Flight From Honour

by Gavin Lyall

  O’Gilroy came in, took one look at his expression and said: “Jayzus, ye’ve been reading the newspapers again.” He reached for the decanters on a side table. “Whyn’t ye try dying of drink? – might even be slower.”

  Sipping his sherry, Ranklin gloomily agreed that solitary newspaper reading was indeed a destructive vice. You needed someone with O’Gilroy’s buoyant cynicism to put things in perspective. “So, how did our new boys do at shadowing?”

  “An omnibus’d do it more invisible. But mebbe I got something into their heads. They get the idea of it quick enough – keeping a pocket of change for buses and cabs, and paying for yer tea when ye get it so yer away fast, stuff like that, but are they thinking ahead on what a man might be doing next? The devil they are, and them close up when they should be far back and t’other way besides.”

  “We all have to learn,” Ranklin said complacently, remembering that a year ago he wouldn’t have known what O’Gilroy was talking about.

  O’Gilroy gave him a look sharp enough to puncture even a Gunner’s condescension, but said only: “Other ways, though, they’re sharp fellers – for officers.”

  “Well, if they volunteered for the Bureau, they’re hardly likely to be average regimental types.” And certainly not above-average, he added silently. Intelligence work was reckoned, correctly, to be a promotional dead end.

  O’Gilroy looked at him curiously, but asked: “And where’ll we be eating? I hear there’s some good places around London.”

  There were indeed, and in happier times he’d have enjoyed taking O’Gilroy out to rediscover some old haunts, particularly if the Bureau would foot the bill. But London’s big Irish population made any unnecessary venture out of doors an extra risk for O’Gilroy – the key word being unnecessary. Ranklin drew a clear distinction between risk in the line of duty, like that shadowing exercise, and risk just in finding a meal.

  He sighed; why the devil couldn’t they be posted back to Paris, where there was no problem and they were perhaps a day closer to any European trouble that might brew up? And where you could actually make money on your subsistence allowance because the pettifogging accountants didn’t know how cheaply you could eat well in the little bistros, even in the tourist season. Then he stopped, a bit ashamed of his own thoughts.

  “We can eat downstairs,” he said gruffly, “or have something sent up. We’d better not be far from the office. The Commander might telephone or cable just to see if anybody’s minding the shop.”

  O’Gilroy, who knew perfectly well the true reason, shrugged. “Things go on like this, whyn’t we buy a cooking book?” But that was a joke: the idea of men knowing how to cook (except badly, over a camp-fire) was as alien to Irish back streets as it was to English drawing-rooms. “All right, have ’em send it up – but ye don’t read newspapers over yer food. Ye can tell me something about Italian affairs instead.”

  This surprised Ranklin as much as it pleased him. O’Gilroy’s usual question about a new country – after asking about the food and drink – was whether it was friendly or (potentially) enemy, disregarding subtler shadings. Ranklin had tried to develop his interest in Europe by pinning up a large map – which also hid several square feet of wallpaper – and chattering about foreign news over breakfast. But he hadn’t thought it had taken hold.

  “I can try, anyway,” Ranklin agreed. “First let’s order dinner.”

  * * *

  The deceased tenant had left behind a mahogany Victorian dining table so large that if it fell through the floor (which seemed quite possible) it wouldn’t stop before the basement. The size had amused O’Gilroy so much that at first he had insisted they ate at opposite ends and called for each other to walk along and pass the salt. Luckily that had palled and they now sat sensibly around one corner, and O’Gilroy got his amusement from Ranklin putting on a velvet smoking jacket so the waiter wouldn’t think they had gone completely native.

  “I don’t know any detail about current Italian politics,” Ranklin began, “but I can give you the general position. The first thing is that although Italy looks very much like one country—” he nodded at the map; “—with all that coastline and the Alps sealing off the top, it’s only actually been united as one for fifty years.

