“That’ll be read by both the Turkish telegraph people and the Germans at the camp.”
“Jayzus, and I niver thought of that.”
She clamped her teeth, then opened them to say: “You evil-hearted, blackmailing son of a . . . All right. Get your damned bags together.”
Ten minutes later they were on their way in the Cadillac.
“When we get on board,” Corinna re-asserted herself, “I shall let it be known that I’m giving a ride to a friend who’s been robbed of everything and had to borrow a servant’s suit, out of pure Christian charity-”
“As ye are indeed.”
“Shut up. And because I’m pumping you for British foreign policy information en route.”
O’Gilroy nodded approval; Christian charity wasn’t really a believable motive.
“I am not,” Corinna finished, “having them think I’m having an affaire with you.” And she was satisfied to have shocked his Irish soul, that was so prim in certain ways.
So for several minutes he was quiet as the car wound its way down the hill, obviously heading for the Galata quayside or thereabouts. Then he said: “Have ye got a fixed time to be getting started?”
“No, just when I get on board.”
“Then could ye jest be making a small loop so’s I could get a word with a coupla fellers off’n the three o’clock train from Vienna?”
“What fellows?” she asked suspiciously.
“Ah, jest some fellers . . .” O’Gilroy was being elaborately unconcerned “. . . that me and the Captain had a bit of a run-in with at Friedrichshafen . . . Bertie was going to hand me over to them so’s they could . . . But the Captain’ll want to know how they’re involved with him.”
“A bit of a run-in?”
“Nobody got shot.”
“Yes, but-”
“And nobody’ll be getting shot at the station, with the crowd and all. Anyways, I haven’t got a gun. Being a poor manservant, like.”
“But if they’re armed, they could force you . . . Damn it, if you must, at least take my pistol with you.”
She always carried a Colt Navy Model in one of her handbags, and over-riding O’Gilroy’s feeble protests, now passed it to him. Then leaned forward to give the chauffeur new directions.
Then she sat back, gradually realising that she had let herself be talked not only into giving O’Gilroy a lift in the yacht but detouring for him to confront two hoodlums and insisting he did it with her own pistol.
No wonder Irish-born politicians seemed to be taking over America.
The Vienna train had come in some time before, but passengers were only now seeping through the Customs hall to begin bargaining for cabs and guides. That made it a cosmopolitan crowd and O’Gilroy was conspicuous only by having no overcoat: both his real one and the sheepskin affair were somewhere back at Bertie’s house. He could stand the cold, but Colts must have been thinking of overcoats when they advertised this pistol as a “pocket” weapon.
Then Hunke came out, carrying a small Gladstone bag, and stood irresolutely staring around; he was immediately besieged by touts. O’Gilroy watched, feeling smugly like an old Constantinople hand – but also suddenly doubting why he was here. Had he just wanted to cock a snook at these two? – that was unprofessional. He should be doing some real spying as well, not just the pistol kind.
He strolled up. “Can I be offering ye any assistance at all?”
Hunke’s eyes widened. Then he switched the bag to his left hand, and looked back for the snowman-shaped Dr Zimmer, coming up behind. He also stopped dead at the sight of O’Gilroy.
“And a very good day to ye, too.” O’Gilroy flapped open his jacket to show the pistol butt, then folded his arms so his right hand rested naturally on it. “Jest thought I’d pop down to let ye know things’ve changed, ’twas all a mistake. Me and Monsieur Lacan, we talked it over and reckoned we was really allies, so . . . Sorry if ye’ve had a wasted journey.”
“M’sieu Lacan is not here?” Zimmer asked, looking around.
“Says he’s sorry.”
“And he let you go?”
“Here I am,” O’Gilroy smiled. “Ye think I escaped? Ye don’t know him so well, do ye?”
“I never-” Then Zimmer clenched his mouth shut.
“Anyways, he had urgent business – ye know? But ’fore that, we reckoned we was really on the same side. We talked over what Gunther had told us-” Zimmer expressed . . . well, it was difficult to say what. The point was that he expressed, and a proper agent wouldn’t have; Zimmer really belonged behind a desk. “So it seems Gunther sold the same information twice, to the both of us.”
“No.” That was more bewildered than definite.
Trying to keep him off balance, O’Gilroy pressed on: “All ’bout the Railroad . . . And Miskal Bey . . . The ransom . . . all what Gunther picked up from the Germans . . .” And at that item on the list Zimmer’s expression relaxed.
“And did M’sieu Lacan send you to here?” Now Zimmer was confident, almost playful. O’Gilroy had shown that he didn’t know something important.
“Must’ve done, else how’d I know? But like I say, I’ll be leaving ye to do a bit of sight-seeing, mebbe. Pity to waste the trip.”
He turned away. Hunke took a step forward and O’Gilroy spun back, his right hand half out from his jacket. For a moment they just stood there, and if the crowd noticed them, God knows what it thought: there could be no missing the death-rays that crackled between them.
Then O’Gilroy said deliberately: “Best start that sightseeing: it improves the mind something wonderful, they do say.”
Zimmer laid a cautious hand on Hunke’s sleeve. O’Gilroy took a couple of steps back, then turned away-
– right into Arif’s path. And if he had been The Terrible before, now the look on his face and the bandages on his hands – he must have tried to open that blazing door – showed the only sight likely to improve his mind was O’Gilroy’s insides.
O’Gilroy didn’t pause. He pulled the pistol out and aimed at Arif’s belly. Then, as the Arab flinched aside, slashed his head with the pistol, barged past both him and Theodora just behind, and ran for the Cadillac.
“If yer ready to leave this town,” he panted, flopping in beside Corinna, “me, too.”
19
Throughout the afternoon the sky had crowded with clouds, the sea became flecked with white and the wind started to make serious sounds in the rigging. By his last sight of the sun, Ranklin reckoned the Captain had turned away from the coast and islands to give himself more room for mistakes; he thoroughly approved.
In the saloon the steward had put away all the bottles and glasses and was making sure the tables and chairs were tied to ring-bolts in the floor. But he had issued Lady Kelso with a wide-based mug of coffee and offered to fetch another. Ranklin said he’d wait until the tying-down was finished and, picking his moment in the ship’s roll, dropped into a chair.
“No sign of Dr Streibl?” he enquired.
“I’m afraid the poor man’s confined himself to quarters.”
“But not you.”
“I’ve got quite a strong stomach. I should have, after twenty years of eating Bedouin food and getting around on camels.” The steward had disappeared towards the galley and she seemed about to say something.
Ranklin beat her to it: “I was a bit surprised you say that Miskal Bey’s a mountain Arab. I mean, I think of Arabs as desert types, you know.”
“ ‘Arab’ is just a race – like English, and at least as varied. You get as many mountain Arabs as desert ones – and most live in towns, anyway: Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut . . . It was the Arabs who founded the Islamic Empire and they don’t forget it. The Ottoman Turks are Johnny-come-latelies who were hired as mercenary soldiers. Then, over time, the wheel turned.” She smiled ruefully.