreed totally: the Commander wanted to use embassies as postboxes, since the only truly secret codes accepted by the cable companies, or the governments that licensed them, were the diplomatic codes. But from there it would be but a step to embassies becoming, or being assumed to have become, which was worse, nests of espionage. Not in my time, he thought, nor in the time of any successor – unless the Foreign Office controls that espionage.
But he was too much of a diplomatist to say “No”. “An ambassador is in the same position as the captain of a warship: he accepts total responsibility for each and every message sent from his embassy. It follows that any such decision would be entirely up to the individual ambassador.”
“But you want me to forbid my agents from going anywhere near your ambassadors.”
“We think that would be most advisable.” Corbin stood up. “I repeat: do we have an understanding?”
“Oh, I understand all right.” The Commander banged his pipe on the pot of a flowering shrub, sprinkling it with hot ash. “I suppose now we’d better go and listen to this Leon. Who is he?”
The diplomatist shrugged. “Just some dago.”
THIS FAITHLESS TIME
38
“Two bowler hats for Mr O’Gilroy?” the Bureau’s accountant said, politely mystified. “I quite see that when posing as your manservant he would need a bowler hat, but two, both purchased within the space of two weeks?”
“The first one got a bullet-hole in it at Kiel,” Ranklin said evenly. “He happened – quite properly, in my view – to be wearing it when he was helping incite a patrol of German troops to open fire one night.”
“Oh, quite, quite.” The accountant seemed used to such explanations. “But if the second hat was a replacement, then you should have stated that, along with a brief outline of the circumstances leading to its loss or irreparable damage. Until then, I’m afraid …”
He laid the bill on the growing pile of rejected claims and picked up another paper. He was a small, affable man in his forties who smoked one cigarette an hour and wore a Norfolk jacket because, to most Englishmen, Paris was a permanent weekend. He would not have minded in the least being told that he looked like an Englishman in Paris; that, he would have said, was what he was.
“You seem,” he said, “to use motor taxis a lot. Do you find the motor-omnibuses and underground railway inadequate?”
“We use those too. It just doesn’t seem worth writing down the fares.”
“Oh.” The accountant put down his pencil to think about this radically new approach to life. Then he said: “I think you should,” and began doing sums on his pad.
Ranklin sipped his lemon tea and stared up at the little square of blue sky that showed above the hotel courtyard. Then, his eye followed one of the many trickles from the hotel plumbing, down to a despondent potted tree in a damp corner, to the rusty metal table with its load of papers, and the accountant again.
He had finished the sums. “If you were to buy a bicycle – ”
“A bicycle?”
“Yes. And if the price of a good second-hand machine were the same as in Britain – let us say one hundred and twenty-five francs – then with the saving on motor-taxis, you would have fully recouped the cost of the bicycle in just twelve and a half days – by your own figures.”
“Quite often O’Gilroy’s with me in those taxis,” Ranklin pointed out.
“Ah yes. Then it would have to be two bicycles and an amortisation period of twenty-five days. Of course, that isn’t quite …”
“I AM NOT GOING TO A RECEPTION AT THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMBASSY ON A SECOND-HAND BLOODY BICYCLE!”
The hotel cat, which had been asleep in the one dry corner of the courtyard, sprang up and gave Ranklin an outraged look, then began to lick itself. The accountant seemed just mildly surprised. “Are you going to a reception at the Embassy?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Do you consider it wholly necessary?”
“If you know anything about the political situation in … Look, it’ll cost just two taxis. And I get a free supper.”
“Aren’t you forgetting the laundering of the collar of your dress shirt? Perhaps even the whole shirt? You see? – it’s these little overlooked matters which can add up to considerable sums. I fully appreciate the, ah, peculiarities of your work and that I have to take many things on trust. But trust, I say, has to be earned. And what better way to earn it than assiduous attention to details such as these?” He smiled amiably, even trustingly.
