Flight From Honour Read Free Page B

not, not before they kill Falcone. They won’t have done anything to be caught for. But afterwards . . .” he shrugged and smiled; “there’s always the chance of Jankovic dropping a hint that they had a gun like that. It’s still quite rare.”
    “So if they use that gun, it betrays them?”
    “Betrayal? You talk of
betraying
that trash? Do you really want them wandering free?”
    “No, of course not,” the Treasurer said hastily. “Just . . .” Then he changed the subject. “So all that about the English Secret Service was nonsense, too? Thank God. We certainly don’t want them involved. Aren’t they supposed to be the best in the world?”
    “One hears things.” He had buttoned up his working clothes and picked most of the fluff out of his scalp. “But they’re only men.” He put on his cap and looked around, but there wasn’t a mirror in the room. Quite likely not in the whole building. “How do I look?”
    The Treasurer hardly glanced at him. “Like what our
masters
pay you to be: an upright and honourable Captain of Police.”

3
    Brussel’s civilian aerodrome lay in the south-eastern suburb of Etterbeek, only a few minutes by train from the Quartier-Leopold station. It didn’t look impressive, but aerodromes never did: just a few stark wooden sheds floating on the last of the early morning mist. But to O’Gilroy it could have been the new Jerusalem.
    He headed for a group of men standing back from a single monoplane which was being fussed over by a couple of mechanics. Most of them were clearly Belgian; that is, wearing gloomy dark suits or sombre, sturdy overcoats. One man stood out in his light fawn suit, light hat and a bronze-coloured overcoat draped dashingly around his shoulders. O’Gilroy decided this must be his man, and shook his head disapprovingly at his prominence.
    “Excuse me, sir, but would ye be Senator Fal-con-e?” He pronounced the name as if reading it, badly.
    “Yes?” Falcone looked at him critically. The new man was tall and loose-limbed inside a rather stiff tweed suit of the sort Continental cartoonists used, accurately, to denote Britons travelling abroad. He had a lean, bony face, dark hair under a tweed cap, and a wry, almost sneering expression.
    Now he nodded. “The Embassy said ye wanted someone to watch yer back. I’m it. Conall O’Gilroy.”
    They shook hands. O’Gilroy went on: “I asked for ye at the hotel and they said I’d be finding ye out here. No trouble at all, they jest told me.”
    He sighed when Falcone didn’t see the import of that, just saying: “Very good. Are you armed?”
    “I am.” O’Gilroy made no move to prove it.
    “Very good,” Falcone said again. “So now . . . ah, you will guard me, no?”
    “Ye think someone’s trying to kill ye?”
    The blunt question disconcerted Falcone. “Ah, I am not . . . How can I be sure?”
    “Ye’d best make up yer mind. I like to know if I’m saving yer life or jest standing around looking pretty.”
    Falcone glared; this was
not
the way a bravo should act. As a senior senator, his demand for help from the British embassy had been instinctive. But the shadowy figures glimpsed in the streets of a strange city seemed mere fancies on this bright morning in the familiar – to him – atmosphere of an aerodrome. He felt annoyed at himself and transferred it easily to O’Gilroy.
    “I am a senator in Italy and I am to meet with your Foreign Office in London,” he announced firmly. “I have been followed, I am sure of it. There are two men – one is tall, the other is short. And yesterday a man with a Slav accent asked at the hotel if I stayed there. He did not want to meet me, just to know if I am there.”
    “Is there a good reason they’d want to kill ye?” O’Gilroy asked calmly. That didn’t help, because Falcone wasn’t going to answer truthfully. He looked around, and saw that the little group around the aeroplane was dispersing and the pilot climbing in . . .
    “I