  “And I’d guess that’s the key to Italian policy. It’s trying a bit of everything because it just isn’t used to being one country with a single policy yet. One faction pushed the government into grabbing some bits of Africa off the Turks, and others want Nice and Corsica back from the French, and Trent and Trieste from the Austrians. And your Senator Falcone feels he can go swanning round Europe buying aeroplanes for the Italian Army on his own initiative. Everybody’s pushing their own policies and the Government isn’t used to resisting the pressures yet. It’s unstable and that could be dangerous.”

  He paused to disentangle a fishbone from the back of his tongue. No matter how carefully he, or the waiter, filtered a Dover sole or any other fish, Ranklin always got at least one bone. But who was he to question God’s ways?

  O’Gilroy watched admiringly. “Ye do that real polite, Matt. Jest what does being a senator mean? Is it like a lord?”

  Ranklin trawled his memory. “I think it means a lord-for-life. The King appoints successful public men, industrialists and so on, to the Senate. That sounds like your man, doesn’t it?”

  O’Gilroy nodded. “So whose side’s Italy on?”

  Ranklin sighed. Why did everyone assume a country had to be on one “side” or another? It was like a form-room feud among eleven-year-olds. Or, he concluded gloomily, like modern Europe. “Theoretically, she’s allied with Germany and Austro-Hungary, but I doubt Italy’s worked out where her self-interest really lies, and meanwhile Austria’s her traditional enemy.”

  He got up and tracked his finger down the long Adriatic, in places less than a hundred miles wide, that separated Italy from the Dalmatian coast and the witches’ cauldron of the Balkans behind it. “You can see why Italy has to worry about who owns that coastline. And Austria owns both Pola and Trieste – which is mostly Italian inhabitants, I think – right opposite Venice and only four hours’ steaming time away.”

  “An hour by aeroplane.”

  “If that matters.” Ranklin was getting fed up with aeroplanes creeping into every conversation. He sat down again.

  O’Gilroy went on gazing at the map. “And ye said Italy was into Africa?”

  “A couple of years ago they invaded Libya, which was sort-of-Turkish. The Turks pulled out, but the local Arabs went on fighting back. Still are, I believe.”

  “Now—” O’Gilroy waved his fork to halt Ranklin whilst he finished a mouthful of his steak-and-kidney pie; “—now was that where they used aeroplanes in war the first time?”

  Ranklin was about to declare a total ban on aeronautics, then recalled reading something about that. “Ye-es, I think so. I don’t think they contributed much . . . But,” he admitted, “the desert would be a good place for aerial scouting.”

  “Falcone was telling about it. Him and other fellers with money got together with some aviators and made up a squadron – called it a ‘flotilla’ – to send to Africa.”

  “Very patriotic of him,” Ranklin said, thinking it the sort of romantic but useless gesture Italians did so well.

  “They was shooting from the aeroplanes as well as scouting.”

  “A great help that must have been,” Ranklin said, imagining aiming a rifle from a moving aeroplane.

  “Ye’d be needing a machine-gun to be much use, sure, but—”

  “What about the weight? The Maxim gun runs to around a hundred pounds – and one thing I do know about aeroplanes is that they can’t carry much weight.”

  “They’ll get better,” O’Gilroy said defensively. “And machine-guns’re getting lighter. There was talk in Brussels about one invented by an American. Lewis, his name was. Weighs jest twenty-five pounds with a magazine, not a belt, so it should fit an aeroplane jest right.”

&nb
sp; “Really?” Ranklin was affronted, since he prided himself on keeping up with weaponry gossip; it was his bedrock of knowledge in the shifting sands of Intelligence.

  O’Gilroy’s voice took on an infuriating tinge of superiority. “Been around some time, I’m thinking. Anyways, they’re making it in Belgium, same as Browning pistols, but it’s not going so well, I heard, so BSA here’s making ’em, too.”

  “Birmingham Small Arms?” Now Ranklin really was annoyed: it had got as far as Birmingham without him noticing.

  “That’s right,” O’Gilroy smiled. “I was talking about it on the boat, and Falcone made out he’d never heard of it, but he was carrying a catalogue of ’em in his baggage.”

