by Gavin Lyall
“The last meal I had,” he recalled, “was in jail.”
O’Gilroy smiled. “That’s the first time for ye, isn’t it, Captain? How did ye take to it?”
Ranklin reflected. “Slow. And mostly quiet.”
“And how did ye get out?”
“Talked my way, I suppose.”
O’Gilroy nodded approvingly. “Always best, that.”
Dagner had been sitting quietly. The bang on his head hadn’t been serious, and Ranklin suspected the real pain had been to his pride. You reach an age when you should only get into fights when armed – and then shoot first.
Now Dagner said: “I’d like to hear all about your doings in Trieste, Captain, but time’s getting on.” He looked at Falcone. “When do you think the aeroplane should take off?”
Ranklin felt he’d been told Sorry, the doctor was wrong, you have got cancer. He forced himself to sit upright, trying to make his mind do the same, and managed it in time to hush O’Gilroy with a gesture and say: “Major, may I have a private word with you?”
Dagner gestured gracefully at Falcone. “I don’t think we have any secrets by now . . .”
“Major, I’m your second-in-command! Can we please talk?”
“Very well.” Dagner followed him to the other side of the terrace, past the french windows. Ranklin was about to start when he realised a dutiful servant had followed, carrying their coffee cups. But he put them down on another table and went back.
They didn’t sit. Ranklin said: “Surely the whole thing’s off. D’Annunzio was going to drop wild rabble-rousing pamphlets from the aeroplane – or did you know about the aeroplane, and him, from the start?”
“I’m afraid I did,” Dagner smiled gravely. “But I thought it best to conceal that. You seemed to have rather fixed ideas about the risk of war.”
Ranklin was a bit surprised to find he didn’t mind that so much; after all, the man in the field often shouldn’t know the whole picture. But: “Didn’t you get my cable saying nobody in Trieste believes the Italian workers are going to strike or riot or whatever? Or was I sent there just to get me out of the way?”
Dagner didn’t answer that directly. “Falcone knows his own people better than we do and he has no doubts.”
“No, he doesn’t, does he?” That suddenly struck Ranklin as odd. “He must be very sure . . . Could there be something he hasn’t told you? Something to do with those Lewis guns you helped him get?”
“For the Italian Army—”
“He pretended that about the aeroplane, too.”
“Perhaps the guns were a blind, to help hide the aeroplane in an arms-buying mission.”
“I think it’s more. The Count—”
“Captain, I know how you’ve always felt about this affair.” Dagner’s voice had become stern. “It may be part of how you feel about the Bureau. When it started, I can well believe the Chief had to take whom he could get, and get them any way he could. Like you and O’Gilroy. I’m afraid I know exactly how he got you. You did good work in your time, and did well together in the fracas just now, but the Bureau’s future demands more than what we used to call ‘Khyber Pass’ stuff, like that and the events in Clerkenwell. We’re working on a much larger canvas now. And we’re getting a new generation, young men who’ve volunteered and can he trained up with the vision to make this service what it deserves to be.”
“So O’Gilroy and I are yesterday’s newspapers, just to wrap the fish and chips.”
“Time passes for all of us.” Dagner’s tone was calm but urgent. “This could be the first vital step to the service living up to its legend, getting away from its pennyweight antics. If we can make this big a change in the Mediterranean situation, we can do anything. I don’t think I’m being overly romantic in foreseeing the day when every statesman in every country will have to take the British Secret Service into account in all he does or proposes. He’ll spend half his time wondering if we’re dogging his footsteps or already ahead of him. We’ve learnt the Navy can no longer do everything for us, and certainly the Army can’t, not in Europe. But now our service itself could hold the balance of power, become itself one of the Great Powers of Europe.
“Can you and O’Gilroy really share that vision with us, Captain?”
The answer must have been written in Ranklin’s expression, because Dagner said sympathetically: “Times change, Captain.”
