All Honourable Men (2 page)

Carstairs was just starting to soothe the lawyer when there was a knock on the door and he let out a bellowed welcome instead. Gorman, dressed in a grey chauffeur's livery and
polished black leggings, came half-in. He touched his peaked cap. “Jest wondering, sor, if ye'd be wanting the motor in the next hour, or should I be getting an early lunch?”

“Hang on a moment, Gorman, I may want you to witness my signature and then pop down to my bank and pick something up in a short while. Help yourself to some coffee and find a seat somewhere.”

“That's kindness itself, sor.” As Gorman bent over the coffee tray he gave Lajos an enormous wink.

“Where were we?” Carstairs resumed. “Oh yes, I was calming you down, Mr Jay. Consider yourself calmed. Anyway, I shall be going out in a week or so to see what I've bought into, and meanwhile Mr Göttlich isn't likely to head for Switzerland for
his
health, so we'll just have to wait and see what
appears
– all right?”

“I am very pleased you say that,” Lajos announced. “And if these were my own shares, I would most happily wait until you had seen the concession for yourself. But Mr Divine is seeking a quick sale, so . . . May I remind you that the German Hamburg-Amerika Line also sails to the Gulf these days?”

“Does it? Didn't know the Germans were interested in that area.”

“Most certainly. You may have heard they are also building a railway from Constantinople to Baghdad – perhaps further. I believe they would like it to go to Kuwait. But the British have a certain
understanding
with Sheikh Mubarak – in return for protecting him from his own Turkish masters.”

“Does that understanding have anything to do with oil?”

Lajos smiled confidentially. “Who knows how the impassive British Foreign Office thinks? But if we may return to more prosaic matters . . .”

“Like the price?”

* * *

“Carstairs,” Ranklin grumbled. “
Carstairs
. Nobody's called
Carstairs
except in schoolboy spy stories.” He finished signing
the name. “And doesn't a false name invalidate the whole deal?”

“I doubt it'll ever be questioned,” Mr Burroughs said sunnily. “Least of all by Göttlich-Divine. Did you suspect—”

“Since Göttlich means divine, I did rather.”

“Anyway, the £14,000 is real enough; he's not going to want to give that back – the company owes more than that to the American drill-makers. Thank you for saving us a few thou', by the way. You obviously drove a hard bargain.”

“We'll take yer thanks in cash,” O'Gilroy suggested.

Mr Burroughs was momentarily flummoxed, unused to hearing men in chauffeur's kit say things like that. Then he smiled uneasily and began sorting the paperwork. In fact, he was uneasy with the three agents anyway. It might have been the unease people feel when meeting actors off-stage but still in their greasepaint and costumes, only it wasn't. And they knew it but said nothing.

“So,” Burroughs went on quickly, “thank you for a most satisfactory conclusion: Albemarle and Dover Trust now owns a controlling interest in Oriental Pearl Oil and Pipeline.”

“Is there really any oil out there then?” Lieutenant J asked. He was stretched almost horizontal, feet on the table and defying his suit, which wanted to sit up in a proper legal manner.

Burroughs hesitated and glanced at Fazackerley of the Foreign Office, who moved his eyebrows in a diplomatic but otherwise meaningless way. “Oh well, you can hardly be gossips in your, ah, profession . . . The answer is that there quite likely is, but the concession isn't in Kuwait any longer. The British Government helped Sheikh Mubarak define his boundaries last year in an agreement with the Turks, and the concession now falls just outside them. So the Sheikh's signature is no longer worth anything as regards that patch of sand.”

“So?” Lieutenant J prompted, and Burroughs realised he had to go on.

“However, there certainly seems to be oil in Kuwait – I believe it's oozing out of the ground in places, so perhaps even
the experts can't be wrong – and Oriental Pearl also owns the lease on a stretch of foreshore. Göttlich insisted the company bought it from himself; he used to run a pearl-diving business there, he knows Kuwait well. And that bit of foreshore is the only suitable place for an oil pipeline terminal and dock.”

“Ah. I noticed mention of a stretch of beach,” Ranklin said, standing up. “I didn't know its importance.” He went into the bedroom to start packing.