  Ranklin frowned, but no longer in annoyance. “So the Senator’s looking for aeroplanes and hiding the fact that he’s heard of a lightweight machine-gun. D’you think he wants Italy to have a secret armada of armed aeroplanes?”

  O’Gilroy shrugged but was obviously taken by the idea. “And other fellers’ secrets being our business . . .

  “Quite. Mind,” Ranklin remembered, “Major Dagner’s seeing the Senator for himself, so he may come back with the whole story. Still, it’s something to watch out for if you’re still taking the Senator to Brooklands this weekend.”

  O’Gilroy got up to find his cigarettes and an ashtray, asking over his shoulder: “What d’ye make of the Major?” The hand-crafted casualness of his tone suggested that Ranklin would have no qualms about discussing a senior with a junior.

  “I fancy he knows the game inside out; he’s been at it far longer than either of us.”

  “In India.”

  “Espionage is adjusting successfully to circumstances. And in India the consequence of failure to adjust can be more prolonged and painful than in most parts of Europe.”

  “Ye know some lovely long words, Matt.” O’Gilroy sighed. “I’ll give ye some short ones: he don’t trust me.”

  “In India,” Ranklin said thoughtfully, “the Intelligence wallahs may have had more choice of volunteers. He’ll have to learn that here, he uses who he’s got. Like you. And me.”

  O’Gilroy breathed smoke slowly. “And why d’ye all call it a ‘game’?”

  “To try and get the English to take it seriously.”

  8

  Looking back on that Thursday, Ranklin came to the self-pitying conclusion that the only person who enjoyed it less than himself might have been Princess Sophia of Saxe-Weimar, because she committed suicide that day. On the other hand, she thereby let herself off part of the day. He got it all.

  It began innocuously with Dagner giving the new recruits a brief, chatty but pointed talk based on his own experience – in this instance, with journalists.

  “Resist your immediate instinct to despise them, borne are pretty good at their job, and all of them have been doing that job longer than you have yours, at the moment. But remember that journalists have opinions, even if they may try not to let them show in print. And more: after years of listening to the policy-makers, they want – perhaps secretly, even unconsciously – to make policy themselves. One way, of course, is to publish a demand for such-and-such a policy. But that’s open, nailing your colours to the mast – and their editors may not let them do it anyway. The other way is not to publish: To support the policy-makers they believe in by withholding unpleasant facts about them, facts that might ruin their careers and place in society. And those, gentlemen, are the stories you want to hear. They may be well worth the price of a drink.”

  He paused, swinging one long leg from his perch on the edge of a table. “Only – don’t fall into the same trap. Don’t conceal, in your own reports, the nastier side of people you have come to like or believe in. Show you are more reliable than journalists by reporting without fear or favour, and leave policy to your country’s policy-makers.”

  He left them to clip or précis a pile of learned foreign-affairs journals, and Ranklin to get on with drafting the training programme.

  Lock-picking, he wrote. Probably safe-breaking was an art that took years to acquire, but it would be useful if they could open ordinary doors, drawers and luggage without leaving traces. Perhaps Scotland Yard could recommend a reliable criminal to give a demonstration . . .

  Forgery: The Commander presumably had access to the Government printers for elaborate and official-looking documents, but a spy in the field might need to alter a name on a passport or write his own letter of introduction. Again, the Yard should be of help, but British forgers might be a little insular. They really needed to study the slanting French script, the upright and rather childish Italian styles, the angular German . . .

  Personal weapons . . . But then Dagner came out of the inner room with a letter from someone in the War Office. “I’ve got a chap here asking us to explore the suitability of the terrain in Schleswig for cavalry operations. He says we’re the experts on invasion by sea – are we? And is somebody proposing to invade North Germany?”

  Ranklin pushed back his chair and relit his pipe. “As I understand it, an important argument for setting up the Bureau was to explore the threat of being invaded from North Germany—”

  “We heard about that scare even in India. What did we conclude?”

  “Oh, it’s rubbish, of course. But our elders and betters have a vested interest in keeping any sort of war scare going, realistic or not, to justify increased spending on new ships and things – even on us I suppose. So it isn’t in their or our interest to conclude that it’s rubbish. We just report – provisionally – from time to time that it’s unlikely to happen this week.”

