by Gavin Lyall
“Sit down, please.” She obediently sat on the bed. “The game’s turned rough: Hazay’s been murdered.”
“God Almighty.” She clutched at the bedpost for support. “But … how? Why?”
“A faked suicide. And it may have been what Major Stanzer left lunch to do: the timing fits. Obviously somebody didn’t like what Hazay was trying to telegraph out. Here – ” she had turned frighteningly pale; “ – let me see if there’s any brandy in O’Gilroy’s – ”
“No, no, I’m all right. But … Stanzer can’t just have got up from lunch and gone off and …”
Ranklin shrugged. “What we think they’re plotting is going to kill tens of thousands. Why not just one now?”
Staring at the floor, she whispered: “Matt, we just have to stop these people.”
“I’m trying a new scheme; it’s too complicated to explain it all but I’ll give you a broad outline …”
She stood up. “But, Matt – what about you? They may know you’ve been seeing Hazay, that you’re involved …”
Ranklin reached into his trousers pocket and showed a stubby nickel-plated revolver. “Just a normal accoutrement of an English gentleman travelling in these parts. Before they get me to go Hazay’s way, it’ll cost them something.”
“And what damned use has men saying things like that ever been to a woman?”
Even with a consul-general to share the load, Dr Brull would have counted this a hard day. The holiday season had brought the usual crop of tourists who had lost their passports, their money, everything but their voices; businessmen wanting to know if it was safe to travel on south and exactly what effect the coming Peace Treaty would have on the flax trade – and then Mr Ranklin with his wild (but quite possibly true) tale of plots against the Archduke.
And now, dear God, he had him again.
“Dr Brull,” Ranklin said soothingly, “before we do anything else, would you telephone to your home?”
Brull frowned. “But what do you …”
“Just telephone home. Then you’ll begin to understand.”
The very weirdness of the demand, and the unease that brought, stopped Brull arguing further, and he lifted the telephone. But when a strange voice answered from his home in a – sort of – English, he was struck dumb.
Ranklin took the handpiece from him. “Con? All’s well. Twenty minutes should do it.” He hung up.
“A colleague of mine,” he explained. “He’s looking after your wife and household whilst you and I complete a very simple task.”
“Dear God – what sort of man are you?”
“A desperate one, I suppose,” Ranklin said reflectively. “But not, I hope, to the point of impoliteness. However, all I ask is that we stroll down to the telegraph office and send, with your authority, a coded telegram to our Embassy in Vienna. What could be simpler than that?”
Now Dr Brull was completely bewildered. “To the Embassy? But you must not believe I will show you our code book …”
“Oh dear me, no. I’m sorry, I should have explained. The telegram’s already encoded. It’s just that they won’t accept something in code from me but they will from you. Now, I expect you’ll be anxious to get this over with, so shall we …?”
They hardly spoke during the short walk to the telegraph office and the flurry of signings and stampings that saw the message off at the Most Urgent rate. Outside again on the Varoshaz Utcza, Ranklin hailed a cab and gave Dr Brull’s address.
“I’ll just come along and collect my colleague,” he explained, sitting down beside the Consul. “I’m sure you’ll find he’s behaved with perfect propriety. And, as you see, all I wanted was to communicate, confidentially, with our Embassy.”
“But if you had confided properly in me, explained your particular situation, I would undoubtedly have …”
“Would you, Doctor?” Ranklin smiled politely, still convinced that any such explanation would have got him thrown bodily out of the Consulate. “Perhaps you would, and I acted too hastily. So I hope you’ll take me as an example of how not to behave and restrict your complaints – and you most certainly have grounds for such – to our own official circles. If you involved the Budapest authorities it would make trouble for me, of course, but also for Britain – and perhaps yourself, your name being on that telegram … Dear me, what sombre thoughts.
“Oh yes,” he felt in a pocket. “A little something as poor compensation for the worry to which we’ve put your wife. I’m afraid I knew nothing of her colouring, so it had to be diamonds.” The comment about colouring, the actual brooch and the very thought itself had, of course, all come from Corinna.
Ranklin added: “And by the way, should the Embassy start complaining that the telegram is indecipherable, say it was all a silly prank by a code clerk. Or something. The right person will have seen it, never fear.”