“So,” O'Gilroy said thoughtfully, “if'n the boundaries hadn't been spelled out, mebbe Mr Göttlich'd be a rich man? – and honest with it?”

“Possibly. Only possibly.” Burroughs finished stuffing papers into his attaché case and snapped it shut. “We know Mr Divine or Göttlich of old and he isn't a real crook. None of this was planned. He's the sort of man who meets a setback, feels the world's done him down and he's got a right to do someone else down. Men like that seldom get rich. Well, thank you gentlemen. Thank you,” he called to Ranklin, “Mr, ah . . . Carstairs. Are you coming, Fazackerley?”

“I'll catch you up downstairs.” When Burroughs had gone, he went to the bedroom door. “Are you ready to leave, Captain?”

“Nearly. Ring for a porter, would you? And a taxi – at the River entrance, I think. Just in case. And you'll settle the bill, will you?”

“Umm, er, of course.” Fazackerley was there to do such things but, after all, he
was
the Foreign Office and they merely Secret Service. So he frowned at Lieutenant J's brandy-and-soda. “I imagine you chaps normally pay for your own drinks?”

“No, no, quite wrong,” J said complacently. “Us spies never do that. But do tell, what's the FO doing being so chummy with the oil biz?”

“Excuse me, I'd better ring for that porter.”

The Secret Service Bureau lived in a jumble of attic rooms in the roof of Whitehall Court and the Commander, who headed the Bureau, lived in one of the bigger rooms. He was a stocky man with a face like Mr Punch, who vastly enjoyed the job, had surrounded himself with ship models, gadgets and a collection of pistols, dubbed himself “Chief” and signed papers “C”.

That morning he was being visited by Lord Erith, a meticulous hawk-faced man who was rumoured to have turned down honours, ministries, governorships – whatever you cared to think of – to stay in some minor post in the Royal Household where he had the ear of the Monarch and thus everyone else. Mind, rumour also had it that Erith's influence was waning under the new King, but he was still high on the hill.

The Commander owed him a continuing debt since it was Erith who had chaired a sub-committee in 1909 which had taken the secret decision to set up the Bureau. Not secret from anyone who mattered, of course, just from the voters and Parliament. And even that perhaps mainly from embarrassment, since most people – popular novelists particularly – assumed Britain had had a world-wide and omniscient Secret Service for ages.

Moreover, as long as Erith approved of the Bureau he had invented, and was still listened to by the King, the Secret Service was reasonably safe from the bigger and older predators of Whitehall. So the Commander felt he should be fairly open about his problems.

“I'm still looking for a permanent second-in-command,” he
was saying. “Preferably Navy. The Navy's always had a more world-wide outlook and a Naval officer has to
know
something, just to keep his ship off the rocks; the Army can get by with merely showing leadership. So if you have influence at the Admiralty . . .”

“Alas, young Winston seems beyond influence, but . . . Who's doing the job at present?”

“My
acting
second's a Gunner. Chap we call, in our secretive way, Captain R. But he doesn't want the job permanently.”

Erith looked politely puzzled. “Surely, if he volunteered, he must—”

“He didn't exactly volunteer. I rather helped.” The Commander took his pipe out of his mouth and inspected it for plumbing problems while he considered how much to tell. “He'd had to resign his commission through bankruptcy and gone to fight for the Greeks against the Turks in Macedonia. So—”

“Odd, isn't it,” Erith digressed, “in a country that prides itself on its patriotism, how
respectable
it is to go off to war for someone else? Waterloo veterans fighting for Bolivar, our officers running the Egyptian Army—”

“Don't forget Cochrane,” the Commander said cheerfully. “He commanded the Chilean, Brazilian and Greek Navies – in succession – after we cashiered him. Wound up buried in the Abbey, too, and he wouldn't have got that by staying at home.”

“You were telling me about your acting number two.”

“Yes . . . I thought I'd made a mistake there, since it turned out it wasn't this chap's fault. It was his brother playing silly-buggers on the stock market with the family money, then shooting himself and leaving our chap to foot the bill. So he isn't really a
natural
cad, and I more or less had to blackmail him into working here. We pay his family's debts as long as he does. But it's worked out well enough.”

