All Honourable Men

20

Although he slept deeply, Ranklin must unconsciously have noticed the storm passing because he woke unsurprised that the yacht was leaning but steady. It must have sails set again, and was just pitching slowly in a long swell. Cheerful with the sense of evil safely accomplished, which was turning out to be almost as good as a clear conscience, he went to order breakfast and then up to stroll the windward deck until it was ready. The sun was bright but not yet hot; in the Mediterranean, another month would make all the difference.

When he returned to the dining-saloon, Streibl was at the table, pale and full of apologies for his weakness of last evening.

Ranklin waved them aside. “Not your fault, old boy. Why, I had an aunt who used to get sick on trains. Carriages, too. In fact, come to think of it, she got sick whenever she felt she wasn’t the centre of attention. So not really relevant. Forget I spoke.”

But Streibl was already quite good at forgetting Snaipe had spoken, or even still was. “The steward said we will not be at Mersina until tomorrow night. I will ask if the wireless operator can . . .”

It sounded complicated, reaching a wireless station in Constantinople or, with luck, a ship in Mersina harbour, then telegraph via the Railway HQ or sub-HQ . . . In a few years’ time the world might be gossiping as between adjacent chairs in a club – that was the sort of bright future O’Gilroy believed in, anyway. Ranklin had his doubts; if it happened at all, did he really want to listen to club bores on a global scale?

* * *

Some two hundred nautical miles behind and catching up, the Vanadis was bouncing along through what O’Gilroy thought was a tempest and Corinna a bright, if chilly, sunny day. He spent much of the time in his cabin – being sick, Corinna suspected – but it took more than that to overcome his Army and Irish habit of taking every meal offered.

So at least they met at the dining table. “It’s all in the mind, you know,” she said, knowing that wouldn’t help but unable not to say it.

He just grunted. Repentant, she said: “I’m sure the Captain and Chief Engineer would be happy for you to look at the engines if you liked. Shall I ask?”

It was a canny offer: Corinna, too, knew his love of machinery and belief that it would bring an earthly paradise.

“And the bridge, and the wireless office and . . . the steering gear . . .” When she repented, she didn’t stint.

* * *

Perhaps it is a maritime tradition that a fine day at sea should be spent inspecting the ship’s stuffiest, smelliest compartments. Or possibly this is when the officers have time to spare for the passengers. Anyway, after lunch Ranklin, Lady Kelso and Streibl were given a briefer tour of the Loreley, just the bridge and engine room. She was impressed by everything and charmed everybody; Streibl asked some mechanically intelligent questions about the steam engine, but what struck Ranklin was the number of stokers needed in the boiler-room. All technical matters aside, the sight of those men sweating over their shovels, and knowing that when they reached port they must go on doing so to “coal ship”, made a powerful case for switching to oil fuel.

And that, after all, was why he was here. That, and the fact that the world’s greatest Empire didn’t include a drop of useable fuel oil.

* * *

Corinna had got O’Gilroy’s lost overcoat and headgear replaced from the ship’s slop chest so that he could now look like an out-of-work sailor in dark-blue pea-jacket, muffler and peaked cap. Could because she had only once got him to put it on and take a walk on deck; now they sat at the round table in the saloon, each with a patch of paperwork spread in front. “Just like two children doing their assignments,” Corinna commented, sitting back and stretching. “When do I get to mark yours?”

O’Gilroy looked up, hesitated, then said: “One thing mebbe ye don’t know ’bout this Railway business-”

“I’m sure there’s a lot I don’t know and I prefer it that way.”

“This bit isn’t our doing . . . Ye know the money, the gold, ye saw at whatever-it-was bank? S’for a ransom on these Railway fellers, if’n Lady Kelso don’t get them loosed.”

“You mean this bandit is demanding a ransom? Then he’s not going to settle for sweet talk from Lady Kelso. Does she know all this?”

“Surely. But seems she gave her promise to the Foreign Secretary, so she’s got to go through with it.”

“Poor woman . . . Bloody men,” she added unspecifically. She thought about it, then: “But that isn’t what you want to reach Matt to tell him . . . What is it?”

“I think it’s that the Germans’n’Turks, they’re planning to take artillery up into the mountains to deal with this bandit feller.”

“Artillery into the mountains? Can they do that?”

