Gavin Lyall - Spy’s Honour

“ They’ll have thought of that. As for proof – ” he jerked his head at Hazay; “ – that’s convinced me.”

“But while I’m sure you’ve found a loophole, a weakness in the Family Law,” Corinna was saying, “how can you stop them re-amending it to plug the hole before the Archduke succeeds to the throne?”

Hornbeam smiled paternally. “The very fact of my making the announcement so publicly, my dear. Their tame lawyers would never dare do anything so cynical in the broad daylight of the public gaze, and particularly since the legal opinion comes from a source – myself – representing, one might say, the gaze of the international public. Of course, we are still talking hypothetically.” He still hadn’t admitted he believed he had been hired by the Archduke.

“Of course,” Corinna said automatically. So that’s the argument they’ve fed him. Never mind that if the Habsburgs cared a bugger for anybody else’s opinion they wouldn’t now be wondering whether or not to start a war.

She tried another approach. “Then could you accept, hypothetically, that if there is the slightest chance that our theory is correct – and after all, you haven’t actually met the Archduke, only people claiming to represent him – you might wait a few days before making a public statement?”

“My dear Mrs Finn, tonight’s lecture is by far the most public … Come in,” he called to a knock on the door.

The Baroness came in, saw Corinna, and said: “Ah, I am most sorry you are …”

“No, no,” Hornbeam assured her. “Be seated, my dear. This concerns you as much as anybody. I fear our little secret has leaked out – ” the Baroness gave Corinna a sharp but apprehensive look; “ – and Mrs Finn, misguided I fear by her father’s business adviser, seems to believe it is all a plot to bring the Archduke into disrepute. I seem quite unable to disabuse her of this fancy.”

Say what you would about the Baroness – and Corinna was ready to say a great deal – she had poise. “My dear child, you cannot know our Monarchy so well after just a few days. It is not a place of mysterious plots and, how do you say it, blood and thunder. That businessman who follows you everywhere is just telling you romantic …”

“Shut your face,” Corinna said. “You, Professor, are as hidebound as a horse’s ass and have about as much vision …” Listening to her own voice, she knew it wouldn’t do her any good. But for the moment, it didn’t feel that way.

Ranklin let O’Gilroy saunter out into the street first, then they followed a couple of minutes later, heading in the opposite direction. It was a sensible move to perplex any watchers but, naturally, it did nothing to calm Tibor’s suspicions about them.

Making left turns while O’Gilroy made rights, they met up again a street away. O’Gilroy shook his head and Ranklin agreed: Hazay’s street had been deserted, and being lined with similar apartment houses, left no place for snoopers to loiter.

“We need some inconspicuous place for a talk,” Ranklin said, and whether or not he understood “inconspicuous”, Tibor led them quickly through a zigzag of back streets, out in Deak Place, and down a short flight of steps to Budapest’s single underground train line. It might be amateurish of him, Ranklin reflected, but he did indeed feel safe and unobserved in a burrow, even an electrified one.

“What do we do about Stefan?” Tibor demanded.

“We just have to leave him. Somebody’ll find him.” Ranklin didn’t envy the somebody.

“But you do not want to tell the police?”

O’Gilroy snorted. “Ye can say I’m old-fashioned, but I’ve no wish to commit suicide meself.”

Tibor eyed him cautiously, he didn’t know what to make of O’Gilroy – and because of that, was newly suspicious of Ranklin as well. Just then a little square-ended carriage rattled in and they got aboard, heading out towards the Town Park.

“I think,” Tibor said, “I must tell them myself.”

“I hope that before that,” Ranklin said, as quietly serious as he could be in the rumble and creak of the carriage, “you’ll remember saying this morning that Hazay couldn’t be shot for trying to bypass the censors – but a few hours later, he was. So who did the censors tell? Who decided he should be killed? Who actually did it? I don’t know, but obviously some authority must be involved. So who can you trust?”

He had hoped that Tibor’s young-rebel-writer attitude had made him anti-authority. And probably he was – but when things get sudden and nasty you want an authority to turn to. Ranklin wanted that authority to be the Secret Service Bureau, but saying so would hardly help.

Tibor considered. “But … what do we do?”

“You know what we want: to know if it’s to be war or peace. And peace is better for international trade, I’m sure you’ll agree. But we think there’s a plot to besmirch the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. And that Stefan was killed because his article would have shown that the Archduke would oppose a war – and that would reveal the motive for the plot. So if we can prevent this plot succeeding then we carry on Stefan’s work and perhaps unmask his assassins.” Or perhaps not, of course, but he had to hammer the idea of avenging Hazay.

“So perhaps you know who kills Stefan?”

That was too big a leap of logic for Ranklin, but O’Gilroy asked: “What time was it ye first found him dead?”

Tibor tried to remember, he even took out a big gun-metal watch and stared at it. “Soon before I telephone you …”

“You telephoned at about a quarter to three,” Ranklin said. “A quarter of an hour before? Half an hour?” Finding and using a telephone wouldn’t be an everyday event for Tibor.

O’Gilroy said: “Anyway, plenty of time for a feller leaving the hotel jest after one o’clock in a motor-car with a coupla other fellers to get down there and – bang.”

“Woah, hold on now,” Ranklin warned – but the timing and Stanzer’s behaviour made him a very likely suspect. And if so, he had very good lines-of-communication behind him: from the censors picking up Hazay’s telegram to the gunshot must have been no more than two hours. Well, he’d already pointed that out – and now it gave him an idea. But it meant scurrying back to the hotel and he didn’t want to leave Tibor alone, angry and bewildered and likely to start an elephant stampede on his own. Or a few more “suicides”.

“Look,” he said, “I want to try something, but it means me nipping back to the hotel. Can you two amuse yourselves for … No, I tell you what you can do: find out the home address of the British Consul, Dr I. Brull, for me. Can you do that?”

“But now,” Tibor said, “he is at his office, no? He must be there until …”

“It’s still his home address I want. I’ll meet you at the Petofi statue.”

“It wasn’t locked against you,” Ranklin assured Corinna, relocking his bedroom door behind her. “I’m working on something … How did it go with Hornbeam? Not very well?” Her expression had already told him.

“God damn it!” she exploded. “Why are we landed with the one eminent American who’s never run for elective office? He knows no more of politicking than … than a Harvard law professor. He’s cold certain he’s doing the right, the noble, the American thing, championing the Duchess Sophie’s democratic right to be Empress – so that’s what George Washington was fighting you bastards for – then riding into the sunset to the cheers of the mob.”

“Is there any point in me tackling him again?”

“No,” she said too quickly.

“You wouldn’t happen to have said, just in passing, something a little bit unforgivable?”