Flight From Honour

by Gavin Lyall

  “Good. But it’s most annoying. I’ve just had a telegram—” she flourished it unnecessarily; “—from Gabri. D’Annunzio. It seems . . . No, I’ll explain to Mr Sherring when he gets down.”

  She treated O’Gilroy with polite reserve, obviously puzzled by the way he seemed to crop up, first as her husband’s bodyguard, then as Andrew’s assistant. And perhaps the Irish accent reminded her of her own social climb. She must have been better born than O’Gilroy, but true Dublin society didn’t let its daughters go on the stage.

  The Oriole drifted down to a smooth landing and O’Gilroy joined the mechanics in man-handling it over to the usual sheds. Andrew climbed down. “A little tightening up on the underside wires, they always work a bit loose after re-rigging. And I’ve put another twenty minutes on the engine, don’t forget that.” He turned to Signora Falcone. “All ready to go, Signora. When’s the—”

  “I have just had news: that vexing man d’Annunzio now wants us to do the first demonstration in Venice – of all places. Some people there he wants to impress, and we’re really in his hands. So I’m going to have to ask you if you can fly there tomorrow, I think it’s only just over two hundred miles . . .”

  “Fine, whatever you say.” Andrew was untroubled. “All we need is a map. Maybe we can make it part of the demonstration, a timed trial?”

  “As you like. But luckily our main home is near Venice and Giancarlo did much of his flying from one of our fields, so you can land there. I don’t suppose Mrs Finn will want to come, it’s a dreary journey by train, and Turin’s much more a centre of things.”

  I wish I dared ask her to bet on that, O’Gilroy thought.

  * * *

  After lunch, Ranklin sat in the hotel lobby and wrote out a cable that started “First impression” and included the phrase “apparently stable workforce with no inclination to strike and good economic reasons not to”, then had it sent to one of the Bureau’s accommodation addresses in London. He wasn’t yet ready to advise Dagner to back out of what might prove a fiasco (though possibly, thank God, an unnoticed one) but he could sound a warning. He still hoped to learn more from the Count.

  So at four o’clock, he was loitering just inside the tunnel entrance, which was framed by operatic flights of stairs leading to the Castello, and feeling as obvious as an anarchist with a sizzling bomb.

  A closed four-wheeler drew up beside him, the door swung open and he stepped up and in, rocking the little carriage like a dinghy.

  “Excellently contrived,” the Count said from the companionable darkness beside him, and rapped on the front with his cane. The driver whipped the horse into a sedate plod. “Perhaps you have more complete news of matters in England? – I received only a guarded cable.”

  “You know the Senator was attacked: it was by two Italian thugs, one of whom was killed that evening in London by certain new friends of the Senator. The other escaped. The Senator lost a lot of blood but otherwise it wasn’t serious, he’ll return to Turin as soon as he can travel. Signora Falcone arrived from Paris, so everything continues as planned. All right so far?”

  He left the implication that there was more hanging and kept his voice unemotional, but his inner self pleaded for the Count to give him a lead.

  And quite calmly the Count said: “I understand. And the aeroplane?”

  My God, it is involved. But how? – how do you start a shipyard strike with a flying machine?

  “It left for France the day I left London. I know nothing more, but it should be in Turin by now.”

  “Ah, excellent.” Gas lamps stuck out on ornate arms from the walls of the tunnel and in their intermittent flares, he saw the Count’s head bowed as if brooding. One window of the carriage was open, letting in the echoing clip-clop of their own and other horses, along with a concentrated horse smell.

  The Count raised his head and peered at him. “Are you permitted to tell me whom, apart from the House of Sherring, you represent? – so ably, if I may say so.”

  “You recall that I said the Senator had certain new friends in London. Our assistance is entirely unofficial, you understand.”

  “Ah, when was England’s interest in anything ever official?” the Count chuckled. “And you are here to report – unofficially – on the outcome, I presume?”

  Ranklin made a noise that (unofficially) could have been agreement. “But I was talking this morning with some dealers on the Exchange . . . They had the impression that the shipyard workers were very content with their lot. At the moment.”

