The Burning Sky

by Jack Ludlow

  ‘Being foreign gets a lot of scrutiny, but I pretended to be a Sudetenlander.’

  ‘And what, pray, is that when it’s out and about?’

  ‘German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, one that Hitler wants to be incorporated back into the Reich, like all the bits that were hived off by the Treaty of Versailles. I said you should read Mein Kampf. Anyway, being an ethnic German, sadly cut off from my Volk, and I played that up a lot, got me a certain amount of sympathy. Accent’s a bit tricky, mind, bit like speaking Welsh.’

  ‘Welsh as an accent and German, so doubly damned, poor sods,’ Lanchester opined, picking up the wine bottle to ensure it was empty. ‘Is it not odd, though, the way we never think of other nations having accents? Port?’

  ‘Not at luncheon, Peter, and not when I suspect I might need a very clear head.’

  Lanchester signalled to the waiter, told him to serve them coffee in the library, a quiet place to which they retired, taking up seats in the far corner, away from the door. ‘You know what we are after already, up to a point.’

  ‘I do not know the “we”, and while you said money was available, I would need to know how much and where it came from to be sure I can trade in the places I need to. That is one area in which all must be secure. Nothing is more likely to get one into trouble than trading for arms, then coming up short with the lolly. Then I would want to know precisely where you fit in.’

  Lanchester looked around the book-lined room, empty except for one very old gent sound asleep in an armchair, probably a victim of an early luncheon, yet even then, in this bastion of the British upper crust, he spoke in a whisper.

  ‘I did do a bit of intelligence work, in our old stamping ground, the Middle East, but I got the heave-ho when the budgets were cut because of the financial crisis. So now I am freelancing, though I have to say I still have good and valuable access to information through my old chums. That aided me in finding you.’

  ‘Ask anyone else, Peter?’

  ‘No I did not. Few have your unique combination of skills.’

  Suspecting that to be a lie, Jardine asked who else was involved.

  ‘Churchill is helping us in his fashion.’

  ‘Not financially, I hope. I heard the old bugger lost all his loot on Wall Street and was living off his writing.’

  ‘Another is Ernest Bevin.’

  ‘What!’ Jardine’s surprised response was loud enough to penetrate the slumbers of the old gent, who snorted and shifted in his armchair, the next comment much softer. ‘Surely those two are not in cahoots?’

  ‘Necessity makes for strange bedfellows, Cal.’

  ‘Warhorse Winnie and the leader of the Transport and General Workers’ Union? Talk about chalk and cheese, and did I not read Churchill was praising Mussolini to the skies for his statesmanship at the Stresa Conference?’

  ‘Think of the newspapers he writes for and his need to earn a crust. Winnie is more pragmatic than you give him credit for. He has the right contacts and Bevin has a hefty dose of the funds.’

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘Not far off the half-million mark – not all from union sources, of course.’

  ‘I wonder if Bevin’s members know what he is doing with their contributions?’

  ‘Fighting the good fight, or planning to, for we can assume they are anti-fascists to a man. There are other contributors right across the spectrum: shipping, industry, even the arms trade, but they, especially, have to be very careful not to upset a government who provides a healthy part of their living.’

  ‘Are not these the very same people who admire Hitler and tell me that Mussolini makes the trains run on time?’

  ‘There are folk on both sides of the argument, Cal, but in the people I represent, the common view is that if we don’t stop these bloody dictators we will be obliged to do a 1914–18 all over again, and that means national ruin.’

  ‘The place to do that is in Europe, not Africa.’

  ‘What if one of them fell?’

  ‘Hitler is a very long shot, Peter. The Germans are efficient at everything, dictatorship included. Damn near every voice that could be raised against him has been either eliminated or incarcerated. If there’s a communist left in a place like Hamburg, they are keeping their heads down and the population are doing likewise, because the only thing you get when you protest is either a visit at midnight or a bullet.’

  Lanchester smiled. ‘Which leaves old fatso. If Mussolini can be held up in Ethiopia, he’s not that secure at home.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  ‘Christ almighty, Cal, it’s Italy – no one is ever secure there.’

