All Honourable Men

by Gavin Lyall

  But it was only from this one position, at the top of the slope, that O’Gilroy and Bertie could see round the curve of the bed to Zurga’s gun. Moving down would unsight them, and they couldn’t go higher, only out onto the open plateau.

  “I’ll go forward,” O’Gilroy said. “Jest ten yards – metres – should be enough. After this,” he added, as Zurga fired.

  The rocks up here were few and small, so they crushed themselves into the pine needles and unyielding soil behind inadequate tree-trunks, feeling horribly naked.

  Shrapnel tore through the branches overhead, thudded into O’Gilroy’s tree and kicked up earth a few inches from his cowering nose.

  “Are you unhurt?” Bertie called.

  “That and moving both.” O’Gilroy began a snake-like crawl forward, zigzagging around tree-trunks and their bulging, clutching roots. At least with his age, shape and infantry training he should be better than Bertie at this. He had thought of leaving his rifle behind, but to let go of it was a form of surrender. That was why men threw away their weapons when they panicked and ran.

  The thud of Ranklin’s gun made him stop and, cautiously, slowly – it was movement that caught the eye – raise his head to watch the shell burst.

  Zero the gun on the aiming point, pull pin, load, close breech, “Retti!” – and wait impatiently for the whistle and its corrections . . . They were down to five shells now, and perhaps even when they were on target, the high explosive would bury itself in soft sand and burst like a damp firecracker . . .

  Such waiting gave you too much time to think . . . Then peep-peep-peep: on line but too short. He corrected up twenty-five metres. “Fire!”

  O’Gilroy had gone at least ten yards, finding a good position behind a fallen tree, but slightly down slope so that he had to half-stand to see. Only he wasn’t going to stand until he heard Ranklin fire. Before then, Zurga was due to fire at him – only he seemed to be taking his time.

  Thud-thud – an echo? Or Zurga trying to time his own shell to reach O’Gilroy at the one moment he must be watching? Whatever it was, he had to stand now – but as he stretched up the shrapnel banged almost overhead, and the upright tree beside him exploded splinters in his face. Blinded, he ducked instinctively for cover, hearing dimly the unseen crump of Ranklin’s shell, but muddled by the memory of another sound, a shot, nearby . . .

  “Did ye see where that one went?”

  Silence.

  “Are ye hit?”

  More silence, while O’Gilroy found his left cheek was grazed and bleeding, but his eyes unhurt. He rolled cautiously to look back.

  A rifle cracked, someone gave a choked yell from up on the plateau, and Bertie called: “A Turk had come up the cliff. I am sorry, he distracted me. He will not distract me again.”

  So it had been a rifle shot that filled his face with splinters. Pretty adventurous of an ordinary soldier to have scaled the wall of the ravine to out-flank them. But all he’d achieved was making them miss one shell-burst. Ranklin would just have to fire another.

  Wait a minute: an ordinary soldier would never be adventurous alone, it wasn’t what he was trained or allowed to do. O’Gilroy opened his mouth to shout a warning.

  Every battery commander knew this impatience: are you blind or just asleep up there in the observation post?.

  Or, in this case, of course, just dead?

  They heard the second rifle shot, but intermittent shots had been coming from along the riverbed all the time.

  “Devil with it,” Ranklin said. “We’ll have to stick on the same aim.” Which would bring them down to four shells. “Fire!”

  The second Turk’s shot and the firing of Ranklin’s gun were almost simultaneous. O’Gilroy saw Bertie sprawl out from behind his tree, was aware of where the rifle flash had come from, but then had, had to turn away to watch Ranklin’s fall of shot. A second rifle bullet slammed into the trunk of the tree he was sheltering behind, and instinctively he sucked in his belly to make himself even thinner . . .

  A flash winked behind the gun, blotted out immediately by erupting earth and dust. If that was over, it was only by mere feet, not worth bothering with. He flopped back behind his fallen trunk, dragged in breath, and began blowing peep-peep-peep-peep-peep-peep . . .

  Then he reached for his rifle and started crawling. And now we’ll see how Turkish Army training fits you to meet a real soldier . . .

  Exultantly, Ranklin lost count of the peeps. “We’re on! Ready? Fire!”

  The breech slammed open, the empty case clanged fuming off the trail, a new shell slid home, the breech slammed shut – “Fire!” They were breathing the pure reek of cordite fumes now, but they had become a team, automatic and unthinking, relay, close, fire, open, load, relay . . .

  “Fire!”

  The explosion was stunning. Distant, yet far larger than a shell-burst should be.

  Corinna looked at him, wide-eyed with hope. “What was—?”

  “I’m not sure . . .” But as the silence spun on, as Zurga’s gun didn’t fire, he became sure. “I think we hit their ammunition.”

  Her face was stained with powder-smoke, streaked with grease where she’d rubbed it. “Then have we won?”

