Curious, Corinna asked bluntly: “Are you jealous of actresses?”
“Envy, envy – it is the great Italian sin. In a world of riches and power, we have only beauty and envy.” He dropped the unfinished cigarette on the floor and was about to stamp it out, then realised his slippers were too thin, and kicked it aside.
“A lot of countries have only got the envy,” she said diplomatically.
He didn’t take it as diplomacy, and snapped: “Italy is not a lot of countries! It is Italy – of Rome and Dante and Venice and Michelangelo . . . And one day I will speak words worthy of them, not in the theatre but in the world, that will rouse Italy again to her true glory. I feel it, that I am alive at this time to do this.”
Startled by his sudden passion, Corinna looked away, through the window. A hunched figure swinging a lantern trudged up the track, going quietly about his job, probably with no idea of how it fitted into the complexity of the shunting yard. And probably content with that. “There’s a lot of people around Europe, quite enough already, I’d think, giving speeches like that-”
“Then Italy deserves the finest and most rousing.”
“D’you mean war?” she asked flatly.
“Yes.” He stood four-square, facing and challenging her. She looked at him for a moment, then turned to the window again and began speaking quietly.
“I know a soldier – an artillery officer. He fought for the Greeks in Macedonia last year, and told me something about it. Mostly it was mud and cold and marching and being hungry and scared. Just moments of excitement, then the same thing only now with men dying of gangrene with no medical aid. And finally – not in his area, thank God – typhus, too, so the ones who lived to go home found they were kept out of their own villages. In the end, you got all the Four Horsemen. He believed it could happen all over Europe.” She looked at him. “To your beautiful Italy, too.”
D’Annunzio seemed unmoved, but nodded to show he had understood. “No. Your friend fought only in a peasant brawl. Serbians, Bulgarians, what do they know of modern war? Even the Greeks – and I love Greece – they cannot be Romans. True war, our war, will indeed be terrible, but it will be quick. Quick as an aeroplane, as a torpedo, as a bullet is quick. And the suffering will be terrible, worse than anyone can imagine. But true courage is to know this and still to go into the fire, seeking to be destroyed – or cleansed and made free and strong once more. Because only the strongest will survive, only a Dante may come back from the Inferno. That is the justice of war. It will be the . . . the . . . crucible that will create our new leaders, to sweep away the old feeble ones elected by bribes from the Camorra.”
She couldn’t argue about the length of any future war; a lot of people believed it would, must, be quickly over. But: “A lot of your bravest and best are going to be the first to get killed. And your crooked politicians and gang bosses aren’t going to get anywhere near a bullet. Be careful they aren’t the only ones left to be your leaders.”
“The fire will destroy many, but it will make more strong those who live. And the people who have been through the fire also, they will never be led by any others.”
His voice stumbled and strained against the barricade of a foreign language, but that only added to his sincerity. And she saw, bursting through the shell of self-indulgence and disrepute, the attraction of the man. Sure he loved himself, but mostly for what he believed he could do, in his art, in his patriotism. He was reaching outside himself, and not always for the nearest woman.
They just come with the mail, she thought, reining in her admiration. So she said in her mildest tone: “Forgive me asking, but had you any specific enemy in mind? – or just a good old war?”
He seemed about to reply, then clamped his mouth shut. And then he said: “Flying machines – such as your brother has made. You have seen the lion in the Piazza San Marco? You remember it has wings? I, Gabriele d’Annunzio, shall give him wings again. I vow it.”
Corinna sat for a while on her bed, picking over their conversation as if summarising it for a report to her father. There was no doubting the sincerity of d’Annunzio’s patriotism any more than its power. It was a smart move to harness that to selling the Oriole. But she had to remember the Falcones were up to something else, something that interested Ranklin and the Bureau. Something that had brought assassins to London. She could only pray they were separate deals – and keep an eagle eye open for a connection.
A couple of hundred miles ahead of them, Ranklin sat on the edge of his non-de luxe sleeper bed and lit a cigarette. He disapproved of smoking in bed, so sitting up was his compromise, despite the Alpine chill. The cigarette was to stop thoughts prowling restlessly through his head and it wasn’t working.
He was glad to be heading out on a new task; such jobs were the core of his new trade. But he was also scared he would find Trieste as recent newspapers drew it: flourishing and prosperous rather than discontented and yearning to riot. And the idea of handing out revolutionary pamphlets at shipyard gates didn’t fit with his image of Senator Falcone. It lacked flamboyance; something was missing.
Did Dagner know what that missing something was? Or had he got his teeth too firmly into his ‘mission’? That wasn’t a good position from which to see the whole picture. And the business of Dagner’s wife . . . Spies are liars; they have to be. But not when they’re so easily proven wrong, like whether their wives are alive or dead. So perhaps his superior hadn’t so much been been lying as . . . as what? No answer he could think of promised him a good night’s sleep.
25
The worried, sleepless hours on the train had caused Trieste to loom ominously. It would be strange and sinister, closed against him – and yet sucking him in. Ranklin felt it would want to trap him, be full of eyes, unseen but all-seeing, waiting to pounce on his slightest mistake.
But now, from the steps of the Excelsior Palace on a sunny morning, the nightmare faded with the sea haze. If Trieste was full of eyes, it was also full of ships, fat Italians, thin Greeks and screeching seagulls. And the most immediate thing likely to pounce on a mistake was the traffic, albeit most still horse- and even ox-drawn except for slow-chugging goods trains that ran along the dockside just across the road.
The long, busy waterfront stretched away on either side. To the right, the bigger ships nestled against the warehouses of the railway yard; to the left lay smaller steamers, trading schooners and fishing boats. And beyond them, somewhere round the point with its stubby lighthouse, were the warship slipways of Stabilimento Tecnico. He was not going to goggle at them, even if it were, physically possible.
Instead, he turned right and right again into the Piazza Grande with its trees, bandstand and cafes, heading vaguely for the Exchange but mostly trying to fit into the city’s pace and mood. Just spending a few pfennigs on a packet of cigarettes helped convince him of some sort of rapport. Because what he was really looking for was the ordinary confidence of an honest man.
Half an hour later he was sitting in a dainty bright cafe with Signor Pauluzzo and two friends who were delighted to chatter to the House of Sherring. And since the name so impressed them, Ranklin lost nothing by explaining that he was both new and junior (and thus didn’t know any juicy high-level gossip).
“The troubles in the south Balkans affect us not at all,” Pauluzzo was claiming. “They have their own ports for what little trade they do. What happens here does not matter to the Carso-” he waved a pudgy hand vaguely eastwards; “-for perhaps 200 kilometres inland. Trieste lives with Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Berlin even. Since the new railway five years ago, each year is a new record in trade. In manufactured goods alone . . .”