Honourable Intentions Read online

  Honourable

  Intentions

  Gavin Lyall

  © Gavin Lyall 1999*

  *Indicates the year of first publication.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  1

  Aunt Maud’s house in Cheltenham was really quite large, in a rambling way; it just seemed too small for the possessions she and her late husband had accumulated. Every small table was draped with a fringed embroidered cloth and then jammed with framed photographs, bowls of pot-pourri, vases and little silver knick-knacks – each with a very dull history. Every wall was coated with elaborate frames, in which were incompetent landscapes. Each door had a heavy velvet curtain with a brass rail on it, to keep out draughts, and every window curtain was as elaborately draped as a rococo Madonna. It would have been a bad place for kittens, drunks and children, if one could conceive of Aunt Maud allowing such creatures in.

  It smelt of dust and old ladies, the other of whom was Ranklin’s mother.

  “You still haven’t married, Matthew,” Aunt Maud told him. “I imagine you want your family name to continue.” Her tone made it clear that she couldn’t imagine why. “You’re not getting any younger.”

  “I’m thirty-nine,” Ranklin said. Though with his round, innocent face he looked ten years younger, something that no longer bothered him.

  “I suppose you’re putting it off in the hope of being promoted to Major. An Army Captain’s pay can’t be all that generous, judging by how much you give your poor mother.” His mother was sitting on the far side of the fireplace, silently doing embroidery, and Ranklin was depressed to see that she was beginning to adopt Aunt Maud’s style: severe floor-length dresses in grey or muddy colours over prim white blouses with high collars fastened with cameo brooches. Damn it, as a child he had thought her the prettiest woman in the world.

  But now age was bringing out the family resemblances: the same lack of chin, the pursed lips, the slightly hooked nose, along with grey hair drawn into a severe bun. Soon they would be just two dusty, old and near-identical sisters whose marriages had been episodes, long passed.

  “And are you still living in Whitehall Court? I am given to understand that that is a very expensive address. No wonder you can’t afford to send your poor mother a proper allowance.”

  “The War Office pays for the flat. It’s right across the street so I can act as a sort of caretaker.”

  “And do you do anything else besides caretaking?”

  “They send me abroad from time to time.”

  “Where to?”

  “I’ve been to France, Germany, Italy—”

  “Oh, only the Continent? The Captain thought of those places as being local.”

  Aunt Maud was the widow of a Navy Captain and didn’t think it odd that he had left her with a comfortable inheritance. Ranklin, who knew that a Navy Captain was unlikely to have earned more than £500 a year, thought it distinctly odd. He wondered how often the Captain, while earning a DSO for suppressing Malayan pirates, had shared in their booty or taken a bribe to look the other way.

  “But just what is it you do! Mind, I’ve never been clear about what the Army did. Now, the Navy’s task is quite clear: preserving the Empire and keeping the world trade routes open.”

  Ranklin had had enough. Ignoring his mother’s pleading look, he said: “Trade? Oh, I don’t think the Army has anything to do with trade.”

  They were now in for five minutes of penal silence, quite likely timed to the second by Aunt Maud, before she would decide she had not heard that. Not forgiven it: forgiveness was a word she understood only in church, and there only in the abstract.

  But suppose he had told the truth – that he was attached to the Secret Service Bureau and its unofficial (and reluctant) deputy chief? Aunt Maud would have said that he was as big a fantasist as his brother had been and that there was something odd about Ranklin blood.

  In fact his father had been a conventionally successful farm-owner – not farmer, that sounded too muddy for a Gloucestershire squire – who had died soon after the Captain, ten years ago. So Ranklin’s elder brother Frederick had inherited earlier than he had expected, and when agricultural prices began to slide, he started dabbling in gold shares, being warmly welcomed by those who understood such things.

  When Frederick found he hadn’t understood, being a man of honour he killed himself with a shotgun. He might have done it where his mother was less likely to find his near-headless body, but perhaps he had other things on his mind. A lot of legal fees later, Mrs Ranklin had come to Cheltenham while Matthew was about to become bankrupt and resign his Army commission. Going off to fight for the Greeks in the 1912 Balkan War was simply opportunism: his only skill was in commanding artillery.

  Still, a bankrupt mercenary soldier does seem rather caddish, and this had attracted the recently-formed Secret Service Bureau. Becoming unofficial second-in-command was partly because he was older than the other London-based agents, and partly because he wasn’t as much of a cad as the Bureau’s Chief had hoped. However, since he needed someone who would run the office without embezzling the furniture, he gave the job to Ranklin.

  The five minutes’ rigid silence ended with: “Perhaps you are pinning your hopes of promotion on their being a European war, Matthew?”

  Ranklin considered his answer carefully. The world had scraped through 1913, when things had looked very sombre, but everyone seemed to agree that the first months of this year had seemed brighter. But the danger time wouldn’t come until late summer, when the harvest was in and reservists could be called up.

  “We’re all still arming,” he said. This was indisputable, even by Aunt Maud.

  “Exactly!” she said triumphantly. “I don’t approve of Winston Churchill, but he does seem to understand that this country depends on the Navy.”

