Bitter Field

by Jack Ludlow

The idea of Cal picking the locks on those Berlin offices tickled him and caused him to chuckle, before going on to say where other plans were kept, equally impossible to get at: Hitler’s Bavarian retreat, the Berghof, high in a large fenced-off and SS-guarded compound in the Obersalzberg, another set with the designated field commander who was, at this moment, engaged in training his troops for the invasion under the guise of autumn manoeuvres.

  ‘You seem to know a lot about something supposed to be a secret.’

  Moravec was too wise to fall for that bit of fishing. He obviously had good sources right at the top of the German state but they were not going to be discussed. ‘Case Green …’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The name of the plan for the invasion of Czechoslovakia; the one for the defence of the West is Case Red. The Sudeten German Party does not have the plan but it holds documents given to Henlein by Hitler only five days ago relating to the invasion plan for Bohemia and Moravia, so that they know what to do when it comes.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘What assets to seize or destroy, where the Wehrmacht columns will seek to penetrate our defences so that they can cause mayhem in the rear areas, as well as their own targets to attack, like roads to block, certain bunkers and the Czech police stations.’

  ‘Is it not lunacy to give the details to such amateurs? From what I know they are not soldiers but street fighters at best.’

  ‘That is what has happened and it also proves that Henlein is in Hitler’s pocket. The man is no more than a puppet.’

  Cal was trying to imagine that on the table of Chamberlain’s cabinet room and the effect it would have; it would blow the appeasement policy out of the water and expose the Sudeten German leader as a fraud.

  ‘And you know where this is kept?’

  ‘It is in the possession of Henlein.’

  ‘Then why don’t you just break in and steal them?’ Cal asked, though he suspected he knew the answer.

  ‘That riot I told you of, the man who was supposed to have used his whip, was dismissed. So was the police chief and six more of his men.’

  That was followed by a deep sigh and a long and windy explanation of the constraints Moravec was under. He had strict orders himself from the president’s office to do nothing that would make a bad situation worse while the British envoy, Lord Runciman, was in the country; in short, nothing that would antagonise the Germans or give the democracies an excuse to walk away from supporting Czechoslovakia.

  To launch an assault on the building in which those documents were located was out of the question when the slightest act like an arrest, even for the proper imposition of order as it had been in Moravia, was blown up by the German press into an atrocity, another excuse for Hitler to rant on about the ‘plight’ of his racial brethren. That impacted in the West, weakening the hand of those trying to press for a policy of standing up to him.

  The police in the Sudetenland had even stricter orders now to avoid provocation. Following the riot and the dismissal of Czech officials, they had been required to stoically bear it when the more rabid Nazis took to the streets to taunt them.

  They had been backed up by the Sudeten German Freikorps, a group based on Hitler’s SA, who had hurriedly rushed to their side, with their uniforms, flags and arms, to parade through the streets where the riot had taken place singing ‘Deutschland über Alles’ and the ‘Horst-Wessel-Lied’.

  Konrad Henlein would not take part in the negotiations with the Czech Government or any other body – Moravec suspected that was again on Hitler’s orders – and nor would any of the other top men in the SdP like Frank. It was becoming increasingly clear there were no concessions which would satisfy the Sudeten German Party: every time their terms were met they upped their demands – this, he was sure, on instructions from Berlin, so the Führer would have his ‘excuse’ to invade.

  Not that standing off made any difference; Goebbels, or at least the German newspapers and radio stations he controlled, just made things up. They screamed daily about fabricated Czech atrocities: the beating of innocent civilians, children included, women being molested and in many cases raped, brutal police raids in which houses were reduced to rubble and furniture thrown out into the streets to be smashed, assassinations of activists and all the usual claptrap of Nazi propaganda.

  ‘My hands are tied, I cannot move, for if I even attempt to do so against the express orders of the Government, someone in my department will leak my intentions before I make a move, perhaps even to the Germans, and next day it will be banner headlines in the Völkischer Beobachter.’

  So your outfit is split, just like MI6, Cal thought, though he did not say so. His other thought was to thank God he was a free agent, and it was that which underlined what Moravec was driving at: if he could not act he needed someone to do it for him, hence this little walk and talk.

