Gavin Lyall - Spy’s Honour

“Ah – a bit complicated, but we’re sure it’s a code that’s been compromised.”

“Mebbe,” O’Gilroy said, “some rotten money-grubbing bastard sold it to them.”

“Quite so,” Ranklin said hastily.

“But,” Corinna mused, “you can’t be sure how quickly they’ll do it, or get word to Major Stanzer in time.”

Ranklin took his pipe out of his mouth to nod. “But the only other approach is the one that’s failed: getting Hornbeam not to say anything.”

“Maybe we should kidnap Lucy – or the Baroness,” Corinna said dreamily, “and tell Hornbeam that if he talks, he gets her back in little blood-stained parcels.”

There was a pause, then Ranklin asked: “Just what did they teach in that Swiss finishing school of yours?”

But O’Gilroy was considering the idea seriously. “With a thing like that, ye need good planning – and anyways, they’re likely dressing for the shebang already.”

Corinna glanced at her wristwatch. “Lordie, yes.” She stood up. “Why have they pitched the lecture so early?” They began strolling back through the trees.

“Perhaps so the journalists have all the time they need,” Ranklin suggested. “Make sure it’s headline news in Vienna tomorrow. And Bad Ischl.”

“If they hadn’t killed … Hazay,” Corinna said, “he might … Do you think they killed him to stop him breaking this story publicly?”

“He didn’t know it. And no editor would print anything about the plot on the evidence we could give him – unless we said exactly who we are. No,” Ranklin shook his head; “don’t be misled by the public aspect of all this. It’s all being done to influence the views of one man: the Emperor. He’s all that matters, his opinion of the Archduke and hence of the Archduke’s advice. That’s what Hornbeam can’t grasp. It’ll be part of the Archduke’s disgrace that he seemed to be washing Habsburg linen in public. But the opinion of the public, all fifty million of it, doesn’t count a whisker.”

They had reached the edge of the trees, with a stretch of grass and then the gravel drive to cross before the hotel.

“You stay back,” Ranklin told O’Gilroy, “I’ll give you a wave from my room when I’m sure Stanzer isn’t around.”

“You really don’t want to meet this guy, do you?” Corinna said to O’Gilroy. “Well, I don’t blame you. So we won’t see you until after the lecture. Wish us – Europe – good luck.”

Ranklin nudged her into moving. There was just her hired car in the driveway, along with a couple of one-horse cabs. No sign of any car that might be Stanzer’s, nor the one that would come to collect Hornbeam and Lucy.

A couple of minutes later, Ranklin came out onto his tiny balcony and waved at the trees; he’d seen no sign of Stanzer, nor of the Baroness. But when O’Gilroy was halfway across the drive, it occurred to him that he needn’t go up to his room anyway. He stopped and called up to the open window and Ranklin reappeared, now half out of his shirt.

“Is it all right with ye if I jest take a cab down the town right now?”

Preoccupied, Ranklin nodded and vanished. And Major Stanzer, already in civilian dress clothes, stepped out onto the Baroness’s balcony and looked down at O’Gilroy. Then he smiled, put a finger to his lips and gestured O’Gilroy around to the main entrance.

The hotel cooks glanced curiously out of their open windows onto the little courtyard stacked with vegetable baskets and strewn with old cabbage leaves, but didn’t interfere. The muscular one with the Austrian moustache looked like an officer, and if he wanted a private place for a talk with the thin dark Englishman, so be it.

“I do not hear an Irish voice so much,” Stanzer said, “so it is most easy to remember. So the Herr Ranklin is your drunken master, no?” O’Gilroy could sense the delight with which Stanzer fingered this new revelation, squeezing it, fondling it. He himself was trying to imitate the potato he was standing on.

“And also Mrs … the daughter of Sherring? She is also an agent?”

At least O’Gilroy could react honestly to that. “Herself? – ye must be joking, Major. She’s disguise, and not the worst idea me master’s had. Who’d think she’d be carting round a coupla British spies? She’d have fits to know it herself.”

Stanzer half smiled; he hadn’t been serious about Corinna. “But also, who would believe that a good Irishman works for the English Secret Service?”

O’Gilroy’s mood changed. “Isn’t that what they think themselves?” and he didn’t think he was lying yet. “So when they caught me and me brother with the bomb … well, he’s rotting in Kilmainham jail and no worse. But if they think now I’m not working for them with all me soul, he swings.”

“Swings?”

“Gets hanged.”

Stanzer nodded. He already believed the best way to control an agent was power, not trust. Hadn’t the Redl case proved that?

“So,” O’Gilroy said, with a hint of defiance, “any idea ye have for me changing sides, I’ll do nothing to put that rope round me brother’s neck.”

“But already that risk you take,” Stanzer pointed out gently, “when you sold to me the code. If the English knew that …”

“Mebbe so.” The defiance was gone. “But a man gets …”

“You must fight back, no? – but secretly. I understand. That is all I want you to do now.”

“Anyways,” O’Gilroy’s spirit seemed to return, “the code’s no good for ye if ye tell ’em I sold it. Ye said that much yerself.”

“That is true. But codes do not for ever last. They must be changed because just perhaps they are – you say ‘broken’, I think. Or sold.”

O’Gilroy shrugged, his defiance turning sullen. The cooks knew no English and wished the pair would talk more with their hands. But the English never did, and the Austrian’s officer-training had rendered him almost dumb. So they went on concentrating on O’Gilroy’s fluent changes of expression.

“So – ” Stanzer had a problem sounding smooth in an alien language; “ – there must also be more work, to be sure your brother does not ‘swing’. Why are you coming to Budapest?”

“I wisht I knew. But,” O’Gilroy went on quickly, “he was wanting to see some feller – ”

“Do not lie to me! I am an officer of the Emperor, it is my duty to report you for spies! But I have no duty for your brother … So, I know your Herr Ranklin is telling the Herr Professor he must not say – something at his lecture. Why does he do this?”

The cooks appreciated O’Gilroy’s look of utter bewilderment – but not the acting that went into it. This could be the moment of decision: Stanzer could choose to strengthen the war party’s case, as Ranklin had feared, by denouncing them as spies. But then he would lose not only the code but an even bigger personal prize: a hidden door leading into the British Secret Service. That way lay promotion, if Stanzer could only see it.

“Ah, that …” The cooks saw that O’Gilroy had remembered something, though not a very important something. “That’s all Mrs Finn herself, saying the Professor’s meddling with laws that’s none of his concern, and like to make a fool of himself and Americans like herself. She thinks she owns the world, her with her money.”

Stanzer hadn’t forgotten Corinna’s jibes at lunchtime; he nodded. “But your Herr Ranklin?”

“He’s never my Herr Ranklin!” O’Gilroy snapped. “Ye can have him yeself any time, long’s ye do it without it seeming my work …” His eyes gleamed as the idea appeared to take root. “Why not that, then? I can help ye lay a trap, like, and ye snap him up and let me go? Would there be money in that for me?”