  “Indeed. That has always been the problem, the selfishness of the working man.”

  The Count would have been right at home in an Army mess. Ranklin said: “But you’re happy that this can be overcome?”

  “Oh yes . . .”

  Ranklin tried again. “I may be called home soon, going back through Italy. So if you have any message for the Senator – or perhaps the Signora . . .”

  “That is most kind, but I must consider. If I do not see you again, where do you stay, may I ask?”

  “The Excelsior.”

  The tunnel was only a quarter-mile long and growing lightness showed they were coming to its south end.

  “I will not detain you with effusive thanks, however much you deserve them,” the Count effused. “Save only to wish you a pleasant – and safe – stay in Venezia Giulia.”

  ‘Julian Venice’, the Italian name – and claim – to the region. And that gave Ranklin an opening. “Is there anybody in particular I should beware of?”

  “Ah . . . I think only Police Captain Novak. A suspicious man. And unscrupulous on behalf of his Slovene brothers. But how to beware of him is by no means so easy.”

  Ranklin stepped down just inside the south entrance and had to stop himself peering suspiciously around. God save him from people who loved deviousness and darkness; they shone like lighthouses in the world of drab, unnoticed skulduggery.

  * * *

  Corinna swept into their hotel suite without knocking. “Are you going through with this Venice business?” she demanded.

  “Sure. Why not?” Andrew was surprised. “It’s only two hundred and twenty-seven miles and all over land—”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean . . . all this chopping and changing. First it’s going to be Turin, then—”

  “If you’ve tied yourself into a publicity stunt with a nutty poet like d’Annunzio, you got to expect some flim-flam.”

  “Sure, and it’s just lucky they happen to have a villa near Venice—”

  “Corrie,” Andrew said firmly and (perhaps he thought) soothingly, “you’ve been too much tied up with the finance end of things. When it comes to selling hardware out in the real world—”

  “The real world? – you blinkered bird-man—”

  O’Gilroy had been trying to merge into the furniture; not easy, since it tended to mock Louis XVI rather than oil-stained tweed. But he felt there were limits to what even a spy should overhear. “I think I’ll be having a jar downstairs,” he said.

  Corinna glared from one to the other of them. “I’ll come with you,” she decided. “And to Venice besides.”

  She had dropped below boiling-point by the time they were seated in the lounge and had ordered drinks.

  “We came more’n two hundred miles jest getting to Paris,” O’Gilroy said reassuringly.

  “Only this time it’s two hundred miles nearer Trieste, where Matt’s up to some Bureau shenanigans,” she said grimly. “Let me tell you, if you’re trying to involve young Andrew in any of that, I am going to set up a scream. And when I scream, factories in the next county think it’s quitting time. Is that clear?”

  “Surely. But like ye said—” The waiter put down two small glasses of what looked like red wine and O’Gilroy sipped cautiously. “What’d ye say this was?”

  “Sweet vermouth. D’you like it?”

  “It’s new. Funny, the flavours people think up . . . But ye’ll be there yeself, and if they’re wanting anything ’
cept a demonstration of the aeroplane, ye can scream then.”

  “Only,” she said grimly, “the boy so much wants to make this airplane a success he could get talked into anything.”

  “But with yet own screaming ’gainst their talking, I know which me money’s on.”

  * * *

  Ranklin got back to the hotel feeling more tired than the efforts of the day warranted. He thought of sending a second cable, but what could he say? All he’d learned from the Count was that the aeroplane was involved – but not how – and that they seemed confident that the workers could be roused. By the sight of an aeroplane? By something it would bring? And how could that pass in a cable for economic chit-chat?

  He was still worrying about this when he let himself into his room – and found it had been searched.

  26

  Ranklin didn’t rush to check if the intruder(s) had found this or that; by now he was experienced enough not to have a this or that. He sat down on the bed to think.

