Corinna said she’d decide when she’d seen how Andrew was. Did the telephone work?
But of course the telephone worked. Probably.
Ranklin had eaten far worse breakfasts than the Castello dungeons provided, and paid good money for some of them, too. It wasn’t elaborate: coffee, bread and a few slices of spicy sausage, but it was all fresh. And come to think of it, it might be more trouble to store things until they’d gone stale than just send down a helping of whatever the Castello guard was getting – particularly since they might well be the only prisoners. He didn’t believe Novak about the dungeons being crowded. The way the lamp-smoke had stained the wall showed this one hadn’t been used since it was whitewashed, and that was weeks ago. You couldn’t be in the Army and not be an expert on whitewash.
“Tell me,” the Count said, “that I only dreamt we had smoked our last cigarettes.”
“No dream, I’m afraid.” Ranklin displayed his empty case.
“Ah me,” the Count sighed. “How can we continue the fine old tradition of bribing prison guards if we do not meet them? Never mind. Soon my friends will know where I am, and then . . . I will send in cigarettes to you if they allow it. English ones may not be possible, but . . .”
“Have you really got friends in high places?” Ranklin asked innocently.
The Count seemed pained. “I have friends everywhere; you must not think I am blinded by my noble birth. But, as I am sure you already know, the title of a Venetian count is quite equivalent to marquis from anywhere else. And I admit that I find my best friends are those who understand that simple fact. So yes, indeed I have friends in what you call ‘high places’.” He glanced at Pero, apparently asleep on his cot, but by now seemed to have accepted him at face value. Still, he lowered his voice. “I may also tell you, in the greatest confidence, that I have taken trouble to impress those friends with my loyalty to the Emperor. I even applied for Austrian nationality. Probably they will not grant it, no matter what they say their policy is, but that is of no consequence. What greater proof of loyalty can they ask?”
Ranklin grunted. He couldn’t see the point of such a move. But at least he had the Count talking in confidence. The trick now was not to rush, let the man take his time. He suggested: “Possibly they assumed it was only to cause them embarrassment.”
“Perhaps – but they could not help being flattered that a man of my birth should ask to become an Austrian citizen. I mean,” he added quickly, “not a citizen in the French meaning. I would, of course, retain my title. It has a most splendid history. My great-grandfather . . .” And Ranklin had to smile and nod his way through a personalised Almanac de Gotha. But, he told himself, there’s still time. One thing you weren’t short of in jail was time.
Signora Falcone’s crisp instructions and the chink of gold coin got a new set of wheels – they hadn’t a suitable tyre, or so they said once they smelled the gold – on the Oriole by lunchtime. That left the afternoon for O’Gilroy to get in an hour’s practice, refuel, and fly the aeroplane over to the pasture across the road from the villa. Signora Falcone was very insistent that the demonstration flight should start from there. It all seemed a bit odd – or foreign – and O’Gilroy’s suspicions were showing healthy growth. But his mind was a pretty suspicious place at any time, and he concentrated on learning the Oriole.
He had been left a picnic of bread, cheese and something called ‘salami’, since the nearest restaurant on the Lido was nearly a mile away and probably thought more of its reputation than of his suit. Then the local mechanics helped him start up the Oriole, turn her into wind – and he was on his own.
After half an hour of weaving and banking at three thousand feet he felt confident enough to start practising landings. With its high wing, there was little tendency to “float” – scoot along just above the ground with the far wall getting closer. She just sat down firmly and stayed down. But coming in for the last one, he felt a flood of stickiness over his left foot, saw there was no drip showing in the oil-feed glass, and just scraped over the near wall with a dead engine.
They pushed the aeroplane into the half-shade of a shed and he smoked a cigarette while waiting for the engine to cool. There was no doubt about the problem – his shoe squelched with castor oil (the oil tank was just above the rudder bar) – only the solution. The mechanics were fascinated by the short length of fractured pipe, once he had got it unscrewed; they just didn’t have any ideas about mending or replacing it.
The dungeon lunch confirmed Ranklin’s view that they were getting straight soldiers’ fare: some sort of stew with rice and a plate of figs, with a flask of wine. And again not stale; the wine tasted only a few days old. He and the Count exchanged horrified glances at the first sip, then watched Pero lap it up, and flop back on his cot snoring.
But by now, the Count was getting agitated. He consulted his watch every ten minutes – Ranklin had given up on that, lapsing back to timing himself by the bugle calls – and muttered: “But my friends, one of my friends, must have asked where I am by now? Come, I must walk.”
So they paced solemnly around the perimeter of the cell, just as if it were the Piazza Grande except for a detour past the latrine bucket.
“What does that peasant of a police captain achieve in keeping us here?” the Count fretted.
“Last night, you said it could be until the Oberdan ‘season’ is over – another six weeks or so.”
“For you, yes. But why me? And he does not even question me. Why not? If I am arrested I have a right to be questioned, to explain. Not, of course, that I have to explain myself to that uniformed monkey.”
“Maybe he’s afraid of you.”
That brought a spring to the Count’s slow pace. “Yes, yes. Well may he be afraid of me. And soon he will have even better reason.”
Ranklin seized the opportunity and put on a carefully worried voice. “Perhaps it’s this place that’s getting me down, but I can’t help worrying about the aeroplane, whether it’s truly capable of the job . . .”
The Count glanced at him sharply. “Giancarlo has seen it, he has flown in it. And he is an expert. Why should it not be capable?”
“Oh, I don’t know . . . I know very little about aeroplanes, but flying all the way from Turin . . .”
“Not from Turin. They take it to Giancarlo’s house by Venice. They did not tell you?”
“Oh good, they did decide on Venice,” Ranklin said hastily. He gave a satisfied nod as if a minor detail had been cleared up and they strolled on, round and round.
But now he was beginning to fret, too. He’d thought of having plenty of time, but it was passing. And perhaps he’d subconsciously been thinking that as he’d been first in, he must be first out – and that was nonsense. At any moment, one of the Count’s friends might whisk him away, ending any revelations.
It was time to stir things up. “And I hope,” he said, “there’s enough ammunition for the Lewis guns?”
The Count stopped dead. “The Lewis guns?” He sounded surprised but, significantly, didn’t need to ask what they were.
“The two Falcone got from Britain.”
“He told you?” The surprise in the Count’s voice was almost horror.