The boxes were solidly built – they had to hold nearly a hundred pounds weight each without falling apart – but crude and unsealed apart from the nails. By now furious at the time and apprehension he’d wasted, he used his penknife to wrench one of the lids free. And there were ten bags of coin, each printed “Imperial Ottoman Bank”, each drawstring sealed with red wax, but hastily and variably. Some were barely sealed at all, and he lifted each bag in turn into the torchlight to pick those out. He got two, then took a second look at the others rather than open another box.
And that bag felt odd. He squeezed it again, feeling the tiny circles of coin, but those at the bottom seemed stuck together in a lump. Gold coins sticking together? That seemed unlikely. Holding it over the box, where fragments of sealing-wax might be expected, he picked the drawstring loose, opened the bag and felt down past the loose coins on top and brought up the lump. They were certainly glued together, but holding the lump closer to the torch he saw they were blank discs daubed with gold paint. Where the paint had scratched, dull grey metal showed through.
He sat back to think – but the first thought was that this was neither time nor place for thinking. He struck a match and re-sealed the wax, reloaded the box, finding other bags with lumps at the bottom – and then realised he had nothing to hammer the lid shut with except rubber boots. He took a big metal ashtray from the desk and used it to force the nails back by silent pressure.
Then he opened the curtains, took a last think around the dark cabin, and cautiously stepped out into the storm. Before he started working his way aft, he pitched his bag of shot into the sea.
“Nobody tried to come in,” Lady Kelso reported. She sounded a little disappointed. “How did you get on?” Then she realised how wet he was. “No, you go ahead and change, I’ll turn my back.”
Modesty wasn’t Ranklin’s main worry: it was the steward finding his damp clothes in the morning, since nothing would dry in that cabin overnight. Well, he’d think of something. He changed his trousers, dried his feet, and lit a cigarette.
Lady Kelso turned back. “Well?”
“I found it. It wasn’t even in the safe.” He frowned, trying to think one step ahead of what he was saying. But she had to know most of it: suppose she was with Miskal when the ransom was delivered and he got furious at all treacherous Europeans? She wasn’t planned to be there then, but this of all plans wasn’t going to go to . . . well, to plan.
“And?” she prompted.
“Somebody’s salted the sugar already: some of the bags have got discs of lead in at the bottom, stuck together so they won’t spill out if you just checked the coins at the top. So I left them as they were.”
“Dahlmann?”
“No. It would be cutting his own throat. Most of the coins are real, so he’d still be paying a good ransom for guaranteed nothing . . . Unless he’s working to some ‘fiendish plan’, and he doesn’t seem a man to believe in fiendish plans.”
She was looking calm but curious. “Then who d’you think it was?”
“I think it all happened at the Imperial Ottoman Bank. Not by them, but there. I saw Dahlmann check the coins – dammit, I signed that I’d witnessed that. . . Then we watched the coins being bagged and sealed and nailed into boxes . . . Then I went off to change some sovereigns.” And he’d rejoined the party as they were waiting for the last box to be brought up from the vaults – so Dahlmann couldn’t have been watching all four boxes all the time. “They switched a whole box. At least one.”
“Yes, but who?”
Hardly D’Erlon, it was his – one of his – banks’ reputation. So who had muddied the waters by asking a British diplomatist and an American bankeress along to sign that the whole thing had been above-board? – and been careful not to be there himself? “Did you meet a chap they call Beirut Bertie at the Embassy dinner?”
“D’you think it was him? Yes, I met him. We had a long chat about the Bedouin, he knows the tribes very well. He seems to be very much on their side.”
“That’s what everybody says. So perhaps nobody thinks he might be working at his real job on the French side.”
“Could he have arranged it?”
“If you’ve been around these parts as long as he has – it must be thirty years – and worked for the Imp Ott at one time, I fancy you could arrange anything.” Provided, of course, that you knew well in advance what the money was wanted for.
“But aren’t the French supposed to be our allies nowadays?”
“Yes, but are we acting like their allies? On the face of it, we’re helping the Germans get the Railway restarted, aren’t we?”
“I suppose so,” she said in a small voice.
Ranklin shook his head wearily. “Everybody’s cooking to their own recipe on this one: Germans, French, ourselves, Zurga’s faction of the Turkish Government. God knows what it’s all going to taste like.” He roused himself: “Look: this may give you an extra card. If we get into Miskal’s stronghold and you’re still there when the ransom looks like arriving, you can warn him in advance that he’s being cheated. Just so he doesn’t get angry with you.”
“Thank you.” She cocked her head on one side; if she’d had her fan she would have waved it slowly. “When I first met you, I thought you were a bit of a fool. Now . . .”
Ranklin groaned to himself; he’d let the Snaipe mask slip. He rammed it back in place. “Oh, well, you know . . . I mean-”
“Yes, saying things like that.”
“It doesn’t do in the Diplomatic to seem too bright.”
“It doesn’t do to be too bright. Remember, I was married to one once. Good night, Mr Snaipe.”
20
Although he slept deeply, Ranklin must unconsciously have noticed the storm passing because he woke unsurprised that the yacht was leaning but steady. It must have sails set again, and was just pitching slowly in a long swell. Cheerful with the sense of evil safely accomplished, which was turning out to be almost as good as a clear conscience, he went to order breakfast and then up to stroll the windward deck until it was ready. The sun was bright but not yet hot; in the Mediterranean, another month would make all the difference.
When he returned to the dining-saloon, Streibl was at the table, pale and full of apologies for his weakness of last evening.
Ranklin waved them aside. “Not your fault, old boy. Why, I had an aunt who used to get sick on trains. Carriages, too. In fact, come to think of it, she got sick whenever she felt she wasn’t the centre of attention. So not really relevant. Forget I spoke.”
But Streibl was already quite good at forgetting Snaipe had spoken, or even still was. “The steward said we will not be at Mersina until tomorrow night. I will ask if the wireless operator can . . .”
It sounded complicated, reaching a wireless station in Constantinople or, with luck, a ship in Mersina harbour, then telegraph via the Railway HQ or sub-HQ . . . In a few years’ time the world might be gossiping as between adjacent chairs in a club – that was the sort of bright future O’Gilroy believed in, anyway. Ranklin had his doubts; if it happened at all, did he really want to listen to club bores on a global scale?
* * *
Some two hundred nautical miles behind and catching up, the Vanadis was bouncing along through what O’Gilroy thought was a tempest and Corinna a bright, if chilly, sunny day. He spent much of the time in his cabin – being sick, Corinna suspected – but it took more than that to overcome his Army and Irish habit of taking every meal offered.
So at least they met at the dining table. “It’s all in the mind, you know,” she said, knowing that wouldn’t help but unable not to say it.
He just grunted. Repentant, she said: “I’m sure the Captain and Chief Engineer would be happy for you to look at the engines if you liked. Shall I ask?”
It was a canny offer: Corinna, too, knew his love of machinery and belief that it would bring an earthly paradise.