Bitter Field Page 8

What could he find out in Czechoslovakia that the British Secret Service did not already know? Not very much, he surmised, but he was willing to try. More to the point, could that hint from Moravec provide a way to achieve what the people Peter Lanchester represented sought, given the level of doubt that any other course was possible, and where, if it could, did he fit in?

  The more he thought on what Peter had said about the attitude of HMG, the more he saw it as a stance fully backed up by what he read in the newspapers – nothing definitive, but telling and disturbing trends about the status of British Government policy.

  Neville Chamberlain had dropped so many hints in so-called off-the-record talks to journalists, both foreign and domestic, as to lay down a marker as to where he stood on the Sudetenland question and it was not on the side of intervention.

  He had sent a mediator, it was true – a fellow Cal had never heard of called Lord Runciman – to broker a deal between the Czechs and the Sudeten minority. There was talk of a plebiscite in which the people could vote for what they wanted, but that mission of mediation, according to what he had read in the French newspapers, did not seem to be getting very far.

  Then there were the editorials in London papers like The Times – day-late copies which he had picked up at various stops – which if they did not spout actual Government policy had a good idea of where it was headed, with leaders asking questions as to why the Czechs were being so intransigent about granting rights to their minorities, which made it sound as if the British and French Governments would go to any lengths to appease Hitler.

  There was no doubt in Callum Jardine’s mind that Hitler had to be stopped and the sooner the better. He had spent too much time in the country to harbour any illusions about the intentions of the so-called Führer of the German Reich, and had seen at first hand the effect of a totalitarian police state on the behaviour of the mass of its citizenry.

  Even in a big sprawling city like Hamburg, home to millions, the presence of the state was all-pervasive, with formal political opposition neutered in every aspect of what had once constituted normal life. The communists had been rounded up or fled in the first year of Hitler’s rule, the social democrats or anyone mildly left of centre cowed into silence by public beatings or selective incarceration in numerous concentration camps.

  In the camps they were subjected to a brutal political re-education, a fate the Nazis were equally willing to hand out to any member of a former right-wing party as well if they did not put enough verve into their ‘Heil Hitlers’ or dig deep enough into their meagre wages to support that fraud upon the public called Winterhilfe.

  Such overbearing weight did not even begin to account for what had happened to Jews, Gypsies, the mentally retarded and those considered sexually deviant. Conformity was all, strikes were banned, unions suppressed and all other organisations, from workers to Boy Scouts, subsumed into things like the Nazi-created German Labour Front or the Hitler Youth.

  When it came to the rights of the citizen they were quite simply whatever Adolf Hitler or one of his satraps decided they would allow. No one openly complained and even in private it was wise to be careful for there were those all around at work, and even in your own street or tenement, just looking for someone to denounce to prove their own loyalty to the party and the Führer.

  Until the beginning of the year the structures of the German army had been intact, but even they were now subject to Hitler’s will. He had removed Blomberg, the Minister of War, somehow got rid of the head of the army, von Fritsch, and appointed himself Supreme Commander. Those running the armed forces were his personal appointees, beholden to him, so now, even for the army to rise up and remove the Nazis would take a lot of nerve.

  Every facet of German life was controlled, every organisation, military and civilian, including their own party organs, spied upon; it was claimed half the office walls in the Berlin ministries contained hidden microphones and that officials, for their own safety, even if it was not proven, communicated in writing or whispers to avoid the attention of the Geheime Staatspolizei.

  By decree, the Gestapo were not subject to any law; you could be arrested on a whim and just disappear, it being their decision, if they put a bullet in a victim’s brain or tortured them to death, as to what the victim’s family were told. Often nothing was said; at other times a wife, father or mother received an urn of ashes accompanied by the terrifying mantra that their loved ones had died while trying to escape.

  Lost in this gloomy introspection Cal had to remind himself that he had managed to live for many months outside the attentions of the state and had, in that time, helped many Jewish families to escape to a safer place, not only with their lives but with the bulk of their portable possessions.

