“Then just go along, and if a chance to do evil crops up, seize it. Perhaps Lady Kelso will introduce you to this brigand and you can bribe him to kidnap a few more Germans.” He thought for a while, chewing on his pipe and rattling a matchbox. “Did they say how they found out about this secret stuff, the ransom and so on?”
“Gunther van der Brock.”
“Did they say that or are you guessing?”
“I’m guessing. But the timing fits, and the story’s from the German end, not the Turkish. And I remember that when I tried Gunther on the Eastern Question, he shied away from it. Normally he’d at least have discussed it, to see what we’re after.”
The Commander’s chomping on his pipe got positively carnivorous. “So van der Brock was selling us a German secret, which suggests the Germans were behind his murder. So won’t they be watching to see if we interfere?”
“It sounds possible.”
The Commander grinned again. “D’you still want to go?”
Ranklin shrugged. “If it was ever worth doing, it still is. But if I get caught working under a diplomatic alias, then it’ll look as if we’re doing the sweetness-and-light bit with one hand and knifing them with the other.”
“The FO will disown you, say you’re an impostor. And the Prime Minister will say we have no Secret Service, so you must just be some patriotic but barmy officer acting on your own.”
“That may fool our journalists and their readers,” Ranklin persisted, “but the Germans won’t believe a word of it. It could make the international situation worse.”
“The FO must have considered that.”
“Perhaps. I just wonder if the FO has considered what a European war could mean in this age.”
Ranklin was one of the few Britons who thought he did know, had learnt fighting for the Greeks in the 1912 Balkan war – and, the Commander felt, it was about time he bloody well forgot it. “You shouldn’t let your adventures in Macedonia colour your whole view of warfare.”
But Ranklin also thought the Commander saw such a war as largely a naval event; perhaps as most Britons did. Fleets pounding each other to pieces in a few glorious hours, not men cowering for weeks in the mud, with their feet and lungs rotting. And where stray shells might kill a passing herring, not women and children, nor grind down the houses, factories, roads, all the complex heart of twentieth-century civilisation.
But the Commander had heard all that before and wasn’t about to hear it again. “You cannot be an agent and fool yourself that you’re working for some abstraction, like clergymen serving God or lawyers saying they’re doing it for Justice and Truth and not the money. An agent works for his country – that’s all. And there’s no doubt that buggering up this Railway is in our national interest. Also there’s a long distance between a piddling little agent like you getting caught and starting a European war, so don’t put on airs. Just do the job and concentrate on not getting caught. Now -” briskly “- what d’you need for that?”
“I’d like . . .” Ranklin husked, then began again more firmly: “I want O’Gilroy with me, and a good alias. Something that fits with being a well-born hanger-on to the Diplomatic Service.”
The Commander lumbered to his feet. “Ah. Now there, I stumbled across something the other . . . Kilmartin . . . Kilmarnock . . . Kilmallock.” He took a copy of Who’s Who from a shelf and dropped it with a thump in front of Ranklin. “Look up Kilmallock in that. He’s an Irish peer, I forget the family name. You’ll find he had two sons; I know the elder’s in America – what’s the younger called?”
“The Hon. Patrick Fergus Snaipe,” Ranklin read.
“Right. He’s about your age, isn’t he? He turned out an imbecile and he’s hidden away in some looney bin in an Irish bog. Perfect: his existence is verifiable, but the rest is a dark family secret. So he could just as well be in the Diplomatic as in a bin.”
“And his Irish valet?”
“If you can talk O’Gilroy into being a manservant again. And your girl-friend’s already out in Constantinople, isn’t she?” The Commander’s grin was sly rather than savage. “If we can’t out-think ’em, perhaps for once we can outnumber ’em.”
6
No king could have worn his Coronation robes with more dignity than Mr Peters did his grubby apron, and Ranklin knew he had come to the right man. It was comforting to know that such men still existed in a world now so dominated by factory production and its good-enough standards. With unhurried precision, the locksmith unfolded and read through the letter of introduction. “Ah, yes. Mr Spencer -” that was Ranklin’s normal alias, but it was wearing thin for use in the field “- of course. I assume you’d like this back.” He returned the letter. “And you want me to teach you to be a top-notch safe-cracker in the next hour.”
Ranklin tried a deprecating smile. “I’d like that, but I realise that, even for a man of your exceptional talents . . .” His voice faded and died. Peters recognised oil, and knew that it clogged the works.
“And what make of safe would it be?”
“I’m afraid we don’t know. But probably German.”
Peters nodded. “Most likely to be a combination lock, then. Will you be able to use heavy tools or explosives?”
“Nothing that leaves a mark. It has to be an undetected entry.”
There was a long silence, then Peters sighed. “Well, I can show you a few safes, explain the principles of the discs and the tumbler gate, point out the differences between different makes, but . . . I won’t try to tell you your business, but I suggest you concentrate on the owner of the safe. Open him, and maybe the safe’ll follow. Apart from that . . . Are you a regular church-goer, Mr Spencer?”
Surprised, Ranklin said: “Er . . . I’m afraid not.” “Start today.”
* * *
Terence Gorman,
Pension Chaligny,
Paris 12e
Dear Gorman,
You have been recommended to me by James Spencer Esq. as a loyal, sober and discreet manservant. I trust that Spencer did not exaggerate your qualities because I am offering you the opportunity to attend to my needs on a mission for His Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs which will take me to Constantinople and perhaps further into the Turkish Empire.
You will be engaged under the usual conditions at a wage of one sovereign a week, paid at the end of the week, but I am prepared to advance you a week’s wage upon your acceptance.
I assume that you will take this handsome chance to better yourself, and will present yourself clad in a fitting manner, and with your accoutrements suitably packed for immediate railway travel, at the Gare de l’Est at 2 in the afternoon on Tuesday next.
Yrs
The Hon. Patrick Snaipe
* * *
Ranklin came into the Commander’s room just as another paper was burning out in the ashtray.
“You’re off to Constantinople tonight? – tomorrow?”
“I’ve just got to pick up a diplomatic passport.”
“Thought you’d like to know: Scotland Yard’s pretty sure it knows who killed your chum van der Brock. A man suspected of being a professional assassin, name of – Bugger! I’ve forgotten.” He glared at the smouldering remains in the ashtray. “Doesn’t matter, he escaped abroad the same day and they can’t prove it anyway.”
“What does matter is who hired him.”
“Possibly . . . I don’t want you wasting time on it, anyway. Give my regards to O’Gilroy.”
* * *