  To report it or not? The search had been thorough, but not blatant; his things weren’t strewn about. A careless man might not have noticed it had happened – but only a guilty man could notice and not report it. That was the deciding fact. He sighed at the prospect of official entanglement ahead, but perhaps that had happened already.

  The office had been carved out of one comer of a bigger room, partition walls chopping off the once-elaborate cornice moulding at two places and making it awkwardly high-ceilinged for its size. Too awkward to reach the cobwebs on the electric fan up there, anyway. After he had waited alone for some minutes Ranklin wondered if this were a test to see if he went snooping on the cluttered desk. After another few minutes, he did go snooping, but only for an ashtray. Perhaps that did the trick, because almost immediately a man in uniform bustled in.

  Police Captain Novak was barely taller than Ranklin but built like a bear, with a deep chest, sloping shoulders and very quick, powerful movements. His squarish face would have been stolid if it, too, wasn’t always moving in small expressions and chewing or lip-pursing. He wore a neat middle-ranking moustache, neither too grand nor too humble. And he spoke no English.

  But he had to speak German, the language of his Austrian masters, and they got along slowly in that. Their very different accents excused the slowness, but weren’t the real cause: Ranklin was thinking carefully before he spoke and he suspected that, despite his apparent impetuousness, so was Novak.

  He started off with much shuffling of blank forms, then decided there was none that suited this occasion and carefully wrote down James Spencer’s details on a writing pad. “And you say nothing was taken? Most curious. In fact, an insult. To be robbed is shocking, terrible, but in a city full of Italians, quite normal. But to be robbed yet robbed of nothing is a trampling of your honour. Did you have anything worth taking?”

  Ranklin shrugged. “A pair of gold cuff-links, not much more.”

  Novak threw up his hands. “Not even taking gold cuff-links! Italian thieves are getting so rich! Or poor – perhaps he didn’t have any cuffs. Are you sure he didn’t steal any cuffs?”

  “I didn’t really count them.”

  “But then he would have taken the cuff-links as well, so we deduce that he most likely did not.” He smiled very quickly. “We progress . . . What have you been doing since you arrived in Trieste?”

  Ranklin blinked. “Ah . . . talking to some gentlemen at the Exchange, lunching – alone – and wandering around the city.”

  “And where did you have lunch?”

  “At the Café San Marco. What does this have to do with my room being ransacked?”

  “Ah!” Novak said explosively. “I am trying to establish a pattern. Men are creatures of routine, police work is mostly routine. If a thief should know that every lunchtime you are at the Café San Marco—”

  “But I’ve been in Trieste less than a day. How can I have established any routines?”

  “Ach, then my theory fails. No matter. Did you meet the Conte di Chioggia at the Café?”

  “Is he an elderly gentleman? Dressed a little . . . artistically?”

  “A most charming man and a truly great conspirator.”

  Ranklin raised his eyebrows. “Is that so? What does he conspire?”

  Captan Novak shrugged violently. “Just conspiracies. He has been conspiring for twenty years, and one day he will go too far. Perhaps tomorrow.” He glared fiercely at the pad. “We have not made much progress. You will not be in Trieste for long?”

  Ranklin hadn’t said how long, but perhaps he was now being told.

  “Probably not long. A few days.”

  “Then, as you have already been robbed but nothing taken, the word will be passed that you have nothing of which to be robbed and you will be safe for the rest of your stay.” Then, with casual abruptness: “How is Senator Falcone?”

  It was probably a trap, but the change of subject struck Ranklin dumb. “Huh? I beg your pardon?”

  “The Italian Senator. You must know him.”

  “I don’t think I’ve heard of him.”

  “He was attacked and stabbed. In England.”

  “No! Killed, you mean?”

  Novak made a vague gesture. “Almost – perhaps.” He already seemed bored by the topic.

  Ranklin put on a heavy frown. “Very distressing. And rare, for Britain.”

  Novak had gone silent. So at last Ranklin said: “Is that all, then?”

  “I could show you some photographs of criminals, to see if you recognised one.”

  “But I didn’t see anyone, just my room, ransacked.”