“You’ve got far more experience,” Ranklin said doggedly, “but the secret service I know is grubby and demeaning and frightening, and can involve shooting people who . . . well, you just hope they deserve it—”
“All that and worse,” Dagner agreed. “But also more. And all the more reason to need a vision, a clear sight of what one is working for.”
“Do you trust Falcone, then?”
The change of tack didn’t bother Dagner. “Trust him? Not what he says, of course not. But what he wants, yes. A political triumph, showing up the Prime Minister as hesitant and feeble by forcing a squabble between Italy and Austria. And we’re using that ambition for our own ends.”
“But where do the Lewis guns fit in?” Ranklin persisted. “The Count—”
“You mentioned him before. What Count?”
“Falcone’s crony in Trieste, he was in jail with me.”
“Why should he know anything about them?”
Ranklin stopped, wondering why he hadn’t asked that question himself. If the guns weren’t going on the aeroplane, why had the Count heard of them? – let alone be so worried that Ranklin had? And, come to that, why should that paper-pushing Austrian Captain Knebel know of such guns?
And then he knew the answer.
Dagner had waited briefly to see if Ranklin had more to say, then turned and strode back to the breakfast table to ask O’Gilroy: “Is the aeroplane ready?”
O’Gilroy glanced past him at Ranklin, coming slowly and thoughtfully up behind, and said carefully: “’Tis in the field, far side of the road. How about Mr d’Annunzio?”
Corinna suddenly appeared and sat down. “I don’t think he likes working for the British Secret Service.”
Dagner looked at her sternly. “Madam, I’d be grateful if you could exercise a little more discretion—”
“That went out the window when you tried to recruit my brother. We’re all family now. Go right ahead.” She smiled decorously at Ranklin, seeming quite composed again. She now wore a plain white dress with an apple-green bolero jacket and a wide straw hat. And with both elbows planted firmly on the table, looked very permanent. Catching O’Gilroy’s eye, she said: “So I was right, wasn’t I? – despite being a weak and feeble woman.”
“Never said ye was wrong. Jest that ye wasn’t . . . sure.”
A bit reluctantly, in front of Corinna, Dagner went on: “Senator, will you have a word with Signore d’Annunzio? But if that doesn’t work, anybody can pretend to be him, throwing out the leaflets.”
“Would you do it?” Ranklin asked quickly.
“Certainly I’ll go. Perhaps better me than you.”
“Ah.” That seemed to mean something to Ranklin. “But just suppose—” he looked from Dagner to Falcone; “—it fails? – the Austrians laugh it off as a silly prank?”
There was something about Ranklin’s tone that made both Corinna and O’Gilroy glance sharply at him, then each other. Dagner, not knowing him so well, just looked impatient, but let Falcone answer. “I know Triestine Italians, Captain Ranklin. The sight of the great patriot flying over – as they will believe – and reading his trumpet words, it will stir them as you do not believe possible.”
“Umm . . .” Ranklin looked thoughtful. “I wonder if you believed that, to start with. And then decided it would be even better if they saw the Austrians blow d’Annunzio out of the sky, martyr him with those Lewis guns you sent them. Sorry, Major,” he said to Dagner, “but we’ve all been working for the Senator’s vision of Europe.”
Everyone was briefly still and silent. Then they all began at o
nce. Ranklin leant over to whisper to O’Gilroy and get a reply.
He overrode the hubbub. “O’Gilroy says he’d been told to drop the leaflets over the old town, around the Castle. So the Lewis guns’ll be on the battlements there, manned by the Castle guard, not the coming-and-going garrison.”
Dagner said: “Captain Ranklin, these are fantasies. But they come very close to that sabotage you spoke of.”
“No, Major, I know this. First I thought those guns must be for the aeroplane, really they’re for shooting it down. Falcone sent them to the Count who presented them to the Austrian Commander.”
Falcone waved the idea away. “Ridiculous! Quite impossible! Would I arrange for such a popular patriot as Gabriele d’Annunzio to be—”
“That’s just what makes him a good sacrifice. And I was in jail with the Count yesterday. I heard all about him sucking up to the Austrians so they’d think the gift of the guns was just part of that, not its purpose. But when he thought of being in their hands when they realised they’d been tricked into publicly slaughtering a great Italian, he was going berserk, and he talked . . .” He delicately left the sentence open.
