Gavin Lyall - Flight From Honour

They pushed the aeroplane into the half-shade of a shed and he smoked a cigarette while waiting for the engine to cool. There was no doubt about the problem – his shoe squelched with castor oil (the oil tank was just above the rudder bar) – only the solution. The mechanics were fascinated by the short length of fractured pipe, once he had got it unscrewed; they just didn’t have any ideas about mending or replacing it.

The dungeon lunch confirmed Ranklin’s view that they were getting straight soldiers’ fare: some sort of stew with rice and a plate of figs, with a flask of wine. And again not stale; the wine tasted only a few days old. He and the Count exchanged horrified glances at the first sip, then watched Pero lap it up, and flop back on his cot snoring.

But by now, the Count was getting agitated. He consulted his watch every ten minutes – Ranklin had given up on that, lapsing back to timing himself by the bugle calls – and muttered: “But my friends, one of my friends, must have asked where I am by now? Come, I must walk.”

So they paced solemnly around the perimeter of the cell, just as if it were the Piazza Grande except for a detour past the latrine bucket.

“What does that peasant of a police captain achieve in keeping us here?” the Count fretted.

“Last night, you said it could be until the Oberdan ‘season’ is over – another six weeks or so.”

“For you, yes. But why me? And he does not even question me. Why not? If I am arrested I have a right to be questioned, to explain. Not, of course, that I have to explain myself to that uniformed monkey.”

“Maybe he’s afraid of you.”

That brought a spring to the Count’s slow pace. “Yes, yes. Well may he be afraid of me. And soon he will have even better reason.”

Ranklin seized the opportunity and put on a carefully worried voice. “Perhaps it’s this place that’s getting me down, but I can’t help worrying about the aeroplane, whether it’s truly capable of the job . . .”

The Count glanced at him sharply. “Giancarlo has seen it, he has flown in it. And he is an expert. Why should it not be capable?”

“Oh, I don’t know . . . I know very little about aeroplanes, but flying all the way from Turin . . .”

“Not from Turin. They take it to Giancarlo’s house by Venice. They did not tell you?”

“Oh good, they did decide on Venice,” Ranklin said hastily. He gave a satisfied nod as if a minor detail had been cleared up and they strolled on, round and round.

But now he was beginning to fret, too. He’d thought of having plenty of time, but it was passing. And perhaps he’d subconsciously been thinking that as he’d been first in, he must be first out – and that was nonsense. At any moment, one of the Count’s friends might whisk him away, ending any revelations.

It was time to stir things up. “And I hope,” he said, “there’s enough ammunition for the Lewis guns?”

The Count stopped dead. “The Lewis guns?” He sounded surprised but, significantly, didn’t need to ask what they were.

“The two Falcone got from Britain.”

“He told you?” The surprise in the Count’s voice was almost horror.

“Oh-” Ranklin waved his hand and smiled; “-we, my people, are in the business of knowing things.”

“Yes . . . yes . . .” The Count was obviously thinking quickly. “He has many interests, the Senator. I believe he bought the machine-guns for the Italian Army. To test, to see if they will buy them.”

“Really? That wasn’t what I heard.”

“Then you heard wrong! Now, I have had my exercise, I must rest.” And he laid himself, limb by aged limb, on his cot.

Rather than just stand there, Ranklin sat down himself, turned so that nobody could see his face. I wrecked it, he thought. I ran it into a wall.

But perhaps the wall had always been there. So much he was expected to know, but other things he wasn’t. And the Lewis guns were on the far side of the wall. He had expected a touch of flamboyance in this plot; now he smelt a Borgian twist as well.

But just what plot? Nobody had said it was actually impossible to mount a Lewis gun on Andrew’s aeroplane. What did seem impossible was getting Andrew himself to pilot a flight intended to spray a city with machine-gun fire. But if Falcone had another pilot standing by, and the firing wasn’t supposed to be accurate but just a dramatic gesture, the whole thing became possible. Insane, but possible.

Damn it, it would be an act of war! And put Italy so far in the wrong that they’d hang Falcone for it, no matter what happened next. The Count might dream up such a plot, but Falcone was a practising politician . . .

I’m missing something, he thought. And just how much is Dagner missing? – or rather, how much does he know?

At five o’clock the Falcone launch arrived at the northernmost of the Lido’s jetties with Corinna already on board, a loose white dress fluttering in the breeze, clutching on a wide straw hat. “Hi. Signora Falcone’s having the vapours about where you’d got to and thinking you’d broken your neck. You haven’t broken your neck, have you?”

“Jest this.” O’Gilroy gloomily held up a few inches of oily copper pipe. “Oil feed. And seems nobody on the island can braze it, or don’t know what the devil I’m talking about.”

“Poor you,” she soothed. “D’ you want me to try my Italian?”

But by now the launch helmsman had taken a look. He said something to Corinna, who asked him to repeat more slowly, then she grinned at O’Gilroy. “Seems one of the chauffeurs back home can do it in a trice. Always doing something like it to the automobiles, he says. You’d better bring it aboard.”

O’Gilroy hesitated, then stepped into the boat. “They’ll have to bring me back to fix it and I want to do a plug change while I’m at it . . . Won’t be getting the Oriole across today, I’m thinking.”

“Then it’ll have to be tomorrow. How is it, flying it from the proper side?”

O’Gilroy’s gloom vanished. “Ah, it’s like . . . like I don’t know the words for it. Riding a winner at the Curragh, mebbe.”

She grinned back. “Little brother knows his stuff, then?”

“Surely – and how’s he doing?”

“Not so bad at all. Mostly bored, with the bandages still on and not able to read. I talked myself hoarse until I found a priest who speaks English and accepts donations to the Church. Then this boat arrived and I learned you’d gone missing – why didn’t you telephone them?”

“In Italian, and not knowing the number besides?” And also, though he wouldn’t admit it, because he wasn’t yet used to the world of telephones and simply hadn’t thought of it.

Once clear of the gondola routes and little islets, the helmsman started showing off like any chauffeur when the owner isn’t on board: they streaked across the lagoon like a torpedo boat. Corinna thought of telling him to behave, decided it would be improper and simply threw her hat on to the bottom boards and let her black hair stream in the wind; perhaps the Signora would lend her a maid to untangle it.

“Have you learnt any more about tomorrow’s demonstration?” she called.

“Never a word.”

She tried again: “Well, whatever it is, Andrew’s out of it.”

“Sounds like that’s what ye wanted.”

“Let’s say I’ve got my doubts.”

O’Gilroy considered. “Like what?”

She’d rather have said this with quiet significance, not bellowed it against the wind and rumble of the engine, but: “That it won’t be a demonstration but dropping inflammatory leaflets written by d’Annunzio over Trieste.”

He stared at her. “Where d’ye get that from?”