Gavin Lyall - Spy’s Honour

“Ye do not, and that’s a fact.” O’Gilroy smoked and thought for a while. “But ye wanted his ticket and papers.”

Ranklin had assumed that was simply as proof, like taking Peter’s scalp. But now he, too, began to wonder.

“So if ye had a man waitin’,” O’Gilroy said slowly, “and wid his bags packed, he could be sailin’ in Piat-kow’s place. And them in America’d never know, not knowin’ him already. Would that be the way of it?”

Suddenly faced with the naked idea, Ranklin knew that had to be the way of it. But why hadn’t the Bureau trusted him with full knowledge? Because he might have been captured and talked, of course. And why hadn’t he worked it out for himself? Because he had set out doggedly to obey orders he hadn’t liked. And while O’Gilroy might be used to thinking in such crooked ways, he himself wasn’t.

And then came the appalling shock of shame that he had accidentally revealed the whole scheme to O’Gilroy.

“Do you believe,” he said as earnestly as he could, “that if you breathe one word of this to anybody, then if I don’t hunt you down and kill you, somebody else most certainly will?”

O’Gilroy thought carefully about that, then said: “No.”

Ranklin, who from his brief experience of the Bureau hadn’t believed it either, nevertheless felt rather taken aback. But O’Gilroy took a last suck at his cigarette, pitched it into the trees and went on: “No, there’s none of yez could do it, and most’d have the sense not to try. But what’s to worry? Yer talkin’ to a dead man, when word gets round I killed me sister’s boy and banjaxed the whole matter. How far d’ye think I’ll get, come the day?”

Ranklin instinctively glanced at the east, but the day was still on the far side of the world.

O’Gilroy said heavily: “And would ye believe I come along tonight jest to be sure the boy didn’t come to harm – Jayzus.” He shook his head. “Would ye have another cigarette? I’ve thinkin’ to do.”

They smoked in silence, except for the noise Ranklin made trying to shuffle life back into his almost-beyond-pain toes. Breaks in the cloud showed patches of vivid blackness, pinholed with sharp stars, and on the earth below, the mud flats looked like smooth slimy lumps of offal.

Halfway through his cigarette, O’Gilroy asked: “Was ye thinkin’ of gettin’ me strung up for the killin’ of that soldier?”

Ranklin was a bit surprised that the idea hadn’t even occurred to him. “No, as far as I’m concerned, that score’s settled with …” he gestured towards Piatkow’s body. “And the people I work for, they aren’t really concerned with Ireland.”

“Is that a fact, now?” O’Gilroy went back to thinking. Then: “Yer new to this work, then, Captain?”

“Yes.” Ranklin wished he hadn’t said that so vehemently.

“Ye’ll be needin’ some help, then.”

“I need to dispose of Piatkow. The channel here should be quite deep, in the middle.”

O’Gilroy nodded. “And the fact is, I’m needin’ some help meself, not fancyin’ bein’ shot by me own friends or hanged by yourn.”

A man under sentence of death from two sides has little left to lose. And, Ranklin reflected, no good reason to keep any secrets he may have stumbled on.

“I’m prepared to get you out of this,” he said carefully. “But you’ll have to tell me how to do it. This is your home ground.”

“I mean out of Ireland, Captain.”

“That, too.”

“Good enough. It’ll mean yer tellin’ some fancy lies, now.”

“I’m supposed to be getting used to that,” Ranklin said coldly. “Now, can we …?” He walked over to Piatkow.

O’Gilroy threw away his cigarette and followed. “Remember a dead man floats, Captain.”

“Not one as rich as he’s going to be.” Three thousand pounds in Admiralty gold, he had calculated, should keep Piatkow at the bottom until any buoyancy had rotted.

“Jayzus!” O’Gilroy whispered as the awesome cost of the idea sank in.

“It’s only Navy money. Ends up on the bottom anyway.”

With Piatkow sunk, O’Gilroy rowed back to the shore. Ranklin wasn’t surprised to find he was a competent oarsman: he found he was assuming the man was competent at all such things, as well as being good at dreaming up an escape plan combined with a tale for Ranklin to spin to the Navy. And even that was a form of competence, he supposed.

“What are you going to do when you reach England?” he asked. “You daren’t go near the Irish communities in the big cities. The story could get there even before you do.”

O’Gilroy pushed the empty dinghy back into the ebbing tide; that was part of the plan. “Been thinking about that meself, Captain. Seems mebbe ye could lend me the passage money to America …”

“You might be no better off there.”

“… or give me a job.”

Ranklin stared through the darkness, then exploded. “Good God Almighty! Are you serious ?”

“Ye said ye needed help. Judgin’ by tonight, I’d say yer right.” He wiped some of the thick mud off his boots on the coarse grass and tramped back towards the car. Ranklin followed in a daze.

But after a time he realised his shock was more at O’Gilroy’s effrontery than at the idea that the man could do the job. If tonight was in any way typical, he was perfectly suited to such work. And the Bureau’s recruitment policy, he thought bitterly, was none too delicate.

He made a half-hearted attempt to clean up his own shoes on the richer grass away from the water’s edge. “You didn’t exactly start this evening on our side.”

Perhaps O’Gilroy’s shadowy figure gave a shrug. “I wasn’t fightin’ for yer Queen and Empire in South Africa, Captain, and I’m not offerin’ to start now. I was fightin’ for me pay. And for some fellas, mebbe – like yeself.” He paused. “And a bit for meself, besides.”

How would the Bureau feel about taking on a pure mercenary? But hadn’t it found him on the Salonika road, selling the only talent he had? Hard times make for soft principles, it seemed.

“Have you got a criminal record?” He found he had said it formally, as if to a new recruit.

“No.” O’Gilroy was positive enough. But that might only mean that he was cleverer than the police. But again, isn’t that what the Bureau wants?

“Oh hell, this is the most ridiculous …” He shook his head. “We’ll get to England and let them decide. But it could turn out to be just another helping of roasted rat.”

“And ye was always a most gen’rous man wid that, Captain. Now, could ye be lendin’ me a coupla sovereigns ’til payday? I’m not wantin’ to go near any house or shop I’m known.”

With a sour glance at the remaining bags of gold, Ranklin took them from his own pocket. “And we meet somewhere near the railway station?”

“At the bottom of Spy Hill. That sounds about right.”

Lunching at this club was always a hazard for the Commander. He had just decided on the curry when an angular Brigadier-General of the Royal Artillery, wearing the red tabs of a staff job, folded himself into the chair opposite and gave him a conspiratorial smile.

Oh God, thought the Commander.

“And how are things not going in that non-existent Bureau which you don’t command?” the Brigadier asked, twinkling at his own well-rehearsed wit.

This was the hazard, although even worse were the handful who honestly didn’t know the secret and simply asked what he was doing these days. On the other hand, kidnapping being illegal, he depended on fellow club members for a flow of recruits.

That thought got garbled in the thinking, he reflected grimly. For “flow” read “drip”, as with a faulty tap, and the results were usually as annoying.