O’Gilroy was trying to look as if this idea, while wholly new and startling, wasn’t entirely unbelievable.
“In fact,” she added, “when I think of my first husband . . . No, never mind that.” She suddenly sat up straight. “Or do you feel I’m trying to involve you in things that shouldn’t concern you?”
“No, no, M’Lady, it’s not that. But – if I might be making a suggestion . . .?”
“That’s just what I’m asking for.”
“I was jest thinking, M’Lady -” he frowned, as if unfamiliar with deviousness “- that if ye waited until yer talking to the feller – Miskal, is it? – ye’d be talking a lingo me and the Hon. Patrick don’t know at all, so if ye said Go right on keeping the prisoners and let the Germans fart in their beer (begging yer pardon, M’Lady) then who’d be knowing?”
Her smile was a sunrise. “What a splendid idea. I’m most indebted to you. And I don’t think you need mention our little chat to Mr Snaipe. It might . . . confuse him.”
“Never a word, M’Lady.”
“Thank you so much. You’re a most intelligent man, Gorman.” She hesitated, perhaps trying to make up her mind, then deciding what could she lose? “What do you make of Zurga Bey? D’you think he could be a spy?”
“Er-” O’Gilroy was taken aback. He would far rather she did not go around wondering if people were spies. “I couldn’t be saying . . . Jest who would he be spying on, M’Lady?”
“Oh, any and all of us. In Turkey you get spies everywhere. It’s their way of life, everybody wants to know what their rivals are doing. Even Europeans down on their luck do it, spying on other Europeans for the Government – and I’m sure that hasn’t changed with this Committee. So be careful who you say anything to.”
Relieved, he realised she was talking about informers, not real spies. “Thank ye, M’Lady, I’ll be remembering that . . . But about Zurga, I can tell ye one thing: he’s a soldier, an officer. Or was, not long past.”
She sat back with a delighted expression. “Ah yes – and you’d be able to tell, of course. Thank you again. Now I’d better let you get on with your work . . .”
Ranklin had just about finished the packing, but he lit a cigarette and let O’Gilroy – who would clearly rather have faced an army of brigands than the notorious Lady Kelso – do the rest and pass on the news.
When he had finished, Ranklin was looking pale. “My God, she isn’t going to do anything on her own, is she?”
“I think I talked her out of it. And was telling her Zurga’s really an officer.”
Ranklin nodded. “The way he handled those bandits? – and spoke to the machine-gun crew? Yes, I’d guess he was in Germany learning German Army methods, and his Turkish masters probably added him to this mission to look after their interests. And the Railway company doesn’t want to be seen as high-handed foreigners if things get exciting, so they welcomed him . . . Probably they welcome a British contingent to share the blame, too,” he added.
“I thought if Lady Kelso don’t get the prisoners released, they jest hand over the gold.”
“Yes, but paying kidnappers keeps them in business. I suggested Miskal might use the ransom to buy more guns, and nobody took me seriously. But it’s so obvious a point, they must have thought of it.” He paused for thought. “It might be that getting the engineers back is just the first step. And the second will be making quite sure Miskal can’t try the same thing again.”
O’Gilroy considered this for himself, then: “D’ye reckon that machine-gun’s coming all the way with us, then?”
“I doubt they brought it just to scare off brigands. You haven’t got a look inside the baggage compartment? – then it could be full of Maxims for all we know. Though I wouldn’t choose them for tackling a mountain stronghold.” Machine-guns were for defence in open country, not lugging – dismounted and unfireable – around rocky slopes.
O’Gilroy shrugged. “All packed, yer Honourable sir. And ye’ve only one clean collar for a dress shirt left, so hope the hotel laundry knows its stuff.”
“Fine.” Ranklin got up to look out of the window. The train was curving gently around the coast, past isolated wooden houses and slumped stone huts, through a gap in the old Byzantine city wall, towards the low rocky headland of Stamboul. “When we get off the train, the Embassy will probably be meeting Lady Kelso, and I imagine I’ll get caught up in that. But nobody’ll care about you. I want you to hang around the station and see what happens to whatever’s in the baggage compartment.”
O’Gilroy thought about this. “Could be they’ll move it out to some goods yard before they unload.”
“The only goods yard is right alongside the station itself – look.” Ranklin unfolded the map in his Baedeker. Squeezed between the sea and Seraglio Point, the station had no room for elaborate marshalling yards. “I don’t say you’ll get right up to it – they’re probably wary of thieves – but you might see something.”
O’Gilroy saw the sense of it, but it was still a tall order for his first move in an utterly strange city. “D’ye have any Turkish money?”
“Sorry, not yet, but they take French gold and silver, if you’ve still got any.”
“And give me yer gun.”
Ranklin frowned, but passed it over. Then he ripped the map out of the Baedeker and passed that over, too. He wasn’t sure how good O’Gilroy was at map-reading, but it might help. “Get a cab when you’re through. We’re at the Pera Palace hotel, everybody knows it.”
The train slowed yet further as they came in sight of Stamboul, uneven steps of wooden buildings that climbed gently to climax in the stalks of minarets and great buds of domes that glowed pink and gold in the setting sun.
“Keep this memory,” Ranklin advised. “Once you’re among it, it won’t feel the way it looks now.”
13
Despite being the end of the line for the Orient Express, Stamboul station was surprisingly unpretentious: no great arched glass roof, just individual canopies over each platform. Since they couldn’t get through Customs until the porters had unloaded their luggage, nobody could rush and the platform turned into a social occasion. Relatives fell into each others’ arms, friends shook hands, hotel agents tried to find who had booked with them and tout for more. And both the British and German Embassies had guessed the private coaches would be at the front of the train, so arrived through the crowd at a diplomatic scamper.
“Harriet, Lady Kelso?” Very correct. “I’m Howard Jarvey, Second Counsellor at the Embassy.” He was tall and slightly stooped, with a head that was lean and, when he raised his top hat, virtually bald. Yet he had a dark moustache that Ranklin couldn’t keep his eyes off; it looked dead, like a moustache on a skull.
Jarvey turned to him, forcing Ranklin to raise his eyeline a few inches. “The Honourable Patrick Snaipe? Splendid. Did you have a good journey? – we heard there’d been some trouble . . .”
“Just brigands,” Lady Kelso dismissed them as she might have done a mosquito.
“Really?” Jarvis was a little surprised to have the topic ended so quickly. “Ah . . . the Ambassador’s having a little dinner tonight, if you feel up to it-”
“How sweet of him. I’d be delighted.”
“Splendid. And you, too, Snaipe.” No “Mr”: he was on the diplomatic ladder here, and the bottom rung of it. “No need to call on the Ambassador formally, it isn’t as if you’re joining our little family. Seven-thirty, the Embassy’s very near the Pera Palace. I’m afraid we can’t offer you a lift now, the Embassy motor-car’s . . .” But Ranklin never learnt what, since Jarvey had escorted Lady Kelso out of ear-shot.
The crowd was thinning and Ranklin became aware of O’Gilroy at his elbow, whispering: “I need ye and the passport to get me off’n the platform.”
Ranklin had forgotten that, but his diplomatic status eased them through the Customs hall and he left O’Gilroy outside as if finding them a cab.