Spy’s Honour

39

The Embassy’s windows had all been opened wide, bringing a confusion of warm fresh air and warm bad breath from last night’s reception. Or at least the Temporary Military Attache found it confusing as he picked his way through the cleaners and sweepers to stare at the man waiting in a small side room.

The visitor was lean, his hair sleeked back with some disgusting-smelling oil, and wearing thick-rimmed spectacles and a suit that was almost a diplomatic incident. He looks like a servant – or worse, the Attache thought. Who let him in? Who said he could sit down?

Unsure of what language to use, he made an international noise in his throat. The visitor looked up and asked: “D’ye spaik English?”

“I do.”

The visitor reached into a bulging pocket. “D’ye want to buy this, then?”

He didn’t even say “Sir”. The book was red, slim, pocket-sized and in the front it said MOST SECRET – CODE X – TRES SECRET. The Attache opened it, then sat down abruptly.

I will attack, he read – 11647 – Je vais attaquer. His hands shivered and he took several deep breaths to subdue his hangover. Despite being a cavalryman and enjoying the image of himself as a “devil of a fellow”, the Attache was not stupid. Perhaps a good deal of what he mistook for intelligence in himself was really ruthless ambition, but in some military circles that is just as good.

I am attacking – 45151 – J’attaque.

If this is a foul joke perpetrated by an unspeakable Magyar in the Commercial section, I will personally see that he is posted to Manzanillo.

I attacked – 31847 – J’ai attaque.

“Where – ” his voice started as a croak and he coughed: “ – where did you obtain this?”

“It belongs to me master, but him busy being dead drunk this fine morning, I’m handling his affairs for him.” He leered like a gargoyle.

“Who is your master?”

“Ah, now. I was thinkin’ names, specially mine, needn’t come into this. Just say he’s the sort of man uses this sort of book. And a bastard of an Englishman besides.”

“You are not English?”

The visitor stood up, snatched back the book, and sneered down at the Curassiers’ uniform. “I ask for an officer and they send the lavatory attendant.”

“No, wait please. You are Irish.”

“A genius. And in uniform.”

“A good Catholic, like us Austrians.”

Apparently mollified, the visitor sat down again.

“But how,” the Attache asked, “can I be sure this book is genuine?”

The visitor shrugged. “How would I know meself. – except me master jest got it for special cablegrams. D’ye want it or not?”

“This is a more complicated matter than you understand. I cannot just buy this book. I do not have the authority. And to buy the book itself would make the code useless, because …”

The visitor studied his fingernails, perhaps to make sure none of the dirt had fallen out.

“I want a thousand pounds,” he said.

“And I said ye wouldn’t be awake before one o’clock so he went charging away with the code – to get it photographed – and then asked me a lot more questions and then stuck me to wait out in the garden. Jayzus! ye should see the size of that garden – ”

“I believe it’s the biggest private park in central Paris,” Ranklin said. They had met in a large students’ cafe near the Place St Michel and, for their own peace of mind, in a dark corner of it.

“… and gave me coffee and cream cakes – ah, those cakes, ye’ve never tasted the like in yer life.”

“That’s fine, but are we going to get the money?”

O’Gilroy considered. “From what he was saying, he was serious about it: telling me not to leave your employ sudden and go drinking it all up at oncest, or ye’d be suspicious.”

“He knows something about the business, then.”

“And he gave me a hundred francs.”

“Four pounds? Well, it’s a start. From what we heard in Brussels, a thousand’s a bit high for a code, but we should get six to eight. Do you think they managed to photograph the whole book?”

“They had three hours, and was talking of getting them on a train to Vienna …”

“That’s at least twenty-four hours. It’ll take time.” Their own “proof” of the code had already gone: a bribed operator had telegraphed a coded message to the British Embassy in Vienna. Tomorrow or the next day, the Kundschaftstelle would have the photographs of the code book, would take the intercepted telegram from the “unsolved” file, and behold! – it was solved. Actually, all they would learn was that it was a test run of a new code, in future to be used only in moments of crisis (which would explain why they wouldn’t get a flood of telegrams in the new code) and no acknowledgement was needed. And they would conclude, Ranklin prayed, that they were being offered a bargain.

The only risk, he reckoned, was that the Vienna Embassy would have an unreadable telegram, would complain to the Foreign Office, who would suspect the Bureau and scream that their diplomatic virginity was being threatened. But that was just too bad: if the Commander didn’t want trouble with the Foreign Office, he shouldn’t send accountants to insult his agents’ financial probity.