  Have we just torn Zurga and half a dozen men – anybody within a dozen yards of that gun – to pieces with red-hot fragments of metal? But she and the Arab were mere gun crew, obeying his orders; it was childish, selfish, to infect them with his own post-action tristesse.

  “Yes, we’ve won. Well done, bloody well done.” He hugged her, pumped the Arab’s hand – that might not be the correct thing to do, but his wide, if forced, grin made the gesture clear. Then he took the last unfired shell from the breech, not wanting it to cook in the hot gun, and rested it carefully on the ground. Then, with the Arab helping, he relaid the gun to point straight along the riverbed, just in case, and sent him back for a couple more shells.

  O’Gilroy and two Arabs came around the bend in the riverbed where the gun was now aimed, a quarter of a mile ahead. Their own Arab came back with two more shells, Ranklin directed him where to put them, then offered him a cigarette and lit one for himself. When O’Gilroy came up, he passed it across and asked: “Bertie?”

  O’Gilroy took the cigarette with a hand that shivered slightly. He took a deep drag, blew smoke, and said slowly, “Coupla fellers – Turk soldiers – tried to flank us, coming up the cliff. Near got me, ’n’ Bertie got that one, then t’other got him. Then I got t’other.” Maybe, by tactful questioning – and half a bottle of whisky – Ranklin would one day learn what had really happened. If it mattered.

  “T’other Arab got himself killed ’fore I got there,” O’Gilroy added. He sucked on the cigarette.

  “Well done, anyhow.”

  “I’d probly have killed Bertie meself anyways,” O’Gilroy said. “Him being a bastard.” Ranklin nodded. You didn’t want to like, even to know, the ones who died. You wanted them just to be things. He looked around. The scattered shell-cases, the dead Arab on the beach, more shell-cases and boxes and the little line of bodies . . . There were plenty of things.

  Oh God, why did You make courage so damned normal? We know You’re on the side of the big battalions – but are You also on the side of the men who send out the battalions? – who use men’s courage to plug the gaps in their own stupidity? Surely You aren’t another of those who believe the more terrible war becomes, the more likely men are to give it up? You’re supposed to know about us! Have You forgotten so much since You last visited us 1900 years ago? Oh God, just stop men being brave!

  Corinna was looking at him. The streaks on her face were now further streaked with tears. Reaction. But she’d want him not to notice. She asked: “Are you all right?”

  “Just praying. I think.” He threw his cigarette on the ground and got brisk. “There’s still getting on for a hundred soldiers up there somewhere. They won’t attack the monastery now but we’re on their line of retreat even if they don’t want to catch us. So you an
d O’Gilroy get on horses – if there’s any still alive – and get back past the Railway tunnel and up to . . . your caravan road.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll disable this gun and go back with . . .” He waved at the three remaining Arabs. “Through the back way to the monastery. And get Lady Kelso out somehow . . .” At least they could now put Miskal on a horse (if they had any left alive) and move off to. . . their village? Or haul him down to Mersina and a doctor? Somewhere, somehow; he was too drained to worry. “I don’t think we’d better go back through the Railway camp, so if you can get something to meet us on the road . . . And after that, we’d appreciate the hospitality of your – Mr Billings’s – yacht.”

  “Of course.” She looked up the riverbed. “Aren’t we going to . . . bury them?”

  “Digging even one grave takes an age.”

  She turned away and then half-turned back. “Did you hear what I said about Edouard?”

  “I heard. I think it’s . . . just . . . Oh hell. I’m very glad.” They smiled at each other; the past seemed very past.

  28

  The Foreign Office had been built over fifty years later than the Admiralty, so Corbin’s room was more grand than elegant. They sat near the window, just out of the slant of the afternoon sun, the Commander, Ranklin and Corbin himself, nobody from the Admiralty or India Office. Ranklin had asked about this and been told, politely, that it wasn’t his concern.

  Now Corbin was asking: “And this survey map is definitely destroyed?”

  “I burned it myself,” Ranklin said firmly.

  “And you believe that will delay the Baghdad Railway for . . . weeks? Months?”

  “I think you’d have to ask an experienced railway surveyor that.”

  “Umm. I think we’d prefer to go on not having heard of it,” Corbin said. “But we – somebody – is going to have to talk to the French. After all, they have lost a diplomatist. You say he was more, or less, than that – which seems borne out by their rather guarded manner in making enquiries about him – but nevertheless prima facie a diplomatist, so something has to be said. Would it be best if you–” his look switched between the Commander and Ranklin“– had a word with your French counterparts and left them to tell the Quai d’Orsay as much as seemed appropriate?”

  “We will if you like,” the Commander said without enthusiasm.

  “I think it would be best. They may settle for an assurance that he died bravely. I trust that he did?”

  “I don’t know,” Ranklin said. “I was half a mile away.”

  Corbin looked irritated, so Ranklin shrugged. “I expect so. Men usually do.”

