Jack Ludlow - A Bitter Field

‘As long as you don’t blame me if it’s not,’ he said to himself.

When the pair came back to the hotel from their spin the Ice Maiden was waiting for them, and judging by the look she gave Corrie, it was all her fault that they had lost their followers.

‘That was very wrong of you to run away from those we have given the task of protecting you, Frau Littleton.’

‘We don’t need protection, surely,’ Cal replied, ‘and we did want to see some of the country.’

‘The Czech army is out there and has been known to shoot anyone who they think is spying on their defence works.’

The temptation to say “That must include half the Sudetenland population” had to be suppressed. Then, as she had done so many times before, she smiled at Cal and turned her body just enough to exclude the other woman.

‘But you are back, Herr Barrowman, and safe and that is all that matters.’

That changed when Cal got a peck on the cheek from Corrie; the smile was gone in an instant, before she added with sweet cruelty, ‘And we had such a lovely drive, Fraulein.’

Major Gibby Gibson was well aware he was dithering; should he send another signal to London or not? Effectively he had been relieved of his job by Noel McKevitt, so in essence he had no authority to do anything at all and in between the worries he had there was the requirement to make arrangements to disperse the men under his command.

With the chaps from neighbouring stations it was easy, they had travelled light — pack your kit and take a train to Warsaw and Bucharest. With him and his assistant they would be giving up rented apartments, paying off people like cleaners, saying goodbye to long-standing friends, settling bills for mundane things like gas and electricity, and in his much younger 2IC’s case disentangling himself from a rather torrid love affair.

‘I think you should see this, sir,’ said Tommy the cipher clerk, bursting into Gibson’s office. ‘It’s a flash from London.’

Gibson was out of his chair before he had finished reading it, calling out for the Royal Marines he had stationed in Prague as legation guards to find Noel McKevitt and if necessary restrain him, only to receive the news that the man had taken a Humber Snipe from the pool and had left half an hour before.

‘Did he indent for a weapon?’ he asked the senior marine, a sergeant who was in charge of such things.

The reply was crisply military and given as if such a thing was an everyday occurrence.

‘Webley revolver, sir, and twenty-four rounds of ammo. Nice to see the gentleman was familiar with the weapon, sir, handled it like an old pro, he did.’

London had to be informed and he needed to know what to do — a message which took time to encode and send. It was only by sheer luck it caught Peter Lanchester, who was leaving the building to hail a cab to Victoria for the boat train. He was hauled back smartish to face a seething Sir Hugh Sinclair.

‘Change of orders, Peter,’ he said, thrusting Gibson’s signal in his hand. ‘McKevitt is to be stopped by whatever means are necessary. Right now Miss Beard is typing a letter relieving him of all duties forthwith pending an enquiry into his conduct.’

‘Can’t we get the Czechs to stop him?’

‘He’s armed and travelling on a UK diplomatic passport — what would you say if you were a local and asked to intercept an armed British official roaring around in a legation car with dip plates?’

‘I would wonder what is going on.’

‘And you would ask for clearance to act?’

Peter nodded; he knew what that meant with someone carrying a gun: permission to shoot, which would entail at the very least the Czech Foreign Ministry asking the ambassador, who in turn might well cable London for clarification.

‘Exactly, and this would all be taking place in a country where, by official diktat, we are supposed to be playing it soft. Get to Eger, Peter, and tell Jardine to abort whatever he’s involved in and get out of the country.’

‘Regardless of what stage he is at?’

‘Regardless,’ Sir Hugh replied, very forcibly, as the required letter was placed in front of him for signature; rather suddenly his eyes misted over and this took on the appearance of a letter of resignation. ‘Termination, Peter, nothing else will do.’

Peter just had time to send a telegram to the Meran Hotel for Vince to get out and he employed the same tactics of colloquial English, there being no time to code it. It read: Gaff Blown, Scarper.

Upstairs Sir Hugh Sinclair was composing another signal telling Major Gibson to stand down and do nothing; the last thing he needed was a bunch of SIS men running around Czecho trying to apprehend one of their own. Keeping that quiet might prove impossible.

Driving out of Prague, Noel McKevitt was excited; given the mundane nature of what he had been doing for many years — the life of an SIS man on station was not one of much adventure and being desk bound was even worse — he was shedding nearly two decades, going back to the days when he and men like Barney Foxton, young then and ruthless, had fought the IRA to keep Ireland under the aegis of the British Crown.

That was the last time he had carried a gun in anger, the same as that which lay beside him on the car bench seat. There was too, at the back of his mind, the knowledge that, while he could rise further in the service, to a man of his background — grammar school and front-line service in a common or garden regiment — positions like that held by Sir Hugh Sinclair were outside his natural reach; he did not come from the right part of the establishment.

Long-held instincts now crystallised into a powerful spur to what he was doing, for it thus followed, and always would even if he had been reluctant to acknowledge it in the past, that elevation to the kind of position he craved would only come from some bold stroke which would elevate his prospects.

Luck played a major part in advancement, that and birth, for, from what he had observed, ability was not a prerequisite if you went to the right schools and saw service in the Royal Navy or the Brigade of Guards. How many senior positions had he seen filled by eejits who had nothing but one of those as their only qualification?

At the first checkpoint he was waved through without trouble; the boys manning it had been educated to recognise the plates of diplomatic vehicles, with which they were neither allowed to interfere or search, and it would be the same at the ones he had yet to face. McKevitt could look forward to being in Cheb in under four hours, the kind of time that had only been possible before Czech mobilisation.

He had reckoned without the car, which on the open road and being pushed a bit hard — normally it was used in town and on short journeys — revealed a radiator prone to overheating, evidenced by the pall of steam that began to issue from the bonnet at the second checkpoint, forcing him to pull over.

Once the steam had dispersed, one of the soldiers keen to assist him identified the problem as a split hose and a very junior conscript was sent off to find a garage where a replacement might be located. So frustrated was McKevitt that he wanted to retrieve the Webley from under the seat where he had hidden it and shoot someone.

Up ahead Vince Castellano was having a miserable time; every checkpoint was taking over an hour to get through, the traffic backed up for at least a mile and everyone’s papers being checked. Being foreign, he was pulled over for a more serious questioning every time which further delayed his progress and the nearer he got to his destination the jumpier seemed the soldiers.

It was well into the afternoon that he was obliged to pull over to the side to let past a stream of army lorries, some pulling artillery, and he wondered if the balloon had gone up, the only thing that reassured him the lack of a stream of refugees coming the other way. Then, on what this map told him was the border with the province called Karlovy Vary, he was halted altogether, the only consolation being that everyone else was too.