Gavin Lyall: Spy’s Honour

Apart from the ponderous crystal chandeliers, the hall was pure Hansel and Gretel, all marzipan and cake icing. Even the Corinthian pillars along the walls had wreaths carved around their waists, and plaster scrolls writhed across the ceiling like tree snakes. Just what use the place had been intended for, he had no idea, but tonight it held a stage with Hornbeam and the city’s legal bigwigs aboard, and hard small chairs set in two blocks with a central gangway. Corinna and Ranklin sat well forward, just behind the Baroness and Lucy, but Stanzer had picked a seat right at the back on the gangway and close to a doorway. Perhaps he planned to vanish just after his question; meanwhile it made him awkward to keep an eye on.

“… what philosophers and jurists had hitherto cited as the Natural or God-given Law in seeking justification for any given war became largely irrelevant in the eighteenth century, which accepted war as a matter of policy, needing no specific justification …”

At that point Corinna nudged Ranklin. He first thought she was just making sure he was awake, but then looked past her and was appalled to see O’Gilroy, in proper dress clothes, sauntering along the side of the hall in full view of everyone, Stanzer included. O’Gilroy caught Ranklin’s look, smiled reassuringly, and found a seat at the end of the row just behind them. Ranklin turned back to the stage, heart and mind racing.

Could O’Gilroy somehow have misunderstood the whole situation? He tried reassuring himself that O’Gilroy was no fool, particularly where his own skin was concerned. So the situation itself must have changed – but since he had no idea how, that thought was hardly reassuring at all.

“… and since these wars were concerned mainly with frontier disputes they posed no threat to the values and customs which the warring states held in common. Moreover, they were fought by a separate class of disciplined mercenaries led by warrior aristocrats …”

“Just like dear old England right now,” Corinna murmured.

“… so society and state became separate entities in time of war, allowing society to become the forum of conscience in which the Kriegsmanier of the states, their customs of war, would be adjudged. This stable, if hardly ideal, system was disrupted initially by the actions of the British Navy – ”

Corinna was about to whisper flippant agreement when she realised that everybody else really did agree: a mutter, almost a growl, rippled through the hall. You could do no wrong, she saw, by denouncing the Royal Navy to a Continental audience.

While Hornbeam paused, Ranklin glanced back towards Stanzer and saw a young officer with a light blue jacket slung cavalry-fashion from his shoulder wandering slowly past the back rows. Stanzer beckoned him and after a whispered conversation, the officer handed over an envelope.

“What’s happening?” Corinna demanded.

“Stanzer’s got a message.”

She turned her full-power stare on the back of the hall, forcing an elderly gentlemen just behind her to lean hastily out of its way.

“He’s reading it,” she reported. “He doesn’t like it … he’s reading it again …”

“It’s bad manners to stare,” Ranklin muttered uncomfortably.

“Pigshit, as they say in this town.” But she stopped her reportage. Stanzer dismissed the officer with a nod, crumpled the paper and bowed his head over clasped hands, frowning with thought.

Corinna faced front again, wearing a shining grin, and squeezed Ranklin’s hand. “We’ve won ,” her whisper gloated. “You clever man, we’ve won!”

“When Hornbeam’s closed down for the night, perhaps,” Ranklin’s natural pessimism warned.

“… when the use of blockade, inevitably an indiscriminate weapon, spread the effects of war to society and threatened its values, war lost its inherent justification as an act of policy, legal thinkers were forced to turn back to the Kriegsraison to seek a means of controlling what had become so much more destructive …”

Get on with it! Ranklin’s inner voice screamed, while earlier it had been willing Hornbeam to drag it out all night. But that was before the message arrived (which could be to say they’d found his lost cuff-link … No, he’d looked too serious for that. But it could be that his horse or mother was ill …) Now he wanted a decision, war or peace, and a train ticket for Paris in either case …

No, if it were war, they’d have to stay to get the news out ahead of them. But make sure Corinna was on the first train …

A wave of applause woke him: Hornbeam had finished, and Ranklin had no idea of how much longer he’d taken. But now Corinna was muttering: “No questions, no questions, get off the stage you old fossil,” so perhaps Ranklin’s nervousness was catching.

But there had to be questions, the first asking whether the necessity of war could be held to exist in peace, that is, whether it is possible to anticipate necessity, in other words, whether necessity was dependent on conditions which … The second asked more simply whether Pufendorf’s concept of the state as imbued with the same conscience as the natural man could be equated with St Augustine’s view that …

“ Forget Pufendorf and St Augustine,” Corinna raged quietly. “Their supper’s not getting cold but yours is. Think of that .”

Pretending to look at a questioner towards the back, Ranklin saw Stanzer with his arms folded, staring at the seat in front with a grim expression. So far, so good – but Stanzer would make sure his question was the last one anyway.

Then nobody was asking a question and a restless, perhaps hungry, murmur filled the hall. Hornbeam asked hopefully: “Are there any more questions?”

There was a pause, then the Baroness half rose in her seat to frown across the rows of faces at Stanzer. But he gave a slow shake of his head and went on sitting stolidly.

So it’s over, Ranklin thought. The legal ringmaster who had introduced Hornbeam began getting up to propose a vote of thanks.

But the Baroness was still on her feet, and now upright and looking more like a ship’s figurehead than ever. “Herr Professor, I have a question, although it is not strictly concerning international law.”

My God! Ranklin realised that Stanzer may have got the message but the Baroness knew nothing about it. She thought he was just suffering from cold feet and was going to ask the question herself.

“Please proceed, Baroness,” Hornbeam smiled down at her.

“Nein! – lass das!” a voice yelled from the back, and Ranklin saw Stanzer on his feet, arms waving. “Nichts – ”

The shots rattled together, too fast to count. Stanzer’s outflung arms stiffened, his mouth gaped in a last gasp, then he crashed onto the row in front.

A hundred women started screaming and overturning their chairs. A few men, who had been under fire before, threw themselves flat but quickly realised flat was no place to be in a stampede. Ranklin grabbed Corinna’s arm and dragged her forward into the lee of the stage.

O’Gilroy eased out of the swirling, shrieking crowd and stood protecting Corinna from the other side. “Ah, but that was a dreadful and calamitous thing.”

He said it with such calm satisfaction that Corinna and Ranklin both stared at him. But he hadn’t been sitting anywhere near Stanzer; the shots, Ranklin reckoned, had come from the doorway at the very back.

Gradually the crowd eddied to a stop in quaking groups spread round the walls; the women had stopped screaming – except for one having hysterics – but the male instinct for shouting orders at each other had taken over. A reluctant Gardeoffizier and a more purposeful man, possibly a doctor, picked their way through the chairs towards Stanzer’s body.