Spy’s Honour

by Gavin Lyall

  “I think Paris was a rehearsal, so I imagine it was much the same. Are you here to interview him?”

  “If he’ll talk to me. I only want some facts about his career.”

  Just then the coffee arrived and Ranklin grabbed his cup. “I don’t know more than I read in the Paris papers, and can’t recall much of that.”

  “Do you think he believes he has a message for us? – or for Europe?” Hazay had a way of putting a question that suggested it was already there, needing to be answered, none of his making.

  But all Ranklin said was: “Ask him.” Then added: “Or his daughter Lucy – here they all come.” Corinna leading and looking very vivid with her black hair, wide smile and dark red skirt, Lucy, Hornbeam and a tall woman in her thirties who held herself with the buxom stiffness of a ship’s figurehead.

  She might have been at the station last night, but so had half Budapest. Now she was introduced as the Baroness Schramm, Hornbeam’s interpreter and secretary, who had come on from Vienna by an earlier train. By the time the introductions had been made and they had sat down again, Ranklin and O’Gilroy had got themselves reasonably isolated.

  “What’re we doing, then?” O’Gilroy asked between mouthfuls.

  “Having a look round the town, I suppose, but after that …”

  “Not much to see of it from here.” From either side came the hoot of ferries and tugs on the Danube, but there was no glimpse of them nor the twin cities of Buda and Pest on the banks beyond. Their view was a choice of the hotel – or trees. It was indeed isolated, and by more than just trees: they were almost the length of the island, about a mile, from the bridge that led to both the Buda and Pest sides. Ranklin wondered if somebody had planned for Hornbeam to be so much out of touch.

  Corinna, smiling brightly and enjoying the bustle of organisation, sat down beside them. “Orders for the day – is that what you say? Anyhow, Hornbeam’s staying here to talk to Dr Klapka about Hungarian law. Lucy and I are going shopping. Hornbeam’s lunching with the American Consul General at some club, Lucy and I will be at a new café called the New York, remember Hornbeam goes to a lawyers’ dinner tonight, none of us invited, maybe we’ll go to the opera – okay, Conall, you don’t have to – then his big lecture at the Palace tomorrow – ” she raised her voice suddenly: “So you see Miklos at the bank, and if he’s got any queries let him telegraph Pop in Paris. Have you met Mr Hazay?”

  The journalist was standing beside them, looking diffident again. “I have a fiacre waiting to take me back to Pest, if you gentlemen care to …”

  “Why not?” Corinna said. “A penny saved – Lucy and I aren’t ready yet. See you at the New York if you’ve anything to report.”

  Being bossed about by a woman, and an American at that, was a near-perfect disguise for British spies, Ranklin decided – and then wondered if he was deciding that just to salve his dignity. But it was true anyway.

  A fiacre was just a two-horse four-wheeler like a British victoria, except that both the horses and the driver thought they were in the Hungarian cavalry. By the time they were slowed by the toll-house on the Margaret bridge, even O’Gilroy, with his Irish love of fast horses, was wishing he’d staked his money and not his life on this pair.

  That was where the city really began, sweeping away downstream with the gentle curve of the wide and busy Danube. On the right were the short steep hills of Buda: Castle Hill with the palace and old town, with the true fortress of the Citadel lowering from the crest beyond. Opposite, behind the wharves and jetties of the left bank, was the neo-Gothic Parliament, far more impressive than anything its politicians were allowed to decide. And behind that, the flat city of Pest with its houses, factories, shops – and banks.

  “Which bank do you wish to visit?” Hazay called above the clatter of hooves on cobbles.

  Ranklin had been silently cursing Corinna for her glib “Miklos at the bank”: an improvised lie is a petard lurking to explode later underfoot. But he hoped he had solved it: Sherring had given him a letter of credit on the Hungarian Commercial Bank in Ferencz-Jozsef Square, so he could draw some korona there, hand in the wad of notes to be cabled to their Versailles account – and all that should take as long as an imaginary interview with the imaginary “Miklos”.

  “If you leave us in the square,” he said, “you can take the cab on to your office.”

