Flight From Honour (11 page)

*        *        *

The new recruits were gone, out to lunch or back up to the office, but the three of them still sat there because Alerion didn’t seem to want to move. He was staring vaguely at the disarranged and empty chairs at the far end of the long table. The room was as bright as it ever got with daylight, but it was indirect, that cool interior light that the Dutch painters understood so well.

“Can I get you some fresh coffee, Sir Caspar?” Ranklin offered.

“No, you can get me a damned great whisky and soda.” He roused himself and lit a small cigar while Ranklin went to the sideboard. “So those are tomorrow’s unsung heroes, off to secret battle armed with my ramblings and your clarion call of King and Country—”

“I don’t think you’re being quite fair,” Dagner protested mildly. “If I’d become overtly patriotic, they’d have fidgeted and looked at their bootlaces. But an agent does have to have a clear idea of who he’s working for, far clearer than a soldier. History’s full of mercenaries who fought, and fought well, just for love of battle and a shilling a day. But espionage has to have a purpose that you can believe in when you’re out there on your own, facing far worse than battle. And we, sitting safe here on our backsides, have to know that they believe, or how can we trust them?”

Alerion let out a mouthful of smoke with a long humming noise. “I want to see this Bureau of yours survive – and prosper. It’s come nearly a hundred years late, we threw away everything we learned in the eighteenth century and the French wars . . .”

He saw the glass Ranklin had quietly placed by him, nodded his thanks and then addressed him for the first time. “You haven’t been in this game very long, have you, Captain?”

Ranklin, who had isolated himself in his ‘Yes, but . . .’ mood, was disconcerted by the prospect of being asked his opinion. But then Dagner said: “Captain R is one of our most senior agents.”

That may have headed Alerion off. But while he was looking at his glass, and taking occasional sips, he didn’t seem to be addressing Dagner. Indeed, he might even have been talking to himself, in short disjointed phrases: “I mentioned the fantasies you run into in this business . . . It takes another form, too . . . When you’ve uncovered so many secrets that you think that now you
know
. . . Like an actor who’s played the king too long comes to think he can change the world . . . Dare say we all want our dreams to come true, but mostly there’s someone looking over our shoulder, messing it up, making it just another day’s work . . . Probably just as well, really . . . Soldiering does destroy soldiers. How can we expect spying not to destroy spies? . . . Only how can you tell if you can’t see any blood . . . ?” He shook his head impatiently. “I’m starting to ramble.”

By now Ranklin was feeling thoroughly uneasy, and it was a relief when Dagner brought the conversation smoothly down to matters of fact. “I believe you know Italy well, Sir Caspar.”

“Knew it, knew it . . . Always been a good place for the English to go to seed. I suppose I shouldn’t ask if you’ve got a ploy going on there?”

“Do you feel we should have anything going on there?” Dagner turned the question deftly.

“Hm. You won’t find much competition from our embassy, not under Rennell Rodd.” He chuckled, then frowned. “But looking for secrets of Italian policy is looking for a haystack under a needle. In my day there was a policy on every café table and a couple of secrets underneath it and I doubt much has changed. Bismarck said it all, thirty years ago: ‘Italy has a large appetite and very poor teeth’.”

“Something I learned only last night,” Dagner said casually, “and that rather surprised me. It probably shouldn’t have done, but most of my soldiering’s been done a thousand miles from the sea . . . That the Navy’s pretty well pulled out of the Mediterranean.”

This surprised Ranklin, too, but Sir Caspar just nodded. “Ah yes, that. You’re thinking of the route to Suez.”

“And India beyond.”

“Of course. And you aren’t the only one who’s concerned about us passing that responsibility to the French.”

Still befogged, Ranklin remembered that the only stupid question is the one you’re ashamed to ask. “Was this something official, sir? – and when?”

“Not officially
announced,
good Lord no. But it happened about a year ago. One fine day the Royal Navy virtually vanished from the Med, and the French fleet vanished from the Channel and the Atlantic. The Kaiser didn’t need any informers to tell him a deal had been struck on who guarded what for the other.”

Ranklin nodded. A year ago, he hadn’t been in this business, and his own problems were blotting out any interest in naval doings anyway.

