Spy’s Honour

45

Ranklin was shaken from the very depths of sleep and came up mumbling and unfocused.

“Wake up, Matt, wake up, God damn it.” He realised it was Corinna, holding a shaded oil lamp and wearing a striped kimono with her hair loose to her shoulders.

That woke him. “What the devil are you doing in here?”

“Well, thank you. That isn’t the way I’m usually greeted in these circumstances. Get up, we’re going burgling.”

“Are we? What time is – ”

“It’s one o’clock. Just get up – all right, I’ll turn my back – and get Conall.”

He reached for his worn old woollen dressing-gown, and a few minutes later they were in Corinna’s sitting room, plotting in whispers.

“Is he not there now?” O’Gilroy asked. “What’s he doing?”

“A lady doesn’t speculate, but he’s doing it in the Baroness’s room, so …”

“How do ye know?”

“I was half expecting this, so I stayed awake, listening – and I spilt some face powder. Look.” She led them proudly back to the door and showed a faint dusting of powder – and the footprints in it – by both Hornbeam’s and the Baroness’s doors. “How’s about that for evidence?” She closed the door again.

Ranklin said: “Most ingenious, but it doesn’t tell us how long he’ll be there.”

“Being a lawyer I expect he’ll spin things out as long as possible, but that doesn’t mean we have to. Conall, you can …” but then she remembered their talk before dinner and turned it into a question: “Do you think it’s safe to hop over that railing thing between our balconies? He’s sure to have left a window open.”

Ranklin and O’Gilroy looked at each other, then O’Gilroy nodded. He was more shy about taking off his dressing-gown in front of Corinna than getting caught in the burglary. But in a couple of minutes he was back, laying the brief-case under the lamplight and grabbing for his gown. “’Twas easier to bring it right back, seeing it was setting by his bed.”

“Not even locked?” Corinna was surprised.

“Oh sure, but he hadn’t taken his keys a-courting.”

It was, Ranklin reflected, a new twist on the classic espionage ploy outlined by the Bureau: pinching the Secret Documents while the bearer is being seduced. Only here the seducer was their rival, not accomplice, and the documents they were lifting from the case probably belonged to her.

The top one was amateurishly typed in German, with many corrections, and laid out in numbered paragraphs and sub-paragraphs. Ranklin frowned, tasting the leaden legalisms: Gehinderungsfalle, it said; Vermachtnisnehmer. He turned back to the first page.

Corinna had picked up three pages of handwritten notes on the paper of the Hotel Imperial, Vienna. “This seems to be about some law case: ‘could be argued that’ … ‘query constructive duress’ … What have you got?”

Ranklin’s whisper had become reverent. “I rather think I’ve got a copy of the Habsburg Family Law. Which I shouldn’t have. And I’m damned sure Hornbeam shouldn’t have, either.” He put the document down as carefully as he would a suspect artillery cartridge. “May I see some of those notes?”

Corinna passed him a page and he read down it quickly, trying to find a train of thought. But couldn’t. There were, however, several references to “Art 1” He turned a page of the Family Law and tried to decipher Article 1. It seemed to be about the composition of the family itself, perhaps a definition of who belonged. It certainly included a long list of titled families. But beyond that …

“This is hopeless,” he said. “And we haven’t got the time. Let’s just copy out his notes. How many pencils have you got?”

“Let me just look at the Law.” She read for half a minute, then said: “I’ll round up some pencils.”

Doing one page each, it took them about five minutes which seemed much longer to Ranklin. Then they had to remember in what order the papers had been arranged in the case – the Bureau had been crisp on that very matter – and hustle a de-dressing-gowned O’Gilroy out of the window again. But Ranklin’s heart didn’t slow down until O’Gilroy was back.

“Now then,” Corinna said, “you seem to have something I don’t …”

“If we’re going to talk this over, may I invite you, this time, to my room? Assuming you don’t want yours smelling of tobacco smoke and whatever I hope and trust O’Gilroy’s got in his travelling flask.”

So there was another scene of silent tiptoeing across the dim corridor, which so much reminded Corinna of the Comedie Francaise that she nearly broke down in giggles halfway. But finally they were settled in Ranklin’s bedroom.

“When you take up a life of crime,” he mused, “I imagine it’s very important to know just what crimes you’ve taken up. We might get away with no more than a Hungarian version of trespass, but Hornbeam could be vulnerable for something like treason.”