“Hold hard,” O’Gilroy said. “Ye say the aeroplane was going to be shot down by machine-guns?” He turned on Falcone. “And what about the pilot?”
Falcone licked his lips but said nothing, watching Dagner. Very deliberately, O’Gilroy took a pistol from his pocket and laid it beside his cup. “Seems like a feller needs some protection around here.”
Corinna suddenly caught on, but turned her fury on Dagner. “D’you mean it would have been Andrew?”
She pitched her coffee at his waistcoat, and at that moment d’Annunzio, freshly lavendered and in an uncreased cream linen suit, came onto the terrace. He stopped and spread his arms delightedly. “Ah, such drama! And so early! Are these—” he gestured at Ranklin and Dagner; “—yet more English secret agents?”
“Yes they are,” Corinna snapped, “and since the plot was to get you bumped off, you’d better sit down and listen.”
Ranklin reassured her: “I’m afraid Major Dagner didn’t know, or he wouldn’t have volunteered to go. He – all of us – were being used by Falcone and the Count.”
Perhaps Dagner winced at that. Corinna switched her glare to Falcone, and asked O’Gilroy: “Are you thinking of shooting him?”
“Oh, I’m thinking of it, all right,” he said softly, and picked up the pistol – though perhaps to stop her grabbing it.
Falcone still didn’t say anything. And unless we shoot him, Ranklin thought, there’s really nothing we can do to him. Except leave him here with the wreckage. And bodies.
D’Annunzio had been enjoying himself without in the least understanding. “Now please, someone explain to me.”
Ranklin stood up. “They planned to have you killed over Trieste, made a martyr like Oberdan, that’s all. Don’t fret about it.” He patted d’Annunzio’s shoulder, leaving a smudge of powder-smoke and oil on the fresh suit. “Come on, let’s get away from here. Major?”
Corinna pushed back her chair so firmly that it fell over. Dagner got to his feet slowly, dreamily, making no move to mop the coffee off his front. “Then he was using me . . . I let him use the whole service . . .”
Ranklin gripped his arm and he let himself be led away from the table. “In Europe things are . . . well, perhaps different.”
“I thought we had a chance to . . . Was I really so wrong, Captain? Was my whole vision wrong?”
“No, no, of course not,” Ranklin reassured him desperately. “Let’s just get away.”
A spark of life seemed to re-enter Dagner. He smiled wryly. “And then what? Do you leave me alone in the library with a pistol on the desk?”
“For God’s sake!” Ranklin felt everything was sliding out of control.
Then Corinna said gently: “Why don’t you just get back home to your wife, Major Dagner?”
He smiled with relief at the thought. “Yes. Yes, of course. She’ll understand. . .” And he seemed to relax.
Corinna must have packed like an impatient burglar; less than ten minutes later, servants were carrying her bags downstairs and out into the garden, where threads of smoke were rising from the steam-launch.
Signora Falcone met them in the hall still wearing last night’s evening dress. But although it looked as limp as yesterday’s bouquet, she herself was very poised, even imperious. “I have told Matteo not to load your bags. I have learned what you were saying, but I said you must not leave before noon and that still holds good.” Matteo stepped out behind her, squat and solid, sort-of-casually holding a shotgun.
“Oh no,” Ranklin said wearily. “It’s all over. Go and ask your husband.”
“He’s a sick man, easily depressed. But we still have the aeroplane—”
“Ye don’t, ye know,” O’Gilroy said. “On account I smashed it up, landing in the dark. Only the wheels and propeller and a strut and the cowling, but a week’s work, mebbe.”
Corinna and Signora Falcone spoke at once; the consensus was: “You mean all this time . . . ?”
“The Captain said to keep quiet, he wanted to hear the rest of the plan out. And we was dashing to yer rescue.”
