Jack Ludlow - The Burning Sky

‘You’re being tailed; one geezer is all I could see.’

‘Dimitrescu.’

‘Has to be, dun it?’ Vince made a fist. ‘You want I should see him off?’

‘No, there’s no point, but I want you to go up to Mr Lanchester’s room and say from now on he’s to stay off my floor. You can take messages back and forth if need be.’

‘What about that call you was gonna make, guv?’

‘I saw a few places. Any idea what the phones take?’

Vince pulled out the coins from his pocket, bani and lei notes, left over from the purchases they had made that day. As usual for a pair who did not know the currency there was a mass of it.

‘Help yourself.’

* * *

‘I’d like to speak to Israel Goldfarbeen, if I may.’ The English was a long shot — he had forgotten to ask Monty if the contact spoke it — as was the idea of hearing a reply, the cafe he was in being so busy he needed a finger in one ear.

‘You are speaking to him.’ The voice was deep, the speech careful and slow.

‘I am a friend of Monty Redfern, from London, he gave me your number.’

‘Montague Rotefarn, the alter bok , how is he?’

Not having the least idea what an ‘ alter bok ’ was, he replied, ‘In rude good health, sir, and my name is Jardine. I am a stranger in Bucharest and he advised me that you could help me.’

The reply was jovial. ‘Mr Hardeen, I am stranger in this country and I have lived here all my life.’

‘I’m in search of advice. Would it be possible to meet?’

‘If a bohmer like Montague sent you, how can I refuse?’ Which left Jardine wondering where to find a Yiddish dictionary. ‘You got a pen?’

‘I have.’

‘What am I saying, “pen”? You get a trasura , you say the Yiddish theatre. The driver will spit at you, the ganef , but he will want the fare, so spit back. My house is on the left of the theatre. You’ll see the lit window. Just knock.’ He then demanded to know from where he was coming. ‘But don’t pay more than thirty bani.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Now, if you like.’

Jardine looked at his watch. ‘It’s after eleven.’

‘In this sheise country that is midday. Come now and drink with me. I want to hear about Montague.’

He and Vince were in one of the few motor taxis not long after, having handed over a ten-lei note to the top-hatted doorman for the service of lifting his finger, Vince being sure the tail had no wheels. ‘He’s probably on the blower now, guv, telling his boss.’

‘As long as his boss doesn’t know where we’re going.’

The taxi took them from the Athenee Palace to another grand hotel, the Francez, where Jardine paid the driver off, engaging the aid — after a bit of a wait and for another ten-lei note — of a second top-hatted doorman to get another taxi. Vince, having observed others do the same, insisted that when he died and came back, a hotel doorman was the job he wanted.

‘Talk about easy green.’

‘You have to buy that job, Vince.’

‘I’ll borrow the money off you. The way the berks that use these places give tips, I’ll pay you back in a week.’

The ride was not long because Bucharest was not large, and the driver did not spit, which was just as well because Vince would probably have clouted him, but he did look as though someone had just shot his cat as Jardine paid him off.

‘Cheery sod,’ was the Londoner’s opinion.

The door opened a split second after Jardine knocked, and before him was a giant of a man in a collarless shirt, with big shoulders, protruding belly, a round smiling face and a thick red beard. ‘So rich you use motor cars, already. Enter, enter.’

Going through the door Jardine touched the mezuzah, and told Vince to do so too, which got him an approving nod. The room they entered had a fire in the grate, even though it was a warm night, which was thankfully dying.

‘You Jewish, Mr Hardeen?’

‘It’s Jardine and no, pure Gentile, but I have been to Palestine.’

The hands went up. ‘ Dos gefelt mir .’ The confusion on Jardine’s face being obvious, he added, ‘You don’t speak Yiddish; why would you?’

‘No.’

‘And you have been to Eretz Yisrael , I should be so lucky.’

He looked past Jardine to Vince, who was introduced, and then a bottle of wine was produced, three glasses poured, toasts proposed and seen off, all in genial good humour. Goldfarbeen asked about Monty Rotefarn, an ‘ eizel ’ for changing his name to the English, and they talked about him for a while, which made Jardine realise how little he really knew about his Jewish friend.

Goldfarbeen, as a young man, had gone to London to study theatre, met and befriended Monty before he was rich, and here he was the theatre administrator, the man who raised and spent the money to keep the place going, some of it sent from Hampstead. An hour passed and the fire died completely before Jardine looked at his watch. He needed to move things on.

‘So, Mr Hardeen, what can I do to aid you?’

Geniality evaporated the more Goldfarbeen heard, and Jardine was pretty open, only leaving out for where the weapons were destined. By the time his visitor was finished he was shaking his massive head.

‘You have picked a bad man to do business with.’

‘You know him?’

‘Bucharest is like a village, my friend, and everyone gossips.’

‘I don’t care if he’s bad, as long as the business is completed.’

‘Dimitrescu is an anti-Semite, but that matters not, nine out of ten of the people of Rumania are that, but I would not trust him and I would advise you to do the same.’

‘He don’t trust him,’ Vince growled.

Goldfarbeen’s beard was on his ample chest and he was thinking. ‘Would I be allowed to ask about and see what is in the wind?’ Jardine was about to say ‘discreetly’, but he sensed that was superfluous. ‘This is a country split in two, Mr Hardeen, and for every one of the far right there is one on the near right and they make it their business to spy on each other.’

‘No one on the left?’

‘None with power, but the closest are the liberals, who would skin Dimitrescu in acid.’

‘Very liberal.’

The great belly shook as he laughed. ‘This is not England, my friend. Here they think and act like Turks.’

‘They was right bastards,’ Vince spat. ‘We saw some of what they did in Mesopotamia, didn’t we, guv?’ Jardine nodded. ‘Every place you walk you’s treading on bones. Made us look like saints.’

‘What do you think you will find out?’

‘A great deal, Mr Hardeen, half of it nonsense, but once I have sorted out fantasy from fact, I will pass on what I hear and you may decide what to do with it. Now I get my coat and walk you back to where you can get a trasura .’

‘Just tell us; we can go alone.’

‘No, my friend, for out there, lurking in the dark, are the Roma, the double curse of Rumania, people who will cut your throat just for your shoes.’

Coat on, Goldfarbeen picked up a large stick with a knob at one end; it was not to aid his walking.

Jardine saw Peter Lanchester set off for Constanta — he was taking an early morning train — where he was to meet up with a representative of one of the people who had set this whole enterprise in motion; Peter had not said the supporter was in shipping, he did not have to. Whoever represented them in Rumania had received a telegram from London, and it had been sent before they departed. It had informed them of the imminent arrival of an English-flagged freighter that was to wait there for a cargo: Lanchester was going down to check things out.

Having barely finished breakfast in a deserted dining room, Jardine finally realised the bellhop, who was bearing aloft a note and calling out for attention, was using a scrambled version of his name. It was from Goldfarbeen, though he had used only his initials, and it posed a simple question. Would he know why a message had been sent to Berlin triggered by his name? He was out of the hotel looking for a phone in seconds and to hell with his watcher.