Gavin Lyall - Flight From Honour

“From that practice flight you told me about in Paris. And listening to d’Annunzio on the train. And because Pop Sherring didn’t raise his little girl to believe everything she hears from big men with fifty-dollar suits and hundred-dollar smiles. Though,“ she admitted, “he may have slipped up with his little boy.”

“Ye worked that out yeself, then . . .”

“They’ll have to tell you pretty soon.”

O’Gilroy thought a while. “I wish the Captain was here.”

“D’you think Matt knows it and didn’t tell you?”

“Mebbe . . .” Ranklin wasn’t a naturally devious man, but over the past nine months he had been learning. O’Gilroy had helped teach him. “It’s not his way, though, not with me.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t know everything himself.”

O’Gilroy nodded vaguely and went back to his own thoughts. Ranklin trusted her – up to a careful point defined by their relationship, but he himself was right outside that. (To tell the truth, which he didn’t like to do even to himself, he disapproved of the affair. Such behaviour was normal for Ranklin, an Army officer, and he had no illusions about the morals of upper-class British women, not after being in service at a Big House. But he had expected better of an American lady.)

Finally he said: “Ye really wouldn’t want to be letting down the Captain?”

Corinna was about say something witty or withering, then thought again and just called: “No. I really wouldn’t. And,” she added, “ I wish he was here, too.”

“They’re wanting to start a strike in the shipyard there.”

She frowned over this, then: “Just that?”

“How d’ye mean?”

“These things can get out of hand, God knows they do in the States. In Trieste it could set Italians against Austrians. Or maybe that’s what they want . . . Except that Falcone’s a senator; he daren’t get mixed up in . . .” She reflected for a moment. “Only he’s doing a pretty good job of unmixing himself, letting d’Annunzio take the credit, and a foreign airplane flown by a foreign pilot . . .”

The launch slowed suddenly, curving skilfully, or so the helmsman wanted them to think, to avoid the milling boats at the mouth of the Brenta.

Meanwhile, O’Gilroy had become an intellectually rigorous Intelligence agent. “Jest how much of this do ye know, or would it all be guessing?”

Corinna almost pouted, but kept her voice low, now the engine noise had dimmed. “Guessing? It’s logic. Deduction.”

“So where’s d’Annunzio? And the leaflets?”

“I bet he – they – both will be here tonight.” She saw his look and hissed: “Suppose Matt had come up with the same idea, would you have believed him!”

With rash honesty, O’Gilroy said: “More like.”

“Oh would you? Just because he’s a man.”

He seemed surprised. “No. Because he‘s a spy.”

She sat back, stunned by the logic. Yes. Quite. What was the answer to that? “You don’t have to be a spy to figure out other people for crooks,” she growled.

They scurried the first few yards from the landing-stage to escape the cloud of insects, but could then stroll up the long garden. It was designed to frame the house: lines of cypresses and flowerbeds and stone walls all leading to it or at right angles from it. The villa itself, pink in the sunset, stood four-square on a slight rise, its ‘ground’ floor raised further so as to need impressive flights of steps on either side of the portico.

Seeing it without distractions for the first time, O’Gilroy broke the long silence. “Nice enough little place.”

“Needs more gardeners,” Corinna said succinctly. And correctly, because the formality was blurred by overgrowth, moss and crumbled stone. But it hardly mattered, since nobody could make decay as elegant as the Italians. “I must ask if it’s genuine Palladio.” She was quite sure O’Gilroy had never heard of him.

But O’Gilroy didn’t ask. He was noticing other villas, half hidden by trees, a quarter of a mile away on either side. In Ireland and England, such houses would have been miles apart, each the dominating Big House of its area. But here, on a vast scale, they had built a Renaissance garden suburb.

It was like words, he was coming to realise. They didn’t translate exactly, and nor did the patterns of life.

As they came near the house, O’Gilroy pitched his cigarette-butt into the dampest bit of undergrowth he could see and got a sharp look from Corinna. But at the last moment she relented as far as saying: “ I don’t know what orders you’re following, but for what it’s worth, I’ll back you if you want to abandon ship. And I’ll tell Matt that.”

But he just muttered something gruff, and they walked up the cracked, mossy but still elegant steps.

With its thick walls, the dungeon was out of phase with the day. It was late afternoon when it had realised it was a warm day outside, but it took to the idea enthusiastically. Already bad-tempered, Ranklin had sweated on the itchy blankets long enough. He grabbed the water-jug, found it was empty, walked to the door and stab-kicked it several times. He heard the guard come scurrying down the corridor to peer through the Judas window.

“ Wasser, bitte, und schnell !” Ranklin bawled, waving the jug at the guard’s startled eyes. Looking back, he was a bit surprised the guard hadn’t told him where to stuff the jug, but instead called a mate to stand guard while he hurried away to fill it.

The Count watched and said cynically: “The word of an Englishman – when shouted loudly enough.”

So Ranklin tried again when the guard returned, demanding the window be opened. That, however, was definitely verboten.

“Perhaps,” the Count observed, “you did not shout loudly enough that time.”

Ranklin finished washing his hands and face and left them to dry by evaporation. “And perhaps,” he said nastily, “you haven’t as many friends in high places as you thought. Looks like you’re spending another night here.”

The Count sat up. “That is impossible. I cannot be here tomorrow.”

“Hard luck,” Ranklin said callously. Then that “tomorrow” echoed in his mind. “Why tomorrow? – because you don’t want to be here, in the Castello, in their hands, when they realise just what you’ve been plotting? Is it happening tomorrow? ” He grabbed the Count by his coat and hauled him up, shaking him like the frail old man he was, and Pero leaping up to intervene . . . But the Count’s frightened nod had got through to Ranklin and he let go.

They all just stood for a moment, the Count trembling, Pero tensed to jump, Ranklin panting – but thinking. And deciding to play the cards he had; it was too late to hope for more. He looked at Pero. “Right: go and tell Novak I want to make a full confession. Go on , man, can’t you see it’s over? Get on with it.”

Pero hesitated a moment longer, then smiled. “Almost I thank you, it was so very tiring.” He went to the door, thumped on it, and called out in fluent German.

The Count had caught up with events and now his trembling was rage. “You, sir, are an English hound of extreme obscenity! You are . . . without honour !”

Ranklin considered this briefly, then nodded. “Yes, I do seem to be growing out of that.”

Signora Falcone was having first-night nerves but the house servants must be used to it, because they tiptoed around her as they would around sweating dynamite.

“Just plain bad British workmanship!” she flared at the oil-feed pipe.

“Happens all the time,” O’Gilroy said stolidly. “And mebbe I shook it up on yesterday’s landing, along with the wheel. Thing is to get it brazed.”