* * *
It was lighter when Ranklin and Lady Kelso came out onto the camp’s main road, but the mist seemed thicker than the night before. In a city, where you expected vistas of only a few hundred yards at most, it would have been unnoticeable. Here, being unable to see more than half a mile (Ranklin reckoned) was confining and, on a ride in unknown country, could be confusing. He could feel the mountains all around; he just couldn’t see them.
But he could see the camp plain enough, and last night’s memory of it by lamplight now seemed romantic and charming. This morning it reminded him of photographs of mining camps in the Klondike and Yukon (where on earth were those places?): ramshackle, damp and grey in the grey light. It was coming alive, with well-wrapped shapes at the coffee-stalls. But it didn’t look like the start of a working day; the whole camp hung in suspension, like the clouds of cigarette smoke in the still damp air above the stalls.
Nothing moved on the Railway itself and there was no engine in sight. He could now see where the tracks ran on, over embankments and through cuttings across the rougher land towards the head of the valley until the mist took over.
“Do you need to go to your tent?” Streibl asked.
Ranklin had on a motoring cap with ear-flaps, leather gloves and the pockets of his “Warrior Sheep” jacket were loaded. “Riding boots?” he queried.
“The stirrups are wide, so . . .” And that suited Ranklin: he would be more versatile in his ordinary boots.
Lady Kelso reappeared from the direction of the tents. “Did you get a look at your map?”
“Yes, I think I see the lie of the land.”
Streibl led them to the horse and mule paddocks, over beside the sidings. A horse-holder was waiting with three shaggy little Anatolian ponies, already saddled and with a guide wearing an elderly Martini rifle – he wasn’t a soldier; modern Mausers were one thing the Turkish Army seemed to have plenty of – slung across his back already aboard one of them. A saddlebag made (of course) of carpet seemed standard issue and Streibl tucked a couple of packages into them. “Some food from the kitchens. . .”
Ranklin said: “No spare mounts? If we get these railwaymen of yours freed, d’you expect them to walk home? Or us?”
Streibl looked momentarily blank, then stammered: “I understand they had horses when they were kidnapped. And I think it is not easy to lead one of these animals. They are not . . . not castr-”
“The word is ‘entire’,” Lady Kelso said crisply, “so they kick each other to death if they get too close.”
“Yes. And I am sorry but there is no side-saddle-”
“Never expected one.” She stood with one foot in the air until he realised she expected him to make a step of his hands, then trod into it and swung into the saddle, revealing that her skirt was some sort of pantaloon. Ranklin, of course, didn’t look closely.
“I’ve ridden these things before,” she said. “They’re actually quite comfortable cross-country.”
They were Turkish saddles, wider and shorter in the stirrup than the European version, and with wooden bits that Ranklin foresaw would rub at the inside of his legs. He had no particular qualms about the pony itself; he neither liked nor disliked horses, they were just the way Army officers got around.
It may have been her new height, but on horseback Lady Kelso had a brisk confidence. “And suppose Miskal Bey asks about the ransom, what should I say?”
“Ah . . . Perhaps you should not know anything about it.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’m not going to sound like just a pawn of your Railway. I shall have to say something – What?”
“Tell him . . . It is ready.” Streibl was a rotten liar. Unfortunately, that didn’t tell them what the truth was. “Perhaps you will make it. . . not necessary.” Then he helped Ranklin into the saddle and stood back quickly as the horse-holder let go.
They followed the line of the Railway on up the valley. Looking back after ten minutes, Ranklin could see the camp in context. It spread over what would have been a meadow, just below a sweep of fir trees coming down from the mist and drifts of vividly fresh snow where the trees petered out. And at this distance, it looked like the sodden litter of a gigantic picnic. The next time he looked, it was gone in the mist.
He was glad to see his pony keeping its head down and watching where it put its feet on the rock-strewn ground. He let it pick its own pace, and guessed it would do so no matter what he wanted; it knew who knew best. They crossed a short bridge where the river turned aside, then dismounted and walked the horses through a quarter-mile tunnel, carrying torches of tar-dipped stick. The flaring light glittered off rough-cut walls streaming with damp. This was limestone country: soft grey-white rock that was easy to tunnel through but impossible to waterproof.
The tunnel ended virtually in mid-air and actually on a short stone-built platform, guarded by two soldiers, which must be the start of a future bridge. Across the valley the real mountains began: a slope that steepened to near-vertical as it reared up and became lost in the mist or cloud. From its sheer bulk it must be miles thick at this level; a dent had been blasted out of the rock opposite, and some scaffolding erected where the far end of the bridge would rest, but that was all.
“Is this according to the map?” Lady Kelso asked.
“Yes.” It had been rather a crude rough blue-print Ranklin had been shown; he had been surprised not to see a proper survey map – they must have one, to be building in that countryside – but perhaps it was too precious. Or Streibl hadn’t trusted Snaipe to understand it. “They’re going to put a bridge across this valley, then tunnel through the mountain on the far side.”
So this, presumably, was where work had ended when the engineers got kidnapped. From here itself? The impression of a frontier was emphasised by the the clutter of brazier, coffee-and cooking-pots; this was a permanent guard-post.
“Where do we go?” she asked, as the guide doused the torches in a jar of water obviously kept there for that.
“Down there.” Ranklin pointed to a fresh but already well-used path running sideways down the slope to the right. “There’s a river at the bottom, you can’t see it from here, and we follow it. The monastery’s . . .” He gestured vaguely half-right, to the north-east.
* * *
The Ford didn’t get its first puncture until they had turned off the main road just past Tarsus (whose scruffy houses and snarling dogs had disappointed O’Gilroy; he’d expected a place mentioned in the Bible to be more . . . well, at least respectable). They stood by the roadside while the Greek driver changed a wheel.
“Tell me something,” Corinna asked. “How did you get to Mersina so fast?”
Bertie considered and decided it need be no secret. “The Ministre de la Marine was kind enough to have a destroyer awaiting me. At Smyrna I caught the normal steamship from Athens.”
Corinna was impressed, but Bertie shook his head. “Fast, but in no way comfortable. Now please, tell me: are all American lady bankers as . . . forthright as yourself?”
“Far’s I know there’s only two of us. And the other, who’d better stay nameless, does it all through her husband the bank president. On account of a little mistake he once made that she covered with her own money. She’s very successful.”
“Yes, I think I see a connection . . . May I also ask, have you known M’sieu Gorman for long?”
“A little longer than you.”
“And you know him-?”
“Maybe a little better.”
“I understand.” Then he shook his head irritably. “No, I do not understand at all. . . But of more importance, you were to tell me what Colonel Kazurga Bey plans.”
“Mountain artillery,” O’Gilroy said.
“The Turkish Army has no mountain guns.”
“Came with us from Germany in the train, in those boxes yer fellers ’n me saw loaded on the launch at Constantinople. Did they tell ye about them dropping a box and diving for cover? Reckon that was some of the ammunition.”