All Honourable Men (11 page)

As the steamer hooted its arrival, the dockside suddenly spawned a flood of porters, waving greeters, outgoing passengers and a row of horse-drawn cabs. Ranklin and O'Gilroy strolled along to where the gangway was being readied and Dahlmann reappeared, relieved to see they weren't lost.

About a couple of dozen passengers disembarked, and Lady Kelso was obvious as the one lone woman in a crowd of businessmen and families. Dahlmann stepped forward, swept off his hat and bowed, a gesture that would have gone better without the jostling of other disembarking passengers. Uniformed town and railway officials crowded in to be introduced next, so Ranklin hung back and watched.

The first impression was that here was a genuine dowager viscountess, with all the fore-and-aft opulence of King Edward's time – in miniature. She was one woman who was shorter than Ranklin: even at a distance, he had a perfect eye for that. And despite the way she glided like the figurehead of a ship, the face between the wide hat and the muffling fur collar was startlingly petite, soft and feminine. Age had been kind to her: Ranklin knew she was about sixty, but her face didn't sag, no matter what her corset was coping with. For a woman whose reputation if not life had been made in the evenings, she had a morning look: bright, fresh and – since God enjoys a joke – innocent.

Finally it was his turn. He raised his hat: “Patrick Snaipe of the Diplomatic, Lady Kelso. Your official escort.”

She smiled. “How sweet of them. And do you know Turkey well?”

“Hardly at all,” Ranklin said cheerfully.

“Well, between us we should manage.” She smiled inquiringly past him at O'Gilroy.

Ranklin was deliberately slow catching on; first impressions, again. “Oh, and that's Gorman, my man.”

Very properly, she didn't offer any handshake, just: “Good evening, Gorman.”

O'Gilroy dipped his head. “Good evening, M'Lady.”

Dahlmann and the officials closed in again. “I have arranged that your baggage is brought to the train, My – Lady Kelso. It is only two hundred metres, but if you wish a cab—?”

“Of course not. Oh, Dr Zimmer.” He was shaped like a snowman, a round head on a round body, with sleek black hair and thick spectacles. He wore an overcoat with a turned-up fur collar and carried an attaché case.

He bowed over her hand and said: “I must hurry, alas, Madam. I am most honoured to have met you. And the very best of luck in your travels.” He disappeared into the churning crowd.

“An admirer I seemed to acquire coming through Zurich,” she explained. “Now, have we really got a private train? How gorgeous. All the way to Constantinople? How clever of you.” Dahlmann preened himself; whatever his private feelings about Lady Kelso, nobody else in the party had called him
clever
.

Walking along the quayside, she turned to Ranklin again. “And the Foreign Office has sent you to keep me out of trouble . . . well, at least you don't seem to be one of those tall sun-bronzed Englishmen who wander the unexplored world making such a nuisance of themselves.”

“Er, no. I'm not,” Ranklin said, wondering if he should sound regretful.

By now it was almost dark. Lights and lamps were coming on around the Customs house and station building as the little procession, porters bringing up the rear, picked its way across the tracks to the welcoming glow of the private carriages.

Ranklin and O'Gilroy stayed outside to let Dahlmann, Lady Kelso, officials and porters jam the corridor, and O'Gilroy observed quietly: “We've lost the engine again.”

“Probably just gone to collect more coal or water.” But Ranklin was beginning to feel the cold. “Damn it, I'm getting in the other end.”

He stumped off down beside the carriage to climb up at the dining-saloon end. That meant going through the shadow of a couple of wagons – the light from the private coach came out well above his head – and he had to watch where he was putting his feet. So he wasn't watching a large figure slip out from between the wagons, but he felt something ram into his ribs.

Ranklin froze.

The pistol, it could only be that, wriggled against him and the man said: “
Komm mit mir
.”

“You aren't going to shoot me here,” Ranklin said in German. But it was one of those silly things you say when you don't know whether he will or not.

“I have orders.”

So Ranklin moved on. They went past the blind service carriage, past more goods wagons and beyond the station buildings, heading up the tracks into darkness.

