Flight From Honour

by Gavin Lyall

  He shook his head firmly. “That, I do not understand. I like money you can—” He made a fingering gesture. “And you say movement? Here nothing is moving. It is all dead!”

  “Just resting.”

  Smudges of steam, slow to dissolve in the cold air, drifted past. “Except,” d’Annunzio said in a sonorous voice, “for the souls of unfinished journeys, turned to ghosts.”

  “I said it would inspire you.”

  “Pff, just description, sterile imaginings.” A flick of his hand threw it away.

  “A lot of—” But then the sleeping-car attendant noticed two of his charges were awake and came along the corridor to assure them that the train would move on at any moment. Meanwhile, could he bring them anything? D’Annunzio politely deflected the question to Corinna. She shook her head. “Not for me.”

  “Ni moi, merci – un moment: vous n’avez-pas des cigarettes?”

  The attendant hadn’t a stock, but happily gave d’Annunzio one of his own, lit it for him and said good-night. D’Annunzio took a cautious drag, stifled a cough, and murmured: “Horrible. Truly horrible. I smoke only weak cigarettes and not often, but tonight I am restless . . .”

  Corinna eyed him cautiously, having a clear idea of what men got restless for on night trains. Women, too, she admitted, in view of last night. And as for ocean liners . . .

  D’Annunzio took another careful puff. “You are saying?”

  What had she been saying? Yes. “Just that a lot of good poetry is description and recollection.”

  “Most often by your English poets – if you also claim them as your own. But for me, I am tired of just describing. It is not enough.” He paused, then went on thoughtfully: “To make people say ‘I recognise’ or ‘I remember’ no longer satisfies me. And even when my words are spoken by a great voice and spirit – I have heard Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse make audiences weep with my words . . . but I have doubts. Here, at this hour, in this ante-room to the Inferno, I doubt my own words. Was it those words – or those voices? Would the audience have wept if Duse had read a railway timetable?”

  Curious, Corinna asked bluntly: “Are you jealous of actresses?”

  “Envy, envy – it is the great Italian sin. In a world of riches and power, we have only beauty and envy.” He dropped the unfinished cigarette on the floor and was about to stamp it out, then realised his slippers were too thin, and kicked it aside.

  “A lot of countries have only got the envy,” she said diplomatically.

  He didn’t take it as diplomacy, and snapped: “Italy is not a lot of countries! It is Italy – of Rome and Dante and Venice and Michelangelo . . . And one day I will speak words worthy of them, not in the theatre but in the world, that will rouse Italy again to her true glory. I feel it, that I am alive at this time to do this.”

  Startled by his sudden passion, Corinna looked away, through the window. A hunched figure swinging a lantern trudged up the track, going quietly about his job, probably with no idea of how it fitted into the complexity of the shunting yard. And probably content with that. “There’s a lot of people around Europe, quite enough already, I’d think, giving speeches like that—”

  “Then Italy deserves the finest and most rousing.”

  “D’you mean war?” she asked flatly.

  “Yes.” He stood four-square, facing and challenging her. She looked at him for a moment, then turned to the window again and began speaking quietly.

  “I know a soldier – an artillery officer. He fought for the Greeks in Macedonia last year, and told me something about it. Mostly it was mud and cold and marching and being hungry and scared. Just moments of excitement, then the same thing only now with men dying of gangrene with no medical aid. And finally – not in his area, thank God – typhus, too, so the ones who lived to go home found they were kept out of their own villages. In the end, you got all the Four Horsemen. He believed it could happen all over Europe.” She looked at him. “To your beautiful Italy, too.”

  D’Annunzio seemed unmoved, but nodded to show he had understood. “No. Your friend fought only in a peasant brawl. Serbians, Bulgarians, what do they know of modern war? Even the Greeks – and I love Greece – they cannot be Romans. True war, our war, will indeed be terrible, but it will be quick. Quick as an aeroplane, as a torpedo, as a bullet is quick. And the suffering will be terrible, worse than anyone can imagine. But true courage is to know this and still to go into the fire, seeking to be destroyed – or cleansed and made free and strong once more. Because only the strongest will survive, only a Dante may come back from the Inferno. That is the justice of war. It will be the . . . the . . . crucible that will create our new leaders, to sweep away the old feeble ones elected by bribes from the Camorra.”