  The Czech was angling for him to be that someone. He had a lot of sympathy for his plight, but natural caution kept him from speaking even if he had a shrewd idea what was coming, not something to contemplate without serious consideration. If Moravec was frustrated by his silence, and he probably was, he hid it well.

  ‘I now know for certain you are not connected to the British embassy.’

  And I won’t ask how you know, Cal thought; Moravec would have people in every embassy that employed Czechs as drivers, cooks and interpreters, which was just about everyone except the Germans and Soviets, the latter too paranoid to ever employ locals in their legations.

  ‘How do you know this document is where you say it is?’

  ‘Trust me to do my job.’

  ‘A spy in place, perhaps?’

  ‘You would not answer that, neither will I.’

  It was time to nail him. ‘If you want help, and it sounds to me very much like you do, you’re going to have to answer that and a lot more besides.’

  ‘Go back to your hotel. There you will find a package waiting for you. Examine it tonight and I will call tomorrow and arrange another meeting.’

  The package was bulky and when it was laid out it covered not only the bed but the floor as well, information relating to a small town called Cheb in Czech, Eger in German, which Henlein and Frank were using as their personal headquarters and from which they were running their political affairs.

  No doubt they had chosen Cheb for the very good reason that it lay only a few miles from the German border; Henlein’s house was even closer in a hamlet called Asch, practically right on the boundary line. The SdP leader was taking no chances on a crackdown; any hint of trouble and he and his family would be in Germany and safe from arrest.

  Frank had his HQ at the local Nazi Party HQ, which appeared to be a substantial edifice, while Henlein’s was over two floors of the Victoria Hotel, which was a three-storey classical-styled building in the centre of the town opposite the Cheb-Eger railway station, through which ran the Paris-to-Prague Express.

  The detail of both locations was comprehensive: the package contained maps of both town and hamlet, as well as the surrounding country, photographs of the streets around both Henlein’s house and Frank’s HQ, and building plans of the hotel itself, where anything really vital would probably be kept.

  There were armed members of the local Freikorps guarding the Victoria, day and night, their strength and a rota included, as well as the number of people employed there during the day, all checked as being of the right stripe, because it was still a working building so there was also included an estimate of the rate of occupancy by guests.

  The only speculation was the location of the safe that contained the details of Hitler’s invasion plan – they would have to be kept under lock and key – which was assumed to be in Konrad Henlein’s own suite on the first floor.

  Everything being, of course, in German, Cal spent as much time translating for Vince as he did examining the documents himself. The Londoner was swift to one conclusion.

  ‘They must have a bloke on the inside, guv, and he’s got to be
close to the boss man, not just one of the hotel staff. If you’ve read it right this practically tells you what this Henlein bloke had for breakfast.’

  ‘They must have the place under permanent surveillance too, Vince. You don’t compile all this without you can watch them day and night, which makes me curious. How come the Heinies haven’t spotted they are being clocked?’

  ‘Heinies?’

  ‘That’s what Henlien’s men are called, and every other Sudeten German now, I shouldn’t wonder, even if they are dead against him.’

  ‘Maybe his lot are thick.’

  ‘They’d have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to suspect they are being watched by Czech security, and there’s another thing. Moravec says that he cannot trust everyone in his own department.’

  ‘So how many folk know about a file like this lot?’

  ‘That’s right, and if they do, would they go so far as to betray the secret? That means it’s possible the likes of Henlein will be aware that this file we are looking at exists.’

  ‘He must be well on guard for somebody trying to break in to his bit of the hotel.’

  ‘I think that’s what Moravec is going to ask us to do.’

  ‘An’ I’m thinking we shouldn’t touch it with a bargepole.’

  Cal had a map open now and was fingering the route to Cheb from Prague, as well as the distance to the German border, which even at a generous estimate could not be more than half an hour.

  ‘There is another alternative. Old Henlein must be nervous, ready to run if he thinks he’s going to be arrested. He’s not going to leave something like that behind, is he, and it’s not going to be in his house.’

  ‘You think he could be spooked into doing that?’

  If Cal was smiling at the thought when he looked up, such a feeling was not replicated in Vince’s expression and it was not necessary to say why. They were two strangers in the country and on the face of it they had no means of bringing about what was being discussed.

  ‘I don’t know yet, but having seen all this, I can’t think that Moravec does not have something like that in mind.’

