Spy’s Honour

16

The car didn’t die until they were through the village and coming down into the valley of the Scie, with the lights of little villages strung along the railway to Rouen. Corinna let it roll as far as it would – about half a mile from the nearest village.

“End of the line,” she announced. “Change here for Rouen, Paris and the British Empire. All ashore that’s going ashore. A good brisk walk will soon warm you up.” Watching Ranklin climb, cramped and cold, out of the servants’ seat had put her in a good humour.

O’Gilroy turned off the lamps, Corinna lent him a silk scarf to replace his collar, and they began walking.

After a while she said suddenly: “But if Cort and Clement were really going to kill you – us – it would have looked awful suspicious, wouldn’t it?”

“Not necessarily,” Ranklin said grumpily.

O’Gilroy said: “Ye could make an accident, with our necks broke in a car crash. Or drowned driving into a river. Or burned up.”

“Or hit by a train on a crossing,” Ranklin said in the tone of somebody who’d just had it happen.

“Ah, now that’d be a grand sight to see. Better’n being poisoned from smoking French cigarettes. Begging your pardon, ma’am, but ye don’t happen to smoke yeself?”

“Sorry, no.”

“And even if we’d been shot,” Ranklin wound up, “and they had to explain away bullet-holes, they could have blamed it on French motor bandits.”

“I suppose in your job you carry lists of such thoughts. And I get the general idea – but you think that’s all over?”

Ranklin instinctively looked behind, but there was only darkness. “I hope so. They probably want to get Gunther to hospital. But we did mark the road for them by leaving the car back there.” There hadn’t been anywhere to push it off the road. “I’d rather keep worrying a little longer.”

“Suit yourself.” They came into the village and a patch of light from a busy cafe. “You know something? You two do look kind of funny, outdoors without hats. If anybody asks, you better say you’ve been playing tennis.”

They walked on through the village to the station and found there was a stopping train to Rouen in a quarter of an hour. And yes, monsieur would find a train on to Paris tonight, pas de probleme.

“It would take us longer to find petrol – if there is any – and walk back to the car. And if we are being chased, I’d rather they didn’t catch us out there on the road, alone.”

Corinna seemed about to suggest something, paused, and changed her mind: “Forget the automobile; I’ll tell them where they can find it.” And since she was the daughter of Reynard Sherring, they wouldn’t raise a peep, although they’d certainly raise the bill. Ranklin bought one first-class ticket for Rouen, where Corinna’s maid and luggage were, and two for Paris.

Then she went off to find the ladies’ lavatory: “I was planning for that at the Chateau, too. Now, on a French railroad station. Lord, the things I seem to be doing for your Empire.”

O’Gilroy gave Ranklin a puzzled look. “Are we in so much of a rush now? Ye really think they’re chasing after?”

“We can still wreck the mission if we don’t get the code to Paris tonight – now we’ve got the real code. It was something Gunther said to me in our private chat: that the War House wouldn’t trust the code if it had vanished, from their point of view, for a few hours. Perhaps the War House doesn’t know about the mix-up, but the French’ll have the other two parcels by now and they’ll damn well know. D’you think they’ll trust it if the third copy doesn’t arrive until sometime tomorrow? So they’ll politely ask the War House to make up a new code please, and with two years’ work down the drain the War House will have words with the Bureau, and what the Commander says to us ….”

O’Gilroy shrugged. “’Twasn’t our mix-up. How’d they blame us?”

“Did you leave your brains in your overcoat? And your Army experience?”

“Sorry, Captain. I was forgetting.”

Corinna came back saying: “Don’t ask,” which deeply shocked Ranklin, who wouldn’t have dreamed of asking.

“Are you returning to Paris tomorrow?” Ranklin asked, trying to restore some tone to the conversation.

“That’s right. Are you going home or staying on in Paris for more spying?”

“Really,” Ranklin protested. “Would an agent announce he’s a British Army officer? And I hope we’ve got real agents who wouldn’t get into the mess we did at the Chateau.”

“Oh, I don’t know: I thought it was pretty resourceful, forcing a duel. Just the thing I’d expect spies to do.”

“Once and for all.”

But then O’Gilroy, who’d been thinking and not listening, said: “If ye don’t fancy the train, I could mebbe steal a car and go all the way.”

“O’Gilroy,” Ranklin said with a glare, “has a rather individual sense of humour. And property.”

Nettled, O’Gilroy sighed: “Ah, to hear the English sorrowing about others’ property is like the tiger saying sorry to the goat. Afterwards.”

“I’m glad you boys are maintaining a united front,” Corinna said, now thoroughly unconvinced by Ranklin. “But if it doesn’t offend your professional propriety, we’ll be legalistic and take the train. And speaking of tigers and goats, would either of you have a goat to spare?”

Ranklin puzzled, then realised: “D’you mean you’ve had no dinner?”

