A shudder passed through the group around the Maxim, as if a sudden wind had blown in their faces. Zurga marched down the bank and vanished again.
Five minutes later, Ranklin came back into the saloon. “The excitement seems to be over,” he reported. “Zurga Bey appears to have persuaded them to dismantle the block on the line and he’s on his way back.”
“Of course he did. He’s a very capable man,” Lady Kelso said calmly, laying the magazine in her lap. She looked at Dahlmann. “And so are the servants, it seems. I didn’t know we had a Maxim gun on board.”
Dahlmann smiled cautiously. “This line can be dangerous – as events have shown.”
“You seem to have thought of everything.” She picked up the magazine again.
The machine-gun crew on the bank were dismounting the weapon, folding the ammunition belt back into its box, lumbering down the bank with the unwieldy tripod. Herr Fernrick knelt with a rifle, covering them. Then he blew a whistle to call in the far-side picket and walked down the bank himself.
They heard Zurga clump aboard at the end of the corridor, but he stayed there, perhaps showing himself at the open door, until they were well under way. They passed the group of half-a-dozen ambushers; most of their feet were bundles of rags. Two of them, rifles slung, were starting to carry one of their logs up the bank – saving it, perhaps, for a less defended train. Another pointed his rifle in the air and fired a last defiant shot.
Then the cutting dwindled down and Ranklin saw a little group of horses and a cart a hundred yards out on the lumpy plain. That explained not only how the bandits travelled but what the machine-gun had threatened.
Zurga came in, face grim and shoulders hunched with cold. He was aiming for the rear carriage, but Dahlmann and Lady Kelso waylaid him.
“That was very brave of you,” she said. “Who were they? – brigands?”
“Of a kind. Most of them had been soldiers. Or deserters, who had not been paid for a year. Unfortunately, there are many such, since the war.” His expression got grimmer.
“But our machine-gun scared them off,” Dahlmann said confidently.
“That machine-gun nearly ruined everything! The sight of it was enough, they know what it can do. Did you want them chased into the train, hiding and shooting among the passengers?”
Dahlmann’s assurance had evaporated. “I will talk to them.”
“I will talk to them. Now!”
The banker’s face wasn’t used to sending any but the subtlest of signals, but now it was trying to transmit warnings, alarm, near-panic. And some of it got through. Zurga said: “First I should put a coat on. It is very cold.” He turned about and headed for his sleeper.
Dahlmann, relieved but discomfited and looking for the office cat to kick, said to Ranklin: “So: you did not need your diplomatic passport after all.”
“So I didn’t.”
“I noticed Gorman,” Lady Kelso said, “out there playing soldiers with a will.”
“You were warned not to look out. Yes, he’s an old soldier. You can never cure that, it seems.”
But after that, everybody was even less ready to settle down again. Streibl recalled native uprisings against the railway in East Africa, Dahlmann muttered some comments about Turkish discipline, and Zurga went about looking grim with angry shame. Abruptly, all this changed to an about-to-arrive scurry, and they besieged Dahlmann with questions that they had meant to ask earlier. So he called a final conference around the big table.
“Lady Kelso,” he read from a list, “is invited to stay at the English Embassy. Dr Streibl and Mr Snaipe will go to the Pera Palace hotel. I am sure you will be met at the station. Zurga Bey – I think you have your own arrangements? As I have.”
“When and how do we leave for the south?” Lady Kelso asked.
“As soon as we have collected the gold coinage. The railway will take you to Eregli and then to the work camp. From there, I am afraid, you must go by horse or mule into the mountains. I understand it is more than a day’s journey.”
Lady Kelso nodded cheerfully.
Streibl woke up again: “If you do not have them now, buy warm clothes here in Constantinople for the mountains. Down there there is nothing to buy.”
“No dressing for dinner, what?” Ranklin said.
Dahlmann said: “I understand it is not the custom on the back of a mule, Mr Snaipe.”
“And you aren’t coming that far, is that right?”
“I am not ashamed to be pleased that I am not, Mr Snaipe. My duties to the Bank will keep me in Constantinople.”
When the meeting ended, a pent-up rush of staff bringing baggage was released. O’Gilroy was helping willingly, hoping for a last-minute look at what the luggage compartment held – apart from that machine-gun. But the narrowness of the carriage was against him: it was too easy for the single guard to block his view. He trailed back to help Ranklin pack; he might not be all that good, but he had had more experience than any spoiled officer.
He had barely got started when Lady Kelso knocked and put her head round the door. “I do beg your pardon, but I wonder if you could lend me Gorman for just a moment? The lock of one of my bags . . .”
“Of course.”
“Close the door, please, Gorman,” she told O’Gilroy, “and sit down.”
Women like Lady Kelso were mysterious, mythical figures to O’Gilroy, reminding him of some dark references his mother used to make. He sat on the bunk bed as far from her as he could.
“There’s no lock problem,” she smiled briskly. “That was just my little ruse. I wanted to ask you . . . But first, have you been with Mr Snaipe long?”
“Sort of off-and-on, M’Lady.”
“Would you agree he’s – Oh dear, this really is rather difficult – perhaps not one of the world’s great thinkers?”
Despite his fright, O’Gilroy twitched a smile. “Perhaps not, M’Lady.”
“But an honest patriot?”
“Oh, surely that, M’Lady.”
“And you yourself were a soldier, I believe.”
Instinctively, although O’Gilroy’s instincts were well controlled by now, he straightened his back. “I was that. South African war ’n all.”
“How splendid. And whatever else I may be, I’m an Englishwoman through and through . . . so I’m worried about all this business.”
A puzzled frown. “All what, M’Lady?”
“You do know about it, don’t you? What it seems to boil down to is that I’ll be helping the Germans complete a railway that I’m far from sure is in Britain’s best interests.”
A volcano of thoughts erupted in O’Gilroy’s mind. She was having patriotic doubts: good – so far. But suppose she got the notion of doing a little sabotage on her own? Then there’d be the most God-awful muddle. Yet she obviously didn’t believe Ranklin, as the Hon. Patrick Snaipe, was capable of doing anything original himself . . .
With a sudden cold professionalism, he wondered if they could pull off a coup and somehow leave her to take the blame, keeping their characters intact. He shelved the idea only because it wasn’t the most urgent. Right now, he must keep her as a possible ally yet dissuade her from acting on her own.
“I thought the Foreign Minister, Ma’am, Sir Edward, he’d asked ye jest to talk to this feller with the prisoners. If ye do that much, nobody’s going to blame ye if-”
“Oh, never mind about blame,” she said testily. “I’m bothered that Sir Edward himself might . . . well, let’s say he may have been poorly advised. He must have a lot on his plate.” She cocked her head. “I wouldn’t say this to Mr Snaipe, so this is utterly between us two, but I’ve found in my travels that our Diplomatic Service, and the Foreign Office back home, don’t always get things right.”