All Honourable Men

12

By morning they were clear of the mountains and rolling, reasonably fast, along the valley of the Maritsa, expecting to reach Constantinople by teatime. But they were still in Bulgaria and Zurga stayed in his sleeper.

As always on a long journey, with the end in sight everybody wanted it over with now and their mood was impatient, yesterday’s party spirit long gone. Dahlmann had a long, private, and probably pointless, conference with Streibl. Ranklin drifted about lighting his pipe, letting it go out and lighting a cigarette instead. Lady Kelso abandoned her magazines to watch out of the window, as if doing so would hurry them forward.

Perhaps Herr Fernrick was still nursing yesterday’s grievance because lunch was very much an eating-up-what’s-left-in-the-larder affair. Halfway through, they crossed the Turkish frontier, and Zurga re-appeared. The sight of Turkish soil obviously cheered him; to Ranklin, it was simply soil – no trees, not much grass, just as if a grey-brown blanket, patched with snow, had been spread over a collection of rocks. A few wild dogs appeared and ran alongside.

“In Constantinople there are now no dogs,” Zurga said.

“Really?”

“They caught all the wild dogs and put them on an island which has no water.”

Frankly, Ranklin didn’t much care: the snarling street packs hadn’t been his favourite memory of the city. But as Snaipe he felt he should say: “Oh, I say. Dash it all . . .” And Zurga looked quietly satisfied.

Perhaps two hours before Constantinople, with all but Zurga in the saloon, the train’s wheels suddenly locked and they screeched and jolted to a halt. They were in a shallow cutting, with banks on either side just higher than the train so you couldn’t see what lay beyond. After half a minute there was some distant shouting and then, unmistakeably, a shot.

The effect rippled through the saloon. Lady Kelso sat up straight and pressed her nose to the window; Streibl also peered out. More agitated, Dahlmann looked back towards the second coach. Ranklin sat still: their position was too perfect, caught in a defile with no view. This must be an ambush.

Zurga strode through, jacketless and with shirt sleeves rolled up, his face set and swearing to himself, heading for the rear of the train. He paused to warn Lady Kelso to get away from the window: “Broken glass can be as bad as a bullet sometimes.”

“Thank you.” She gave him a brilliant smile and stood up. “I feel quite safe with you coping.” He went on and a sharp barking-match in German began somewhere around the kitchen.

Lady Kelso selected a chair well away from any windows and re-opened her magazine. Streibl went on bobbing around, trying for a better view, and there didn’t seem any point in trying to stop him. Ranklin got up.

“Where are you going?” Dahlmann demanded.

“Er . . . to get my diplomatic passport.”

“This does not seem to me a diplomatic situation.”

In his sleeper, Ranklin dug out his revolver and pocketed it. As an open-air weapon it was useless, it wouldn’t reach accurately to the top of the banks. But if it came to a barney in the carriage itself. . .

Then he went on forward to the little vestibule with its outside doors, where they linked to the rest of the train. He opened the right-hand door and leaned out cautiously, although he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be conspicuous: human nature would have dozens of heads poking out right along the train.

Zurga strode past, heading forwards and shouting in Turkish. He waved Ranklin back inside; Ranklin obeyed briefly, then leant out again. From the kitchen carriage, one of the staff ran up the bank carrying a rifle, paused to peek over the top, then threw himself flat and brought the rifle to his shoulder. A second followed, more lithely, dark hair fluttering – and damn it all, it was O’Gilroy.

Well, of course it was. If there was a spare rifle, a mere language problem wouldn’t have stopped him talking his way to it.

Ranklin knew there must be a similar group on top of the opposite bank. But now, for the moment, the situation froze in place – and Ranklin with it. There was a knife-edged plains wind flattening the ochre-grey tufts of coarse grass, and little smut-stained patches of snow lingered in every shadowed pocket of the banks.

After a moment more, he went back to his sleeper, put on his overcoat and found his binoculars. They were naval, really too powerful to use except with a steady rest, and a giveaway that he was a long-distance soldier if anybody guessed he was a soldier at all. Back in the doorway, he propped himself against the side and tried to focus on a group at the front of the train.

Two or three were passengers, being hustled back aboard by the train staff. And Zurga distinctive in shirt sleeves, standing with legs spread and hands on his hips obviously laying down some law to a group of drab, ragged men with rifles. Through the shifting group and spurts of steam from the engine, Ranklin could just make out some obstruction on the line beyond. Logs, maybe, though God knows where they came from on this treeless plain.

