by Jack Ludlow
Part of the visiting party included his counterpart in French Intelligence and he would share with that man the fact that he had an independent and covert operation going on in Czechoslovakia, one in which he was happy to communicate the results, albeit the French were well placed there themselves.
Naturally he would be expected to ask for something in return and he would, out of a curiosity prompted by what Peter Lanchester had told him on his return, request a record of the calls from abroad made to certain proto-fascist organisations in France; that such records existed he had no doubts.
The telegrams were locked in his desk drawer; his briefcase was waiting for him to take out, within it the latest digest of intelligence from the Central European Desk. Emerging to cross a sunlit pavement, Sir Hugh reflected that it was probably sunny all the way across the continent of Europe. Odd that what he was carrying hinted at dark and threatening clouds.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘I think the thing that set me up most was the sea journey back to the States.’
Corrie Littleton was talking about her convalescence in what had, so far, been a very pleasant dinner, during which she had, surprisingly, asked for wine; Cal remembered her as a strident teetotaller, but as a result of her serious wounds, she had turned to alcohol to ease down from a possible morphine addiction.
‘And not just the sea air. On the transatlantic there was the dishiest doc you have ever seen in your life. Boy, do those sailor’s whites make a guy look good, especially the shorts.’
‘You should see me in a kilt.’
‘Do you mind, Cal, I’m eating,’ she replied, forking some goulash into her mouth, only speaking again when that had been consumed. ‘So when are you going to tell what game you are playing here in Prague?’
‘Who says I’m going to tell you?’
She threw back her head and laughed. ‘You better had, bud, ’cause I am a hot reporter these days.’
She had been something of a thorn in Cal’s side in Ethiopia, forcing diversions on his objectives in a search for her archaeologist mother, that not aided by a tongue that seemed, in his case, to be made of acid. Yet she could handle a gun, complained little of the discomfort of travelling and proved she was a woman by making moon eyes at an aristocratic, arrogant French flyer.
It was also true she had been stalwart when called upon, helping, without any experience at all, to run a field hospital in which it had been necessary to quickly overcome any natural squeamishness and deal with the horrendous wounds caused by modern weapons. In short, Corrie Littleton was quite tough.
‘So you’d best just open up.’
Recalling the way he had lost contact with Moravec, Cal was thinking right now there was nothing to say. Then Vince nudged him and he saw coming through the tables the bloke his boxing friend had nearly floored. The young man said nothing, just dropped a card onto the table by Cal’s side and carried on. Corrie Littleton tried to snatch it but failed; after a quick look it went into a pocket.
‘Whose side are you on?’ Cal asked as a way of diverting her. ‘The Germans or the Czechs?’
‘I’m supposed to be neutral.’
‘Hard to be that,’ Vince said.
‘I agree, and when it’s the little guy against Goliath there’s really only one side to be on.’
‘Is that the policy of your rag?’
‘It’s not a rag, Cal, it’s a magazine and they don’t have a view either way and nor do they want headlines. What they need is a set of features that sells copies. How the place is, under the threat of invasion – are the locals coping, what do they think of the democracies, not just here in Prague but in the Sudetenland as well? And to do that I need to go there and be free to operate openly.’
Cal did a good job of looking sorry for her; Vince did it better – he meant it.
‘With what’s happening in Nuremberg the Czechs have got kinda jumpy about journalists travelling around the border areas and they’re insisting they need police escorts. I’d need accreditation papers to do my job.’
‘You can go as a private citizen, I think.’
‘What would be the point of that? My request to go there is with the Interior Ministry but they seem to be taking their damn sweet time to process it.’
‘It must be crowded in those parts right now,’ Vince said.
‘Not so, Vince, the head honchos up there are not talking, so all the journos are stuck with the political shenanigans here in Prague, all writing the same copy. Quite a few will be lighting out for Nuremberg, where at least something’s happening.’
‘Mass hysteria is happening.’
‘Which I don’t want to cover anyway, because my stuff is supposed to be human interest. I don’t suppose you have any pull in this neck of the woods, do you?’
‘If I had, why would I use them on your behalf?’ Cal replied, avoiding the implications of that query, not that he could oblige.
That got him sight of a paprika-stained tongue. ‘If they take much longer I might just be obliged to shimmy over to the Nazi Party Rally. I’ve got accreditation for the Reich and it will be exciting on the last day when Hitler speaks, though that will be crowded.’
‘Take my word for it, the place will be heaving with lunatics.’
‘I was talking about journalists.’
‘What makes you think I wasn’t? What are the chaps in the bar saying about what’s happening here in Prague?’
‘To a man they’re saying it stinks. That Lord Runciman guy Chamberlain sent over is a patsy, going through the motions, judging by the speech he made today at his latest press conference. And where has he gone off for the weekend to find out how the Czechs feel? To spend time in the castle of some well-heeled German aristocrat up north near Carlsbad called Prince Hohenlohe, that’s where. The word in the bar of the Ambassador is it’s all a set-up to sell the victims down the river.’
