Bitter Field

by Jack Ludlow

  Given McKevitt’s way of openly stating his political leanings, it was a fair guess that many of those contacts he had made abroad would subscribe to his views; that was how you got talking to someone with inside knowledge, you shared in decrying the things that upset them, you created a fellow feeling that allowed for things that should be left unsaid to slip out.

  Peter Lanchester knew that, just as he knew that if the man he was talking to had made connections with the right-wing zealots in France, like the Jeunesses Patriotes, the last thing he would do was be open about such an association.

  ‘Just the same, Quex felt it best you are made aware of what I did and when.’

  ‘Of things like that little dust-up in La Rochelle.’

  It was hard not to tense at that; Peter had not expected any mention of it. ‘You know about that?’

  ‘One of the fellows you took there from the Paris embassy is an old friend of mine.’

  You have been putting it about in asking questions, Peter thought, but why do so in Paris unless …? And when was the question posed, because there had been some delay in lining up that pair and the actual departure?

  ‘I take it,’ McKevitt continued, ‘given you went to Brno to check out the illegal purchase of guns, there’s some connection in the fact that you ended up there?’

  Now he was being sarcastic, but there was no point in denying it, nor was his knowledge indicative of anything. The gun battle would have come to the attention of the French press, or perhaps that friend in Paris had put two and two together – indeed they might have still been there and not, as he had instructed them, heading back to Paris.

  ‘I am assuming you were trailing the consignment, you being there I mean?’

  Peter made the response as laconic as he could. ‘All I know is there was a hell of a flap a few miles outside the port at the time I was expecting the guns to show up.’

  It would have been quite unnerving to be the object of McKevitt’s stare if one was not experienced; fortunately Peter was enough that to sit back in his chair and look relaxed.

  ‘According to what I could glean from the local gossip there was a confrontation in which a light machine gun was employed and a couple of young blades wounded. Given the employment of such a weapon, as well as the mention of foreigners being involved, it’s a fair bet that was part of the consignment I was looking for.’

  ‘And how, Lanchester, did you find all this out?’

  ‘By poking around a bit when I heard about it, the place was awash with rumour and gossip. Hospital first, then I found a local bobby who liked his beer too much and had been out at the scene.’

  ‘And he told you what?’

  ‘Apparently there was a burnt-out lorry blocking the road but no sign that it had any kind of load on board, so if it was those machine guns they must have been spirited away somehow.’

  It was equally unnerving, this lack of any sign of a reaction; Peter Lanchester rated himself as no slouch in the game of which they were both a part and he had to believe that McKevitt was well aware of his true reason for calling.

  It was nothing to do with concocting a tale to inform him of what happened, more a coded warning to stop poking around asking questions, the reasons being straightforward: to tell McKevitt to have a care how he behaved in future, if indeed – and there was no proof – he had behaved improperly in the recent past.

  ‘Sure, you must be a fast worker to unearth all that.’

  ‘Keen to impress, shall we say, being fresh back in the fold. Anyway, I lost all trace of the cargo and we have no idea where it went, if indeed the dust-up outside La Rochelle was to do with that. It was not something I was able to establish.’

  ‘You did enquire at the local gendarmerie?’

  ‘Good God no! Quite apart from the struggle I would have had to find a reason, I would have risked my cover.’

  ‘Well I made some enquiries through Paris and I can tell you it was a damn sight more than a dust-up.’ McKevitt pushed his chair back and folded his arms. ‘Did you know there was a British cargo ship sitting in the harbour?’

  ‘I assume there were several.’

  ‘But not one in particular, say one chartered in Dublin by a character called Moncrief?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not that our Dublin lads think that’s his real name. It sailed that very night.’

  ‘But,’ Peter said, leaning forward and looking like a man who had succeeded in something, ‘was it loaded?’

  ‘I have no idea and neither, it seems, do you. It’s quite possible it was and the weapons got to their intended destination, which, I am going to speculate, you don’t have a clue about either?’

  ‘My assumption is that whatever was planned would have had to be aborted.’

  ‘But you don’t know for certain?’ That brought forth a slow shake of the head, which in turn engendered a sharp response. ‘Which means, Lanchester, it appears to me as if you made a right Horlicks of your first mission back, because you should know.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Peter replied, forcing himself to look and sound the same, even if, inwardly, he was seething. ‘But we will keep our eyes and ears open in case it resurfaces. How goes things in your bailiwick?’

  ‘Now, why would I tell you? Everything that comes across my desk goes upstairs, Lanchester. Maybe, since you are one of Quex’s new blue-eyed boys, you should ask him to let you see what I send him.’

  It was interesting: most people being deliberately rude could not avoid accompanying it with a matching irate expression – McKevitt could.

  ‘Look, old chap,’ Peter said, glad to see that form of address produced a flicker in the McKevitt eye – it was an expression he obviously disliked. ‘We know you are not waving flags at what Quex had decided to set up.’

  ‘No, I’m not, and neither are the others who have put in years of uninterrupted service. Morale is at rock bottom.’