  “Perhaps the trouble is that the Navy can’t really influence what happens on land.”

  “Fiddlesticks. The boy,” Aunt Maud turned to Ranklin’s mother, “seems never to have heard of blockade.”

  “I think submarines and mines have made—”

  “And what will happen when we’ve trounced the German fleet?”

  “Er . . . I’m afraid I don’t know.”

  “If they haven’t had the sense to give up already, you and your Army will land a few miles from Berlin and march in.”

  Oddly, she wasn’t alone in planning this. Lords of the Admiralty had had the same farcical idea for decades. Ranklin did his best to look apologetic. “I doubt the Army’s big enough for that.”

  “I know, I know. And that is why we have had to ally ourselves with the French.” Clearly an exceptionally Satanic sect. “Our natural enemy! King George should have got rid of the Liberal government first thing. And then told the French to go about their business. His Majesty had a naval upbringing, you know, but quite clearly he would not have made a good Captain.”

  “Really? I do believe Mr Lloyd George—” He hadn’t bothered to think up what he believed, knowing he’d never get to say it. His mother winced, but it was too late.

  “Lloyd George is an anarchist! A charlatan! A Methodist! I have Heard Thin
gs about him that I Will Not Repeat!” But she would be in a better mood afterwards. Mention of Lloyd George always acted like an enema on Aunt Maud.

  Before he left on Tuesday morning, Ranklin gave his mother an envelope holding thirty pounds in notes. As usual, she said it was too much and he said he was sorry it wasn’t more. But it didn’t make any difference: she would just hand it over, gratefully, to Aunt Maud. Then he kissed them both and walked off towards the station.

  There was a horrifying inevitability about that house. It was utterly alien, yet it was on his road. He could never imagine himself starving in a damp London basement, but could all too well imagine the dust settling on him among the worthless bric-á-brac of Cheltenham.

  Whitehall Court lay between Whitehall and the river, comprising mostly expensive service flats and small clubs. The Bureau also had its offices there, in a rambling set of attics and garrets on the eighth floor, rooms built originally for junk and servants.

  Ranklin came in through the outer office and said: “Good afternoon, Miss Stella,” to the senior lady, and she looked up from her typing machine and said: “Good afternoon, Captain, did you have a pleasant Easter?” Ranklin lied politely back and the two other ladies smiled and bobbed their heads as he went on into the agents’ room.

  By now this had itself taken on the air of a club, albeit a rather bohemian one. One side of the room had a sloping outer wall, pierced by two dormer windows. The floor was bare boards – quite good boards, since the building was only fifteen years old – with various rugs over the draughtier places. The Commander, whom everyone except Ranklin called Chief or even “C”, had donated some basic furniture, and the rest had accumulated on the principle of “if you want a comfortable chair, you’re welcome to bring one in”.

  Beside one of the dormer windows Lieutenant P was rumpling through a stack of morning newspapers, pausing now and then to cut out an article. Like most men, he used scissors very clumsily. Standing by a small table was Lieutenant Jay. He was really Lieutenant J, but six months of token secrecy had actually worked and nobody could remember what his name really was, so he had become Jay. This had not happened to Lieutenant P. Jay was trying to brew coffee with a new infernal machine and spirit stove he had bought. No, not bought, not Jay – just acquired. Despite his family supposedly being very rich, Jay had a talent for acquiring things that would be the envy of any quartermaster-sergeant. Both agents paused to smile and nod at Ranklin and that was all.

  The office didn’t look much; it certainly wasn’t the busy warren of panelled rooms that writers of shilling shockers imagined the HQ of the British Secret Service to be. But most of all, it wasn’t as old: probably the biggest secret that the Bureau kept was that it had only been founded four years ago.

  Waiting for him on what by tradition had become his table was a parcel of books – Wer ist (the German Who’s Who) and the Italian Annuario Militare – which the Commander had grudgingly accepted they should buy. He put them in the glass-fronted bookcase that was their library, added their names to the exercise book that was their filing system, and sat down to fill and light his pipe.

  The soundproof baize door to the inner office was wrenched open and the Commander stumped out, waving two sheets of paper. He headed for Lieutenant P.

  “You say here the attaché’s mistress is –” he read from the report “– ‘olive-skinned’. . . Was she green?”

  “No, of course not, sir.”

  “Black, then?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Those are the only colours I’ve ever seen on an olive. Did you mean she was swarthy?”

  “Er . . . that sounds rather unshaven, sir.”

  “Any reason to believe she does shave? – her face, anyway?”

  Lieutenant P shook his head.

  “Very well, then, she was swarthy. Say so next time.” He noticed Ranklin. “Ah, you’re back.” He pulled out his watch. “We’re due at the Cannon Street Hotel for tea at four. Your girlfriend wants us to meet that Jew lawyer Noah Quinton. Says it’s of national importance. It had bloody well better be.”

  Ranklin puffed and nodded contentedly. He was home.

  2

  The Cannon Street Hotel wasn’t quite in the heart of the City but a bit south of that; say the liver. So it was geographically Corinna’s territory, and the hotel was prepared to overlook its City prejudice against women – save as rich widow shareholders at the many company annual general meetings held there – because she was the daughter of Reynard Sherring. And Sherring controlled a private bank that, even at the flood tide of joint-stock banking, was keeping its head a million or two above water.

