Spy’s Honour

50

“It wasn’t locked against you,” Ranklin assured Corinna, relocking his bedroom door behind her. “I’m working on something … How did it go with Hornbeam? Not very well?” Her expression had already told him.

“God damn it!” she exploded. “Why are we landed with the one eminent American who’s never run for elective office? He knows no more of politicking than … than a Harvard law professor. He’s cold certain he’s doing the right, the noble, the American thing, championing the Duchess Sophie’s democratic right to be Empress – so that’s what George Washington was fighting you bastards for – then riding into the sunset to the cheers of the mob.”

“Is there any point in me tackling him again?”

“No,” she said too quickly.

“You wouldn’t happen to have said, just in passing, something a little bit unforgivable?”

“He didn’t seem to mind what I said about him personally,” she reflected, “but when I called Harvard Law School a rest home for punctured windbags … I insulted the Baroness quite thoroughly, too.”

“She was there? Hmm. You seem to have put every shot in the bull.”

“So how did you get on?”

Ranklin took a breath. “You’d better sit down.”

“I … what?”

“Sit down, please.” She obediently sat on the bed. “The game’s turned rough: Hazay’s been murdered.”

“God Almighty.” She clutched at the bedpost for support. “But … how? Why?”

“A faked suicide. And it may have been what Major Stanzer left lunch to do: the timing fits. Obviously somebody didn’t like what Hazay was trying to telegraph out. Here – ” she had turned frighteningly pale; “ – let me see if there’s any brandy in O’Gilroy’s – ”

“No, no, I’m all right. But … Stanzer can’t just have got up from lunch and gone off and …”

Ranklin shrugged. “What we think they’re plotting is going to kill tens of thousands. Why not just one now?”

Staring at the floor, she whispered: “Matt, we just have to stop these people.”

“I’m trying a new scheme; it’s too complicated to explain it all but I’ll give you a broad outline …”

She stood up. “But, Matt – what about you? They may know you’ve been seeing Hazay, that you’re involved …”

Ranklin reached into his trousers pocket and showed a stubby nickel-plated revolver. “Just a normal accoutrement of an English gentleman travelling in these parts. Before they get me to go Hazay’s way, it’ll cost them something.”

“And what damned use has men saying things like that ever been to a woman?”

Even with a consul-general to share the load, Dr Brull would have counted this a hard day. The holiday season had brought the usual crop of tourists who had lost their passports, their money, everything but their voices; businessmen wanting to know if it was safe to travel on south and exactly what effect the coming Peace Treaty would have on the flax trade – and then Mr Ranklin with his wild (but quite possibly true) tale of plots against the Archduke.

And now, dear God, he had him again.

“Dr Brull,” Ranklin said soothingly, “before we do anything else, would you telephone to your home?”

Brull frowned. “But what do you …”

“Just telephone home. Then you’ll begin to understand.”

The very weirdness of the demand, and the unease that brought, stopped Brull arguing further, and he lifted the telephone. But when a strange voice answered from his home in a – sort of – English, he was struck dumb.

Ranklin took the handpiece from him. “Con? All’s well. Twenty minutes should do it.” He hung up.

“A colleague of mine,” he explained. “He’s looking after your wife and household whilst you and I complete a very simple task.”

“Dear God – what sort of man are you?”

“A desperate one, I suppose,” Ranklin said reflectively. “But not, I hope, to the point of impoliteness. However, all I ask is that we stroll down to the telegraph office and send, with your authority, a coded telegram to our Embassy in Vienna. What could be simpler than that?”

Now Dr Brull was completely bewildered. “To the Embassy? But you must not believe I will show you our code book …”

“Oh dear me, no. I’m sorry, I should have explained. The telegram’s already encoded. It’s just that they won’t accept something in code from me but they will from you. Now, I expect you’ll be anxious to get this over with, so shall we …?”

They hardly spoke during the short walk to the telegraph office and the flurry of signings and stampings that saw the message off at the Most Urgent rate. Outside again on the Varoshaz Utcza, Ranklin hailed a cab and gave Dr Brull’s address.

“I’ll just come along and collect my colleague,” he explained, sitting down beside the Consul. “I’m sure you’ll find he’s behaved with perfect propriety. And, as you see, all I wanted was to communicate, confidentially, with our Embassy.”

“But if you had confided properly in me, explained your particular situation, I would undoubtedly have …”

“Would you, Doctor?” Ranklin smiled politely, still convinced that any such explanation would have got him thrown bodily out of the Consulate. “Perhaps you would, and I acted too hastily. So I hope you’ll take me as an example of how not to behave and restrict your complaints – and you most certainly have grounds for such – to our own official circles. If you involved the Budapest authorities it would make trouble for me, of course, but also for Britain – and perhaps yourself, your name being on that telegram … Dear me, what sombre thoughts.

“Oh yes,” he felt in a pocket. “A little something as poor compensation for the worry to which we’ve put your wife. I’m afraid I knew nothing of her colouring, so it had to be diamonds.” The comment about colouring, the actual brooch and the very thought itself had, of course, all come from Corinna.

Ranklin added: “And by the way, should the Embassy start complaining that the telegram is indecipherable, say it was all a silly prank by a code clerk. Or something. The right person will have seen it, never fear.”

“I hope your new code is also indecipherable to others.” Dr Brull’s confidence was returning, along with the properly superior attitude to what he now knew Ranklin to be. “The Kundschaftstelle in Vienna prides itself on its code-breaking expertise.”

“Really? Ah well, perhaps this will keep them amused for a while … This is your house, I think? Yes, there’s my colleague at the window. You’ll forgive me for not coming in to apologise personally to your good wife …”

“You know, it’s served a lot more purposes than whoever drew it up ever intended,” Ranklin said.

“And more’n I fancy ye’d have ’em know,” O’Gilroy smiled.

“Indeed. But I think it would be tempting fate to hang onto it any longer, so …” He threw the shoe-bag holding Code X and a number of heavy stones out into the fast deep Danube, and they walked back along the jetty towards the hotel.