“I hope your new code is also indecipherable to others.” Dr Brull’s confidence was returning, along with the properly superior attitude to what he now knew Ranklin to be. “The Kundschaftstelle in Vienna prides itself on its code-breaking expertise.”
“Really? Ah well, perhaps this will keep them amused for a while … This is your house, I think? Yes, there’s my colleague at the window. You’ll forgive me for not coming in to apologise personally to your good wife …”
“You know, it’s served a lot more purposes than whoever drew it up ever intended,” Ranklin said.
“And more’n I fancy ye’d have ’em know,” O’Gilroy smiled.
“Indeed. But I think it would be tempting fate to hang onto it any longer, so …” He threw the shoe-bag holding Code X and a number of heavy stones out into the fast deep Danube, and they walked back along the jetty towards the hotel.
51
Tucked away in the trees just south of the hotel were the low walls of a ruined convent. A few late-afternoon holiday-makers and patients from the thermal baths pottered about but whoever had ruined the convent had done a very thorough job and the most interesting sight was two men and a woman, obviously foreign, sitting on one of the walls staring gloomily at nothing. The House of Sherring branch of the British Secret Service was back in session.
“So the way they’ll play it,” Corinna was saying, “is that when Hornbeam’s finished and asked for questions, Major Stanzer – whom he thinks is the Archduke’s man – asks if he’s any views on the Duchess Sophie, and Hornbeam says Yes and starts a war.
“Could we maybe,” she added, “push Stanzer in the river first?”
“It would be pleasure and not work,” Ranklin said, “but it wouldn’t stop the Baroness or one of Stanzer’s chums asking instead. They’ll find a way to give Hornbeam his cue – unless they get word from Vienna telling them not to.”
“Jest what was yer telegram saying?” O’Gilroy asked.
“That we (I didn’t specify who ‘we’ were, the Consul will get the blame) had reliable information from the Russian Embassy in Belgrade that they had all of Plan Three – from Redl – and were only too happy for Austria-Hungary to start a war based on that plan. Please pass on to interested departments in London and so forth.”
“But how,” Corinna asked, “can you be sure the Austrians will be able to decode it?”
“Ah – a bit complicated, but we’re sure it’s a code that’s been compromised.”
“Mebbe,” O’Gilroy said, “some rotten money-grubbing bastard sold it to them.”
“Quite so,” Ranklin said hastily.
“But,” Corinna mused, “you can’t be sure how quickly they’ll do it, or get word to Major Stanzer in time.”
Ranklin took his pipe out of his mouth to nod. “But the only other approach is the one that’s failed: getting Hornbeam not to say anything.”
“Maybe we should kidnap Lucy – or the Baroness,” Corinna said dreamily, “and tell Hornbeam that if he talks, he gets her back in little blood-stained parcels.”
There was a pause, then Ranklin asked: “Just what did they teach in that Swiss finishing school
of yours?”
But O’Gilroy was considering the idea seriously. “With a thing like that, ye need good planning – and anyways, they’re likely dressing for the shebang already.”
Corinna glanced at her wristwatch. “Lordie, yes.” She stood up. “Why have they pitched the lecture so early?” They began strolling back through the trees.
“Perhaps so the journalists have all the time they need,” Ranklin suggested. “Make sure it’s headline news in Vienna tomorrow. And Bad Ischl.”
“If they hadn’t killed … Hazay,” Corinna said, “he might … Do you think they killed him to stop him breaking this story publicly?”
“He didn’t know it. And no editor would print anything about the plot on the evidence we could give him – unless we said exactly who we are. No,” Ranklin shook his head; “don’t be misled by the public aspect of all this. It’s all being done to influence the views of one man: the Emperor. He’s all that matters, his opinion of the Archduke and hence of the Archduke’s advice. That’s what Hornbeam can’t grasp. It’ll be part of the Archduke’s disgrace that he seemed to be washing Habsburg linen in public. But the opinion of the public, all fifty million of it, doesn’t count a whisker.”
They had reached the edge of the trees, with a stretch of grass and then the gravel drive to cross before the hotel.
