Flight From Honour

by Gavin Lyall

  “And you and Conall manage by yourselves here?”

  “Well, we have a little help from the restaurants and kitchens downstairs.”

  “I’ll bet. But how are you on opening champagne?”

  “That’s one aspect of officer training I do remember.”

  *

  Corinna interpreted ‘picnic’ as meaning a bite of this, then that, then back to the other and no nonsense about ‘courses’. Currently alternating between curried prawn and foie gras, she asked: “How’s Conall going to make out, learning to fly?”

  “Pretty well, I’d say. He doesn’t take chances . . . or rather, he does, but he knows what the chances are. I’d back him against the steeple-chasing young sprigs of nobility you seem to get in that world.”

  “Yes. Andrew’s pretty sharp about those guys. He thinks the way they break their airplanes – and necks – gives aviation a bad name.” She smiled thoughtfully around a mouthful of prawn. “I bet you never thought he’d wind up learning to fly when you rescued him from a life of crime in Irish back alleys.”

  “He didn’t tell you that.”

  “He’s kind of hinted at it.”

  “Well, he’ll tell you the full story if he feels like it. But he wasn’t any run-of-the-mill criminal. He might have deserved being in cells, but managing to dodge it, from our . . . from one point of view, that’s a recommendation. And I don’t think he was from any back alleys, either: he can read and write, for one thing, and knows how an Irish gentleman behaves. Anyway, the Army doesn’t recruit from the slums, too many of them are wrecked before they’re twenty by rickets and tuberculosis and God knows what – that’s what those slums do for you. London’s, too. We prefer country boys who don’t panic at the smell of fresh air.”

  He refilled their glasses. “My guess is that he was born in the country – he can ride and he’s been a servant in one of the Big Houses – and then his family moved to a town. Maybe his father took a job in one of the shipyards. I think O’Gilroy did, after the Army. Certainly some work with machines and metal.”

  “You say you’re guessing: he doesn’t confide in even you?”

  “Why should he?”

  She smiled and shook her head at the same time. Men. “But that doesn’t explain how he got to . . . here.”

  Ranklin looked serious. “Perhaps we’re starting at the wrong end. If you take an Irish country boy and reckon his chances at ending up as . . . in a job like this, of course it’s a million to one against. But start with one in this job and look back, and all you can say is that he must have been exceptional. And he is. Lucky, if you like, as well. But you must meet exceptional people every day in your world. Perhaps they all had luck, too – at least not to get bogged down in routines of work and family and knowing their place . . . ” He went on reflectively. “That’s really what had happened to me, until a year ago. My life’s been far more conventional, given my family and so on, than O’Gilroy’s ever was.”

  She frowned at him. “Oh now . . .”

  “No, I mean it. Joining the Army was pure convention for a younger son – I happened to choose the Guns, but I’d never have got into a fashionable regiment anyway, and then I drifted along, vaguely hoping for a war – not a big one – and a chance to make my name, but when I got a war, in South Africa, all I did was get locked up in a siege.”

  “Where you met Conall? He’s talked about that, all right, the way you adopted him and taught him about artillery.”

  “I needed another gun number, that’s all.”

  “Oh come on. I bet you were a better officer than you make out, saying you were only interested in guns and tactics.” It exasperated her the way he dodged compliments. She knew the English well enough to recognise most self-deprecation as inverted boasting. But with Ranklin it seemed genuine. It suited the job, of course; he could hardly go around saying: “Really, I’m only a minor spy, quite unimportant” – but it went deeper than that.

  But probably, she reminded herself, when he talks about his past he’s remembering a man he once knew in a bygone world. Not his fault, except for that damned British gallantry which made him acknowledge the signature his elder brother had forged before his financial ruin and suicide. And financial ruin was terrible – but in her world, it was a familiar dragon. You knew you were fooling with it and if it bit you, then maybe, scarred but wiser, you recovered. But it had eaten Ranklin’s world in one gulp. Almost overnight, he had gone from a predictable Army career to a mercenary soldier to a spy. Such things must change a man.

