Corinna pointed out the other private yachts: the Italian Trinacria, waiting for the King and Queen to arrive tomorrow, the Prince of Monaco’s Hirondelle, the Archduke Karl Stefan’s Ui … “And all with their wireless sets buzzing away, trying to keep up with what’s happening in the Balkans. That’s what Pop’s doing right now; you’ll meet him at lunch.” She gazed at the sky. “The air’s fuller of wireless messages than smoke and seagulls. Do wireless messages go through seagulls?”
Ranklin blinked and said he hadn’t thought about it.
She smiled. “When I was a girl, I thought these yachts were just toys, like the fanciest carriages and then automobiles. When I got more involved, I saw what they were really about. On this boat, Pop can be more private than anywhere else, his offices, our homes, anywhere. No journalists on the front steps, no Congressional committees listening at the windows. Just privacy.”
“What did you tell your father about us?”
Her face was very expressive: now it flicked like a lantern slide into serious stillness. “Just what I know, not anything I may have guessed. That you’re a British Army officer but not wearing uniform. Today, when I told him you were coming aboard, I had to say you were using different names. He’s more used to that than you might think. He didn’t say anything. What he thought, I don’t know. You’re just friends of mine. And I suppose I have to guess what you’re doing here?”
Ranklin had thought hard about that already, and found he had a narrow and tricky path to walk. He lit a cigarette – and had to wait while a distant but observant servant hurried up with a heavy pedestal ashtray – then told about Cross’s death and tried to give the impression that they were more interested in that than in what Cross had been up to.
He said nothing about warships passing through the Canal nor O’Gilroy’s night on the town. However, because Reimers had mentioned it and it was a colourful detail, he did bring up Dragan el Vipero.
She pounced on it. “He sounds just marvellously wicked. Who is he?”
“I have no idea. But according to a barman in the Old Town, he was involved in the assassination of the King of Greece last March.”
“And was he?”
“Again, no idea. But one thing I’d like your views on.” He handed her the bond. She immediately unfolded it to see if there were anything inside, made a face, and started reading.
Finally she said: “Well, I guess you know this is a bearer bond, although they’re more common in Europe than England or America. I guess we have more stable societies: with a bond like this, you don’t have your name on any shares register, it’s as portable and anonymous as cash, only this isn’t worth a wooden nickel since it doesn’t have the coupons you exchange for your half-yearly interest. Does that help any?”
Ranklin nodded, but uncertainly. Being valueless only made it more mysterious. Just then, Jake the Chief Steward came up to refill their glasses and tell Corinna that lunch would be in a quarter of an hour.
When he had gone, Ranklin asked: “Have you heard of the land company?”
She glanced at the name again. “No, it’s too local. But owning land like that, it must be pretty valuable by now. I tell you what, why don’t we ask at the bank this afternoon?”
“Are we going to the bank this afternoon?”
“Sure. Then we’ll buy you a blazer and tennis shoes so’s you’ll blend with the background more.”
Ranklin had always hated ready-made clothes; now, he also hated the idea of expense he might not get reimbursed. Lucidly she misinterpreted his expression. “I know all men hate buying clothes and Eve started it all with that fig-leaf, but you just be a brave soldier and it won’t hurt too bad.”
27
Sherring was a large, broad-shouldered and rather ugly man with a big man’s precision of movement and a confident man’s disdain for “correct” dress when it didn’t matter. He had good reasons for owning a steam yacht, and that was enough: unlike some emperors and kings, he didn’t think that meant he had to dress like an operetta sailor. Today he wore a plain linen jacket such as his clerks might be allowed in hot weather, a collar-attached “polo” shirt and a bright silk choker.
He shook Ranklin’s hand and waved him to sit down on Corinna’s left. On her right was a short, stout middle-aged man who made his dark blue blazer seem formal enough to meet the Kaiser in – which he had probably done, since he was Albert Ballin, head of the Hamburg-Amerika shipping line, the biggest in the world. This didn’t stop his rather flabby face looking distinctly sombre.
“Bulgaria doesn’t seem to be doing too well,” Sherring announced. “The Serbs are definitely counter-attacking.”
“Good news for the Czar,” Ballin said gloomily. “But not so good for the Emperor in Vienna. He must have hoped – ah, but this is boring and troublesome for you, Mrs Finn,” he added with heavy gallantry.
“Not at all,” Corinna chirped. “What d’you think, James?”
Ranklin agreed with Ballin (on Vienna’s reaction) but James Spencer probably wouldn’t know enough to care. “After ten years in India, the Balkans seem a bit distant to me. Every time I get home on leave, there’s another new country popped up there. It all gets confusing.”
Sherring, who wore his eyes half-closed anyway, narrowed them further and started pulling a bread roll apart. Ballin looked reproving of such colonial flippancy.
“In India you are more concerned about Russia, no?”
“Oh, that old myth. No, we’ve stopped worrying about that.”
“That’s official, is it?” Sherring asked.
“I don’t know about official, sir, but I do know that somebody finally went and looked at just how Russia could invade India. It turned out they’d have to travel Lord-knows-how far on a single-track railway, and then hike it over the Hindu Kush for another two hundred miles. That’s good country for mountain goats but not so good for artillery.”
Sherring smiled privately into his soup spoon, but Ballin was unwilling to let go the idea that Britain could never ally herself with Russia just because of the Indian question: “But can you really trust the natives to fight for England?”
Ranklin shrugged. “We’re devils they know.”
After that, they finished the soup as quietly as it allowed. The dining saloon, two decks down from the one they had been sitting out on, could hardly be furnished too lightly – good food needed some richness of setting – but Corinna had chosen a plain dull gold for the carpet, ivory painted wood panelling and faded rose silk for the curtains and upholstery, leaving the richness to small exquisite bits of wood carving. It gave the comfortable feeling that the room had been crafted, not just decorated.
Whoever had chosen the menu – again probably Corinna – had remembered that Germans like to eat well at lunch. There was a choice of cold lobster and salad or a hot chicken dish – or both, as Ballin decided. With equal tact, the wines were German, and Ballin forgot his troubles for a moment when he was poured an ’86 hock from the Prussian Royal Domain. Ranklin thought he saw a tiny nod of approval from Sherring to Corinna.
Trying to keep the mood going, Ranklin said: “Tell me, we have the most frightful trouble with wines in India; how do you keep them aboard ship?”
“Ah,” Ballin put down his knife and fork carefully before he answered. “We have an advantage in our liners: German wines travel better than French. If passengers on Cunard, White Star, CGT, American, if they ask for a good claret in the middle of a storm – ha, they will travel by Hamburg-Amerika next time.”
“You can’t rock claret and Burgundy in the cradle of the deep,” Corinna said firmly. “I don’t let Pop even try. We have it waiting at any port we’re likely to call.”