The Dardanelles Conspiracy by Alan Bardos (best ereader for pc TXT) 📗

‘Prost!’ Johnny tried to focus on the fleshy officer handing him a cloudy glass of what could only be raki. ‘Ernst, if you are not going to watch the pretty girls dance you must drink.’

‘You’re quite right, Dolly.’ Johnny tried to grin and swallowed the drink in one. It was like cough mixture. He dry retched aniseed, but kept it down, much to the amusement of the officers at the table.

‘Here’s to Ernst,’ Kurt shouted from the other side of the table, they all suddenly stood and Johnny stumbled to join them then remembered that he was Ernst. They repeated the toast, downing raki and banged the glasses on the table.

Johnny glanced at his comrades, but no one had noticed his mistake. Their raucous behaviour was attracting stares from the locals. He suspected that he should be keeping a lower profile.

Since their arrival in Constantinople the size of the group had increased as old friends were reunited and he had stayed in their company. Being seen with them made it a lot easier to pass himself off as German and he was starting to feel comfortable in the part he had to play.

After serving on the frontline Johnny felt a certain amount of affinity with the Germans, and they all had a mutual interest in drinking and showgirls.

‘Tell me, Ernst, why is it that a man of your obvious physical prowess is not at the front?’ The question cut through Johnny’s drunken haze. He glanced over at Captain Sigmund Stolz, a vain and haughty officer, sitting across from him in the red trimmed, field grey uniform of the Uhlans. A solitary service medal hung from the triangular plastron panel of his tunic.

Luckily for Johnny this was the closest that he had ever got to an Uhlan. Although Stolz certainly didn't look as fearsome as the reputation of the infamous lancers would suggest. He was clearly not as drunk as everyone else and Johnny realised he would have to watch himself.

‘We all serve in the best way we can, Captain Stolz. My talents are in diplomacy, where I serve the German Reich to the best of my abilities.’ It was a hollow answer to give in such company and Johnny tried to look suitably shame-faced.

‘Being a messenger boy? I am also interested in diplomacy, but have put my ambitions aside to fight for the fatherland – to fight for you.’

Johnny wasn’t sure if Stolz was jealous of him or if he thought that something about him didn’t ring true. Either way, he would keep picking on Johnny until he broke his cover story. If they had been in a British mess, Johnny would have given him a thrashing in the ring to shut him up, but these were Germans and he’d probably have to do something with sabres.

He glanced at the other officers wondering if Stolz had put doubt in their minds, about him. Kurt glared at Stolz. It was the last night of his leave and he would not want to waste it on pointless cross examinations.

‘Come now, Stolz, do you not recognise an old-stagger… a frontline soldier when you see one? Or have you been “fighting” with the Legation here too long, flattering that Prussian dullard, Liman von Sanders?’

‘What the hell do you mean by that, Lieutenant?’ Stolz was the superior officer and he was quite happy to pull rank.

‘Well, Herr Captain,’ Kurt said, trying to adopt a military bearing, ‘Ernst is obviously not ill-bred enough to talk of such things and you would not understand unless you had been there and shed blood.’

Kurt pointed at Johnny’s head. ‘Look at the scar on his forehead – that could only have been made by a Tommy’s hobnailed boot.’

The table exploded into cheering. Dolly stood up calling for quiet, filled his glass with champagne, held it high to propose a toast and then thought better of it.

‘Ernst also knows far more about champagne than you do, Sigmund.’

Dolly paused, looking at the epaulette on his shoulder, indicating that he was also a captain. ‘The champagne he procured for us was of a far superior quality to this swill you ordered!’

Dolly threw his glass at the preening officer. He was so drunk that he missed him by a mile, but managed to spray him and half the table in champagne. Stolz flushed with anger, but faced with the laughter of the other officers, made no response. Picking on a junior official from the Diplomatic Corps was one thing, but trying to impose his authority on a table of drunken veterans was quite another. He bowed and left.

If Johnny hadn’t been so thankful for the danger being over, he might have felt sorry for Stolz. He wondered if he should try and sober up and start his mission.

Dolly and Kurt carried Johnny out of the café and into the fading night life of the European quarter of Constantinople. They staggered up the Grand Rue de Pera and into the bright lights of the Hotel Tokatliyan and started ringing the bell of the reception desk.

‘Yes? Room numbers?’ the desk clerk asked, apparently unimpressed by their drunkenness.

Dolly and Kurt told him and got their keys. Johnny’s mind was a blank. He looked at the rest of the group who shrugged and made their way to bed.

The desk clerk ignored Johnny and busied himself looking through papers. Johnny fell on the desk and addressed the top of the clerk’s head. ‘Look, my name is something, Ernst von Hunter, no, that’s not right…’

‘I believe that the gentleman’s name is Herr Ernst von Jager and his room number is 269.’ Johnny tried to nod his thanks to a doorman in a dark uniform and repeated the number to the desk clerk, who passed him the key. Johnny tried to tip the doorman and stumbled.

‘Please allow me to assist