Gavin Lyall - All Honourable Men

“Suppose,” Ranklin said cautiously, “they ask how Bertie found out?”

But the Commander refused to be uncheered. “They probably won’t. Anyway, loose ends add veracity. It’s only lies that explain every last detail.”

“How very true,” Ranklin murmured.

“I believe,” Ranklin said, “that you’re an expert on the rupee?”

“Oh no, just an amateur, a pure dabbler on the fringes.” Hapgood, the outsider, had picked up the self-deprecation of the genuine insider. Only perhaps he overdid it.

“But you’ve never seen it in its native habitat? Never visited India?”

“No-o.” Hapgood was puzzled but kept a smile on his honest, open face.

“Now might be a good time.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because I’m going to have to tell Gunther van der Brock’s partner that you betrayed Gunther to the French, had him killed.”

“I did nothing of the-”

“Perhaps for what you saw as the best of motives: so that, once Gunther had sold his secret to you, he couldn’t sell it to anyone else. Only – I suppose you had the sense to make it an anonymous message? – you’d have to pretend that he was coming to this Office, not that he’d already been.”

“I tell you this is abso-!”

“I suppose you thought that was what a real born-to-rule insider would have done. Charming but ruthless. But you overdid it: more royal than royalty sort of thing. It can be tricky, knowing what to be true to, I know . . . And incidentally, you were wrong about Gunther. He would never have sold the same secret twice. He was, in his way, an honourable man – for purely commercial reasons, no doubt, but in these lax times . . .”

Hapgood had gone red-faced under his curly fair hair. “I had nothing to do with it. . . And why are you making a fuss about some damned little informer, anyway?”

“He was a spy – just like me. He spent his life risking his neck and being despised by people like you, and he’d learned to expect that, we all do. That doesn’t leave us much to cling to. But one thing is not being betrayed by the people we work for: we don’t have to stand for that – is that quite clear?”

Hapgood stared at him, truly bewildered. “But you can’t compare yourself with him . . . You work for-”

“You don’t understand.” Ranklin nodded to himself and stood up. Hapgood rose, too, towering over him. “And if you don’t understand, don’t meddle . . . I’m serious about visiting India.”