“Just for having that Family Law?” Corinna asked.

O’Gilroy added: “And what is it, anyways?”

“Remember, I haven’t come across it until just now, but I’ve heard of it before. And it’s what it says: the law of the Habsburgs. A rich, powerful, big – seventy archdukes or so – family that needs laws to decide who ranks after who, inheritance and succession.”

Corinna made a face. “What’s wrong with the ordinary law?”

“The Habsburgs don’t see themselves as part of the Monarchy, the Empire: they see that as part of themselves. They’ve been one of the most important royal families in Europe for seven hundred years, far longer than most nations have lasted. They’d say they’re the trunk of history: nations, frontiers, common laws are just leaves that have their season. So they need their own private law.”

Corinna frowned into her well-watered brandy. Sure, she knew families, younger and brasher, and called Morgan and Rockefeller and Carnegie – and Sherring, come to that – who preferred their own codes to the laws of the common herd. And she had learnt plenty about the Habsburgs as characters in a play written by “history”. But Ranklin, with his European perspective, was seeing the Habsburgs more as they saw themselves; chosen and burdened to lead. Not stripping off the beards and greasepaint when the curtain fell, because the curtain never did. And the blood on the Habsburg stage was not stage blood.

She nodded. “And is the Family Law really that secret?”

“In practice, it just can’t be. All those archdukes and their lawyers. But it certainly isn’t something you can buy in a legal bookshop. A badly typewritten copy is probably the best you could lay hands on, so I don’t think Hornbeam went looking for it out of professional curiosity. I think it must have come to him, and for a purpose. It’s that purpose I don’t like thinking about.”

“The Baroness’s purpose, we assume, don’t we? And what d’you figure it is?”

“I don’t. Just the fact that he’s looking at the Law and making notes about it suggest he’s trying to interfere with it. And he shouldn’t even be looking.”

“Interfere how?”

“I don’t know.” He picked up the copied notes. “These don’t tell us. We really need a lawyer.”

“Dr Klapka?”

“Ummm. If there were any hint of treason, he might go straight to the police – just to protect himself.”

“A lawyer doesn’t discuss his clients’ affairs. So, I shall hire him.”

There must, Ranklin thought, be some problems that couldn’t be solved by saying “I’ll hire a car, a couple of spies, a lawyer …” But he had to admit it simplified life a great deal.

“As long as we’re sure Klapka himself isn’t involved.”

“He doesn’t like the Baroness one bit. He was spitting blood about her getting between him and Hornbeam this afternoon, thinks she’s an interfering busybody. And now I can tell him just how busy her body’s been.”

O’Gilroy was sitting on the bed, elbows on knees with a tooth-mug of brandy in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and mostly just listening and nodding. Now he asked quietly: “And how will ye be explaining ye know he’s got a copy of the Law?”

“Oh – he left his case around, and I saw a paper nearby that I thought must’ve fallen out, so I – I found the case was unlocked – so I opened it to put the paper back …” She was clearly making it up as she went along, and Ranklin shuddered.

O’Gilroy said: “And it being a dull afternoon, like, ye jest happened to copy out three pages of his notes. Ye think he’ll believe it?”

“Lordie, no. But he’ll be used to clients telling lies.”

O’Gilroy took a thoughtful drag at his cigarette. “And are we thinking this is the whole reason of his being here – what ye was talking about on the train? To take a look at this Law?”

Ranklin looked at Corinna; neither of them had been thinking of the wider implications. Catching up with O’Gilroy, he said: “If it is, it goes far beyond the Baroness. Barons are just errand boys in court circles. So who recruited the Baroness?”

“Who’d know how to get hold of the Law?” O’Gilroy asked.

“And,” Corinna added, her face serious now, “what sort of people would want a legal opinion of it? It wouldn’t be the guy who sweeps the street crossings, that’s for damn sure.”

She shivered and glanced at the window curtains, but they hung still, there was no draught. Maybe she was just feeling suddenly far from home: it was a rare feeling for a Sherring.

On the other hand, she didn’t feel like sleep yet. The thrill of the midnight burglary and speculating about its results would keep her awake for hours yet unless she soaked herself in laudanum. Brandy was healthier: she held out her glass.

Mock grudgingly, O’Gilroy poured from the big silver flask engraved with unknown initials. “Ye likely can’t find stuff this good in this heathen country, and it hurts terrible to see ye mangling it with water. I’m back to bed.”