“You stay back,” Ranklin told O’Gilroy, “I’ll give you a wave from my room when I’m sure Stanzer isn’t around.”
“You really don’t want to meet this guy, do you?” Corinna said to O’Gilroy. “Well, I don’t blame you. So we won’t see you until after the lecture. Wish us – Europe – good luck.”
Ranklin nudged her into moving. There was just her hired car in the driveway, along with a couple of one-horse cabs. No sign of any car that might be Stanzer’s, nor the one that would come to collect Hornbeam and Lucy.
A couple of minutes later, Ranklin came out onto his tiny balcony and waved at the trees; he’d seen no sign of Stanzer, nor of the Baroness. But when O’Gilroy was halfway across the drive, it occurred to him that he needn’t go up to his room anyway. He stopped and called up to the open window and Ranklin reappeared, now half out of his shirt.
“Is it all right with ye if I jest take a cab down the town right now?”
Preoccupied, Ranklin nodded and vanished. And Major Stanzer, already in civilian dress clothes, stepped out onto the Baroness’s balcony and looked down at O’Gilroy. Then he smiled, put a finger to his lips and gestured O’Gilroy around to the main entrance.
The hotel cooks glanced curiously out of their open windows onto the little courtyard stacked with vegetable baskets and strewn with old cabbage leaves, but didn’t interfere. The muscular one with the Austrian moustache looked like an officer, and if he wanted a private place for a talk with the thin dark Englishman, so be it.
“I do not hear an Irish voice so much,” Stanzer said, “so it is most easy to remember. So the Herr Ranklin is your drunken master, no?” O’Gilroy could sense the delight with which Stanzer fingered this new revelation, squeezing it, fondling it. He himself was trying to imitate the potato he was standing on.
“And also Mrs … the daughter of Sherring? She is also an agent?”
At least O’Gilroy could react honestly to that. “Herself? – ye must be joking, Major. She’s disguise, and not the worst idea me master’s had. Who’d think she’d be carting round a coupla British spies? She’d have fits to know it herself.”
Stanzer half smiled; he hadn’t been serious about Corinna. “But also, who would believe that a good Irishman works for the English Secret Service?”
O’Gilroy’s mood changed. “Isn’t that what they think themselves?” and he didn’t think he was lying yet. “So when they caught me and me brother with the bomb … well, he’s rotting in Kilmainham jail and no worse. But if they think now I’m not working for them with all me soul, he swings.”
“Swings?”
“Gets hanged.”
Stanzer nodded. He already believed the best way to control an agent was power, not trust. Hadn’t the Redl case proved that?
“So,” O’Gilroy said, with a hint of defiance, “any idea ye have for me changing sides, I’ll do nothing to put that rope round me brother’s neck.”
“But already that risk you take,” Stanzer pointed out gently, “when you sold to me the code. If the English knew that …”
“Mebbe so.” The defiance was gone. “But a man gets …”
“You must fight back, no? – but secretly. I understand. That is all I want you to do now.”
“Anyways,” O’Gilroy’s spirit seemed to return, “the code’s no good for ye if ye tell ’em I sold it. Ye said that much yerself.”
“That is true. But codes do not for ever last. They must be changed because just perhaps they are – you say ‘broken’, I think. Or sold.”
O’Gilroy shrugged, his defiance turning sullen. The cooks knew no English and wished the pair would talk more with their hands. But the English never did, and the Austrian’s officer-training had rendered him almost dumb. So they went on concentrating on O’Gilroy’s fluent changes of expression.
“So – ” Stanzer had a problem sounding smooth in an alien language; “ – there must also be more work, to be sure your brother does not ‘swing’. Why are you coming to Budapest?”
“I wisht I knew. But,” O’Gilroy went on quickly, “he was wanting to see some feller – ”
“Do not lie to me! I am an officer of the Emperor, it is my duty to report you for spies! But I have no duty for your brother … So, I know your Herr Ranklin is telling the Herr Professor he must not say – something at his lecture. Why does he do this?”
