Spy’s Honour

21

Kiel was boisterously overcrowded during the biggest event of its year, which meant there wouldn’t be as much as a mousehole left to rent. Nor were there any motor taxis: they simply hadn’t reached Kiel yet. So by the time they had packed themselves and their bags into a cab, Ranklin was reduced to clinging limply to his James Spencer identity and taking everything else one step at a time. The first step was the vice-consul.

Only, at that time of the evening, he wasn’t there and Herr Kessler was. “You are of Herr Cross a long-term friend?”

“Ah, yes,” Ranklin agreed, hoping one lunch covered the idea. “I was.”

“He is dead.”

“That’s why I’m here. Has his father arrived?”

“Yes. He is not here. He with Herr Sartori eats.”

The Sartori family clearly had a whole fistful of fingers in the pie of Kiel, being both British and American vice-consuls as well as Lloyd’s agents, before you started counting the shipping interests and incomes housed in their solid, dark waterfront offices. Kessler was just some senior clerk, but he had the stout unflustered dignity that comes with working for a long-established firm. And death was just another, probably not unfamiliar, commodity.

“Do you wish to see the police report?” he offered. “Herr Cross did not wish to see.”

Ranklin could imagine that the details of a beloved son’s violent end might lack appeal, but took the two-page document for himself.

“It must not this office leave,” Kessler warned.

So Ranklin stood at one of the high ledger desks in an empty office and picked his way carefully through the report. At least the police side of it was clear and concise: the Nachtwachter at the (new) Holtenau locks had telephoned the local police at 1.43 a.m. They arrived at 2.02, helped get the body out of the lock, and called the Kiel police at 2.17. Hauptmann Lenz arrived from Kiel at 2.39 and confirmed identity of the body (so a police captain, a big fish in a small city like Kiel, already knew Cross; that was bad news). Body sent to the Lazarett by 3.15, a cable sent to Cross’s parents’ home by the vice-consul as soon as the telegraph office opened at 8, medical report received at 1.30 p.m.

It all looked too neat and precise, but so did any report, including hundreds Ranklin himself had written. He copied all the times down without believing they were more than approximate, and moved onto the medical details. After ten minutes chewing his empty pipe and guessing at German versions of medical Latin, he deduced that Cross had broken almost every bone in his body, but predominantly his arms, skull and kneecaps, ruptured most internal organs but died – and was there a hint of expertise triumphant here? – of asphyxiation due to inhaling water and blood. Water in an empty lock?

He gnawed his pipe some more, wrote a few more notes, and took the report back to Herr Kessler.

“You understand?” Kessler asked.

“I think so. When will Herr Cross come back?”

“He does not come back. He stays at the Jachtklub or Hotel Hansa.”

“Thank you.”

“Please.”

Kiel harbour was a long inlet with the shipyards on the far, east, side, and most of the town and the docks on the west. Quite apart from the regatta, it was a busy place, the docksides lined with small steamers and Baltic trading schooners, the water crammed with homing fishing boats, ferries and important-acting motor launches. The Yacht Club, which Ranklin decided to try first once he had routed O’Gilroy and their baggage out of the nearest tavern, lay further out, almost on the edge of town and halfway to the Canal mouth and Holtenau.

“How’s it looking?” O’Gilroy asked, once they were clattering north in a cab.

“Good and bad.” He gave a rough outline of the report, adding: “The fact that they gave it to our vice-consul – in effect, to our Foreign Office – suggests it’ll stand up to scrutiny.”

“Sure, but is it the report they put in their own files?”

And come to think of it, Ranklin realised that the police and medical reports must originally have been separate. “Umm, yes. Well, the Canal and its locks aren’t secret, but they’re government property so it’s a suspicious place to be and a suspicious time to be there.”

“Did ye find out how easy it is to get to it?”

“No, but we’ll have a look tomorrow. The Navy probably wants a report from the Bureau so we’ll need all sorts of useless facts to pad it out. But what worries me more just now is Mr Cross Senior. He’s never heard any talk about dear old chum, Jim Spencer.”

“With being in the Navy, the boy’d be away a whole lot and making all sorts of friends,” O’Gilroy said sagely. “Anyhow, best mumble and be short on words. Ye know? – just like an Englishman.”

The big bright windows of the Yacht Club gazed out across its railed garden of well-clipped shrubs, across the harbour road, and onto a gently swaying plantation of bare-masted yachts. And a larger-than-life statue of Krupp the Cannon King gazed with them, justifiably, since he had paid for it all.