“Mountain guns, special ones made so’s they break down into mebbe half a dozen loads ye pack onto mules . . .” Loads that could also be boxed up and manhandled into a luggage van, an ox-cart, a launch, a yacht. “Our Army uses ’em in India, so probly the Germans make ’em, too.”

“Are you saying that they could start bombarding this bandit hideout when Lady Kelso and Matt are still there?”

“I wasn’t saying jest that, but . . . mebbe . . .”

Corinna took a careful breath, then pushed aside her own papers and assumed a formal, almost judicial, manner. “Right. I am now in session. You may tell me everything you know’s going on, or can even guess at.”

“I thought there was things ye didn’t want to know-”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

“Well, setting aside what the Captain and me’s supposed to be-”

“No, not setting that aside, because I’m sure that’s fundamental to this whole damn snake-dance. I want a full confession from you, Conall, and in case it helps, I’ll make the position – your position – quite clear: you are not going to get off this yacht at Mersina until you have convinced me you’ve told me all you know or think you know.

“And,” she added, “I am going to take a lot of convincing. You may start now.”

* * *

It was the steward’s idea that English ladies (particularly Ladies) took tea at four o’clock, rather than any hint from Lady Kelso, that had them sipping from the German Navy’s best china when Streibl came in with a handful of papers. “I have been sending and getting messages . . . One is for you, Mr Snaipe . . . Had you lost your servant?”

“Has he been found?”

Streibl recoiled from Ranklin’s vehemence. “Er, ja, yes . . . The message is that he will try to catch us up.”

So O’Gilroy was all right – alive, anyway. “I’m sorry I jumped at you . . . Been a bit worried, you know . . . Feel such a fool, losing a servant . . . Er, it didn’t say any more? – how he’s going to catch up?”

Streibl re-read the message. “Only your Embassy told the vice-consulate at Mersina, and they told the Railway company.”

Anyway, O’Gilroy was alive. Lady Kelso leant forward and laid her hand on Ranklin’s. “You were worried, weren’t you?”

“Well . . . Constantinople isn’t London, or Dublin.”

Lady Kelso nodded sympathetically, then turned to Streibl. “Would you like a cup of. . . well, more-or-less tea? No? And is there any news about Miskal Bey? He hasn’t let the hostages go?”

Streibl looked startled. “Was? Er, no, not at all. . . He says, I think, that he will kill them if he does not have the ransom in two days.”

“You think?” she demanded.

Streibl had been reading from a form; now he consulted it again. “That is what it says. In two days.” He checked the paper yet again. “It is most sad. For their families . . . It is most important.” He looked puzzled, then embarrassed, then hurried out.

Lady Kelso looked at Ranklin. “If he is threatening to kill the hostages, and the ransom is . . . spoiled, then he may kill them. Oh Lord.”

“I thought you didn’t think Miskal behaved like this.”

“I still don’t, but now I don’t know . . .”

“But I do know that Streibl’s holding something back, or lying, or both.” It was an unSnaipeish comment, but it seemed more important to calm Lady Kelso’s fears. “He was reading that stuff, telling us what he’s been told to tell us. He’s out of his depth in this business; his job’s steel rails, not people.”

She certainly agreed with that. “Then what do you think-?”

“Just that we should wait and see.”

She thought for a moment. “Perhaps we should-”

“Neither of us is going to search his cabin for those telegrams. Anyway, he’ll probably keep them in his pocket.”

She smiled, almost impishly. “He does seem to keep everything there. All right. We’ll wait and see.”

* * *

O’Gilroy was saying: “. . . and the way I see it, in the end they know there’s only one way of dealing with this feller Miskal, and that’s put him out of business permanent. I’m guessing, mind, but it seems good sense, they’ll wait until he’s got the ransom and let go the engineers, then . . .”

“And you think this is being run by a man Matt knows?”

“Not knows, exactly. Not met. Ye know he was fighting on the Greek side in that war in 1912? He was up against a Turkish gunner commander they called the Tornado, and that was all the Captain knew of him. So then there was this feller Zurga coming from Germany in the train with us, an Army officer but hiding it, we couldn’t reckon what he was doing. Turns out it’s the same feller, the Tornado, and him a gunner. And in the luggage van all these boxes, so now I reckon that’s his guns, mountain guns.”

“Where are they now, those guns?”

“Went on ahead by train to t’other side of the mountains. Mebbe in place by now, I don’t know how far they have to be carried by mule.”

