Jack Ludlow - The Burning Sky

‘At the risk of stating the obvious, Jardine, nothing will happen unless the wheels are oiled, and the Rumanians do not come cheap. I have had dealings there over many years and I know they expect to be bribed and that their preferred currency is Swiss francs.’

‘Especially if I am in a hurry.’

‘Try not to let it appear so, for if they suspect you are eager, the price of help will double, at least.’

Now he was speeding back through France weighing the alternatives. It was a case of supplying a decent amount of old equipment as against a small quantity of new, the cost of the alternative being prohibitive, even if it could be found. Striking was the simple fact that the most potent arms dealer in Europe, albeit he was no longer really active, had not offered him anything other than information — not even an old competitor who could help. Quite apart from the politics of standing aside in Abyssinia, the major manufacturing countries were looking to their own needs and, apart from Germany, they were keeping what they made at home.

That the Germans had been rearming for fifteen years was an open secret: Jardine moved in circles well aware of this, and any government with an intelligence set-up knew it too. They had opened secret factories in Russia, as well as in Germany itself, for the one thing the Great War had not done was to tame the ambitions or power of the Great General Staff. Even before Hitler, the now-defunct Weimar Republic had relied on the army, and the Nazis had been required to seduce and reassure the military in order to see them into power.

Back in his London hotel room, he laid out the bones of what he had discovered to Lanchester. ‘So there we have it, Peter — not perfect, perhaps less than satisfactory, but given the time, maybe the best we can do.’

‘What would be required if the answer is to go ahead?’

‘Funds available as I have already outlined, to buy the goods and transport them to the Black Sea, a ship waiting at Constanta to take them to the Horn of Africa, and some way of assuring me that once that vessel is off Somaliland there is a way to get them to where they need to be. I presume that has been thought about in advance.’

‘We have a representative out there, a district officer primed to do what is required.’

‘Who?’

‘Chap called Mason, who is also our link to those around Haile Selassie, and the idea is that once the weapons are on the way you go in and set up the operation overland with his aid.’

‘Which has to be carried out in secret, Peter, because if the Italians even get a sniff they will scream blue murder.’

‘He has assured us this can be done.’

‘By road?’

‘God no, that would be too obvious, seeing there’s only one road in and out and it runs past the barracks of the Somali Camel Corps. The powers that be in British Somaliland would throw you in the clink if they caught you, and impound the goods. The Ethiopians will provide the men and transport to get them across a discreet part of the border.’

‘That sounds very like camels.’

‘Spot on, old boy. The main road, not much of one I am told, runs through Hargeisa, the administrative centre of British Somaliland, while the railway from Djibouti to Dire Dawa is under French control, given they built it. Neither is useable.’

‘Would you be offended if I said this whole idea is a bit half-cocked? I have to buy a load of weapons and get them to the Horn of Africa, with no feeling of assurance that when I get there I will not be kyboshed by my own government, then sneak them overland across what might well be a bloody desert.’

‘Using the old slave trade routes, Cal, which, I’ll have you know, are not entirely redundant.’

‘There are too many “ifs” in this, Peter.’

‘Never knew any operation to be different, Cal. “If” number one! Will the backers agree to what is being proposed? “If” number two, can you get hold of what is available in the time we have? Three, can they be got, by ship, to the Somali coast? Four, can we get them ashore and across one of the least hospitable places on the planet to where they can do some good?’ Lanchester leant over grinning and slapped him on the back. ‘Bloody simple, really.’

‘One step at a time in other words?’

‘Precisely.’

‘You could lose your shirt on this.’

‘It’s not my shirt.’

‘How long before we know the funds are available for use in Rumania?’

‘They are in place now, Cal, in a Swiss bank, three hundred thousand pounds sterling, with the reserve if you need more, which means that you and I should pack our bags for Bucharest.’

‘You’re coming too?’

‘Old chum, I trust you, but not with that much lolly. I am there to sign the cheques.’

* * *

There were two people to see before heading east, the first being the man who had recruited him for the Hamburg operation. He took Elsa Ephraim with him to the huge heath-side house in Hampstead, though after the introductions, she was asked to wait outside.

‘Now, that is a real looker,’ said Sir Monty Redfern, as always, when using an ‘r’, making it sound as if there were several instead of just one. ‘I didn’t know you liked them so fresh.’

‘I admit to temptation, Monty,’ Jardine replied, ‘and I was sorely tempted a few nights back, but I kept my buttons done up because she is young and naive.’

‘So you are a fool.’

‘How was New York?’

‘Too many Jews, what do you think, and loud, so loud. Worse than Palestine, my God!’

Patron of several Jewish charities, Sir Monty was a self-made millionaire who had earned his money in chemicals, never boasting that he started with nothing as a fifth son of refugees selling such things as bicarbonate of soda door to door; such tales had to be dragged out of him. Money had not sophisticated him much: he dressed in clothes he had owned for years and his shoes were never polished, but if anyone in Britain was doing what they could for the Jews of Europe it was he, because, as he insisted, anti-Semitism was not confined to Germany, there was plenty of it in Britain.

‘You raised some funds?’

‘Not as much as those crooks could have contributed.’ To Monty there were only crooks or good people; there was nothing in between. ‘Of course, they have their own organisations who are pleading for lolly.’

Jardine laid the money belt he had brought from Hamburg on the desk. ‘This will help.’

Monty picked it up and weighed it in a way that made Jardine think he could count the unseen contents; maybe he could.

‘I took a lot of money off those Jews who could afford to pay and used it to get anyone too poor but under threat through the port.’ The word ‘Communist’ hung in the air, but was unmentioned. Jardine had got several Reds out from under the threat of a National Socialist bullet, but it was not a thing to make public. Few countries wanted Jews, none wanted to import revolution and no one of that political persuasion had been sent on to England. ‘That is what is left over.’

‘Jardine, you I should employ to sell my chemicals, then I would be rich, no?’ That was followed by a frown. ‘You have taken care of your own needs.’

‘I have.’

‘Good.’ Monty knew and approved of the Jardine rule: never work for nothing. As he had observed, there were not many rich Jews in his native Scotland, the competition was too stiff. ‘Now, your young lady.’

‘She wants to help.’

‘You think perhaps she would consider to make an old man happy?’

‘Your wife would kill you.’

‘What do you think she does already? Spend, spend, spend!’

‘She could act as some kind of secretary.’

‘My wife sees that kind of secretary, I will be eating my own balls for dinner.’