The hotel waiter, thinking Ranklin’s shout had been for him, had decided after two minutes to come and see what he wanted.
“Let me pay for this,” the accountant said, reaching for the wallet that held his personal money. “Would you like another lemon tea?”
“No, thank you. I would like a large cognac.”
“That might turn out to be a very expensive drink,” O’Gilroy said judiciously.
“Be damned to it. Saying I should earn the trust of a snotty little clerk! He was questioning my integrity! I’ve spent half my Army life having rows with the Quartermaster and Ordnance branches about pennies, but they were conducted as between gentlemen!”
O’Gilroy, who believed the solution to a storm in a teacup was to steal a new teacup, asked: “What’s the damage, then?”
“About half of what we paid to replace the kit left at the General’s Château, no first-class travel for you when you were being a manservant, about half our taxi fares disallowed – we’ll be living out of our own pockets for months unless they send us on a new task. Damn it all, we didn’t join the Bureau to lose money.” He was stumping angrily around his small bedroom, picking up and throwing down clothes.
“We know where he’s staying,” O’Gilroy said. “So, jest suppose he met a young lady tonight, and suppose there was something in his drink to make him especial careless, and suppose ye happened by his room and found them in bed – a respectable man like himself, ye’d have him by the balls.”
“The very last place I’d want to touch him in that circumstance. And you’d need to hide a whole rhinoceros in his drink, not just a bit of horn, to bring him to life …” But the very thought had calmed him; he sat down and mused, smiling. “It’s a pity blackmail can be so unpredictable … isn’t there any other crime we can commit?”
“It’s come to that, has it?”
“We’re learning to be a sort of criminal, aren’t we? And we can’t go on doing our job without proper financing, so let’s use what we’ve learned.”
It was logic that O’Gilroy accepted without a blink, but knew Ranklin would have rejected it out of hand a few weeks ago. We’re learning, all right, Captain, dear – but I wonder if ye realise how much?
“Think, man, think,” Ranklin urged him. But in the end, he thought of it for himself.
“To count all acts of war as normal because all must be driven by necessity, to count none as exceptional, resorted to only in extremis, in short to deny the existence of Kriegsraison and say that all is Kriegsmanier, is to me to deny the role of conscience in the waging of war. And yet this is what Professor Westlake would have us do. But it is my profound and considered belief, ladies and gentlemen, that when we lose conscience we lose judgement – no inconsiderable trifle in matters of law. Professor Lueder has drawn the analogy with the criminal law: that a man may commit acts contrary to that law, yet be excused on grounds of dire necessity such as self-preservation. This does not destroy the law. So it is with nations: we must continue to recognise the Kriegsraison, to accept the exceptional for what it is, and still call it for judgement in the forum of conscience.”
All this was rather far removed from the battlefields Ranklin had known, and his attention was wandering around
the room – the ballroom, presumably, since the Hôtel de Matignon had been built as a private house – practically a palace – and become the Austro-Hungarian Embassy only thirty years before. Now the room was crowded with spindly gilt chairs (not enough: Ranklin was leaning against a pillar), the Diplomatic Corps, Parisian lawyers and distinguished guests to whom the Dual Monarchy was showing off its latest catch.
He himself was there because of Corinna, now sitting a few yards away wrapped in green watered silk and a modest spattering of rubies and listening with a bright but rather fixed smile to Professor … er … let me think … oh yes, Hornbeam, Gerald Hornbeam. The American expert on international law, you know. You must have heard of him.
Well, I have now, and would have spotted him for an American lawyer anyway, he decided. Pink-cheeked, comfortably stout, with a full white moustache, and mane of hair (it was odd how successful lawyers kept their hair; Hornbeam must be past sixty), the dress clothes slightly out of date and rumpled to show academic soundness.