Alerion went on: “The thinking goes that now Russia’s our ally, she’s no threat to India so there’ll be no need for quick reinforcement out there. Meanwhile, von Tirpitz is certainly building a damn great fleet on our own doorstep and that has to be the Navy’s greatest concern.”

Dagner said thoughtfully: “But it does seem to mean that the Italian and Austrian navies, if they combined, would control the eastern end of the Med. And the route to Suez.”

“Technically, Italy’s already allied with both Austria and Germany in the Triple Alliance, but I doubt that means much. Italy’s bound to join in a major war, out of sheer pride at becoming a new European Power – but who’s going to pay the bill?
That’s
Giolitti’s problem; he’s been their Prime Minister, on and off, for twenty years and it looks as if he’ll get back at the November elections. And he’s a rogue but no fool, and knows his best policy is to wait and see who’ll pay Italy the biggest bribe to take sides. And his worst fear is his own fanatics pushing him into a war with France or Austria – or even us – out of nationalist pride and without bribes.”

“But meanwhile,” Dagner reminded him, “the route to India . . .”

“I think we’re realising that we can’t be powerful everywhere. We have to leave some things to diplomacy – and your Bureau, of course,” Alerion added politely.

11

While Dagner escorted Sir Caspar out, Ranklin checked the room over for any papers that might have got left behind, and called down by voicepipe for someone to clear away the coffee tray. Then went upstairs.

Dagner was back at the littered work-table; he looked up with a thin smile. “What did you make of Sir Caspar?”

“Can’t say I followed everything he said,” Ranklin said tactfully. “But most seemed to be sound, if cynical, sense.”

“Quite. And he confirmed what I heard last night about the naval situation in the Med. Perhaps you gathered that it was a sort of reunion of old India hands? – we even got Lord Curzon to drop in . . .” Of course: Curzon had been Viceroy of India when Dagner had won his DSO, had probably pinned it on him. It must have been Curzon’s Rolls-Royce Ranklin had seen at the Tower last night. “They were quite cut up about it all.”

“Understandably,” Ranklin felt he should say.

“And it ties up with something Senator Falcone was telling me yesterday afternoon.” He pulled out his watch. “Would you care to hear about it over lunch downstairs?”

“Of course.” Ranklin hadn’t been sure he was going to hear what the Senator had said – nor that he really wanted to. The less he was involved in office strategies, apart from the training programme, the more free he’d be to get abroad again. Hiding O’Gilroy away down at Brooklands could only be a temporary measure.

The tables in the dark-panelled restaurant on the ground floor were widely spaced, and the lunchtime crowd had thinned out, so they were safe from being overheard. Even so, Dagner switched to Indian reminiscences whenever a waiter came near.

“How
au fait
are you with naval matters?” he began.

“A pure landlubber,” Ranklin said promptly. “As I say, we don’t usually touch on such things.”

“It all seems to begin seven years ago when we launched HMS
Dreadnought,
which made every other battleship in the world – our own included – out of date. Since then, everybody’s been building their own versions.” He shot his cuff and consulted some figures he’d pencilled on it. “We’ve now got eighteen, plus eight battle-cruisers which are faster but thinner-skinned. And of those, according to
Whitaker’s
– something anybody can look up – only three are in the Mediterranean. And the French, who are supposed to be guarding the Med, have only
two
dreadnoughts anywhere. Against that, the Italians already have four and the Austrians two and are building two more. So, on paper, we and the French are already outnumbered down there and it could soon be worse. Why are we happy with that? – I thought the Navy was there to protect our Empire and trade.”

Ranklin hadn’t seen Dagner so positive, almost aggressive, before. He just had time to murmur: “The German fleet in the North Sea . . .” before their soup arrived.

When they were alone again, Dagner said: “Quite. But the matter might be a little more urgent that most people suppose . . . Because what Senator Falcone came to tell our Foreign Office people was that, three months ago, the Italian Foreign Minister signed a secret treaty with Austria putting the Italian fleet under Austrian command in the event of a war. So we
would
be facing a unified fleet.”

Dagner’s quiet tone seemed aimed at understating this news and, by implication, emphasising it. So Ranklin put down his soup spoon and frowned. Then asked: “Has he any proof of this treaty?”

