Spy’s Honour

KEEPING THE CODE
9

They got a first-class smoking compartment to themselves on the train to Newhaven, carrying three copies of the Anglo-French military code “X” parcelled up in Ranklin’s hand baggage. It wasn’t the genuine code: that was the “W” one, three copies of which were being carried by Lieutenant Spiers of Military Operations in the next compartment. And somewhere else on the train was a gentleman with three copies of the equally false code “Y”.

It was all overcomplicated and uncertain and Ranklin didn’t like it. Why, for instance, wasn’t the code simply going by Diplomatic Bag?

“Because,” the Commander had explained, “the Foreign Office doesn’t know about it. Half the Cabinet doesn’t know we’ve got as cosy with the Frogs’ Army as to need a joint code. Their Liberal morality would be outraged and their mistresses would have told all of London by lunchtime. And we don’t want two years’ work thrown away.

“Mind you,” he had added, “damn few secrets last that long, especially when they involve the Frogs’ Ministere de la Guerre. That’s why we’ve undertaken to deliver the code ourselves, right to their front door.”

“Does the Ministere know when the code’s supposed to arrive, sir?”

“Oh, yes. So if there’s been any leak, it’ll come from their end, and it’ll be your job to prove it. Spring any ambush, fall into any trap. I envy you: should be jolly good sport.”

Sport?

“I want two volunteers to go ahead until they get shot, then report back,” O’Gilroy interpreted.

“Apart from that word ‘volunteers’, that seems to be the case.”

“And just what will we be doing when somebody tries to relieve us of our precious burden?”

“We’re supposed to use our discretion.”

“By that d’ye mean yer little gun?”

“No, I haven’t brought that.”

“That’s the first good news I’ve heard about this job. If somebody found that on ye, specially taped behind yer knee, it’d be a badge saying Secret Service. Ye don’t happen to have such a badge, do ye?”

“Of course not.” Ranklin was too ashamed to admit that he had once asked the Commander if such a thing existed – a distinctive signet ring or cigarette case, even something pasted inside a watch – to identify brother agents to each other. The Commander had said with threadbare patience: “I thought I told you when you joined the British Secret Service that Britain has no Secret Service. Therefore, how can it have a badge?”

O’Gilroy was saying: “Fine, but then what will we be doing with him? – just kick the right to vote off’n him?”

“Well, try to find out who he is and who he’s working for. No, I don’t imagine anybody’ll just jump at us from a dark alley, that sort of thing …” But he had no idea of what the unknown anybody might do – nor of what he would do in their place …

“And don’t smoke your cigarettes down that far,” he snapped at O’Gilroy’s lean and exasperating smile.

The idea of treating O’Gilroy as an equal – another country gentlemen, albeit an eccentric Irish one – had at first struck Ranklin as impossible, but in fact came easily. His great weakness as an officer, one which made him an indifferent leader, was that unless he treated a man as his equal, he had little idea of how to treat him at all. He had often blessed the juvenile whim that had made him pick the Artillery when the inflexible pattern of life had forced him, as second son, to join the Army.

Trying to be a conscientious infantry officer, he now realised, would have been a life of constant doubt and embarrassment. He had learnt that he could cope in battle, steadily and thoughtfully if not with much dash. He could order men to risk their lives or kill others: that, after all, was what they were there for. But listening to a man’s marital troubles, or his lame excuses for horrible misdeeds, just terrified him. It wasn’t the gross details, it was the expectation that he should give advice that would do some good. Why should it? Who on earth was he to judge? And the Army had far more marital problems than battles.

But in the Guns, the rapidly evolving world of breech mechanisms, recoil buffers and sighting systems, the interlocking problems of range, muzzle velocity, trajectory, convergence and probability theory – all this created a firm ground on which he could meet other minds. And, largely, let their incontinent bodies look after themselves.

Perhaps that was why he had taken to O’Gilroy at Ladysmith. Pressed into service as a replacement gun number, the lad had been unforthcoming about himself even when there can have been little to forthcome about, but hungrily anxious to learn about the guns’ mechanisms and routines. In teaching him, Ranklin may have been trying to create another equal, but the infantry had swallowed him up again once the siege was lifted.

And now, after thirteen years and some weeks of careful coaching, he had O’Gilroy back – as an equal.

The equal smiled wickedly and took another cigarette from his gold case – second-hand, as were his watch and wallet and thus well worn – and having stared carefully at its length, lit it. Ranklin clamped his mouth on his pipe and said nothing.

It had been easy to get O’Gilroy shaved, barbered and into the right tweedy clothes, and not too difficult to fit him with the general air of an Irish gentleman of leisure. He had known the genuine article well, having been chauffeur for a big house in Waterford (though how he had learnt to drive, Ranklin had no idea). And he obviously enjoyed life in first class.

But there lay the problem: he enjoyed it because it had only just come to him, and constantly forgot to waste it: to leave drinks, meals and cigarettes half-finished, the change from a sovereign uncounted. Oh well, Ranklin shrugged mentally, perhaps the French would simply think O’Gilroy was untravelled. He hunched down in his seat and stared unseeing at the damp April landscape rattling past the misted windows; he had been thinking too much of O’Gilroy and not enough of the job ahead.

And after a time, he said: “I’ve been a bit slow: they aren’t going to steal this code from us. If we knew it had been stolen, we’d change it. A damned nuisance, but nothing worse than that, not in peacetime.”

“Ah-hah? I’ve had no dealing with codes, but what ye say makes sense. So what would they do? Try to get a look at it and copy it without us knowing?”

“It’d have to be something like that. But again, how …”

“I’d think we watched who tried to make friends with us, then.” He held up his cigarette to make sure it was precisely half-smoked, and ground it out. Ranklin pretended not to see.