A little larceny had never troubled O’Gilroy’s sleep yet.

Then he added: “I’m sure ye can remember which yer own beds are,” and closed the door very quietly.

“Now what d’you think he meant by that?” Corinna asked, enjoying Ranklin’s embarrassment. “But you’ve got this place smelling like a dockside saloon. If you can leave that pipe behind, let’s finish his precious flask in my sitting-room.”

So once again they went through the tiptoe routine, but it was only to her sitting room, Ranklin excused himself, clutching the copies of Hornbeam’s notes to remind himself of business.

“Here,” he offered, “you’d better put these where the maids won’t see them.” And that reminded him: “What happened to your own maid?”

“Kitty? Oh, I sent her back to Paris. She got sick with the eastern cooking.” That wasn’t the whole truth; in fact it was very little of the truth. Corinna had found out that Kitty was also being paid by her father to report on her doings. She hadn’t been shocked by that, hadn’t really resented it; she just damned well wasn’t going to put up with it. “So I’m here just on my poor little ownsome.”

She dropped onto a sofa and flicked through the notes. “A year ago, would you have thought you’d be helping loot bedrooms for secret documents?”

“No-o,” Ranklin agreed cautiously. How did she know he hadn’t been doing just that a year ago?

“But it must be more fun than ordinary Army life.”

“It isn’t what I signed up for.” Privately, Ranklin was thinking that if a spy, like a cat, had only nine lives, it was a pity to risk one trying to keep an American law professor out of trouble. The Habsburg Law wasn’t exactly Plan Three.

“You really don’t like being a spy, do you?”

Ranklin reached for the flask on the table – she had brought it across – and refilled the silver cap he was using. O’Gilroy was right: it was too good to be watered down. “It still wasn’t what I signed up for.”

She persisted: “But that doesn’t mean you disapprove …”

He smiled, holding up his hand to cut off the question. “I know that argument; I’ve had it with myself. I certainly don’t think espionage is taking an unsporting advantage or any nonsense like that. But I can approve of sweeping streets and unblocking drains without wanting to do them, either.”

Hmm, she thought with a wry smile; is that how he sees his work? “What would you be doing in the Army if … if you weren’t doing what you are doing?”

“Now, in August? Looking after the horses and ammunition for a battery on firing practice at Shoeburyness or Okehampton, probably.”

“And you’d really rather be back holding horses and so on instead of all … this?” She flung out an arm, her kimono sleeve flaring in a world-sweeping gesture.

“It wasn’t just horse-holding. It was the life, the friends – ”

“Are they still your friends?” she asked shrewdly.

Ranklin said stubbornly: “It was the life I had chosen.”

“Along with a few thousand others who can probably do it just as well because it’s that sort of job. While you’re in a job they couldn’t do – but you despise it because they would. God Almighty, man, hadn’t you noticed you’re a hell of a smart guy? Because if you hadn’t, Conall sure has: he wouldn’t stick by you two minutes if you weren’t, not in your trade.”

A gentleman really ought to deflect any compliment from a lady, no matter how oddly phrased, with some modest but appreciative remark. However, this is difficult if the gentleman is suddenly wondering if he hasn’t been wallowing in self-pity for the last six months, and also if he’s never been called a hell of a smart guy before. None of the women who had drifted through Ranklin’s life, and certainly not his family or the Army, had ever said such a thing. Not even an English translation of it.

Corinna had watched his bemused silence nervously, and found herself beginning to babble. “Lord, now I really did insult you, didn’t I? – saying you were in a ‘trade’. Suggesting you cared about that filthy stuff money which the English don’t talk about. How the hell they can pretend that just beats me: you sit down to dinner in England and they never talk anything else – falling land values, agricultural prices, servants’ wages, income tax, their mortgages, they all say they’re broke but you know damn well they’ve never had real trouble like y …

“Oh hell.” She sat up very straight and took a breath. “I guess I haven’t been behaving like a gentleman. Conall told me – I made him – about your brother and how you landed in this job.”

She was surprised to see Ranklin smiling, but he was rather surprised himself at feeling a sense of relief and not indignation. “O’Gilroy knew, then … But of course he would. I ought to stick to keeping secrets that really matter.”

Reassured, she went on: “I got worse than that, I’m afraid. I had one of our London boys do some tracking in the City. He found they’d hauled up the drawbridge once you got into that Deed of Composition – was it your new bosses arranged that? – but he got the trail pretty clear up to there.”

