Gavin Lyall - Spy’s Honour

Corinna said: “Professor, we came here to ask you to keep it to yourself, not to give any opinion on the Law in public. Nor in private, if it can be attributed to you.”

Having blown hot, Hornbeam drew himself up and turned icy. “Mrs Finn, you are intruding into a matter between a client and his legal adviser, sacred ground to a professional man. I beg you to trespass no further.”

“But have you considered the political aspect, sir?” Ranklin asked.

“Political aspect? There is no political aspect. This is a matter of a … certain lady being entitled to share her husband’s rank when … in a certain circumstance. A private matter.”

Ranklin stared, puzzled. “But this concerns the ruling branch of the Habsburg family, and if that isn’t political – ”

“Would you say, sir, that such people are denied a private life? Excluded from the basic rights of ordinary citizens?”

It suddenly dawned on Ranklin that, in Hornbeam’s academic, cloistered but essentially democratic view, the Habsburgs simply didn’t matter. They must be a quaint old ritual, kept alive to amuse and distract the populace on feast days; real power, obviously, had to lie with the witty and urbane ministers and administrators who had clustered round him in Vienna and now Budapest. The idea that an aged Emperor pottering about the streets of Bad Ischl in the thin guise of a commoner should actually hold the reins of peace and war was patently absurd.

As indeed it is, Ranklin agreed. But, God help us, it’s also true. Yet how, in a few moments, can I persuade him that here in the Dual Monarchy dinosaurs still survive, still red in tooth and claw?

He didn’t even get the chance to try. There was a distant rapping on another door and a voice called: “Herr Ranklin, Herr Ranklin. Telefon …”

“Blast, that’ll be Hazay. I have to talk to him, but I’ll try and get back-”

“Please don’t trouble yourself on my account.” Hornbeam was freezingly dismissive. “I regard this conversation as ended.”

It wasn’t Hazay, it was Tibor again. And sounding more agitated than mere inexperience with the telephone should make him. “Come to the Petofi statue,” he bawled. “I meet you there soon. Now.” And he hung up.

Ranklin glared exasperatedly at the ceiling, then ran to find O’Gilroy.

The storm had left Pest with the look of fresh paint: the colours more vivid, the shadows more intense, the streets and pavements shining and steaming. Even the trams threw festive showers of sparks from damp overhead cables.

Ranklin picked his way primly among the puddles and flooding gutters, with O’Gilroy ambling along a hundred yards back – or so he assumed; by now he knew not to look. Tibor was waiting by the Petofi statue, not sitting, just shifting from one wet foot to the other and sucking impatiently on a long cigarette.

He threw the cigarette away and headed straight off into the town as Ranklin came up, directly away from the river. He still moved like a bear, but now a bristly damp one; he had been caught in at least part of the storm without any topcoat.

“May I ask where we are going?” Ranklin said, striding out to keep up.

“See Stefan,” Tibor growled.

Ranklin looked at him sharply. “What’s happened to him?”

Tibor glanced at him with at least equal suspicion. “What have you been making him to do?”

“Do? Nothing. Just asking him for information. Damnation!” He had dropped his furled umbrella in a puddle. He picked it up gingerly, shook it and flicked scraps of rubbish off it while Tibor stomped about and O’Gilroy, on the other side of the street, had time to close up. Ranklin was sure he was being led into something, and wanted his reserves right at hand.

They passed through the university and museum district, uncrowded now with most students on vacation and tourists still waiting for the streets to dry. Tibor turned into a narrower street, then through a carriage arch into the courtyard of an apartment building. Continental cities were full of identical buildings – it was a way of life, not a style of architecture – only here the stucco was painted the inevitable Habsburg yellow.

Ranklin stopped. “What about the concierge? – gatekeeper?”

“Not in afternoon.” Tibor headed for a stone staircase in one corner; Ranklin peered cautiously into the concierge’s room, but it was quiet and dark.

At the top of one flight of stairs, Tibor pushed open a heavy door, took a few paces down a hallway and opened another door.

“Now see what you have made to happen.”

By now, Ranklin was well braced, but it’s never enough. A close-up gunshot to the head is particularly nasty, since it empties much of the skull and swells the eyeballs nearly out of their sockets. The surroundings get messy, too.

Ranklin stood, swallowing hard and looking not too hard; luckily the room overlooked the courtyard and was rather dark. The outer door creaked, and Ranklin called softly: “Come on in – and be ready for a shock.”

“Jayzus,” O’Gilroy breathed over his shoulder.

“Who is this?” Tibor demanded, looking ready to start throwing punches.

“A colleague, a friend.”

“You did not trust me!”

“Have you been acting trustworthily? Why didn’t you just tell me what had happened?”

Probably the answer was that Tibor didn’t know. Something terrible had happened and he was ready to blame the nearest bystander.

O’Gilroy moved forward, peering at the body sprawled across the table from a wooden elbow chair. Hazay’s right hand clutched a small semi-automatic pistol. Next to it was a notepad with writing on it; the blood and brains had mostly blown the other way, over the papers on the far end of the table.

O’Gilroy passed the notepad to Ranklin and asked Tibor: “Would this be his pistol?”

“He had a gun, for travelling in the south …”

O’Gilroy began moving quickly but carefully, opening drawers and cupboards. Ranklin read the scrawl on the notepad. In German, it said:

I have been deceived into betraying the Monarchy by the secret planning of a Great Prince who is unworthy of his destiny. Forgive me, my friends

.

“Is this Hazay’s writing?” he asked Tibor.

“Yes, I believe …” But there was plenty of Hazay’s writing scattered around the table: it looked genuine. Only most of the rest was in Magyar.

Ranklin sat down in another chair, tapping the notepad against his knee and thinking desperately. O’Gilroy came back from the hallway holding a grease-soaked little cardboard box of cartridges.

“In with his shoes.”

“Do they match?”

O’Gilroy squinted at the weapon on the table. “Looks like the same bore.”

“Right.” Ranklin took a deep breath and said to Tibor: “Now do you believe he shot himself?”

Tibor let his mouth hang open. What he had seen – could see – was so horrible and vivid that mere thoughts could make no impact on it. The scene just was , he couldn’t see it as composed of details yet, let alone ones that might be false.

Ranklin tried to supply them. “This morning, so you told me, he was all fired up about telegraphing an article to Munich, but expected trouble with the censors. A few hours later you find him dead, leaving a suicide letter in German. A letter for friends, like you; would you have expected it to be in Magyar?”

Tibor nodded slowly.

“So somebody, several somebodies, could have forced him to produce the pistol, write the letter in German because they couldn’t read Magyar – then shot him. Do you agree this could have happened?”

“Yes,” Tibor said huskily.

“Right. Then let’s get the devil out of here.”

O’Gilroy let out a long breath of relief. But Tibor, catching on to the implications of murder, was searching the desktop with his eyes. “I find his notes, then I prove the story he sends is true …”