Jack Ludlow - A Bitter Field

‘I guess you’re trying to find a story that will get you out from under Vernon,’ Corrie replied, unwittingly throwing him a lifeline. ‘As you can see, Jimmy, I was just getting dressed.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Look, I am meeting someone in the bar in fifteen minutes.’

‘Callum Jardine,’ Jimmy replied, immediately realising that was a mistake.

The hand that grabbed him and pulled him inside the door was not gentle, nor was the way it was slammed behind him.

‘How the hell do you know his name?’

Tempted to lie, there was not one he could think of and that left only the truth. ‘Vernon knows him from Madrid and he saw you get into his car.’

‘You little schmuck, you’ve been sent to tail me.’

‘Instructed, Corrie,’ Jimmy pleaded. ‘I am only doing what Vernon told me to do.’

‘Sit in that chair and say not another word.’ Corrie went to the phone and asked for Cal’s room number, hissing when he picked up his end, ‘Doc, my room now! No, it’s not that, it’s serious. Quick as you can.’

She turned to see Jimmy standing over the typewriter and what she had written was lying beside it. ‘Get away from that and sit down.’

‘How the hell did you know we were coming to Cheb?’ she demanded when he complied.

‘Vernon knew.’

Pacing back and forth, she began to curse, because it could only have come from the hotel. ‘That low-life snake! To think he acts like he’s an English gent, when he is full of shit.’

‘I say,’ Jimmy protested; he was no stranger to foul language, only not in the mouths of the fairer sex.

‘Don’t you “I say” me.’

The gentle knock at the door heralded Cal and he was inside quickly, to be given a gabbling explanation of who Jimmy was and what he knew. When the ‘how?’ came it was Corrie’s turn for contrition.

‘It’s standard behaviour, Cal, you gotta tell your editor when you go somewhere.’

‘The telephone would have been better.’

‘What, a transatlantic call for that? He would have had my ass.’

Turning to face Jimmy, Callum Jardine wondered why the youngster shrank away. Then he realised he was wearing his rimless specs, and with his en brosse hairdo, allied to the expression on his face, he must have looked to him like he was Gestapo.

‘Relax.’

‘Easier said than done.’

‘I’m not going to hurt you, am I?’

‘I don’t know, are you?’

Cal had to shut this lad up, but how? One thing was for sure: threats would be counterproductive unless he was not prepared to let him out of his sight, indeed out of this room.

‘Jimmy — it is Jimmy, yes?’ That produced a still-fearful nod, even though Cal had smiled. ‘I am going to need your help and so is the British Government.’

‘You’re working for the Government?’

‘I am.’

‘Doing what?’

‘I can’t answer that, and I am afraid, Jimmy, even if you were told you would not be able to write about it. If you submitted it to your paper… by the way, who do you write for?’

‘ News Chronicle.’

‘Good newspaper,’ Cal said, ‘got the right ideas about Hitler. The story would be subject to a D-notice, in fact, I suspect it will be buried in the files of SIS for a hundred years or more, it’s so sensitive.’

‘So you might as well tell me what it is.’

‘Corrie, get dressed, we are meeting Veseli in the lounge shortly.’

‘Sure, I’ll use the bathroom, but don’t let that little bastard near my notes.’

When she had gone, Cal addressed a young man pained by the way she had described him. ‘You must know about the Official Secrets Act, Jimmy.’

‘I do, but I don’t see what difference that makes if the story is not going to come out anyway.’

‘It means I can’t tell you anything, because if I do, I will suffer the consequences.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘What don’t you believe?’

‘All of it, the Government, you working for them, D-notices.’

The sigh was audible. Cal had a choice: stepping closer, he could take this little bugger by his carotid artery and either kill him or render him unconscious and do so in utter silence. What then? He would either have a body to deal with or he would have to truss him up and for how long? And he could still scream blue murder as soon as he was released.

Suddenly he was back in that moonlit Jewish cemetery in Prague, with General Moravec, and it was something he had said which provided a possible solution to shutting this lad up at least as long as they were in Cheb.

‘OK, Jimmy, how would you like a twenty-four-carat gold-plated scoop?’

‘Politicians the newspapers fear,’ Moravec had insisted.

The Standartenfuhrer was waiting for them in the lounge and as soon as Corrie saw him she hissed, ‘What a hunk!’

‘You trying to make me jealous?’

‘Would it succeed?’

‘I’m not the type,’ Cal replied as Veseli gave a crisp Nazi salute.

‘Nothing to fear, Doc,’ she whispered.

Introductions followed with Cal comparing the stiff behaviour he was watching now to the more relaxed man he had met in that farmhouse with Moravec; in terms of German broom-up-your-arse carry-on it was faultless.

‘But we must be on our way, it would not do to miss the arrival of the Fuhrer.’

‘God forbid,’ Corrie replied, which got a flicker of disapproval from Veseli, leaving Cal to wonder at the man’s self-control.

Living a lie must be intense, acting almost constantly against your natural instincts, never able to relax, probably even in private in case you inadvertently gave something away by allowing the mask to slip, and there had to be, at his age and with his looks, women in his life, people with whom he was intimate, and how hard was that?

As they exited the hotel, Veseli gave his men a salute, which was returned, with Corrie commenting that this was a nation — she meant the Germans — who would benefit from a mass amputation. Then he was off, striding down the road, saluting right and left as those who thought him one of their own, and seeing his uniform, were determined to acknowledge his rank.

‘You’re in for a fun night.’

That got him that arm squeeze again. ‘I sure hope so.’

‘Remember, I’m only human.’

‘Not at all, Doc,’ she said with feeling, ‘you are a love machine.’

‘Where did you learn to talk like that?’

‘First of all at Daddy’s knee, ’cause he was never one to avoid a cuss when I was around, and then at college. We Bryn Mawr girls are famous for telling it like it is.’

‘Feminists?’

‘You make it sound like a dirty word.’

‘The dirtier the better.’

They reached the crowded old market square, which killed off their conversation. Down the side it was set with tables and in between them there were stalls cooking all kind of wurst, the smoke and the smell of the frying meat filling the air. Others were laden with bread and hams, added to which the tavern had set up a beer service on the pavement, with girls in dirndl clothing delivering steins to thirsty customers.

Within a minute both visitors found themselves holding steaming glasses of gluhwein and being encouraged to drink up. It could have been a carnival except that now many of the surrounding buildings were festooned with a mixture of Nazi banners and the red-black-red flags of the SdP. They tended to turn the mood, for non-believers, into a sombre one.

‘Fraulein Littleton, our leader wishes you to join him. He is about to have his photograph taken and he would like one which includes you.’

‘Delighted,’ Corrie replied in the correct and required tone; Cal knew she did not mean it because, distributed, it would give the wrong impression.