All Honourable Men (33 page)

Bertie turned slowly, unalarmingly, and saw O'Gilroy behind him, holding the Winchester by his side, one-handed but with his thumb on the hammer.

“Indeed you talk to the best people,” Bertie said. “And do you know? – suddenly, I find I am persuaded.”

* * *

It was lighter when Ranklin and Lady Kelso came out onto the camp's main road, but the mist seemed thicker than the night before. In a city, where you expected vistas of only a few hundred yards at most, it would have been unnoticeable. Here, being unable to see more than half a mile (Ranklin reckoned) was confining and, on a ride in unknown country, could be confusing. He could feel the mountains all around; he just couldn't see them.

But he could see the camp plain enough, and last night's memory of it by lamplight now seemed romantic and charming. This morning it reminded him of photographs of mining camps in the Klondike and Yukon (where on earth
were
those places?): ramshackle, damp and grey in the grey light. It was coming alive, with well-wrapped shapes at the coffee-stalls. But it didn't look like the start of a working day; the whole camp hung in suspension, like the clouds of cigarette smoke in the still damp air above the stalls.

Nothing moved on the Railway itself and there was no engine in sight. He could now see where the tracks ran on, over embankments and through cuttings across the rougher land towards the head of the valley until the mist took over.

“Do you need to go to your tent?” Streibl asked.

Ranklin had on a motoring cap with ear-flaps, leather gloves
and the pockets of his “Warrior Sheep” jacket were loaded. “Riding boots?” he queried.

“The stirrups are wide, so . . .” And that suited Ranklin: he would be more versatile in his ordinary boots.

Lady Kelso reappeared from the direction of the tents. “Did you get a look at your map?”

“Yes, I think I see the lie of the land.”

Streibl led them to the horse and mule paddocks, over beside the sidings. A horse-holder was waiting with three shaggy little Anatolian ponies, already saddled and with a guide wearing an elderly Martini rifle – he wasn't a soldier; modern Mausers were one thing the Turkish Army seemed to have plenty of – slung across his back already aboard one of them. A saddlebag made (of course) of carpet seemed standard issue and Streibl tucked a couple of packages into them. “Some food from the kitchens. . .”

Ranklin said: “No spare mounts? If we get these railwaymen of yours freed, d'you expect them to walk home? Or us?”

Streibl looked momentarily blank, then stammered: “I understand they had horses when they were kidnapped. And I think it is not easy to lead one of these animals. They are not . . . not castr—”

“The word is ‘entire',” Lady Kelso said crisply, “so they kick each other to death if they get too close.”

“Yes. And I am sorry but there is no side-saddle—”

“Never expected one.” She stood with one foot in the air until he realised she expected him to make a step of his hands, then trod into it and swung into the saddle, revealing that her skirt was some sort of pantaloon. Ranklin, of course, didn't look closely.

“I've ridden these things before,” she said. “They're actually quite comfortable cross-country.”

They
were Turkish saddles, wider and shorter in the stirrup than the European version, and with wooden bits that Ranklin foresaw would rub at the inside of his legs. He had no particular qualms about the pony itself; he neither liked nor disliked horses, they were just the way Army officers got around.

It may have been her new height, but on horseback Lady Kelso had a brisk confidence. “And suppose Miskal Bey asks about the ransom, what should I say?”

“Ah . . . Perhaps you should not know anything about it.”

“That's ridiculous. I'm not going to sound like just a pawn of your Railway. I shall have to say something – What?”

“Tell him . . . It is ready.” Streibl was a rotten liar. Unfortunately, that didn't tell them what the truth was. “Perhaps you will make it. . . not necessary.” Then he helped Ranklin into the saddle and stood back quickly as the horse-holder let go.

They followed the line of the Railway on up the valley. Looking back after ten minutes, Ranklin could see the camp in context. It spread over what would have been a meadow, just below a sweep of fir trees coming down from the mist and drifts of vividly fresh snow where the trees petered out. And at this distance, it looked like the sodden litter of a gigantic picnic. The next time he looked, it was gone in the mist.

