There was a pause while nobody mentioned Kuwait.
“Quite so,” Fazackerley agreed. “And while we all applaud the Foreign Secretary’s desire to reassure Germany, it still might be that the national interest would not suffer from a prolonged delay in completing the Railway. If you follow me.”
Young he might be, but Fazackerley had learned the Foreign Office’s elliptical manner well. And suddenly Ranklin saw why Corbin had left: he was going to be asked to sabotage the Railway – somehow – and there are some things a man of honour cannot bear to hear himself saying.
But then there was a discreet knock on the door, the Admiral called: “Come!” and a messenger came in with a tray of tea things. Berrigan said: “Ah, tea,” in a ritual way, and heaved himself onto his stiff leg to do the pouring. The messenger checked the coal scuttle, then the windows and said: “I expect you’ve seen enough of today, haven’t you, sir?” and pulled the heavy red curtains across a view of the forecourt. He turned on a couple more desk lamps, asked if there was anything more and went out.
The ceremony left the room feeling even more warm and grandly cosy, and while Fazackerley and the Admiral took it in their stride, Hapgood clearly relished it. Similar rituals would be going on all over Whitehall – in rooms of a certain rank and above – but Ranklin felt unsettled; the drawing of the curtains against the outside world had been too symbolic. He and the Bureau belonged on the outside.
Setting aside his cup, Fazackerley glanced over his spectacles. “If we might return to the kidnapped engineers? – What the newspapers do not know, and we’ve only just learned, is that a fortnight ago this Miskal sent a message to the builders demanding a ransom equivalent to ?20,000 in gold coin. So, if this is paid, tunnelling could be restarted very soon.
“Corbin told you the Turks were giving the Railway pretty well a free hand. However, one faction of the Committee regards paying the ransom as giving in to brigandry and prefers to let the engineers take their chances. In addition, neither the Railway-builders, the Deutsche Bank nor the German Foreign Office – which is deeply if not openly involved – can agree who should put up the money and take the risk of defying the Turks.
“But it seems that an agreement has now been reached in Berlin. They still hope Lady Kelso will get the men freed without it costing them a penny – but if she doesn’t, they’re ready to pay up. Without the relevant faction in the Turkish Government knowing, of course. And for that reason the money will have to be moved covertly. You still follow me?”
Ranklin nodded.
“Good. Now, Hapgood has a little scheme which I’ll let him explain himself.”
Hapgood sat up straighter, cleared his throat, and launched into his Big Moment. “What I thought was, if we can slip you into the affair as Lady Kelso’s escort, you could then intercept this ransom payment and replace a fair part of it with – let’s say – lead. So when Miskal Bey comes to count it, he’ll think the Germans have cheated him, become even more obstreperous, and the tunnelling – and hence the whole Railway – will be delayed yet further.”
And, after quick looks at the other two, he sat back smiling. Ranklin was doing his best not to gape; all his sympathy for Hapgood the outsider had vanished. Dazed, he instinctively looked to the Admiral, who should have some experience of making realistic plans. But Berrigan was studying the fire with deep concern. And Fazackerley was showing just as great an interest in his own finger-nails.
“I see,” Ranklin said slowly. “But . . . just suppose Lady Kelso manages to get the engineers set free and the ransom doesn’t come into it?”
“We regard that as rather unlikely,” Fazackerley said, still intent on his nails. “Particularly with a man of your ingenuity at hand.”
In short, his first task might be to sabotage Lady Kelso.
“Does the Foreign Secretary know about the ransom demand?”
“Sir Edward sees everything that comes in from diplomatic sources.”
So they’d learnt of the ransom from some back-door source . . . Gunther? he wondered. And whose office would he have come to: the FO, India or the Admiralty?
“Bound to be problems,” Berrigan said, waving the poker in slow circles, “but that’s what you chaps are trained for, isn’t it?”
And in his way, the old bastard was right – if I’d had any training worth the name, Ranklin thought sourly. He said: “Naturally I can’t commit the Bureau myself, that’ll be up to my . . . Chief. But I’ll put the whole thing to him as fairly as I can.”
“We quite understand,” Fazackerley said. “And in the light of other matters, we hope you’ll emphasise the importance of this.”
“And its urgency,” Berrigan said. “The Germans are in a hurry, so we can’t afford to dawdle.”
Fazackerley nodded. “Now, as to details . . .”
* * *
The Commander listened to the story without interrupting, or not often. When Ranklin had finished, he said thoughtfully: “I’ve expected to be asked to do something about that blasted Railway for the last couple of years. . . And they’re quite right, of course; it isn’t just Foreign Office jingoism. We trapped ourselves when we decided to change the Navy from coal to oil and the only place we could find our own source was in the Gulf. So we’re bound to protect it when we see the Germans driving a railway down to that part of the world. Their intentions may be entirely peaceful – in peace. But come a war, they’ll use every weapon they can, and that Railway’s one of them.”
“Then you want to take this on?”
“I don’t think we have a choice. I’ve been saying that we’re here to do dark-alley jobs like this, that this is how we can coexist with the Foreign Office – and now they’ve taken me at my word. I don’t think we can say No.”
“The FO may be right,” Ranklin said, “but the the idea of interfering with the ransom is sheer lunacy. The Germans aren’t going to carry a load of gold coin into brigand country in a shopping basket. It’ll be shut up in safes or strongboxes, under armed guard probably.”
“You’d better make a quick study of safe-cracking before you go. But yes, I agree . . . You say that idea came from Hapgood? Perhaps, with his background, he’s trying a little too hard.”
Comments like that about Hapgood made Ranklin feel a little awkward. He must have worked far harder than Corbin or Fazackerley to get where he was, he deserved every credit and so forth . . . and yet, damn it, this involved people’s lives. Come to that, he wondered, why did the Foreign Office let the India Office in at all if it was the threat to the Navy’s oil, not to India, that mattered?
He set that thought aside and said: “None of this seems to be sanctioned by any of the ministers involved.”
The Commander eyed him curiously. “You have a latent streak of democracy that you should keep an eye on . . . Ministers don’t soil their hands and minds with the likes of us. My chosen interpretation of the situation is that Sir Edward wants the Railway delayed, and that sending the Kelso woman is just an empty gesture of goodwill. So his civil servants are doing their proper job of ensuring that the Railway is delayed, and not bothering him with the details.”
“Such as the problem of the ransom. And us.”
“Exactly. And if my interpretation is wrong, it doesn’t matter because it isn’t politicians we have to please; they could be gone next week. Civil servants last longer and it’s the Corbins we have to live with – if we want this Bureau to survive. So just think of the Royal Navy running out of puff in mid-ocean, and remember that anything you can do to bugger up this Railway puts us in profit . . . Now, how much d’you know about railways? D’you think it would really be better just to dynamite it? – anonymously, of course.”
Ranklin shook his head slowly. “In South Africa, the Boers kept on cutting our lines, tearing up rails, derailing trains – but our chaps usually had things working again in a day or two. I learnt that once a railway’s in place, it’s a pretty tough thing. Stopping it being built at all seems a better way.”