  ‘Italy,’ Jardine pointed out and with some emphasis, ‘is at this moment more stable than our supposed main ally, France.’

  ‘Never could rely on the Frogs, could we, really? Always moaning. Too damned sensitive, and as for those miserable paysan blighters who sought to rob us blind in the Pas de Calais …’

  ‘I’m rather fond of the French.’

  ‘Then, old boy, and not for the first time, you go against the grain.’

  ‘So, Peter, do we have a plan?’

  ‘Are you saying yes to the endeavour?’

  ‘No, I am saying do we have a plan?’

  ‘It would be more accurate to say we have an intention. As I intimated in Hamburg, and I am sure I have reiterated here, great caution must be taken to avoid contamination for certain people. Their role is in discreet finance, extensive contacts and the provision of the necessary services.’

  Jardine knew what that meant; right now there was nothing, and if there was ever going to be anything, he would have to create it, which was a far-from-attractive prospect. Against that he was now at a loose end and a man who had an abhorrence of inactivity. Being in London made him uncomfortable also: there were too many unhappy memories here.

  ‘So tell me what you do have.’

  Lanchester obliged and in doing so added some sobering thoughts to the mind of Callum Jardine. The Eyeties had completely rebuilt the port of Massawa in Eritrea, turning it from a wooden jetty into a modern facility, and they were using that to pour in troops, arms and vehicles to their main base at Asmara. They had built good roads both to their capital, as well as to the Ethiopian border and also constructed an airbase big enough to cater for their three-engined bombers.

  Having been defeated by the Ethiopians some forty years previously at the Battle of Adowa – held in Italy to be a crushing national humiliation – it seemed they were taking no chances this time. It was going to be massive force and modern weaponry against what could only be an ill-equipped native army, with the aim of total conquest.

  ‘There’s no way enough arms can be smuggled in to face that, Peter, at least of the level required. You’re talking about tanks and artillery. Only governments can do that.’

  ‘True, what we are doing is tokenism, really.’

  ‘Then why do it?’

  The place was filling up with those who had finished their grub; the armchairs would now be occupied by old buffers in need of a postprandial nap, and this forced Lanchester to lower even his previous whisper – his head was now very close to that of his companion.

  ‘It will help to save our blushes in the future and, who knows, the fuzzy-wuzzies might make the Italians pay a very high price for success, maybe even too high a price. Imagine if the buggers came unstuck … but even holding them up might do. I doubt Mussolini can either take his time or lose too many men, given the people he leads have no greater appetite for conflict than we do in Blighty.’

  ‘An attitude they share for a very good reason. Their donkeys were far worse generals than even our lot. The Italian army lost more men on the Izonso river front than we did at the Somme. What are their forces like now?’

  ‘Navy looks good, and I suspect the pilots are dashing johnnies. Ground troops are not the best, but they never were, given their officers are more interested in being well barbered than being well trained. Some good
regiments, the Alpine chaps are top class, but there are also Blackshirt units in their bits of the Horn of Africa and I suspect they are rubbish, a bit like your Hun SA.’

  ‘Then why use them?’

  ‘Forget all that guff about Italy needing colonies, Cal, this is a political enterprise to bolster the regime, and it is my guess that whoever is in charge has instructions to put Mussolini’s ex-street-fighting cadres at the front of the battle so he can claim it is Fascist willpower which has overcome the fuzzy-wuzzies—’

  Jardine interrupted. ‘Can we call them Ethiopians, please?’

  Even hissed, that got them attention, so Lanchester rose. ‘What about a walk in Green Park, oh sensitive one?’

  He had to sign for his bill and don his new bowler before they exited, crossing Piccadilly to the park, with Lanchester resuming where he had left off, as they sauntered down paths filled with office workers out enjoying the sunshine, with the odd tourist admiring Buckingham Palace or the bas-reliefs on Decimus Burton’s Hyde Park Corner arch.

