Spy’s Honour

26

By noon, they were waiting on a small wooden jetty that stuck out into the sea just across the road from the Club, among a small crowd that was mostly men in the usual white trousers and blue blazers. Although not vain, Ranklin was horribly conscious of looking wrongly dressed. He was sure his plain dark suit and waistcoat, perfectly cut, left him looking like a debt collector.

A dark mauve – or light purple – motor launch wallowed up to the steps and a sailor with KACHINA across his chest called up: “Any of youse gennlmen for the Kachina?” and then helped them aboard.

The boat was powerful, so they ripped across the crowded anchorage in a swerving charge, but not very big, so they rolled and slammed as they crossed the wakes of other boats. From the fittings fore and aft, Ranklin deduced it was carried on the Kachina’s davits: hence the small size.

Nothing in Ranklin’s background had given him any connection with the sea, but he had an eye for beauty, and those private steam yachts were simply the most lovely powered craft ever built. Indeed, they had no other purpose except to look and feel elegant. Their hulls had the sweeping length and sharp bow of clipper ships, carrying only long low deckhouses, tall raked masts and slim single funnels. Against the column of warships anchored in mid-channel, they looked like debutantes visiting a seedy boxing gym.

Even O’Gilroy, who could usually find a bad word for how the rich spent their money, was moved to comment: “If they was horses, I’d be wanting to back them all.” And the Irish do not joke about race horses.

The purple/mauve colour was repeated on Kachina’s funnel, the lettering on her white hull and the Sherring house flag at the mainmast. They managed the tricky stride to the accommodation ladder slung down the ship’s side and were met at the top by a salute from the ship’s Captain. At least, a white naval-cut uniform with four gold stripes and a goatee beard presumably wasn’t Sherring himself, although you could never be sure with rich men playing sailors. Just behind him was Corinna, grinning broadly.

“Well, hello, Mr Spencer. And good day, Gorman.” She was clearly enjoying the charade – and the day. She wore a plain white dress under a Sherring house-colour blazer, the same colour headband, and tennis shoes. Ranklin felt even more like a debt-collector and glowered internally.

“First, I’ll show you around, then we’ll have a drink,” she announced. “Follow me.”

Inside, the Kachina was even more elegant. Ranklin had expected something of a cross between the Spanish Main and the Bank of England: dark, heavy, ornate. But this was all lightness and light.

“Tell me,” he said, “how much did you have to do with decorating the interior?”

She grinned. “Quite a bit. Pop wanted something like the partners’ room at the bank, but I said this was where he got some value from what he spent on my education, so kindly step aside. And he did.”

“Wise man.”

“Except for his own suite. Maybe you’ll see that later.”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” O’Gilroy asked, “but what would ‘Kachina’ be meaning?”

“It means ‘spirit’ in the Hopi Indian language. There’s hundreds of them in their religion: the spirit of the wind, of the sun, the moon, the eagle. Strictly, Pop should have picked just one, whatever he wanted protecting the boat. But he said that was thinking small: he’d take the lot. And we haven’t had a complaint from a Hopi Indian yet.”

Alone in one of the corridors, she lowered her voice and said: “Say, I don’t know how you’re playing this, with Conall being your valet …”

O’Gilroy said: “Best keep it going. We’re doing it for a good reason and there’s trouble in forgetting it only a moment. I’m his servant and that’s all of it.”

“Okay, if you say so. I’ll get Jake – our chief steward – to look after you. I think they do themselves pretty well.” She hesitated, then asked mischievously: “Is he a good master?”

O’Gilroy rolled his eyes to heaven via the deckhead. “Oh, ma’am, the things I could tell ye and ye wouldn’t believe …”

“I feared so. I know the English.”

She and Ranklin wound up alone on the Main Deck – the top, open-air one – in cane armchairs padded with removable cushions, sipping a mint julep, a drink Ranklin had heard of but never met before. It suited the day perfectly: the gentle sway and creak of the big boat, the small yachts scudding about on some race of their own, the north-west breeze that pushed the stuffiness and smell of the city back on itself.

Corinna pointed out the other private yachts: the Italian Trinacria, waiting for the King and Queen to arrive tomorrow, the Prince of Monaco’s Hirondelle, the Archduke Karl Stefan’s Ui … “And all with their wireless sets buzzing away, trying to keep up with what’s happening in the Balkans. That’s what Pop’s doing right now; you’ll meet him at lunch.” She gazed at the sky. “The air’s fuller of wireless messages than smoke and seagulls. Do wireless messages go through seagulls?”

Ranklin blinked and said he hadn’t thought about it.

She smiled. “When I was a girl, I thought these yachts were just toys, like the fanciest carriages and then automobiles. When I got more involved, I saw what they were really about. On this boat, Pop can be more private than anywhere else, his offices, our homes, anywhere. No journalists on the front steps, no Congressional committees listening at the windows. Just privacy.”

“What did you tell your father about us?”

Her face was very expressive: now it flicked like a lantern slide into serious stillness. “Just what I know, not anything I may have guessed. That you’re a British Army officer but not wearing uniform. Today, when I told him you were coming aboard, I had to say you were using different names. He’s more used to that than you might think. He didn’t say anything. What he thought, I don’t know. You’re just friends of mine. And I suppose I have to guess what you’re doing here?”

Ranklin had thought hard about that already, and found he had a narrow and tricky path to walk. He lit a cigarette – and had to wait while a distant but observant servant hurried up with a heavy pedestal ashtray – then told about Cross’s death and tried to give the impression that they were more interested in that than in what Cross had been up to.

He said nothing about warships passing through the Canal nor O’Gilroy’s night on the town. However, because Reimers had mentioned it and it was a colourful detail, he did bring up Dragan el Vipero.

She pounced on it. “He sounds just marvellously wicked. Who is he?”

“I have no idea. But according to a barman in the Old Town, he was involved in the assassination of the King of Greece last March.”

“And was he?”

“Again, no idea. But one thing I’d like your views on.” He handed her the bond. She immediately unfolded it to see if there were anything inside, made a face, and started reading.

Finally she said: “Well, I guess you know this is a bearer bond, although they’re more common in Europe than England or America. I guess we have more stable societies: with a bond like this, you don’t have your name on any shares register, it’s as portable and anonymous as cash, only this isn’t worth a wooden nickel since it doesn’t have the coupons you exchange for your half-yearly interest. Does that help any?”

Ranklin nodded, but uncertainly. Being valueless only made it more mysterious. Just then, Jake the Chief Steward came up to refill their glasses and tell Corinna that lunch would be in a quarter of an hour.

When he had gone, Ranklin asked: “Have you heard of the land company?”

She glanced at the name again. “No, it’s too local. But owning land like that, it must be pretty valuable by now. I tell you what, why don’t we ask at the bank this afternoon?”

“Are we going to the bank this afternoon?”

“Sure. Then we’ll buy you a blazer and tennis shoes so’s you’ll blend with the background more.”

Ranklin had always hated ready-made clothes; now, he also hated the idea of expense he might not get reimbursed. Lucidly she misinterpreted his expression. “I know all men hate buying clothes and Eve started it all with that fig-leaf, but you just be a brave soldier and it won’t hurt too bad.”