Then a machine-gun fired. Just one quick rattle, perhaps ten rounds, and from the other side of the train. In the moment Ranklin’s binoculars had wavered, the group around Zurga had dived into crouching positions beside the train wheels. Only Zurga stayed upright, and he then vanished, apparently into the train. Ranklin hurried across to the other door.

At the top of that bank, three of the German staff knelt or sat around a Maxim gun on a heavy tripod. They were quite still and looked very competent. Ranklin swivelled the binoculars to see Zurga marching – barely a hint of scrambling – up the bank to stand, arms akimbo again, and bellow in German – extremely fluent German, in its own way; “. . . dumm Sohnes von Huren. . .” and similar phrases.

A shudder passed through the group around the Maxim, as if a sudden wind had blown in their faces. Zurga marched down the bank and vanished again.

Five minutes later, Ranklin came back into the saloon. “The excitement seems to be over,” he reported. “Zurga Bey appears to have persuaded them to dismantle the block on the line and he’s on his way back.”

“Of course he did. He’s a very capable man,” Lady Kelso said calmly, laying the magazine in her lap. She looked at Dahlmann. “And so are the servants, it seems. I didn’t know we had a Maxim gun on board.”

Dahlmann smiled cautiously. “This line can be dangerous – as events have shown.”

“You seem to have thought of everything.” She picked up the magazine again.

The machine-gun crew on the bank were dismounting the weapon, folding the ammunition belt back into its box, lumbering down the bank with the unwieldy tripod. Herr Fernrick knelt with a rifle, covering them. Then he blew a whistle to call in the far-side picket and walked down the bank himself.

They heard Zurga clump aboard at the end of the corridor, but he stayed there, perhaps showing himself at the open door, until they were well under way. They passed the group of half-a-dozen ambushers; most of their feet were bundles of rags. Two of them, rifles slung, were starting to carry one of their logs up the bank – saving it, perhaps, for a less defended train. Another pointed his rifle in the air and fired a last defiant shot.

Then the cutting dwindled down and Ranklin saw a little group of horses and a cart a hundred yards out on the lumpy plain. That explained not only how the bandits travelled but what the machine-gun had threatened.

Zurga came in, face grim and shoulders hunched with cold. He was aiming for the rear carriage, but Dahlmann and Lady Kelso waylaid him.

“That was very brave of you,” she said. “Who were they? – brigands?”

“Of a kind. Most of them had been soldiers. Or deserters, who had not been paid for a year. Unfortunately, there are many such, since the war.” His expression got grimmer.

“But our machine-gun scared them off,” Dahlmann said confidently.

“That machine-gun nearly ruined everything! The sight of it was enough, they know what it can do. Did you want them chased into the train, hiding and shooting among the passengers?”

Dahlmann’s assurance had evaporated. “I will talk to them.”

“I will talk to them. Now!”

The banker’s face wasn’t used to sending any but the subtlest of signals, but now it was trying to transmit warnings, alarm, near-panic. And some of it got through. Zurga said: “First I should put a coat on. It is very cold.” He turned about and headed for his sleeper.

Dahlmann, relieved but discomfited and looking for the office cat to kick, said to Ranklin: “So: you did not need your diplomatic passport after all.”

“So I didn’t.”

“I noticed Gorman,” Lady Kelso said, “out there playing soldiers with a will.”

“You were warned not to look out. Yes, he’s an old soldier. You can never cure that, it seems.”

But after that, everybody was even less ready to settle down again. Streibl recalled native uprisings against the railway in East Africa, Dahlmann muttered some comments about Turkish discipline, and Zurga went about looking grim with angry shame. Abruptly, all this changed to an about-to-arrive scurry, and they besieged Dahlmann with questions that they had meant to ask earlier. So he called a final conference around the big table.

“Lady Kelso,” he read from a list, “is invited to stay at the English Embassy. Dr Streibl and Mr Snaipe will go to the Pera Palace hotel. I am sure you will be met at the station. Zurga Bey – I think you have your own arrangements? As I have.”

“When and how do we leave for the south?” Lady Kelso asked.

“As soon as we have collected the gold coinage. The railway will take you to Eregli and then to the work camp. From there, I am afraid, you must go by horse or mule into the mountains. I understand it is more than a day’s journey.”