‘Typical reporters’ talk.’
‘Don’t knock it, some of those guys have seen it all and are too long in the tooth to fall for any old line.’ Another mouthful of goulash later, Corrie added, with narrowed eyes and what Cal thought was her best effort at a winning smile, ‘But if I can’t do the Sudetenland my readers would sure like a tale of derring-do and gunrunning. I can do it off the record, no names or places.’
‘Pity I can’t oblige, I always wanted to see my name in print.’
‘You will one day, buster, but it will be on a charge sheet.’
They continued to spar throughout the main course, into the dessert and coffee, she probing, he fielding, watched by a mainly silent and amused Vince Castellano, who knew there was something between the pair other than the apparent mutual antagonism that peppered their conversation, until finally Cal indicated he and Vince had to go.
‘Anything to do with that card you pocketed?’
An index finger was used to tap the side of his nose before Cal asked, ‘You OK to get a cab on your own?’
‘I’m a big girl now, Cal,’ Corrie replied with a girlie lilt.
Having seen her into the aforesaid taxi he and Vince walked up the street till they saw their man emerge from a doorway several yards ahead – a gap he maintained, turning left then right into a backstreet so ill lit it had Vince on edge, eyes darting and fists clenched in case of trouble. The car Cal had been alerted to on that card was waiting, engine purring, and the two men got in, the lead fellow now in the front passenger seat.
‘Does he speak English?’
Cal could only mean the driver, who had engaged the gears and moved off without a word being spoken. ‘No.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes.’
‘How well?’
‘Three years at the London School of Economics.’ There was a mid-European accent, but not much of one. ‘Most of my fellow students went to the Sorbonne and are French-speaking.’
‘Why did you follow me?’
‘On the general’s orders, to see where you stayed.’
‘He must
have known I was at the Meran as soon as he made the phone call I asked for.’
‘A clever man might book into more than one hotel to make sure he was not exposed.’
‘And the Meran is where you picked us up tonight?’
‘Yes.’
‘Inside or out?’ Cal saw the young man’s shoulders shrug as if it made no difference; it did to him and he asked again.
‘I was outside in Wenceslas Square.’
‘So you did not enquire about me at the Meran reception desk? Ask who was staying in room 47?’
The silence was the answer and that was not good; the last thing Cal wanted was people seeking information on him at a hotel reception desk, especially since this youngster would have had no name with which to enquire, which was bound to raise curiosity about him as a guest. Anonymity was a precious commodity to be preserved if possible, which was why he had not told Moravec the name he was travelling under at the cathedral.
Irritated as he was, there was no point in crying over spilt milk. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To the old Jewish cemetery.’
‘Why there?’
‘It’s safe.’
There was a temptation to probe about that, to ask if it was as bad as Moravec had made out, or was it just the paranoia of a man who spent his life in the spying business? But there was little point, so he just sat back and relaxed as the car weaved through the light night-time traffic, crossing the river, until they stopped by the long wall of the old cemetery, alighting to walk to the gate.
There was a moment outside while checks were made on both sides of the gate but finally they went through into the gloomy interior. Moravec was waiting for them inside and, without speaking, they set off on a walk through the now defunct graveyard, packed with tilted headstones, with the other two well back to avoid them being overheard. The intelligence chief was not even about to trust the young man he had sent to fetch them.
Cal could hear Vince questioning the young fellow, not in any pressured way, just curious about his time in London, what he had studied, what he thought of the place and had he come across any fascists at the LSE, but inside those replies there would be nuggets of information that might provide clues for future use, given neither had any idea exactly where this was heading.
On a clear night with a near-full moon and a sky full of stars, even in a part of the city low on the spill from street lighting there was no need for any extra illumination, though it did give a ghostly air to both their surroundings and the Moravec-Jardine conversation as they walked down the gravel paths that criss-crossed the burial ground.
Cal was wondering what Moravec wanted with him but was equally determined not to initiate anything; he would wait to hear what the intelligence chief had to say and that became frustrating, as Moravec seemed to want to talk about anything and nothing, thankfully mostly in German.
He was treated to a potted history of the Czechs, without doubt and unsurprisingly in the Moravec exposition the cleverest and most industrious of the former inhabitants of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Quite naturally that included a comprehensive list of the manifest failings of the rest of the groups with whom they competed for imperial attention in what had, until its dismemberment in 1919, been a somewhat rickety edifice.
To the Czech way of thinking it was made up of lazy Slovaks, mercurial Hungarians, puffed-up Poles, insular Ruthenians and double-dealing Rumanians, all beholden to soft overfed Austrians, with the rest, a good dozen races, not, it seemed, to be considered as human at all and a polity riven with the kind of deep-seated anti-Semitism that made men like Hitler.
‘And you can see how we Czechs did not just tolerate the Jews, but lived alongside them in harmony and mutual industry. There were no pogroms in Prague and as of this moment we are walking through a thousand years of Jewish history.’
