Jack Ludlow - The Burning Sky

‘Now, you have to admit, Cal, that is a record.’

Turning slowly he looked her up and down, knowing Lizzie had quite deliberately posed under a tall standard lamp to be admired, and admirable she was. Blond, with a pixie face and that bloody pert nose, wearing a white dress overlaid with silver, she had been the most beautiful debutante of her year, and daft Callum Jardine, fresh from the wilds of Dumfriesshire, tall, handsome, golden-haired and soon to be a dashing officer, had been the one who won her hand. He had suffered nothing but trouble and heartache since.

‘Well, are you going to say anything?’

‘Is white this year’s colour?’

Her tongue came out. ‘You are a pig, Callum Jardine.’

‘True,’ he replied, damned if he was going to compliment her. ‘Shall we go?’

The food at the Cafe de Paris was not inspiring, served as an adjunct to the entertainment, rather than on its own merits. They had danced a quick foxtrot right after cocktails, then had dinner to the sound of ‘Melancholy Baby’ and ‘The Very Thought of You’, with Lizzie mouthing along and making moon eyes at the singer, even more outrageously when ‘Hutch’ came on to play.

‘Pity Edwina Mountbatten has got her claws into him, darling,’ he whispered mischievously.

‘Just make sure Dickie doesn’t get his bits into you, Cal. He does so love a handsome man.’

‘I wish he would try, I haven’t killed anyone for a while.’

That made her frown deeply. ‘Must you bring that up?’

‘Sorry,’ he replied insincerely. ‘I thought it was proof I loved you.’

The eyes went dewy. ‘Do you love me, Cal?’

Here we go again, Jardine thought. Why can I not stay away from her? What is the matter with me? He so wanted to not sleep with her but he knew he would weaken, even as he looked around the packed room and wondered who else had enjoyed the privilege. She would drink just a little too much and get all romantic; he would have lowered his resistance by exactly the same means and he would sashay her into that bedroom at Connaught Square, hoping he could avoid looking at the bedhead and remembering the face of the naked man sitting up, his eyes wide with fear, just before he put a bullet in the left one.

‘Our friend does not look in a good mood this fine morning,’ said Peter Lanchester to Vince Castellano, as they watched Cal Jardine, a luggage porter alongside, heading towards the ticket barrier. His shout echoed as it always does in a railway station. ‘Had a good night, did we?’

‘Do shut up, Peter, and let’s get out of this bloody country.’

‘I sense domestic harmony has not reasserted itself.’

‘When was the last time you ’ad a belt round the ear’ole, Mister Lanchester?’ asked Vince, ‘’cause I can see one coming your way.’

‘Long time since Cal and I exchanged blows.’

‘Them mess dinners were a bit ’airy.’

Cal Jardine marched past them, his face still stiff: last night had conformed to the usual script, with much tender lovemaking, but so had the morning with its customary mutual recriminations. He needed some of that sea air to clear his head, and some action to salve his soul.

First stop was Belgium, a place where, in Vince’s parlance, they could ‘tool up’. Lanchester’s Mauser had gone into the North Sea as soon as he and the Ephraims had cleared the Elbe, Jardine’s pistol into the Danube at the Czech border, neither wishing to be caught bringing a gun into England. By the same token it was not an easy place to buy personal weapons, but Brussels was, and even if they were going to a country at peace, some kind of weaponry was a sensible precaution. They bought two ex-US Army Colt Automatics, while Vince got himself a vicious-looking hunting knife. In passing, Jardine took a shine to a rather natty leather attache case.

‘I’m going to have to get you a new suit, Vince,’ Jardine insisted, looking at the light-brown pinstripe with very pronounced lapels.

‘You don’t like me togs?’

‘You look like a bookie.’

‘I wish I was a bookie, the robbin’ bastards.’

They bought him something dark blue and discreet, with Vince insisting he now looked like a ‘bleedin’ undertaker’. The next train was a sleeper via Paris to Milan, then another to Vienna and finally on to Bucharest, the city they called Little Paris. Jardine could immediately see why, laid out as it was in wide boulevards and big open squares and parks in a way that mirrored the designs of Napoleon III’s architect, Baron Haussmann.

It was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, at the height of its pomp, which had built most of Bucharest, turning it from a sleepy and desolate conurbation into a jewel on the Dambovita river, all of this explained to Vince by Peter Lanchester.

‘The good baron tore down old Paris to rebuild it and apparently it was pretty grubby and smelly. As well as bringing light and air it provided very good fields of fire for artillery, given the city was prone to riot. If your lot got uppity he could mow you down and I daresay they can do that here too.’

‘If the old git is still breathing send him to the Elephant amp; Castle, that could do wiv a clear-out — and not just the houses.’

They booked into the Hotel Palace Athenee — Jardine in a suite, given he needed to look well heeled, and a telegram went off to Zaharoff via his secretary Drouhin, to say where they were staying; you did not use the name of his employer in a public communication if you did not wish to immediately set off alarm bells. His contact name, Colonel Ion Dimitrescu, came by return, with Jardine putting in an immediate telephone call to his office, which had, of necessity, to be discreet and in German, which he had been told the man, like many of his countrymen, spoke fluently. It took ages and some insistence to get through.

‘We have not met, Colonel, but we have a mutual acquaintance and he has kindly given me your name as someone who can advise me about certain aspects of a country I do not know at all.’

‘This acquaintance is?’

‘A resident of Monte Carlo and a man with whom you have done business in the past.’

That led to a pause: this was not a man to be rushed. ‘Is he an elderly gentleman by any chance?’

‘Newly into his eighth decade, Colonel.’

‘And your purpose in being in Bucharest, Herr Jardine?’

‘I am looking for business opportunities in a general sort of way.’

Jardine emphasised the word ‘general’ and he was not disappointed, given his hint seemed to be picked up. ‘And how can I be of assistance?’

‘Might I suggest we have dinner together at my hotel tomorrow night and I can outline my needs?’

‘Allow me to consult my diary.’

That was just a holding tactic: Jardine suspected a man like Dimitrescu, even if he had never met him, would know precisely what commitments he had. ‘Where are you staying?’

‘The Athenee Palace.’

‘Tomorrow evening?’

No doubt after a day of making enquiries to find out who I am, one of which would be a telegram to Zaharoff. ‘Around nine perhaps, Colonel; I am informed you do not dine early in Rumania.’

Jardine and Vince spent the next day finding out about their surroundings, including a very quick way to get out of the hotel unseen, this while Lanchester saw to the banking. A wander round the city showed a mixture of the very new and the timeless, expensive cars many times required to use their horns to move aside horse-drawn transport, like the cabs called trasuras , with Vince sure he was able to recognise the swear words.

The language was akin to Italian, derived as it was from the Latin left behind by the Roman Empire, which had established a frontier in this part of the world to keep out the barbarians from further east, and one held onto by a population that refused to speak Turkish when ruled by the Ottomans. They hated the Austrians and Russians who had occupied the city several times with as much passion, but German was a second language, hardly surprising given the monarch was Carol von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, part of the same extended family as the exiled German kaiser.