  ‘But we are all on the same side,’ Peter said, standing up, ‘all trying to get to the right result, are we not? If I find out anything of use to you, I will happily pass it on and I hope – indeed, I am certain – you will do the same in reverse.’

  ‘If you will forgive me, Lanchester,’ McKevitt said, dropping his eyes to his desk, ‘I have a rate of work to get through.’

  ‘My old school head was less brusque than that bastard and that, sir, is saying something.’

  Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, the aforementioned Quex, allowed himself a very slight twitch of the lips, not a smile but an acknowledgement that what was being said was true. ‘He’s an acquired taste all right, but it takes all sorts to do our kind of work, does it not?’

  ‘And he’s been asking far too many questions about me, sir.’

  ‘Happens when one’s nose is put out of joint, and his was very much so when he found out he was being bypassed.’

  ‘How did he find out?’

  ‘You turning up in Brno would not have gone unnoticed, Peter.’

  That seemed to be too sanguine a response; better to seek to dig the man out. ‘For my money he has pursued it beyond what is natural. I have it in mind, sir, to slip McKevitt some false information, to see if I can get him to break cover and expose himself.’

  ‘Whatever you think of him, he is on our side.’

  ‘I think he knows precisely what happened in La Rochelle and who was involved and he is not one just to sit on his hands. He’s talked to both the Paris and Dublin embassies and, for all we know, asked them to dig further. It might be best to put him off any scent he picks up regarding Callum Jardine and those like him.’

  ‘And how would he do that, Peter?’

  You do not say outright to the head of an intelligence agency that his organisation is riddled with factions, that it is a hotbed of rumour and suspicion made worse by your recent actions, even if you know he is aware of the fact and spends much of his working life using that tension to good effect; Peter Lanchester had to be tactful but he also had to say his piece, for if McKevi
tt was devious, so was the man he was talking to.

  ‘Just as a precaution, given my sole concern is to protect our man in place, who is, after all, not officially a member of MI6 and is therefore very vulnerable, even to the machinations of his fellow countrymen. Contact with Prague goes through McKevitt, which allows him to issue instructions that we would know nothing about, while withholding information he feels he has no need, or reason, to pass on.’

  ‘You are implying that if he found out about Jardine being in Prague, he might not bother to let me know?’

  Quex paused, having stated the obvious, albeit with a palpable air of disbelief.

  ‘As long as you keep me properly informed, we will be able to deal with any problems that arise and, I might add, McKevitt’s a clever bugger, who will reckon that anything coming from you is tainted and that will only excite his interest. Best leave him alone, Peter.’

  Given the nervous state of František Moravec, the leaving of the cathedral was a damn sight more cautious than the arrival. Vince was well behind Cal as he reprised his sightseeing act on the Charles Bridge. When he stopped in front of the statue of St Elizabeth and managed to look both up and back Vince was very obviously smoking and made a point of shoving out his cigarette to flick off the ash; they had a tail.

  That did not say who it was, it could be that Moravec had put somebody to keep an eye on them, but to accept that as the case was a bad idea; it was safer to think the worst, to suspect that by meeting with the head of counter-intelligence he had laid himself open to scrutiny by someone whose aims were not benign.

  It also appeared that Moravec might be right: he was not able to operate unobserved in his own capital city. Cal made no attempt to identify who was doing the following – Vince had spotted him and would give him a description later – but it did mean that he would need to act upon it. Had anyone overheard the exchange in the church? Unlikely, they had spoken in near-whispers.

  Sauntering on, still playing the tourist, Cal peered at buildings and statues. He had no intention of leading their man back to where he and Vince were staying, but made instead for the Ambassador Hotel, even if such a place carried with it the risk of him being recognised, being, he knew, the chosen watering hole of all the foreign correspondents.. A five-star establishment, it had a precious asset: more than one entrance and exit, which made losing a man on his own easy.

  The lobby was abuzz with conversation being carried out in several different languages and, like every luxury hotel he had ever entered, there seemed to be an overabundance of well-dressed women, some, no doubt, of dubious purpose. But it was busier by far than the Savoy in London; diplomats too used the Ambassador, and right now every country in Europe felt they needed to have folk in place outside their embassy staff to tell them what was going on.

  Cal moved through to the desk, engaged one of the receptionists to ask an innocent question, then went to one of the bank of lifts and allowed himself to be taken up to the fourth floor. He immediately dropped one floor and took another lift, a different one with a different operator, back down to the lobby and without looking around made for a more discreet exit, which took him through a residents’ lounge.

  ‘Jesus Christ Almighty, if it isn’t my old pal, Doc Savage.’

  The cracked American voice, reminiscent of someone with a bad throat, might have been behind him but he knew it to be female, just as he knew who it was, though such knowledge brought him no more pleasure than the nickname she had once regularly used to insult him – the moniker of some inane American cartoon character he had never heard of or read.

  Walking on and ignoring it was not an option; he had to turn round and be smiling broadly as he did so. The last time he had seen Corrie Littleton she had been in some distress, in the latter stages of a recovery from a wound caused by an Italian bomb, pale-faced and all skin and bone, not that she had ever been fulsome; he had once decided she was rangy rather than skinny.