  She couldn’t argue about the length of any future war; a lot of people believed it would, must, be quickly over. But: “A lot of your bravest and best are going to be the first to get killed. And your crooked politicians and gang bosses aren’t going to get anywhere near a bullet. Be careful they aren’t the only ones left to be your leaders.”

  “The fire will destroy many, but it will make more strong those who live. And the people who have been through the fire also, they will never be led by any others.”

  His voice stumbled and strained against the barricade of a foreign language, but that only added to his sincerity. And she saw, bursting through the shell of self-indulgence and disrepute, the attraction of the man. Sure he loved himself, but mostly for what he believed he could do, in his art, in his patriotism. He was reaching outside himself, and not always for the nearest woman.

  They just come with the mail, she thought, reining in her admiration. So she said in her mildest tone: “Forgive me asking, but had you any specific enemy in mind? – or just a good old war?”

  He seemed about to reply, then clamped his mouth shut. And then he said: “Flying machines – such as your brother has made. You have seen the lion in the Piazza San Marco? You remember it has wings? I, Gabriele d’Annunzio, shall give him wings again. I vow it.”

  Corinna sat for a while on her bed, picking over their conversation as if summarising it for a report to her father. There was no doubting the sincerity of d’Annunzio’s patriotism any more than its power. It was a smart move to harness that to selling the Oriole. But she had to remember the Falcones were up to something else, something that interested Ranklin and the Bureau. Something that had brought assassins to London. She could only pray they were separate deals – and keep an eagle eye open for a connection.

  * * *

  A couple of hundred miles ahead of them, Ranklin sat on the edge of his non-de luxe sleeper bed and lit a cigarette. He disapproved of smoking in bed, so sitting up was his compromise, despite the Alpine chill. The cigarette was to stop thoughts prowling restlessly through his head and it wasn’t working.

  He was glad to be heading out on a new task; such jobs were the core of his new trade. But he was also scared he would find Trieste as recent newspapers drew it: flourishing and prosperous rather than discontented and yearning to riot. And the idea of handing out revolutionary pamphlets at shipyard gates didn’t fit with his image of Senator Falcone. It lacked flamboyance; something was missing.

  Did Dagner know what that missing something was? Or had he got his teeth too firmly into his ‘mission’? That wasn’t a good position from which to see the whole picture. And the business of Dagner’s wife . . . Spies are liars; they have to be. But not when they’re so easily proven wrong, like whether their wives are alive or dead. So perhaps his superior hadn’t so much been been lying as . . . as what? No answer he could think of promised him a good night’s sleep.

  25

  The worried, sleepless hours on the train had caused Trieste to loom ominously. It would be strange and sinister, closed against him – and yet sucking him in. Ranklin felt it would want to trap him, be full of eyes, unseen but all-seeing, waiting to pounce on his slightest mistake.

  But now, from the steps of the Excels
ior Palace on a sunny morning, the nightmare faded with the sea haze. If Trieste was full of eyes, it was also full of ships, fat Italians, thin Greeks and screeching seagulls. And the most immediate thing likely to pounce on a mistake was the traffic, albeit most still horse- and even ox-drawn except for slow-chugging goods trains that ran along the dockside just across the road.

  The long, busy waterfront stretched away on either side. To the right, the bigger ships nestled against the warehouses of the railway yard; to the left lay smaller steamers, trading schooners and fishing boats. And beyond them, somewhere round the point with its stubby lighthouse, were the warship slipways of Stabilimento Tecnico. He was not going to goggle at them, even if it were, physically possible.

  Instead, he turned right and right again into the Piazza Grande with its trees, bandstand and cafés, heading vaguely for the Exchange but mostly trying to fit into the city’s pace and mood. Just spending a few pfennigs on a packet of cigarettes helped convince him of some sort of rapport. Because what he was really looking for was the ordinary confidence of an honest man.

