Gavin Lyall - Spy’s Honour

Ranklin turned from the mirror to see O’Gilroy handling three thin red pocketbooks, just like Army field manuals, each wrapped in a strand of pink tape. “Yes?”

“We was bringing over code ‘X’, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

O’Gilroy looked at the front of one book. “Code X.” He dropped it on the bed and looked at the next. “Code Y.” He picked up the third. “Code W.”

There comes a time when it is your knees and not your will that decide you should sit down.

After a time Ranklin heard himself saying tonelessly: “I can see how it happened, of course. Some clerk at the War House was told to make up three parcels from nine books. But he wasn’t told what it was about, that would be too secret for him.” He read from the cover of the nearest book: “‘Most Secret’, in fact. So he used his common sense: obviously three addresses in France were to get one copy of each code. Oh, I understand it.”

“And if ye understand how England ever got itself an Empire without somebody having dropped it in the street, mebbe ye’ll tell me that, too. Along with what we do next.”

Ranklin sat very still, shoulders hunched and thinking hard. Then he said: “We try leaving one code, one of the false ones, and hope they don’t know there should be three copies.” But they seemed to know so much else about this job that he wasn’t too hopeful. “Wrap up the Y code, would you? See if you can make it seem it was never more than one.” He stood up, pocketing the X and W codes. They were slim enough that they barely bulged in the big pockets of his travelling tweeds.

O’Gilroy started work. “But ye said yeself, if we know they’ve got hold of even the right one, all it needs doing is to change it.”

After the French had had a hearty laugh at the bungling of the Bureau and the War Office and their wrath had been passed on to those junior enough to be thought worthy of blame.

“That isn’t the point any longer. If they even suspect we can denounce them as spies … well, it means Devil’s Island for the General. That’s where they sent Dreyfus for the same thing, and he wasn’t even guilty. Have you heard of Devil’s Island?”

“I have that,” O’Gilroy said grimly. “And I get yer meaning, Captain. I’d kill us rather than wind up there.”

A freshly lit wood fire was crackling and popping in the drawing room, with the General dozing in front of it. A cosy, old-fashioned scene of the old soldier home from the wars, and Ranklin looked appraisingly at the trophies of those wars around the walls. He could handle a sword, and anybody could use a stabbing spear, but he was sure he’d be up against modern revolvers. For the moment he settled for a whisky and soda, offered in a whisper by the watchful butler.

O’Gilroy took the same and they stared silently out of the windows. It wasn’t raining at the moment, but the overlong grass was rippling in the wind and the whole afternoon had been one long twilight.

The General woke with a whuffling grunt, saw them and said: “Ah, pardon, messieurs …” and the butler hurried over with a glass of something pink.

“I wonder,” Ranklin said, “if I might place a telephone call to Paris? I was given a message at Dieppe but was unable to contact the person.”

He reckoned he was running no risk: he wasn’t supposed to know the message had been false. And he wanted to see how the General would handle it.

“But naturally. Gaston will obtain the number.”

“Colonel Yarde-Buller at the British Embassy, please.”

He was not surprised when Gaston returned to report his desolation that the apparatus did not function. So Gaston was in on the act, too (only later did he wonder why he’d assumed the telephone must really be working; his own experience of telephones was that half the time they didn’t).

“I never trust these barbarous machines meself,” O’Gilroy chipped in. “Begging yer pardon, General, it being yer own machine.”

“But no, M’sieu, it is the company’s. I agree: they are barbarisms. And now the Army is to employ them for – how do you say?”

“Field telephones?” Ranklin suggested.

“Exactly. And for how long will they function? It demands just one horse to put just one foot on the wire, that is how long … And you, M’sieu Gilroy, you have not served with the Army?”

“Alas no, General. I fancied the drum and the glory when I was a lad, but me poor father died early and the family and the land …”

Ranklin listened only faintly to O’Gilroy’s fantasies. Perhaps at this moment somebody – Gunther, possibly: he was sure Gunther would be somewhere backstage – was sorting through their bags, coming up with the single code book. And being satisfied? Or realising their plot had been detected and there was only one thing to do …

Would they get any warning? Or would the door open and …?

At that moment the door did open, and while Ranklin stood gaping, the General began to lever himself to his feet. “Ah, Madame Finn: permit me to introduce these gentlemen.”

American, Ranklin thought, then wondered why he thought it. It was the freshness about her – and the boldness. Not that European women couldn’t manage both, but it seemed more natural with Americans. She was taller than Ranklin, with black hair pinned up under a small straw hat, large dark eyes and a wide smile as she thrust out an ungloved hand. Whoever she is, Ranklin realised, she doesn’t intend to be underestimated.

She was Mrs Winslow Finn, daughter of Reynard Sherring – the General dragged that name in, though Ranklin already knew it. To him, and most people, it simply meant Money, subdivided into cartels, rings, railways – sorry, railroads – or coal or steel or oil or perhaps all of them. It was a world Ranklin had been brought up tacitly to despise and ignore – until about a year before. Now he had learnt that at least he couldn’t ignore it.

“Hi,” she said, “I’m Corinna. Happy to meet you. General – may I use your telephone?”

Ranklin suppressed his smile, but the General coped. “I am desolated, my dear Mrs Finn, but it is not functioning. Captain Ranklin also …”

“Oh bugger the silly thing.” The General didn’t flinch, but O’Gilroy’s eyeballs nearly exploded. He had met enough of the gentry to know that their ladies, particularly in the hunting field, could use language that would scald the fur off a fox, but he hadn’t expected it from this American enchantress. “I think I’ve found just the chateau for Pop,” Corinna went on. “I wanted to tell him.”

“I doubt,” the General said gravely, “there will be much competition with your father if he wishes to buy.”

“When Pop wants to buy there’s always competition,” she said crisply. Then to Gaston: “Cafe noir s’il vous plait, pas de sucre.” Her French accent, Ranklin noted, was far better than his own.

The General said: “Then perhaps your father will not mind the deprivation of one residence from – how many?”

“Don’t be an old meanie, General. Everybody likes a few roofs over their heads, don’t they, Captain?”

“They come in handy in the winter.”

She grinned at him. With a thin face, high cheekbones and wide mouth she was immediately attractive rather than stand-back-and-stare beautiful. That afternoon she was wearing a plain high-necked white silk blouse and simple purple-red wool skirt, but the single ruby at her throat would, Ranklin thought sourly, make a down payment on any chateau in the land.

“You’re staying here while you house-hunt, are you, Mrs Finn?” he asked politely.

“The General’s been kind enough to put up with me for a couple of nights, but I’m through now. I’m heading back to Rouen and Paris.”