The front rooms were all laughter and loud talk. In a small, quiet back room, Mr Cross, seventyish and with a sad spaniel face and big white moustache, half got up to shake Ranklin’s hand and say: “Very good of you to come,” without much meaning it.

The other two men introduced themselves: Kapitanleutnant Reimers, slim with a sharp imperial beard in uniform mess dress, and police Hauptmann Lenz, a burly man of about forty who, oddly, had a more weatherbeaten face than Reimers the sailor.

Ranklin sat down. Cross went on staring at a full glass of schnapps, then said wearily: “You knew my boy?”

“We hadn’t met for some time, until the other day in Amsterdam. And when I heard … I still can’t believe it. How could it happen?”

Cross obviously wasn’t going to say anything, so Lenz had to. “On Saturday,” he announced formally, “there was much drinking …” Cross shook his head; Lenz went on: “Perhaps Leutnant Cross also – here at the Club he was with friends, then they to the Weinkeller went. I do not know why he is at Holtenau. The night-watch telephoned.”

“And you went out there?” Ranklin asked, adding quickly: “I saw the report at the vice-consul’s. You knew Lieutenant Cross already?”

“Do you speak German well?” Reimers asked. His English was far more fluent than Lenz’s and, oddly to Ranklin’s ear, had a slight American accent.

“Just schoolboy level,” Ranklin said, trying for a charming smile.

A servant quietly put an unasked-for glass of schnapps in front of Ranklin and three of them drank with polite formal gestures. Cross did nothing.

“I had met Leutnant Cross when he visited here before,” Lenz said firmly, looking squarely at Ranklin.

Ranklin just nodded, closing the subject, and asked Cross: “Is there anything I can do, sir? Anything at all?”

“Very good of you,” Cross mumbled automatically, but then roused himself. “Yes, there’s one thing: if you could go through his kit in his room, get it packed up and sent home – and if there’s anything – like letters, you know – you think his mother shouldn’t … I can’t face it.”

“Of course.” It was what you did for the battlefield dead: sifted out letters, photographs, perhaps a diary, that didn’t fit the image of a young hero so heroically dead.

But he instinctively glanced at Reimers for permission, and got an official nod, confirming his feeling that the Naval officer was in charge. But in charge of what?

Cross levered himself to his feet. “I’ll get back to the hotel. Will you be here in the morning?”

“I don’t yet know where I’m staying …”

Reimers said: “You can take Lieutenant Cross’s room, if that suits you.”

That was a stroke of luck. No, it wasn’t: it kept Ranklin where Reimers could find him.

And it confirmed Reimers’ influence: Club rooms would be rare pearls in Kiel Week, even to Club members. But it still suited Ranklin – particularly the idea of getting at Cross’s papers.

“That’s very kind of you. Perhaps the Club could suggest a small hotel for my man-servant?”

That flummoxed them. Perhaps they hadn’t thought of a spy (and he must remember they would suspect him if they had suspected Cross) bringing along a valet. That might reduce the suspicion. Anyway, another nod from Reimers dumped the problem on Lenz.

They escorted Cross to the entrance hall and into a waiting cab, then got O’Gilroy summoned from down among the kitchens. Since Reimers was quite blatantly listening, Ranklin had to stay in Character.

“Gorman, I’m staying here tonight to sort Dickie Cross’s things. They’re putting you into some hotel. Have you got enough money?”

“I wouldn’t be knowing, sir.” O’Gilroy did mournful truculence infuriatingly well.

“Here’s a double crown, then. It’s worth about a pound and I expect plenty of change, And don’t go off boozing in the waterfront bars. They may speak English, but they’re no place for you while you’re in my service. How you behave reflects on me just as much as the state of my shoes does. I shan’t need you until 8.30 tomorrow, but I expect you on the dot and sober. Good night.

“These Irish,” Ranklin complained, once O’Gilroy had gone off with Lenz, “they’re completely lost once they’re abroad. Or they behave as if they’re in the jungle.”

“You have not had him long?”

“I haven’t been home long.”

A Club servant picked up Ranklin’s bags and Reimers led the way out: the room, it appeared, was next door in a large annexe covered with gable roofs, turrets, bay windows, wooden-railed balconies and all the other trimmings of a grand German guesthouse.