  Half an hour later he was sitting in a dainty bright café with Signor Pauluzzo and two friends who were delighted to chatter to the House of Sherring. And since the name so impressed them, Ranklin lost nothing by explaining that he was both new and junior (and thus didn’t know any juicy high-level gossip).

  “The troubles in the south Balkans affect us not at all,” Pauluzzo was claiming. “They have their own ports for what little trade they do. What happens here does not matter to the Carso—” he waved a pudgy hand vaguely eastwards; “—for perhaps 200 kilometres inland. Trieste lives with Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Berlin even. Since the new railway five years ago, each year is a new record in trade. In manufactured goods alone . . .”

  It is always difficult to guess the age of foreigners, but Ranklin made Pauluzzo over sixty, with his aura of comfortable worth in black suit, wing collar and a white moustache that disdained the dashing upturned ends favoured by the Austrians. And the other two about his own age or younger; one even wore a turned-down collar like his own, which probably counted as rather flash on the Exchange. So far they had done little but nod and smile.

  “And local industries?” Ranklin prompted.

  “Again, new records – especially in shipbuilding. This year, Stab Tec will build over twenty warships and eighty other vessels.”

  “Perhaps over one hundred,” ventured one of the others.

  “It sounds as if there is no problem with strikes,” Ranklin ventured, “as at Fiume?” It was pure luck that the yard down the coast, building the fourth of the dreadnoughts, was strike-bound at the moment. He had no idea why, but it made it a reasonable topic for an outsider.

  That brought confident chuckles and some unkind murmurs about managers and workers down there. Pauluzzo held up a hand. “No, we must be fair,” he said solemnly, and the expressions on the younger faces warned: Joke Coming. “It is not easy to build a battleship from the keel downwards, in the Hungarian manner.”

  They all duly guffawed. But before he could work around to another rib-tickler, Pauluzzo was called away by a messenger and the atmosphere relaxed in the international camaraderie of the same age group.

  Ranklin put his pipe in his mouth. “And no hint of political – nationalist – problems?”

  They swapped glances, then the one with the turned-down collar and a long Venetian nose shrugged and said: “I only speak of the Italians. The Slovenes, in the city there are not so many, and I do not know what they think. Probably they hate both Austrians and Italians. But the Italian worker, he thinks of himself as Italian, so when he gets drunk he says he is oppressed by the Austrians. But all around are Italians also getting drunk and agreeing with him, eating Italian food, reading newspapers in Italian, in the city where their fathers and grandfathers got drunk and complained also. And when he is sober in the morning, when he goes to work in the shipyard, he looks at the colour of his money before the colour of the flag. He loves Italy, but does he want Italian poverty and politics?”

  The other had been nodding gently. Now he said: “Also, they listen to the Church which tells them to be good citizens and loyal to the Emperor, who is a good Catholic himself and not like Italian politicians who have robbed the Church of land and power.”

  The first one said: “If there came an avenging angel, a new Garibaldi, even Oberdan, then perhaps – who knows? But until then—” He lifted a couple of coins set aside as a tip and chinked them. “This is the music of Trieste. It is so since Roman times.”

  If this is true, or even half true, Ranklin thought, how does Falcone reckon to get the workers to rise and wreck their own livelihood? He steered the conversation into the innocent waters of capital shortages before it ended.

  The trouble, he told himself as he paced slowly around the Piazza, is that I don’t know even how British civilian workers think and feel. Oh, I know the Army’s view of civilians, but since I left off the cocoon of uniform, life has looked a lot more complex.

  Still, I’ve only heard one view. Perhaps I’ll find another one in the Café San Marco.

  He knew the place immediately: he had, he felt, sat there in every Central European city he had visited, among the same almost democratically diverse clientele. Intellectuals gathered there because no-one objected to their loud argument, ladies came in because the coffee was good, businessmen might meet there because it was centrally placed, and students because they were left alone to read. And the café didn’t mind if you only popped in to view such diversity, particularly such flamboyant and slightly scandalous characters as the Conte di Chioggia.

