When he’d gone, Lady Kelso asked: “Were you expecting him to drop out?”
“More or less. We never really believed in his mission, did we? But he’s here for some purpose, and that could make it more dangerous for you.” He was in trouble here; the ransom had, through no doing of his, been sabotaged. But that might no longer be enough to keep Miskal delaying the Railway, not if Zurga was plotting something dire. He wanted to meet Miskal, see the situation . . . only perhaps that meant shoving Lady Kelso’s neck into the noose . . .
Damn it, what he wanted was for her to insist on going so that it was impossible to stop her, whatever came of it. Please, please insist . . .
He said: “There’s still time for you to back out, not go. I’ll support you, here and in London.”
“That’s very sweet of you to say, Patrick – but I did agree and we’ve come so far . . .”
“If you really want that . . .” But he had said back out, hadn’t he? – a phrase sure to raise her hackles and make her insist. He back-pedalled: “But I still don’t like the idea of Zurga coming down here ahead of us. He’s not part of the Railway, so what the devil has he been arranging, the last two days?”
But suddenly the German railwaymen noticed their guests had been left alone and rushed to show hospitality, burying them with friendly small talk. The atmosphere in the hall was cheery, bubbling over into frequent laughter. He had expected them to be gloomier, but perhaps their own arrival had brought hope, an imminent end to a frustrating delay.
* * *
The Vanadis churned at near-top speed through the quiet dark sea – though if O’Gilroy knew anything about the sea (he didn’t) hurricanes and waterspouts were waiting at the next corner. So he was back at his favourite seat, as near the centre of the ship as possible, at the big saloon table.
Corinna came in and threw a sheaf of telegraph forms on the table. “We’ve been wirelessing everybody and everything. We should be at Mersina by dawn tomorrow but the Railroad says they can’t be ready for me until the day after. Sorry and all that, but pressures of work and blah-blah.”
“Day after tomorrow? Reckon to have Miskal all dead and buried by then, do they?”
“It sounds like it. Damn, damn, damn. And there’s just about nothing I can do about it. Sure, I represent an important potential investor, but they’re only saying if I wait twenty-four hours they’ll have the red carpet dusted off and rolled out for me.”
“Can ye jest arrive there without an invitation?”
“How can I? The Railroad itself is the only route to the camp, no road or anything-” Seeing his surprise she said: “That’s normaclass="underline" a railroad becomes its own road. Once you’ve laid a bit of track, you use it to haul up what you need for the next bit.”
She ignored his affront at her knowing more than he about such a masculine thing as railway building, and laid a small map on the table. It really was small, just a cutting from a German magazine showing the progress of the Baghdad Railway.
O’Gilroy leaned over it and identified a parallel rail and road (or track) joining Mersina to Adana-
“That’s about forty miles,” Corinna said. “That bit of railroad was built by a French company some years ago.”
– and before that, a road branching off at Tarsus-
“Tarsus?” he queried.
“Yes. Where St Paul was born, wasn’t it?”
– and heading inland over the mountains. And a few miles past Tarsus a rail spur doing the same thing: turning off inland, and ending after a few miles.
“That’s where the work-camp is. That spur’s about ten miles long and not open to the public. We could hire horses in Tarsus and ride up there alongside the railroad, but what would that do except show bad manners? And I’m sorry, but I can’t do that to Cornelius Billings or the House of Sherring.”
“But if they’re jest keeping us out while they get into a barney with a bandit-”
“Even if I were supposed to know that, what’s my complaint? It’s not my business how they deal with bandits. More my business if they couldn’t deal with them and let it delay them unduly.”
O’Gilroy stared gloomily at the sketch map. “We’re bug- stuck, then.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” she said thoughtfully. “We’ll have all day tomorrow from when we reach Mersina. I assume Matt and Lady K will get on out to the bandit hideout first thing in the morning, so even if we were going to the camp, we’d miss them . . . Why don’t we try to catch them at the hideout ourselves?”
O’Gilroy peered at the little map, but it barely showed the mountains, let alone a monastery tucked in among them. “Pity ye couldn’t get a proper map-”
“There’s likely no such thing. You’re spoiled: Britain’s probably the best-mapped place in the world. Down here, sailors have mapped the coast and archaeologists a few sites, but the rest -” she shrugged “- it’s travellers’ tales.”
“Then any idea where this monastery place is?”
“None at all – except it must be somewhere north of the camp, more into the mountains. And there must be another way to it: a monastery will have been there hundreds of years before the Railway.”
O’Gilroy nodded, then said: “I’m wondering where Bertie is.”
“Oh Lord, I’d forgotten . . . Will he go to the camp?”
“Not him,” O’Gilroy said firmly. “If he’s conniving with this bandit feller, it’s without the Railway knowing. He’ll have his own road there.”
“Probably the one we’re looking for.” She paused, calculating. “There’s an American consul in Mersina, he’ll have heard of the House of Sherring . . . I’ll see if I can get a telegram to him.”
She saw O’Gilroy’s expression and shook her head. “No, not telling him anything except when we expect to get in. You don’t give consuls time to think up more reasons why you shouldn’t do something.”
* * *
The Railway camp’s dinner was good and plentiful, but it had the bland, uncertain taste of food prepared by cooks who weren’t born to that cuisine and didn’t really know if they were getting it right or wrong. Streibl and the camp Aufseher, an elderly white-moustached man in respectable clothes and obviously ex-military, shared their table. The Aufseher made the conversational running, asking about the London weather, music, the comfort of their journey – topics as bland as the food.
Halfway through, a younger engineer came in to apologise and call Streibl away. Lady Kelso and Ranklin avoided catching each other’s eyes and both started talking simultaneously.
After coffee, they were escorted to their tents on a side street of grass as yet not quite trampled to mud. Lady Kelso’s was guarded by by a Turkish soldier in a long overcoat, a slung rifle and a lambswool cap like Zurga’s.
The floor of Ranklin’s tent was raised off the ground by duckboards covered in old carpets (the one thing Turkey wasn’t short of: in its lifetime a carpet could go from a wall hanging to a stall awning to being cut up for saddlebags). There was also a charcoal brazier – lit – and a washbasin and jug of water. Ranklin took off a minimum of clothing, washed perfunctorily, and was trying to organise his canvas camp bed for maximum warmth when Streibl and Zurga asked permission to come in.
“We have thought about a change to the plan,” Streibl began awkwardly.
“That Zurga isn’t going to see Miskal? We heard about that,” Ranklin said, deliberately unhelpful.
“Ah . . . no, not about that. . .” Streibl sat on a camp stool. “But . . . will Lady Kelso herself take to Miskal the ransom?”
Ranklin hadn’t expected that. His instinct was to stay as far clear of the ransom as possible. And it seemed reasonable it would be Snaipe’s instinct, too. “No. Most certainly not. Surely, her mission and the ransom are alternatives. If you’ve decided she’ll fail, send the ransom up instead.”