Spy's Honour by Gavin Lyall

Author:Gavin Lyall [Lyall, Gavin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Sherring’s day cabin was clearly outside Corinna’s jurisdiction. Here was dark wood panelling, rows of old books, heavy buttoned-leather chairs and a tiger skin on the floor; here, the time was always just after dinner. Ranklin instinctively put his pipe in his mouth and accepted a brandy from a cut-glass decanter. Corinna, by contrast, faded into a dutiful daughter sitting demurely in one corner.

Sherring stretched his long legs from his chair and puffed alight a long cigar. “Tell me, Mr – Spencer, do you have an opinion on the situation in the Balkans? How likely is it to spark off a European war?”

This is where I sing for my lunch, Ranklin thought. But it was a good lunch. “At this season – yes, it could.”

“This season?”

“Yes. Armies work on a yearly training cycle, aiming for a peak of readiness for their big manoeuvres in August or September, when the weather should be dry for easy movement and the harvest’s in and they can mobilise the farm boys who are reservists. In Southern Europe the harvest comes earlier. This year it was in June, and now they’ve gone to war. In about a month, Northern Europe should be ready, too.”

Sherring glanced across at Corinna with a look of bemused horror, but when he looked again at Ranklin, it was with respect.

“I appreciate hard-headed thinking, but I guess I’d expected something more political.”

Ranklin smiled modestly. “You must know far more experienced political advisers than me. But as I see it, they have something of a power vacuum down there, caused by the decay of the Ottoman – now Turkish – empire. Countries like, first, Greece, then Bosnia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Serbia, and last, Albania, bobbing up as the Turkish tide flows back. And now squabbling over their frontiers.”

“And Austria-Hungary?”

Ranklin frowned. “I can only make a military guess. They picked up Bosnia and Herzegovina, but that might be part of an overall defensive strategy. They’re scared of a group of Slav states stretching west as far as the Adriatic, and waking up one morning to find a Russian fleet (they’re more or less Slavs, too) based in a port there and bottling their own up in Trieste further north. So they’re all for Serbia, the Slav ringleader, getting cut down to size.”

“You make it all seem neat and clear,” Sherring observed.

“Then I apologise, because I must have got it horribly wrong. I believe it’s as I said, all right, but all soaked in a broth of local nationalism, religious persecution, trade interests and personal ambitions. And, of course, Italy, Germany, France – and Britain, I suppose – all trying to tune the Balkan piano to their own key.”

“And what happens when they give up trying and throw the piano down the back stairs?”

Ranklin nodded. “That’s the day I’m worried about.”

They sat silent for a little while, then Sherring asked: “And how d’you reckon this new war in the Balkans will go? Will Serbia do well?”

“I think so. The Bulgarian Army’s a poorly disciplined lot.”

Sherring’s eyes narrowed again.

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