This was another moment when the rest of them held their breath. But Zurga just smiled. “It is an Empire – perhaps like your British Empire. Is that for Britons or does every peasant in India and Africa have also your wonderful Parliament?”
She shook her head and smiled ruefully. Zurga pressed on gently: “And would they understand a Parliament if they had it? Would your Arab friends know?”
“Oh, they’d understand the House of Lords, all right. Miskal could walk straight in there now and not be noticed bar his clothing.”
And once again the fuse flared up close to the gunpowder barrel. And once again Zurga snuffed it out by chuckling with the rest. “So you have still your sultans, I think. But yes, you will find many changes, I hope. But not alclass="underline" we have had only a few years. There are still corrupt valis and kaimakams. There is inefficiency and waste and justice is often for sale. After a century of sleeping, it takes time to awake.”
“And when you do wake up, Turkey will be in Europe, will it?”
“Not all. We must have the Railway, the telephone, the motor-car. And money also. We need these things. But we must also say ‘Enough, beyond this, you must not meddle.’ Because we must also remain Turkey, a nation of Islam. Without God, Turkey does not exist.”
Was Dahlmann trying to hide his affront? And was Lady Kelso staring past them, past the walls of the carriage and perhaps of time and seeing her old romantic Turkey fading in a harsh new dawn?
Zurga smiled again and said politely: “But of course, you were not concerned with the politics, with the hope of change.”
She came back to the here-and-now with a thump. “I’m a woman, Zurga Bey. Who cared what I thought?”
He had no answer to that. Yet, as he tried to straddle two worlds and perhaps found himself torn between them, here was a European who had submitted easily to the East and then, seemingly as easily, stepped back again. Zurga could believe he understood European women and, separately, the few respectable Turkish ones he could respectably meet. But not Lady Kelso. However much, in his mind, he labelled her a whore of Arabs and an infidel (and Ranklin was sure he did both) he’d know that wasn’t understanding. And hate both his need to understand a woman and inability to do it.
12
By morning they were clear of the mountains and rolling, reasonably fast, along the valley of the Maritsa, expecting to reach Constantinople by teatime. But they were still in Bulgaria and Zurga stayed in his sleeper.
As always on a long journey, with the end in sight everybody wanted it over with now and their mood was impatient, yesterday’s party spirit long gone. Dahlmann had a long, private, and probably pointless, conference with Streibl. Ranklin drifted about lighting his pipe, letting it go out and lighting a cigarette instead. Lady Kelso abandoned her magazines to watch out of the window, as if doing so would hurry them forward.
Perhaps Herr Fernrick was still nursing yesterday’s grievance because lunch was very much an eating-up-what’s-left-in-the-larder affair. Halfway through, they crossed the Turkish frontier, and Zurga re-appeared. The sight of Turkish soil obviously cheered him; to Ranklin, it was simply soil – no trees, not much grass, just as if a grey-brown blanket, patched with snow, had been spread over a collection of rocks. A few wild dogs appeared and ran alongside.
“In Constantinople there are now no dogs,” Zurga said.
“Really?”
“They caught all the wild dogs and put them on an island which has no water.”
Frankly, Ranklin didn’t much care: the snarling street packs hadn’t been his favourite memory of the city. But as Snaipe he felt he should say: “Oh, I say. Dash it all . . .” And Zurga looked quietly satisfied.
Perhaps two hours before Constantinople, with all but Zurga in the saloon, the train’s wheels suddenly locked and they screeched and jolted to a halt. They were in a shallow cutting, with banks on either side just higher than the train so you couldn’t see what lay beyond. After half a minute there was some distant shouting and then, unmistakeably, a shot.
The effect rippled through the saloon. Lady Kelso sat up straight and pressed her nose to the window; Streibl also peered out. More agitated, Dahlmann looked back towards the second coach. Ranklin sat stilclass="underline" their position was too perfect, caught in a defile with no view. This must be an ambush.
Zurga strode through, jacketless and with shirt sleeves rolled up, his face set and swearing to himself, heading for the rear of the train. He paused to warn Lady Kelso to get away from the window: “Broken glass can be as bad as a bullet sometimes.”
“Thank you.” She gave him a brilliant smile and stood up. “I feel quite safe with you coping.” He went on and a sharp barking-match in German began somewhere around the kitchen.
Lady Kelso selected a chair well away from any windows and re-opened her magazine. Streibl went on bobbing around, trying for a better view, and there didn’t seem any point in trying to stop him. Ranklin got up.
“Where are you going?” Dahlmann demanded.
“Er . . . to get my diplomatic passport.”
“This does not seem to me a diplomatic situation.”
In his sleeper, Ranklin dug out his revolver and pocketed it. As an open-air weapon it was useless, it wouldn’t reach accurately to the top of the banks. But if it came to a barney in the carriage itself. . .
Then he went on forward to the little vestibule with its outside doors, where they linked to the rest of the train. He opened the right-hand door and leaned out cautiously, although he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be conspicuous: human nature would have dozens of heads poking out right along the train.
Zurga strode past, heading forwards and shouting in Turkish. He waved Ranklin back inside; Ranklin obeyed briefly, then leant out again. From the kitchen carriage, one of the staff ran up the bank carrying a rifle, paused to peek over the top, then threw himself flat and brought the rifle to his shoulder. A second followed, more lithely, dark hair fluttering – and damn it all, it was O’Gilroy.
Well, of course it was. If there was a spare rifle, a mere language problem wouldn’t have stopped him talking his way to it.
Ranklin knew there must be a similar group on top of the opposite bank. But now, for the moment, the situation froze in place – and Ranklin with it. There was a knife-edged plains wind flattening the ochre-grey tufts of coarse grass, and little smut-stained patches of snow lingered in every shadowed pocket of the banks.
After a moment more, he went back to his sleeper, put on his overcoat and found his binoculars. They were naval, really too powerful to use except with a steady rest, and a giveaway that he was a long-distance soldier if anybody guessed he was a soldier at all. Back in the doorway, he propped himself against the side and tried to focus on a group at the front of the train.
Two or three were passengers, being hustled back aboard by the train staff. And Zurga distinctive in shirt sleeves, standing with legs spread and hands on his hips obviously laying down some law to a group of drab, ragged men with rifles. Through the shifting group and spurts of steam from the engine, Ranklin could just make out some obstruction on the line beyond. Logs, maybe, though God knows where they came from on this treeless plain.
Then a machine-gun fired. Just one quick rattle, perhaps ten rounds, and from the other side of the train. In the moment Ranklin’s binoculars had wavered, the group around Zurga had dived into crouching positions beside the train wheels. Only Zurga stayed upright, and he then vanished, apparently into the train. Ranklin hurried across to the other door.
At the top of that bank, three of the German staff knelt or sat around a Maxim gun on a heavy tripod. They were quite still and looked very competent. Ranklin swivelled the binoculars to see Zurga marching – barely a hint of scrambling – up the bank to stand, arms akimbo again, and bellow in German – extremely fluent German, in its own way; “. . . dumm Sohnes von Huren. . .” and similar phrases.