Flight From Honour

by Gavin Lyall

  “He play-acted writing slogans on walls. But you could ask him yourself.”

  The Count chose to ignore his own grasp of Slovenian. “I am not sure of the etiquette of prison life. It is a long time since I was locked up and then for young matters like drunkenness and duelling, but is one permitted to ask what you are accused of?”

  “I think Police Captain Novak believes I’m a spy.”

  “Truly? How very exciting.”

  “Perhaps. But I doubt that being in jail can be the most exciting part.”

  “Probably not. One thinks more of dark, mysterious women, secret treaties, rushing about Europe in the finest trains . . . No, I understand that sitting in damp dungeons would not be mentioned by the recruiting officer.”

  Ranklin was watching the shadows in the barrel vaulting above. Their edges moved, infinitesimally, with the tiny wavering of the lamp flame. “And yourself?” On the curve of the vaulting above the lamp, a smear of soot was forming on the whitewash.

  The Count sighed. “I do believe these imbeciles place me in the same class as this fellow here – although, I trust, on a rather higher level. Accused of painting words on minds, not walls. But mostly, I think, it is the time of the year.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Do you know of Oberdan?”

  “I’ve heard of him.”

  “He believed that Trieste was truly Italian and was executed thirty-one years ago for plotting against the Emperors life. To be honest, I do not think he was a danger to anyone but himself. He only wished to be a martyr. And this is the time of year when he is remembered so, as the most notable Italian of the city, Captain Novak wishes me to be in prison until the time is passed. The man is a presumptuous moron even for a Slovenian policeman, and can do this only because the Comandante of the garrison is away. But when he returns . . . And possibly it is the same for you: you are just locked up until for the time of Oberdan.”

  Ranklin reckoned he was locked up for more specific reasons, but since Novak hadn’t even interrogated him, couldn’t be sure. “How long’s that?”

  “He was executed on the eighteenth of December.”

  Ranklin calculated. “Damn it, that’s a good six weeks.”

  “True. But it will all be changed long before that. And once my distinguished friends and my lawyers know where I am, I will be free anyway, and then . . .” He paused, glanced at Pero, and turned stiffly on his side to face Ranklin. “I can ask my lawyer to work for you also,” he whispered hoarsely, “but perhaps you do not wish to make our connection so public?”

  This was the first time the Count had acknowledged any “connection”, and it cheered Ranklin up. The Count knew things that he didn’t, and had no-one else to talk to. But this couldn’t be hurried, so he said: “That’s very thoughtful of you. But I certainly don’t want to incriminate you, so may we wait and see?”

  The Count was silent for a while, then said in the same whisper: “I hear some employers now pay a man his wages when he is sick. Most extraordinary. Do they – I mean, I wonder if they pay spies when they are in jail?”

  * * *

  The train reached Mestre after dark. Corinna took her time, letting the joyously tearful reunions that were so much part of the Italian railway system erupt before she stepped down. Anyway, this was Signora Falcone’s territory; she was in charge. So she was startled when she came face to face on the platform with a figure as scruffy as any railway ganger and reeking of castor oil: O’Gilroy, alone.

  “What are you doing here? Is Andrew . . . ?” It flashed through her mind that O’Gilroy couldn’t have got there without Andrew, yet . . .

  “He’s in hospital but all right. We ran into a bird and he got bits of glass in his face, near his eye, but seems he’ll be all right.”

  “My God! Did you crash? Which hospital? – where ?”

  “In Venice.” He consulted a bit of paper. “Called the . . . the . . . here.” He gave her the paper rather than try to pronounce Giudecca. “No, we didn’t crash.”

  Corinna swung round to find Signora Falcone coming up behind her. “Did you hear?”

  “Yes. Terrible – only Mr O’Gilroy seems to have saved the day.” She was reappraising him with a wary smile.

  “Where’s the hospital? How do I get there?”

  Signora Falcone hesitated, then realised it was pointless to do anything but smooth Corinna’s path. “I’ll see to it.”

  Corinna may have gone as far as stamping her foot with impatience, but knew it was pointless to interfere. Then, frowning in thought, she tried to imagine the accident, and . . . “Did he manage to land here, then?”