“Thanks to getting mad at you and your code.”

Ranklin tried to recall if they’d passed an open food shop (they certainly hadn’t passed a hat shop), but O’Gilroy just turned out his pockets. He came up with a bar of chocolate, some boiled sweets and what looked like two of the General’s tea biscuits.

“Trust an old campaigner,” Corinna said, pouncing. “May I?”

The train dramatised its arrival with a complete symphony of hoots, squeals, rattles and clanks, then sat steaming like a blown horse. It had only three carriages and barely more passengers; nobody was taking day trips to Dieppe’s beaches yet, and boat passengers had their own expresses. They climbed into one of the corridorless first-class compartments, and Corinna plonked her travelling bag on the seat beside her. “Since it seems to be the fashion, does anybody mind if I take off my hat?”

The train gave a preliminary shudder, then the door swung open and Sergeant Clement swarmed in, holding the big military revolver.

He slammed the door and sat in the corner beside it, holding the pistol two-handed on his knees. At the other end of the long seat, O’Gilroy was so rigid that he swayed all in one piece as the train ambled away; his face shone with hatred.

Trying to defuse him, Ranklin said quickly: “I suppose you didn’t think to bring my hat, did you? No? One just doesn’t realise – ”

“I think you have the code-book, Madame,” Clement said to Corinna. “Please to give it to me.”

Corinna glanced at Ranklin for guidance. He seemed faintly exasperated. “For heaven’s sake, man, that’s all over. Why didn’t you run when you had the chance – and the car? You still can: I’m not going to report anything until we reach Paris. Nobody around here would believe us.”

“Please, the code-book.”

Ranklin sighed and nodded to Corinna. She took the still tape-bound book from her bag and tossed it on the seat beside Clement. He took another, the Y code, Ranklin remembered, from his pocket and compared them, then looked suspicious.

“These are not the same. I think you have another.”

Ranklin reached – carefully, because the revolver was watching him – into his own pocket and threw across the third book.

“This also is not the same!” Clement was baffled and by now trebly suspicious. So was Corinna, but she was keeping quiet about it. “You will tell,” Clement demanded, “which is the right code.”

“And you’ll believe me?” Ranklin asked. “What happens next, anyway?”

It was a question Corinna wasn’t sure she wanted answered, and certainly wouldn’t have asked.

“We get out at the next village.”

Ranklin nodded, glancing at O’Gilroy. The staging of the “accident” would start from there. “But why,” he said, “are you still fooling about with these codes? You’d far better spend the time running.”

O’Gilroy’s face twisted into a sour smile. “Running takes money, Captain. And ye’d be surprised how much, oncest others know how bad ye need their help.”

“Free Trade in action,” Corinna murmured.

Of course: with Gunther in no state to help, getting hold of the code was Clement’s one hope of escape. A quick sale of that (or, more sensibly, a copy of it) before it was known to be discredited …

“It won’t be any use,” Ranklin said. “Unless I deliver that code, it’ll be changed. Worthless.”

Clement smiled faintly. “And do you think your government, and also the government in Paris, they will say in the newspapers they have lost a code and must change it?”

No, Ranklin hadn’t believed that, just hoped Clement might.

“But,” Corinna said, “when we’re found dead, they’ll sure as hell print my name. And theirs besides. Captain Ranklin of the British Army, travelling to Paris on official business. Somebody could read that and have time to connect it with the code coming on the market. Because if you think you’re going to go into an embassy and roll out with a hatful of gold five minutes later, you know nothing about getting money out of government officials.”

And at last a twitch of doubt showed on Clement’s bony face. Because in all his years of soldiering, he must have learnt a lot about getting money out of officials: delayed back pay, quibbles over deductions and allotments and dates of promotion. That was one war every soldier had fought.

“But you’re in luck, my friend,” Corinna went on. “You want money, we want our lives. Let’s deal.” She plunged her hand, both hands, into her bag and French banknotes fluttered out like big moths. Ranklin could see they were big denominations, and Clement could recognise them even quicker.

“Here,” she said, “take it, take the lot.” And, with both hands still inside, she thrust the bag out towards Clement. He reached with his free hand and the bag boomed smoke in his face.

He was whirled back into his seat by shock, blinded by smoke, and a moment later had O’Gilroy’s elbow rammed in his face, the pistol wrenched from his hand, lifted above his head.

“Stop!” Ranklin roared, and O’Gilroy paused. The heavy revolver would have burst Clement’s head open. Panting more in anger than breathlessness, O’Gilroy settled the gun in his hand and clicked back the hammer. “Say something interesting, Sergeant. Like how ye file bayonets in half.”

Corinna sat with her eyes shut and holding the bag, which was still pouring smoke, in her lap. “Did I kill him?”

“No, ma’am, jest his hand.” Clement’s left hand was dripping blood and his eyes streaming tears. A hit on the hand always does that, as Ranklin had learnt in school long before he saw it again on the battlefield.

