Jack Ludlow - A Bitter Field

Peter was beside him and had got hold of the Webley, which he started to empty, but they were sitting ducks in the doorway and both took return bullets, Cal more than one, which had him seek to get behind the wall. He was vaguely aware of the shouting in German and he also heard the click of Peter’s weapon — it was empty.

Looking up he saw two men, both carrying wounds themselves, with their weapons up and looking to administer the coup de grace to both him and Peter. Suddenly their bodies began to jerk like rag dolls as, from behind them, the Czech police — or was it soldiers? — riddled them with dozens of bullets. The last thing Cal saw before he passed out was, at the same ground level as his own, the glazed eyes of Peter Lanchester.

He did not see Corrie or hear her scream for an ambulance, nor feel Jimmy help her to make him comfortable. The hand that slipped into his pocket and lifted his car keys was equally unknown to a numb and unconscious body. Vince was trying to help Peter, relieved to hear sirens in the distance, which he hoped were ambulances and not more police.

Whatever else Cheb had, the medical services were good; all three men were rushed to the emergency department of the local hospital but McKevitt was dead on arrival, while Cal and Peter were hanging on to life. The surgeons were Sudeten German but the Hippocratic oath knows no nationality and they worked hard to save their two remaining patients.

It was Vince who asked where Jimmy was; he was not in the hospital. Only when they could do no more and they returned to the hotel to sleep did they discover he was not there either. It was the next day before anyone looked in the garage and saw the Maybach was gone.

Side by side on deep mattresses and enclosed in crisp linen, Callum Jardine and Peter Lanchester were as comfortable as two men could be having suffered multiple bullet wounds and undergone several operations. The doctors who were treating them were of the opinion that news, good or bad, was inimical to a speedy recovery, but they knew from their visitors that things were dire. They had no idea how bad until Sir Hugh Sinclair turned up in person.

At first, during the official visiting time, everyone had been present: Corrie, Vince, Major Gibson and the aforementioned Quex. He had charmed Corrie with his old-world courtesy and was taken with Vince, as any once-active serviceman would be with another. But the time came when he asked for privacy so that he could talk to the two patients, one of whom was pressing in posing the obvious question.

‘There is no doubt that having stolen your car, young Garvin searched it and found the Hitler document.’

‘I tip him as future editor of a national daily,’ Peter said, bitterly.

‘So it never got to Chamberlain and the Cabinet?’

‘Two different beasts, Mr Jardine, but let me explain. Young Garvin flew out of Prague with the goods and insisted on taking it not to the editor of his newspaper but to the proprietor, a fellow called Layton, and he spiked the story.’

‘Did he spike the little shit with it?’ demanded Cal.

Blinking at the vulgarity, Quex shook his head. ‘No, he bribed him to forget it with a senior post, which, I am told, had Vernon Bartlett spitting blood.’

‘If you spawn evil…’ Peter intoned, leaving the rest to the imagination of the others.

‘But Layton gave it to Sir Samuel Hoare, who in turn showed it to Chamberlain.’

‘So he got it!’ Quex nodded. ‘Then why did he sign that rubbish bit of paper at Munich?’

‘Don’t you see, Mr Jardine, he was the saviour of the nation?’

‘Destroyer, more like.’

‘Never,’ Sir Hugh said gravely, ‘underestimate how far a politician will go for a bit of short-term popularity. The PM was cheered by thousands when he came back from Munich and it went to his head. He quite forgot he is the leader of a nation of millions who think him a dupe.’

‘Who were these thousands?’

‘Those who think they have something to lose by war other than their lives. Comfort, houses, businesses, and that is allied to a deep fear of Bolshevism and the working classes. Anyway, according to my good friend Duff Cooper, who resigned in disgust, Chamberlain saw it and dismissed it as propaganda, then embarked on his shuttling to and fro by air to suck Hitler’s poison, with Mussolini as the convenient suppository.’

‘With the result that he has the Sudetenland.’

‘And will have all of Czecho soon.’

‘Poland?’

‘Will take the coalfields they have desired for so long only to lose them again. Once Hitler has Teschen, Danzig and the hundreds of miles of Silesian border they are doomed. Not that they think so — to hear them boast, a squadron of cavalry is a match for any tank.’

‘Which,’ Cal growled, ‘was perfectly obvious a year ago to anyone who looked at a map.’

‘Politicians are strange creatures. Chamberlain is now acting as if Munich was a deliberate policy to gain time to rearm, instead of what it really was, the worst piece of diplomacy our country has ever engaged in.’

‘What did you do about McKevitt?’

‘Treated him as a hero externally and a warning internally. No point in washing our dirty linen in public, but he has served to remind those who incline to ill discipline that the end result is unpleasant.’

‘What drove him?’

‘Ah, what else but that madness which afflicts Irishmen on occasions? He was sure those machine guns were going to the IRA and he set out to stop it by diverting them to the Jeunesses Patriotes.’

‘Who would have used them on their own government.’

‘A notion which did not bother McKevitt one bit!’ Quex snapped. ‘Then I became the target of his ambition, an affliction which progressively warped his judgement, I fear.’

‘He’s not unique in SIS?’

‘Sadly no; but anyway, now to business, because you cannot stay here until you are fully recovered. The Germans will move into Eger within days.’

‘I’m feeling pretty good,’ Cal said.

‘Your physician does not agree. What we are planning to do is employ an ambulance to get you both back home and your doctors will travel with you, all covered by diplomatic immunity.’

‘That’s a lot of money, sir.’

‘On the contrary, Peter, the doctors have no desire to be here when the SS arrive, both being social democrats. They and their wives, who will be designated as nurses, will be much happier domiciled in England and for that their services are free. Their children we will get out by normal channels.’

There was a pause to allow him to be smug. ‘And now we come to you, Mr Jardine.’

‘The Tower, I expect.’

‘An amusing and tempting idea, but not sound.’ There was another pause, to gather his thoughts. ‘You are the possessor of skills that are in short supply and, I might add, skills we are going to need very sorely in the coming years. It has occurred to me that having someone of your ability inside the tent might be better than having you running around outside.’

‘Are you offering me employment?’

‘Don’t pay him,’ Peter snapped, ‘he doesn’t need it.’

That got a thin smile. ‘There is a war coming, Mr Jardine, and we can do nothing to avoid it. I am too old to be entering such a cataclysm. Peter will prosper both through his brains and his judgement.’

That got a raspberry from Cal.

‘But you and your type are needed, Mr Jardine.’

‘Type?’

‘Killers. Or should I say imaginative eradicators of human vermin.’

‘You should look after General Moravec, he’s got some good people and he is, as I know to my cost, a wily old bugger.’

‘Already arranged; he will come to England when the Germans take the rest of the Czech lands.’