  This had been achieved when most Jews wishing to depart Germany were forced to leave with no more than what they could carry in a single suitcase, and that after having paid hefty bribes or transferred valuable property, houses, businesses and works of art to the SS for a pittance.

  If there was no underground movement, the German state still possessed an underbelly in the big cities: a black market in scarce goods particularly, the best customers now those with the means to pay, the higher-ranking Nazis and the industrialists and employers who had done so well out of the suppressed workers.

  Criminals and those who lived the life of the quasi-legal had a natural survival strategy, particularly in the big commercial and industrial cities where once the Reds and socialists had ruled, places where people still had the guts to make jokes debunking Hitler and his satraps, the most obvious of those being Berlin – no wonder the Führer hated the place.

  Cal’s beat had been the Hamburg quarter of St Pauli, a place of hucksters, whorehouses, prostitutes in windows and highly suspect drinking dens dedicated to fleecing their itinerant customers – visiting sailors or provincials come to test out the fleshpots – a district where they also showed a cunning ability to circumvent the endless freedom-limiting decrees.

  Was there enough of that commodity in an institution like the armed forces to curb Hitler and his plans for expansion? In many ways, especially in its codes of conduct, it was still the Kaiser’s army – the officer corps hidebound in its traditions, fiercely clinging to its codes of honour and obedience, those hiding, in too many cases, the hypocrisy of professional ambition.

  A lot of questions, few definitive answers, but the other nagging uncertainty was natural: should he get involved at all? Though he had been active in many places either fighting, training or supplying weapons, the last four years seemed to have been an ongoing fight against Fascism in its various incarnations, first in Hamburg, then Ethiopia and lastly Spain; this was no exception.

  Yet if he lacked one thing it was an ideology; his politics did not go much beyond a hatred of any government dedicated to killing or imprisoning innocents to maintain power, and that included Communism. Peter was not the only person who openly wondered at what triggered his actions; Callum Jardine often asked himself the same question.

  Was he a soldier of fortune, an international crusader or out of his mind, nothing more than a psychotic thrill-seeker, never happy unless he was in some place where the bullets were flying or there was order to be circumvented? He had never known the answer and it did not surface now as sleep took over.

  What the captain of the freighter called his ‘motor launch’ was a bit less than that – one of his lifeboats fitted with an outboard motor – and since he did not want to re-enter French territorial waters, that meant in excess of a three-mile boat ride in a vessel that seemed designed to ship water over the bows in any kind of sea, and the one on which they were travelling was excessively choppy.

  Their destination was the sandy beach on the southern shore of a low-lying peninsula called the Ile d’Oléron, a rocky sandbar jutting out into the Bay of Biscay, which became an island at very high tide. In a country with such a huge and fragmented coastline, the chances of being intercepted by authority were low, while the i
sland was a place to which folk travelled for sea and sunshine, so that strangers excited no comment.

  Peter’s small suitcase had been replaced with a sailor’s ditty bag and once on land it was a hot and dusty trek to find first the road which acted as a spine along the island, then wait for an infrequent bus to take them to the mainland and a town big enough to have a railway connection to the regional capital of Angoulême and the main route north.

  The journey back to and across Paris to the Calais boat train provided ample time to talk, eat, doze, make a decision and plan; there was no thought of stopping en route, which would have required a hotel and the necessary registration. Bar that, it seemed all the difficulties lay on the opposite side of the Channel.

  ‘If I’m going to do as you ask, I have to put in place my own plan, because I tell you this, Peter, I will deal only with you and I would ask that you tell no one where I am, what I’m doing and to whom I’m talking.’

  ‘You can’t do this alone, you need money, papers and the means of keeping in contact as well. What if I seek to come out to help you?’

  ‘Do you know Prague?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Matters not, we have to work out a way to stay in contact.’

  ‘Funds?’