“So they won’t have to go through this Railroad camp?”

“Mebbe the Captain’s gone by boat so’s he won’t meet the guns on the train. And mebbe there’s another camp on the north side-”

“There’ll be one wherever the Railroad’s reached on either side.”

“Sure . . . But guns alone won’t do it,” O’Gilroy said. “Never mind what the Captain would say. If’n that monastery’s like I’d think it is, thick stone, those little mountain popguns won’t knock it down. Not in a month. Not in a year. The bandit fellers’ll hide in the cellars – I never yet heard of a monastery didn’t have cellars – all snug and sound.”

“Then-”

“-only they can’t do that if there’s troops likely to come charging in the front door. So they’ve got to stick their heads up and start getting them blowed off. That’s when ye get the difference between a monastery and a fort: a fort’s built to be shooting back when it’s being shot at.”

Corinna nodded. “So there’ll have to be troops as well. How many?”

“Dunno. Haven’t seen the place. But not less’n a hundred, a half-company, anyways.”

“A hundred soldiers . . . There’s probably garrisons in the towns around there, Mersina and Adana.” She assembled the thoughts in her mind. “And how much of this d’you think Beirut Bertie knows?”

“I reckon he started the whole kidnap-ransom end of it. . . He didn’t know ’bout Zurga, not before he left, but the woman keeps his house in Constantinople, she worked it out and was going to telegraph him. Now I wouldn’t be knowing how much she can say in a telegram, with the Turks reading it-”

Corinna shook her head, dismissing the problem. “If she can go through the French Embassy they can legally use code to their vice-consulate in Mersina. They might even get direct to the ship he’s on if it’s a French one, and it could be. One way or another, I think we assume he knows what she knows. Did that include the artillery?”

O’Gilroy swayed his head uncertainly. “Dunno . . . I don’t think she knew Zurga was a gunner, jest an officer. And anyways she’d have to guess about them boxes being mountain guns, like I did, but – begging yer pardon – it doesn’t seem a thing a woman would guess at.”

Normally Corinna bristled at remarks like that, but in all honesty she couldn’t this time. She herself wouldn’t have guessed it in a month of Sundays. “Then what d’you think Bertie will do?”

“If he’s going there, it’s surely to see Miskal. Now he can warn him they’re setting Zurga on him, but not about the guns.”

Corinna nodded. “Then – I hate to say this – doesn’t that make Bertie at least temporarily a good guy and if we meet, you’re going to have to postpone hitting him with an axe?”

O’Gilroy nodded – grudgingly, since Bertie’s attitude to him wouldn’t have changed.

“And what,” she went on, “are you going to do?”

“Get to the Railway camp and warn the Captain – if’n he hasn’t gone to see Miskal already.”

She considered this. “But if he has gone, our Turkish chums could start bombarding the place when they’re still there?”

“Like I say, I’m not thinking it’s likely-”

“How do you know? You only have to make one wrong guess and she’ll be blown to bits.”

“Now jest hold on.” O’Gilroy felt he had been pushed, not fallen, into a trap. “The way I see it, the whole idea’s they get their own fellers away from there, that’s what the ransom’s for, before they start shooting. And getting them away means getting her’n the Captain away, too.”

Corinna was silent for a while. Then she said, more gently: “I spend my life helping people put together deals – agreements. Because that’s what they are, they want to agree because it’ll be good for both of them. And these are honourable people I’m talking about, doing business in a familiar way, wanting everything clear and above-board. And have you any idea how much sweat and fine print we have to go through and then how often it goes wrong in some particular?

“Now, here we have a rather different situation, on account it starts with a kidnapping and shooting, which is not a normal basis for agreement. But on top of that, there’s you and Matt trying to foul it up, and Bertie trying to foul it up, and now this Tornado character bringing in artillery and troops to foul it up de luxe and -” she threw her hands in the air “- just don’t tell me this is all somehow going to go right. This could be a catastrophe to make Noah think he just stepped in a puddle!”

But O’Gilroy didn’t seem as impressed as she’d intended him to be, and she realised how pointless it was to talk to him of agreements and above-board deals. His life simply hadn’t been like that.

“All right,” she said. “But can we agree there’s things we can’t know or guess at?”

O’Gilroy shrugged and then nodded.