  And from her point of view, very much for the better. If she had met that comfortable, doubtless worthy, Gunner officer, she wouldn’t have given him a second glance.

  She gazed around the walls, with the lowering wallpaper that pressed in on them like some Edgar Allan Poe story, at the inevitable picture of a dead hare nestling into a bunch of dewy fruit. Not, she thought coolly, very romantic.

  “This isn’t the . . . shop itself?”

  “No, that’s upstairs.”

  “And empty?”

  “Yes,” Ranklin said incautiously. “They put telephone calls through to here at night and weekends.”

  A slow grin spread across Corinna’s face. “I suppose you wouldn’t let me have a little peek?”

  “No.”

  “You’d be with me. You could be Very Close to me, to make sure I didn’t do anything I shouldn’t.”

  Ranklin suddenly realised what she was proposing. “You are a bad, disgraceful, shocking little girl. Absolutely No.”

  “Oh please. Just once. In the headquarters of the British Secret Service . . .!”

  “When you first join the . . . the shop, they tell you about shameless wicked women who try to uncover secrets by . . .”

  “Tell me what the shameless wicked women do,” she purred, stretching so that her blouse pulled taut over the swell of her breasts.

  * * *

  O’Gilroy flopped into bed alone but feeling as close to Heaven as he was ever likely to get in England, and content that there was no way he could have done or learned more in a single day. The Brooklands aviation village, he had found, had a cosmopolitan population with a class system of its own. If you were rich and well-born the flying schools would take your money as they would anybody’s: in advance rather than argue with the executors of your will. But you were respected only for flying ability and knowledge, and if anybody asked politely about O’Gilroy’s background, they forgot his answers immediately. That was part of Heaven, too.

  But one where he was a very minor cherub. At first he had assumed he would have an advantage both because no other student could have studied aeronautical magazines as avidly as he, and because he was young and thus a quick learner. Instead, he had learnt quickly that everybody had read more than he, and that thirty was very old for a cherub. The one advantage his age gave him – if he survived to exploit it – was that he expected things to go wrong. He loved machinery, but knew it was mortal and that he could only prolong that life by gentleness and mistrust. Mid-air was no place for thinking “I can always buy another one”.

  And he had two other advantages: that he had nothing else to do – no tailors or girlfriends in London needing his attention – and Andrew Sherring. When nothing was happening at the flying school, O’Gilroy haunted Andrew’s shed or the Blue Bird, asking and listening. He saved his own opinions to impress Ranklin.

  15

  On Monday, Ranklin handed Dagner a brief report on Saturday’s events and, ten minutes later, was called in to discuss it. For the first time, Dagner wore plain clothes, a dark grey lounge suit that was brand new. So probably he had worn uniform last week simply because, after years in India, he was waiting for his tailor to run him up some London clothes. Ranklin should have thought of that, and felt ashamed of his glib hints that Dagner abandon uniform.

  “D’you think Mr Sherring’s aeroplane fits Senator Falcone’s needs?”

  “He appeared to be talking seriously about it.” />
  “Then let’s hope . . . Now, about the Senator being followed. You obviously did the right thing in moving him to a hotel in the country—”

  “I’m afraid he may now suspect who I really represent. He did comment.”

  Dagner smiled sympathetically. “Can’t be helped. But the man trying to follow him from the Ritz: positively didn’t speak English?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “And dressed unsuitably . . . I know nothing about these organisations, but does that sound like, say, the Austrian KS to you?”

  Ranklin noticed he knew enough to call the Austrian secret service by its initials, though. “No, they should be better than that. But if they wanted to keep their hands clean, they might have hired some assassin.”

  “Yes, there’s always that. And if Falcone doesn’t want a bodyguard, we can’t insist. But I want to keep tabs on him . . . If he approaches Mr Sherring again, will we know through O’Gilroy?”

  “Not necessarily. But I should hear from Mrs Finn.”

