“You don’t get a fire at the firemen’s ball, huh? It’s a good argument – but I’d like a little more.”
“And what do we get out of it?”
Her smile suggested she was about to make a naughty joke out of that, but then didn’t. “It’s no secret that Britain’s looking for a reliable, controllable source of oil – right?” Then she told him about Lajos Gottlich.
When the resident “expert” poked his head up to top-step level, he saw them both leaning propped against the window-sill, staring at the floor a few yards away. They made a puzzling pair. He was used to elegant women accompanied by short, fat men whose wallets were tall and handsome, but knowing who Corinna was made Ranklin a conundrum.
Corinna glanced his way, fired off a grin and called: “We’re still talking it over. Thank you.”
Roused from his thoughts, Ranklin looked at the picture of Constantinople and said carefully: “I know you have problems with men in the City who aren’t used to talking finance with a woman, but in Turkey . . . they prefer women seldom seen and never heard. Are you going all by yourself?”
“No-o. . .” She swivelled slightly to look out of the window. “No, but I’ve got a connection with the French financial delegation there. Edouard D’Erlon, of D’Erlon Freres, one of the Paris private banks. We’ve done business with them. He’s the son of the firm. He’s also a director of the Imperial Ottoman Bank. That’s the biggest bank in Turkey. Now French-controlled.”
The staccato sentences were like the vibrations of an imminent earthquake. He had barely time to brace himself before it struck.
She stood and faced him. “Pop wants me to marry him, and I think I’m going to have to.”
All Ranklin’s experience as a spy clicked into play. From his expression, she could have been telling him about this wonderful little dressmaker she’d found.
Then, from being clipped and hesitant, she suddenly became voluble. “Ethan, he’s Pop’s main New York partner, had a heart attack last month. He’s got a new young wife (so it serves the old goat right) and he’s talking of retiring to breed horses. That’s got Pop thinking of mortality and dynasty and what happens to the House of Sherring. He’s given up on hoping Andrew will join the bank, so he wants to breed an heir from me. And he reckons Edouard’s the right stallion, good banking blood on both sides, see? And later, maybe some sort of merger. That sort of thing’s coming anyway. It’s the only way the private banks can survive. The world’s getting too rich.” She smiled wanly. “Hadn’t you noticed?
“If I was a man I could walk out on Pop and with my experience any bank would take me on, maybe offer me a partnership straight off, let me owe them for it. But as a woman, people only deal with me because I’m Pop’s daughter. So I need him, I need the House of Sherring, if I’m going to stay in the game.
“So it’s the money, in a silly kind of way. I’ll always have enough for myself, unless Pop goes completely bust, but when I marry Edouard, Pop’ll settle enough on me so I can buy my own partnership, properly, carry on as I am. Better than I am. That’s the deal. It’s unfair and Pop knows it and he’s got me over a barrel.”
During all this, Ranklin had more or less got his feelings formed up and ready for inspection. He had, he told himself, always known it couldn’t last. Only he’d thought it would end tomorrow, never today. “What’s this chap Edouard like?”
“Oh, perfectly civilised, pleasant company, lousy taste in objets d’art but that’s French bankers for you, a bit younger than you, a bit taller-”
“Sounds like a bargain. We always knew we weren’t permanent. I mean – what future have you got with a captain of . . . whatever I’m a captain of, these days?”
Deceived by the quietness of their tone, the “expert” reappeared, smiling and salesmanlike. Neither of them noticed.
“You’re being noble,” Corinna said accusingly. “You’re being self-sacrificing.”
“I’m being sensible and rational.”
“God, how I hate self-sacrificing, sensible men. They’re so righteous, so unfair!”
“I’m just facing up to things,” Ranklin protested. “There really isn’t any way we could make a proper marriage-”
“And that’s another thing! You never even asked me to marry you! Oh no, you were quite happy just using me whenever it took you fancy. Well, let me tell you-”
The “expert” almost fell down the stairs before a stray thunderbolt hit him.
“For God’s sake, using you? What d’you mean? As I recall-”
“I wouldn’t marry you if the alternative was the Spanish Inquisition.”
“Isn’t that just what I was saying? It would be-”
“I’m going to marry Edouard. And I had a plan, but I’m not so sure I’ll bother with it, now.”
“That’s fine. I think you should marry Edouard. It’s the sensible thing.”
“Don’t you even want to hear my plan?”
“Only if you want to tell me.” Ranklin was being so upright that you could have moored the British Empire to him.
“I don’t think I’ll do it now, but what I was going to do was, just before I marry – I can time this – you get me pregnant, so there’s a fifty-fifty chance the heir to Sherrings and maybe D’Erlons too will be our son. How about that?”
Ranklin gaped, horrified, appalled. In all his years as a soldier, then as a spy, he had learnt a lot about what men can do to each other. But women. . .
All his training fell away. “You can’t. . . I mean . . . that is unthinkable!”
She grinned, happy that at last she’d shaken him out of his reasonableness. “Nonsense, this isn’t cricket, nothing so serious. It would just be playing their game with our own twist.”
“My God, I need a drink,” Ranklin said weakly.
“Yes, you do look a bit that way. We’d better get you one.”
As they went down the stairs, Ranklin said grimly: “On the North-West Frontier, the Pathan women come out and dispatch wounded British soldiers, slowly. Kipling has a poem about it.”
“No kidding? Usually he gets his women wrong.”
4
Ranklin was sitting in the flat at the end of a gloomy, misty day – but a windless one, more like autumn than March – when the voicepipe shrilled and the hall porter reported that a Mr Tilsey, “a friend of Major Kell’s”, was asking to be shown up. Kell headed their sister, spy-catching, service (and didn’t call himself silly things like “Chief’ or “K”), so Tilsey must be one of his men.
“Ship him up,” he ordered, and went to the decanters on the sideboard to see what he had to offer.
Tilsey turned out to be a thin man of roughly Ranklin’s age, with sandy hair and moustache and generally looking military. Which he was, of course. He would be invisible in a respectable London street or Government building, but little use for keeping watch on foul opium dens in dockland. However, any spy who wanted to frequent foul opium dens was welcome to get on with it unwatched.
They exchanged greetings, Tilsey accepted an Irish whiskey and water, and stood warming himself in front of the fire. “Have you heard of a chap called Gunther van der Brock? He’s-”
“One of the Continental secrets-for-sale boys, otherwise a cigar wholesaler in Amsterdam.”
“That’s the chap.”
“-only it’s a whole firm and I believe they pass that name around, so it may not be our lad.”
“Just under six feet, stout, dark hair, big moustache, spectacles, last seen wearing a light grey town suit and a dark green cloak,” Tilsey recited.
“He’s the one I know. Is he over here?”
“You know him? Good. Yes, he got into town around teatime. He’s staying at the Metropole in Northumberland Avenue, quite openly using his own name. Van der Brock, anyway.”