“Still,” she conceded, “I do know the ransom is real. So I dare say we can count on them getting that to Miskal.”

“And probly getting it back again,” O’Gilroy suggested. “Shells don’t kill gold.”

No, she thought, this is not my world of gentlemen’s agreements.

* * *

Even with the Captain and First Officer joining them at dinner they were still a small camp-fire group eating in the wide desert of a dining-saloon that could have seated twenty easily. Watching Lady Kelso as she smiled, listened, and commented in good German, Ranklin tried to imagine her at a real camp-fire in a real desert. He couldn’t, though he was sure she would have been equally at home. The calm weather, presumably why the officers were there, had also been good for the cooking and German white wine didn’t suffer from storms anyway.

Streibl was nervous and self-contained throughout the meal. Ranklin left him to the First Officer opposite, who tried hard but didn’t get much beyond With Survey and Shovel Through East Africa. They went up to the saloon proper for coffee, one cigarette and one glass of cognac, then the officers clicked their heels and left. Almost immediately Streibl decided he had some papers to read, and went to his cabin.

“Yes, I don’t think he does want us cross-questioning him,” Lady Kelso said. “What on earth does a man like that read himself to sleep with?”

“Der Kinderbuch von five-eighths hexagonal nuts and bolts?”

She laughed. “Of course.” She looked around the big, officially comfortable, saloon. It was arranged like a club-room, for a large party that might want to split into smaller conversational groups; unfocussed. “Can’t we make this place look a bit more cheerful?” She turned on the only light that wasn’t on already, a standing lamp bolted to the floor near a long leather sofa. Ranklin found a panel of switches and played around with them until he had the sofa isolated in light and just a few small wall lamps glowing between the portholes.

“Well done,” she pronounced, and sat at one end of the sofa. She didn’t sprawl as Corinna would have done, just relaxed her neat little body. “So we’ll be at the Railway camp by this time tomorrow-”

“That’s the plan. And until then, we wait and see.” He sat down at the other end of the sofa.

“Then let’s forget it for tonight. Tell me about yourself, Patrick.”

Of course, most men would jump at such an opening. But for Ranklin it meant dredging up a lot of fiction about Patrick Snaipe and being alert for errors. And Ranklin didn’t want to be alert; he just wanted to slump, conscious of her as a woman just a few feet away.

You do remember she’s twenty years your senior, don’t you? said some small inner voice. So what? – as Corinna would say. Ah, I’m glad you mentioned Corinna – Corinna is going to marry this French banker, we’ve said our good-byes, I’ll probably never see her again.

“Are you married?” she prompted.

“Me? No. I-” He was going to say something about Army officers marrying late, which was true, before he remembered he wasn’t an Army officer now. “I . . . just never . . .”

“Not every marriage is the right shape for the people in it. . . Did you meet that Mrs Finn at the British Embassy?”

“Er, yes. Yes, I did.”

“I believe she’s a widow, but she’s the kind who could make a happy marriage because I’m sure she’d stand up and say what she wants. You can only accommodate so far . . . then you begin to lose what you really are yourself. Of course, most women aren’t encouraged to have real selves . . . And most men don’t want them to have, either.

“Mind you,” she added, reverting to Corinna, “she could also make a disastrous one, far worse than an accommodating wife.”

Ranklin didn’t feel comfortable talking about Corinna. He wanted her out of his mind, leaving him in the present of that (fairly) cosy saloon, glass in hand, with the ship swaying and throbbing gently around them; not intrusively, just enough to remind them their surroundings were alive.

“Was your -” he’d been going to say “second marriage”, but had it been only that? Had she “married” any of the Arab sheikhs she was credited with? “- your marriage to Viscount Kelso what you hoped for?”

She smiled reminiscently. “He was a sweet old thing. And pretty shrewd, not the fool he . . . well, his family thought he was. I think his son Henry never grew out of that stage when boys think their fathers are embarrassing old dunces. He – more likely his wife – had packed James off to visit the Holy Land – that’s where we met – I think hoping it would kill him. So Henry could inherit the title and get on with a political career in the Lords. Political career!” She snorted delicately. “I suppose they might have put him in charge of Dog Licences if the Liberals hadn’t swept the board, I think he could just about tell the difference between a cat and a dog. Though one can never be sure, since he married a mixture of both.”

Ranklin grinned, despite a warning feeling that Snaipe should have looked shocked. “And were you happy?”