He
is
going to shoot me, Ranklin realised. There I was, being so clever at persuading them I was Snaipe, and all the time they were working out how to get rid of me. Just an armed-robbery-gone-wrong, or a simple disappearance, and the Wilhelmstrasse full of remorse and regret but no Diplomatic Incident.

Little I'll care.

But I don't
want
to die now – it's so inconvenient, so much unfinished. It leaves my family in a mess, I haven't sorted things out with Corinna, this job incomplete . . . I have to try something. Only . . . what?

Then they reached a level crossing and turned off into the sparsely-lit streets of the old town. This puzzled Ranklin more than it cheered him. It probably meant a more complicated plan, maybe an interrogation ending with him “accidentally” drowned in the harbour . . .

Abruptly he was pushed in through a side door of a half-timbered building that had the smell and distant babble of a
beer hall. Ahead of him was a dim-lit uneven wooden staircase and he was shoved up it. And into a wide, low-ceilinged room with its furniture pushed back against the walls, except for a single table and chair in the middle. Sitting there was the snowman-shaped Dr Zimmer of Zurich.

He looked up and said in fluent but accented English: “You are Captain Ranklin of the English Secret Service Bureau?”

Ranklin tried to look outraged. “I'm Patrick Snaipe, attached to the Diplomatic Service, and I most strongly—”

“Yes, yes, of course. But I will proceed as if you were Captain Ranklin. You are accused of helping arrange the murder of a man known – to you – as Gunther van der Brock.”

A great relief flooded Ranklin: the Germans hadn't uncovered him, only Gunther's people, and they knew him anyway. He might still get murdered, but he had his professional pride back. “I've no idea what you're talking about, and I've most certainly never arranged the death of any—”

“You are here in Germany to accompany Lady Kelso, who goes to Turkey to help release two engineers on the Baghdad Railway held hostage for ransom. Do you want more details? About Miskal Bey defeating Turkish soldiers with his new rifles?”

“Who are you?”

“You may go on calling me Dr Zimmer. But I am a partner of Gunther. Will you now stop pretending?”

Ranklin looked around. The room was big, probably used for parties and meetings, and bare – for any room in Bavaria. The walls held only a scattering of religious prints, mountain views, photographs and official notices, a clock and several empty flower baskets. It was lit by a single electric bulb hung from the ceiling that was anything but bare: its shade looked like a harvest festival with tassels on, letting only a glow of orange-pink light leak out. From below came, incongruously, the friendly early-evening mumble of the beer hall. “Is this a trial, then?”

Zimmer gave a tiny shrug. “Perhaps, but not like your
English trials. It is . . . an inquiry, before Hunke takes you out for execution.”

“It seems I've been found guilty already.”

Zimmer said indifferently: “I could have had Hunke shoot you in the rail-yard. Instead, I am being fair. You can try to explain yourself.”

Good God, the bastard really
means
this, Ranklin realised. Any feeling of relief was gone now. He was going to be taken out and shot like . . . like a spy. He swallowed and asked: “May I sit down?”

Zimmer nodded; Hunke brought over a chair, then himself sat against the wall square to Ranklin, dangling the pistol between his knees. His knubbly face seemed solemn and phlegmatic under his wide flat cap – he may have been the dockside loafer glimpsed earlier – but quite capable of obeying nasty orders.

Ranklin said: “Gunther didn't come to see the Bureau in London, he saw somebody else. I don't know who. I called on him at breakfast because we'd heard he was in town—”

“Who told you?”

“The police spotted him at the port. Gunther didn't tell me anything, we said good-bye outside the hotel, then a man waiting put a pistol in his face and killed him. I saw that myself.”

Zimmer had his attaché case open on the table, spilling a collection of papers, and was checking Ranklin's account against a newspaper cutting. “Did you try to catch the man?”

“No, he'd vanished in the fog. It must mention the fog. Anyway, I might have thought twice about chasing an armed man who killed that freely. And that's all.”

Zimmer seemed to be considering this judiciously. “Are you sure he had seen someone in your Government?”