Lady Kelso nodded cheerfully.

Streibl woke up again: “If you do not have them now, buy warm clothes here in Constantinople for the mountains. Down there there is nothing to buy.”

“No dressing for dinner, what?” Ranklin said.

Dahlmann said: “I understand it is not the custom on the back of a mule, Mr Snaipe.”

“And you aren’t coming that far, is that right?”

“I am not ashamed to be pleased that I am not, Mr Snaipe. My duties to the Bank will keep me in Constantinople.”

When the meeting ended, a pent-up rush of staff bringing baggage was released. O’Gilroy was helping willingly, hoping for a last-minute look at what the luggage compartment held – apart from that machine-gun. But the narrowness of the carriage was against him: it was too easy for the single guard to block his view. He trailed back to help Ranklin pack; he might not be all that good, but he had had more experience than any spoiled officer.

He had barely got started when Lady Kelso knocked and put her head round the door. “I do beg your pardon, but I wonder if you could lend me Gorman for just a moment? The lock of one of my bags . . .”

“Of course.”

“Close the door, please, Gorman,” she told O’Gilroy, “and sit down.”

Women like Lady Kelso were mysterious, mythical figures to O’Gilroy, reminding him of some dark references his mother used to make. He sat on the bunk bed as far from her as he could.

“There’s no lock problem,” she smiled briskly. “That was just my little ruse. I wanted to ask you . . . But first, have you been with Mr Snaipe long?”

“Sort of off-and-on, M’Lady.”

“Would you agree he’s – Oh dear, this really is rather difficult – perhaps not one of the world’s great thinkers?”

Despite his fright, O’Gilroy twitched a smile. “Perhaps not, M’Lady.”

“But an honest patriot?”

“Oh, surely that, M’Lady.”

“And you yourself were a soldier, I believe.”

Instinctively, although O’Gilroy’s instincts were well controlled by now, he straightened his back. “I was that. South African war ’n all.”

“How splendid. And whatever else I may be, I’m an Englishwoman through and through . . . so I’m worried about all this business.”

A puzzled frown. “All what, M’Lady?”

“You do know about it, don’t you? What it seems to boil down to is that I’ll be helping the Germans complete a railway that I’m far from sure is in Britain’s best interests.”

A volcano of thoughts erupted in O’Gilroy’s mind. She was having patriotic doubts: good – so far. But suppose she got the notion of doing a little sabotage on her own? Then there’d be the most God-awful muddle. Yet she obviously didn’t believe Ranklin, as the Hon. Patrick Snaipe, was capable of doing anything original himself . . .

With a sudden cold professionalism, he wondered if they could pull off a coup and somehow leave her to take the blame, keeping their characters intact. He shelved the idea only because it wasn’t the most urgent. Right now, he must keep her as a possible ally yet dissuade her from acting on her own.

“I thought the Foreign Minister, Ma’am, Sir Edward, he’d asked ye jest to talk to this feller with the prisoners. If ye do that much, nobody’s going to blame ye if-”

“Oh, never mind about blame,” she said testily. “I’m bothered that Sir Edward himself might . . . well, let’s say he may have been poorly advised. He must have a lot on his plate.” She cocked her head. “I wouldn’t say this to Mr Snaipe, so this is utterly between us two, but I’ve found in my travels that our Diplomatic Service, and the Foreign Office back home, don’t always get things right.”

O’Gilroy was trying to look as if this idea, while wholly new and startling, wasn’t entirely unbelievable.

“In fact,” she added, “when I think of my first husband . . . No, never mind that.” She suddenly sat up straight. “Or do you feel I’m trying to involve you in things that shouldn’t concern you?”

“No, no, M’Lady, it’s not that. But – if I might be making a suggestion . . .?”

“That’s just what I’m asking for.”

“I was jest thinking, M’Lady -” he frowned, as if unfamiliar with deviousness “- that if ye waited until yer talking to the feller – Miskal, is it? – ye’d be talking a lingo me and the Hon. Patrick don’t know at all, so if ye said Go right on keeping the prisoners and let the Germans fart in their beer (begging yer pardon, M’Lady) then who’d be knowing?”

Her smile was a sunrise. “What a splendid idea. I’m most indebted to you. And I don’t think you need mention our little chat to Mr Snaipe. It might . . . confuse him.”