  “I see.” Dagner glanced at the letter again. “So that makes us the acknowledged experts at something we don’t believe in. It sounds positively theological. But do we believe in ourselves invading Germany?”

  “I doubt it. But when a general gets a bee in his bonnet it can fly both ways. I’ll handle it if you like.”

  Dagner passed the letter over but also asked: “How?”

  “Sit on it for a week or so in case we need to send someone to Schleswig for a good reason as well. Otherwise, get someone – like Lieutenant P, he reads German well – to see what he can dig out of libraries. There was probably some cavalry action there in 1848 or ‘64. Finally, send in a report that’s coy about its sources.”

  Dagner looked uncertain, so Ranklin added: “It helps the cause: shows willing but doesn’t waste too much of our time.”

  Dagner sighed. “I suppose so.” He went back into the inner office.

  Personal weapons – then it was the telephone girl with a call from a manufacturer of phonographs wanting to speak to the Commander. Ranklin got the call routed to himself and discovered, by roundabout questions, that the Commander was thinking of buying such equipment – presumably for mechanical eavesdropping. On the instant, he became the Commander’s assistant, hinted that it was to do with wireless training in the Navy, swore the manufacturer to secrecy, and said the Commander would be in touch when he returned.

  Personal weapons – only now he had to support Dagner at a meeting with an Admiralty accountant over a proposal to set up a bank account in Amsterdam. It turned out that the accountant couldn’t authorise this himself, merely recommend it if they convinced him it was necessary. The argument quickly dwindled to whether “necessity” was an absolute concept like having a rudder on a ship or a sensible precaution like having a lifeboat. It was unlikely that the Admiralty accountant had ever seen a ship, but it seemed polite to use nautical analogies. Such tact meant the proposal was at least still breathing when it was shelved indefinitely due to the pressures of lunch.

  “I hate to say this,” Ranklin observed as they walked back across Whitehall, “but the simplest solution would be to produce a document – code or technical drawing or order of battle – and swear we paid five hundred pounds for it in Brussels. And start the account with that.”

  After a moment, Dagner said: “But don’t you think that, in our situation where nobody can
really check on whether we’ve been strictly honest in our claimed expenditure, it behoves us to be strictly honest?”

  “Perhaps,” Ranklin said, who no longer thought so.

  Personal weapons, Ranklin resumed after lunch, and waited for the next interruption. It didn’t come, so he moved on cautiously. Carry a pistol only if your (adopted) persona would carry one in those particular circumstances. And then avoid anything exotic that suggests you care about pistols. Don’t carry a knife, but know how to use one. It’s not an Anglo-Saxon weapon, but it’s usually easy to come by. You only need a” four-inch blade to reach a man’s heart, thrusting slightly upwards through his ribs—

  How the hell do I know that? he wondered, staring at the page as if it had spat at him. I certainly didn’t know it a year ago. Did someone in the Greek Army tell me? Or O’Gilroy? Or was it one of those odd scraps of knowledge that seem to settle and cling to me now I have the stickiness of a spy?

  He shrugged mentally and tried to think of other personal weaponry that was both effective and unsuspicious – but then Lieutenant M got back from lunch having learnt from an old friend of his father’s that the Japanese were trying to stir up the Finns to revolt against their Russian masters—

  “Really?” Ranklin put on an impressed expression. “What instances did he cite? And names?”

  The point, Lieutenant M bubbled on, was that the Japs wanted to keep the Russians busy in the West while they machinated in the East. Surely the Cabinet should know about this immediately. Others could supply instances and names.

  “The point,” Ranklin corrected gently, “is that those others are us. The Government can usually come by its own rumours. When it does, it should turn to us to verify or deny them by supplying the details. So can you go back to this chap and see if he knows any hard facts?”

  “He’s rather a tetchy old boy.” Lieutenant M looked dubious. “I don’t how he’ll like some whipper-snapper like me cross-examining him . . .”