The cooks appreciated O’Gilroy’s look of utter bewilderment – but not the acting that went into it. This could be the moment of decision: Stanzer could choose to strengthen the war party’s case, as Ranklin had feared, by denouncing them as spies. But then he would lose not only the code but an even bigger personal prize: a hidden door leading into the British Secret Service. That way lay promotion, if Stanzer could only see it.
“Ah, that …” The cooks saw that O’Gilroy had remembered something, though not a very important something. “That’s all Mrs Finn herself, saying the Professor’s meddling with laws that’s none of his concern, and like to make a fool of himself and Americans like herself. She thinks she owns the world, her with her money.”
Stanzer hadn’t forgotten Corinna’s jibes at lunchtime; he nodded. “But your Herr Ranklin?”
“He’s never my Herr Ranklin!” O’Gilroy snapped. “Ye can have him yeself any time, long’s ye do it without it seeming my work …” His eyes gleamed as the idea appeared to take root. “Why not that, then? I can help ye lay a trap, like, and ye snap him up and let me go? Would there be money in that for me?”
Stanzer smiled as O’Gilroy seemed to bare his twisted soul. But he could hardly say that O’Gilroy himself was only any use as a channel to Ranklin, not if the man was too stupid to realise it already.
“Perhaps,” he temporised, “but not yet. So why does Herr Ranklin argue with the Professor?”
“Mrs Finn told him to. What does he care about Americans? – and him tearing to be away to see this feller, and taking the code book and the Consul besides …”
“What fellow is this? Your master is sending a message in code?” Galloping down the new track, Stanzer couldn’t hide all his eagerness.
“Ah, jest some feller … mebbe Russian, or was it about Russia? What’s the big town down the river, Bel-something? Is that in Russia?”
“Belgrad? In Serbia?”
“That’s the place, sure – something about Russia from there. Jayzus! – d’ye think he tells me these things? He’s more like tell his dog.”
Stanzer would probably have disbelieved a clear-cut tale; certainly he would have picked it apart with suspicion. But leave him to work it out for himself, now … And Stanzer was working, all right: Belgrade was a cesspit of Ru
ssian influence and intrigue – so a message from there – then the code book … and the Consul to authorise the telegram …
“Where is the telephone in this hovel?” he demanded.
“Holy Mary!” O’Gilroy took fright. “Yer never turning us in to the police?”
“No, no, no. You are safe – if what you tell me is true. You are my secret now. You do not leave Budapest soon? I send you a message … I call myself …” He thought quickly. “Danilo. You know that? Danilo. But – ” he felt a reminder was called for; “I do not forget all my duty. Now, telephone.”
As Stanzer hurried off, the pastry cook announced that it must all have been about money: no Englishman nor Austrian got that excited about women. The vegetable cook thought it had been about horses, but kept the thought quiet; pastry cooks have artistic temperaments.
Strolling back to the more recently painted side of the hotel, O’Gilroy reckoned they were safe – for the moment. Stanzer clearly thought he had recruited O’Gilroy as an informer, what with all that talk of “Danilo” as his code-name for messages. And that meant Stanzer would protect him: not mention him to whoever he was telephoning, nor to the Baroness. Spies, they had been told, are very possessive about the agents they collect. Perhaps it was a desire to build their own secret empire, not merely be part of someone else’s.
But moments, like codes, don’t last for ever. And now he had no need to hide from Stanzer, he could go, anywhere – even, eventually, to the lecture at the Palace. He went up to his room to change. And once there, he unwrapped his pistol. Unlike Ranklin’s distinctively British “Bull-Dog” revolver, this weapon had no nationality. It was an American design manufactured in Belgium and, O’Gilroy felt sure, quite untraceable. Little things like that could sometimes be quite important.
52
If it had really been used as a Royal Palace, it would have been a good one: a warren of offices, barracks, kitchens, stables, treasury – anything and everything as well as the royal apartments – a grandiose village with corridors for streets. Use and bustle would have been everything: unused, it had little more elegance than a deserted village, since its only grandeur was its hilltop site, and that less than half a mile from the Panna Tavern. The rest was a neo-Gothic pile of statues, carved stonework, wrought-iron gates, lamps and fountains, and a big bronze bird that Ranklin knew wasn’t an eagle but couldn’t remember what it really was.