Flight From Honour (31 page)

Downstairs, she was served coffee, toast (of leavened bread, thank goodness or Signora Falcone’s Irish background) and even offered a boiled egg. Then she began asking questions, and learnt that the Signora and O’Gilroy had already gone to the Lido in the launch, she to make sure the aeroplane was repaired, him to fly it, while Matteo would again get her to the hospital when she was ready. And – this from the major-domo, who had rather more power over the household than the grandest of English butlers – would she inform them if she wished to move to a hotel in Venice so as to be nearer her brother? She was, of course, welcome to stay, but the Signora would quite understand if . . .

Corinna said she’d decide when she’d seen how Andrew was. Did the telephone work?

But of course the telephone worked. Probably.

*        *        *

Ranklin had eaten far worse breakfasts than the Castello dungeons provided, and paid good money for some of them, too. It wasn’t elaborate: coffee, bread and a few slices of spicy sausage, but it was all fresh. And come to think of it, it might be more trouble to store things until they’d gone stale than just send down a helping of whatever the Castello guard was getting – particularly since they might well be the only prisoners. He didn’t believe Novak about the dungeons being crowded. The way the lamp-smoke had stained the wall showed this one hadn’t been used since it was whitewashed, and that was weeks ago. You couldn’t be in the Army and not be an expert on whitewash.

“Tell me,” the Count said, “that I only dreamt we had smoked our last cigarettes.”

“No dream, I’m afraid.” Ranklin displayed his empty case.

“Ah me,” the Count sighed. “How can we continue the fine old tradition of bribing prison guards if we do not meet them? Never mind. Soon my friends will know where I am, and then . . . I will send in cigarettes to you if they allow it. English ones may not be possible, but . . .”

“Have you really got friends in high places?” Ranklin asked innocently.

The Count seemed pained. “I have friends everywhere; you must not think I am blinded by my noble birth. But, as I am sure you already know, the title of a Venetian count is quite equivalent to marquis from anywhere else. And I admit that I find my best friends are those who understand that simple fact. So yes, indeed I have friends in what you call ‘high places’.” He glanced at Pero, apparently asleep on his cot, but by now seemed to have accepted him at face value. Still, he lowered his voice. “I may also tell you, in the greatest confidence, that I have taken trouble to impress those friends with my loyalty to the Emperor. I even applied for Austrian nationality. Probably they will not grant it, no matter what they say their policy is, but that is of no consequence. What greater proof of loyalty can they ask?”

Ranklin grunted. He couldn’t see the point of such a move. But at least he had the Count talking in confidence. The trick now was not to rush, let the man take his time. He suggested: “Possibly they assumed it
was
only to cause them embarrassment.”

“Perhaps – but they could not help being flattered that a man of my birth should ask to become an Austrian citizen. I mean,” he added quickly, “not a citizen in the French meaning. I would, of course, retain my title. It has a most splendid history. My great-grandfather . . .” And Ranklin had to smile and nod his way through a personalised
Almanac de Gotha.
But, he told himself, there’s still time. One thing you weren’t short of in jail was time.

*        *        *

Signora Falcone’s crisp instructions and the chink of gold coin got a new set of wheels – they hadn’t a suitable tyre, or so they said once they smelled the gold – on the Oriole by lunchtime. That left the afternoon for O’Gilroy to get in an hour’s practice, refuel, and fly the aeroplane over to the pasture across the road from the villa. Signora Falcone was very insistent that the demonstration flight should start from there. It all seemed a bit odd – or foreign – and O’Gilroy’s suspicions were showing healthy growth. But his mind was a pretty suspicious place at any time, and he concentrated on learning the Oriole.

He had been left a picnic of bread, cheese and something called ‘salami’, since the nearest restaurant on the Lido was nearly a mile away and probably thought more of its reputation than of his suit. Then the local mechanics helped him start up the Oriole, turn her into wind – and he was on his own.

After half an hour of weaving and banking at three thousand feet he felt confident enough to start practising landings. With its high wing, there was little tendency to “float” – scoot along just above the ground with the far wall getting closer. She just sat down firmly and stayed down. But coming in for the last one, he felt a flood of stickiness over his left foot, saw there was no drip showing in the oil-feed glass, and just scraped over the near wall with a dead engine.

