All Honourable Men (9 page)

Gradually, there and on the train as they headed across Alsace-Lorraine, German territory since 1870, Ranklin evolved the character of Snaipe. He couldn't be a complete fool – he had been over-playing, he realised, at the Gare de l'Est – or even the Diplomatic Service wouldn't have touched him. More importantly, people wouldn't bother to talk to him. But he must not be curious. This should both head off suspicion and account for his having achieved virtually nothing in his forty-odd years.

The first impression he gave in Strasbourg would be vital. Then, if he later forgot himself and said something perceptive, it should be dismissed as an aberration. Perhaps affable bone-idleness was the key. And for that, he could recall more than one brother officer to model himself on.

They reached Strasbourg just after midnight, the station empty, windy and cold. There was an instant scurry and babble as the other passengers sought their luggage and a warm bed as soon as possible, but Ranklin held back.

“Should I see to the bags, sir?” O'Gilroy asked.

“No rush. I think the best thing is just to stand here and look lost.”

So they did that for a while. Twice an official in the double-breasted military overcoat of the Prussian Railways strode past, seemingly looking for someone important. By the third time he had lowered his standards and stopped to demand if Ranklin were the Honourable Snaipe.

“Yes, that's me,” Ranklin said.

The official – he looked rather like the late Prince Bismarck, but it was a popular look – gave him one hard stare to make sure he wasn't being trifled with, then barked for action. Porters appeared out of the steamy gloom and went off with O'Gilroy to the baggage van, while Ranklin was led across to the most distant platform, and then further still. In the marshalling yard, among the rows of dark, engineless trains, a lone carriage stood leaking light from curtained windows.

They tramped across the tracks towards it, the official mounted at one end and rapped on a door. A moment later, Ranklin was invited up.

The layout of the carriage was simple, although Ranklin didn't take it all in immediately. Starting from that end there were two rooms, each the full width of the carriage – about nine feet – and over a dozen long. Thereafter, it became more normal, with a row of four sizeable sleeping compartments off a
side corridor, and a toilet in the vestibule at the far end.

He was led through the first room, lit only enough for him to avoid a long dining table and its chairs, and into the second. It wasn't warm, but it looked it: shaded gas mantles glowed from the pillars between the dark blue-curtained windows, reflecting off polished and inlaid woodwork, gilt fittings and etched glasswork.

Amid this plum-cake richness, the only occupant came as a relief because he looked like a cut-out photograph, all black and white. The black was the overcoat and its collar, suit, Homburg hat and slight moustache on the white face above a white scarf. Although he had been seated, he was wearing all this in the compartment temperature. “Good evening. I am Dr Dahlmann, a director of Deutsche Bank.” He bowed slightly and held out a hand.

“
Nett, Sie kennen zu lernen, Herr Doktor. Mein Name ist Pat Snaipe, sehr untergeordnet Mädchen für alles vom der Foreign Office
.” German isn't a language for self-deprecation, but Dahlmann's brief smile suggested he appreciated it. Or he was sympathising with the FO for having such a “dogsbody” on its hands, but that suited Ranklin just as well.

Thereafter they spoke German, which betrayed nothing, since even Snaipe's dilettante education would have covered that. Dahlmann gestured to a chair. “Sit down, please. I suggest you keep your overcoat on: our service carriage with the boiler has been detached. We will find it tomorrow.”

Ranklin sat and couldn't help just gazing around. The floor was covered with a thick, richly patterned carpet, probably Turkish. The easy chair he was sitting in was one of half a dozen, all upholstered with floral embroidery, and the walls were padded with lilac-coloured buttoned velvet. But the false ceiling was the real glory. It was totally covered with painted panels of figures set among clouds or fairy-tale landscapes, a mixture of Wagner and classical Greece but with a few non-denominational cherubs thrown in. Each panel was framed by thick, gilded rococo swirls.

In a sympathetic surge of fantasy Ranklin saw this as the
original parent of all railway carriages, whose descendants had grown weedy, drab and functional.

