O’Gilroy nodded. “So whose side’s Italy on?”
Ranklin sighed. Why did everyone assume a country had to be on one “side” or another? It was like a form-room feud among eleven-year-olds. Or, he concluded gloomily, like modern Europe. “Theoretically, she’s allied with Germany and Austro-Hungary, but I doubt Italy’s worked out where her self-interest really lies, and meanwhile Austria’s her traditional enemy.”
He got up and tracked his finger down the long Adriatic, in places less than a hundred miles wide, that separated Italy from the Dalmatian coast and the witches’ cauldron of the Balkans behind it. “You can see why Italy has to worry about who owns that coastline. And Austria owns both Pola and Trieste – which is mostly Italian inhabitants, I think – right opposite Venice and only four hours’ steaming time away.”
“An hour by aeroplane.”
“If that matters.” Ranklin was getting fed up with aeroplanes creeping into every conversation. He sat down again.
O’Gilroy went on gazing at the map. “And ye said Italy was into Africa?”
“A couple of years ago they invaded Libya, which was sort-of-Turkish. The Turks pulled out, but the local Arabs went on fighting back. Still are, I believe.”
“Now-” O’Gilroy waved his fork to halt Ranklin whilst he finished a mouthful of his steak-and-kidney pie; “-now was that where they used aeroplanes in war the first time?”
Ranklin was about to declare a total ban on aeronautics, then recalled reading something about that. “Ye-es, I think so. I don’t think they contributed much . . . But,” he admitted, “the desert would be a good place for aerial scouting.”
“Falcone was telling about it. Him and other fellers with money got together with some aviators and made up a squadron – called it a ‘flotilla’ – to send to Africa.”
“Very patriotic of him,” Ranklin said, thinking it the sort of romantic but useless gesture Italians did so well.
“They was shooting from the aeroplanes as well as scouting.”
“A great help that must have been,” Ranklin said, imagining aiming a rifle from a moving aeroplane.
“Ye’d be needing a machine-gun to be much use, sure, but-”
“What about the weight? The Maxim gun runs to around a hundred pounds – and one thing I do know about aeroplanes is that they can’t carry much weight.”
“They’ll get better,” O’Gilroy said defensively. “And machine-guns’re getting lighter. There was talk in Brussels about one invented by an American. Lewis, his name was. Weighs jest twenty-five pounds with a magazine, not a belt, so it should fit an aeroplane jest right.”
“Really?” Ranklin was affronted, since he prided himself on keeping up with weaponry gossip; it was his bedrock of knowledge in the shifting sands of Intelligence.
O’Gilroy’s voice took on an infuriating tinge of superiority. “Been around some time, I’m thinking. Anyways, they’re making it in Belgium, same as Browning pistols, but it’s not going so well, I heard, so BSA here’s making ’em, too.”
“Birmingham Small Arms?” Now Ranklin really was annoyed: it had got as far as Birmingham without him noticing.
“That’s right,” O’Gilroy smiled. “I was talking about it on the boat, and Falcone made out he’d never heard of it, but he was carrying a catalogue of ’em in his baggage.”
Ranklin frowned, but no longer in annoyance. “So the Senator’s looking for aeroplanes and hiding the fact that he’s heard of a lightweight machine-gun. D’you think he wants Italy to have a secret armada of armed aeroplanes?”
O’Gilroy shrugged but was obviously taken by the idea. “And other fellers’ secrets being our business . . .
“Quite. Mind,” Ranklin remembered, “Major Dagner’s seeing the Senator for himself, so he may come back with the whole story. Still, it’s something to watch out for if you’re still taking the Senator to Brooklands this weekend.”
O’Gilroy got up to find his cigarettes and an ashtray, asking over his shoulder: “What d’ye make of the Major?” The hand-crafted casualness of his tone suggested that Ranklin would have no qualms about discussing a senior with a junior.
“I fancy he knows the game inside out; he’s been at it far longer than either of us.”
“In India.”
“Espionage is adjusting successfully to circumstances. And in India the consequence of failure to adjust can be more prolonged and painful than in most parts of Europe.”
“Ye know some lovely long words, Matt.” O’Gilroy sighed. “I’ll give ye some short ones: he don’t trust me.”
“In India,” Ranklin said thoughtfully, “the Intelligence wallahs may have had more choice of volunteers. He’ll have to learn that here, he uses who he’s got. Like you. And me.”
O’Gilroy breathed smoke slowly. “And why d’ye all call it a ‘game’?”
“To try and get the English to take it seriously.”
8
Looking back on that Thursday, Ranklin came to the self-pitying conclusion that the only person who enjoyed it less than himself might have been Princess Sophia of Saxe-Weimar, because she committed suicide that day. On the other hand, she thereby let herself off part of the day. He got it all.
It began innocuously with Dagner giving the new recruits a brief, chatty but pointed talk based on his own experience – in this instance, with journalists.
“Resist your immediate instinct to despise them, borne are pretty good at their job, and all of them have been doing that job longer than you have yours, at the moment. But remember that journalists have opinions, even if they may try not to let them show in print. And more: after years of listening to the policy-makers, they want – perhaps secretly, even unconsciously – to make policy themselves. One way, of course, is to publish a demand for such-and-such a policy. But that’s open, nailing your colours to the mast – and their editors may not let them do it anyway. The other way is not to publish: To support the policy-makers they believe in by withholding unpleasant facts about them, facts that might ruin their careers and place in society. And those, gentlemen, are the stories you want to hear. They may be well worth the price of a drink.”
He paused, swinging one long leg from his perch on the edge of a table. “Only – don’t fall into the same trap. Don’t conceal, in your own reports, the nastier side of people you have come to like or believe in. Show you are more reliable than journalists by reporting without fear or favour, and leave policy to your country’s policy-makers.”
He left them to clip or precis a pile of learned foreign-affairs journals, and Ranklin to get on with drafting the training programme.
Lock-picking, he wrote. Probably safe-breaking was an art that took years to acquire, but it would be useful if they could open ordinary doors, drawers and luggage without leaving traces. Perhaps Scotland Yard could recommend a reliable criminal to give a demonstration . . .
Forgery: The Commander presumably had access to the Government printers for elaborate and official-looking documents, but a spy in the field might need to alter a name on a passport or write his own letter of introduction. Again, the Yard should be of help, but British forgers might be a little insular. They really needed to study the slanting French script, the upright and rather childish Italian styles, the angular German . . .
Personal weapons . . . But then Dagner came out of the inner room with a letter from someone in the War Office. “I’ve got a chap here asking us to explore the suitability of the terrain in Schleswig for cavalry operations. He says we’re the experts on invasion by sea – are we? And is somebody proposing to invade North Germany?”
Ranklin pushed back his chair and relit his pipe. “As I understand it, an important argument for setting up the Bureau was to explore the threat of being invaded from North Germany-”