“Is this the place they make the Zeppelins?” O’Gilroy asked.
“It is, and we show absolutely no interest in that.”
“Surely. Jest hoping to see one. But too much wind, I’m thinking.”
“How are your new quarters?”
“Jayzus!” O’Gilroy said fervently. “Ye wouldn’t keep a pig in them, ‘cept I think they did. Mind,” he added grudgingly, “the carriage is clever for what it is. Jest too much space for baggage.”
“When the Kaiser travels, it’ll all be used. Can you get at it?”
“Not easy. There’s a proper locked door and one of the fellers, sort of train guard and mebbe t’other sort as well, he’s got a seat right alongside it. I’ll try later: if ye dress for dinner, ye’ll find ye haven’t got any neck-ties. Give me a bollocking and send me to get ’em double quick. Mebbe that’ll stampede them to let me in.”
“Good idea.”
Dahlmann strode – except that with his short legs it was more of a scurry – up with the news that the ship perhaps a mile away, and already sparkling with lights in the dusk, was the one from Romanshom. “In ten or fifteen minutes she is here. Ah . . . you will not get lost, I hope?”
Ranklin suppressed a smile. “Oh, I don’t expect so. It seems quite a small town.”
Dahlmann hurried off again and Ranklin did a standing dance to keep his feet from frostbite.
O’Gilroy said approvingly: “Ye’ve got him thinking Patrick Snaipe’s a pure fool, anyhow.”
And indeed, Ranklin felt happy that he was getting across his new persona convincingly – although he’d have to start all over again with Lady Kelso. So he may have forgotten that however well he played at being Patrick Snaipe, he still matched perfectly a description of Captain Matthew Ranklin.
As the steamer hooted its arrival, the dockside suddenly spawned a flood of porters, waving greeters, outgoing passengers and a row of horse-drawn cabs. Ranklin and O’Gilroy strolled along to where the gangway was being readied and Dahlmann reappeared, relieved to see they weren’t lost.
About a couple of dozen passengers disembarked, and Lady Kelso was obvious as the one lone woman in a crowd of businessmen and families. Dahlmann stepped forward, swept off his hat and bowed, a gesture that would have gone better without the jostling of other disembarking passengers. Uniformed town and railway officials crowded in to be introduced next, so Ranklin hung back and watched.
The first impression was that here was a genuine dowager viscountess, with all the fore-and-aft opulence of King Edward’s time – in miniature. She was one woman who was shorter than Ranklin: even at a distance, he had a perfect eye for that. And despite the way she glided like the figurehead of a ship, the face between the wide hat and the muffling fur collar was startlingly petite, soft and feminine. Age had been kind to her: Ranklin knew she was about sixty, but her face didn’t sag, no matter what her corset was coping with. For a woman whose reputation if not life had been made in the evenings, she had a morning look: bright, fresh and – since God enjoys a joke – innocent.
Finally it was his turn. He raised his hat: “Patrick Snaipe of the Diplomatic, Lady Kelso. Your official escort.”
She smiled. “How sweet of them. And do you know Turkey well?”
“Hardly at all,” Ranklin said cheerfully.
“Well, between us we should manage.” She smiled inquiringly past him at O’Gilroy.
Ranklin was deliberately slow catching on; first impressions, again. “Oh, and that’s Gorman, my man.”
Very properly, she didn’t offer any handshake, just: “Good evening, Gorman.”
O’Gilroy dipped his head. “Good evening, M’Lady.”
Dahlmann and the officials closed in again. “I have arranged that your baggage is brought to the train, My – Lady Kelso. It is only two hundred metres, but if you wish a cab-?”
“Of course not. Oh, Dr Zimmer.” He was shaped like a snowman, a round head on a round body, with sleek black hair and thick spectacles. He wore an overcoat with a turned-up fur collar and carried an attache case.
He bowed over her hand and said: “I must hurry, alas, Madam. I am most honoured to have met you. And the very best of luck in your travels.” He disappeared into the churning crowd.
“An admirer I seemed to acquire coming through Zurich,” she explained. “Now, have we really got a private train? How gorgeous. All the way to Constantinople? How clever of you.” Dahlmann preened himself; whatever his private feelings about Lady Kelso, nobody else in the party had called him clever.
Walking along the quayside, she turned to Ranklin again. “And the Foreign Office has sent you to keep me out of trouble . . . well, at least you don’t seem to be one of those tall sun-bronzed Englishmen who wander the unexplored world making such a nuisance of themselves.”
“Er, no. I’m not,” Ranklin said, wondering if he should sound regretful.
By now it was almost dark. Lights and lamps were coming on around the Customs house and station building as the little procession, porters bringing up the rear, picked its way across the tracks to the welcoming glow of the private carriages.
Ranklin and O’Gilroy stayed outside to let Dahlmann, Lady Kelso, officials and porters jam the corridor, and O’Gilroy observed quietly: “We’ve lost the engine again.”
“Probably just gone to collect more coal or water.” But Ranklin was beginning to feel the cold. “Damn it, I’m getting in the other end.”
He stumped off down beside the carriage to climb up at the dining-saloon end. That meant going through the shadow of a couple of wagons – the light from the private coach came out well above his head – and he had to watch where he was putting his feet. So he wasn’t watching a large figure slip out from between the wagons, but he felt something ram into his ribs.
Ranklin froze.
The pistol, it could only be that, wriggled against him and the man said: “Komm mit mir.”
“You aren’t going to shoot me here,” Ranklin said in German. But it was one of those silly things you say when you don’t know whether he will or not.
“I have orders.”
So Ranklin moved on. They went past the blind service carriage, past more goods wagons and beyond the station buildings, heading up the tracks into darkness.
He is going to shoot me, Ranklin realised. There I was, being so clever at persuading them I was Snaipe, and all the time they were working out how to get rid of me. Just an armed-robbery-gone-wrong, or a simple disappearance, and the Wilhelmstrasse full of remorse and regret but no Diplomatic Incident.
Little I’ll care.
But I don’t want to die now – it’s so inconvenient, so much unfinished. It leaves my family in a mess, I haven’t sorted things out with Corinna, this job incomplete . . . I have to try something. Only . . . what?
Then they reached a level crossing and turned off into the sparsely-lit streets of the old town. This puzzled Ranklin more than it cheered him. It probably meant a more complicated plan, maybe an interrogation ending with him “accidentally” drowned in the harbour . . .
Abruptly he was pushed in through a side door of a half-timbered building that had the smell and distant babble of a beer hall. Ahead of him was a dim-lit uneven wooden staircase and he was shoved up it. And into a wide, low-ceilinged room with its furniture pushed back against the walls, except for a single table and chair in the middle. Sitting there was the snowman-shaped Dr Zimmer of Zurich.
He looked up and said in fluent but accented English: “You are Captain Ranklin of the English Secret Service Bureau?”
9
Ranklin tried to look outraged. “I’m Patrick Snaipe, attached to the Diplomatic Service, and I most strongly-”