  Shortly before four, Ranklin and the Commander were sipping tea in the drawing-room of the hotel which, true to the current fashion, ran to a high ceiling, cushioned wickerwork chairs and potted palms.

  The Commander looked at his watch. “She said four o’clock, didn’t she?”

  “That‘s what you said.”

  “Is she usually late?”

  “I wouldn’t say she was, yet.”

  The Commander watched five seconds tick by. “Dammit, she could perfectly well have told you whatever-it-is. No need for me. I’ve got things to do.”

  Like keeping the Bureau from getting involved in the mess that was Ulster. There was a good case for this, but the danger was that the spring of 1914 was turning out to be rather quiet on the Bureau’s true international stamping-ground and they didn’t have enough to do.

  Ranklin shrugged and another five seconds passed.

  Then the Commander demanded: “I know she’s a partner or something in her father’s bank, but does she really understand banking and finance and . . . whatnot?”

  “I imagine so. But I don’t, so I can’t judge.”

  “She’s one of these clever women, then.”

  “Certainly.” Ranklin realised they were passing the time with a little game of make-the-other-lose-his-temper-first.

  “Handsome gal, though.”

  “I didn’t know you’d met her.” Did he lose half a point for being surprised?

  “Oh yes. At a dinner party at the Grenfells’. We got on rather well.”

  Perhaps that was supposed to make Ranklin jealous. But he could well believe that Corinna had been intrigued to meet the Bureau’s Chief. Of course, his identity was a closely-guarded secret, but equally of course, that didn’t apply to Certain People. Moreover, the Commander – a genuine naval rank – fancied himself as a ladies’ man. By now in his mid-fifties, he was a stocky man with a face like Mr Punch, nose and chin seemingly trying to meet. He had a complexion that he probably hoped looked weatherbeaten-old-seadog, but was really just ruddy, and the Navy had long ago beached him for incurable seasickness. He had once been heard calling espionage a “capital sport”, but probably that was just a sop to the type of Englishman who took nothing seriously except games.

  On the whole, Ranklin thought he was probably right for his job. He had a lot of enthusiasms – gadgetry, motor-cars, pistols – a love of secrecy, and apparently no scruples. Certainly he betrayed his rich wife, who lavished Rolls-Royces and yachts on him, as skilfully and naturally as he did foreign governments. Ranklin wished he thought these two talents weren’t connected.

  When Ranklin hadn’t reacted, the Commander provoked further: “Bit tall for you, I thought.”

  “I don’t know . . . Can’t have too much of a good thing.”

  That gave the Commander the choice of being even more vulgar or pretending to be upright and shocked. Cannily, he did neither. “Ah, your intentions aren’t honourable, I see. Just animal passion.”

  “As technically my commanding officer, would you give me permission to marry an American citizen?”

  “Certainly, if it was just for her money. If I thought you were sincere, I’d sack you.”

  Ranklin decided it was time for a change of subject. “What do we know about Noah Quinton?”

  “As a man or as a lawyer?”

  “Either
.”

  “I understand he doesn’t come of one of the academic-professional families. First of his line. Lower-middle-class East London Jew . . . Perhaps not very East London.” The Commander wasn’t speaking geographically. “It’s said he’s a good man to go to if you want to win and don’t mind how.”

  In answer to Ranklin’s raised eyebrows, the Commander added: “I don’t say he breaks the law. Just got a reputation for sailing close to it.”

  Ranklin wondered if he’d been naive in thinking that that was just what lawyers were for. While he was still wondering, Corinna and Noah Quinton arrived.

  Corinna, who liked to be called Mrs Finn and thought of as a widow for entirely immoral reasons, was indeed tall and attracted words like “striking” and “handsome”. Or “vivid”, because her eyes and mouth were exaggerated like an actress’s and her hair was very black. With all this, she could carry off strong colours and did, while most of London was wearing pastels and fussy little hats. Today she wore a black matador hat and was wrapped in a cape of purple wool that completely hid, and therefore hinted at, her shape beneath.

  Probably it was too warm for the day – a fine Easter was stretching on, with temperatures nearing 60° – but when did being hot or cold affect how a woman wanted to look?

  The Commander pre-empted her to the introductions. “I’m Commander Smith and this is Captain Ranklin. Army Captain, of course.”

  Corinna smiled. “May I present Mr Noah Quinton?” They shook hands and Quinton said: “And you represent the Government?”

  “Whatever Mrs Finn told you,” the Commander said blandly. They all sat down, a watchful waiter hurried up with a fresh pot of tea, and Ranklin poured.

  If you had met Quinton anywhere, you would have thought: Ah, a sharp lawyer. But how else was a lawyer allowed to advertise? He was dapper (attention to detail), quick of movement (and thus of thought), and looked you in the eye with a smile (he believed what you were telling him). Actually, between his curly grey hair and small grey beard was a rather ferrety face, which his heavy-rimmed glasses helped humanise, but he was constantly putting those off and on.