So Cross had finished, or was about to finish, the job when he died. At least he had done the impossible: found his Canal-watcher – but that achievement seemed to have died with him.
Ranklin unfolded the bearer bond and passed it to Helsted. “Does this mean anything to you?”
The Captain’s face grew even more and deeper lines as he studied it. He shook his head slowly. “It says nothing. How did …?”
“It was among Lieutenant Cross’s things. And I imagine he must have picked it up in Kiel, so … The company doesn’t exist any longer. It may have been a fraud anyway.” He put the bond away, musing. “I can get a cablegram address for you to use; that won’t be a problem. And if we can revive the plan, can we reach you at Korsor?”
“By the steamship office.”
“All right, that seems to be …”
“One thing,” O’Gilroy interrupted. “The officer ye sent to sell me the pretty pictures: some rough things happened after that, and he could be recognised by them making them happen. I’d keep him aboard until – ” he glanced at Ranklin, “ – until the circus has left town, mebbe?”
“Until Kiel Week is over, anyway.”
“This was not the police?” Helsted frowned.
“No. It was – perhaps some visiting Russians. I’m not sure. But you trust your officer?”
“I trust my own son,” Helsted sneered his smile again. “Perhaps he will live to see Kiel a town of Denmark once more. Who knows?”
Ranklin very much doubted it, but was grateful for the hint at Helsted’s motive in working for Britain. The unwritten rule book told him to use other people’s patriotism – or misuse it – wherever he could find it.
“Indeed I hope so,” he said solemnly.
On their way back to the jetty where the Kachina’s launch would pick them up, they passed the railway station which was being hung with bunting and flags for the arrival of the King and Queen of Italy that evening. A squad of Schutz des Konigs, drably uniformed except for their helmets, rehearsed in the square and, as old soldiers, they had to stop to watch. They approved the uniforms – keeping the best unsullied for the real ceremony – and even the drill. Only the basic idea, that an escort of troops could prevent an assassination, was mocked by the history of the last ten years.
“Get them standing top of the steps there,” O’Gilroy murmured. “Perfect target.”
Most assassinations took place where the victim was raised up: on a horse, in an open carriage, on a balcony or … “Or up on that viewing stand at the locks, tomorrow?” Ranklin suggested gloomily.
“Sure, grand place.” And Cross had been found within short rifle-shot of that stand, a letter from Dragan in his pocket. It simply didn’t make sense – but here was no place to be overheard discussing it.
The chauffeured Mercedes was also waiting by the jetty and the launch delivered Corinna and her father, both dressed smartly but soberly and off to lunch with some business acquaintances.
“Jake’s expecting you back to lunch,” she assured Ranklin, “and you can use the launch as long as it’s back here by three. Or you sleep in the bilges tonight – whatever they are. Oh yes – the Widow Wedel lives at Holtenau, Tiessenkai 16. You promised and I’ve done my bit.”
“What was that about?” O’Gilroy asked as the boat scorched through the busy harbour.
“I promised to look up the widow of the man who formed the land company that issued the bond. You needn’t bother, it’s just to keep Mrs Finn happy.”
“Ye be going to ask her how the Lieutenant picked up the bond? What it might be meaning?”
Ranklin made a face. “It’s worthless, it’s been worthless for years. He could have picked it up anywhere.”
“Ye think? Last week’s newspaper’s not worth much, neither, but tell me where ye’d find one.”
Ranklin was about to suggest library files or the newspaper office, but then saw the point: somebody had to make a deliberate effort to keep something that had lost its value. He nodded; it was a topic for the useless conversation with the Widow.
If the Widow worked in a government office, she wouldn’t be home until the end of the afternoon, so Ranklin sat under an awning, read newspapers, listened to the starting guns of various yacht races, drank lemon tea – and worried. O’Gilroy, it turned out later, had been in the earthly paradise of Kachina’s engine room. Everything mechanical fascinated him; he belonged in the modern world far more than Ranklin, who welcomed improvements warily and viewed change with suspicion – except in military matters. As a soldier he wanted the latest and best fighting tools, but to defend and preserve his world as it was now, not to reshape it. O’Gilroy just preferred the stink of a petrol engine to that of the slums and assumed in some romantic way that the one must conquer the other.
“Put the turbines of this thing in torpedo boats,” he enthused, having brought up Ranklin’s latest glass of tea, “and ye’d have better than any navy in the world.”
“Splendid. But getting back to the navy we see parked around us – ” he gestured at the rigid columns of grey ships (a colour the Royal Navy seemed to be adopting) “ – we’re still looking for somebody who can tell what ships have gone through the Canal and has the means to signal it to the Sondervind when she passes. How? like the Yacht Club’s mast?”
A string of flags was displaying an unreadable message to some ship in the harbour.
“Not like to allow that – in a war,” O’Gilroy said.
“Hardly.” He remembered Corinna’s suggestion of hanging towels on his balcony as a signal, but that had been a simple Yes or No, not a dozen different figures. And yet it must be something like that, a signal that didn’t look like a signal. Red Indian smoke puffs from a chimney? He had been worrying at it all afternoon and hadn’t found a better answer.
“And when ye say ‘looking’, I’d say we was jest standing, or sitting, here,” O’Gilroy said calmly.
“But where? If we go ashore and just prowl about, all we’ll do is get Lenz and Reimers on our heels, growling about Dragan. Dragan. I just don’t see why Cross got mixed up with him. We now know what Cross was up to: good, sensible, naval espionage. Nothing to do with assassination. That just stirs things up – Good God, it would start a war tomorrow!” As Anya had been telling him last night, he now realised.
“If yer plotting to steal the knives, get them to counting the spoons,” O’Gilroy said, as if quoting an unimpeachable authority.
“And what does that mean?” Ranklin asked crossly.
“A feller like Lenz, ye’ll never stop him suspecting yer up to some deviltry. But ye may get him thinking it’s a different deviltry and be looking the wrong way. So the Lieutenant didn’t want Lenz thinking about battleships on the Canal …”
“You think he teamed up with Dragan to create a diversion?”
O’Gilroy shrugged. “He was talking enough about him, it seems.”
Ranklin sat silent, frowning busily. Finally he said: “I wonder how much Dragan would like that.”
“Not so much, with it getting Lenz and his detectives looking all over for him. And, ye notice, the Lieutenant did end up dead.”
Dragan the murderer? If he were an assassin he wouldn’t hesitate to blot out some walk-on player like Cross. And leave Lenz’s suspicions to be transferred to themselves. Good God! – the man thought they were planning to kill the Kaiser! No wonder Lenz had locked O’Gilroy up on the flimsiest evidence, rather than let him get on with that plan. And probably, but for Reynard Sherring’s unwitting protection, they’d both be in “protective custody” or expelled from Kiel. Either was allowed under German law.
He found himself glancing around furtively, earning a contemptuous scowl from O’Gilroy. It was a bit craven, but they were in German waters, and he was the next one to go ashore.
34
The government and province offices in Holtenau turned out at six, so assuming that the Widow Wedel didn’t stop off at the nearest Biergarten then by twenty past, Ranklin reckoned, she should be home and ready to receive.