Gavin Lyall - Spy’s Honour

“It would be nice to know if this is a plot to start a war or to stop one.”

The room darkened, as abruptly as if a curtain had been pulled, as the clouds overtook the sun.

“But how much,” Corinna asked, “do we really know about the Archduke?”

“That’s the trouble. So much is Vienna society gossip – his mad rages, shooting servants and so on – but Vienna society doesn’t know him. He never goes near them. And if he’s really no more than pig-headed and bad-mannered then he’s no worse than most generals I’ve met. And as a general, he could see it’s lunacy to risk a war with Russia when Redl might have given them the Monarchy’s Plan Three – their war plans.”

O’Gilroy objected: “But ye said the Chief of Staff – and he must be a general – he wants a war.”

“Conrad, yes. But he might feel his career needs one: he’s been in post some years now and never ordered a shot fired. He might even want a war to restore the Army’s morale after the Redl affair. But a war now won’t do the Archduke any good. He’s so close to becoming Emperor – the old boy’s nearly eighty-three – that all he has to do is wait and then he can have all the wars he wants – and total direction of them besides. He’s got far more to gain from keeping the peace now – if we can credit him with the sense to see that.”

There had been no hint, no distant mutter, of thunder. But like a besieging army, it had crept up on them, laid its mines in silence and then detonated them all at once in an enormous explosion that rattled the windows and squeezed their eardrums. Ranklin knew he had jumped, and suspected the other two had as well. For a full minute, as the explosions rolled and echoed on, they just stared at the shuddering windows, with no point in trying to speak.

When there was something nearer silence, Corinna said: “Operatic and overdone.”

“Your criticism is minuted,” Ranklin said gravely.

O’Gilroy asked: “So ye think mebbe it’s that General Conrad behind of all this?”

It was a difficult question, and Corinna came in with her answer while Ranklin was still puzzling at it. “It can happen sometimes that an important man’s aides and sidekicks can set something going that they think the boss wants but won’t want to know about. To keep his hands clean. All very self-sacrificing and self-advancing of them, and it can be one hell of a nuisance.”

She said it with quiet fervour and they both knew whom she was talking about. Ranklin summed up: “It’s being run from Vienna by somebody well up the ladder from Stanzer, but there’s no point in guessing who. And nothing, nobody, can take away the cause of war, it’s just there, in the air, in everything that’s going on.”

“But,” Corinna said, “if we can stop Hornbeam being the occasion for it, maybe we’ll stop it for this war season. Maybe something will happen, a miracle, before the next season comes around …” She glared at him. “One thing we can sure do is talk to Hornbeam. If it all depends on what he says tonight and we can stop him saying it – hallelujah!”

Ranklin nodded, but not as enthusiastically as she had expected, and went back to rolling the billiard ball.

Outside, the rain began: at first just a rattle of heavy drops, but in seconds the noise became a roar and the windows waterfalls. Corinna walked to one and pressed her nose against the glass, playing the childhood game of being warm and dry just a fraction of an inch from the streaming flood.

“We’d better try and catch him as soon as we can,” she went on, turning from the window.

“It means tipping our hand somewhat,” Ranklin said.

“Okay, so what else do you want us to do?”

Ranklin frowned down at the tabletop. “The problem is that spies are supposed just to find out, not to do . It tends to make them conspicuous. And there’s another good reason,” he went on quickly. “A spy’s always working with incomplete knowledge, deliberately so. We don’t get sent into the field knowing all our bosses know, what our side’s plans are – for obvious reasons.”

“But you can’t think your bosses want a war.”

He sighed. “No, I don’t think they do, although they wouldn’t tell us anyway.”

They were silent for a while, listening to the steady rain and the now distant soft-edged growls of thunder. O’Gilroy looked tensed, Corinna more perplexed.

“Then,” she said finally, “you don’t really want to speak to Hornbeam, either?”

“No, I’ll come with you on that. But I really don’t see what more we – O’Gilroy and I – can do. We’ve been acting nosy enough to get people wondering about us. If we do anything more blatant, we might give ourselves away completely.”

“Captain – ” O’Gilroy’s voice was low and trembling with, perhaps, reined-in anger; “ – I think we’re here for different reasons. Mebbe yer saving the British Empire, but ye know I’ve no part in that. I’m here because I chose, though – ” he shrugged; “ – the reason for that I wouldn’t say I knew. I do know ye’ve told me often enough ye think spying’s a dirty business – and mebbe it is for the likes of yerself. But I’m telling ye it’s just because we’re spies that we’re knowing this plot and can mebbe do something to stop it. And I recall what ye told me of the war ye saw, and fought, in Greece and what yer guns can do. And I say if ye run from the chancest to stop that happening in the towns and countries ye’ve shown me, then they’ll have to dig a new pit in Hell to make it deep enough to hold ye!”

Corinna turned her head slowly from watching O’Gilroy and her face was troubled and, though she tried to hide it, disappointed. “Matt,” she appealed, “isn’t there anything, just anything, you can …?”

“You just don’t see,” Ranklin said wearily. “Not either of you. It isn’t as easy as sacrificing ourselves. It needs just a hint, just one, that the British Secret Service is opposing them, and the war party’s won hands down.”

After a time, Corinna said in a voice that was subdued but somehow relieved: “Conall, next time let’s remember there’s a good reason why they put this guy in charge.”

“You won’t,” Ranklin growled.

They found Hornbeam in his room. In his shirtsleeves and with a wad of papers in his hand, he had obviously been pacing about practising his lecture which, since he had given versions of it four times already on this trip, was truly conscientious of him.

“We aren’t interrupting, are we, Professor?” Corinna asked demurely.

“No, no, I’ve just been pitting my puny voice against that of the gods.” He waved at the open window, beyond which the rain still streamed down and the thunder muttered. “A useful rehearsal for the coughs and snores of my audience. Sit yourselves down.”

He was in a jovial mood – and why not? This would be the last night of a tour that was a personal triumph, a phrase that might stretch to include the Baroness. And he would top it all with a surprise high C of judicial revelation; it was cream enough for the fattest of cats.

“Professor,” Corinna began diffidently, “we’ve picked up a rumour, I don’t know if it’s true, that you’ve been asked to give a legal opinion on the Habsburg Family Law – ”

“Where did you learn this?” Hornbeam’s manner had changed abruptly.

“It is true, then,” she sighed.

“This is a gossipy part of the world, sir,” Ranklin put in. “And I imagine quite a lot of people must have been involved in getting the Law to you.”

“This is – was supposed to be – a highly confidential matter between myself and a … a certain distinguished party,” Hornbeam said heatedly. “I must insist that you mention this to nobody, absolutely nobody. Happily it’s only for a few hours now, but in the meantime …”