Flight From Honour

by Gavin Lyall

  Ranklin raised his eyebrows. “You must have been home on leave at some time in that long?”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t got a home in England,” Dagner corrected gently. “And not even any close relatives here by now.”

  Ranklin scowled inwardly at having forgotten that the Indian Army officers did tend to belong in India. Or thought they did. Dagner had made his name (secretly, that is) playing the “Great Game”, probably disguised as a tribesman on the North-West Frontier, and he looked very much the part. As, of course, he would have had to: lean, dark-haired, a hawk face still bronzed by the sun or the last coating of walnut juice or whatever they used. Now he had come to be the Commander’s deputy and pass on his expertise to the new Bureau and its crew of enthusiastic but as yet mostly amateur agents. Or, as Ranklin preferred to put it, spies.

  Dagner turned from the window. “The Chief was saying yesterday that, in the interests of secrecy, he felt I should be known as Major X.” He might have been slightly embarrassed, but it was difficult to tell with that controlled face. He hurried on: “And, by the same token, you should be Captain Y.”

  Ranklin frowned. “I’m not sure that I want to be Captain Why?”

  “Ah. Yes indeed. Then I suggest you take to signing papers Captain R and present him with a fait accompli when he gets back. Is that the training programme?”

  “No, just the new chaps’ CR’s. I’ll get down to the programme once he’s gone.”

  Dagner smiled as sympathetically as his face allowed. “We must have a chat about our new boys . . . How did you get landed with the training?”

  “I complained once too often about how little I’d been taught myself, and the Commander said Fine, you’re in charge of drawing up a programme, then.”

  “The old Army game. Have you done this sort of thing before?”

  “I did my three years as adjutant.”

  “Splendid,” Dagner murmured. “May I ask what the programme will comprise?”

  Ranklin tried not to look rueful. “I don’t think we can give them more than a light dusting of practical skills: following people and spotting if you’re being followed, lock-picking and so forth.”

  “And its real aim?”

  Ranklin acknowledged this with a nod; a proper training programme should have an ulterior purpose. “To teach them not to be Army officers – which they’ve been learning to be ever since they left school.” And seeing the frown starting on Dagner’s face, added quickly: “Europe’s a civilian society.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. I must get used to that. And nothing we teach them can be as valuable as experience, but . . .” Then, as if wanting to get something off his chest but unsure about whether or not it was a Shameful Episode: “I dined with Sir Aylmer Corbin of the Foreign Office last night. Do you know him?”

  “Met him.” Ranklin quietly began to fill his pipe, watching Dagner’s face. Behind its control, he thought he recognised the look on the faces of men coming out of their first battle: sheer disbelief that the world could be like that.

  “I just can’t accept that I heard what I think I was told. That while I’m in command here, I’m expected to do nothing. Nothing. That the Chief’s great failing was that he would send people to places and do things, and that I was expected to redress the balance . . . Just whose side are those people on?”

  Ranklin tried to radiate sympathy and had a good face for that. In many ways he was the physical opposite of Dagner: fair-haired, shortish but not too tubby, at least not to his own mind, and with a round schoolboy face on which he usually wore a small hopeful smile that adjusted easily to the sympathetic. In any case, the hopefulness was entirely deceptive, belonging with his current “disguise” as a middle-ranking civil servant dedicated to the future of his pension and the Empire. And nobody could now force him back into uniform since he had thankfully shaved the regulation moustache which, even at the age of thirty-eight, had grown only as a juvenile fluff.

  “Some do say,” he said, sucking experimentally on his pipe, “that, being the Foreign Office, they represent foreigners. Myself, I think that’s too simple, because whatever the FO is, it isn’t simple.”

  Dagner’s smile was cold and brief. “But we’re an official Government department – or Bureau – as well. What do they expect of us?”

  “Oh, I think Sir Aylmer was quite straight with you there: they want nothing. Or, at most, to take us over themselves and disband us. But I fancy that the sub-committee which thought us up foresaw that; that’s why they put us under the protection of the big, bold Admiralty and with a Naval man in charge.