He picked up a short list of questions. “You said you wanted the money in cash, either pounds or francs?”

“Yes.”

“And that we were leaving next week and you wanted it prompter?”

O’Gilroy nodded.

“That if they didn’t pay, somebody else might?”

“Ah, they gave me a lecture on how it would ruin the value of the code if word of it got about, and I took a long time to understand what they meant by that.” Ranklin’s sympathy was entirely with the Austrian Attache; O’Gilroy being stupid was a top-of-the-bill performance.

“But ye’re still sure,” O’Gilroy added, “ye don’t want me to try it on the Germans as well?”

“No need to take the risk. The Austrians are the ones. After the Redl affair they want, they need, an Intelligence success – just for their own self-esteem. And,” he ticked off the last question, “did they try to follow you?”

“Oh yes. But the Rue de Varenne’s a straight long street and they daren’t keep close, and I lost them in that tangle around the Rue du Bac and the Boulevard.”

If O’Gilroy said the followers had been lost, they were lost. But what now impressed Ranklin more was the way O’Gilroy had picked up the geography of Paris; he mispronounced the street names wildly but walked them confidently. And he could sense the mood of a district the way a gnarled old countryman could smell a change in the weather. The man was just a natural townee, which wasn’t much of a compliment in Ranklin’s old circle, but now …

He rolled the list of questions into a spill, lit it and lit his pipe from it. “Well, in a few days,” he puffed contentedly, “solvency should stare us in the face. And you need never put that foul stuff on your hair again.”

“And me thinking to lend ye half a pint of it the next time ye was stepping out with Mrs Finn.”

Ranklin shut his eyes and shuddered delicately.

There was nothing new or brash about the office of the House of Sherring in the Boulevard des Capucines. It had the quiet solid look of an institution that had been there a long time, as, in terms of the financial world, it had. Sherring’s father had been of that generation of American financiers who had learnt the business in Europe, steering the old money into the railroads and iron mines of America, long before they reversed the flow to finance Europe’s wars.

Puzzled why he had been summoned there, Ranklin was further surprised to find Temple, from the American Embassy, already drinking coffee in the dark-panelled private office. He wore a fawn summer suit and bright necktie, but his thin bespectacled face looked diplomatically sombre enough.

Sherring shook hands, offered coffee, and got straight down to business. “I got a telegram from Corinna. I won’t bother showing it to you, you wouldn’t either of you understand it, but translated and reading between the lines and so on, she’s worried about Professor Hornbeam. Seems like he’s getting the a la carte treatment, belle of the ball, and Corinna thinks they’re up to something.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Temple said, “but who is ‘they’?”

Ranklin was also thinking of the many levels of “they” in Vienna.

Sherring flipped through the telegram – several pages long – and frowned. “Doesn’t rightly say, just big names in the court and government. And the Professor is always getting asked for legal opinions, and she’s suspicious of the motives.”

“It could be just flattery,” Temple suggested. “Viennese society usually says more than it means.”

“Sure, but Corinna’s no damn fool. If she says there’s something to worry about, I’d back her.”

Nobody knew what to say next. Ranklin was watching Sherring and wondering why he looked American. In fact, of course, he didn’t: he looked like the bosun of a tramp steamer dressed in banker’s clothing. Perhaps it was that in Europe such a man could never have become an international banker, never been accepted by financial families, well-bred (in their own way, his county blood added) through generations of handling and mishandling big money. They would never have shed their jackets on the wannest of days, nor sat lounging back with thumbs jammed in their waistcoat pockets.

“Well?” Sherring said.

Temple coughed and said carefully: “If she feels an American citizen is being tempted to make statements that could embarrass us, then our Embassy in Vienna could …”

“She says our Embassy is …” Sherring reached for the telegram again to get the exact words, then decided they were too exact. “She isn’t so impressed,” he concluded.

Temple smiled lopsidedly. “If this is about possible Austrian intervention in Serbia – as I believe Mr Ranklin feared when we met at Hornbeam’s talk here – I don’t really believe Austria is going to start a war just because an American lawyer says it’s okay to do so.”

“No,” Sherring admitted, “but …”

Temple went on: “If they do go to war, sure they’ll use every justification they can get a hold of. Nations always do. But I’m just as sure that no American Foreign Service officer is going to try and deprive Hornbeam of his First Amendment right to speak his mind. And I’d guess that Hornbeam, as a lawyer and Republican both, knows that also.”

Sherring looked at him expressionlessly, which meant his face was just normally craggy and serious. “Okay, son. D’you want to be excused school?”

