Free Flight From Honour by Gavin Lyall

with money got together with some aviators and made up a squadron – called it a ‘flotilla’ – to send to Africa.”
    “Very patriotic of him,” Ranklin said, thinking it the sort of romantic but useless gesture Italians did so well.
    “They was shooting from the aeroplanes as well as scouting.”
    “A great help that must have been,” Ranklin said, imagining aiming a rifle from a moving aeroplane.
    “Ye’d be needing a machine-gun to be much use, sure, but—”
    “What about the weight? The Maxim gun runs to around a hundred pounds – and one thing I do know about aeroplanes is that they can’t carry much weight.”
    “They’ll get better,” O’Gilroy said defensively. “And machine-guns’re getting lighter. There was talk in Brussels about one invented by an American. Lewis, his name was. Weighs jest twenty-five pounds with a magazine, not a belt, so it should fit an aeroplane jest right.”
    “Really?” Ranklin was affronted, since he prided himself on keeping up with weaponry gossip; it was his bedrock of knowledge in the shifting sands of Intelligence.
    O’Gilroy’s voice took on an infuriating tinge of superiority. “Been around some time, I’m thinking. Anyways, they’re making it in Belgium, same as Browning pistols, but it’s not going so well, I heard, so BSA here’s making ’em, too.”
    “Birmingham Small Arms?” Now Ranklin really was annoyed: it had got as far as
Birmingham
without him noticing.
    “That’s right,” O’Gilroy smiled. “I was talking about it on the boat, and Falcone made out he’d never heard of it, but he was carrying a catalogue of ’em in his baggage.”
    Ranklin frowned, but no longer in annoyance. “So the Senator’s looking for aeroplanes and hiding the fact that he’s heard of a lightweight machine-gun. D’you think he wants Italy to have a secret armada of armed aeroplanes?”
    O’Gilroy shrugged but was obviously taken by the idea. “And other fellers’ secrets being our business . . .
    “Quite. Mind,” Ranklin remembered, “Major Dagner’s seeing the Senator for himself, so he may come back with the whole story. Still, it’s something to watch out for if you’re still taking the Senator to Brooklands this weekend.”
    O’Gilroy got up to find his cigarettes and an ashtray, asking over his shoulder: “What d’ye make of the Major?” The hand-crafted casualness of his tone suggested that Ranklin would have no qualms about discussing a senior with a junior.
    “I fancy he knows the game inside out; he’s been at it far longer than either of us.”
    “In India.”
    “Espionage is adjusting successfully to circumstances. And in India the consequence of failure to adjust can be more prolonged and painful than in most parts of Europe.”
    “Ye know some lovely long words, Matt.” O’Gilroy sighed. “I’ll give ye some short ones: he don’t trust me.”
    “In India,” Ranklin said thoughtfully, “the Intelligence wallahs may have had more choice of volunteers. He’ll have to learn that here, he uses who he’s got. Like you. And me.”
    O’Gilroy breathed smoke slowly. “And why d’ye all call it a ‘game’?”
    “To try and get the English to take it seriously.”

8
    Looking back on that Thursday, Ranklin came to the self-pitying conclusion that the only person who enjoyed it less than himself might have been Princess Sophia of Saxe-Weimar, because she committed suicide that day. On the other hand, she thereby let herself off part of the day. He got it all.
    It began innocuously with Dagner giving the new recruits a brief, chatty but pointed talk based on his own experience – in this instance, with journalists.
    “Resist your immediate instinct to despise them, borne are pretty good at their job, and all of them have been doing that job longer than you have yours, at the moment. But remember that journalists have opinions, even if they may try not to let them show in print. And more: after years of listening to