Flight From Honour (36 page)

The gallery itself was dark, but light seeped up from the below. O’Gilroy crawled to the balustrade and peeked cautiously through. Corinna, sprawled but tense, was on a chaise-longue, and when he moved a little further along, he could see Signora Falcone in an armchair next to her. Grouped together, easy to watch. He saw one man immediately, wearing a black suit and pacing slowly, puffing on a cigarette. A pistol dangled from his other hand. But that was all.

O’Gilroy tried to estimate the distance. The gallery itself was a good twenty-five feet high, and the slant made that a range of up to forty feet. Long for a pistol, and the light from table and standing lamps was very blotchy, but he could use the balustrade as a rest when the time came.

Then the man stopped pacing and spoke to someone out of sight beneath that side of the gallery. O’Gilroy waited, then moved round a corner of the gallery to his right, almost in line with the front door and bringing the second man into sight. He was sitting in a hard-backed chair with a shotgun across his knees. If
that
thing went off . . . But O’Gilroy couldn’t choose his target; he was to cope with whoever didn’t go to the front door.

It was silly how your mouth got dry, waiting for action. Every time.

As at the back, the front of the villa was a terrace under the high portico reached by flights of steps at either end. Only these were well lit from electric lamps on the house walls. Staying against the wall, Ranklin sidled along and stationed himself to the right of the tall double front doors, still against the wall. Dagner came up from the opposite end. They waited.

Ranklin tried to concentrate on what was about to happen yet have no preconception about what the enemy might do. It was best to think of them that way, as the anonymous ‘enemy’ of his soldiering days, just targets without feelings or loved ones. And they might want Falcone to get inside the house, or rush out to kill him before he could escape. Or – most likely of all – do something Ranklin hadn’t thought of.

He cocked the hammer of Corinna’s Colt, wishing he’d thought to unload it and test the trigger-pull earlier. Given a choice, he wouldn’t have picked a gun that caused so much smoke and had only five shots, but O’Gilroy needed the better weapon. Ranklin just hoped that, if they forced a servant to open the door, he was dressed as one and wouldn’t cause the waste of surprise, time and a bullet. And bad luck for himself, of course.

He waited on, feeling his mouth dry up.

Then, with a growl and crunching of gravel, the car swung in through the gates and Matteo tooted the horn as instructed. Then he scuttled out of the far side to leave the car between himself and the house. That was his own idea, and Ranklin didn’t blame him for it. The front doors clicked and began to open, and Dagner, following orders perfectly, stepped forward to show himself in the light, hands visible and empty.

Ranklin couldn’t see who opened the doors, but heard a quavering voice ask: “
Che cosa volete, signore?
”

But before Dagner could answer, there was a shout from inside the house, a gunshot sounded followed by the boom of the shotgun, and another shot.

O’Gilroy had heard the car as soon as those below did. It prompted a flurry of Italian and arm-waving which suggested an uncertainty about which of the gunmen was in charge. But the one with the pistol – Silvio – seemed to win. He strode towards the front door while the one with the shotgun went to guard the seated women. Signora Falcone made a move to stand, but the shotgun waved her down, and the three of them stabilised into a tableau. O’Gilroy rested the pistol on the balustrade, wrapped his left hand around his right, and aimed at the foreshortened figure below. One squeeze and it – Jankovic had become an ‘it’ – would fold like a puppet, backbone cut through. But not quite yet.

An elderly servant appeared from the service stairs, buttoning a livery jacket. Silvio herded him towards the front door, out of sight, and there was a long-stretched moment of silence. Perhaps Signora Falcone heard something O’Gilroy couldn’t, or perhaps she just snapped: she jumped up, screamed, and ran for the front. Jankovic took a step but didn’t fire, perhaps fearing he would scare Falcone away.

She might have counted on that, but O’Gilroy couldn’t. He fired as Jankovic moved, and missed. Jankovic whirled round and jerked a trigger at the likeliest source of the shot, the french windows. O’Gilroy heard glass crash as he steadied and fired again.

The shots seemed to blow the servant out of the front door like a cork, but it was Silvio charging out from behind to reach Falcone. Instead of jumping aside, Dagner tried to grab him. Silvio slashed at him with the pistol but they hung together, grappling. Ranklin yelled, Silvio half turned to see and Ranklin took a stride forward and fired from no more than a couple of feet. He saw Silvio jerk backwards before the black-powder smoke blotted him out. Ranklin ducked as he recocked, seeing Silvio’s feet and firing somewhere above them, vaguely hoping he wouldn’t hit Dagner. The feet vanished.