“That’s what the Foreign Office asked him – not too tactfully, I understand. No, he hasn’t. But he hopes to get a copy of the treaty before too long. Or so he says. So the FO suggested he come back when he’d got that. He then – mistakenly, I think – offered them a deal.”

Ranklin winced, imagining the sudden Ice Age that would have visited King Charles Street. One did not offer the British Foreign Office
deals.

“Exactly,” Dagner smiled. “That’s why he turned to us.”

“He’d turned to us before he saw the FO. Though perhaps he guessed what sort of reception he’d get there.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s very much an Italian nationalist who hates the idea of subservience to Austria. I find that reassuring, that one can understand his motives.” He saw Ranklin’s dubious look and smiled. “No, Captain, I’m not making the mistake of thinking because we agree with the Senator on one thing, he must be really just an Englishman with a funny accent. I’m sure that, quite apart from his nationalism, his own political ambitions are mixed up in this. We’ll have to watch out for that—Did you ever hear about Hodson, the chap who actually set up Hodson’s Horse?” That was for the waiter taking away their soup plates. And he did it so quickly that Ranklin never got to hear about Hodson.

“Anyway,” Dagner resumed, “what he’s offering is to prompt a strike in the shipyard at Trieste that’s building most of the Austrian dreadnoughts.”

“Oh.” Ranklin couldn’t think how to react. “Er . . . just like that?”

“I didn’t ask how.” Dagner gave him a reproving look. “And I doubt I’d understand anyway: I know almost nothing about industry. But I think we must accept that he does; that’s how he made his money. And he claims strong family connections with Trieste – where most of the shipyard workers are also Italian. Building warships for Austria that
could
be used against Italy – one can see an inflammatory argument there. He also mentioned Oberdan – have you heard of him?”

Ranklin just shook his head, since the waiter was delivering their main course. He couldn’t remember what he’d ordered but it turned out to be the rump steak with oyster sauce. He felt he had to justify it by pointing out: “With one thing and another, I didn’t get any real dinner last night.”

Dagner nodded and consulted his cuff again. “I’ve verified Oberdan, at least. He was an Italian nationalist but citizen of Austria who got hanged by the authorities in Trieste back in 1882, at about this time of year. Apparently he’s become a martyr, a useful name to shout at riots. And that’s what the Senator hopes for: not just a strike but a riot with the workers destroying the shipyard machinery in an outburst of Luddism.”

“Sabotage,” Ranklin muttered, but not really listening to himself because he felt this was either an opium dream or very deep water.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sorry. Sabotage. New slang from the French railway strike last year, when they tore up the sleepers, that the French call
‘sabots’.
Wooden shoes.”

“Sabotage.” Dagner savoured the word. “Thank you. So, such things can happen.” He ate quietly for a while. Then: “I find that rather terrifying – even that such a word has appeared in our language. We talked of Secret Weapons the other day, but this could trump the lot.”

Ranklin had long believed that any talk of bloody-minded, bone-idle, money-grubbing civilian workers should be a banned in Army messes, so wasn’t going to get involved. Instead: “You said the Senator was offering a deal: what does he want from us?”

“Help with armaments. He’s not just interested in naval affairs, but in improving the Italian Army as well.”

“Money?”

“Oh no, no.”

“That’s usually all it takes. I don’t believe there are any restrictions on the export of arms.” He had wondered if Dagner, fresh from the Khyber Pass where selling even a rifle to a tribesman was probably a hanging offence, realised how easy the rest of the world found it to buy British battleships, French aeroplanes, German cannon, no matter who you were. All you needed was hard cash.

But Dagner seemed to appreciate this already. “He’s just one man, rich but still not the Italian Government, and he thinks we could help in cutting red tape, speeding things up. And one thing he’s looking for is an aeroplane – to replace the one he thought he was going to buy in Brussels.”

Ranklin pushed back his plate, feeling that this was more his size. No longer heady talk of secret treaties and shipyard riots, just buying an aeroplane. “We need O’Gilroy. He was going to take the Senator to Brooklands this weekend.”

“I know. But since he’s there already, I wonder if you felt like escorting the Senator down there tomorrow?”

Ranklin thought for a moment, then asked: “Who am I?”