  “Ah yes.” Dagner smiled, perhaps relieved that the lady’s name had finally come into the open. “I must say I’d very much like to meet her myself . . .”

  To see if she were suitable? But he still welcomed the idea. Once Corinna had met Dagner, Ranklin could at least mention him in conversation.

  “I’m sure she’d be delighted. Should we say tea at one of the big hotels?”

  “Excellent. I look forward to it.”

  * * *

  It rained the next morning so perhaps, with October only a week away, autumn had finally arrived. Ranklin got out his winter overcoat and looked at it critically. It was made of tan broadcloth and only ten years old and so still perfectly wearable, but the cut was a bit full for today’s fashion. He liked that shape – damn it, he was that shape – but suppose he had one day to look fashionable? . . . Well, he’d see. Meanwhile, perhaps he needed one of the new Burberry weatherproofs for a day like this. The trouble was, the advertisements always showed them on men as tall and thin as lances. On him, it would look like a tent. And Burberry never put prices in their advertisements . . . It could wait.

  So, feeling better for having at least identified a problem, he put the overcoat away and walked upstairs to the office. Dagner didn’t get in for half an hour, wearing a brand-new topcoat that fitted his slim figure perfectly. Ten minutes later he called Ranklin in to make a “morning report”, a carry-over of Army procedure that hadn’t happened when the Commander was in charge. For one thing, it would have implied that somebody apart from himself knew what was going on.

  Ranklin summarised how the training was going, then added: “And I had a word with Mrs Finn yesterday evening. She suggests we meet for tea at the Carlton tomorrow, if that suits you.”

  “Certainly.”

  “And she’s heard from her brother Andrew. Senator Falcone has made a firm offer to buy the aeroplane outright, provided he gets the right to make it in Italy and Andrew gets it out there and flies a demonstration. Andrew wants to agree, the price seems right, but there’s a snag: he apparently offered it to the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough to test for our Army, and since they agreed, it’s become, as it were, sub judice. He can’t take it out of the country until it’s been tested. He’s pretty sure they’ll turn it down, there’s a virtual ban on monoplanes for military use, but nevertheless . . . And Falcone seems in a bit of a hurry.”

  But Danger was just nodding contentedly. “That seems to be just the sort of problem the Senator anticipated, and that we agreed to sort out for him as our part of the deal. Do you know who should speak to at the War House to get the tests cancelled or postponed?”

  “No, but I can pop across there and find out.”

  “Splendid. You’d better get on with it. It’s nearly half-past ten now and you’ll need to catch them between getting in and going out for lunch.” Dagner, it seemed, was not impressed by the hours worked at the War Office.

  * * *

  Ranklin himself saw the War Office as a cobweb. Most of it was immobile and just clinging on, but if you kept trudging and didn’t get stuck, you ultimately found a spider who was ready to take a decision. By the time he got back with the name of the man to talk to, Dagner himself was out to lunch and there was a message to telephone Corinna at the Sherring City office.

  “Good Lord, you don’t care much if a girl doesn’t get any lunch, do you?” her voice crackled. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. Listen: you asked me about Birmingham Small Arms, right? It turns out they’re trying to raise cash so I asked them to come and talk and a Mr Viner will be here at three. He wanted to bring their new product to show me and for your sake alone I said Yes, so you’d better be here. Three o’clock, okay? As James Spencer, I think, devoted employee.”

  He had been in the Sherring office in Paris, a stately affair on the Boulevard des Capucines, but never the London one. Perhaps Sherring believed in local colour, because this was positively Dickensian, all rambling passageways and cock-eyed right angles. Corinna was waiting in a low-ceilinged room overfilled with leather chairs, bookshelves of ledgers, mahogany and green glass-shaded lamps that must shine all day. It looked a bit deliberate and made her, dressed in emerald green and gold, seem like a butterfly in a funeral parlour, but she sprawled unselfconsciously in one of the big chairs with papers strewn across the thick carpet.