  “There is no hurry – for me. Perhaps I can show you some of our city? But we walk, no?”

  Perhaps to Hazay’s surprise, and certainly to O’Gilroy’s, Ranklin agreed, and they waited for him at a nearby café. But if they were there to pick up information, Ranklin reasoned, where better to start than a bright and talkative journalist? He must know things he couldn’t print but might like to gossip away.

  Hazay’s idea of sightseeing was remarkably relaxing. He stood in the square and pointed out the beloved Chain Bridge, which led off it and across to a tunnel under the Palace to the South Station (in the west, since, as he explained, the West Station was in the north). He then named the statues in the square – von Eötvös, Deák and Széchenyi – nodded at the Academy of Sciences and police headquarters as they passed them for a quick tour of the Museum of Commerce, then back through the square and along the river on the Ferencz-Jozsef Quay.

  It had taken barely half an hour and Ranklin wasn’t sure his cultural appetite hadn’t been deeply insulted, but he recalled the Quay as being one of the pleasantest boulevards in Europe. Tree-and café-lined, it was as if a one-sided Champs-Elysées had been laid out along the Seine – and shorn of its new motor showrooms as well.

  He was just savouring this when somebody tried to drive a herd of pigs through the side of a tram, and the romantic image got a little clouded. But he had quite forgotten the music that was everywhere: violins and pianos from the cafés, even this early, a gypsy band on a pleasure steamer, street musicians with cornets and urchins with fifes. It gave the whole city the sound of a smile.

  They had strolled no more than half a mile when Hazay led them to a café table in a triangle of trees around yet another bronze statue.

  “Who’s the gentleman?” O’Gilroy asked.

  “Sándor Petöfi, the poet and soldier.” Hazay’s face had lost its diffidence. “He was killed in … 1849,” translating figures is always tricky; “fighting the Russians.”

  “Who were helping the Habsburgs keep control of Hungary,” Ranklin said unemotionally.

  “That is right. He wrote then, the year before …” They waited as his face twisted in the effort of more translation; “he wrote:

  ‘Liberty, in this … faithless time,

  We have been your … thy … last and only faithful sons.’ I am sorry I do not translate it very well.”

  But it had been quite good enough for O’Gilroy, who was nodding gravely. “I like the sound of that.”

  The waiter brought their coffee, a plate of cream cakes and a newspaper. Hazay was immediately apologetic again: “Excuse, please, but I must see if in a Vienna newspaper there is a report …” Eyes and hands flickering, he went through the paper in thirty seconds, then tossed it down.

  “No. I had thought perhaps a journalist I know there, that he would have found something – but no.” He smiled at their politely blank faces and explained: “When he can find one thing, then I can write how it will affect Hungary. You see?”

  O’Gilroy looked blank, knowing nothing of the journalistic round of liar-dice where one took another’s story, added a fresh twist and republished it as new, so that another could take it, add a twist … Ranklin, more newspaper-wise, smiled politely and said: “It must be an important matter to affect all Hungary.”

  “It is still the affair of Colonel Redl. You have read about that?”

  “Oh, something in the papers.” He turned to O’Gilroy and asked blandly: “Did you?”

  “Sure, something.” The problem was that neither of them could now separate what was public knowledge from what they had picked up on the professional g
rapevine in Brussels. So they both put on expressions of interested ignorance.

  “It has caused much trouble in our Parliaments and Minister Krobatin has tried to stop our Budapest papers from publishing so much …” He shrugged. “So we send it to Munich or Paris and then we can publish here that it is quite untrue what Munich and Paris say that Colonel Redl had given all our plans and codes for war to the Russians, and General Conrad did not lie to Parliament, he is an honourable man … our readers understand.”

  This “revelation by denial” was itself news to Ranklin. But in a country with official censorship – and probably a lot of unofficial pressure as well – journalists would need crafts beyond the mere stringing together of words.

  “And do you know what secrets Redl did give to the Russians?” he asked.

  “But no. The Army does not know – it gave Redl no time to confess. So General Conrad did lie to Parliament when he said the secrets Redl gave were not important, because he cannot be sure.”