“Never a word, M’Lady.”

“Thank you so much. You’re a most intelligent man, Gorman.” She hesitated, perhaps trying to make up her mind, then deciding what could she lose? “What do you make of Zurga Bey? D’you think he could be a spy?”

“Er-” O’Gilroy was taken aback. He would far rather she did not go around wondering if people were spies. “I couldn’t be saying . . . Jest who would he be spying on, M’Lady?”

“Oh, any and all of us. In Turkey you get spies everywhere. It’s their way of life, everybody wants to know what their rivals are doing. Even Europeans down on their luck do it, spying on other Europeans for the Government – and I’m sure that hasn’t changed with this Committee. So be careful who you say anything to.”

Relieved, he realised she was talking about informers, not real spies. “Thank ye, M’Lady, I’ll be remembering that . . . But about Zurga, I can tell ye one thing: he’s a soldier, an officer. Or was, not long past.”

She sat back with a delighted expression. “Ah yes – and you’d be able to tell, of course. Thank you again. Now I’d better let you get on with your work . . .”

Ranklin had just about finished the packing, but he lit a cigarette and let O’Gilroy – who would clearly rather have faced an army of brigands than the notorious Lady Kelso – do the rest and pass on the news.

When he had finished, Ranklin was looking pale. “My God, she isn’t going to do anything on her own, is she?”

“I think I talked her out of it. And was telling her Zurga’s really an officer.”

Ranklin nodded. “The way he handled those bandits? – and spoke to the machine-gun crew? Yes, I’d guess he was in Germany learning German Army methods, and his Turkish masters probably added him to this mission to look after their interests. And the Railway company doesn’t want to be seen as high-handed foreigners if things get exciting, so they welcomed him . . . Probably they welcome a British contingent to share the blame, too,” he added.

“I thought if Lady Kelso don’t get the prisoners released, they jest hand over the gold.”

“Yes, but paying kidnappers keeps them in business. I suggested Miskal might use the ransom to buy more guns, and nobody took me seriously. But it’s so obvious a point, they must have thought of it.” He paused for thought. “It might be that getting the engineers back is just the first step. And the second will be making quite sure Miskal can’t try the same thing again.”

O’Gilroy considered this for himself, then: “D’ye reckon that machine-gun’s coming all the way with us, then?”

“I doubt they brought it just to scare off brigands. You haven’t got a look inside the baggage compartment? – then it could be full of Maxims for all we know. Though I wouldn’t choose them for tackling a mountain stronghold.” Machine-guns were for defence in open country, not lugging – dismounted and unfireable – around rocky slopes.

O’Gilroy shrugged. “All packed, yer Honourable sir. And ye’ve only one clean collar for a dress shirt left, so hope the hotel laundry knows its stuff.”

“Fine.” Ranklin got up to look out of the window. The train was curving gently around the coast, past isolated wooden houses and slumped stone huts, through a gap in the old Byzantine city wall, towards the low rocky headland of Stamboul. “When we get off the train, the Embassy will probably be meeting Lady Kelso, and I imagine I’ll get caught up in that. But nobody’ll care about you. I want you to hang around the station and see what happens to whatever’s in the baggage compartment.”

O’Gilroy thought about this. “Could be they’ll move it out to some goods yard before they unload.”

“The only goods yard is right alongside the station itself – look.” Ranklin unfolded the map in his Baedeker. Squeezed between the sea and Seraglio Point, the station had no room for elaborate marshalling yards. “I don’t say you’ll get right up to it – they’re probably wary of thieves – but you might see something.”

O’Gilroy saw the sense of it, but it was still a tall order for his first move in an utterly strange city. “D’ye have any Turkish money?”

“Sorry, not yet, but they take French gold and silver, if you’ve still got any.”

“And give me yer gun.”

Ranklin frowned, but passed it over. Then he ripped the map out of the Baedeker and passed that over, too. He wasn’t sure how good O’Gilroy was at map-reading, but it might help. “Get a cab when you’re through. We’re at the Pera Palace hotel, everybody knows it.”

The train slowed yet further as they came in sight of Stamboul, uneven steps of wooden buildings that climbed gently to climax in the stalks of minarets and great buds of domes that glowed pink and gold in the setting sun.

“Keep this memory,” Ranklin advised. “Once you’re among it, it won’t feel the way it looks now.”