All Honourable Men (17 page)

“How splendid. And whatever else I may be, I'm an Englishwoman through and through . . . so I'm worried about all this business.”

A puzzled frown. “All what, M'Lady?”

“You do know about it, don't you? What it seems to boil down to is that I'll be helping the Germans complete a railway that I'm far from sure is in Britain's best interests.”

A volcano of thoughts erupted in O'Gilroy's mind. She was having patriotic doubts: good – so far. But suppose she got the notion of doing a little sabotage on her own? Then there'd be the most God-awful muddle. Yet she obviously didn't believe Ranklin, as the Hon. Patrick Snaipe, was capable of doing anything original himself . . .

With a sudden cold professionalism, he wondered if they could pull off a coup and somehow leave her to take the blame, keeping their characters intact. He shelved the idea only because it wasn't the most urgent. Right now, he must keep her as a possible ally yet dissuade her from acting on her own.

“I thought the Foreign Minister, Ma'am, Sir Edward, he'd asked ye jest to talk to this feller with the prisoners. If ye do that much, nobody's going to blame ye if—”

“Oh, never mind about
blame
,” she said testily. “I'm bothered that Sir Edward himself might . . . well, let's say he may have been poorly advised. He must have a lot on his plate.” She cocked her head. “I wouldn't say this to Mr Snaipe, so this is
utterly
between us two, but I've found in my travels that our Diplomatic Service, and the Foreign Office back home, don't
always
get things right.”

O'Gilroy was trying to look as if this idea, while wholly new and startling, wasn't entirely unbelievable.

“In fact,” she added, “when I think of my first husband . . . No, never mind that.” She suddenly sat up straight. “Or do you feel I'm trying to involve you in things that shouldn't concern you?”

“No, no, M'Lady, it's not that. But – if I might be making a suggestion . . .?”

“That's just what I'm asking for.”

“I was jest thinking, M'Lady –” he frowned, as if unfamiliar with deviousness “– that if ye waited until yer talking to the feller – Miskal, is it? – ye'd be talking a lingo me and the Hon. Patrick don't know at all, so if ye said Go right on keeping the prisoners and let the Germans fart in their beer (begging yer pardon, M'Lady) then who'd be knowing?”

Her smile was a sunrise. “What a
splendid
idea. I'm most indebted to you. And I don't think you need mention our little chat to Mr Snaipe. It might . . .
confuse
him.”

“Never a word, M'Lady.”

“Thank you so much. You're a most intelligent man, Gorman.” She hesitated, perhaps trying to make up her mind, then deciding what could she lose? “What do you make of Zurga Bey? D'you think he could be a spy?”

“Er—” O'Gilroy was taken aback. He would far rather she did not go around wondering if people were spies. “I couldn't be saying . . . Jest who would he be spying on, M'Lady?”

“Oh, any and all of us. In Turkey you get spies everywhere. It's their way of life, everybody wants to know what their rivals are doing. Even Europeans down on their luck do it, spying on other Europeans for the Government – and I'm sure
that
hasn't
changed with this Committee. So be careful who you say anything to.”

Relieved, he realised she was talking about
informers
, not real spies. “Thank ye, M'Lady, I'll be remembering that . . . But about Zurga, I can tell ye one thing: he's a soldier, an officer. Or was, not long past.”

She sat back with a delighted expression. “Ah yes – and you'd be able to tell, of course. Thank you again. Now I'd better let you get on with your work . . .”

Ranklin had just about finished the packing, but he lit a cigarette and let O'Gilroy – who would clearly rather have faced an army of brigands than the notorious Lady Kelso – do the rest and pass on the news.

When he had finished, Ranklin was looking pale. “My God, she isn't going to do anything on her own, is she?”

“I think I talked her out of it. And was telling her Zurga's really an officer.”

Ranklin nodded. “The way he handled those bandits? – and spoke to the machine-gun crew? Yes, I'd guess he was in Germany learning German Army methods, and his Turkish masters probably added him to this mission to look after their interests. And the Railway company doesn't want to be seen as high-handed foreigners if things get exciting, so they welcomed him . . . Probably they welcome a British contingent to share the blame, too,” he added.