  O’Gilroy said: “The Army should know what Redl knew. Then it would know what he might have given away.”

  “Of course.” Hazay nodded emphatically. “But as deputy to military intelligence, he would know much. And as chief of staff to an army corps, the new work he had just moved to, he must know that Corps’ plans for war, perhaps all the Army’s plans.”

  “All in all,” Ranklin summed up, “it sounds a good reason not to risk a war with Russia over Serbia just now.”

  “But yes,” Hazay agreed. “You are interested in our politics, no?”

  Ranklin was taken aback. O’Gilroy hastily rescued him, his voice muffled by cream cake: “Since when was politics and profit sleeping in different beds?”

  “But of course.”

  “And who’s pushing for war?” Ranklin asked, hoping it was a logical question at that point. “Apart from Archduke Franzie, of course.”

  “General Conrad, yes. Always. He would solve everything to send in the Army. Your wife is unfaithful? – send in the Army. A fly has bitten you? – send in the Army. And the Minister of War, Krobatin, you know? – and General Georgi … But the Archduke; he made Conrad Chief of Staff, it was said, so we think he believes as Conrad – but who really knows what a pig thinks except ‘More mud, please,’?”

  O’Gilroy was listening enchanted to this Hungarian view of Viennese authority – and of the Archduke, of course.

  “Do you believe,” Ranklin asked, “these stories about the Archduke’s madness? Shooting a servant and so on?”

  Hazay pondered, frowning, then decided to be frank. “I want to believe anything of the Archduke – but also I believe nothing that is said in Austria. So I have a problem, no?” He grinned.

  “Well, if it’s any help, he didn’t look too mad yesterday.”

  Suddenly wary, Hazay asked: “Do you know the Archduke?”

  O’Gilroy said abruptly: “Met him.”

  “He and his party tried to walk over us on the train,” Ranklin explained. “Coming to Vienna.”

  “He was going to there?” Hazay was so eager that for a moment Ranklin feared he had let slip some self-betraying secret. But no, he reassured himself, it’s just journalistic enthusiasm. I hope.

  “Last evening; he got on at Salzburg.”

  “Who was with him? – please.”

  “Three men. Two in Army uniform. One – I’m not good at ranks – could have been a colonel.”

  “Colonel Doctor Bardolff, his aide.” Hazay was blinking with excitement. “So he is today in Becs …” The Magyar name for Vienna seemed to sum up the attitude: “operatic, enchanting Becs” – it just wasn’t quite the same. “Excuse, please, I have work – I will pay-”

  “No, no, Mr Reynard Sherring will pay,” Ranklin said expansively.

  Hazay grinned. “Thank you. I buy him coffee, or beer, soon – yes? Excuse.” He strode away.

  O’Gilroy gazed after him. “Are we missing the main event somehow, then?”

  “God knows, I think it’s just journalism. Anyway, we gave him the tip so he should feel he owes us anything he finds out. I think we should stay – accidentally – in touch. But if he’s still picking over Redl’s bones after – what? nearly three months? – he’s not making any friends in high places.”

  “Seems he’s got most of the tale anyhow. Jest not how long the Colonel’d been working for the Russkies and the name of the Russkie himself Bat-what-was-it.”

  “Batjuschin. And Plan Three.”

  “Now, Captain, that was just talk. Nobody told us for sure he’d given away Plan Three. How would they know? – without the Russkies up and said it.”

  “Hmm. Well, I wouldn’t risk an attack on Serbia if there was even a whisper the Russians might have the blueprint of it.”

  “Ah, if yer dragging common sense into it … And what are we doing now?”

  Ranklin looked at his watch. “It’s an hour and a half until we join the ladies – assuming we do. I’d better read the financial pages of any German-language papers, you could go and look at the shops. You’d better have some money.”

  O’Gilroy looked disdainfully at the grubby ten- and twenty-korona notes. “I know,” Ranklin said, “but the bank was short of gold coins.” He paused. “And that’s not a good sign, either.”