Temple stood up. “I think I’d better be, sir, if this conversation is going to continue.”

When he had ushered Temple out, Sherring walked carefully back towards Ranklin. Like many tall, heavy men he had a delicate, almost tiptoe, walk.

“D’you still think like you did at Kiel?” he asked. “About what would happen if Austria charged into Serbia?”

“Yes.”

“Would you go there to help Corinna figure out what’s going on?”

Ranklin swallowed. “I – I’d like to. Tell me, though: what’s your interest in this?”

“Finding out what’s going to happen before anybody else,” Sherring said promptly. “And keeping it to myself as long as I can. We might be in the same line of business.” He allowed himself a little bleak smile. “Corinna wants you to meet them in Budapest – they’ll have moved on from Vienna by the time you could get there. Seems he’s giving the same lecture in both places.”

Vienna tried – at least in unimportant matters – to treat the capital of Hungary as an equal.

“We’ll pay all your expenses,” Sherring went on, “both you and your Irish whatever-he-is. Okay? And would you like a drink?”

“It’s rather early for me,” Ranklin said. “But yes, I would.”

He had expected a servant with a silver tray. Instead, Sherring simply opened a mahogany cabinet and started pouring; perhaps he valued his time and unbroken privacy more than any display of stature.

When they were settled again, Sherring said: “It’s still the war season, by the reckoning you used in Kiel. D’you think it’ll happen this time around?”

“You don’t need me to tell you that Europe’s littered with heaps of loose gunpowder and dry tinder, the Balkans particularly, even with a peace conference starting in Bucharest. But whether somebody’s going to drop a lighted match, accidentally or on purpose …” He shrugged. “Perhaps I’ll have a better idea after Budapest, but only perhaps.”

“Uh-huh. If it happens, d’you figure it for a long war?”

Everybody who talked about war talked of a short one, but perhaps those who thought otherwise kept their pessimism quiet. And militarily, Ranklin had no idea: a war on the scale he foresaw hadn’t happened in Europe since the days of the Brown Bess musket and wooden men-o’-war. He shook his head helplessly.

“If you get yourselves a war,” Sherring said slowly, “it’s going to be different. I don’t just mean your new dreadnoughts and big guns. I mean it won’t just be about shifting frontiers: it’s going to be about shifting ideas, too. We had ourselves a war about ideas just fifty years back – like in most things, we’re ahead of you here in Europe.” He smiled thinly. “I was still just a boy when it was over, and my father took me on a trip through the South, to see what business was left. There wasn’t much of anything left. Except hating, and that’s still there.

“You get yourselves into a war like that and Europe’s going to end up different. How different, I don’t know, but …” He looked at Ranklin in an odd, reflective way. “But maybe you’ll be lucky and not live to see it, not in your job. Whatever,” he added politely, “that is.”

Ranklin took great care with his cablegram to the Bureau, and it took them twenty-four hours to reply:

APPROVE INVESTIGATE BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES BUDAPEST STOP LETTER OF CREDIT AWAITS AT BANK STOP DO NOT REPEAT NOT TRAVEL ORIENT EXPRESS OR STAY EXPENSIVE HOTEL ENDS UNCLE CHARLIE.

“Did ye mention that Mr Sherring was paying for it all anyhow?” O’Gilroy asked.

“In the end, no. I felt it would make my cablegram too expensive if I explained.”

“That accountant would be proud of ye.”

“Still, Uncle Charlie is going to expect a full report, and some new stuff, from all this. But with the Sherring connection, we should meet some interesting people.”

“We play that up, do we?”

“It’s both our disguise and our opportunity; we’re Sherring minions now. Don’t talk of money in less than millions – unless somebody’s trying to cheat you out of a halfpenny.”

But it was the Austro-Hungarian Embassy that nearly caused the real hold-up. Reluctant as any government institution anywhere to hand out money, it didn’t pay for the code – just over ?700 – until the afternoon of the day they were due to leave. That left no time to deposit the cash in the small, obscure bank Ranklin had chosen in Versailles. While he wasn’t too concerned about carrying the money to Budapest, and could telegraph it to the account from there, he would have liked to leave the code-book in a deposit box. He thought of simply destroying it, but that would have to be done very thoroughly and there were no hotel-room fires in July. So rather than try to hide it in their rooms, he simply took it along.

He wouldn’t actually be breaking any law, he reflected in the taxi taking them to the Gare de l’Est, even if the Austro-Hungarian officials found it on him. He would simply be followed every waking minute by twenty men in cheap boots and blank expressions.