They pushed the aeroplane into the half-shade of a shed and he smoked a cigarette while waiting for the engine to cool. There was no doubt about the problem – his shoe squelched with castor oil (the oil tank was just above the rudder bar) – only the solution. The mechanics were fascinated by the short length of fractured pipe, once he had got it unscrewed; they just didn’t have any ideas about mending or replacing it.

*        *        *

The dungeon lunch confirmed Ranklin’s view that they were getting straight soldiers’ fare: some sort of stew with rice and a plate of figs, with a flask of wine. And again not stale; the wine tasted only a few days old. He and the Count exchanged horrified glances at the first sip, then watched Pero lap it up, and flop back on his cot snoring.

But by now, the Count was getting agitated. He consulted his watch every ten minutes – Ranklin had given up on that, lapsing back to timing himself by the bugle calls – and muttered: “But my friends,
one
of my friends, must have asked where I am by now? Come, I must walk.”

So they paced solemnly around the perimeter of the cell, just as if it were the Piazza Grande except for a detour past the latrine bucket.

“What does that peasant of a police captain achieve in keeping us here?” the Count fretted.

“Last night, you said it could be until the Oberdan ‘season’ is over – another six weeks or so.”

“For you, yes. But why me? And he does not even question me. Why not? If I am arrested I have a right to be questioned, to explain. Not, of course, that I have to explain myself to that uniformed monkey.”

“Maybe he’s afraid of you.”

That brought a spring to the Count’s slow pace. “Yes, yes. Well may he be afraid of me. And soon he will have even better reason.”

Ranklin seized the opportunity and put on a carefully worried voice. “Perhaps it’s this place that’s getting me down, but I can’t help worrying about the aeroplane, whether it’s truly capable of the job . . .”

The Count glanced at him sharply. “Giancarlo has seen it, he has flown in it. And he is an expert. Why should it not be capable?”

“Oh, I don’t know . . . I know very little about aeroplanes, but flying all the way from Turin . . .”

“Not from Turin. They take it to Giancarlo’s house by Venice. They did not tell you?”

“Oh good, they
did
decide on Venice,” Ranklin said hastily. He gave a satisfied nod as if a minor detail had been cleared up and they strolled on, round and round.

But now he was beginning to fret, too. He’d thought of having plenty of time, but it was passing. And perhaps he’d subconsciously been thinking that as he’d been first in, he must be first out – and that was nonsense. At any moment, one of the Count’s friends might whisk him away, ending any revelations.

It was time to stir things up. “And I hope,” he said, “there’s enough ammunition for the Lewis guns?”

The Count stopped dead. “The Lewis guns?” He sounded surprised but, significantly, didn’t need to ask what they were.

“The two Falcone got from Britain.”

“He told you?” The surprise in the Count’s voice was almost horror.

“Oh—” Ranklin waved his hand and smiled; “—we, my people,
are
in the business of knowing things.”

“Yes . . . yes . . .” The Count was obviously thinking quickly. “He has many interests, the Senator. I believe he bought the machine-guns for the Italian Army. To test, to see if they will buy them.”

“Really? That wasn’t what I heard.”

“Then you heard wrong! Now, I have had my exercise, I must rest.” And he laid himself, limb by aged limb, on his cot.

Rather than just stand there, Ranklin sat down himself, turned so that nobody could see his face. I wrecked it, he thought. I ran it into a wall.

But perhaps the wall had always been there. So much he was expected to know, but other things he wasn’t. And the Lewis guns were on the far side of the wall. He had expected a touch of flamboyance in this plot; now he smelt a Borgian twist as well.

But just what plot? Nobody had said it was actually
impossible
to mount a Lewis gun on Andrew’s aeroplane. What did seem impossible was getting Andrew himself to pilot a flight intended to spray a city with machine-gun fire. But if Falcone had another pilot standing by, and the firing wasn’t supposed to be accurate but just a dramatic gesture, the whole thing became possible. Insane, but possible.

Damn it, it would be an act of war! And put Italy so far in the wrong that they’d hang Falcone for it, no matter what happened next. The Count might dream up such a plot, but Falcone was a practising politician . . .

I’m missing something, he thought. And just how much is Dagner missing? – or rather, how much does he know?