  “Had to do it meself. Went and burst a tyre. But they say—”

  “Hold on: that airplane’s only got one set of controls. On his side. My God! – you must’ve . . . You saved his life!”

  “Me own was there with him.”

  Her face suddenly bloomed into a radiant grin. “You’re quite a guy, Mr O’Gilroy. Thank God you were there.”

  “Ah, ’twas nothing special . . .” He lapsed into a mumble and was clearly going to stay there.

  “All right, I won’t gush. And the airplane’s all right?”

  “Like I said, I burst a tyre, only they reckon they’ll have one to fit or mebbe find two whole new wheels – if somebody’ll pay for them.”

  “Heavens, don’t worry about that.”

  Then Signora Falcone came back with a man who was probably one of her staff. “It’s best to catch the mail steamer from Fusina. Matteo will drive you and see that you get back. Do you want to go, too, Mr O’Gilroy?”

  O’Gilroy hesitated and Corinna chipped in: “There’s no need. You must be done in, Conall. Get some sleep – and thanks again.”

  The Falcone family seemed well endowed with motor-cars; whatever the Signora and O’Gilroy climbed into wasn’t a taxi-cab, and nor was the racier affair Corinna and Matteo had zoomed away in. This one went off at a pace consistent with the tasselled pelmets at the windows, but was soon beyond the lights of the town and rolling on through flat, dark countryside. Sinking back into deep leather, O’Gilroy found himself yawning; as always, it wasn’t life’s incidents that were wearing, but the long aftermath of explanation, clearing up – and waiting.

  After a time, Signora Falcone said: “I hadn’t realised you were a proper pilot yourself, Mr O’Gilroy.”

  “I’m new to it.”

  “But you must have been very competent. Have you flown that particular machine much?”

  “Not much at all.”

  That kept her quiet for a while. Then: “When do you think Mr Sherring will be fit to fly again?”

  “I’d guess a while yet. They’d bandaged over his eyes and was talking about keeping him quiet and dark.”

  Another silence. “If you could practise tomorrow, would you feel up to a demonstration flight on the next day?”

  The Oriole wasn’t built for Pégoud-style stunts: all it did was take off, fly and land. And after an hour or two’s practice . . . “Surely. Mind, I couldn’t be telling all the figures of its range and fuel consumption—”

  “That won’t matter.”

  “—and they’ll need to be fixing that wheel.”

  “That will be done.” It was the positive statement of someone used to having her orders obeyed. “You’re quite happy about it, then?”

  O’Gilroy was happy, all right, both at getting to fly the Oriole again and being in the middle of events. But he was also wary because he wasn’t sure what event was planned. Still, if they were relying on him as a pilot, they were handing him control.

  “Surely,” he said confidently. “That’ll be jest fine.”

  29

  The distant bugle call that began the day came as a relief. Night in jail was not fun. When there was light, you could think of the reasons why you would soon be out, but the darkness crushed all reason and hope. They had won, had forgotten you, and were sleeping peacefully. And you were alone with dozing thou
ghts, not even the exotic terrors of nightmares, just coldly logical and gloomy. Ranklin loved that bugle call.

  He sat up and realised he must at least have lain still a long time, since he was horribly stiff. The Count, a good twenty years older, must feel like a corpse.

  Perhaps he was a corpse, Ranklin thought in a sudden panic. Died before I’ve found out what’s really going on. But when he leaned over to peer through the gloom, the old man was blinking and mumbling under the thin blankets. Only then did it occur to Ranklin that it had been a rather selfish thought. So he got all the way up, shook his shoes to make sure nothing had crawled into them, then went to piss in the enamel bucket and splatter his face with dusty water.

  Pero sat up quickly, his smile as bright as ever, and made pantomime gestures of how the Count must feel. It was intended as sympathy, but the Count caught a glimpse and husked: “Please do me a favour and kill that damned Slovene.”

  * * *

  O’Gilroy was woken by a manservant with a tray of coffee. He lay for a minute or two wondering where he was before remembering he didn’t know. The ride in the dark last night had shown him very little, and the conversation had been either in Italian or about more important things.

