Gavin Lyall - Flight From Honour

O’Gilroy was happy, all right, both at getting to fly the Oriole again and being in the middle of events. But he was also wary because he wasn’t sure what event was planned. Still, if they were relying on him as a pilot, they were handing him control.

“Surely,” he said confidently. “That’ll be jest fine.”

The distant bugle call that began the day came as a relief. Night in jail was not fun. When there was light, you could think of the reasons why you would soon be out, but the darkness crushed all reason and hope. They had won, had forgotten you, and were sleeping peacefully. And you were alone with dozing thoughts, not even the exotic terrors of nightmares, just coldly logical and gloomy. Ranklin loved that bugle call.

He sat up and realised he must at least have lain still a long time, since he was horribly stiff. The Count, a good twenty years older, must feel like a corpse.

Perhaps he was a corpse, Ranklin thought in a sudden panic. Died before I’ve found out what’s really going on. But when he leaned over to peer through the gloom, the old man was blinking and mumbling under the thin blankets. Only then did it occur to Ranklin that it had been a rather selfish thought. So he got all the way up, shook his shoes to make sure nothing had crawled into them, then went to piss in the enamel bucket and splatter his face with dusty water.

Pero sat up quickly, his smile as bright as ever, and made pantomime gestures of how the Count must feel. It was intended as sympathy, but the Count caught a glimpse and husked: “Please do me a favour and kill that damned Slovene.”

O’Gilroy was woken by a manservant with a tray of coffee. He lay for a minute or two wondering where he was before remembering he didn’t know. The ride in the dark last night had shown him very little, and the conversation had been either in Italian or about more important things.

At least he had no problems about what to wear: it was still the tweed suit he had left Brooklands in, the cleaner of two shirts and (he hoped) a fresh collar. He’d meant to buy more in Paris or Turin, but there hadn’t been time. He got shaved and dressed and found his way downstairs.

The house was grand but, he discovered, a simple square block. Bedrooms and bathrooms led off a wooden gallery that formed a hollow square, while below was a large living space surrounded by dining-rooms, drawing-rooms and God-knows-what rooms. Kitchens and staff quarters must be below that, half buried in a semi-basement.

Corinna didn’t wake for another hour, but had a better idea of where she was: in Senator Falcone’s villa. If it wasn’t by Palladio himself – and he couldn’t have designed every one of the hundreds of such villas in the Veneto region – it was in his style: symmetrical and classical. Her window, once she’d pushed open the shutters, looked out past a colonnaded portico to the formal garden, maybe a quarter of a mile of it before the River Brenta. A steam-launch was just chugging off from a landing-stage and heading downstream, probably to the lagoon and Venice, which she reckoned was a dozen miles away.

Downstairs, she was served coffee, toast (of leavened bread, thank goodness or Signora Falcone’s Irish background) and even offered a boiled egg. Then she began asking questions, and learnt that the Signora and O’Gilroy had already gone to the Lido in the launch, she to make sure the aeroplane was repaired, him to fly it, while Matteo would again get her to the hospital when she was ready. And – this from the major-domo, who had rather more power over the household than the grandest of English butlers – would she inform them if she wished to move to a hotel in Venice so as to be nearer her brother? She was, of course, welcome to stay, but the Signora would quite understand if . . .

Corinna said she’d decide when she’d seen how Andrew was. Did the telephone work?

But of course the telephone worked. Probably.

Ranklin had eaten far worse breakfasts than the Castello dungeons provided, and paid good money for some of them, too. It wasn’t elaborate: coffee, bread and a few slices of spicy sausage, but it was all fresh. And come to think of it, it might be more trouble to store things until they’d gone stale than just send down a helping of whatever the Castello guard was getting – particularly since they might well be the only prisoners. He didn’t believe Novak about the dungeons being crowded. The way the lamp-smoke had stained the wall showed this one hadn’t been used since it was whitewashed, and that was weeks ago. You couldn’t be in the Army and not be an expert on whitewash.

“Tell me,” the Count said, “that I only dreamt we had smoked our last cigarettes.”

“No dream, I’m afraid.” Ranklin displayed his empty case.

“Ah me,” the Count sighed. “How can we continue the fine old tradition of bribing prison guards if we do not meet them? Never mind. Soon my friends will know where I am, and then . . . I will send in cigarettes to you if they allow it. English ones may not be possible, but . . .”

“Have you really got friends in high places?” Ranklin asked innocently.

The Count seemed pained. “I have friends everywhere; you must not think I am blinded by my noble birth. But, as I am sure you already know, the title of a Venetian count is quite equivalent to marquis from anywhere else. And I admit that I find my best friends are those who understand that simple fact. So yes, indeed I have friends in what you call ‘high places’.” He glanced at Pero, apparently asleep on his cot, but by now seemed to have accepted him at face value. Still, he lowered his voice. “I may also tell you, in the greatest confidence, that I have taken trouble to impress those friends with my loyalty to the Emperor. I even applied for Austrian nationality. Probably they will not grant it, no matter what they say their policy is, but that is of no consequence. What greater proof of loyalty can they ask?”

Ranklin grunted. He couldn’t see the point of such a move. But at least he had the Count talking in confidence. The trick now was not to rush, let the man take his time. He suggested: “Possibly they assumed it was only to cause them embarrassment.”

“Perhaps – but they could not help being flattered that a man of my birth should ask to become an Austrian citizen. I mean,” he added quickly, “not a citizen in the French meaning. I would, of course, retain my title. It has a most splendid history. My great-grandfather . . .” And Ranklin had to smile and nod his way through a personalised Almanac de Gotha. But, he told himself, there’s still time. One thing you weren’t short of in jail was time.

Signora Falcone’s crisp instructions and the chink of gold coin got a new set of wheels – they hadn’t a suitable tyre, or so they said once they smelled the gold – on the Oriole by lunchtime. That left the afternoon for O’Gilroy to get in an hour’s practice, refuel, and fly the aeroplane over to the pasture across the road from the villa. Signora Falcone was very insistent that the demonstration flight should start from there. It all seemed a bit odd – or foreign – and O’Gilroy’s suspicions were showing healthy growth. But his mind was a pretty suspicious place at any time, and he concentrated on learning the Oriole.

He had been left a picnic of bread, cheese and something called ‘salami’, since the nearest restaurant on the Lido was nearly a mile away and probably thought more of its reputation than of his suit. Then the local mechanics helped him start up the Oriole, turn her into wind – and he was on his own.

After half an hour of weaving and banking at three thousand feet he felt confident enough to start practising landings. With its high wing, there was little tendency to “float” – scoot along just above the ground with the far wall getting closer. She just sat down firmly and stayed down. But coming in for the last one, he felt a flood of stickiness over his left foot, saw there was no drip showing in the oil-feed glass, and just scraped over the near wall with a dead engine.