Dahlmann had been watching with a tight, proud little smile; it wasn't his carriage, but it was his Kaiser's. Then he remembered he was the host. “Would you like a drink? – and something to eat?” He looked around, but could only find the brandy decanter he'd been nibbling at himself.

Ranklin saw a sudden opening. “Why don't we wait until my servant gets here? – he'll find whatever there is.”

“You have brought a servant?”

“Of course.”

“But if you are going into the mountains of Turkey with Lady Kelso—”

“Even more important, surely,” Ranklin said cheerily. “I mean, the hotel staffs in such places probably aren't up to much.”

Faced with that, Dahlmann didn't know where to begin, so didn't. He was only a little taller than Ranklin, probably in his fifties, with a squarish face, high cheekbones and a thin nose – and the whole held in constant tension. He was literally tight-lipped, and it gave him a prissy look, as if he were disapproving of your tuppenny overdraft. But if the Deutsche knew what it was doing, there must be more to Dr Dahlmann than first impressions showed.

He finished the subject of O'Gilroy with a warning: “I am afraid you will have to share a sleeping compartment tonight with your servant . . .”

“Oh well, rigours of foreign service, eh?” Ranklin said undaunted. Just then a clatter and a sudden draught showed that O'Gilroy, porters and baggage had arrived. Dahlmann directed that the bags went in the last-but-one compartment.

A couple of minutes later, O'Gilroy appeared. Ranklin introduced them – no handshakes, of course – then said: “Now, be a good fellow and scout about and see if you can raise anything to eat and drink. Try any cupboards next door.” In other words, snoop into every cranny you can while you've got an excuse, but O'Gilroy didn't need telling. “There should
be a second carriage attached, but it's gone off somewhere. Does it,” he asked Dahlmann, to hold him in place, “have a kitchen, too?”

“Naturally. And also a boiler and generator –” he nodded at some dead table lamps which Ranklin hadn't realised were electric “– and baggage space and a cabin for the staff. Your servant must move in there tomorrow.”

“Splendid. And what's the plan, then?” Snaipe could show that much curiosity.

“Tomorrow, perhaps later tonight – we must find a train to be attached to, or an engine – we go south to Basle, then to Friedrichshafen, to meet the ferry of Lady Kelso who comes from Romanshorn. Then, I do not know for sure yet. The telegraph . . .” He nodded at the outside world, where others must be taking decisions. Nods, brief and sharp, were part of Dahlmann's vocabulary, gestures were not.

O'Gilroy came back with a stone jar of pickled herring and half a coffee cake. “And there's drinks of all sorts, sir. I can't be reading the labels, but from the smell I can do yez a whisky.”

“Whisky would be splendid,” Ranklin murmured, deciding against herring at one in the morning. “Oh, and we're going to have to share a compartment tonight. I trust you don't snore.”

“Living single, nobody's ever told me, sir,” O'Gilroy said mournfully.

O'Gilroy insisted on clearing up all the cups, glasses and so forth and washing them in the toilet hand-basin – which gave him the run of the whole carriage while Ranklin and Dahlmann chatted between long silences. The banker wasn't probing and Snaipe wasn't the inquisitive type, so not much got said. Ranklin and O'Gilroy went to bed about half past one.

The walls of sleeping compartments can be deceptively thin – though these seemed more solid than usual – and they kept their voices down.

“Dahlmann's in the one next to the room ye was in,” O'Gilroy reported, “and some railway feller between this and that, then the last one's empty. There's no papers in the dining
room ‘cept some railway maps in German, but there's a small safe. Locked. Ye can't say easy how big a safe is from the outside, but I wouldn't be thinking it could hold that much gold. Ye said 'bout a foot square?”

“The India Office did.” They sat on the bottom bunk measuring small cubes in the air like modest anglers talking about the ones that got away.

O'Gilroy shook his head. “Not that big.”

“Maybe it's in the detached carriage. Or it'll come aboard later. Has the safe got a combination lock?”

“It has. How much did ye learn about them?”

“Little enough. But if I get a chance, I'll try my luck.” But even if the gold were there, what could he do about it? He hadn't got any lead to substitute: he reckoned he'd need at least a tenth of the total weight, which meant explaining away over thirty pounds of lead if his baggage got searched.