  “Of course. It would not help anyway, they all look the same: hideously ugly. It is nonsense to say there is no criminal type: just to see those photographs proves it. SO!” He sprang to his feet. “Thank you for coming in, I apologise that I can be of no more help, enjoy your short stay in Trieste, good day.”

  He sat down again and Ranklin found his own way out.

  You Have Been Warned, he thought. And by now he was pretty sure Novak himself had organised the room-searching. Trieste’s eyes were back.

  He sent another cable before dinner. It was mostly facts and figures about Triestine trade, but included the phrase “feeling a bit ill” to tell the Bureau he was under suspicion. They had progressed that far in developing a cable code – if anybody remembered, that is.

  * * *

  He devoted the next morning to behaving like a loyal and industrious Sherring employee. He called on the British consul and both the other names Corinna had given him and – apart, he hoped, from persuading any police watchers that he wasn’t a spy – only reinforced the impression that Trieste’s Italian workforce was not about to go on strike. He didn’t fool himself that he “understood” the city after a bare twenty-four hours, just that he had seen no sign of the unrest they hoped for and plenty of signs pointing the opposite way.

  He asked at the hotel desk if there were any cablegrams for him, but got only an odd, stiff smile. Damn it, had that policeman Novak been snooping round, staining his reputation? He stumped off towards the lift – but didn’t get there.

  Police Captain Novak was guarding a large potted palm beside the lift gate, and in case the plant turned nasty, he’d brought two policemen to help out.

  He took Ranklins’ arm and urged him towards the front door; he had a grip like a lobster. “When I arrest people like you,” he confided, “I am allowed the expense of a carriage. You may also ride in it, or you can be carried through the streets by my men. It makes no difference to me. Either way, I still get to ride in the carriage.”

  27

  Turin to Venice was 365 kilometres in a straight line, which was 227 miles, which was 3 hours 46 minutes at a steady 60 m.p.h. in a dead calm. Only it wasn’t going to be a dead calm, it was impossible to maintain a steady 60 m.p.h. and certainly not a straight line. But O’Gilroy had learnt that the original perfection of measurement and calculation was still vital. Then, when you spotted an un
questionable landmark, you could work out just how far off your perfect plan you were, in time or distance, and correct accordingly.

  That left only the problems of identifying unquestionable landmarks you had never seen before in an unknown countryside and hazy weather – and getting some sense out of the compass. O’Gilroy had had no dealings with compasses before: they went with officers, and a rare old mess that combination usually made. Now, watching the needle swing unprovoked a good ten degrees either side of north, he had some sympathy with the lieutenants and captains of his Army past.

  Andrew had been unworried. “Venice is on the sea, we can’t miss that. If you’ve any doubts, err to the south, so we’ll know which way to turn when we find the coast.”

  But O’Gilroy was determined to do better than that. Flying was a matter of precision, and unless you started with that, there came a point when all you believed in vanished. He had experienced it even within a few miles of Brooklands aerodrome: a sudden sense of being utterly lost in an alien world. A familiar landmark, popping out from under the Boxkite’s wing, had saved him then. He remembered the sense of relief as everything clicked back into place, putting him just a few minutes from home. But he remembered also the sense of utter loss.

  At least the haze meant that the wind was light, perhaps 10 m.p.h. at 2,000 feet where Andrew chose to fly. Their course headed just north of east, down the wide and ever-widening valley of the Po. It looked good agricultural land below, studded with farms that were like miniature fortresses – and maybe had been, in wilder days. O’Gilroy knew nothing of Italian history, but enough about mankind to assume that any flat rich land had been well fought over.

  An hour and a quarter after Turin they were supposed to pass just north of Piave and south of Milan, which should give a reasonably accurate check on progress. But while Milan was obvious enough as a long sprawl of red roofs under a smoky haze, it was too obvious, too big. Towns and cities weren’t as neat as on the map: they straggled away into suburbs and half-absorbed villages, and he wasn’t sure about Piave at all. But the railway joining the two saved him with a near-precise position.