O’Gilroy nodded. “And the fact is, I’m needin’ some help meself, not fancyin’ bein’ shot by me own friends or hanged by yourn.”
A man under sentence of death from two sides has little left to lose. And, Ranklin reflected, no good reason to keep any secrets he may have stumbled on.
“I’m prepared to get you out of this,” he said carefully. “But you’ll have to tell me how to do it. This is your home ground.”
“I mean out of Ireland, Captain.”
“That, too.”
“Good enough. It’ll mean yer tellin’ some fancy lies, now.”
“I’m supposed to be getting used to that,” Ranklin said coldly. “Now, can we …?” He walked over to Piatkow.
O’Gilroy threw away his cigarette and followed. “Remember a dead man floats, Captain.”
“Not one as rich as he’s going to be.” Three thousand pounds in Admiralty gold, he had calculated, should keep Piatkow at the bottom until any buoyancy had rotted.
“Jayzus!” O’Gilroy whispered as the awesome cost of the idea sank in.
“It’s only Navy money. Ends up on the bottom anyway.”
With Piatkow sunk, O’Gilroy rowed back to the shore. Ranklin wasn’t surprised to find he was a competent oarsman: he found he was assuming the man was competent at all such things, as well as being good at dreaming up an escape plan combined with a tale for Ranklin to spin to the Navy. And even that was a form of competence, he supposed.
“What are you going to do when you reach England?” he asked. “You daren’t go near the Irish communities in the big cities. The story could get there even before you do.”
O’Gilroy pushed the empty dinghy back into the ebbing tide; that was part of the plan. “Been thinking about that meself, Captain. Seems mebbe ye could lend me the passage money to America …”
“You might be no better off there.”
“… or give me a job.”
Ranklin stared through the darkness, then exploded. “Good God Almighty! Are you serious?”
“Ye said ye needed help. Judgin’ by tonight, I’d say yer right.” He wiped some of the thick mud off his boots on the coarse grass and tramped back towards the car. Ranklin followed in a daze.
But after a time he realised his shock was more at O’Gilroy’s effrontery than at the idea that the man could do the job. If tonight was in any way typical, he was perfectly suited to such work. And the Bureau’s recruitment policy, he thought bitterly, was none too delicate.
He made a half-hearted attempt to clean up his own shoes on the richer grass away from the water’s edge. “You didn’t exactly start this evening on our side.”
Perhaps O’Gilroy’s shadowy figure gave a shrug. “I wasn’t fightin’ for yer Queen and Empire in South Africa, Captain, and I’m not offerin’ to start now. I was fightin’ for me pay. And for some fellas, mebbe – like yeself.” He paused. “And a bit for meself, besides.”
How would the Bureau feel about taking on a pure mercenary? But hadn’t it found him on the Salonika road, selling the only talent he had? Hard times make for soft principles, it seemed.
“Have you got a criminal record?” He found he had said it formally, as if to a new recruit.
“No.” O’Gilroy was positive enough. But that might only mean that he was cleverer than the police. But again, isn’t that what the Bureau wants?
“Oh hell, this is the most ridiculous …” He shook his head. “We’ll get to England and let them decide. But it could turn out to be just another helping of roasted rat.”
“And ye was always a most gen’rous man wid that, Captain. Now, could ye be lendin’ me a coupla sovereigns ’til payday? I’m not wantin’ to go near any house or shop I’m known.”
With a sour glance at the remaining bags of gold, Ranklin took them from his own pocket. “And we meet somewhere near the railway station?”
“At the bottom of Spy Hill. That sounds about right.”
A LONDON CLUB
8
Lunching at this club was always a hazard for the Commander. He had just decided on the curry when an angular Brigadier-General of the Royal Artillery, wearing the red tabs of a staff job, folded himself into the chair opposite and gave him a conspiratorial smile.
Oh God, thought the Commander.
“And how are things not going in that non-existent Bureau which you don’t command?” the Brigadier asked, twinkling at his own well-rehearsed wit.
This was the hazard, although even worse were the handful who honestly didn’t know the secret and simply asked what he was doing these days. On the other hand, kidnapping being illegal, he depended on fellow club members for a flow of recruits.
That thought got garbled in the thinking, he reflected grimly. For “flow” read “drip”, as with a faulty tap, and the results were usually as annoying.
“Well enough,” the Commander said, grinning falsely. Even out of uniform, he would have looked like a Naval officer: in his fifties, solidly built, with bright eyes in a large head whose nose and chin seemed prevented from meeting only by the briar pipe he usually wore in between. His usual expression was aggressive but amused and he was trying hard to keep the balance: he did owe the Brigadier something.
“How’s the recruiting drive coming along?” the Brigadier asked.
“Splendidly,” the Commander began, then had to break off to order his lunch. The Brigadier chose lamb chops, was told it was too early in the season, and opted for pork instead.
“And half a bottle of the Beaune,” he added. “You’ll join me in a glass? Did I hear you say ‘splendidly’?”
“If I were recruiting for a concert party to tour the better lunatic asylums, yes.”
The Brigadier laughed. “The dear old Army game of pass the parcel; sooner or later it’s everybody’s turn to be the Dead Letter Office. But in all seriousness, you can’t expect us to send you our best officers, chaps we’ve been training for fifteen or twenty years. We’re only human.”
“Which is more than can be said for the people you do send me.”
“Oh, come now – what about the last chap I put you on to?”
“At no great sacrifice to yourself, since you’d dropped him and he was serving in the Greek Army at the time.”
“Well, you can’t keep a chap who’s about to be hauled into court for bankruptcy, even if it was allowed. His brother officers … well, they wouldn’t … it would be an embarrassment to …” He was grateful that the arrival of the soup stopped him.
“Anyway,” he resumed when the servant had gone, “I noticed you’d got him back in the Army List as attached to the War Office. Does that mean you solved his money problems for him?”
“To an extent.” The Commander was ready to leave it there, but the Brigadier obviously wanted more, so he went on: “We – our bank – offered his creditors a cast-iron Deed of Composition so that they get paid off in instalments and only care about the bank, not him.”
“By that, d’you mean nothing has to come out in public?” The Brigadier fixed on the only aspect of bankruptcy he knew or cared about.
“That is correct.”
“Good. We look after our own, in the Gunners.” The Brigadier, who had done nothing but gossip Ranklin’s name to the Commander, gulped soup smugly. “I hope he isn’t resenting our efforts as being an act of charity or something damn fool.”
“I think he resents it rather more as being an act of blackmail. He’s not a bloody fool, not entirely. He certainly resents working for me. But he’d like the alternatives even worse.”
The Brigadier frowned uneasily and dabbed soup off his moustache. “Look, I hope you’re not being too hard on the chap. He seems to have been a perfectly good officer until …”
“Well-travelled, languages, able to mix in respectable society – I can use all that. And he can pretend he’s still got money, even to himself if he wants. I want good pretenders.”
The Brigadier didn’t like this turn in the conversation. “It isn’t as if he was an absolute blackguard, spending it all on women and horses. I expect you went into the details, but I understood it was really his elder brother getting into the wrong crowd at the Stock Exchange and then shooting himself when it all went wrong. I thought our chap just signed some papers that got him involved, and if you can’t trust your own brother …”