Jack Ludlow - A Bitter Field

Peter Lanchester was back on the train at Calais wondering whether his stomach would ever settle down after a most appalling crossing in which he had been tossed around like a cork; would he be able to eat the food he had ordered?

The waves in the English Channel were notorious, made more disturbing by the narrowness of the sea and the way the gap between each rise and fall was so small. The whole thing had been accompanied by the sound of breaking glass and crashing crockery as the things normally used to feed and water people — no one was eating or drinking — were chucked off the shelves supposed to contain them by the peculiar corkscrew motion of the ferry.

Worse, the crossing had taken longer than normal, not aided by the difficulty of getting into Calais harbour, and he was in some danger of missing his connection to the Paris-to-Prague Express. The steward in the first-class dining room had assured him that the driver would seek to make up time, so he would just have to hope — and it seemed a forlorn one — that he could get to Cheb before McKevitt.

‘And so, Fraulein Littleton, I hope you have everything you have come for,’ said Henlein, once more taking her hand to kiss it while Cal translated. ‘You will, of course, let me see what you intend to submit.’

‘Before you leave,’ added the Ice Maiden.

‘Plenty of time,’ Cal responded, his remark no longer met with warmth.

‘Wessely told me he had invited you to our local rally tonight,’ Henlein said. ‘I too will be attending. It is good that we come together to hear the German Fuhrer speak, for I am certain he will refer to us and our difficulties and what aid he intends to give us.’

That was said with such confidence that Cal wondered if Henlein knew what Hitler was going to say — not the words, for he was very much an instinctive orator, but the gist. It was not a thought he held long, for the time had come for him and Corrie to depart, and as soon as they were out of the door she could not resist a jibe.

‘How does it feel to be frozen in ice like a woolly mammoth?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he replied, but he did.

‘How long have we got before we are taken to the bullring?’

‘A couple of hours.’

‘We could…’ she said kittenishly, taking his arm.

‘Haven’t you got typing to do?’

If it sounded like resistance it was only a formality.

Her nails dug into his arm. ‘I’ve got nimble fingers.’

‘My place or yours?’

Jimmy Garvin was bored stiff; he had actually called the Bayerischer Hof to inform Bartlett there was nothing happening, only to be told there was bugger all happening anywhere, certainly not in Prague, and what about him, surrounded by fanatical Nazis who kept trying to knock his eye out with their damn salute? It seemed churlish for Jimmy to point out that he was in much the same boat.

‘She must have interviewed Henlein, Jimmy, if she is staying in the same bloody hotel. What about breaking into her room and seeing if there’s anything worth pinching?’

‘You’re not serious, Vernon?’

‘No, joking really, but you never know what a young and ambitious fellow will do to get on, what?’

‘Meaning if I’d said I would do it you would not have restrained me?’

‘Laddie, I’m a hundred or more miles away, how could I? Best thing to do is to make yourself known to Corrie-’

‘I’ve met her, remember.’

‘Don’t be obtuse, Jimmy, there’s a good chap. Let her know you’re in Cheb, chat her up and use that devastating charm of yours to wheedle something out of her.’

Jimmy was about to say ‘What devastating charm?’ when he realised Bartlett was being sarcastic. ‘She’ll probably tell me to bugger off.’

‘Not a word our American chums employ, dear boy, but nothing ventured. Now, I’ve got to dash, the car is waiting to take me and dump me amongst several thousand sweaty oiks in that damned Congress Hall so that I can listen to Hitler tell the world what a genius he is for the umpteenth time.’

‘Are you not worried about being overheard?’

‘Jimmy, I hope the Gestapo are listening in. The truth, for once, will do them a power of good.’

Lying soaking an hour later, Cal was not thinking about the second bout of lovemaking he had just been enjoying with Corrie Littleton, pleasant as that was, but about what might be asked of him when he met Veseli in an hour’s time — and he knew it was not just going to be beer, food and listening to Hitler; that box in the back of his car was there for a purpose and it did not take a genius to work it out.

He was going to be asked to blow Henlein’s safe, which was pushing things a bit; while he knew about explosives, there was a skill to being aware of the right quantity needed to blast open a lock of a hardened steel door without killing yourself in the process and this was no trial-and-error situation.

Also, it must have been planned from the outset; Moravec, he suspected, had suckered him into this, playing up his need for subterfuge in his own capital city, ramping up the nerves, dangling before him the enticing prospect of material that would answer his purpose without the risk of going into Germany.

How convenient it must have been, his turning up, a man with the skills needed, an expert in covert warfare, guns and explosives, abilities they had talked about months before. How long after he got Janek to initiate contact had Moravec seen that he might be the solution to a problem he was wrestling with?

Cal had to assume it had been from the outset and he had been manoeuvred, pulled and pushed like some puppet, with Corrie Littleton the icing on the Moravec cake, which, if nothing else, showed that the intelligence chief was not only very quick to see a possibility but capable of acting on it with equal speed.

The other fact, which was inescapable, lay in the certain knowledge that someone else had been set to undertake what he was going to be asked to do and stood down when he arrived as a better alternative.

The reason? He was a foreigner, the original person tasked to blow Henlein’s safe and steal those documents had to be Czech, so was that sanction from the president to do nothing real or just another bit of flummery to suck him in?

Odds-on it was Veseli, but by using Cal, Moravec might get what he wanted, avoid censure if there was to be any and leave his best agent in place, which might not have been possible if Veseli did the deed.

How, if it was Veseli doing the job, had the Czech agent planned to get away? That, as Cal examined it, did not make sense. Once his cover was blown he was stuck miles from safety with everyone who had once trusted him baying for his blood, and he was not an easy man to disguise; even amongst Aryans he stood head and shoulders above them.

Imagining some of his Brownshirt thugs catching up with him and thinking of the treatment they would mete out should not have induced feelings of gratification, but it did; it was only a flight of the imagination and if Moravec had finagled him into this, Veseli must have known and been complicit.

The church clock striking six had him rise from the water; it was time to get ready.

‘Jimmy,’ Corrie said, as she opened the door to find the young reporter looking abashed, in fact hopping from foot to foot; she was, after all, wrapped in a huge bath towel.

‘Sorry to catch you in… er… your… er…’ he mumbled away at the towel. ‘Thought it was time to come and say hello.’

‘I’ll say, but I would be more interested to know why you ran away yesterday.’

‘I’m not supposed to be here,’ he replied, in a flash of what seemed like inspiration until he realised he would have to run with the lie and he had no idea where to go.