*        *        *

At five o’clock the Falcone launch arrived at the northernmost of the Lido’s jetties with Corinna already on board, a loose white dress fluttering in the breeze, clutching on a wide straw hat. “Hi. Signora Falcone’s having the vapours about where you’d got to and thinking you’d broken your neck. You
haven’t
broken your neck, have you?”

“Jest this.” O’Gilroy gloomily held up a few inches of oily copper pipe. “Oil feed. And seems nobody on the island can braze it, or don’t know what the devil I’m talking about.”

“Poor you,” she soothed. “D’ you want me to try my Italian?”

But by now the launch helmsman had taken a look. He said something to Corinna, who asked him to repeat more slowly, then she grinned at O’Gilroy. “Seems one of the chauffeurs back home can do it in a trice. Always doing something like it to the automobiles, he says. You’d better bring it aboard.”

O’Gilroy hesitated, then stepped into the boat. “They’ll have to bring me back to fix it and I want to do a plug change while I’m at it . . . Won’t be getting the Oriole across today, I’m thinking.”

“Then it’ll have to be tomorrow. How is it, flying it from the proper side?”

O’Gilroy’s gloom vanished. “Ah, it’s like . . . like I don’t know the words for it. Riding a winner at the Curragh, mebbe.”

She grinned back. “Little brother knows his stuff, then?”

“Surely – and how’s he doing?”

“Not so bad at all. Mostly bored, with the bandages still on and not able to read. I talked myself hoarse until I found a priest who speaks English and accepts donations to the Church. Then this boat arrived and I learned you’d gone missing – why didn’t you telephone them?”

“In Italian, and not knowing the number besides?” And also, though he wouldn’t admit it, because he wasn’t yet used to the world of telephones and simply hadn’t thought of it.

Once clear of the gondola routes and little islets, the helmsman started showing off like any chauffeur when the owner isn’t on board: they streaked across the lagoon like a torpedo boat. Corinna thought of telling him to behave, decided it would be improper and simply threw her hat on to the bottom boards and let her black hair stream in the wind; perhaps the Signora would lend her a maid to untangle it.

“Have you learnt any more about tomorrow’s demonstration?” she called.

“Never a word.”

She tried again: “Well, whatever it is, Andrew’s out of it.”

“Sounds like that’s what ye wanted.”

“Let’s say I’ve got my doubts.”

O’Gilroy considered. “Like what?”

She’d rather have said this with quiet significance, not bellowed it against the wind and rumble of the engine, but: “That it won’t be a demonstration but dropping inflammatory leaflets written by d’Annunzio over Trieste.”

He stared at her. “Where d’ye get that from?”

“From that practice flight you told me about in Paris. And listening to d’Annunzio on the train. And because Pop Sherring didn’t raise his little girl to believe everything she hears from big men with fifty-dollar suits and hundred-dollar smiles. Though,“ she admitted, “he may have slipped up with his little boy.”

“Ye worked that out yeself, then . . .”

“They’ll have to tell you pretty soon.”

O’Gilroy thought a while. “I wish the Captain was here.”

“D’you think Matt knows it and didn’t tell you?”

“Mebbe . . .” Ranklin wasn’t a naturally devious man, but over the past nine months he had been learning. O’Gilroy had helped teach him. “It’s not his way, though, not with me.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t know everything himself.”

O’Gilroy nodded vaguely and went back to his own thoughts. Ranklin trusted her – up to a careful point defined by their relationship, but he himself was right outside that. (To tell the truth, which he didn’t like to do even to himself, he disapproved of the affair. Such behaviour was normal for Ranklin, an Army officer, and he had no illusions about the morals of upper-class British women, not after being in service at a Big House. But he had expected better of an American lady.)

Finally he said: “Ye really wouldn’t want to be letting down the Captain?”

Corinna was about say something witty or withering, then thought again and just called: “No. I really wouldn’t. And,” she added, “ I wish he was here, too.”

“They’re wanting to start a strike in the shipyard there.”

She frowned over this, then: “Just that?”

“How d’ye mean?”

“These things can get out of hand, God knows they do in the States. In Trieste it could set Italians against Austrians. Or maybe that’s what they want . . . Except that Falcone’s a senator; he daren’t get mixed up in . . .” She reflected for a moment. “Only he’s doing a pretty good job of unmixing himself, letting d’Annunzio take the credit, and a foreign airplane flown by a foreign pilot . . .”