He had moved on while Ranklin’s thoughts had sneaked out for a smoke, though still in pursuit of Professor Westlake. “In the event of an uprising in a neighbouring state, he would brand as lawless any intervention to quell what he is pleased to call ‘the mere contagion of principles’, citing as his authority the famous despatch by Canning in 1823 which justified intervention only in the face of a physical threat. Yet what navy or army today could mount an invasion more potent than one manned solely by principles? And in denouncing one side of the coin, he fails entirely to observe what is inscribed on the other: that if we grant principles the power of evil, may we not also grant them the power of good? And if this indeed be so, may it not also be so of intervention in support of principles? Or must we shackle ourselves with laws obdurate to the finer judgements of conscience?”
He ended amid a burst of eager applause, a few cheers and a grim mutter from behind Ranklin: “Parce que c’est fini.” Hornbeam took one question, phrased as if it were being read from an old parchment, and then several women in the audience simply stood up, forcing the men round them to do the same, and in a moment the talk was over and supper could begin.
Ranklin hung back, waiting for Corinna and watching a small crowd gathering to congratulate Hornbeam. Among them was a shortish, slightly dumpy girl, perhaps in her middle twenties, who was nevertheless dressed to stand out anywhere – except a Paris reception. She took Hornbeam’s arm and smiled possessively out at the crowd.
“Matt, come here and meet Mr Temple,” Corinna called. She was with a lanky bespectacled young man – American, from the way his figure drawled as his voice might.
“From our Embassy,” Corinna confirmed, introducing them.
“And what did you think of Professor Hornbeam’s address, sir?” Temple asked politely.
“Most interesting,” Ranklin said promptly, and left to himself he would have said no more. But he owed it to Corinna not to be too much the country clodhopper, as her expression was now pointing out. So: “I think his lectures should be well received in Austria-Hungary.”
That didn’t satisfy Corinna, but Temple saw the drift and nodded seriously. “Exactly. His views on intervention in a neighbouring state …”
“Such as Serbia.” And Ranklin was immediately aware that he had said a Very Rude Word. Temple winced and actually glanced around.
Now Corinna had got interested. “I thought that intervention stuff was just about Cuba and maybe now Mexico; he’s a great Teddy Roosevelt man. But I never thought of Serbia.”
“Mrs Finn, we are on Austro-Hungarian territory here,” Temple hissed. “I’m sorry the matter came up.”
“My fault,” Ranklin said. “Still, he doesn’t speak for your government and you didn’t invite him to Europe, so if anything he says might be construed as endorsing any prospective act with unfortunate consequences – Good God! I’m beginning to speak like him. Anyway, you can disown him.”
“We’d rather not have to,” Temple said. “He’s a very eminent academic. And our job is to protect our citizens abroad, not rap their knuckles. Still …”
“I was planning to go to Vienna soon anyway,” Corinna said cheerfully. “Maybe I’ll hitch myself to his wagon and see if I can’t tone him down a bit.”
“Mrs Finn,” Temple said, beginning to sound anxious, “we have a perfectly good Embassy in Vienna.”
“Why, of course you do – but they’re all diplomatists, aren’t they, old boy, what ho? Anyway, Lucy would welcome some help shopping, I’m sure.”
“His wife?” Ranklin asked.
“Daughter, stupid. Mrs Hornbeam’s an invalid, doesn’t travel.”
“Ah. Tell me,” Ranklin turned to Temple, “who’s the Major in Cuirassiers’ uniform?”
Temple squinted across the room at a blond young man alternately laughing and dipping his moustache in champagne. “Oh, their temporary Military Attaché, I forget his name. The real one’s back in Vienna.”
“He looks,” Corinna said, “as if he has a very muscular brain.”
Ranklin nodded, hoping she was right.
39
The Embassy’s windows had all been opened wide, bringing a confusion of warm fresh air and warm bad breath from last night’s reception. Or at least the Temporary Military Attaché found it confusing as he picked his way through the cleaners and sweepers to stare at the man waiting in a small side room.
