Gavin Lyall - All Honourable Men

O’Gilroy and two Arabs came around the bend in the riverbed where the gun was now aimed, a quarter of a mile ahead. Their own Arab came back with two more shells, Ranklin directed him where to put them, then offered him a cigarette and lit one for himself. When O’Gilroy came up, he passed it across and asked: “Bertie?”

O’Gilroy took the cigarette with a hand that shivered slightly. He took a deep drag, blew smoke, and said slowly, “Coupla fellers – Turk soldiers – tried to flank us, coming up the cliff. Near got me, ’n’ Bertie got that one, then t’other got him. Then I got t’other.” Maybe, by tactful questioning – and half a bottle of whisky – Ranklin would one day learn what had really happened. If it mattered.

“T’other Arab got himself killed ’fore I got there,” O’Gilroy added. He sucked on the cigarette.

“Well done, anyhow.”

“I’d probly have killed Bertie meself anyways,” O’Gilroy said. “Him being a bastard.” Ranklin nodded. You didn’t want to like, even to know, the ones who died. You wanted them just to be things. He looked around. The scattered shell-cases, the dead Arab on the beach, more shell-cases and boxes and the little line of bodies . . . There were plenty of things.

Oh God, why did You make courage so damned normal ? We know You’re on the side of the big battalions – but are You also on the side of the men who send out the battalions? – who use men’s courage to plug the gaps in their own stupidity? Surely You aren’t another of those who believe the more terrible war becomes, the more likely men are to give it up? You’re supposed to know about us! Have You forgotten so much since You last visited us 1900 years ago? Oh God, just stop men being brave!

Corinna was looking at him. The streaks on her face were now further streaked with tears. Reaction. But she’d want him not to notice. She asked: “Are you all right?”

“Just praying. I think.” He threw his cigarette on the ground and got brisk. “There’s still getting on for a hundred soldiers up there somewhere. They won’t attack the monastery now but we’re on their line of retreat even if they don’t want to catch us. So you and O’Gilroy get on horses – if there’s any still alive – and get back past the Railway tunnel and up to . . . your caravan road.”

“And you?”

“I’ll disable this gun and go back with . . .” He waved at the three remaining Arabs. “Through the back way to the monastery. And get Lady Kelso out somehow . . .” At least they could now put Miskal on a horse (if they had any left alive) and move off to. . . their village? Or haul him down to Mersina and a doctor? Somewhere, somehow; he was too drained to worry. “I don’t think we’d better go back through the Railway camp, so if you can get something to meet us on the road . . . And after that, we’d appreciate the hospitality of your – Mr Billings’s – yacht.”

“Of course.” She looked up the riverbed. “Aren’t we going to . . . bury them?”

“Digging even one grave takes an age.”

She turned away and then half-turned back. “Did you hear what I said about Edouard?”

“I heard. I think it’s . . . just . . . Oh hell. I’m very glad.” They smiled at each other; the past seemed very past.

The Foreign Office had been built over fifty years later than the Admiralty, so Corbin’s room was more grand than elegant. They sat near the window, just out of the slant of the afternoon sun, the Commander, Ranklin and Corbin himself, nobody from the Admiralty or India Office. Ranklin had asked about this and been told, politely, that it wasn’t his concern.

Now Corbin was asking: “And this survey map is definitely destroyed?”

“I burned it myself,” Ranklin said firmly.

“And you believe that will delay the Baghdad Railway for . . . weeks? Months?”

“I think you’d have to ask an experienced railway surveyor that.”

“Umm. I think we’d prefer to go on not having heard of it,” Corbin said. “But we – somebody – is going to have to talk to the French. After all, they have lost a diplomatist. You say he was more, or less, than that – which seems borne out by their rather guarded manner in making enquiries about him – but nevertheless prima facie a diplomatist, so something has to be said. Would it be best if you-” his look switched between the Commander and Ranklin“- had a word with your French counterparts and left them to tell the Quai d’Orsay as much as seemed appropriate?”

“We will if you like,” the Commander said without enthusiasm.

“I think it would be best. They may settle for an assurance that he died bravely. I trust that he did?”

“I don’t know,” Ranklin said. “I was half a mile away.”

Corbin looked irritated, so Ranklin shrugged. “I expect so. Men usually do.”

Satisfied, Corbin nodded. “Which seems only to leave the matter of Lady Kelso . . . What do you suggest we should do to express our thanks to her? Bearing in mind that any public acknowledgement of her contribution might bring the whole . . . complex story into the open.” He’d probably been going to say “shabby”, not “complex”.

Ranklin had known this must come, but that had been no help. “I’m afraid there’s not much I can suggest, except-”

“She does rather seem to have everything already,” Corbin mused. “The title, the house in the Italian lakes . . .”

“I think she’d rather like an introduction to English society – at a level suitable to her rank.”

There was a moment of rather surprised silence. Then Corbin said: “Society . . . Yes, odd how people value that . . . But although, at the Foreign Office, we have to deal with some strange and even weird races, the upper reaches of English society are, thank God, not within our remit. So I’m afraid . . . A warm letter of appreciation from Sir Edward himself, perhaps?”

It was, as Ranklin had expected, the best they could do. On the way out, he asked: “Will you be letting the Admiralty and India Office know whatever’s ‘appropriate’? Or do they expect us to report to them separately?”

This time Corbin looked vexed. “The Admiralty will be informed. But the India Office . . . They may have started this thing, but it isn’t any risk to India that concerns us, it’s the Gulf and oil.”

As they reached the pavement of King Charles Street, the Commander demanded: “What was that about the India Office? We don’t have any dealings with them.”

“Spying,” Ranklin said cheerfully. “Corbin said the India Office started it. So now we know Gunther sold his secret to Hapgood, not the FO or the Admiralty. I suppose foreigners do tend to overrate our concern for India.”

“Are you still worrying about van der Brock?”

“Wouldn’t we like to re-establish good commercial relations with that firm? Their terms seem to be strictly eye-for-an-eye: one of Gunther’s partners wanted to balance their books by killing me. May still want to, for all I know.”

“We can’t have that ” the Commander frowned. “Could you suggest to them that it was the late Monsieur Bertrand Lacan who had Gunther killed? – he was in Paris, just a telephone call away at the time, wasn’t he?”

Ranklin nodded. “Actually, I think it really was him – or his department or whatever. I think Gunther got his information from an informant in Paris, not Berlin. And from what they said, or didn’t say, to O’Gilroy at Constantinople, I think Gunther’s partners know that.”

“Fine,” the Commander said cheerfully. “So all you have to do is persuade them that Bertie found out, and Bob’s your uncle.”