  “I suppose—” he put a match to his pipe and began puffing up a smokescreen; “—that they see our very existence as a standing reproof: that they can’t learn everything by their own methods. And to be fair, we may occasionally tread on their toes. Perhaps the problem with Europe is that, if we’re caught, we don’t usually get quietly tortured to death and dumped in a ditch. It can happen, of course, but we’re more likely to get a well-publicised trial producing a Diplomatic Incident, which means our ambassador there gets a roasting, the FO here gets a wigging from the Cabinet and His Majesty – and we sit in the shadows saying smugly: ‘But we don’t exist, you can’t blame us.’ That’s the way the FO sees it, anyway.”

  A true, slow smile broke across Dagner’s stem face. “Thank you, Captain . . . R,” he said formally. “I can see I’ve got a lot to learn. But the Chief said that I could rely on you, as the senior agent present, for an uncompromising view of our work and its problems.”

  That startled Ranklin. Senior agent? – he had only been with the Bureau for nine months, only “home” in London – which had never been his home – for the past two weeks. Granted they had been busy months, and he was probably the oldest in the office bar the Commander and Dagner himself, but senior ? Of course, Dagner had said “present”, so it might be that the Continent was crawling with the Bureau’s more experienced and skilled spies, too valuable to keep in London. But Ranklin doubted it.

  “Nice of him to say so,” he mumbled.

  “So I hope you’ll forgive me if I rely rather heavily on you until I find my feet.”

  “Oh, quite, yes, of course.”

  Then the Commander came out of his inner office to shake hands with Dagner while still patting the shoulder of a rather tearful stenographer who was telling him to be sure not to get into trouble with the nasty Germans, and calling for someone to find a taxi.

  Finally he shook Ranklin’s hand, said: “Get everything organised so that I can ruin it when I get back, Captain,” and chuckled loudly. “And don’t forget that Sir Caspar Alerion’s coming to lecture you all on Friday. Give him my regards and apologies. Don’t come down to see me off.” Then he drew and flourished his swordstick, nearly emasculating a hanging light, and was gone in a swirl of green cloak.

  Nobody wanted to be the first to speak after that exit. Ranklin began cleaning out his pipe, gradually others began a gentle bustle, and then Dagner said: “Very well, then. I suppose I’d better say a few words to set the pace for the coming weeks. Captain, would you make sure everybody’s here in, say, five minutes?” He went through into the Commanders sound-proofed inner room.

  Ranklin directed the rearrangement of chairs into a rough line. Three of the new recruits were Army officers, one a Marine, and all around thirty years old. They had trickled in over the past week and he knew very little about them apart from their reports. And CR’s were tricky things, supposedly frank assessments by former CO’s, but seen by the reportee himself. It helped if you knew the CO’s – which he didn’t – and could read between the lines, which he had been trying to do.

  He gave a mental shrug; whatever the CR’s said, these were the people he had to try and train. And it wasn’t your seniors who forced you into believing in what you were doing, it was having damned juniors whom you mustn’t disillusion.

  After precisely five minutes, Dagner reappeared. He stood looking at them for a moment,
cautiously tested a table for its solidity, then sat on the corner of it, swinging one long leg. “Smoke if you want to,” he invited them, then began: “We – you and I – are all new boys in this Bureau. Although I’ve played the Game out in India for a few years, already I’ve realised that I’ve got a great deal to unlearn in the very different climate of Europe. So we’re starting at the bottom of the ladder together.”

  He had an easy confidence, Ranklin conceded. It took that to admit ignorance to subordinates yet be sure you wouldn’t lose their respect.

  “But one thing I think I shall find is the same: that there comes a time when all the scaffolding of authority falls away and you have to stand alone. And it is not how you cope with that loneliness that will make you an effective agent but how you do more than cope, how you decide and act.” He paused, then went on thoughtfully, almost diffidently: “It can help to remember that at such moments you are working directly for your country. The link is simple and unimpeded. I suggest you let that be your guide.

  “Now—” he relaxed and let a small, friendly smile show; “—we aren’t going to send you out equipped with only a few noble thoughts. Captain . . . R is laying on a training programme to give you some basic knowledge and skills that you’ll find useful in the field. That will begin—” A telephone rang and Ranklin almost knocked over his chair in reaching it.