Still, it would be progress of a sort to find the gold was actually on the train.

* * *

Some time in the night – call it three in morning since the middle of the night is always three in the morning – Ranklin heard somebody clump down the corridor and start banging around in the next compartment. He had just dozed off again when, at another three in the morning, an engine or train backed into them with a jolt, paused for an interval of shouting, and jerked them – temporarily – into motion.

He lost count of the threes in the morning after that, but at the last one he realised they were rumbling along steadily if not fast. When he next woke they were stopped again, light was seeping past the blind and O'Gilroy was offering him a cup of coffee.

“We're at somewhere called Basil, sir. I think it's in Switzerland.”

“Uh? Oh, Basle. Yes, I think it's in Switzerland, too, but only just. Hold on, I'll come down.”

He scrambled down the ladder from the top bunk and tweaked aside the blind. They were in another marshalling yard and there was a drizzle with lumps in it that could have been half-hearted snow. He shivered. “Give me my dressing-gown.”

“Ye'd be warmer if ye got dressed properly, sir,” O'Gilroy said censoriously, but passing the gown. “'Tis past nine o'clock.”

“So?” Ranklin felt that Snaipe wouldn't be an early riser. Anyway, what was the hurry? – they were where they wanted to be, and comfortably helpless. All decisions were out of their hands. He took a swallow of coffee; it wasn't more than warm, but surprisingly good. “Is there anything to eat?”

“They had some stuff sent in from the station. All cold, supposed to be cold, I mean, sir.” O'Gilroy refused to get used to the Continental idea of starting the day without hot food.

In fact, Ranklin got dressed rather quicker than he'd originally planned, having remembered he'd lose less blood if he shaved while the carriage was stopped. The hot tap wasn't working, of course, but O'Gilroy conjured a pitcher of luke-warm water from somewhere.

Well before he reached the dining compartment at the far end he could hear a difference of opinion going on. It turned out to be two men in different coloured railway uniforms stabbing forefingers at a map, displaying sheaves of paper and conversing as if they were a hundred yards apart. It so much reminded Ranklin of a tactical discussion between infantry and cavalry that he felt quite at home.

The exchange faded to mere argument at the far end of the table while he helped himself from the jug of coffee, platters of cold meat and cheese and a basket of varicoloured bread at the near end. And looked around, casually, for the safe O'Gilroy had spotted last night.

At last he realised he was standing right by it, a black-and-gold cube whose outside was no more than twelve inches on a side, sitting on the floor under a small vertical bookcase and almost certainly too small for the gold. Probably it was a
permanent fixture for when this was part of the Kaiser's train and there were state documents to lock away. He went back to eat in the saloon and gaze out of the window at what was still a Swiss marshalling yard in the drizzle.

He had never particularly liked Switzerland, being unable to quite shed the English feeling that it was the duty of foreigners to be colourful, lively and unreliable, at all of which the Swiss failed miserably. But they were only here, he assumed, because at this point Swizerland spread across the natural frontier of the Rhine and trapped a few square miles of Germany as North Basle. Not that frontiers meant much in this part of the world anyway; nobody had asked for his passport and probably wouldn't as long as he stayed aboard.

Perhaps it would have been different if they
had
been carrying £20,000 in gold coin; surely Customs would have been mildly interested. But then they'd probably have gone a different route, staying inside Germany.

He had just lit a cigarette when a sudden clattering and clumping heralded a procession of Dahlmann, a tall man with a black-grey beard, and three porters struggling in the narrow doorways with luggage. They went straight through into the corridor. Apparently released by this arrival, the two railway officials appeared outside the window, voices back at full strength and backed by flag-waving and the toot of a guard's horn. Soon after, they were jerked into motion.

Dahlmann came back and collapsed into a chair. “The motor-car,” he said firmly, “is a wonderful invention. It does not run on rails. It can go when it wants and stop when it wants. And pass other motor-cars in safety.” He gave Ranklin a prim smile before tightening his face up again. “Now we are to be attached to an
Eil-Zug
that will take us to Singen. It is the best we can do.”