  ‘If we can get stuff in to augment the local weaponry, and they can kill enough Blackshirts, it might cause him big trouble at home. Bringing him down is probably asking for the moon, but if we can remind the Eyeties of the cost of conflict that can only be to the good. If it keeps them out of Hitler’s embrace, then—’

  ‘They will fall out over Austria when Hitler invades, which he will do if they don’t agree to a political union, especially when the Ösis become part of the Greater German Reich and demand the Trentino region back.’

  Lanchester sighed. ‘They know not what they did at Versailles, do they, slicing up and parcelling out bits of the old German and Austrian empires?’

  ‘I think they knew, Peter, but I don’t think they had much choice.’

  ‘If we have to fight the Hun again, I will personally shoot the first bugger to mention an armistice or peace terms. So, how do we feel about the job, which comes, by the way, and I have not mentioned it, with a very healthy stipend?’

  With a private income, money was only of concern to Jardine because it was a bad idea to work for nothing; even in Hamburg he had taken a small amount in pay. ‘I’ll look at the salary when I’ve looked at everything else. What paperwork do you have, order of battle and that sort of stuff?’

  ‘Quite a lot.’

  ‘Maps too – what about arms?’

  ‘That’s your bailiwick, old boy. The only thing I will say for certain is they cannot be bought or shipped from these shores.’

  ‘Then I need to see some people before I commit to anything, here and overseas.’

  ‘Fair enough. How long?’

  ‘Couple of weeks, Peter, but be warned, I might turn you down flat.’ The look Lanchester gave him then was discomfiting, being too knowing: he knew his one-time fellow officer could not resist an underdog or a cause. ‘I mean it, Peter.’

  ‘Of course you do, Cal, old boy. Now where are you staying?’

  ‘Across the park at The Goring.’

  ‘Not with the ex-wife?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Still not forgiven you?’

  Jardine shook his head fiercely, making it obvious that was not a subject he wanted to reprise and the forgiveness bit was a dig: who was to forgive whom? He had come back from the war to find his wife’s lover in bed with her. Still carrying his service revolver he had immediately shot the fellow dead. It had been quite a cause célèbre at the time, especially when, at the subsequent Old Bailey trial, the jury had acquitted him of murder. Lizzie Jardine was one reason to stay out of London. With his wife, it was a case of make up for a bit then fall out again, and with her being a Catholic, even if she was not in the least bit moral, divorce was out of the question.

  ‘Talk to you anon, then?’ Lanchester said, tipping his bowler as he walked away, his brolly ferrule beating out a tattoo. ‘I’ll put in a decent cheque to cover your expenses.’

  Jardine’s first task was to order a new passport – his old one had some too-revealing stamps – and that required a visit to a photographer and an hour in the Victoria offices where they were issued, his excuse for a replacement that he had lost his previous one. Back at The Goring he wrote to ask for an appointment with Geoffrey Amherst, and his next task was to book a train and ferry crossing back to the Continent, his destination Monaco.

  Lanchester’s papers, including a cheque for a hundred pounds, arrived before he ate dinner and he did not look at them till afterwards, thankful he had eaten little given his appreciation of the situation was likely to induce indigestion.

  The Abyssinian invasion force was reported to consist of nearly seven hundred thousand men, two-thirds of them Italian, the rest made up of Somali and Eritrean levies, as well as units from Libya. But it was the equipment levels more than the numbers of bodies that were sobering. Six hundred tanks, two thousand pieces of artillery and close to four hundred aircraft were either in the region or on the way, and given they were not all yet in theatre, Jardine concluded Lanchester, or someone like him, had very good access to what should have been secret Italian information.

  Some of the units could be discounted, like the so-called Arditi, Mussolini’s Blackshirts, who would be made up of ex-street thugs and Fascist arrivistes, more boastful than brave. But as Lanchester had pointed out, there were units like the Alpini; in a mountainous country like Ethiopia they would be invaluable. Just as deadly would be the local askaris, troops able to fight in the terrain and climate because they were accustomed to both and, if they were anything like the ones the Germans had used in Tanganyika in the Great War, the most dangerous force of all, given they would take casualties in a way he doubted would apply to the regular Italian army. Worst of all for the Abyssinians was Italian air power: three hundred modern bombers and fighters against which the defenders could muster only some twenty-five old biplanes.

