Read Online Flight From Honour by Gavin Lyall - Free Book Online Page B

foreign news over breakfast. But he hadn’t thought it had taken hold.
    “I can try, anyway,” Ranklin agreed. “First let’s order dinner.”
    *        *        *
    The deceased tenant had left behind a mahogany Victorian dining table so large that if it fell through the floor (which seemed quite possible) it wouldn’t stop before the basement. The size had amused O’Gilroy so much that at first he had insisted they ate at opposite ends and called for each other to walk along and pass the salt. Luckily that had palled and they now sat sensibly around one corner, and O’Gilroy got his amusement from Ranklin putting on a velvet smoking jacket so the waiter wouldn’t think they had gone completely native.
    “I don’t know any detail about current Italian politics,” Ranklin began, “but I can give you the general position. The first thing is that although Italy
looks
very much like one country—” he nodded at the map; “—with all that coastline and the Alps sealing off the top, it’s only actually been united as one for fifty years.
    “And I’d guess that’s the key to Italian policy. It’s trying a bit of everything because it just isn’t
used
to being one country with a single policy yet. One faction pushed the government into grabbing some bits of Africa off the Turks, and others want Nice and Corsica back from the French, and Trent and Trieste from the Austrians. And your Senator Falcone feels he can go swanning round Europe buying aeroplanes for the Italian Army on his own initiative. Everybody’s pushing their own policies and the Government isn’t used to resisting the pressures yet. It’s unstable and that could be dangerous.”
    He paused to disentangle a fishbone from the back of his tongue. No matter how carefully he, or the waiter, filtered a Dover sole or any other fish, Ranklin always got at least one bone. But who was he to question God’s ways?
    O’Gilroy watched admiringly. “Ye do that real polite, Matt. Jest what does being a senator mean? Is it like a lord?”
    Ranklin trawled his memory. “I think it means a lord-for-life. The King appoints successful public men, industrialists and so on, to the Senate. That sounds like your man, doesn’t it?”
    O’Gilroy nodded. “So whose side’s Italy on?”
    Ranklin sighed. Why did everyone assume a country had to be on one “side” or another? It was like a form-room feud among eleven-year-olds. Or, he concluded gloomily, like modern Europe. “Theoretically, she’s allied with Germany and Austro-Hungary, but I doubt Italy’s worked out where her self-interest really lies, and meanwhile Austria’s her traditional enemy.”
    He got up and tracked his finger down the long Adriatic, in places less than a hundred miles wide, that separated Italy from the Dalmatian coast and the witches’ cauldron of the Balkans behind it. “You can see why Italy has to worry about who owns that coastline. And Austria owns both Pola and Trieste – which is mostly Italian inhabitants, I think – right opposite Venice and only four hours’ steaming time away.”
    “An hour by aeroplane.”
    “If that matters.” Ranklin was getting fed up with aeroplanes creeping into every conversation. He sat down again.
    O’Gilroy went on gazing at the map. “And ye said Italy was into Africa?”
    “A couple of years ago they invaded Libya, which was sort-of-Turkish. The Turks pulled out, but the local Arabs went on fighting back. Still are, I believe.”
    “Now—” O’Gilroy waved his fork to halt Ranklin whilst he finished a mouthful of his steak-and-kidney pie; “—now was that where they used aeroplanes in war the first time?”
    Ranklin was about to declare a total ban on aeronautics, then recalled reading something about that. “Ye-es, I think so. I don’t think they contributed much . . . But,” he admitted, “the desert would be a good place for aerial scouting .”
    “Falcone was telling about it. Him and other fellers