Spy’s Honour

6

Now unhurried, Ranklin half-opened the rifle bolt to check there was a round in the breech, then looked for O’Gilroy. He was in no hurry to rush into the darkness that now hid Peter and his pistol.

O’Gilroy was cradling his dead cousin in his arms, sobbing wildly and, to Ranklin, silently. He hesitated, then the roar of the car’s engine, cutting through his deafness, startled them both. O’Gilroy laid Mick down and reached for the shotgun.

“Did he git away?” he seemed to be asking, and Ranklin nodded. O’Gilroy snapped off the light and looked cautiously out into the driveway. The car’s rear light was just vanishing past the lodge.

O’Gilroy surprised Ranklin by turning and running back into the drawing room, but he followed. And out through the French windows, down the steps into the garden and on down the sloping lawn.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Yer not invited.”

“Shoot me, too, then,” Ranklin puffed, scrambling over a stone wall on what seemed to be a familiar route for O’Gilroy. For a while he thought O’Gilroy was taking up the suggestion, since he fumbled to reload the shotgun as they crossed another garden, another wall, and ran down an alley into a lower street. But now he had the derringer hidden in his clenched hand – hidden well enough for that darkness, lit only by flares of half-moon light among the ragged clouds.

They came out under the dark stunted bulk of the spireless cathedral, and O’Gilroy turned into a darker alley and grabbed one of two push-bikes hidden against the wall.

“D’you know where he’s going?” Ranklin demanded.

“I do that.” He climbed on the bike. “I hope I do,” he added, and rode off, not bothering with the lamps. Ranklin stared at the other bike, presumably the late Mick’s, then pocketed the derringer and climbed aboard.

The bike was arthritic and loud with rust and took almost no notice of its screeching brakes as he plunged downhill on slippery cobbles. But at least Ranklin was fit: that legacy of the Balkans hadn’t worn off, and as he came to the bottom of Spy Hill and on to the flat road that ran round the corner of the island, he began to catch up with the weaving shadow ahead.

O’Gilroy was riding with the shotgun held crossways on the handlebars as Ranklin came up alongside. Not too close alongside, since the road was flat only in principle, not counting details like potholes and ruts now they had left the town behind. They seemed to be paralleling the railway and the channel up to Cork, heading for Belvelly bridge.

“Have you got a boat … cross the channel in?” Ranklin asked in puffs.

“Niver ye mind.”

“I know this man … he’s wanted in London … Peter Piatkow was his name there … Peter the Painter, did you hear of him? … the Sidney Street siege … the Houndsditch murders before that … you think he’s joined your cause? … others thought that … they did the robberies and got shot … a factory, then a jeweller …”

“That’s not my business wid him.”

“It’s his business with you … taking his cut … only this time it’s the lot … to America … he’s booked his passage,” though that was only rumour. But the rumour that had brought Ranklin there.

They trundled past the lights of a shipyard and the road closed up on the channel again. There were lights on the far shore, no more than a quarter of a mile away, and closer still the lights and skeleton masts of a windjammer being towed down from Cork on the tide.

“Piat-kow, ye said his name was?” O’Gilroy asked.

Ranklin gave a grunt of relief. He thought O’Gilroy had only been half listening, acting on another instinct that made him chase Peter without thinking whom he was really chasing, or what to do when – if – he caught up. Now, perhaps, he had begun to think again.

“The name he used … in London … Probably a different one here … he’s used half a dozen … in France, too.”

“And what d’ye want of him yeself?”

“I’m just along … to guard your back.”

“Yer a connivin’ liar, Captain. Is it the gold or the man ye want most?”

“We haven’t got either, yet.”

Ahead, the road swung sharply right and dived under the railway track. O’Gilroy slowed, then dismounted and pushed his bike straight ahead at the turn, onto an overgrown and muddy track. Ranklin got off and followed, his bike squeaking and grinding.

O’Gilroy stopped. “Leave the bikes, ye sound like a tinker’s cart. Mick niver would take care of machinery, God rest him.”

They lowered the bikes onto the grass, beyond sight of the road, and moved ahead beside a row of spindly trees. Beyond, Ranklin could see the dull sheen of the channel and, closer, the duller glint of wet mud. O’Gilroy moved right, inland, to avoid being silhouetted against the water and sky.

Then, dark against the mud, Ranklin saw the hard curve of a rowing boat. They stopped. The car might be in the darkness of the trees, but there was no shape, no light, no sound but the gentle wind. They waited, Ranklin curling his thumb over the derringer’s hammer. It was awkward, too small a gun even for his hand, and he hadn’t practised enough since he hadn’t much believed in it. He wished he believed in it now. Then Peter moved.

Just a dark shape coming from the trees towards the boat, slowly, with faint mudsquelching noises. O’Gilroy took several silent paces, Ranklin following in a crouch. A hot machine smell stung his nostrils and, peering, he could see the car just a few yards away.

There was the thump of something heavy on the wood of the boat, then Peter squelched his way back towards them. O’Gilroy let him get within ten feet.

“Would ye be wantin’ any help wid the gold, Mr Piat-kow?”

Ranklin wished he could have seen Peter’s first expression. But his mind and voice recovered quickly. “Conall? You escaped also? Wonderful! Yes, help, please, into the boat.” He came forward, towards the car, O’Gilroy covering him with the shotgun.

“Would that be the boat to America, then?”

“What do you mean? Who have you talked … who is with you?”

Ranklin said: “Take his pistol. Then talk all you want.”

“The Captain?” Peter said, peering through the gloom under the trees. “Why did you bring …”

“I’ll be takin’ the pistol, all the same.”

