Gavin Lyall - Flight From Honour

“Trieste. And the fuss is just Scotland Yard trying to balance its books. Why did you suddenly decide to go . . . well, where are you going?”

“Wherever Andrew does.” She because serious. “I don’t know what’s going on and unless you tell me, I’m sticking to that boy like a leech.”

He nodded. “I can’t blame you. But I still don’t think he’s likely to get mixed up in anything, I think Falcone had several irons in the fire and we’re only interested in one of them, but . . .”

“Is Trieste part of that? Like it’s part of Austria that Italy covets?”

Ranklin studied his tiny cup of cognac. And with her lantern-slide change of expression to a broad grin, she said: “You poor darling, you really don’t know what the hell’s going on, do you? Come up this end and let Mama cuddle you and you tell her all your troubles.”

Ranklin accepted half her invitation. “Is this how private banking conducts business?”

“Invariably. But at least take your damned overcoat off.”

“Sorry.” He laid his head tentatively on her breasts; she certainly had nothing supportive on beneath the kimono. After a while, he said in a rather muffled voice: “Something I don’t understand . . . Do you remember Major Dagner talking about his wife?”

“His second wife, you said.”

“I did, but just hours ago he told me his wife got ill but recovered. So the chap who told me she’d died must have got it wrong.” But damn it, the Scots Guards major had been specific enough about Dagner’s grief.

“I know,” she said calmly. “Adelina was talking about him-”

“Who?”

“Lady Hovedene. She said, with his medal and that Tibet stuff, he was the most eligible widower in London. And believe me, she doesn’t get those things wrong.”

Ranklin raised his head, puzzled. “But he says his wife’s on the way home.”

“Sure. But I figured that was just his act – and you seemed to be backing him. Spy stuff. Or maybe he doesn’t want people like Adelina trying to marry him off, so he pretends she’s still alive. Like me being Mrs Finn only the other way around. You don’t have to be a spy to be an out-and-out liar,” she added. “But I guess it helps.”

“But why put on the act with me?”

She went cross-eyed looking down at him. Then smiled as she stroked his silky hair. Men got so outraged at each other not being Pukka Sahibs.

“Maybe he pretends to himself,” she said evenly. “He just can’t bring himself to face it, so he believes she’s forever on the next boat home. I find that rather romantic.”

Ranklin obviously didn’t find it so. She felt she was cuddling a plank. “Or maybe you could say he’s a bit eccentric. Don’t you have to be, to be a top spy? Anyhow, what can you do about it right now? Just relax.”

And gradually, soothed by her and the rocking of the train, he did. Most of him.

They met again at ten that morning in the Sherring office on the Boulevard des Capucines. After – probably – a couple of hours’ sleep in her own bed, a bath and a change of clothing, Corinna looked crisp and fresh. Ranklin didn’t. On what was obviously going to be another hot day, he had spent three hours taxi-cabbing from cafe to cafe in his overcoat and burdened with his luggage.

She had a Baedeker Austria-Hungary open at the Trieste pages. “The Excelsior Palace sounds good enough for a Sherring representative. Shall I cable them to book a room? – I suppose there’s no hope that you aren’t going to pose as one of us?”

“Er, well, it . . . that is . . .”

“I thought not. But please try not to shoot anybody in our name, will you?” She scribbled on a form and gave it to a clerk.

“And since you mention it,” Ranklin said hopefully, “can you give me any names in Trieste? – business acquaintances?”

She pulled a sour face. “Give an inch and . . . Oh well.” She rummaged in her bag once more and found a small but bulky notebook. “Trieste . . . I’ve never been there myself, but . . . Here we are: there’s Signor Pauluzzo on the Exchange there. He thinks he knows more than he does but he does know about shipping. He breeds orchids and has a son in Boston.” The book obviously held more than just names and addresses and Ranklin longed to add it to the Bureau’s “registry”.

“I could,” he suggested helpfully, “look them up myself, see who seems likely-”

“No you don’t. This sort of stuff is our real family jewels. Your Bureau can buy its own notebook.” She gave him a couple more names, complete with character sketches, then said hesitantly: “There’s also a Conte di Chioggia listed. Apparently no good on business affairs, but knows everyone socially and is involved in pro-Italian politics at a dilettante level. Spends every morning in the Cafe San Marco. Sounds good for a gossip, anyway. What time’s your train?”

“One o’clock at the Gare de Lyons. Gets me into Trieste tomorrow night. What about you?”

“I’ll get out to Issy to see about getting the airplane onto a train for Turin.” She saw his surprise. “Andrew doesn’t want to fly it all the way down, thank God, what with the Alps and saving wear and tear on the engine. Did you know those engines only last fifteen hours or so between overhauls? Crazy. The Signora’s already there, some Italian she wants should see it . . .”

They chattered on, the gulf of parting gradually widening between them, until a cable came back from the Excelsior in Trieste confirming that Ranklin – James Spencer, that is – was booked in from Sunday night.

But as he was about to leave, she suddenly hugged him fiercely. “Take care of yourself,” she whispered. “And I really mean that. I’ll be at the Grand de Turin, cable me if there’s any problem. Any problem.”

“And you know where I am. It’s not too far. And stick close to O’Gilroy: he’s got a good sense of self-preservation.”

She nodded. “Yes. That’s why I wish he were going with you.”

As Ranklin looked for yet another taxi, he reminded himself: I’m working for the Bureau. I think.

The Paris aerodrome, on an old drill-field in the suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux, was surprisingly deserted for a fine Saturday afternoon until Corinna recalled Andrew talking of the Gordon Bennett air races at Rheims that weekend. They (she and the Sherring chauffeur) finally tracked down the Oriole behind the two vast airship sheds and found it already in pieces. Andrew and O’Gilroy, shirt-sleeved and oil-smudged, were directing a handful of French mechanics as they lashed the body onto a flat motor-truck. Much as she trusted her brother (she told herself) she was always cheered to see his aeroplanes in unflyable condition.

She greeted them, was assured that an unfledged sparrow could have made yesterday’s Channel crossing safely, and asked: “What happened to Signora Falcone?”

“Went off with the wop poet,” Andrew said, turning back to the loading.

“The who?” she asked O’Gilroy.

“Dannun-something. Seems he’s a famous poet. Italian.”

“D’Annunzio?”

“Ye know him, then?”

“I know of him, of course – is he the Italian she was talking about?”

O’Gilroy shrugged. “Best ask the Signora. But seems he’s in it with Falcone, buying the Oriole for the Italian Army.”

Corinna frowned. From what she’d read of Gabriele d’Annunzio, what he spent money on was himself – which included actresses – and the money wasn’t usually his own. Indeed, wasn’t he exiled in France by bankruptcy? But he was still popular in influential Italian circles, and while getting a poet-playwright to endorse an airplane would be pointless in America, in Italy things were different.