The room itself was high-ceilinged if not very big, with heavy curtains hiding the view east across the Harbour. And there were enough of Cross’s belongings scattered about to give it an occupied look.

“Put them down anywhere,” Ranklin told the servant. “Don’t bother to unpack.” He wanted nothing disturbed until he could do it himself.

Reimers dismissed the servant but showed no sign of following. In fact, he promptly sat down in a comfortable flowered-chintz chair and took out a small cigar. “Do you mind? Thank you. You don’t live in London, then?”

“Oh, no. India. Lahore.”

“And you work for the Government?”

“I was in the Civil Service until a few years ago. D’you know India?”

“I’m sorry to say, no. Only America.” Since Germany’s few colonies were all in Africa or the Pacific, Reimers’s sea-going career sounded rather misdirected. “And what do you work at now?”

“I supply stuff to the Government,” Ranklin said casually, knowing how that would strike Reimers, although James Spencer probably wouldn’t have. He had confessed to being a Kaufmann, a merchant, definitely not of the officer class. No matter that Krupp himself had been a Kaufmann, nor that this Club, the whole sport of yachting, existed only because of rich merchants obeying the Kaiser’s drang nach the sea. The Prussian officer class wanted no part of such nonsense.

And absurdly, Ranklin wanted to wink and confide: “I’m only pretending; really, I’m an officer.” Perhaps Prussian and English attitudes weren’t all that different.

To his surprise, Reimers just nodded. “Government contracts? A good foundation for any business. If you don’t rely on them too much.”

Turning to the corner washbasin to scrub off the day’s travel, Ranklin felt unsettled by Reimers’ refusal to be a typical officer. And increasingly wary of him. As he dried himself, he looked around the room: there was a large sealed envelope on the table by the window.

“That is what Hauptmann Lenz took off the body,” Reimers said. “Mr Cross senior had it sent up here.” He stayed where he was as Ranklin opened the envelope, so presumably he’d seen it all before.

Anyway, there was very little to see: some coins, a packet of cigarettes, a box of matches, a broken watch, some bank-notes and a restaurant bill. Clearly, all the papers had got wet: they were crumpled and stained and the cigarettes had dried to a solid cake.

“Damp? In a dry lock?”

“No lock’s ever really dry. The bottom is thirteen metres below the sea, and with rain and seepage … They keep pumping it out, but …”

Ranklin nodded. Just a few inches of water would do nothing to cushion a fifty-feet fall, just add the final touch of asphyxiation to a fast-dying body.

The watch appeared to have stopped at 1.45 (wasn’t that about the time the night watchman had spotted Cross’s body?) but when he picked it up, the minute hand swung loosely all round the dial. So much for the watch as a clue: that would never have happened to a proper detective, he thought sourly.

There were two 100-mark notes, the bill was from the local Ratsweinkeller for three dinners on the Saturday night – and that was all. No passport, card case, wallet, keys – none of the innocent freight that cluttered his own pockets. He was about to ask if this were really all, but then didn’t. Reimers wouldn’t like the implication.

While he was there he opened the table drawer – and found the answer: passport, wallet and all the rest. But it was an answer that posed a new question: had Cross stripped for action, as it were, on his last night?

“What was Lieutenant Cross wearing when he was found?” he asked casually.

“I can’t say.”

“Then probably he’s still wearing it. I hope you cleaned it up a bit before his father saw him.”

“The Club gave the police a suit and other things for the body,” Reimers said stiffly.

“What a good idea.” One of the papers, when unfolded, turned out to be a 200-mark bond for a local land development company. What would Cross want with such a thing? He hurried his thoughts, trying to think if there was an incriminating aspect to it, in which case he shouldn’t mention it, or … He recognised that the moment for showing surprise had passed, so just dropped it back into the drawer and went around the room collecting other bits and pieces.

There were only a couple of shilling-edition English novels (neither of them on the popular German-invasion-of-Britain theme, thank God), British and German yachting magazines, a new Baedeker Guide to Northern Germany (which he planned to keep for himself), and a hectographed list of visiting big yachts on Club paper.

He also wondered how to get rid of Reimers. He considered asking if Mrs Reimers had run off with the window-cleaner, or whether the bailiffs had taken the bed, but before he could think of something more diplomatic, Reimers asked: “Have you visited much of Europe?”

“Not on this trip, not yet. Just Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels so far. I thought of going on east, Vienna and so forth, unless there looks like being a war down there.”