Ranklin glared at the shape that was Peter, wanting to hate him, reminding himself of the trail of blood that led across Europe to this muddy patch, of the dead soldier in the hall, wanting to want to kill him. He just felt cold.

But a soldier should feel cold. Not hate. The enemy was a thing, an obstacle, an obstruction to be removed. Think of this man as the enemy.

“The pistol?” Peter said. “Oh, it is in the car. I show you.” He turned to the car, turned his back on O’Gilroy and the shotgun.

And Ranklin, abandoning wanting and trying and thinking itself, raised the derringer at arm’s length and fired both shots into Peter’s back. Immediately, there was a third shot.

Ranklin jerked his glance at O’Gilroy, but the shotgun hadn’t fired. Peter fell, with very little sound in the wet grass and mud, gave one gasping moan and died.

O’Gilroy stepped forward, bent, and picked up the pistol that had been in Peter’s waistband, that he had grabbed when he turned his back. “Ye was quicker’n me, Captain. He’d mebbe’ve shot me.”

No, Ranklin thought dully, I wasn’t quick. I shot an unarmed man in the back. I didn’t know he had his finger on a trigger. I was just doing my duty.

“Only I didn’t know ye had a gun,” O’Gilroy went on. “Is it my turn now?”

“It’s empty.” Ranklin gave it to him and stooped over the body.

Surprised, O’Gilroy peered at the little pistol. “I niver saw the like before. And where was ye keepin’ it?”

“Taped to the back of my leg.”

“I’d’ve missed findin’ it meself.”

Ranklin straightened up holding a bunch of papers, then took out his matches and lit one of the car’s acetylene lamps.

“Jayzus,” O’Gilroy protested. “Ye’ll have every constable and all the Army itself on us – ”

“Just for a moment.” He read quickly through the papers in the lamplight. “Here we are: a second-class berth in the name of Vogel, on the Carmania to New York, later today. D’you want to see?”

Numb of mind, O’Gilroy glanced at the ticket and nodded. Ranklin turned off the lamp.

“Well now,” O’Gilroy said. He lowered the hammers on the shotgun, propped it against the car, and sat down on the running board. “And now d’ye … No. First, d’ye have a cigarette?”

They both lit up; Ranklin opened the rear door of the car and sat on the seat beside several bags of gold, just to get his feet off the ground. His thin evening shoes were leaking and his toes freezing.

“And what about the gold?” O’Gilroy asked quietly.

What indeed? Ranklin had already been thinking about that. If he piled it back aboard the car, drove to some corner of the island and buried it, O’Gilroy would be committing suicide if he denounced him. It would be plain theft and horribly disloyal but genteel poverty was horrible, too, and twenty thousand would just about put his family back on its feet.

And, of course, give him away, because it would be immediately clear that his family was back on its feet, most creditors paid off. The only reason he wanted the gold would betray that he had taken it. He sighed and put the idea behind him (but later, being as pessimistic about himself as about anything, he wondered which had been the stronger motive for leaving the sovereigns alone. Or, as it turned out, almost alone).

“When you think about it.” he said, “that steamship ticket was your death warrant – and Mick’s. He couldn’t have left you two alive. He would have killed Mick anyway.”

“I’ll remember who killed Mick,” O’Gilroy said tonelessly.

And I who killed Peter Piatkow, Ranklin thought. And exactly how.

“And the gold?” O’Gilroy prompted.

“As far as I’m concerned, you can take it – as far as you can get with it.”

“So ye was jist after himself.” He nodded at Peter’s body. “Wid yer little gun. And what would it all be for?”

“He was some sort of revolutionary – Anarchist, Communist, Menshevik, Bolshevik, perhaps all of them at one time – going to America to organise things there.” It was absurd to be discussing the Bureau’s affairs with this man, but Ranklin badly needed to sort out his own thoughts. “I was to prevent him, arrest him separately from – anybody else.”

“It sounds like somebody’s been talking about us,” O’Gilroy said thoughtfully, and almost stopping Ranklin’s heart. What had he betrayed now? Then he realised that just by planning to ambush the ambushers, the Bureau had given away its hand, and must have withdrawn its informant already – or be sure he was above suspicion. He started breathing again.

“Arrest him – or kill him?” O’Gilroy added.

“I was prepared for that,” Ranklin said stiffly.

“I see ye was. And nobody to know, is that it? And then what?”

“I do not have to explain myself to you.” Ranklin hoped his stiffness hid the fact that he had no idea.

“Ye do not, and that’s a fact.” O’Gilroy smoked and thought for a while. “But ye wanted his ticket and papers.”

Ranklin had assumed that was simply as proof, like taking Peter’s scalp. But now he, too, began to wonder.

“So if ye had a man waitin’,” O’Gilroy said slowly, “and wid his bags packed, he could be sailin’ in Piat-kow’s place. And them in America’d never know, not knowin’ him already. Would that be the way of it?”

Suddenly faced with the naked idea, Ranklin knew that had to be the way of it. But why hadn’t the Bureau trusted him with full knowledge? Because he might have been captured and talked, of course. And why hadn’t he worked it out for himself? Because he had set out doggedly to obey orders he hadn’t liked. And while O’Gilroy might be used to thinking in such crooked ways, he himself wasn’t.

And then came the appalling shock of shame that he had accidentally revealed the whole scheme to O’Gilroy.

“Do you believe,” he said as earnestly as he could, “that if you breathe one word of this to anybody, then if I don’t hunt you down and kill you, somebody else most certainly will?”

O’Gilroy thought carefully about that, then said: “No.”