The Loreley eased cautiously into Mersina harbour soon after dark, and anchored a couple of hundred yards off-shore. The town was no more than a long jumble of yellow lights, dimmed by a mist gathering in the still air.
But the yacht itself was brightly lit and, standing by the rail, Ranklin and Lady Kelso had a good view of Streibl as he bustled up to them. It was a remarkable sight: he was wearing a yellow-and-bright-green check shirt over faded whipcord trousers and calf-length boots, topped by a black leather coat and a stained wide-brimmed hat. Ranklin’s first thought was that Streibl had got his geography wrong and dressed for some Crossing-the-Line ceremony. His second was that this was how the railwayman dressed to build railways. And for the first time, Streibl didn’t look rumpled; or rather, any rumpling looked right, as if this was the real him.
“We go ashore to the camp soon,” he announced. “Please to dress in warm and not-so-good clothes.”
Lady Kelso gave him a polite but definite Look; she didn’t go in for not-so-good clothes. “I shall dress warmly.”
But Ranklin could almost match Streibl. In his cabin he stripped and threw on a flannel shirt, riding breeches, ordinary boots, a fisherman’s sweater and finally his armless mountain coat, a knee-length waistcoat of patchwork sheepskin. It had tufts of wool sprouting from every join and edge and when he had bought it in Peshawar bazaar it had been off-white. Now it was much further off.
He packed a bag of shaving kit, nightshirt and riding boots and little else, and took it on deck.
One of the cutters had been lowered and was being loaded, quite openly, with the boxes of ransom money. Ranklin looked away: now he knew the ransom was flawed, he wanted no part of it. Lady Kelso reappeared in remarkably short time, but all he could see of her dress was a long blue-brown fur coat. She was an experienced traveller and he fancied it would spend the night as a counterpane on her bed.
Ashore, there were cabs waiting to take them and the ransom – guarded by a couple of sailors with rifles – to the railway station where a tank engine and single carriage were waiting. Of Mersina itself, Ranklin got very little impression; he just assumed there must be a dazed fishing village lurking somewhere behind the piles of Railway ironware and half-finished European-style houses.
The carriage was short, with platforms at both ends, as used in German mountain railways, and the train started as soon as they and the ransom were aboard. For a while they ran straight and flat on a stretch of track that joined Mersina to the regional capital of Adana, forty miles off. Roughly halfway along, the Baghdad Railway would join it from the mountains to the north, and the actual junction had already been built: a spur that wriggled and climbed through a wooded river valley and ended at the work-camp itself.
The mist was thicker here, hiding any view or sense of landscape. The camp itself was – well, “built” sounded too permanent a word – it lay on perhaps the last flat land at the head of the valley, and it was a shapeless mess studded with flaring hurricane lamps.
Men swarmed around them waving more lamps, grabbed their bags, and straggled off into the darkness. They followed, across temporary sidings with rows of railway wagons, past a paddock with every sort of cart, past bales of hay, heaps of broken stone and more piles of railway ironware, and reached what must be the camp’s high street. This was lined with a few wooden huts and a lot of ramshackle stalls and coffee-houses built of draped tarpaulins and carpets, all crowded with dark well-wrapped figures who were squatting, sipping and haggling as in any other bazaar. Blue woodsmoke drifted through the patches of lamplight, mingling with the smells of cooking, of paraffin, of animals and latrines. The street itself was water-filled ruts and everywhere the underlying motif was half-frozen mud.
This didn’t surprise Ranklin with his military background. He was convinced that an army could camp on the driest part of the Sahara or an Arctic ice-floe, and within hours the place would be trampled mud. It was obviously a law of nature that touched armies of workmen too.
He had taken Lady Kelso’s arm as she carefully placed her button-booted feet. “Would you mind frightfully,” she asked, “if I said ‘bloody hell’?”
“Please do.”
“Bloody hell.”
Then they were ushered up wooden steps – all the huts were placed well above the mud – and into what must be the German mess hall. It was bright and functional, with some small tables and chairs, some long tables and benches, a couple of stoves and, at the far end, a half-hearted attempt to create a lounge area of padded chairs, carpets and brassware.
Streibl had undergone an odd snowball effect, gradually becoming a small crowd of men in similar hats, shirts and leather coats who hurried up to clasp his hand; in his own world, he was obviously a grand panjandrum. Now the little crowd split, pulling out chairs for Lady Kelso and Ranklin, fetching them coffee, and introducing themselves. Streibl himself had vanished.
“Is this,” their self-appointed German host asked, “how you expected it to be?”
“I don’t expect things,” she said pleasantly. And that, Ranklin thought, is probably true: her self-sufficiency lies in her talent to go from place to place, person to person, hoping for nothing but courtesy.
“We have for sleeping,” the host went on, “the huts and the new tents. Do you choose . . .?”
“You say the tents are new? – so the insects may not have moved in yet? I’ll take that.”
He smiled at her foresight and, when Ranklin had also chosen a tent, went off to arrange it. The mess hut was gradually filling up – it must be nearing dinnertime – with German railwaymen, most dressed in Streibl’s style. For a formal people, they really let themselves rip in the back of beyond – or perhaps they were copying pictures of American railway pioneers. Masculine groups were more susceptible to that than they admitted.
Then an exception was striding towards them in a long dark coat and a semi-official-looking black lambskin cap. He looked vaguely familiar, but Ranklin would surely have remembered that long ragged scar on the left jawline.
The man smiled and said: “Good evening, Lady Kelso, Mr Snaipe.” It was Zurga without his beard.
He sat down. “In Germany I got tired of always telling how I got this.” He tapped the scar. “So I grew the beard.”
Ranklin nodded. “Quite . . . er, how did you get it?”
Zurga smiled thinly and, now that Ranklin was noticing, slightly lopsidedly. “A shell fragment when I was too near the battle for Constantinople fifteen months ago.” So he was still pretending that he wasn’t an army officer and hadn’t been part of that battle.
Lady Kelso said firmly: “You look much more handsome without the beard – and quite dashing, with that scar. How did you get here?”
“I have been here since two days. I came by the Railway to the far side of the mountains and by horseback from there. You go to see the bandit Miskal tomorrow?”
“I believe that we’re going to see Miskal Bey – as you are, of course? If I fail, that is.”
Zurga nodded, a quick and then prolonged affair, as if he’d forgotten he’d started his head moving. Then he said: “Do you truly think I can persuade him if you cannot?”
She barely hesitated. “Not if you regard him as a bandit, no. Nor by appealing to any Ottoman patriotism. If you want to try arguing Islam with him . . .”
Zurga smiled. “He may not see me as a True Believer . . .”
Wasn’t this just what she’d said to Ranklin on the train? But she could go no further with Zurga; women had no place arguing Muslim doctrine.
He nodded again, or perhaps he’d never quite stopped. “You think so also?. . . So perhaps, to save time, it is best I do not go, we just send the ransom – if you should fail. I must tell Dr Streibl . . .”