Jack Ludlow - The Burning Sky

‘You told me what you wanted, but not who wanted it done.’

‘I think that is better left till we are safely out of here.’

‘Don’t prevaricate, Peter,’ Jardine snapped, going to his Gladstone bag and, on opening it, producing a Mauser pistol, which he passed to Lanchester, followed by a clip of bullets. ‘I take it you still know how to use one of these.’

‘I do, but I have a strong disinclination to employ them in the situation in which we find ourselves.’

‘Last resort, Peter; best to leave a couple of dead secret policemen behind us than end up in somewhere like Dachau.’

‘Where and what is Dachau?’

‘It’s a special prison for enemies of the state, but just be satisfied it’s not a place you would want to visit.’ Jardine pushed the chair towards Lanchester and sat on the edge of the desk. ‘Now please answer my question.’

Lanchester clicked in the clip of bullets, having first checked the safety was on. ‘The idea was that I would take you back to Blighty to meet a group of people who share your concerns.’

‘And you, Peter?’ That got a raised eyebrow. ‘You don’t strike me as a knight in shining armour. Quite the reverse, in fact.’

‘I am a messenger, Cal, what I believe is irrelevant.’

‘Funny that, Peter, I always had you down as someone who lacked beliefs.’

‘It makes for a contented life.’

Jardine went to stand by the window, far enough back from it to not be observed. ‘My question?’

‘I represent a group of people who think that unchecked fascism is a danger to our national security.’

‘Can’t fault that.’

‘But they are not in government.’

‘Churchill?’

‘Most folk think he’s just a mad old warmonger.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘It will do for now, old boy.’

‘You said a group of people?’

‘An eclectic mix who think if we back Ethiopia and put a stopper on Mussolini it will make Hitler think twice about disturbing the peace.’

‘It won’t, but I need names.’

‘Not yet, Cal, just take my word for it they exist and that the funds are available to aid the world’s underdogs.’

‘Most people I know think Fatso Mussolini is a genius for making the Italian trains run on time, especially those with a few quid and no brains. They are the same ones who admire Adolf and think Britain would be better off with someone like him in charge. You know the type, shoot a few miners and the world will be safe.’

‘Shall we leave politics out of it for now?’

‘If you insist, but guns cost a lot of money and they are not easy to come by without everyone knowing about it, the arms trade being somewhat incestuous by nature.’

As he was speaking, Jardine went to the door and, opening it, peered out just enough to look along the street. When he looked back at Lanchester it was with a less than happy face.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘That lorry, they are taking far too long to load it.’

‘Can you stop your Yids?’

Jardine, who now had his own pistol out, was, for the first time, really sharp. ‘Peter, this is not the bloody golf club, will you stop calling them that.’

‘Can you?’

‘There’s no telephone here.’

‘Something of a flaw in the organisation, I hazard. I’m beginning to regret accepting this commission, all this danger is not my cup of tea at all.’

That laconic statement got Lanchester a look and a wry smile: Jardine had been right when he declined to accept that they were really friends, but they had served together as young subalterns in the last months of the Great War, and whatever else the man was he was no coward; he had been a damned fine officer with a mind sharp enough to know when it was foolish to be brave, as well as when it was necessary to employ just that quality to carry forward his men. They had both stayed on in the army after the war, Lanchester because he was open about not being fit for anything else, Jardine for his own personal reasons.

That he lacked convictions did not single Lanchester out from his fellow regimental officers: they were all racial bigots to a degree, with the concomitant drawback that some of them were certifiable dunderheads as well — not all the donkeys in the British army were generals. Lanchester was far from the exception: it had been Callum Jardine who was the outsider in his declarations that what they were doing in the Middle East on behalf of the British Government was utterly wrong and likely to produce the exact opposite result of what was intended.

You did not pacify the locals by dropping bombs on rebellious Iraqi villages, killing more women and children than the targeted fighters, acts carried out at the behest of government ministers like the aforementioned Winston Churchill, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time. These policies were something about which Peter Lanchester had been sanguine, and Callum Jardine furious enough to eventually resign his commission.

‘Why we did not crush these Hun buggers when we had them on the floor, I still do not comprehend, Cal. Their army was totally beaten in 1918 and now they tell us they were stabbed in the back by their own bloody politicos.’

‘You trying to remind me I was wrong about that, Peter?’

‘Only in a roundabout way, old boy, but I do recall you saying that there was every reason to grant the Hun an armistice instead of killing several thousand more, whereas I was all for pushing on and burning Berlin. Come to think of it, I’d still happily go to Holland and shoot the Kaiser.’

‘I was concerned about more of us dying for no purpose, not least myself, and I am sure you can remember the losses we suffered as well as I can. But I’m doing my best to make up for not agreeing with you here and now.’

‘And to quote that fine comedian, Mr Oliver Hardy, this is another fine mess you have got me into.’

‘Not that again!’

Iraq had been Mesopotamia when they first served there and it had been hell: hot enough to fry an egg on the toe of your boot, dusty, flyblown and deadly. The army of which they had been a part had artillery, trucks, armoured cars and aircraft; the Arabs old pattern rifles, guile and, sometimes, suicidal bravery, which made patrolling extremely risky.

Lanchester was of the opinion that shooting first and asking questions after was sound military sense; Jardine, marginally senior by date of his commission, was not, and in employing his tactics he had got two infantry half-companies trapped in an Iraqi village of mud huts and narrow streets, totally outnumbered and with no means of calling for support.

‘I got you out, didn’t I?’

‘Only by my crawling on my belly for several hours along a dry watercourse! Christ, I am still picking the sand out of my teeth. If you’d heard some of the names my chaps were calling you …’

‘Don’t worry, Peter, my lads were using the same language and it was we who provided the rearguard and took the casualties.’

‘Justice and no more, old fruit, and thank the Lord no one died. But the question is, if we are in the soup now, which I rather suspect you think the case, how are we to get out of it?’

That got a wave of the Jardine’s Mauser. ‘I don’t think we can shoot our way out.’

‘Nor, I suspect, will you think of sacrificing your …’ Lanchester paused then to choose his word carefully ‘… refugees?’

Jardine went back to his bag and opened it again, taking out a folder of papers. ‘These are their travel documents, Peter, tickets from the Hook of Holland to Harwich, as well as the names of their British sponsors, with supporting letters. Without someone to vouch for them and feed them they will be turned away.’