Then he was on to the German minority, grudgingly admitted to be hard-working and industrious, though politically they had nothing to complain about, with the whole separatist campaign being orchestrated, if not forced, from Berlin.
Konrad Henlein, the leader of the SdP, was far from the most rabid of their number and, while he was strong in demands for regionalism, had never been a National Socialist. It was only pressure from others, rabid Nazis, and their success in the polls that had forced him to even consider incorporating the Sudetenland in the Reich.
According to Moravec, Henlein had been quite amenable to the Sudetenland regions remaining part of the Czechoslovak Republic, albeit with concessions, a position he maintained until he was outmanoeuvred by the National Socialists, who were being heavily backed financially from Berlin.
With less money to spend on elections Henlein had lost an internal struggle for votes against a faction led by an outright Nazi who was now his deputy, a thug called Karl Hermann Frank. He had then moved to the extreme right only to maintain his own position as leader of the ethnic Germans.
While what Moravec was telling him was of some interest it did not answer the central question of what this clandestine meeting was for. On and on he rambled until finally he came to the point, which was that the invasion was scheduled and the question as to how that knowledge would be received in London if it could be proved beyond doubt that it was not just some outline plan – the reason it had been dismissed before – but a real one ready to be executed.
‘It would have to harden their attitude to Germany.’
‘Enough to stop Hitler?’
‘It’s possible,’ Cal replied, thinking of his conversation in the courtyard of the Savile Club. ‘I can say no more than that.’
‘We cannot give up control of the Sudetenland without losing the means to defend the rest of the country. I suspect you know this.’
‘Of course.’
‘You asked about the Germans who fear Hitler will ruin their country?’
Cal did not speak; this was what he had come to Prague for.
‘That attacking us was bound to cause another war. Three we know of tried to change his mind, wrote strong memoranda saying it was madness, von Neurath, the Foreign Minister, Generals Blomberg and Fritsch; all were got rid of. Now General Beck, the Chief of the General Staff, has resigned, but it has not been made public.’
‘If a man of that stature took such a course there must be others willing to follow him?’
‘None as yet, they are behaving like sheep. Everyone who knows what is planned has been told it is Hitler’s unalterable will.’
That sounded like the Austrian Corporal all right: ‘unalterable will’ was one of his favourite sayings and a mantra adopted by those who worshipped him and his creed, as though the mere application of willpower could achieve whatever was desired, regardless of obstacles. It was an uncomfortable truth that, up till now, against all the odds, the little moustachioed bastard had been right.
‘Most of his senior generals are terrified of what he proposes and fear that he will use his leader’s speech at Nuremberg to declare his intention to invade.’
That was only a few days away. ‘Will they act if he does?’
‘If your country was at risk like mine, would you rely on a group of German generals to save you?’
‘No. Is there any prospect of help from elsewhere?’
‘The Polish jackals will not give us aid, they will not even let the Soviets cross their land to help us because they are itching to take back the Teschen coalfields, this while the Hungarians are circling like vultures too, waiting to feed on our carcass. Without help from the West we are doomed.’
‘You’re still negotiating.’
That produced a snort, which was supposed to pass for a laugh. ‘Let me tell you, my friend, a few days ago our president called in the two deputies Henlein has appointed to deal with us. He gave them a blank sheet of paper and a pen and asked them to write for themselves the conditions by which we could avoid a conflict, guaranteeing to accept whatever they wrote in advance.’
‘That sounds like surrender.’
‘It was not quite, but I think they were shocked. Oh, these men, they wrote such a list and Beneš accepted it in a bid to avoid our country being smashed. Then we had a riot up north in Moravia, engineered by the German deputies, in which they claim a policeman struck a deputy with his whip. You will not yet have seen your English papers reporting this, but suddenly we are again, in Germany, killing innocents even if no one died. And what happened to those terms that our president agreed to?’
‘Don’t tell me, no longer acceptable.’
Then, surprisingly, he reverted to his grammarless English and the previous point. ‘If we you give proof absolute of what Hitler planning, what with it would you do?’
‘What kind of proof?’
‘The details of attack.’
That required a long pause; was he being offered such proof? ‘Get it back to London, put it in the hands of those who could make use of it.’
‘The newspapers also?’
‘Perhaps. That would not be for me to decide.’
Even in the gloom Cal saw the smile. ‘Politicians the newspapers fear when they do not them control.’
‘Why do you speak in English when your German is fluent?’
‘Not fluent my English, is it, like Vaclav?’ Finally the young man had a name. ‘I am wound, but practise I must, my friend, if I need flee. If Germans come, a bullet only I can expect.’ The switch back to German was seamless as was the change of subject. ‘There are only four places where this truth you seek exists.’
I seek, Cal thought. So this is where he’s going?
‘Naturally, the entire plan is at the headquarters of the German army in Berlin, along with those for defending at the same time the Rhineland from a French invasion.’
‘I hope you’re not going to suggest I go burgling in the Bendlerstraße.’