He was glad to see his pony keeping its head down and watching where it put its feet on the rock-strewn ground. He let it pick its own pace, and guessed it would do so no matter what he wanted; it knew who knew best. They crossed a short bridge where the river turned aside, then dismounted and walked the horses through a quarter-mile tunnel, carrying torches of tar-dipped stick. The flaring light glittered off rough-cut walls streaming with damp. This was limestone country: soft grey-white rock that was easy to tunnel through but impossible to waterproof.

The tunnel ended virtually in mid-air and actually on a short stone-built platform, guarded by two soldiers, which must be the start of a future bridge. Across the valley the real mountains began: a slope that steepened to near-vertical as it reared up and became lost in the mist or cloud. From its sheer bulk it must be miles thick at this level; a dent had been blasted out of the rock opposite, and some scaffolding erected where the far end of the bridge would rest, but that was all.

“Is this according to the map?” Lady Kelso asked.

“Yes.” It had been rather a crude rough blue-print Ranklin had been shown; he had been surprised not to see a proper survey map – they must have one, to be building in that countryside – but perhaps it was too precious. Or Streibl hadn't trusted Snaipe to understand it. “They're going to put a bridge across this valley, then tunnel through the mountain on the far side.”

So this, presumably, was where work had ended when the engineers got kidnapped. From here itself? The impression of a frontier was emphasised by the the clutter of brazier, coffee-and cooking-pots; this was a permanent guard-post.

“Where do we go?” she asked, as the guide doused the torches in a jar of water obviously kept there for that.

“Down there.” Ranklin pointed to a fresh but already well-used path running sideways down the slope to the right. “There's a river at the bottom, you can't see it from here, and we follow it. The monastery's . . .” He gestured vaguely half-right, to the north-east.

* * *

The Ford didn't get its first puncture until they had turned off the main road just past Tarsus (whose scruffy houses and snarling dogs had disappointed O'Gilroy; he'd expected a place mentioned in the Bible to be more . . . well, at least
respectable
). They stood by the roadside while the Greek driver changed a wheel.

“Tell me something,” Corinna asked. “How did you get to Mersina so fast?”

Bertie considered and decided it need be no secret. “The
Ministre de la Marine
was kind enough to have a destroyer awaiting me. At Smyrna I caught the normal steamship from Athens.”

Corinna was impressed, but Bertie shook his head. “Fast, but in no way comfortable. Now please, tell me: are all American lady bankers as . . . forthright as yourself?”

“Far's I know there's only two of us. And the other, who'd
better stay nameless, does it all through her husband the bank president. On account of a little mistake he once made that she covered with her own money. She's very successful.”

“Yes, I think I see a connection . . . May I also ask, have you known M'sieu Gorman for long?”

“A little longer than you.”

“And you know him—?”

“Maybe a little better.”

“I understand.” Then he shook his head irritably. “No, I do not understand at all. . . But of more importance, you were to tell me what Colonel Kazurga Bey plans.”

“Mountain artillery,” O'Gilroy said.

“The Turkish Army has no mountain guns.”

“Came with us from Germany in the train, in those boxes yer fellers 'n me saw loaded on the launch at Constantinople. Did they tell ye about them dropping a box and diving for cover? Reckon that was some of the ammunition.”

“The boxes,
naturellement
. My men guessed only explosives. And now I remember, Kazurga is an artilleryman . . . You say it was in the train with you?”

“Joined us after Basle, before Friedrichshafen.” He couldn't remember the name of the station where they'd met the second carriage.

“Bavaria – of course. One tests a mountain gun in mountain country, no? And Kazurga Bey at the same time?”

“He'd come aboard at Basle.”

“Close enough. So: they were teaching the Tornado of their new mountain gun when
voilà
: a perfect opportunity comes to test it in action. And far better if it is commanded by a Turk when used against a Turkish citizen – which, however reluctantly, Miskal Bey is still.

“And after this demonstration,” he went on thoughtfully, “of course the Turks must buy such a wonderful weapon. In the midst of peace we are in war, and in the midst of war we are in salesmanship. How truly wicked this world is.”