  There was no mistaking him; he clearly didn’t want there to be. He was elderly, slim, aristocratic, wearing a light suit, a wide floppy hat and holding a silver-knobbed cane like a staff of office; on a cooler day he would surely have worn a cloak. Ranklin sat and watched as a stream of visitors arrived at his table, drank a coffee, said a few words, listened and went about their business. They were a well-mixed bunch, but that didn’t mean that a complete stranger would be welcome.

  Past noon the waiters started clattering cutlery and serving lunch, and the turnover at the Count’s table dried up to one man who was obviously going to stay and eat. But first, he had to greet a lady on the far side of the room and Ranklin acted on an impulse.

  Carrying a menu and frowning at it, he moved to the Count’s table. “Beg pardon, Excellence, but do you speak English?”

  The Count showed no sign of surprise at being recognised by a total stranger. “I retain a modest competence in that language. How may I be of assistance?”

  “If you could explain what this dish here is . . . I was recommended to this café by Senator Falcone.” The Count’s face showed only polite interest. “Or perhaps it was Signor Vascotti.”

  “Ah yes.” The Count smiled. “How is he?”

  “Recovering.” That was commitment.

  “Good.” No questions, just “good”. That was commitment, too, Ranklin exulted.

  The Count took his time putting on a pair of gold pince-nez that were tied to him by a scarlet cord and peering at the menu. “And who are you, pray?” he murmured.

  “An English businessman with connections to the House of Sherring.”

  “That sounds as if it could easily be verified – or disproven.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm . . . I seem to be taking a long time to explain this dish, which is no more than rice and vegetables. Perhaps I should wave my hands in culinary gestures. I think we should meet more privately, most of the waiters here are police spies . . . Do you know the Galleria di Montuzza, the tunnel under the Castello?”

  “I can find it. You could suggest other dishes instead.”

  “An excellent idea. If you are just inside the tunnel at the Piazza Goldoni end at four this afternoon, my carriage will pick you up and nobody will see. More seriously, I recommend this dish: the scaloppa.”

  “You’re most kind.”


  “Prego.”

  Ranklin stayed and ate his scaloppa without another glance at the Count’s table. He seemed to have found the right man, and been invited to a Secret Meeting. He would rather it had been a mire secret meeting, but the Count’s flamboyance wouldn’t allow that. With contacts, too, you had to work with what you’d got.

  * * *

  Putting the Oriole together again at Veneria aerodrome was a much longer job than dismantling it had been. It was covered in smoke-smuts and with a couple of small rips in the wing fabric. These weren’t serious – such things happened all the time – but Andrew insisted on doing the patching himself, trimming the ripped area, sealing on a new patch with cellulose dope, then weather-proofing it with varnish. O’Gilroy was permitted to wash off the smuts.

  After lunch they began the re-assembly. In principle this was straightforward; in practice it was a cautious procedure of reattaching wires, both for control and rigging, then tightening or loosening each one on turnbuckles to achieve what Andrew saw as just the right tension. Two experienced pilots could disagree on the last touches of rigging, preferring marginally different wing incidence or stiffness. As yet, O’Gilroy had no views; he hadn’t even touched the Oriole’s controls, since they were all on Andrew’s side. His job had been map-reading, keeping the engine log, and passing sandwiches.

  But when he wasn’t doing any of these, he had studied Andrew’s hands as they coped with the ripples and bumps he could himself feel in the air.

  Around what would have been tea-time if Italy had such a time, O’Gilroy primed each cylinder with petrol, spun the propeller, and saw Andrew off on a short test flight. As he watched the aeroplane bobbing and weaving around the local sky, a large cream-and-red tourer drove onto the field and the chauffeur released Signora Falcone.

  “Is that our aeroplane?” she asked, looking up.

  “It is, ma’am.”

  “And is all well?”

  “Seems to be.”