  ‘Demand a lump sum of money from SIS, a decent one, and bank it in your own name, payment to be sorted out when the operation is complete. Transferring money to Czechoslovakia is too risky, too open to being picked up, and besides, that will avoid currency controls.’

  ‘Do you still have funds there?’

  ‘That’s a question I don’t need to answer.’

  Peter nodded; he thought he just had, but it was moot if they were his own or what was left over from his work for the Spanish Republic. If it was the latter, then the use of them for the purpose outlined lay on Cal’s conscience, not his.

  ‘Are you sure you can get good enough papers without my help?’

  ‘One of these days I must introduce you to some of my more low-life contacts.’

  ‘One of these days I might need them, which is certain to be true if this goes wrong.’

  ‘There’s no other safe way. If you can’t trust the SIS people who provide false documents not to blab, neither can I, so I will set up a new identity and you and I will organise the method of communicating. But I stress it has to be secure, just you and me. No SIS, no Quex, and if that person trusts you as much as I do, maybe we can do something useful.’

  ‘He will ask for some assurance that you can be that.’

  Cal grinned. ‘With your charm, Peter, that should not be a problem.’

  The remark failed to amuse. ‘And the other matter will be left to me as well.’

  That was a statement not a question and judging by the look that accompanied the words it was not something Peter was looking forward to, for the other thing which had been discussed on the way home, and it could hardly be otherwise, was the level of contact which existed between certain people in SIS and European right-wing organisations.

  ‘I don’t see how I can help in that regard,’ Cal added.

  The acknowledgement of that truth came with a sigh.

  They parted company at the Gare du Nord, Peter going to Calais while Cal took another set of trains north through Brussels to the Hook of Holland, so landing at the port of Harwich instead of Dover, which was a precaution to avoid their arrival being connected. This, in terms of security was possibly excessive, but as Cal insisted, that was a commodity no one ever died of.

  From there and by the boat train he went to his old London haunt, the Goring Hotel, a rather stuffy establishment behind Buckingham Palace, a place once frequented by the wife of a monarch and now used by a very respectable, rather conformist clientele, which suited him, since anyone not of the right type stuck out a mile.

  That he arrived looking a touch grubby by comparison to his normal self did not raise an eyebrow, though there was bound to be curiosity in regard to someone who tended towards the well dressed; Mr Jardine was a good and loyal customer, inclined to tip well, and he would soon be back to normal – his luggage was stored in the hotel basement and every room had a well-stocked en suite bathroom.

  It was while he was lying in the bath, enjoying a good soak in the company of a bottle of Sancerre and cogitating on how to keep going and maintain arm’s-length contact with Peter Lanchester in a strange country, that he had what he considered a good idea. The best solution if a crisis blew up would be to have a trusted intermediary and he knew just where to find one.

  ‘Hello, Vince.’

  Backed on to the boxing ring ropes in his Old Kent Road gym, covered in perspiration and with his head in a protective helmet, arms up to ward off the rain of blows being aimed at him, it was not the most apposite time for Cal to introduce himself, especially since the distraction made his situation worse and he got a blow to his ear that looked hard enough, had he been wearing them, to have rattled his false teeth.

  Vince Castellano was no mug as a pugilist; he had been more than handy in his younger years, good enough to box for and win many bouts for the regiment of which both he and his company commander, Callum Jardine, had been part. It was that ability which had gone some way to mitigating his punishments for the many offences Vince had committed against King’s Rules and Regulations – the colonel did like a winner.

  His problem now was the age of his sparring partner, who looked to be no more than twenty, tall, strong and muscular where it mattered, plus the fact that his blood was up and he was enjoying himself so much that the call to back off went nowhere.

  Thankfully Vince had guile to compensate for the differences and when he took the blow he fell away far and fast enough to regain some control, to parry what came next and get past his opponent’s guard. The short jab to the jaw stopped him dead and the shout to calm down finally registered.