* * *

After a few minutes of switchbacking along beside the river, Ranklin realised they were still on a path, but now a much older one. No particular thing told him that, it was more the ease with which they moved. As if, for centuries, people had walked and ridden this route and paused to push aside fallen rocks and trees or kick stones to fill up gulleys. So perhaps this was was an original route to the monastery. There had to be at least one.

After maybe a mile, the guide led them across a shallow patch, over a wide beach of shingle and up beside a smaller tributary flowing from the north. On its far side a slim shaft of darker rock, five or six hundred feet high, rose abruptly from wooded foothills.

The guide said something to Lady Kelso and she turned in the saddle to Ranklin. “He says that modesty forbids him to say what the locals call that peak. So now we know.”

Ranklin tilted his head to squint upwards. Well, it was . . . distinctive. And would be a useful landmark in clearer weather.

After a while they turned east again, down a widish and virtually dry valley. Ranklin had a military eye for landscape – he couldn't help choosing sites for artillery wherever he went – not a geologist's understanding of how it got that way. But he knew from experience that in limestone country rivers could suddenly decide to flow underground instead, leaving dry beds above. Here “dry” was a relative term: the old stream bed was at least damp, its centre patched with grass, bushes and the occasional reeds of boggy stretches. They stayed on the firmer shoreline with its intermittent patches of shingle beach.

For nearly a mile they followed the curves of the dry stream. The left side was a bank averaging fifty feet high and dotted with thin pines; on the right steep slopes swept up to the distinctive peak. Then the left bank rose and was suddenly split by a sheer-sided ravine nearly a hundred feet high that let out only a small, apologetic stream which shuffled around fallen boulders and vanished quickly into a marshy patch. The guide stopped, pointed, said something.

“He says,” Lady Kelso interpreted, “that we should climb the
bank over
there
–” beyond the ravine “– and keep going for about a mile, with the ravine on our left.”

“That sounds like good-bye.”

“Up there counts as Miskal's land. On a clear day we'd see the monastery from the top of the bank.”

* * *

Before the Ford reached the turn-off to the monastery, the caravan road had woken up and they were meeting long strings of laden mules, pack-horses and especially camels, plodding and gurgling down from a night-stop further up. It was a scene that might not have changed in over two thousand years.

“I suppose the Railroad will wipe this right out,” Corinna commented.

“Perhaps.” Bertie looked philosophical about it. “But on smaller roads . . . I think Turkey will never have railways like France and England.”

The monastery route was just a track leading up towards a low pass on the tree-covered slope beside the road. It was marked by a small
han
– what might charitably be called a wayside inn but here a small rundown building for travellers and good, big stables with a dozen and more horses. The proprietor knew Bertie and they all sat down to tiny cups of coffee and, it seemed to Corinna, just as tiny steps in the negotiation process.

She was about to get impatient, then realised that Bertie was in just as much of a hurry, and if there were a faster way of doing things, he'd be using it. It was nearly twenty minutes before they got up and went out to choose horses.

* * *

Ranklin and Lady Kelso zigzagged the horses up the bank between the under-nourished pines and found themselves on the edge of a flat plateau of bare rock that stretched ahead, sloping sightly upwards, until the mist took over.

It was so surprisingly open and exposed after being dominated by the landscape for nearly two hours that they stopped. After a while, Ranklin unbuttoned his coat to use his field–glasses, but until he looked back at the Peak and other slopes behind them, there was virtually nothing to see. There must be mountains somewhere off in the mist ahead, but here he couldn't even feel them.

He let the glasses dangle from their strap, but Lady Kelso seemed in no hurry to get moving again. Perhaps, one short stage from the whole point of her mission, she needed time to prepare for that step.

Or just to talk. “Can they really build a railway through all this?”

“Not this bit. They're sticking to the solid mountains.” He gestured backwards, west. The German taste for tunnelling made more sense now that he'd seen something of the country. It was probably simplest to say the hell with trying to follow twisting dead-end valleys and just tunnel a straight line: once you'd done that, you were at least safe from weather and landslips. Judging from the rocks around, this land didn't need much excuse to slip.