Jack Ludlow: The Burning Sky

‘Apologies and thank you for the history lesson, Cal, but I seem to have sidetracked you when you were regaling me with how you got out of Hunland. Sharp thinking to head inwards rather than out when the borders were being watched. I take it you did not linger long in Berlin.’

‘I went straight from the railway station to the passenger barges that run down to Prague.’

‘And your forged papers stood up to scrutiny?’

There was no need to say they had been checked, and more than once, in a country in the grip of deep paranoia layered on top of an endemic and historic love of bureaucracy. Travelling without papers was impossible and you could not even stay with a relative in Germany for more than two weeks without registering your presence at the police station. Every mode of transport had roving officials checking documents and that included Elbe barges. It was thus a good job those he carried had been supplied by members of the Hamburg underworld and were of a high standard.

‘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.