  ‘Thanks a lot, guv,’ Vince gasped, hanging over the ropes. ‘Just what I needed, a clout round the ear ’ole.’

  ‘The boy looks good,’ Cal replied, nodding to his equally puffing partner.

  ‘He would be if he had any brains. Thick as a brick he is, ain’t you, James?’ The lad nodded as Vince pulled off his gloves, then his helmet, shaking his head and sending beads of sweat flying in all directions. ‘Is this a social call?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I hope you ain’t come to get me into trouble.’

  Cal knew to smile. ‘Would I?’

  ‘Let me get washed and changed.’

  Vince was quick and within ten minutes they were sitting in a smoky pub, a fug to which Vince was quick to add with a lit cigarette, drinking pints of bitter, Cal not coming to the point right away but catching up with his old one-time sergeant, whom he had not seen since the fighting they had shared in Barcelona and the Catalan countryside. But curiosity was not long delayed and nor, it seemed, was Vince in any ignorance of what was happening in Czechoslovakia.

  ‘If my paper is right they are in a bit of shit. What do you need from me?’

  ‘I need my back covered and I might need a way of communicating that does not involve telephones or bits of paper.’

  ‘With who?’

  ‘Your favourite companion, Peter Lanchester.’

  ‘Old snooty bollocks, eh,’ Vince laughed. ‘Not that I dislike the sod as much as I used to when he was an officer. We got on quite well on the last job. How long we talking about?’

  ‘I doubt more than a month.’ When Vince looked into his beer Cal quickly added, ‘Look, I know the gym is important …’

  ‘Runs itself now, guv, really, and as you just saw I am having a bit of trouble at the old sparring. Getting too old.’

  Cal wondered if, in fact, Vince was bored. He had been a terrific if troublesome soldier, a good man in a scrap, bouncing from sergeant to private and back again at regular intervals, but whatever joy he took from his training of youngsters – as he often said, keeping them out of jail – seemed to have withered. He sensed something of
the same in Vince as he had himself, an old soldier’s recklessness that came from never being willing to just settle back into Civvy Street.

  ‘Good money I hope?’

  ‘Same as before, Vince, twenty quid a week and all found.’

  ‘I don’t get a raise?’

  ‘Make it guineas.’

  ‘Done,’ Vince said, pulling out another cigarette. ‘When do we leave?’

  ‘I have a couple of things to sort out. I’ll ring the gym, but sort out your passport and pack a bag.’

  The reply was a nod to the empty pint glass. ‘Another one?’

  ‘Things to do,’ Cal said, downing his beer and standing up, his hand waving. ‘I would leave you here to choke on the smoke but I need you to have your photo taken.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Safety. We might be going into Germany as well.’

  ‘That means danger money,’ Vince replied, with a laugh, ‘but I’ll waive that if I get a chance to chin a few Nazis.’

  ‘You can do that at Hyde Park Corner or the East End.’

  And he had. Vince was not one to let folk like that do as they pleased. If Mosley’s Blackshirts came out, so did people like Vince to do battle with them. That got a loud and dismissive snort.

  ‘They’re not real Nazis, they’re fairies.’

  Peter Lanchester had, as was required, made his report to Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, leaving out nothing about the dust-up outside La Rochelle and the suspicion that some kind of leak had come from London.

  ‘Is that a line of enquiry you intend to pursue, Peter?’

  ‘Only with your permission, sir.’

  Quex nodded at what was the correct response, if not one he always got from his subordinates. It was in the nature of the game of which he was part that you needed to recruit mavericks and misfits – to Sir Hugh the man before him was of that stripe.

  Some had mere harmless eccentricities, like his Berlin man’s insistence on rattling around the German capital in a very obvious Rolls-Royce. Yet others were subject to a variety of types of paranoia, seeking and seeing, even inventing conspiracies where none existed, though they were less harm to the aims of the country and the service than those whose caprices tended to allow them to miss what should have been obvious.