“Do you think there will be?”

“Me? – haven’t a notion, old boy. But Emperor Franz Josef doesn’t seem to have much grasp on his Empire, these days.”

“I think all Empires of many races have problems today.”

That was probably a jibe at India and the rest of the British Empire, but Ranklin just said: “Very profound. Wise of you to have an Emperor and no Empire.”

Reimers’s politeness became controlled. “I do not advise you to say that to Hauptmann Lenz, who served His Imperial Majesty in the Schutztruppen of the Cameroons.”

It was no surprise that Lenz had been an army officer – just about all German police officers had to have been – but few came from the tough school of African soldiering. He asked: “What’s his job here?”

“Lenz? He is head of the detective bureau – and, at this time, most concerned with the safety of His Imperial Majesty. And,” he added, “other royal visitors, of course.”

Ranklin had quite forgotten that the Kaiser would have to be around, Kiel Week being his own invention. Probably his steam yacht was parked out in the harbour right now. And had there been a whisper of warning? – that anything happening in Kiel this week was serious?

Ranklin started piling Cross’s clothes on the bed and sorting through the pockets. “And what’s your job?”

“Lieutenant Cross was found on Imperial property that is not open to the public.”

“And what do you make of that?”

“I do not know. Do you?”

“D’you think he was spying?” James Spencer was turning out to be rather tart and blunt. Which might be useful, as long as he didn’t get Spencer thrown into jail.

“Why should we think an officer and a gentleman was spying?” Reimers asked smoothly, if a little belatedly.

“Wasn’t that what you were hinting at? You can’t have thought Dickie was trying to steal your locks. Not even pick them.” He chuckled at Spencer’s wit.

Reimers stood up, walked to the window and pulled aside a curtain to show the fairground lights of the steam yachts moored in the harbour. “It is Kiel Week. There are ships from all Europe and America also. They are all welcome, and welcome to this Club and this city. Why should we think they are spying?”

Ranklin stared out. “Impressive. No, I dare say they aren’t all spying. Sorry I brought it up. Captain Lenz thought he’d been drinking.”

Reimers let the curtain fall back. “Perhaps. But you know him better than Hauptmann Lenz: what do you think?”

Ouch. Then, airily: “Oh, Dickie could take a jar or two, but in company … I say!” he grabbed for the restaurant receipt. “Look, it says Abendessen for three. So he ate his last meal with two other chaps. Now, why didn’t Lenz find who they were and ask them what happened?”

“Their names were Younger and Kay, both young Englishmen and small yacht racers. They say they all stayed drinking at the Ratsweinkeller until eleven o’clock. Then Lieutenant Cross went to the lavatory – and did not come back. They waited, they looked for him, then they went back to their hotel – the Deutscher Kaiser, very close. That is all they know.”

“Oh.” Spencer’s triumph was only matched by his despondency. And now truculence: “Then why the devil didn’t Lenz tell Mr Cross?”

“He told him before you arrived.”

“Oh. Well – didn’t he have any other friends around as well?”

“Sure. He had one other friend.” Reimers took out his pocket-book and passed over a folded piece of writing paper, crumpled and stained like the banknotes and restaurant receipt. It said in large script:

Kiel, June 28

Ich bin gekommen im Namen der Freiheit von der Tyrannie

Dragan el Vipero

.

The writing was slow and careful, perhaps uneducated. “And who is this Dragan who comes in the name of freedom from tyranny?”

“You haven’t heard of Dragan el Vipero? But it is clear that Lieutenant Cross had – no?”

Ranklin shrugged. June 28 had been Saturday, Cross’s last day. “And this was on his body, too?”

Reimers nodded. “But we did not show it to his father. We did not want him to know his son knew such a monster.”

Dragan the Viper certainly sounded monstrous, but: “What sort of monster? Have you caught him?”

Reimers frowned quickly. “No, he has not been caught yet. I suggest you don’t try to catch – or meet – with him.” He tucked away the note. “This may be evidence, but – we hope not. Good night, Mr Spencer.”

When the door had closed, Ranklin grabbed a pencil and wrote down the names Kay and Younger of the Deutscher Kaiser hotel. Then he sat back and thought. Reimers was almost certainly Naval Counter-intelligence. And he suspected Cross of something, and by now suspected Ranklin/Spencer, too, though that transfer of suspicion had been inevitable. But most of all, Reimers suspected Dragan el Vipero – and who the devil was he!