  Now she was very obviously recovered and was no longer clad in slacks and a masculine sort of shirt-blouse he remembered as standard dress, but in a smart grey suit, jacket and pencil skirt, with an expensive handbag and shoes to match. Her hair, slightly reddish on the side of auburn, which she had worn loose, was now carefully arranged under a pert hat.

  ‘Corrie,’ he responded.

  ‘Cal …’

  He moved forward with speed, immediately taking her arm to push her towards a clutter of settees where they could sit down.

  ‘Hey, buster.’

  Cal’s response came out of the side of his mouth as a desperate whisper. ‘Do shut up for once, there’s a good girl.’

  ‘Hell, your manners ain’t altered.’

  ‘Let’s sit and talk.’ She tried to resist being put on her backside but he was too strong, and he made sure their backs were to the door he had just come through. ‘And don’t use my bloody name.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘That’s right.’ There was no need to say he was here on the same kind of business he had been doing when they first met and Cal did not bother to try and explain. Corrie Littleton might be a pain in the posterior but she was not dumb. ‘What in the name of creation are you doing in Prague?’

  She responded to his low tone of voice in a similar vein. ‘Working, which I kinda guess is what you are doing too.’

  ‘What kind of work can you be doing here?’

  ‘That, from you, is typical, like a woman can’t do any work. I am here reporting for Collier’s Weekly.’

  ‘You’re a journalist?’

  The reply had all the sarcasm he recalled so well. ‘I always knew you were smart.’

  ‘How did you end up doing this?’

  ‘Thank Tyler Alverson. I thought if he could do it, so could I, and I must say he was sweet when we got back stateside. He put me on to people who could help, though that had to wait till I had fully recovered.’

  Alverson had been with them both in Ethiopia and Cal had come across him in Madrid as well, when the city was under siege. A long-in-the-tooth self-confessed hack of a foreign correspondent, he was a man Cal liked and admired; he was also a fellow who was to be found where there was anything approaching action.

  ‘Don’t tell me, he’s here too.’

  ‘As far as I know he’s in Berlin, though he might turn up in Prague to slam your guy Runciman when he’s finished pussyfooting around.’ Her raised crooked two fingers, on both hands, implied parentheses; the look in her eye was implicitly one of scepticism. ‘He’s supposed to be assessing the situation, as if we don’t know what it really means. Damn bastard’s been here for weeks and all he’s done is play footsie with the Germans.’

  ‘He might not have done, the situation’s complex.’

  Cal replied in that positive manner, even though he did not believe his own words. He had really only said them to give himself time to think, because Corrie Littleton’s presence might present a complication. A reporter, she would be bound to want to know what he was up to, as would Tyler Alverson if he showed up.

  ‘You staying here?’ She nodded. ‘Room number?’

  ‘One of the best, 48.’ Seeing that the praise did not register, she added. ‘Overlooks Wenceslas Square.’

  ‘OK. I am going to leave, but I will call you.’

  ‘How about you give me your contact number and I’ll call you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I could yell out your name, let the whole world know you are here.’

  ‘You could, but if you want to guarantee I clam up, that would be the best way to do it. I will call – and tell Tyler if he shows up that I will talk to him too, but not to shout out if he sees me, and that goes for Vince Castellano.’

  ‘He’s here too?’ Her eyes narrowed in a face that was attractive, if not conventionally beautiful. ‘Sounds as if you and Vince are involved in something juicy.’

  ‘Or maybe nothing at all, Corrie.’

  ‘The Doc Savage I recall was not that kind of guy.’

  Fo
r once, that nickname did not annoy him; it would allow him to communicate without the use of his name. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Give Vince my regards.’

  His cockney friend was pleased with the message – he and Corrie had always got on – though Cal was less enamoured with what Vince had to tell him about what the fellow tailing them had done, in fact he was mystified.

  ‘Sod went straight to the phone after you went up in the lift and I sidled over to see if I could cop the number he dialled. Missed that, but the bugger was loud enough to overhear his voice, not what he was saying, though. The thing is, guv, whoever the sod was talking to, he was doin’ it in English.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The telegram Cal Jardine composed and sent off to London was gobbledegook to anyone but Peter Lanchester; sent to his home address to avoid complications it was delivered before six in the evening. It told him he had made contact with those who could help and asked if anyone from the embassy might be tailing the head of Czech Intelligence and how many operatives were in place.

  Unbeknown to both, such was the nervousness of the British state regarding events in Czechoslovakia that the sister service to the SIS had people in place to monitor that kind of traffic between the two capital cities. If MI5 did not know the contents of Cal’s message or whom it was from, they knew to whom it was addressed.

  Part of their job was to compile a list that kept the SIS Central European Desk informed. The register of the day’s traffic was thus passed on to Broadway where the recipient’s name set off the bells with the man who ran it; normally he was above that sort of thing unless it was deemed important.

  Following on from Peter’s previous trip to Brno and the subsequent trail that led to La Rochelle it smacked of conspiracy and produced in Noel McKevitt the kind of expletive-filled apoplexy he reserved for times when he was alone and unobserved, the kind that turned the air blue and had those outside his office exchanging looks and shrugs.