Jack Ludlow: The Burning Sky

‘Just your sort of place, then.’

‘Wait here, Peter, I have one or two things to collect.’

Callum Jardine took the stairs two at a time, with Lanchester calling after him, ‘I hope it’s not one of those ugly tarts that use the upstairs rooms, old boy.’

Lanchester opened the door and, bending forward, looked out before exiting into a narrow alleyway, where he donned his bowler. He was still there when Cal Jardine reappeared wearing a Burberry trench coat and carrying a large Gladstone bag. With a gesture he indicated that Lanchester should follow him and they made their way down the alley and out onto the wide avenue of the Reeperbahn.

‘Cab rank, over there.’

‘You armed?’

Jardine patted a bulging trench coat pocket. ‘Just a precaution, Peter.’

They were crossing the street when the open-topped truck appeared, loaded with burly SA Brownshirts, the street-fighting thugs of the Third Reich. Cal turned his face away until they got into a cab, then with the door closed and a hand shielding his face, he watched as the Brownshirts jumped down and ran into the dingy bar, each one carrying a club or a cosh.

‘Where are you staying, Peter?’

‘Kaiserhof.’

‘ Altona Bahnhof, bitte ,’ Callum said to the driver. ‘Might I suggest you ring and request them to send your luggage back to England? Ask how much the bill is, including carriage, and say you will send a cheque.’

‘Why the train?’

Callum Jardine just smiled. ‘So what is this honourable job?’

‘Abyssinia. The Italians are gearing themselves up to invade and the poor fuzzy-wuzzies will struggle to boot them out.’

‘They did it before.’

‘The Battle of Adowa was forty years ago, Cal, and Mussolini is a different kettle of fish altogether. Officially HMG’s policy is to work through the League of Nations, and before you say what a lot of good that will do, I will say the folk I represent wholeheartedly agree with you. The League is a toothless tiger, but Stanley Baldwin knows the British electorate will not tolerate anything that smells of war, quite apart from the fact that challenging Italy might drive Il Duce into the arms of Hitler, which is inimical to British foreign policy.’

‘I seem to remember the British Foreign Office to be a murderous beast, Peter.’

‘They believe in realpolitik, Cal, as the Huns are wont to say, but there are others less concerned with that who are prepared to act. We need to get some modern weaponry into Abyssinia and damned quick, and we would like you to both buy it and deliver it.’

‘You seem very sure I can do this.’

‘Don’t be modest, Cal, you’ve run guns in the past.’

The taxi pulled up outside the railway station and they both got out, Jardine paying the driver and giving him an overly lavish tip. Entering the concourse, walking quickly, he made straight for a side exit, calling to Lanchester to pass his bowler, which he did. Callum Jardine then dropped it into the first litter bin they passed.

‘I say, Callum old boy, I bought that in Jermyn Street at no little cost.’

‘Too distinctive and Messrs Bates and Company will happily sell you a replacement. That taxi driver, who I tipped excessively, will be questioned and he will not only recall two Englishmen, one of them wearing a very distinctive hat, but will tell them we came here. They, I hope, will then assume we have made for somewhere like Copenhagen, given the trains to there run from Altona.’

‘And we’re not.’

‘No.’

‘You have a safe route out?’

Jardine had opened his Gladstone bag to produce a woollen muffler, which he handed to a companion who did not have to be told to put it on. ‘I wouldn’t be much of a Scarlet Pimpernel if I had no way to save myself, Peter — more than one, in fact.’ Jardine then put a couple of pfennigs into his hand and indicated a phone booth. ‘Now, you have just time to make that call to your hotel.’

‘And then?’

‘Certain things have to be brought forward.’

‘Your Jews?’

‘That fellow you saw me talking to when you came in is, if all goes to plan, going to take us all to Rotterdam. You might just get a chance to learn a little Yiddish in the next few days.’

Lanchester was on his way to the phone when he stopped and turned back, his look curious. ‘What about your paramour, Cal, the widow, your contact in the party office — is she to be left to her own fate after tipping you off?’

‘The call she made will have been from a public phone, Peter, and Lette always knew this was possible. She will find another man to comfort her, and if you’d ever seen her you would know it will not be long in the coming.’

‘A little callous perhaps?’

‘Make your call.’

Hamburg was a great, bustling city and also an international trading port full of seamen from all over the world. It was therefore a perfect place to avoid detection: even if rendered curious, no one overreacted to a strange face, a different voice or odd clothing, so there was little risk in travelling to wherever Jardine was headed. He bought a newspaper, a copy of the Volkischer Beobachter , flicking quickly through the pages before handing it to Lanchester.

‘It’s unlikely anyone in Hamburg will trouble you if you’re reading that rag. Old Adolf is not held in high esteem hereabouts.’

‘And here we are in England, convinced the entire German nation adores him.’

‘What you have to worry about, Peter, is all the idiots in England who admire him and his mode of governance.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘It would do no good for me to say, since you don’t know the city, and let us stop speaking in English, shall we?’

They travelled by bus, crowded given it was the end of the working day, boarding separately and sitting apart. Lanchester was at the rear, the newspaper held open to hide his face, though he kept a watch out of the corner of his eye, while trying simultaneously to decipher the stories in the Nazi Party’s daily house journal, the banner headlines screaming abuse at the ‘International Jewish Conspiracy’ being the easiest to unravel.

The bus wended its way through various streets of Altona — wide boulevards of tall buildings, deep pavements lined with trees — until Jardine stood up. Lanchester waited a few seconds before doing likewise and joining him on the step, staying separate still as they alighted, though heading in the same direction along an avenue lined with small shops. Jardine stopped by a public phone while Lanchester moved past to idly examine a pillar plastered with posters full of warnings and exhortations from the Propaganda Ministry, vaguely aware that his companion had dialled more than once; in fact he did so three times.

‘Code was it?’ he asked, once Jardine joined him.

‘A simple method, using the stories in the newspaper. Pick one on a page, refer to it and that page number is the key to the meeting place, one of half a dozen. You have to assume every Judenhaus is being watched, even if only by a nosy neighbour. Maybe a phone is being tapped, so no names either. My contact will come to meet me at a coffee bar, which is the designated number.’

‘Might he not be followed?’

‘He’s good at avoidance.’

The coffee house in question was cramped and had no chairs, just a series of small, high, round tables at which a customer could stand, a commonplace in Germany, which Lanchester, in a whisper, condemned as comparing unfavourably with a Lyons Corner House.

‘I agree, Peter, but the coffee is so much better.’

‘Too strong for me, old boy, and no pretty Nippies to serve us and tickle our fancy with thoughts of illicit carnality, quite apart from the fact that I prefer tea.’