  “I thought I asked you not to put any calls through here,” he whispered huskily.

  The telephone girl was unimpressed. “It’s Mr O’Gilroy, sir.”

  “All right, I’ll come out there. Don’t lose him.” He hung up, nodded apologetically at Dagner and tiptoed out.

  The outermost room of the suite was both spartan and had the Feminine Touch, being staffed by girls, and one widow, of good naval and military families. All wore a semi-uniform of dark skirt and demure high-necked white blouse fixed with a bow-tie or cameo brooch. Somebody – perhaps they had organised a rota – brought in fresh flowers for each desk every day, and there were cheerfully dull prints of Scottish landscapes on the walls.

  The telephonist indicated a spare instrument, then did something brisk and technical with her wires and plugs. Ranklin picked up the earpiece and said: “Hello?”

  O’Gilroy sounded very stilted and exaggeratedly Irish. “Matt? Matt? Is it yeself, Matt?”

  “It’s me.” He settled himself for an obscure and roundabout conversation; O’Gilroy wisely didn’t trust telephone operators. “Where are you speaking from?”

  “The hotel. Jest got into town. Seems like nobody was meeting us.”

  Blast Scotland Yard. They’d promised to have someone ready to take over from O’Gilroy the moment he came ashore at Harwich. Arranging that had been a courtesy on the Bureau’s part, to demonstrate that their people were not “active” on British soil.

  “Sorry about that. I’ll remind them. Did you have a good crossing?”

  “Wasn’t exactly a storm.” That probably meant a flat calm; O’Gilroy was a dedicatedly bad sailor.

  “Any trouble in Brussels?”

  “The feller was right about having problems. Near had a nasty accident with an aeroplane.”

  “An aeroplane?” How on earth . . . But the telephone system wasn’t private enough for explanations. “Was anybody hurt?”

  “Nobody we know. I thought it was mebbe in the papers.” Come to think of it, Ranklin had noticed a small item about a fatal aeroplane crash in Brussels. But he hadn’t read more – it was a common enough headline – and certainly hadn’t connected it with O’Gilroy’s work.

  “Anyway, you’re back. Which hotel are you at?”

  “The Ritz.”

  “The Ritz? Good Lord, with dinner, that could cost him a pound a night.”

  “I’m thinking he’d never notice.”

  “Then I don’t suppose you’re in any hurry to leave, but I’ll get on to the Yard anyway. Come back here when you’re relieved.”

  “Thanks, Matt. I’ll say goodbye, then. Goodbye.”

  Ranklin hung up, thinking: It’s unfamiliarity with telephones that makes O’Gilroy sound so stilted, but can it be the electricity that somehow emphasises his accent? If so, and you had somebody whose English was good but you suspected he was foreign, then perhaps . . . Then he shook his head and asked the girl to get him through to Scotland Yard.

  He got back to the agents’ office just as the meeting was breaking up and went up to apologise to Dagner, who waved it aside. “You didn’t miss anything. Was it important?”

  “It was O’Gilroy—”

  “Ah, our wild Fenian boy.”

  “— and Scotland Yard losing its notebook. I wouldn’t call him a Fenian.”

  “I’m looking forward to meeting him. I heard you captured and tamed him yourself single-handed, on a mission to the Irish jungle. Come in and tell me a little about him – and yourself.” He led the way and sat at the Commander’s table, which briefly startled Ranklin. Yet in the Army, when the CO moved out, his number two moved in; logical and sensible. Perhaps it was that the room was so personal to the Commander, cluttered with gadgets, maps and his display case of pistols – everything except paperwork.

  Dagner clearly didn’t believe in paperwork either, because he didn’t consult any before saying: “I understand that, a year ago, you joined the Greek Army’s artillery and fought in the Salonika campaign. How did that come about? – and was it why the Chief recruited you?”