“I thought if Lady Kelso don't get the prisoners released, they jest hand over the gold.”

“Yes, but paying kidnappers keeps them in business. I suggested Miskal might use the ransom to buy more guns, and nobody took me seriously. But it's so obvious a point, they must have thought of it.” He paused for thought. “It might be that getting the engineers back is just the first step. And the second will be making quite sure Miskal can't try the same thing again.”

O'Gilroy considered this for himself, then: “D'ye reckon that machine-gun's coming all the way with us, then?”

“I doubt they brought it just to scare off brigands. You haven't got a look inside the baggage compartment? – then it could be full of Maxims for all we know. Though I wouldn't choose them for tackling a mountain stronghold.” Machine-guns were for defence in open country, not lugging – dismounted and unfireable – around rocky slopes.

O'Gilroy shrugged. “All packed, yer Honourable sir. And ye've only one clean collar for a dress shirt left, so hope the hotel laundry knows its stuff.”

“Fine.” Ranklin got up to look out of the window. The train was curving gently around the coast, past isolated wooden houses and slumped stone huts, through a gap in the old Byzantine city wall, towards the low rocky headland of Stamboul. “When we get off the train, the Embassy will probably be meeting Lady Kelso, and I imagine I'll get caught up in that. But nobody'll care about you. I want you to hang around the station and see what happens to whatever's in the baggage compartment.”

O'Gilroy thought about this. “Could be they'll move it out to some goods yard before they unload.”

“The only goods yard is right alongside the station itself – look.” Ranklin unfolded the map in his Baedeker. Squeezed between the sea and Seraglio Point, the station had no room for elaborate marshalling yards. “I don't say you'll get right up to it – they're probably wary of thieves – but you might see something.”

O'Gilroy saw the sense of it, but it was still a tall order for his first move in an utterly strange city. “D'ye have any Turkish money?”

“Sorry, not yet, but they take French gold and silver, if you've still got any.”

“And give me yer gun.”

Ranklin frowned, but passed it over. Then he ripped the map out of the Baedeker and passed that over, too. He wasn't sure how good O'Gilroy was at map-reading, but it might help. “Get a cab when you're through. We're at the Pera Palace hotel, everybody knows it.”

The train slowed yet further as they came in sight of Stamboul, uneven steps of wooden buildings that climbed gently to climax in the stalks of minarets and great buds of domes that glowed pink and gold in the setting sun.

“Keep this memory,” Ranklin advised. “Once you're among it, it won't feel the way it looks now.”

Despite being the end of the line for the Orient Express, Stamboul station was surprisingly unpretentious: no great arched glass roof, just individual canopies over each platform. Since they couldn't get through Customs until the porters had unloaded their luggage, nobody could rush and the platform turned into a social occasion. Relatives fell into each others' arms, friends shook hands, hotel agents tried to find who had booked with them and tout for more. And both the British and German Embassies had guessed the private coaches would be at the front of the train, so arrived through the crowd at a diplomatic scamper.

“Harriet, Lady Kelso?” Very correct. “I'm Howard Jarvey, Second Counsellor at the Embassy.” He was tall and slightly stooped, with a head that was lean and, when he raised his top hat, virtually bald. Yet he had a dark moustache that Ranklin couldn't keep his eyes off; it looked dead, like a moustache on a skull.

Jarvey turned to him, forcing Ranklin to raise his eyeline a few inches. “The Honourable Patrick Snaipe? Splendid. Did you have a good journey? – we heard there'd been some trouble . . .”

“Just brigands,” Lady Kelso dismissed them as she might have done a mosquito.

“Really?” Jarvis was a little surprised to have the topic ended so quickly. “Ah . . . the Ambassador's having a little dinner tonight, if you feel up to it—”

“How sweet of him. I'd be delighted.”

“Splendid. And you, too, Snaipe.” No “Mr”: he was on the diplomatic ladder here, and the bottom rung of it. “No need to
call on the Ambassador formally, it isn't as if you're joining our little family. Seven-thirty, the Embassy's very near the Pera Palace. I'm afraid we can't offer you a lift now, the Embassy motor-car's . . .” But Ranklin never learnt what, since Jarvey had escorted Lady Kelso out of ear-shot.