For the first time, they saw Signora Falcone lose her elegance. She sagged, hunched as if she suddenly wore a rucksack of rocks, staring at the floor. Then in a tired, soft voice she spoke to Matteo and he laid the shotgun aside.
O’Gilroy took his hand out of his pocket.
“And now,” Signora Falcone whimpered, “you’re leaving me with all . . . this.” A gesture scooped in the whole night’s happenings.
“I’m sure you’ll manage,” Corinna said crisply. “And I shall watch your husband’s political career with great interest.”
Then slapped her hard enough to spin her round.
The baggage was already loaded into the launch. Ranklin peered under the canvas canopy. “Where’s Major Dagner?”
O’Gilroy shrugged and indicated his own small bag. “I was packing. Thought he came down ahead of us.”
Corinna turned her exam Italian on the servants. After a bit of gesticulation, she reported: “They saw him going down the garden ten minutes ago. Towards the river.”
The three of them instinctively looked down into the slow, placid, deep Brenta.
Ranklin said: “Oh Christ.”
O’Gilroy said: “He’s an expert. If he don’t want to he found . . .” He shrugged.
Corinna said softly: “Maybe he did go home to his wife.”
34
The Commander still had the curled moustache he had grown for his curtailed Bavarian holiday, and a new mannerism of stroking it every few seconds – either from pride or to make sure it hadn’t escaped.
“Why the devil have you written all this down?” he grumbled, waving Ranklin’s report. “Did you expect me to leave this lurking in the files?”
“No, sir. I expect you’ll burn it. But it helped clarify my thoughts, getting it all onto paper.”
“And at the end of it all – making the Bureau a legend and a Great Power and believing his wife was still alive and storming a police station – you don’t conclude the man was mad?”
“No, sir. I think perhaps he’d been a sp— an agent too long. Living in a make-believe world . . . And he talked about us having a mission—”
“Dangerous,” the Commander grunted.
“—and the loneliness of the job . . . Perhaps pretending to himself his wife was still alive made it less lonely.” It sounded pretentious as he said it, so he added a shrug to water it down.
But the Commander had his own thoughts. “I should have been more suspicious when Indian Army Intelligence handed him over so easily. You don’t let your best men go. And I shouldn’t have left him alone so soon. Hoped you and your blasted paperwork would keep him busy.”
“He was doing it all for the Bureau.”
“For his idea of the Bureau,” the Commander said sharply. “There’s
only one idea of the Bureau that counts, and that’s mine. I suppose he never thought I might have an idea of what we might some day become? And how to get there?” Then he calmed down. “Would you have called him a decent upright English gentleman?”
“Yes.” Ranklin was surprised. “Of course.”
The Commander sighed. “Without thinking how difficult it would he to turn decent, upright Englishmen into useful agents? – around Europe, anyway. Goes against everything they’ve ever been taught. Maybe it’s easier on the frontier, dealing with tribesmen, fuzzy-wuzzies, whatever-they-call-’em. Cheating them don’t count. But then he comes home, not on the frontier now, but where the real troubles are, and the real crooks. But he sees it as a chance to have world visions, start a crusade . . .”
“I think he trusted Senator Falcone too much, I mean trusted his own idea of what Falcone was up to, and never believed he might risk, even want, a war . . . But he was a good example to the new chaps.”
The Commander gave him a fierce stare and then an explosive grunt. “If any one of those new chaps of ours had stayed where he was a few weeks longer, he’d’ve been drummed out. Or court-martialled. Of course it didn’t show on their reports,” he answered Ranklin’s expression. “If it had got that far they’d have been out of my reach. But each one of ’em had his hand in some shady financial affair or up the skirt of the colonel’s daughter.”
After a few moments of rather stunned re-appraisal, Ranklin ventured: “Then you didn’t tell Major Dagner any of this, sir?”
“Up to him to spot it, if he’d been more open-minded – and less taken with Italian senators. Anyway, not the done thing to talk about, what? We’d given them a fresh start in the Bureau, chance to put it all behind them, forget the past . . . and all that balls. I picked ’em for bounders, even cads, and they’d better stay that way.”