Blundering through the smoke, Ranklin rammed one of the columns at the edge of the terrace and realised Silvio had gone over. He lay sprawled on the lamplit gravel below, winded, wounded and empty-handed, but squirming slowly.

“Get down there and . . .” Ranklin ordered, but Dagner was on his knees, looking surprised and fingering his head where Silvio had hit him. “Oh
blast
it!” – because Silvio’s pistol was down there, too, and he might recover enough to find it and – “Oh
damn
!”

So he carefully shot the enemy dead as he would a twitching wounded rabbit. Then rushed for the house and Corinna. He still had two shots left.

O’Gilroy’s pistol had jammed after the second shot. He knew he had hit Jankovic, seen him stagger, but he still had the shotgun and one unfired barrel. As O’Gilroy wrenched at the pistol’s slide, Corinna swung to her feet.

“Stay still ye stupid—!” O’Gilroy screamed. She probably didn’t even hear; people don’t hear things at such moments. But Jankovic heard, raised his head and the gun – as Corinna smashed a table lamp on his head.

Then she seemed to freeze in place, just stood there watching Jankovic pitch forward and skid on the polished floor, piling up a fur rug with his head. The slide of the automatic slammed free, Corinna was clear of the line and O’Gilroy had an easy target.

Ranklin had been delayed by colliding with Signora Falcone in the doorway. He never knew that when he appeared, just a running figure in the patchy light, O’Gilroy had switched aim to him and taken the first pressure on the trigger. Then he switched back to Jankovic and shot him dead.

The sound of the shot faded, leaving just the smell of gunfire. Ranklin reached Corinna and grabbed her arm; it was like trying to pivot a statue.

“Are you all right?”

“I guess so . . .” She seemed dazed. Then suddenly she sagged.

“Sit down.”

“Hell, I’ve been sitting all night . . .” But then she slumped onto a sofa. “Is it really all right? Really?”

He sat beside her, clutching her hands. “Yes, yes, all right.”

“I knew you’d come . . . No, I didn’t see how you could, but I
believed
you would. You and Conall, you’re the only ones in the world who could . . .” She freed a hand to gesture at the room, its broken glass, bullet scars, its corpse. “Are they both . . . ?”

“Both dead, yes.”

She gave a shiver and was silent for a few moments, then: “I
wanted
them dead, but . . . We made you kill them, didn’t we?” She stared at him as if they’d never met before. “How can you stand it? All this killing people? You don’t
show
anything!” She looked up at O’Gilroy, who was making a slow business of counting his unfired cartridges. “Neither of you!”

“You’re not supposed to show it,” Ranklin said.

“But you must – Oh
God
!” She jumped up and fled up the stairs. Ranklin stood, looking after her hesitantly. There was a burst of chatter by the front door; servants were bringing in Falcone in a wheelchair.

O’Gilroy replaced the automatic’s magazine with a loud snap.

“You don‘t show anything,” Ranklin said, “and you don’t feel anything.”

O’Gilroy smiled faintly. “Is that an order, Captain?”

“I suppose it is.”

33

The rising sun threw long shadows from the pillars of the back portico and the cypresses beyond, there was coffee on the terrace table and the air was fresh but with an underlying warmth. In all, a perfect Italian autumn day if you could ignore the shattered french windows, a few bullet-holes and two bodies stowed somewhere back in the house. And Ranklin had no trouble ignoring them; they were strictly Falcone’s problem. He took another gulp of coffee.

Signora Falcone was also back there, placating the servants, who had been shut up in their basement rooms, and sending out breakfast in dribs and drabs. D’Annunzio had been locked in his room and probably asleep until the shooting started. They had caught a glimpse of him in a vivid bathrobe, demanding explanations; now, presumably, he was getting properly dressed. Falcone himself sat at the table in his wheelchair, still with a rug over his knees, looking pale and serious. But then, he had problems. Ranklin put some smoked ham on a piece of bread.

“The last meal I had,” he recalled, “was in jail.”

O’Gilroy smiled. “That’s the first time for ye, isn’t it, Captain? How did ye take to it?”