  At least he had no problems about what to wear: it was still the tweed suit he had left Brooklands in, the cleaner of two shirts and (he hoped) a fresh collar. He’d meant to buy more in Paris or Turin, but there hadn’t been time. He got shaved and dressed and found his way downstairs.

  The house was grand but, he discovered, a simple square block. Bedrooms and bathrooms led off a wooden gallery that formed a hollow square, while below was a large living space surrounded by dining-rooms, drawing-rooms and God-knows-what rooms. Kitchens and staff quarters must be below that, half buried in a semi-basement.

  Corinna didn’t wake for another hour, but had a better idea of where she was: in Senator Falcone’s villa. If it wasn’t by Palladio himself – and he couldn’t have designed every one of the hundreds of such villas in the Veneto region – it was in his style: symmetrical and classical. Her window, once she’d pushed open the shutters, looked out past a colonnaded portico to the formal garden, maybe a quarter of a mile of it before the River Brenta. A steam-launch was just chugging off from a landing-stage and heading downstream, probably to the lagoon and Venice, which she reckoned was a dozen miles away.

  Downstairs, she was served coffee, toast (of leavened bread, thank goodness or Signora Falcone’s Irish background) and even offered a boiled egg. Then she began asking questions, and learnt that the Signora and O’Gilroy had already gone to the Lido in the launch, she to make sure the aeroplane was repaired, him to fly it, while Matteo would again get her to the hospital when she was ready. And – this from the major-domo, who had rather more power over the household than the grandest of English butlers – would she inform them if she wished to move to a hotel in Venice so as to be nearer her brother? She was, of course, welcome to stay, but the Signora would quite understand if . . .

  Corinna said she’d decide when she’d seen how Andrew was. Did the telephone work?

  But of course the telephone worked. Probably.

  * * *

  Ranklin had eaten far worse breakfasts than the Castello dungeons provided, and paid good money for some of them, too. It wasn’t elaborate: coffee, bread and a few slices of spicy sausage, but it was all fresh. And come to think of it, it might be more trouble to store things until they’d gone stale than just send down a helping of whatever the Castello guard was getting – particularly since they might well be the only prisoners. He didn’t believe Novak about the dungeons being crowded. The way the lamp-smoke had stained the wall showed this one hadn’t been used since it was whitewashed, and that was weeks ago. You couldn’t be in the Army and not be an expert on whitewash.

  “Tell me,” the Count said, “that I only dreamt we had smoked our last cigarettes.”

  “No dream, I’m afraid.” Ranklin displayed his empty case.

  “Ah me,” the Count sighed. “How can we continue the fine old tradition of bribing prison guards if we do not meet them? Never mind. Soon my friends will know where I am, and then . . . I will send in cigarettes to you if they allow it. English ones may not be possible, but . . .”

  “Have you really got friends in high places?” Ranklin asked innocently.

  The Count seemed pained. “I have friends everywhere; you must not think I am blinded by my noble birth. But, as I am sure you already know, the title of a Venetian count is quite equivalent to marquis from anywhere else. And I admit that I find my best friends are those who understand that simple fact. So yes, indeed I have friends in what you call ‘high places’.” He glanced at Pero, apparently asleep on his cot, but by now seemed to have accepted him at face value. Still, he lowered his voice. “I may also tell you, in the greatest confidence, that I have taken trouble to impress those friends with my loyalty to the Emperor. I even applied for Austrian nationality. Probably they will not grant it, no matter what they say their policy is, but that is of no consequence. What greater proof of loyalty can they ask?”

  Ranklin grunted. He couldn’t see the point of such a move. But at least he had the Count talking in confidence. The trick now was not to rush, let the man take his time. He suggested: “Possibly they assumed it was only to cause them embarrassment.”

  “Perhaps – but they could not help being flattered that a man of my birth should ask to become an Austrian citizen. I mean,” he added quickly, “not a citizen in the French meaning. I would, of course, retain my title. It has a most splendid history. My great-grandfather . . .” And Ranklin had to smile and nod his way through a personalised Almanac de Gotha. But, he told himself, there’s still time. One thing you weren’t short of in jail was time.