She didn’t answer immediately. She sipped her cognac, cocked her head, looked slowly around the saloon. At last she said: “I was content, I think. I thought all of this -” the wave of her hand might have encompassed the whole of the Near East “- was behind me. I ought to settle down to a dignified old age – as near as I could get, anyway.

“I was pretty good at being accommodating by then, too,” she added. She looked at her glass. She had placed herself with the light behind her, outlining her delicate profile, putting her face in soft shadow when she looked towards him. And why not? She really was deliciously seductive in a plain blouse and skirt; she didn’t need the dressiness she had favoured on the train.

“And why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.

“You’re a very attractive woman.”

She smiled and looked away. “A lot of men, when they know something of my past, they make certain assumptions about me and just – try to – pounce.” She looked back at him. “But not you. Does that mean you’re an honourable man, Patrick?”

“Perhaps they think they are.” It was certainly “honourable” to categorise women in such a way; only dishonourable to get it wrong.

“But you?” she persisted.

“I think I used to be, once. I tried, anyway.”

She thought about that for moment, then asked: “Could you get me just a spot more cognac, please?”

He fetched the decanter and when he had refilled her glass, she laid a hand on his wrist. “I don’t think you’re really what you pretend to be. No, I’m not prying; I prefer you being a bit . . . mysterious. But if you wanted to, you could take the Honourable Patrick Snaipe’s clothes off, as it were, just for tonight.”

He took her hand and the pull she gave was so slight it could have been ignored without offence. Accommodating.

* * *

On Vanadis O’Gilroy was taking an after-dinner cognac, too. Actually, he was just finishing his second, or he might have felt too circumspect to ask: “Are ye going to marry this French banker feller, then?”

Billings had laid out his saloon far more personally, and for smaller groups. They were at the far end of it; in a house it would have been around a fireplace, but here it was just an alcove of dried flowers. Corinna, stretched out on a sofa, looked up from her book. “Yes, of course I am. Have you met Edouard? – no, probably not.”

“Never at all . . . Ah, ’tis a good thing.” He nodded. “Ye ought to settle down.”

She sat up and swung her feet to the floor. “What d’you mean, settle down? It’s as much a merging of interests, banking interests.”

“So that’s the way of it, is it?” He nodded again; a marriage that blended two plots of land to form one viable farm was understandable, too.

“I’ll become a full, paid-up partner in Pop’s Bank and in the merged one, if we go ahead on that.”

“Ye mean, jest the same as yer husband?”

“Of course just the same.”

“If ye say so.” The disbelief in his voice was tangible.

“Now look: as far as capital and clients go I’ll be bringing in just as much of a stake as he will. And I’ve just as much experience as- Why the hell do I have to explain myself to you?”

“Ye don’t. Jest, I never knew a farm that worked with two farmers on it, is all.”

“We’re not talking about farms.”

“Sure. Must be different entirely.”

“You think just because Edouard’s a man – Did Matt put you up to this?”

“Himself? He never said a word, ’cept that yer marrying this feller.”

“I don’t believe you.” But she did; she just wanted to annoy him as much as he was annoying her.

It didn’t work; he only shrugged philosophically. “Anyways, I think yer doing the right thing. Ye had yer bit of fun with the Captain, and-”

“It wasn’t just a bit of fun! I-” So now she’d got her argument firmly facing both ways. “And what fucking business is it of yours, anyway?”

There, she’d done it: shocked him. But only by descending to bar-room language. She felt furious, and ashamed and. . . . furious. If she’d been shorter, she could have flounced out; with her height, she had to sweep. And if she’d gone onto the deck she’d have frozen, so it had to be down the curling steps to the cabin deck, and going down was ignominious. So she reached her cabin in no better temper. Even slamming the door didn’t help.

Damn it, she was going to marry Edouard. Even if Conall O’Gilroy . . . well, even if he approved of it. What the hell did she care about his opinion? He was so conventional, apart from being a spy and a gunman. And that went for Matt Ranklin, too. Just let them come around and see, ten years from now, if she wasn’t happily married and an equal partner in the merged bank.

Ten years of being married to that man?

* * *

Her body was smaller than . . . More yielding, not leading, but instantly responsive to his every move, taking and multiplying his fierce joy . . . A small voice kept asking What did he think he was doing? But he wasn’t thinking now, only doing . . .