Still smiling, Ranklin hoped he’d remember to get that trail well muddied: if the House of Sherring could follow it, so could the Kundschaftstelle or the Nachrichtendienst.

“Matt,” she said, “for the Lord’s sake, if you – or your family – ever go buying gold shares again, ask me which mines to go for.”

“I’m afraid that isn’t exactly the family’s problem at the moment, but I’ll bear it in mind.”

“And don’t go signing guarantees you don’t understand – please.”

Ranklin nodded automatically. But then he paused and carefully took a big decision. “Did I?” he said.

“How d’you mean?”

“I’m really not so innocent that I don’t know I’m innocent when it comes to City gentlemen and their pieces of paper.”

She looked puzzled. “Just what do …”

“I’ve never told anybody,” he said, almost dreamily. “Nobody else in the world knows this – but how do you tell your family that your brother, who’s just killed himself because he lost pretty well all their – not just his, but their – inheritance, how do you tell them that he was a forger as well?”

She sat stunned. Then gradually the pieces fitted together in her mind. She had been thinking of this man as smart enough in his own world – she hadn’t been flattering him there – but a bit of a fool in hers. And now she saw that he wasn’t a fool but a hell of a nice guy as well as being smart and funny and, probably, brave (though she wasn’t a schoolgirl, to be impressed by mere physical courage). And he hadn’t been behaving according to some gentlemanly code; he’d just saved people he loved from hurt. For that, he’d let himself look a fool and put his career on the line. No, way below the line and in the ashcan.

She felt a sudden warmth towards him that really was that: a flush of loving excitement that tingled through her whole body. And a brief loathing for that brother of his, so intense she wanted to rip open his grave and stamp on his remains – only then I’d never have met Matt, she thought, and closed the grave again.

“Why don’t you come and sit over here?” she said quietly.

Ranklin lay drifting in that luxurious space between sleep and waking, knowing he could choose either, reliving gently the sensations of Corinna’s soft vigorous body that now slept beside him. Should I sleep or wake, remember or dream? The ceiling was dark above; there was no moon, only a slash of faint starlight on the part-opened curtains.

I suppose, looked at objectively, he thought, I have been seduced. He had been seduced once before, but that had been when he was a twenty-year-old subaltern, and by a senior officer’s wife. A messy, clumsy business, he recalled, and best forgotten. But remembering it had woken him up and he slid carefully out of bed, found his dressing-gown, and lit a cigarette. Then stood by the half-open window to breathe smoke outside.

Not that that would fool the hotel staff; they’d know. The servants always knew.

“Are you planning to make a romantic escape through the window?” Corinna asked sleepily. “And break your stupid neck? Come back to bed.”

“When I’ve finished my cigarette.”

She rolled over and stared at the ceiling, the sheet spilling away from her left breast. “If we’re confessing things, d’you want to hear one of mine?”

“Only if you want to tell me.”

“I’ve never been married.”

“Good God.” Ranklin really was startled, and began hastily to re-examine his behaviour. And the re-examination told him only one thing: “Look, do you want …” This had gone from being perhaps his happiest hour to his most awkward; “… I mean, I’d be honoured if …”

“I’d marry you? Is this a proposal? Oh, poor Matt!” She began to laugh, choked, and had to sit up coughing herself breathless. Ranklin just stared, thinking: that was my first proposal, and … well, at least I know what being shot at dawn will be like: easy.

“My dear, dear boy,” she gurgled at last. “I guess when I find a real gentleman, I get the full menu. No, I’m not trying to trap you.” She flopped back again, now naked to the waist and giggling at the ceiling. “It’s just. I found out early that, in Europe, it’s the married women and widows who have all the fun. So, I invented Mr Finn and a marriage in San Francisco. The great thing about the fire is that it burned up all the public records like marriages. So I can be Mrs Finn or the widow Finn, whatever fits the occasion.”

“Good God,” Ranklin said again, but not for the original reason.

“Con-men use it, too. If you get in a deal with anybody who says he was born in ’Frisco, be suspicious. Now forget about my honour and think about more interesting parts of me. Come back to bed.

“Mind,” she added, “if you tell anyone about Mr Finn, I’ll kill you.”

Ranklin pitched his cigarette end through the window. “You’ve got a few secrets of mine I’m rather hoping you’ll keep.”

“That’s right, I have, haven’t I? I’ve got you in my power, Captain Ranklin. Come back to bed.”