Ranklin reflected. “Slow. And mostly quiet.”

“And how did ye get out?”

“Talked my way, I suppose.”

O’Gilroy nodded approvingly. “Always best, that.”

Dagner had been sitting quietly. The bang on his head hadn’t been serious, and Ranklin suspected the real pain had been to his pride. You reach an age when you should only get into fights when armed – and then shoot first.

Now Dagner said: “I’d like to hear all about your doings in Trieste, Captain, but time’s getting on.” He looked at Falcone. “When do you think the aeroplane should take off?”

Ranklin felt he’d been told Sorry, the doctor was wrong, you
have
got cancer. He forced himself to sit upright, trying to make his mind do the same, and managed it in time to hush O’Gilroy with a gesture and say: “Major, may I have a private word with you?”

Dagner gestured gracefully at Falcone. “I don’t think we have any secrets by now . . .”

“Major, I’m your second-in-command! Can we please talk?”

“Very well.” Dagner followed him to the other side of the terrace, past the french windows. Ranklin was about to start when he realised a dutiful servant had followed, carrying their coffee cups. But he put them down on another table and went back.

They didn’t sit. Ranklin said: “Surely the whole thing’s off. D’Annunzio was going to drop wild rabble-rousing pamphlets from the aeroplane – or did you know about the aeroplane, and him, from the start?”

“I’m afraid I did,” Dagner smiled gravely. “But I thought it best to conceal that. You seemed to have rather fixed ideas about the risk of war.”

Ranklin was a bit surprised to find he didn’t mind that so much; after all, the man in the field often shouldn’t know the whole picture. But: “Didn’t you get my cable saying nobody in Trieste believes the Italian workers are going to strike or riot or whatever? Or was I sent there just to get me out of the way?”

Dagner didn’t answer that directly. “Falcone knows his own people better than we do and he has no doubts.”

“No, he doesn’t, does he?” That suddenly struck Ranklin as odd. “He must be very sure . . . Could there be something he hasn’t told
you
? Something to do with those Lewis guns you helped him get?”

“For the Italian Army—”

“He pretended that about the aeroplane, too.”

“Perhaps the guns were a blind, to help hide the aeroplane in an arms-buying mission.”

“I think it’s more. The Count—”

“Captain, I know how you’ve always felt about this affair.” Dagner’s voice had become stern. “It may be part of how you feel about the Bureau. When it started, I can well believe the Chief had to take whom he could get, and get them any way he could. Like you and O’Gilroy. I’m afraid I know exactly how he got you. You did good work in your time, and did well together in the fracas just now, but the Bureau’s future demands more than what we used to call ‘Khyber Pass’ stuff, like that and the events in Clerkenwell. We’re working on a much larger canvas now. And we’re getting a new generation, young men who’ve
volunteered
and can he trained up with the vision to make this service what it deserves to be.”

“So O’Gilroy and I are yesterday’s newspapers, just to wrap the fish and chips.”

“Time passes for all of us.” Dagner’s tone was calm but urgent. “This could be the first vital step to the service living up to its legend, getting away from its pennyweight antics. If we can make this big a change in the Mediterranean situation, we can do anything. I don’t think I’m being overly romantic in foreseeing the day when every statesman in every country will have to take the British Secret Service into account in all he does or proposes. He’ll spend half his time wondering if we’re dogging his footsteps or already ahead of him. We’ve learnt the Navy can no longer do everything for us, and certainly the Army can’t, not in Europe. But now our service itself could hold the balance of power, become itself one of the Great Powers of Europe.

“Can you and O’Gilroy really share that vision with us, Captain?”

The answer must have been written in Ranklin’s expression, because Dagner said sympathetically: “Times change, Captain.”

“You’ve got far more experience,” Ranklin said doggedly, “but the secret service I know is grubby and demeaning and frightening, and can involve shooting people who . . . well, you just hope they deserve it—”

“All that and worse,” Dagner agreed. “But also
more.
And all the more reason to need a vision, a clear sight of what one is working for.”

“Do you trust Falcone, then?”

The change of tack didn’t bother Dagner. “Trust him? Not what he says, of course not. But what he
wants
, yes. A political triumph, showing up the Prime Minister as hesitant and feeble by forcing a squabble between Italy and Austria. And we’re using that ambition for our own ends.”