  The only decorations in the room were an old chart of the world, a portrait, and a ship model in a glass case. It was an ocean-going paddle-wheel steamer of maybe sixty years ago, still carrying two fully rigged masts, and beautifully crafted. Knowing he was behaving as any visitor would, Ranklin headed straight for it and stared in admiration. “Is this the ship that founded the family fortunes?”

  “That’s the story,” she agreed. “Actually Pop says you English don’t trust a bank that doesn’t have a ship model in its partners’ room, so he bought it when the shipping line went broke.” She nodded at the portrait, of a large, ugly man with fully rigged white whiskers. “But that really is my grandfather, unless Grandma was way ahead of her time.”

  Ranklin smiled. “Before we get down to more sordid business, I’ve news about your brother’s aeroplane: there may now not be any problem about Farnborough stopping it leaving the country. So if you’re happy about Falcone’s offer in other respects, it can probably go ahead.”

  Corinna stumped back, frowning. Then said carefully: “I’d like to see Andrew bring this off. He’s tried so many things (probably not hard enough but he has tried) and nothing’s ever quite . . .” Her voice trailed off, then renewed itself. “Pop never approved of Andrew going in for engineering, wanted him to come with him into the bank. And everything Andrew did, it seemed to Pop just like playing with toy trains – that’s the impression he gave. But if this airplane really worked and people bought it, it would justify everything else Andrew’s tried. The confidence it would give him, he’d really be out from under Pop’s shadow . . .

  “So I want to help, as much as I can. But not too much, not so it shows. Do you think Senator Falcone’s really on the level?”

  “As far as I can tell . . . Of course, I know nothing about the financial side—”

  “No, I can take care of that. But if it’s really any good, why hasn’t your Army snapped it up? – because an Englishman didn’t make it?”

  “No. We can be that way, all right, but the aeronautical people aren’t. The problem is that we’ve got a prejudice – virtually a ban – on monoplanes for military use. O’Gilroy told me something about this. They aren’t supposed to be strong enough, and there’s been crashes where aeroplanes fell apart in the air. I do see some of this: if you take a biplane with two layers of wing and join them with vertical struts and criss-cross wires, you’ve got a box structure, like a box girder in a bridge. But a monoplane’s just a single plank. You can add all the slanting struts and wires you like – as Andrew has – but it still hasn’t the inherent strength of the box shape of a biplane.”
r />   “You do sound as if you know something about it.”

  “I didn’t spend my entire two years at Woolwich learning how to open champagne.” Ranklin showed a flash of real annoyance.

  “No, of course not.” Corinna was so used to Ranklin seeming a little boy lost in this modern world that she forgot how much of it was a pose. Parts of the world, particularly the part where mans ingenuity could destroy other men miles away, he knew far better than most. She went on: “Do other countries have the same prejudice against monoplanes?”

  “I doubt it, or nobody would make the things.”

  “So I could be worrying about nothing – except for your interest in Falcone. And whoever’s trying to kill him, of course.”

  “I told you: we just like to know what arms Italy’s buying. As to who’s trying to kill him, d’you think we’d let them roam free if we knew who they were?”

  “Um, I guess not . . . I just never know how sincere you are with your clothes on. All right. Mr BSA’s due any minute.” She looked Ranklin up and down critically. “You don’t look exactly partnership rank. More like a bank teller. I’m sure it’s an impenetrable disguise in Whitehall, but . . . Take your jacket off.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not talking about your pants. Just get your jacket off. Look as if you owned the place. Or a few per cent of it.”

  A year ago Ranklin wouldn’t just have refused, he would have denounced her to the Commissioners in Lunacy. Now he meekly took his jacket off.

  “Better,” she said, “but the necktie doesn’t look expensive enough. Try one of Pop’s.” She found a couple in a drawer, chose one and watched Ranklin put it on. “Remember, it isn’t you, it’s James Spencer. And you won’t see it when it’s on.”

  But dressing a little oddly was a help in remembering he was playing a part. James Spencer was an alias he had used before, the name of a school friend who had gone to the bad thereafter. Fatally, he trusted.