“As you said, I wouldn't be here in Germany if he hadn't, would I? And the English money the police found on him.”

“Money?” Zimmer frowned and consulted the cutting again.

“Two hundred pounds. No, they were trying to keep that out of the newspapers.”

Outside the door a board creaked and Hunke lunged silently to his feet; for a big man, he moved very smoothly. He tiptoed to the door and listened, keeping his pistol pointed warningly towards Ranklin. There was silence, except for the murmur from beneath, then heavy, unsuspicious footsteps came down the stairs, past the door and on down until they blended into the noise below. Hunke shrugged and sat down again.

Zimmer picked up the thread: “So you say you did not arrange his death?”

“Of course not. We wouldn't kill the golden goose.”

“Pardon?”

“We got information from him. We wanted – still want – to go on getting it from his firm – you. Why should we suddenly want to kill him?”

“To protect the secrets he had given you, so that he would not sell them to anyone else.”

That was a new idea for Ranklin. He'd been standing too close to the event, not seeing enough of how it might look to others. “We wouldn't do that. We trusted Gunther, we wouldn't have had dealings with him if we hadn't trusted him.”

“But this time, you said, you did
not
have dealings with him.”

And what was the answer to
that?
Zimmer went on calmly: “You see, I know what the famous English Secret Service thinks of us. You believe, because you are patriots working only for your country, that you are superior to us who work for any country, and also for money. We do not matter – is it not so?”

“No,” Ranklin said. It was difficult to think in big general terms when faced with the specifically gigantic thought that Hunke was about to take him out and kill him. “No. That might be how generals and cabinet ministers think, if they didn't despise all of us, their own spies as much as any others.”

Again the small, almost indifferent, shrug. “Perhaps. Perhaps now I do not think you killed Gunther, or want him killed. But that does not matter. Like a soldier – and I think you are also a soldier? – then you must die, not for what you have done, but for what your country has.”

“But you don't
know
it was my country! It could be the
Germans
who found out what Gunther had sold!” He was ashamed to hear the desperation in his voice, then he thought The hell with shame, this is my
life
.

Zimmer shook his head and smiled sadly. “I said you do not understand. You think you belong to a small Bureau. Probably you say you have not enough men, not enough money, so you
think
you are small. But not really, because you belong to
England
, and that is big. So a defeat does not mean so much, it is not the end of everything – and one day, probably, you will take revenge. But we are truly small, and belong to nobody, and a single defeat will destroy us if it is known that we do not act, and quickly. So it is more important to show we will take revenge, than that we take the right revenge. Do you understand that?”

“That saving your honour justifies any mistake?” But hadn't it always?

Somebody tried the handle of the door, then gave a heavy knock. A voice called: “How can I bring in your drinks if you won't open the door?”

Zimmer and Hunke swapped surprised looks. “
Did you
—?” Zimmer hissed, and Hunke shook his head.

The voice outside was impatient. “Open up!”

Hunke pocketed the pistol and opened the door. The landlord – presumably – waddled in with a tray of beer-mugs, and doled them onto the table beside Zimmer's case.

Zimmer asked: “Who ordered these?”

“The other man. The Englishman.”

Zimmer instinctively looked at the door – at O'Gilroy sauntering in with a friendly grin and going straight up beside Hunke. Going so close you couldn't see his hand behind Hunke's back.

“There's your change.” The landlord slapped it on the table and waddled out, muttering about locked doors and secret societies . . .

O'Gilroy patted Hunke's pockets and whisked the pistol away. Hunke stood very still, knowing exactly what was poking into his back.

Then O'Gilroy stepped away quickly. “All under control,” and by now his smile was lopsided and nastier. “D'ye want me to shoot them in any partic'lar order?”

Ranklin got carefully to his feet, unsure about his knees. “Give me my pistol.” Even to himself, his voice sounded unnatural.

O'Gilroy snapped open Hunke's gun – it was a big military-calibre revolver – to check that it was loaded, then passed over Ranklin's smaller weapon. The simple feel of it in the hand flowed straight to his knees, stiffening them. His hand clenched and he almost shot a dent in the wall.