She gave a shiver and was silent for a few moments, then: “I wanted them dead, but . . . We made you kill them, didn’t we?” She stared at him as if they’d never met before. “How can you stand it? All this killing people? You don’t show anything!” She looked up at O’Gilroy, who was making a slow business of counting his unfired cartridges. “Neither of you!”
“You’re not supposed to show it,” Ranklin said.
“But you must – Oh God!” She jumped up and fled up the stairs. Ranklin stood, looking after her hesitantly. There was a burst of chatter by the front door; servants were bringing in Falcone in a wheelchair.
O’Gilroy replaced the automatic’s magazine with a loud snap.
“You don‘t show anything,” Ranklin said, “and you don’t feel anything.”
O’Gilroy smiled faintly. “Is that an order, Captain?”
“I suppose it is.”
33
The rising sun threw long shadows from the pillars of the back portico and the cypresses beyond, there was coffee on the terrace table and the air was fresh but with an underlying warmth. In all, a perfect Italian autumn day if you could ignore the shattered french windows, a few bullet-holes and two bodies stowed somewhere back in the house. And Ranklin had no trouble ignoring them; they were strictly Falcone’s problem. He took another gulp of coffee.
Signora Falcone was also back there, placating the servants, who had been shut up in their basement rooms, and sending out breakfast in dribs and drabs. D’Annunzio had been locked in his room and probably asleep until the shooting started. They had caught a glimpse of him in a vivid bathrobe, demanding explanations; now, presumably, he was getting properly dressed. Falcone himself sat at the table in his wheelchair, still with a rug over his knees, looking pale and serious. But then, he had problems. Ranklin put some smoked ham on a piece of bread.
“The last meal I had,” he recalled, “was in jail.”
O’Gilroy smiled. “That’s the first time for ye, isn’t it, Captain? How did ye take to it?”
Ranklin reflected. “Slow. And mostly quiet.”
“And how did ye get out?”
“Talked my way, I suppose.”
O’Gilroy nodded approvingly. “Always best, that.”
Dagner had been sitting quietly. The bang on his head hadn’t been serious, and Ranklin suspected the real pain had been to his pride. You reach an age when you should only get into fights when armed – and then shoot first.
Now Dagner said: “I’d like to hear all about your doings in Trieste, Captain, but time’s getting on.” He looked at Falcone. “When do you think the aeroplane should take off?”
Ranklin felt he’d been told Sorry, the doctor was wrong, you have got cancer. He forced himself to sit upright, trying to make his mind do the same, and managed it in time to hush O’Gilroy with a gesture and say: “Major, may I have a private word with you?”
Dagner gestured gracefully at Falcone. “I don’t think we have any secrets by now . . .”
“Major, I’m your second-in-command! Can we please talk?”
“Very well.” Dagner followed him to the other side of the terrace, past the french windows. Ranklin was about to start when he realised a dutiful servant had followed, carrying their coffee cups. But he put them down on another table and went back.
They didn’t sit. Ranklin said: “Surely the whole thing’s off. D’Annunzio was going to drop wild rabble-rousing pamphlets from the aeroplane – or did you know about the aeroplane, and him, from the start?”
“I’m afraid I did,” Dagner smiled gravely. “But I thought it best to conceal that. You seemed to have rather fixed ideas about the risk of war.”
Ranklin was a bit surprised to find he didn’t mind that so much; after all, the man in the field often shouldn’t know the whole picture. But: “Didn’t you get my cable saying nobody in Trieste believes the Italian workers are going to strike or riot or whatever? Or was I sent there just to get me out of the way?”
Dagner didn’t answer that directly. “Falcone knows his own people better than we do and he has no doubts.”
“No, he doesn’t, does he?” That suddenly struck Ranklin as odd. “He must be very sure . . . Could there be something he hasn’t told you? Something to do with those Lewis guns you helped him get?”
“For the Italian Army-”
“He pretended that about the aeroplane, too.”
“Perhaps the guns were a blind, to help hide the aeroplane in an arms-buying mission.”
“I think it’s more. The Count-”
“Captain, I know how you’ve always felt about this affair.” Dagner’s voice had become stern. “It may be part of how you feel about the Bureau. When it started, I can well believe the Chief had to take whom he could get, and get them any way he could. Like you and O’Gilroy. I’m afraid I know exactly how he got you. You did good work in your time, and did well together in the fracas just now, but the Bureau’s future demands more than what we used to call ‘Khyber Pass’ stuff, like that and the events in Clerkenwell. We’re working on a much larger canvas now. And we’re getting a new generation, young men who’ve volunteered and can he trained up with the vision to make this service what it deserves to be.”
“So O’Gilroy and I are yesterday’s newspapers, just to wrap the fish and chips.”
“Time passes for all of us.” Dagner’s tone was calm but urgent. “This could be the first vital step to the service living up to its legend, getting away from its pennyweight antics. If we can make this big a change in the Mediterranean situation, we can do anything. I don’t think I’m being overly romantic in foreseeing the day when every statesman in every country will have to take the British Secret Service into account in all he does or proposes. He’ll spend half his time wondering if we’re dogging his footsteps or already ahead of him. We’ve learnt the Navy can no longer do everything for us, and certainly the Army can’t, not in Europe. But now our service itself could hold the balance of power, become itself one of the Great Powers of Europe.
“Can you and O’Gilroy really share that vision with us, Captain?”
The answer must have been written in Ranklin’s expression, because Dagner said sympathetically: “Times change, Captain.”
“You’ve got far more experience,” Ranklin said doggedly, “but the secret service I know is grubby and demeaning and frightening, and can involve shooting people who . . . well, you just hope they deserve it-”
“All that and worse,” Dagner agreed. “But also more. And all the more reason to need a vision, a clear sight of what one is working for.”
“Do you trust Falcone, then?”
The change of tack didn’t bother Dagner. “Trust him? Not what he says, of course not. But what he wants, yes. A political triumph, showing up the Prime Minister as hesitant and feeble by forcing a squabble between Italy and Austria. And we’re using that ambition for our own ends.”
“But where do the Lewis guns fit in?” Ranklin persisted. “The Count-”
“You mentioned him before. What Count?”
“Falcone’s crony in Trieste, he was in jail with me.”
“Why should he know anything about them?”
Ranklin stopped, wondering why he hadn’t asked that question himself. If the guns weren’t going on the aeroplane, why had the Count heard of them? – let alone be so worried that Ranklin had? And, come to that, why should that paper-pushing Austrian Captain Knebel know of such guns?
And then he knew the answer.
Dagner had waited briefly to see if Ranklin had more to say, then turned and strode back to the breakfast table to ask O’Gilroy: “Is the aeroplane ready?”
O’Gilroy glanced past him at Ranklin, coming slowly and thoughtfully up behind, and said carefully: “’Tis in the field, far side of the road. How about Mr d’Annunzio?”
Corinna suddenly appeared and sat down. “I don’t think he likes working for the British Secret Service.”