Then she cocked her head at Ranklin and waved the lorgnette; it didn’t work quite as well as the fan. “Mind you, I have read articles that say the Railway’s a bad idea for Britain, that it’s a threat to India and our oil-field in Persia . . . Do you hear talk like that in the Foreign Office?”
“The Foreign Secretary himself asked you to come and help get the Railway building going again, didn’t he?”
She frowned delicately – as all her expressions with her small features had to be. “Well. . . No. What I was actually asked to do was appeal to Miskal to let those two engineers go, just out of common decency. Now I find that thousands of workmen are standing idle waiting for me to wave my fairy wand and start up the whole thing again, all its bridges and tunnels and trains and things . . . It’s . . . it’s terrifying.”
“I don’t think anyone expects you to work miracles,” Ranklin soothed. “It’s just the way they see it. I don’t suppose they’d give a hoot about the lives of two engineers if it wasn’t holding up the Railway.”
“Then if they don’t care, why do they let it hold up the Railway?”
Ranklin found his mind bare of answers. “Ah . . . perhaps because it’s been reported in the papers . . . the chaps’ families . . . the other engineers . . .” He was having no trouble at all in sounding like Snaipe.
So now it was her turn to sound soothing. “Never mind. Perhaps we’ll find out as we go along.” She sipped her brandy-and-water. Then, casually: “What do they say of me in England these days?”
“I . . . ah . . .” Nobody Ranklin knew said anything of her. But Snaipe, as a minor aristocrat, should know more. “I haven’t heard anyone say anything unkind . . .”
“Not even when they knew you were going to be my escort?”
“I wouldn’t discuss Foreign Office matters even with my family,” Ranklin said, finding inspiration in false virtue.
“Of course not.” But she sounded a little disappointed. “Do you think that if I bring this off, Sir Edward will invite me back to London? – if only to say thank you?”
Thus giving her an entree to English society? It seemed highly unlikely. As far as Ranklin could tell, Sir Edward cared as little for society as he could get away with; his passion was angling, which was hardly sociable.
“Things have changed a bit with the new King. He seems to be rather more a family man . . . Of course, King Edward’s friends are still around, but not so much at Court. It’s a more . . . ah, a quieter place now, I believe . . .” For God’s sake, read between my lines, woman: blatant adultery is just Not On these days.
“If I were still just Harriet Mayhew, or even Mrs Fenby -” (that had been her first, diplomatist, husband) “- I could just go back and brazen it out, find my own level. But being Lady Kelso now, it . . . it isn’t so easy. I’ve rather trapped myself. I seem to have swapped my old self for a passport that’s valid only so long as I never try to use it. It’s really so silly: I was never particularly happy in England, but it’s where I was born, and I would like to die there.”
* * *
Breakfast had been under way for some time before Ranklin got there; luckily the chef de train was feeling indulgent, and there was still a good spread of cold meats and cheeses, bread and jam, with eggs to order.
Daylight hadn’t improved the view of the marshalling yards, and although there was plenty of blue sky, it had a temporary, windswept look. Just as Ranklin was thinking of taking his last coffee into the saloon, Dahlmann bustled through from the outside world. He was well wrapped up, so it was probably as cold as it looked.
“Dr Streibl’s train is here soon,” he said over his shoulder, bustling on.
Ranklin followed. “That completes our merry band then, what? Next stop Constantinople and all that.” He sat down in the saloon; Zurga and Lady Kelso were already there. “And then to the mountains . . . I say, what are we going to do when we get there? I mean, what’s the actual jolly old plan?”
There was a sudden pause, but no rush to tell him. Zurga looked at Dahlmann, who had stopped at the door to the corridor. “What do you mean, Mr Snaipe?”
“Well, we go to Miskal’s mountain stronghold – d’you know the place, Lady Kelso?”
She shook her head. “When I knew Miskal he was in the Army, in Syria. But I’ve been through that part of Turkey, the old caravan route up across the Cilician Gates.”
“Yes, well. . . But I mean, what then? Do you and I roll up at his front door and ask politely that he lets his prisoners go? Or what?”
Dahlmann said nothing, but he took off his overcoat and hat and laid them carefully over a chair.
Lady Kelso looked at him, then Ranklin. “Obviously you want me to approach the dear man first, but really, Mr Snaipe, I don’t think there’s any need for you to come along. It makes the whole thing rather official, don’t you feel?”
She was letting him down lightly. He frowned. “Ah. Yes. But the whole point. . . What the Foreign Office sent me for . . . Well, I mean, I’m supposed to look after you and you don’t really need that until we get to . . . wherever . . .” Her expression, as pretty, polite and just as inflexible as a china figurine’s, told him he would get nowhere. Not now, anyway. He changed tack somewhat: “But what’s this chap doing in the mountains anyway, if he’s an Arab? I thought deserts, tents. . .”
“His people were Syrian mountain Arabs – I think,” Lady Kelso said. “I’ve no idea how he got to these mountains.”
“He was exiled to there,” Zurga explained. “The Committee did not want him to be a leader among his own people, to make trouble like so many Arabs, so they gave him an Armenian village that had become . . . empty.” Ranklin held onto a bland expression, though he guessed just how an Armenian village in Turkey could suddenly become “empty”. From Lady Kelso’s fixed smile, she guessed, too – perhaps in more detail.
“Of course,” Zurga went on, “his family was permitted to go with him, and I think more than his family . . . I think many of his people went also. He became, not officially, the kaimakam of the village.” He seemed to debate with himself, but in the end added: “I think it was not a good idea.”
So now, Ranklin assumed, instead of a village full of troublesome Armenians without repeating rifles, the Committee had created a village full of troublesome Arabs with same.
Lady Kelso murmured: “Perhaps the Committee hoped the climate would kill them off quietly. They don’t know the weather in the Syrian mountains.”
Last night, Zurga would have had an indignant answer. This morning, perhaps he had realised they had a long journey still ahead, because he just gave a brief smile and shrug.
Ranklin asked: “And the jolly old monastery, is that part of the village?”
Zurga glanced at Dahlmann, but got no help. “I do not know the country there, but I think the village is in the mountains and the monastery – it is a ruin – is more near to the Railway. Where the Railway must go.”
“Ah.” Ranklin nodded, as if all were explained. “And what are you going to be doing?”
Lady Kelso seemed interested in knowing that, too. Zurga said: “I am asked – if Lady Kelso does not succeed – to speak to him as once a soldier of the Ottoman Empire. And perhaps to warn that the Committee will become . . .”
He didn’t want to specify, and was saved by Dahlmann being hasty and apologetic: “Forgive me, Lady Kelso, but we must allow for the possibility that you will fail. So we must be ready with other things.”
Ranklin was watching, and her polite smile was Dresden china again. Then she looked at him. “Does that answer all your questions, Mr Snaipe?”
No, of course it didn’t. But Snaipe probably wouldn’t have persisted. “Oh yes . . . Well, mostly . . . Plenty of time, though . . .”