  42

  The New York café occupied the ground and basement corner of the New York building, mostly taken up by newspaper and publishing offices which liked the flavour of the name. America was clearly the Promised Land of Hungary and for hundreds of thousands who had emigrated there (some must have done well: how about persuading them to invest in their old country, with Sherring as the middleman? Damn it, Ranklin thought, I’m thinking like a blasted financier now. He dropped the idea).

  Corinna and Lucy were drinking coffee at a small marble table under cascading chandeliers and the most thoroughly neo-Baroque ceiling Ranklin had ever seen; even a South American general couldn’t have more twiddly gilt bits on him. Nor did it do anything to hush the political arguments which raged in normal Budapest fashion at most of the other tables without quite drowning the gypsy band.

  “Is New York really like this?” Ranklin bellowed.

  “No,” Corinna shrieked back. “There you get silence at these prices. Hold it – ” to a waiter who was bringing more chairs; she pointed to the floor; “ – let’s go downstairs and eat.”

  Down there, at least the political debate was interrupted by chewing and swallowing, though they were nearer the band.

  “And how was the morning?” Ranklin asked politely. “I don’t see you weighed down with parcels.”

  “You haven’t seen the cloakroom,” Corinna said.

  “There really wasn’t a thing to buy,” Lucy complained.

  “But we bought it anyway.”

  “What are we eating?” O’Gilroy asked. He had taken one look at the menu and laid it aside; even in translation it would mean nothing.

  Ranklin said: “Something with pork and paprika and sour cream. Unless, of course, they’ve got something without pork and paprika and sour cream.”

  Corinna laid down her own menu. “I just love decisive men. Go ahead and order for us. Good practice,” she added, “since you’re taking Lucy out to dinner tonight while her father gives the private lecture. And Conall and I go over those import tariff figures.”

  Ranklin managed to smile at Lucy and say: “I’ll be honoured,” hoping Corinna got a quite different message about bloody impertinence and impromptu lies.

  “I want,” Lucy said, eyes bright, “to see a real gypsy haunt in the old town.”

  Well, you’re not ruddy well going to; you’re going to see a faked-up tourist version like everybody else because I’m not eating stewed cat and getting into knife fights just to please you. I need Hazay or Dr Klapka to recommend a place.

  He smiled grimly at Corinna and ordered Gulasch for the four of them. “By the way, did you know that the German for ‘field kitchen’ is ‘Gulaschkanone’?”

&
nbsp; When they were waiting for an after-lunch coffee, Lucy took herself off to the ladies’ room. Ranklin promptly leant across the table and hissed: “And why am I escorting her this evening? – am I to marry her off to a gypsy fiddler?”

  Corinna smiled brightly. “No, no, I just want her out of the way while Conall and I burgle Hornbeam’s room.”

  O’Gilroy woke up. “We do?”

  “Well, probably more you than me – but I can keep watch, and his suite’s next to mine.”

  “And what’ll we be looking for?” O’Gilroy demanded.

  “Look,” Corinna turned serious, “Lucy’s been rattling on about the Baroness who’s taking up all of Hornbeam’s time and some document he’s got – probably from her – that’s terribly terribly secret. That he doesn’t want Lucy shouting from the rooftops, anyhow. I just think we ought to know what it is, that’s all, so I thought while he’s out lecturing …”

  Ranklin was – had become – in favour of looking at secret documents, but: “Would it be too much of a strain to make ideas like this just suggestions until we’ve actually heard them?”

  “Well, I started by suggesting to her that you could take her out and she said ‘Why not just tell him to – he works for you, doesn’t he?’ She has a charmingly direct manner.”

  “Splendid. If there’s one thing they appreciate in real gypsy haunts it’s a charmingly direct manner.”

  Corinna’s dark eyes got several shades darker. “You bring that dear girl home totally unharmed or I’ll change your marriage prospects with a meat-axe. Is that understood?”

  “You make yourself, if I may say so, almost vulgarly clear,” Ranklin said in his most County voice, feeling a little better.

  Finding Hazay again was easier than Ranklin had expected, since the café upstairs turned out to be infested with writers. This surprised him, but then he wondered if the management regarded them as an attraction to customers and whittled the price of their coffees accordingly; anything was possible in a city which put up statues to poets.