  Studying the maps, it was clear the Italians would have to come from the lowlands of Eritrea and Somalia and ascend into the high country around Addis Ababa, their capital being the hub of resistance and the place the Ethiopians would be determined to defend. He let some tactics run through his mind but decided to let his notions lie fallow until he had talked to Amherst, who was, as a military strategist, very much his superior. Even then, the ringing of the bedside phone broke his train of thought.

  ‘Mr Jardine, you have a visitor downstairs.’

  ‘I do?’ he replied, looking at his watch: ten o’clock was a late hour for anyone to call. ‘I’ll come down; ask them to wait.’

  In a life of much risk, and even being in London, Callum Jardine never allowed himself to take a chance. If it was a habit that others might sneer at – a sort of showing off – it was one he stood by because you only got the chance to be wrong once. So when he went down to meet this visitor he did so by using the service stairs to the basement, past piles of fresh and dirty laundry and all the paraphernalia that hotel guests never see in the mass. There was a fire exit and he hit the bar, emerging into the street at the hotel rear.

  Coming round to the main entrance his first look was at the cars parked nearby, to see if any of them had passengers or some sign, like a trail of smoke coming from a cigarette, to show someone waiting. Sure they were all unoccupied, he made his way to the well-lit doorway, eyes cast right and left to pick up anyone immobile in the shadows, then he had a long look through the glass of the revolving door before he pushed his way into the lobby.

  He spotted who had come to see him immediately. If the clothes were different, a dark-blue suit instead of grey, she was as well dressed and groomed as she had been the last time he had seen her clearly; the back of a car and dressed like a stevedore did not count.

  ‘Fräulein Ephraim?’ he said, softly.

  She had been facing the lift and staircase, sat on the edge of a couch, and his surreptitious approach startled her so much she spun around in alarm, making him wonder if, in her mind, she was suddenly back in her own country worrying about a visit from the G
estapo. That faded quickly as she composed her features and stood up.

  ‘Please Elsa call me,’ she replied, in accented English.

  ‘I didn’t know you spoke our language.’

  ‘I do not well, Herr Jardine.’ The grin with which he responded was only partly to dismiss such a comment; the other part was a genuine feeling that he was with a very attractive girl. ‘I ask Herr Lanchester to telephone me when you arrive in London, if you arrive in London, zhat is.’

  ‘I’m sure he could not wait to place the call.’

  She smiled herself then and that softened features he had thought to be somewhat stiff, the normal look a girl of her age would employ in the presence of anyone older. ‘He is very push, your Herr Lanchester.’

  ‘So he did not advance to Peter?’

  That got a real smile. ‘No.’

  Seeing the night porter hovering he asked, ‘Will you join me in a drink?’

  ‘I came to thank you only.’

  The way she said that struck a false note. ‘Which does not debar you from accepting a glass of champagne, surely.’ Seeing the hint of reserve, the tightening of the cheeks, he added quickly, ‘To celebrate your deliverance and mine, of course.’

  ‘That would be most kind, but—’

  ‘Your father and mother are well?’ Jardine interrupted, a ploy both to stop her refusal and to let her know that he understood that there were constraints on how she could behave. ‘Not to mention your brothers.’

  The toss of the head, which threw her long black hair to one side, was enchanting. The well-defined black eyebrows, plucked to a perfect arch, went up as well, to dismiss as pests her three male siblings. ‘My brothers, phut!’

  He took her elbow and led her deeper into the hotel lounge, to a pair of couches on either side of a low coffee table, guiding her to one side while he sat on the other, the night porter having followed at his signal. Jardine knew they had a Sekt on the wine list, but he suspected a German sparkling wine might not be welcome: better to stick to France and safety.