The visitor was lean, his hair sleeked back with some disgusting-smelling oil, and wearing thick-rimmed spectacles and a suit that was almost a diplomatic incident. He looks like a servant – or worse, the Attaché thought. Who let him in? Who said he could sit down?
Unsure of what language to use, he made an international noise in his throat. The visitor looked up and asked: “D’ye spaik English?”
“I do.”
The visitor reached into a bulging pocket. “D’ye want to buy this, then?”
He didn’t even say “Sir”. The book was red, slim, pocket-sized and in the front it said MOST SECRET – CODE X – TRES SECRET. The Attaché opened it, then sat down abruptly.
I will attack, he read – 11647 – Je vais attaquer. His hands shivered and he took several deep breaths to subdue his hangover. Despite being a cavalryman and enjoying the image of himself as a “devil of a fellow”, the Attaché was not stupid. Perhaps a good deal of what he mistook for intelligence in himself was really ruthless ambition, but in some military circles that is just as good.
I am attacking – 45151 – J’attaque.
If this is a foul joke perpetrated by an unspeakable Magyar in the Commercial section, I will personally see that he is posted to Manzanillo.
I attacked – 31847 – J’ai attaqué.
“Where – ” his voice started as a croak and he coughed: “ – where did you obtain this?”
“It belongs to me master, but him busy being dead drunk this fine morning, I’m handling his affairs for him.” He leered like a gargoyle.
“Who is your master?”
“Ah, now. I was thinkin’ names, specially mine, needn’t come into this. Just say he’s the sort of man uses this sort of book. And a bastard of an Englishman besides.”
“You are not English?”
The visitor stood up, snatched back the book, and sneered down at the Curassiers’ uniform. “I ask for an officer and they send the lavatory attendant.”
“No, wait please. You are Irish.”
“A genius. And in uniform.”
“A good Catholic, like us Austrians.”
Apparently mollified, the visitor sat down again.
“But how,” the Attaché asked, “can I be sure this book is genuine?”
The visitor shrugged. “How would I know meself. – except me master jest got it for special cablegrams. D’ye want it or not?”
“This is a more complicated matter than you understand. I cannot just buy this book. I do not have the authority. And to buy the book itself would make the code useless, because …”
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br /> The visitor studied his fingernails, perhaps to make sure none of the dirt had fallen out.
“I want a thousand pounds,” he said.
“And I said ye wouldn’t be awake before one o’clock so he went charging away with the code – to get it photographed – and then asked me a lot more questions and then stuck me to wait out in the garden. Jayzus! ye should see the size of that garden – ”
“I believe it’s the biggest private park in central Paris,” Ranklin said. They had met in a large students’ café near the Place St Michel and, for their own peace of mind, in a dark corner of it.
“… and gave me coffee and cream cakes – ah, those cakes, ye’ve never tasted the like in yer life.”
“That’s fine, but are we going to get the money?”
O’Gilroy considered. “From what he was saying, he was serious about it: telling me not to leave your employ sudden and go drinking it all up at oncest, or ye’d be suspicious.”
“He knows something about the business, then.”
“And he gave me a hundred francs.”
“Four pounds? Well, it’s a start. From what we heard in Brussels, a thousand’s a bit high for a code, but we should get six to eight. Do you think they managed to photograph the whole book?”
“They had three hours, and was talking of getting them on a train to Vienna …”
“That’s at least twenty-four hours. It’ll take time.” Their own “proof” of the code had already gone: a bribed operator had telegraphed a coded message to the British Embassy in Vienna. Tomorrow or the next day, the Kundschaftstelle would have the photographs of the code book, would take the intercepted telegram from the “unsolved” file, and behold! – it was solved. Actually, all they would learn was that it was a test run of a new code, in future to be used only in moments of crisis (which would explain why they wouldn’t get a flood of telegrams in the new code) and no acknowledgement was needed. And they would conclude, Ranklin prayed, that they were being offered a bargain.