He said: “Of course, I don’t know anything about ransoms and hostages, but if I knew there was five hundred thou in gold francs heading my way then I probably wouldn’t be too impatient – what? I suppose he does know it’s coming?”
“Yes, I am sure he has been told.”
Lady Kelso frowned. “It’s still putting a price on life . . .”
Then the coffee tray arrived and she gave up on Streibl and sat down with it. They were in the aftermost of two deckhouses; the forward one, under the funnel and bridge, seemed to be officers’ territory and, with the dining-room and their cabins directly below here, there was an obvious hint that passengers should stay aft and out of the way. The saloon itself was big and had everything to make it comfortable – leather arm-chairs, small tables, ashtrays – but gave the impression of a hotel run by the military so that it was all correct, solid, and of good value but quite without style or homeliness.
Ranklin asked: “And how fast does this ship go?” He was pretty sure Streibl would know the answer. He knew more.
“Twenty-two kilometres per hour . . . ah, twelve knots, I think. The engine is of three cylinders, triple expansion, and I understand that with one hundred and eighty thousand kilos of coal it can . . .”
Ranklin hardly listened. Even if Streibl were worried about the fate of his comrades-in-railway – and, perhaps because they were mere flesh and blood, he didn’t seem all that worried – why should Dahlmann and the Railway management feel the same way? Miskal wasn’t just putting a price on life, he was putting a damned high price, given that men got killed every day building railways; that might sound callous, but it just happened. Moreover, if the worst came to the worst and Miskal murdered the hostages, he’d label himself a villain in the eyes of the world, the Turkish Government would be forced to act – and the ransom money would be saved.
Perhaps it was just the delay; hundreds or thousands of men standing idle was also a high price. But he couldn’t help wondering if the worst was somehow worse than they’d been told – and how.
He woke up to hear Streibl saying: “. . . and tomorrow, the Captain thinks maybe there is a storm . . .”
* * *
Towards dinnertime O’Gilroy was herded downstairs and along to the kitchen where Theodora was working at a big cast-iron cooking stove. It was a large, warm place full of copper cookpans, a smaller version of the Irish Big House kitchens O’Gilroy had sat and cadged in when he was genuinely in service as a chauffeur. And as in them, here the cook was Queen, ordering Arif and Ibrahim to pass this or do that and getting unquestioned obedience. She spoke French to them; O’Gilroy knew a little, but had decided not to admit to even that.
“Beg pardon for asking,” he said, “but all of this don’t seem what I’d heard a Turkish house was like.”
“Turkish?” she exploded. “This is a French house. And did you think I am Turk? I am Greek, you . . . imbecile.”
“Sorry about that. And these fellers, too?”
“They’re Bedouin. To you, Arab. Do you think M’sieu Lacan would have Turks in his house?” She despised him with her dark eyes. “English are bad enough.”
“I’m Irish.”
Her gesture told him that that wasn’t going to help.
They ate – a thick vegetable soup, then lamb and something that looked like rice but wasn’t quite – at the big scarred kitchen table. By putting O’Gilroy in a high-backed chair with the chain wrapped around the top bar, they both pinned him down and got most of the weight off his neck, leaving his hands free. But that done, they treated a man in chains as quite unexceptional, not worth comment or glance. That rather depressed him.
At least Theodora offered him real coffee with the sticky-sweet bits that ended the meal. The two Arabs got interested only when he lit one of his cigarettes.
“Tell ’em they can smoke their own, less’n they’re going to let me go buy some more.”
A quick conversation established that the household was almost out of cigarettes. “Arif,” Theodora said, “will buy some. Give him money.”
So O’Gilroy gave him a handful of change and Arif went out. Theodora began clearing away.
“Tell me,” O’Gilroy said, “wasn’t yer people – the Greeks – at war with Turkey jest a year’n so ago?”
“We took back Salonika that is a Greek city always.”
“Was ye in Constantinople the while?”
“Of course – but M’sieu Lacan saw that I was not harmed. He protects his people.”
“Good for him . . . Did ye ever hear of an Englishman, an officer, was helping yer Greek army with its guns at Salonika?”
She thought, then asked: “The Englishman they called Sheep?”
“Eh?”
“He wore the sheep’s coat, so he was called, I think, Colonel Sheep . . . no, the Soldier Sheep . . . no -” she snapped her fingers impatiently “- you would say, the Warrior Sheep.”
“The-?” O’Gilroy nearly ruptured himself containing an explosive chuckle; Ranklin had never admitted to that nickname.
“You also know him?”
“I work for him. His name’s Ranklin. He’s -” No, he’d better not say Ranklin was in Turkey “- he sent me here to work against the Turks. And Germans.”
She sat down again and took one of his remaining cigarettes. “He has gone back to the English Army, then? And you are also a soldier – yes?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
She considered this. “And did you tell M’sieu Lacan?”
“He didn’t give me much chance, jest out with the opium – and here I am.”
She nodded approvingly. “He thinks you were a . . . an obstacle.”
“And is he really going to let me go?”
“Did he not say so?” Her bold dark eyes challenged him to disbelieve that.
Reluctantly, O’Gilroy set aside the matter of his future. “Have ye heard of a feller Zurga Bey? Turkish soldier – could be a major.”
“Colonel, if he is Bey,” she said automatically. “No, I do not know him.”
“Biggish feller, forty or thereabouts, got a beard-”
“Turkish officers do not wear beards.”
O’Gilroy shrugged. “Well . . . he had one. Been in Germany, they had a German passport for him coming through the Balkans, but he’s Turkish, right enough.”
Despite herself, she was intrigued – by the beard, by the false passport. After all, this was a household apparently devoted to intrigue. “Ottoman names tell so little, just one name often, and it may not be real, a name made by friends -” she snapped her fingers again “- how do you say it?”
“A nickname?”
“Yes, yes . . . The Efficient, the . . . Sword . . .”
“The Terrible?” That got him a dark, sharp glance and he tried to make up ground by recalling the nickname of Ranklin’s opponent in the 1912 war. “The Tornado?”
“Yes. There is an officer called the Tornado. I think he was named that at the Military Academy. Kazurga.”
“Huh?”
“Kazurga, Tornado.” This time she heard her own voice. “You said Zurga. . . Kazurga.” She stood up and ground out her cigarette. “Wait.”
“Ye think I have a choice?” O’Gilroy muttered.
A few minutes later she came back with a bulging scrap book, leafing through pages pasted with clippings from newspapers. “There.” She slapped the book down in front of him. “Is that the man?”
It was a poorish reproduction of a stiff studio portrait, in uniform and, of course, without the beard. O’Gilroy tried mentally pencilling one in. “Could be him . . . nose and eyes seem right . . . What’s it say ’bout him?”
She didn’t need to refer to the book. “He was the big hero -” a sneer “- who saved Constantinople from the Bulgars. Of course,” she relented, “Bulgars are animals.”
“Didn’t get wounded, did he?”
This time she picked up the book and mouthed her way through the cuttings. “Yes . . . yes, he was hurt in the fighting for Salonika. By our Greek Army.” She nodded approvingly, then shut the book with a snap. “So this Colonel Kazurga, Zurga, has been in Germany but came back with the men of the Railway. And he has also gone south?”