O’Gilroy said: “Ah, Jayzus,” passed the revolver to Ranklin and began wrapping a handkerchief around the hand. Ranklin picked up the bag and emptied out its smouldering papers, gloves, handkerchief, more money – and an elderly brass-inlaid pocket revolver with the unmistakable Colt butt.

“Less than Government calibre,” he said, peering into the muzzle. “And black powder besides.”

“Ye hear that, Sergeant? – ye wasn’t more’n tickled. Proper gun like ye had yerself’d tore yer hand right off. Hold yer arm up, me darling; ye can hurt or bleed, it’s yer own choice.”

Ranklin passed over his own handkerchief to add to the bandaging, then went on standing, swaying slightly, with a pistol in each hand.

“You look like Buffalo Bill in a dime novel,” Corinna said with a shaky smile, then: “I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Don’t,” Ranklin ordered. “There’s enough mess in here already.”

She gave him a look of pure hate, but wasn’t sick. The train slowed and rocked around a curve; peering across the inside of it, Ranklin could see the lights of a station ahead, and took a quick decision.

“You get out here,” he told Clement. He dropped Corinna’s pistol back into her bag and picked up a smoke-stained 500-franc note. “Here – I don’t know how far this’ll get you, but just stay out of our sight for evermore. Unless you want to discuss filed bayonets with O’Gilroy.”

A village station would hardly have enough staff, especially at night, to man both platforms, so they let Clement down onto the track on the empty side.

As the train pulled out again, Corinna began repacking her bag, which had a charred hole the size of a penny at one end.

Ranklin said: “I see now why you don’t mind driving on French roads at night.”

She stared at her pistol as if seeing it for the first time. “I’ve carried this around for years, but never …”

“Why didn’t you give it to one of us earlier?” Ranklin asked gently.

She frowned. “I guess … I thought … God damn it, I don’t know you! Except you go starting and fighting duels and stuff. Maybe I thought if I gave you the gun, you’d shoot somebody and there’d been quite enough …” She lifted her head with her eyes closed and shuddered. “When I got the thing cocked, I thought: maybe I’m going to kill this guy. And I thought: so? he’s going to kill me. Me. And I shot as straight as I could.”

She put the gun in the bag and snapped it shut. “Is that what happens? What you feel?”

Ranklin and O’Gilroy looked at each other, then nodded.

“Mind, why a couple of spies, of all people, don’t carry their own guns and need so much help from me, I’ll never understand.”

“I keep telling you …” Ranklin began.

“I know you do. Aren’t you going to put away your secret codes before someone else walks off with them?”

Ranklin began stuffing the three books into the pockets that didn’t already hold Clement’s revolver.

Corinna watched. “And why three of them – all different?”

Ranklin hesitated, then said: “Two of them are false.” There was no need to explain it hadn’t been planned just that way.

“And the one you gave me, X, is the real one?” O’Gilroy’s eyebrows lifted for a moment, but he said nothing. “Because,” she went on, “it had damn well better be. I didn’t fancy being a messenger, but if I thought I’d just been a decoy duck …”

Ranklin nodded. “X is the real one.”

At Rouen, they saw Corinna into a taxi and had time to buy a different brand of cigarette, since O’Gilroy believed an entire nation couldn’t tolerate the things he had tried at the Chateau. Ranklin, who still had some English tobacco for his pipe, said nothing.

When they were settled, alone, in a rather more first-class compartment than the small train’s, O’Gilroy lit a cigarette, scowled, and said: “So ye did send her off as a decoy duck for them to be chasing after.”

“It might have come to that, if I thought it could gain us more time. But they’d never have caught her.”

“’Cept they would, with her turning round like that to come back and blast ye.”

“Damn fool woman.”

“Yer a hard man, Captain.”

“All right, what code am I supposed to be keeping to? Did I get a foul stain on my honour as a spy?” Ranklin knew his face looked childish in anger, but no longer cared.

“It’s ‘spies’ we are now, is it?”

“Of course it is. All that bloody nonsense about ‘agents’ – we’re spies and that’s all there is to it. And not much bloody good at it, not me, anyway. Nearly getting you killed in a duel.”

“Nearly killed, was I now?” O’Gilroy changed gear into high indignation. “I could’ve bested six of him with one hand tied behind me back – and I did have one hand tied, nearabouts, and turned out there was two of them. If’n ye want me killed, try a regiment of cavalry next time, and a few machine-guns besides.”

“Sorry.”

“Save yer sorrow for the times we lose. We beat them bastards, Captain, and yer own War Office besides. Only – I’m wondering why ye volunteered for such work at all.”

“Don’t worry,” Ranklin muttered. “I’ll stick with the job.”

“I’m not worried, Captain. Knowing yer a man of honour.”