Erith had very good control of his expression, but he allowed himself a blink. “And he isn't a little . . . bitter about this?”

“Oh, of course he is. And by now he's learnt to be suspicious
and mistrusting, too. I don't want men who've gone through life wrapped in cotton wool.”

“Quite, quite so . . . Only, I still wonder . . . if you might do better to pick people who are, well . . .”

“More the clean-cut dashing types who volunteer to Save the Empire in spy stories?” the Commander suggested. “Anyone who thinks like that belongs in a bin. God save me from a man who really
wants
to be a spy.”

“I think I'll spare His Majesty that viewpoint. Next thing we know, you'll be recruiting these Irish blackguards for their skill in outwitting us.” He looked at the secret, clamped-shut smile on the Commander's face and a horrible thought began to grow. “You don't mean to tell me—”

“Just the one. Oddly enough, it was Captain R who found him on a mission to Cork – they'd served together in the South African War. Now he's turned out to be one of the most effective agents we've got. In his own way.”

“I shall most
certainly
spare His Majesty that titbit.” Erith looked around the room, at the sloped attic ceiling, at what showed of his shoes beneath the spats. He was obviously gathering courage to ask something . . . “As regards your agents' methods . . . Often, I suppose, women can be surprisingly well informed . . . If you see what I mean.”

The Commander didn't.

“That is to say,” Erith went on, “do you encourage your people to contract
liaisons
to extract information?”

So
that's
what he was driving at. Erith, whose private life could probably bear the closest inspection, seemed never to have grown out of a schoolboy voyeurism. Now he wanted detailed tales of spies seducing the mistresses of foreign diplomats. Oh Lord.

“I rather leave that to their personal inclinations. And talents.”

Erith looked disappointed, almost rebuffed, and the Commander didn't want that. He trawled his memory. “Of course, one of our chaps seems
very
close to the daughter of Reynard Sherring, the American private banker.”

Erith went on looking disappointed. The Commander said: “International banking has very good information. It's a good source.”

“I dare say, but—”

“We got something of great interest to the Admiralty that way.”

“—but do you mean they're
really
close?”

The Commander's patience snapped. “They're probably fucking each other blind, for all I know.” There, that was what you wanted to hear, wasn't it? “All I care about is that we got a tip on an oil matter in the Gulf . . . Anyway, she's a widow, so it's perfectly respectable.”

“Fascinating,” Erith murmured. “Ah – does she know what your chap actually does when he isn't. . . When he's working?”

“I have to assume so. But –” he shrugged his heavy shoulders “– it's all a profit and loss account with invisible figures. You just hope you're getting invisibly rich.”

“Quite so . . . So you're involved in the Oil Question. I presume you know of Winston's plans – do they concern you?”

“So far, only marginally. I've a feeling it won't stop there.”

“No, I fear not.” A small fastidious frown flickered across his brow. Conniving, even fighting, for the silk and spice trade had a certain
something
. . . Something that oil didn't have, anyway. He sighed. “But I can say that you are . . . would ‘fully aware' cover it? Excellent.” He stood up, quite unconsciously brushing invisible spy-dust off his perfectly-fitting frock coat. “Then I thank you for letting me intrude. I can presume to say that His Majesty will be well satisfied if he hears nothing of your continued progress.”

The Commander escorted him out through the sound-proof door and the outer office. This was furnished with unmatched but comfortable-looking chairs, small tables with ashtrays, a scatter of newspapers and magazines. It might have been any small club – and Whitehall Court was full of them – devoted to owning a certain make of motor-car or shooting a particular breed of animal. Three men stood in a huddle by a window.
They glanced at Lord Erith, showed no hint of recognition, and went on talking.

He was disconcerted; surely they
must
recognise who I am, he thought. Then he remembered that they would be carefully trained not to show any reaction, and went his way content.

The huddle was still in session when the Commander came back. O'Gilroy had been able to change out of chauffeur's uniform in Ranklin's – actually the Bureau's – flat downstairs, but Lieutenant J still wore his funereal City solicitor clothes. The Commander asked: “Is it all wrapped up, then? Succesfully?”