Gavin Lyall - Flight From Honour

O’Gilroy nodded approvingly. “Always best, that.”

Dagner had been sitting quietly. The bang on his head hadn’t been serious, and Ranklin suspected the real pain had been to his pride. You reach an age when you should only get into fights when armed – and then shoot first.

Now Dagner said: “I’d like to hear all about your doings in Trieste, Captain, but time’s getting on.” He looked at Falcone. “When do you think the aeroplane should take off?”

Ranklin felt he’d been told Sorry, the doctor was wrong, you have got cancer. He forced himself to sit upright, trying to make his mind do the same, and managed it in time to hush O’Gilroy with a gesture and say: “Major, may I have a private word with you?”

Dagner gestured gracefully at Falcone. “I don’t think we have any secrets by now . . .”

“Major, I’m your second-in-command! Can we please talk?”

“Very well.” Dagner followed him to the other side of the terrace, past the french windows. Ranklin was about to start when he realised a dutiful servant had followed, carrying their coffee cups. But he put them down on another table and went back.

They didn’t sit. Ranklin said: “Surely the whole thing’s off. D’Annunzio was going to drop wild rabble-rousing pamphlets from the aeroplane – or did you know about the aeroplane, and him, from the start?”

“I’m afraid I did,” Dagner smiled gravely. “But I thought it best to conceal that. You seemed to have rather fixed ideas about the risk of war.”

Ranklin was a bit surprised to find he didn’t mind that so much; after all, the man in the field often shouldn’t know the whole picture. But: “Didn’t you get my cable saying nobody in Trieste believes the Italian workers are going to strike or riot or whatever? Or was I sent there just to get me out of the way?”

Dagner didn’t answer that directly. “Falcone knows his own people better than we do and he has no doubts.”

“No, he doesn’t, does he?” That suddenly struck Ranklin as odd. “He must be very sure . . . Could there be something he hasn’t told you ? Something to do with those Lewis guns you helped him get?”

“For the Italian Army-”

“He pretended that about the aeroplane, too.”

“Perhaps the guns were a blind, to help hide the aeroplane in an arms-buying mission.”

“I think it’s more. The Count-”

“Captain, I know how you’ve always felt about this affair.” Dagner’s voice had become stern. “It may be part of how you feel about the Bureau. When it started, I can well believe the Chief had to take whom he could get, and get them any way he could. Like you and O’Gilroy. I’m afraid I know exactly how he got you. You did good work in your time, and did well together in the fracas just now, but the Bureau’s future demands more than what we used to call ‘Khyber Pass’ stuff, like that and the events in Clerkenwell. We’re working on a much larger canvas now. And we’re getting a new generation, young men who’ve volunteered and can he trained up with the vision to make this service what it deserves to be.”

“So O’Gilroy and I are yesterday’s newspapers, just to wrap the fish and chips.”

“Time passes for all of us.” Dagner’s tone was calm but urgent. “This could be the first vital step to the service living up to its legend, getting away from its pennyweight antics. If we can make this big a change in the Mediterranean situation, we can do anything. I don’t think I’m being overly romantic in foreseeing the day when every statesman in every country will have to take the British Secret Service into account in all he does or proposes. He’ll spend half his time wondering if we’re dogging his footsteps or already ahead of him. We’ve learnt the Navy can no longer do everything for us, and certainly the Army can’t, not in Europe. But now our service itself could hold the balance of power, become itself one of the Great Powers of Europe.

“Can you and O’Gilroy really share that vision with us, Captain?”

The answer must have been written in Ranklin’s expression, because Dagner said sympathetically: “Times change, Captain.”

“You’ve got far more experience,” Ranklin said doggedly, “but the secret service I know is grubby and demeaning and frightening, and can involve shooting people who . . . well, you just hope they deserve it-”

“All that and worse,” Dagner agreed. “But also more. And all the more reason to need a vision, a clear sight of what one is working for.”

“Do you trust Falcone, then?”

The change of tack didn’t bother Dagner. “Trust him? Not what he says, of course not. But what he wants , yes. A political triumph, showing up the Prime Minister as hesitant and feeble by forcing a squabble between Italy and Austria. And we’re using that ambition for our own ends.”

“But where do the Lewis guns fit in?” Ranklin persisted. “The Count-”

“You mentioned him before. What Count?”

“Falcone’s crony in Trieste, he was in jail with me.”

“Why should he know anything about them?”

Ranklin stopped, wondering why he hadn’t asked that question himself. If the guns weren’t going on the aeroplane, why had the Count heard of them? – let alone be so worried that Ranklin had? And, come to that, why should that paper-pushing Austrian Captain Knebel know of such guns?

And then he knew the answer.

Dagner had waited briefly to see if Ranklin had more to say, then turned and strode back to the breakfast table to ask O’Gilroy: “Is the aeroplane ready?”

O’Gilroy glanced past him at Ranklin, coming slowly and thoughtfully up behind, and said carefully: “’Tis in the field, far side of the road. How about Mr d’Annunzio?”

Corinna suddenly appeared and sat down. “I don’t think he likes working for the British Secret Service.”

Dagner looked at her sternly. “Madam, I’d be grateful if you could exercise a little more discretion-”

“That went out the window when you tried to recruit my brother. We’re all family now. Go right ahead.” She smiled decorously at Ranklin, seeming quite composed again. She now wore a plain white dress with an apple-green bolero jacket and a wide straw hat. And with both elbows planted firmly on the table, looked very permanent. Catching O’Gilroy’s eye, she said: “So I was right, wasn’t I? – despite being a weak and feeble woman.”

“Never said ye was wrong. Jest that ye wasn’t . . . sure.”

A bit reluctantly, in front of Corinna, Dagner went on: “Senator, will you have a word with Signore d’Annunzio? But if that doesn’t work, anybody can pretend to be him, throwing out the leaflets.”

“Would you do it?” Ranklin asked quickly.

“Certainly I’ll go. Perhaps better me than you.”

“Ah.” That seemed to mean something to Ranklin. “But just suppose-” he looked from Dagner to Falcone; “-it fails? – the Austrians laugh it off as a silly prank?”

There was something about Ranklin’s tone that made both Corinna and O’Gilroy glance sharply at him, then each other. Dagner, not knowing him so well, just looked impatient, but let Falcone answer. “I know Triestine Italians, Captain Ranklin. The sight of the great patriot flying over – as they will believe – and reading his trumpet words, it will stir them as you do not believe possible.”

“Umm . . .” Ranklin looked thoughtful. “I wonder if you believed that, to start with. And then decided it would be even better if they saw the Austrians blow d’Annunzio out of the sky, martyr him with those Lewis guns you sent them. Sorry, Major,” he said to Dagner, “but we’ve all been working for the Senator’s vision of Europe.”