  * * *

  Signora Falcone’s crisp instructions and the chink of gold coin got a new set of wheels – they hadn’t a suitable tyre, or so they said once they smelled the gold – on the Oriole by lunchtime. That left the afternoon for O’Gilroy to get in an hour’s practice, refuel, and fly the aeroplane over to the pasture across the road from the villa. Signora Falcone was very insistent that the demonstration flight should start from there. It all seemed a bit odd – or foreign – and O’Gilroy’s suspicions were showing healthy growth. But his mind was a pretty suspicious place at any time, and he concentrated on learning the Oriole.

  He had been left a picnic of bread, cheese and something called ‘salami’, since the nearest restaurant on the Lido was nearly a mile away and probably thought more of its reputation than of his suit. Then the local mechanics helped him start up the Oriole, turn her into wind – and he was on his own.

  After half an hour of weaving and banking at three thousand feet he felt confident enough to start practising landings. With its high wing, there was little tendency to “float” – scoot along just above the ground with the far wall getting closer. She just sat down firmly and stayed down. But coming in for the last one, he felt a flood of stickiness over his left foot, saw there was no drip showing in the oil-feed glass, and just scraped over the near wall with a dead engine.

  They pushed the aeroplane into the half-shade of a shed and he smoked a cigarette while waiting for the engine to cool. There was no doubt about the problem – his shoe squelched with castor oil (the oil tank was just above the rudder bar) – only the solution. The mechanics were fascinated by the short length of fractured pipe, once he had got it unscrewed; they just didn’t have any ideas about mending or replacing it.

  * * *

  The dungeon lunch confirmed Ranklin’s view that they were getting straight soldiers’ fare: some sort of stew with rice and a plate of figs, with a flask of wine. And again not stale; the wine tasted only a few days old. He and the Count exchanged horrified glances at the first sip, then watched Pero lap it up, and flop back on his cot snoring.

  But by now, the Count was getting agitated. He consulted his watch every ten minutes – Ranklin had given up on that, lapsi
ng back to timing himself by the bugle calls – and muttered: “But my friends, one of my friends, must have asked where I am by now? Come, I must walk.”

  So they paced solemnly around the perimeter of the cell, just as if it were the Piazza Grande except for a detour past the latrine bucket.

  “What does that peasant of a police captain achieve in keeping us here?” the Count fretted.

  “Last night, you said it could be until the Oberdan ‘season’ is over – another six weeks or so.”

  “For you, yes. But why me? And he does not even question me. Why not? If I am arrested I have a right to be questioned, to explain. Not, of course, that I have to explain myself to that uniformed monkey.”

  “Maybe he’s afraid of you.”

  That brought a spring to the Count’s slow pace. “Yes, yes. Well may he be afraid of me. And soon he will have even better reason.”

  Ranklin seized the opportunity and put on a carefully worried voice. “Perhaps it’s this place that’s getting me down, but I can’t help worrying about the aeroplane, whether it’s truly capable of the job . . .”

  The Count glanced at him sharply. “Giancarlo has seen it, he has flown in it. And he is an expert. Why should it not be capable?”

  “Oh, I don’t know . . . I know very little about aeroplanes, but flying all the way from Turin . . .”

  “Not from Turin. They take it to Giancarlo’s house by Venice. They did not tell you?”

  “Oh good, they did decide on Venice,” Ranklin said hastily. He gave a satisfied nod as if a minor detail had been cleared up and they strolled on, round and round.

  But now he was beginning to fret, too. He’d thought of having plenty of time, but it was passing. And perhaps he’d subconsciously been thinking that as he’d been first in, he must be first out – and that was nonsense. At any moment, one of the Count’s friends might whisk him away, ending any revelations.

  It was time to stir things up. “And I hope,” he said, “there’s enough ammunition for the Lewis guns?”

  The Count stopped dead. “The Lewis guns?” He sounded surprised but, significantly, didn’t need to ask what they were.