  By now, Ranklin could recite his recent past in the flat tone of someone reading an engineering manual. “I had to resign my commission here because I was about to go bankrupt. Nothing dramatic, just that my brother made a mistake in the stock market and I’d guaranteed him. And the only thing I know about is the Guns, so I looked around for the nearest war. I went to Greece because – the English always side with the Greeks, don’t they? Byron and so on. It’s probably the classical education. The Commander had me brought back and made an arrangement with my creditors and had me reinstated here.”

  He was curious to see if Dagner acknowledged that recruitment as pure blackmail and what it said about the finest secret service in the world. But he made no comment. Presumably the Commander would have told him most of it anyway, so perhaps he just wanted to know how it looked from Ranklin’s side. He nodded. “You must tell me more about that campaign one day. Now, how about O’Gilroy?”

  “He was in the infantry for ten years, took his discharge as a corporal. I first met him in South Africa, when we were bunged up in Ladysmith – in the siege. Then I ran into him again in Ireland when he was certainly working for the Fenians or something like them. That ended with him killing one of them, his own nephew, actually, and he became rather non grata over there. I think the Commander took him on because he thought his experience – of outwitting us, I suppose – would be useful.”

  It did no harm to emphasise that it had been the Commander’s decision. And there was more to the story than that, but that was for O’Gilroy to tell, if he chose.

  Dagner nodded again. “There’s nothing like secret service work for breeding myths and legends. I wonder if it’s that we’re the last place that isn’t swamped with paperwork? If they’d had paper and typewriting machines in Ancient Greece we’d never have heard of their gods and heroes, just their orders of the day and ration returns. D’you trust him?”

  “I do.”

  When Ranklin didn’t say any more, Dagner asked: “Could he tell our counter-intelligence people anything useful about his erstwhile colleagues in Ireland?”

  “‘Could’ I don’t know. Certainly he didn’t.”

  Dagner raised his eyebrows gently. “And you trust him.”

  “I do tend to trust a man who refuses to betray his friends.”

  “Yes.” But it was another meaningless sound and Ranklin sensed that Dagner was shelving rather than concluding the topic. “Now, to the rest of our flock: what do you make of the new boys?”

  “So far, no more than what their CR’s tell us. If there�
��s a common denominator, it’s that they all started off as go-getters—” He saw Dagner’s puzzlement at the American slang and made a hasty revision; “—recommended for accelerated promotion, then something got lost along the way. Two of them were down to ‘delayed promotion’ by the end. Collectively, I’d say their last CO’s were only too glad to be rid of them.”

  “Quite,” Dagner agreed. “Not exactly the cream of the crop.”

  “In the British Army – I don’t know about the Indian – you won’t get the best regimental officers volunteering for Intelligence work. No promotion, no medals.”

  “We certainly don’t want glory-hunters . . . But at least they volunteered.”

  Ranklin said nothing. Army interpretations of the word “volunteer” would fill a lexicon. Technically, he himself had volunteered. Dagner continued: “The trouble is, I haven’t your experience of command, of bringing up young officers. I was working so much by myself. So I may be no judge . . . But they seem bright enough.”

  Ranklin nodded. “And they’re what we’ve got.”

  “Quite. Now – I’d better know what’s going on. What was O’Gilroy doing in Belgium?”

  “He was in Brussels looking at some documents – technical drawings – a commercial firm of spies had offered for sale. And some Italian senator who was coming to a meeting at our Foreign Office had gone to our embassy there and said he thought his life was in danger and could he have an armed escort? They asked us, and O’Gilroy was free, so he took it on. I gather that there was an incident, but this was on the telephone . . .”

  “So the Foreign Office can occasionally find a use for us . . . May I assume they’ll be told the job was properly carried out? Good. But did you say a firm of commercial spies?”

  Yes, Ranklin realised, that must sound a bit odd. I accept them because they were there when I came into this business and everything seemed odd. “You find such people, particularly in Brussels and Vienna, buying and selling secrets. Really, it’s no more than a formal version of the informers you probably had in the bazaars at Peshawar and Lhandi Kotal. Some are better than others, of course, but they are useful on the technical side, now we seem to be living in an age of Secret Weapons. What with submarines and torpedoes and mines and all sorts of flying machines, it’s risky to disbelieve anything.”