The crowd was thinning and Ranklin became aware of O'Gilroy at his elbow, whispering: “I need ye and the passport to get me off'n the platform.”

Ranklin had forgotten that, but his diplomatic status eased them through the Customs hall and he left O'Gilroy outside as if finding them a cab.

In fact, O'Gilroy had great difficulty in not finding several cabs, along with porters, guides, half a dozen boarding-house touts, several things to eat or drink, and some offers he could only guess at. Any idea of standing there and taking stock of his new surroundings vanished. He could only stride off purposefully, like trying to out-run a cloud of midges on a beach.

The Customs exit was at the side of the station. After a hundred yards or so, he had worked his way round to the front, end-on to where all the lines – only four of them – terminated. The crowd there seemed more concerned with its own purposes, and he found a table on the outskirts of the station buffet and sat down.

The first thing he saw was a shop sign – probably. But it wasn't that he couldn't read the words, the very
letters
meant nothing. In the twilight a few electric lamps had wavered on, but far more oil lamps were flaring up, lighting alien faces in strange clothes, jabbering incomprehensibly. And behind that, the jingle, clatter and yells – the Turks shouted in deliberately low-pitched voices – of horse-drawn traffic, and behind
that
the rumble of unseen ships' sirens. Shapeless, rowdy and menacing, the world tried to engulf him. He clutched the familiar pistol in his pocket for reassurance—

A waiter stood looking at him impatiently. O'Gilroy managed to croak: “
Café
, please,” and the waiter nodded and went
away. He had spoken to this world, and it understood! He leaned back, nestling in a surge of confidence, lit a cigarette and set to watching the crowd more calmly. Almost all were men: the very occasional women wore black from head to foot, held a fold of cloth across their faces and generally looked as unmysterious as a bag of washing. But even allowing for it being a cold evening, the men were barely less drab, except that most wore the scarlet flowerpot of a fez. So much for the “colourful East”.

But they were still
different
, and in so many aspects of clothing, mannerism, movement, that he stood no chance of blending into any crowd. He needed something to do, besides sit and look. So after he had drunk what they seemed to think was coffee he moved on.

On the opposite side of the station from where he'd first come out, a dark road lined with warehouses ran parallel to the lines of the goods yard. There was nowhere to loiter inconspicuously, so the most O'Gilroy could do was confirm that there was a gate into the yard – there was, and it was guarded – then see if the road led anywhere else. It dissolved into a tangle of alleyways with the loom of bare trees and a barracks-like building beyond, so he turned back.

It would be an outrageous compliment to call the road surfaces here cobblestones: they were just vari-sized rocks hammered into the half-dry mud. The idea of pavements hadn't occurred to anyone yet, so he had to squeeze himself against a wall as a procession of three ox-carts lumbered by. They were empty, but with enough men on the driving seats to form a work-party and as they passed he heard a snatch of conversation – and was sure it was German.

He saw them turn into the yard gateway and walked back to the front of the station. There he bought a four-day-old London newspaper and a handful of postcards, then found another café. Now he could pick one not obviously overlooking the goods yard road since a convoy of ox-carts would be slow and highly visible. Here also they had the idea that coffee meant a thimbleful of sandy sour treacle, so perhaps it
was a common Turkish delusion. He dried the tabletop with his sleeve and began to write postcards.

* * *

The immediate lobby of the Pera Palace hotel – built by the
Wagons-Lit
Company specifically to house its Orient Express passengers – was quite small and a little austere.

“Has my man Gorman got here yet?” Ranklin asked, and was told, of course, No.

“Silly ass,” he grumbled. “Went looking for some bit of baggage he'd misplaced . . . Get someone to unpack for me, would you? I've got to tog up for dinner at the Embassy, but right now I want a cup of tea. You do make a decent cup of tea, I trust?”

And having established Snaipe's character yet again, he drifted up a few steps and turned into the public rooms, where things got more palatial. High-ceilinged, chandeliered and most overlooking a park and the ships gliding up the Golden Horn, the idea was obviously to give you the feeling that you were experiencing Constantinople without getting your shoes muddy or your back stabbed. The furniture and decor blended Eastern patterns with European comfort without satisfying either the discriminating eye or backside, but got high marks for trying.