  Satisfied, Corbin nodded. “Which seems only to leave the matter of Lady Kelso . . . What do you suggest we should do to express our thanks to her? Bearing in mind that any public acknowledgement of her contribution might bring the whole . . . complex story into the open.” He’d probably been going to say “shabby”, not “complex”.

  Ranklin had known this must come, but that had been no help. “I’m afraid there’s not much I can suggest, except—”

  “She does rather seem to have everything already,” Corbin mused. “The title, the house in the Italian lakes . . .”

  “I think she’d rather like an introduction to English society – at a level suitable to her rank.”

  There was a moment of rather surprised silence. Then Corbin said: “Society . . . Yes, odd how people value that . . . But although, at the Foreign Office, we have to deal with some strange and even weird races, the upper reaches of English society are, thank God, not within our remit. So I’m afraid . . . A warm letter of appreciation from Sir Edward himself, perhaps?”

  It was, as Ranklin had expected, the best they could do. On the way out, he asked: “Will you be letting the Admiralty and India Office know whatever’s ‘appropriate’? Or do they expect us to report to them separately?”

  This time Corbin looked vexed. “The Admiralty will be informed. But the India Office . . . They may have started this thing, but it isn’t any risk to India that concerns us, it’s the Gulf and oil.”

  As they reached the pavement of King Charles Street, the Commander demanded: “What was that about the India Office? We don’t have any dealings with them.”

  “Spying,” Ranklin said cheerfully. “Corbin said the India Office started it. So now we know Gunther sold his secret to Hapgood, not the FO or the Admiralty. I suppose foreigners do tend to overrate our concern for India.”

  “Are you still worrying about van der Brock?”

  “Wouldn’t we like to re-establish good commercial relations with that firm? Their terms seem to be strictly eye-for-an-eye: one of Gunther’s partners wanted to balance their books by killing me. May still want to, for all I know.”

  “We can’t have that” the Commander frowned. “Could you suggest to them that it was the late Monsieur Bertrand Lacan who had Gunther killed? – he was in Paris, just a telephone call away at the time, wasn’t he?”

  Ranklin nodded. “Actually, I think it really was him – or his department or whatever. I think Gunther got his information from an informant in Paris, not Berlin. And from what they said, or didn’t say, to O’Gilroy at Constantinople, I think Gunther’s partners know that.”

  “Fine,” the Commander said cheerfully. “So all you have to do is persuade them that Bertie found out, and Bob’s your uncle.”

  “Suppose,” Ranklin said cautiously, “they ask how Bertie found out?”

  But the Commander refused to be uncheered. “They probably won’t. Anyway, loose ends add veracity. It’s only lies that explain every last detail.”

  “How very true,” Ranklin murmured.

  * * *

  “I believe,” Ranklin said, “that you’re an expert on the rupee?”

  “Oh no, just an amateur, a pure dabbler on the fringes.” Hapgood, the outsider, had picked up the self-deprecation of the genuine insider. Only perhaps he overdid it.

  “But you’ve never seen it in its native habitat? Never visited India?”

  “No-o.” Hapgood was puzzled but kept a smile on his honest, open face.

  “Now might be a good time.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Because I’m going to have to tell Gunther van der Brock’s partner that you betrayed Gunther to the French, had him killed.”

  “I did nothing of the—”

  “Perhaps for what you saw as the best of motives: so that, once Gunther had sold his secret to you, he couldn’t sell it to anyone else. Only – I suppose you had the sense to make it an anonymous message? – you’d have to pretend that he was coming to this Office, not that he’d already been.”

  “I tell you this is abso—!”

  “I suppose you thought that was what a real born-to-rule insider would have done. Charming but ruthless. But you overdid it: more royal than royalty sort of thing. It can be tricky, knowing what to be true to, I know . . . And incidentally, you were wrong about Gunther. He would never have sold the same secret twice. He was, in his way, an honourable man – for purely commercial reasons, no doubt, but in these lax times . . .”

  Hapgood had gone red-faced under his curly fair hair. “I had nothing to do with it. . . And why are you making a fuss about some damned little informer, anyway?”

  “He was a spy – just like me. He spent his life risking his neck and being despised by people like you, and he’d learned to expect that, we all do. That doesn’t leave us much to cling to. But one thing is not being betrayed by the people we work for: we don’t have to stand for that – is that quite clear?”

  Hapgood stared at him, truly bewildered. “But you can’t compare yourself with him . . . You work for—”

  “You don’t understand.” Ranklin nodded to himself and stood up. Hapgood rose, too, towering over him. “And if you don’t understand, don’t meddle . . . I’m serious about visiting India.”

  This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

 
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  Copyright © 1997 by Gavin Lyall

  First published in Great Britain in 1997 by Hodder & Stoughton

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  ISBN: 9781448200559

  eISBN: 9781448201877

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