  ‘One that keeps him clean and might get us in deep shit.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting we don’t give him a hearing, Vince?’

  ‘I might,’ Vince sighed; he knew his old company officer too well, knew when an idea had taken hold that excited him. ‘But I’d be wasting my breath.’

  ‘And this might be too good an opportunity to turn down. Cast-iron evidence of what Hitler is up to is just what we need, and those plans do just that.’

  Once everything was tidied away and Vince had gone back to his own room, Cal sat down with the laborious task of composing another telegram to Peter Lanchester, this time outlining what he thought was on offer.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Peter Lanchester’s ‘chat’ with Noel McKevitt had not started well and ended badly, though he had noticed on entering the Ulsterman’s office that there was a strong smell of drink on his breath. His eyes also had that slight glaze which comes from a too-liquid lunch and perhaps it was that which led to a surprising loss of control from a man so well known for the lack of passion in his demeanour.

  There had been a seemingly interminable discussion of Brno and what he had observed there, tedious because Peter had nothing to say which he suspected McKevitt did not already know, but eventually it led to where it was clear he wanted to go, even if he said he was no longer concerned: had Peter found out the identity of the fellow who had illegally bought those weapons?

  ‘You didn’t question anyone at the arms factory?’ McKevitt asked, for the first time slightly querulous when the answer was negative.

  ‘That was not my brief, Noel, and besides, given we surmise that the End User Certificate was known to be false by the managers, I doubt asking questions would have got me very far. They would have just clammed up, while I was not inclined to seek out and interrogate your source.’

  ‘Not your brief,’ was the response, accompanied by a slight frown. ‘You were given this job by Quex himself—?’

  A sharp interruption was necessary. ‘I do think that is a question you should put directly to him, Noel.’

  ‘Would it be breaching any confidentiality to tell me what the parameters were? For instance, was your mission to stop the shipment or just to track it?’

  ‘As you know,’ Peter responded, prevaricating, ‘it had already left Brno when we were alerted to the transaction.’

  ‘Which makes me wonder, Peter, if the man we pay a stipend to there is either as quick or as loyal as we would hope. We should have known about this deal before it was concluded.’

  The idea that the fellow’s loyalty might be to the country of his birth was not one to raise; it may well be he had done the minimum instead of the maximum.

  ‘I’m curious, Noel, where this is leading. I am happy to talk to you about Brno, even if there’s not much to say, but I am less so to discuss an operation with anyone not directly connected with it. It would, in fact, be a breach of both confidence and protocol.’

  ‘Do you not see, Peter?’ McKevitt replied, rather pedantic in the way he used that expression. ‘We have been made to look like fools.’

  ‘We cannot be certain of that; there’s no evidence those weapons ever got out of France.’

  Maybe it was the drink, maybe the way he was being stalled, but the man lost some of his habitual detachment.

  ‘Christ, we would be a poor Secret Intelligence Service if we relied on evidence. You have admitted you were in La Rochelle on the trail of those bloody machine guns. One phone call to the French would have put the kibosh on any attempt to get them through France, never mind out of the country. Why was that call never made?’

  The temptation to ask if he had made any calls around the same time was so hard to resist.

  ‘Now if you did not do that,’ McKevitt continued, ‘there had to be a motive for it, and I am curious as to what that could be. I am also curious, Peter Lanchester, why a few days after your return from this particular cock-up you are in receipt of a telegram from Prague?’

  ‘That is none of your business.’

  ‘Anything to do with Czechoslovakia is my business and the list of such telegrams and the recipients lands on my desk as a matter of course. What I want is the contents.’

  Peter stood up. ‘Have you never heard of Chinese walls?’

  The tone of the response was icy. ‘I’ll give you Chinese walls, or maybe they’ll be prison walls. I am not a man to mess with, Lanchester, as you may find out, and don’t be sure that there is anyone, however high and mighty, who can protect you. There’s something going on that I should know about and I intend to find out what it is. Maybe you would like the weekend to think that over.’

  ‘We are all here on sufferance, Noel, including you, but I will pass on to Quex your concerns as to how he runs SIS.’

  There was pure devilment in what Peter said next and he had no knowledge of what Quex had been up to.

  ‘And while you are busy monitoring the telegram traffic from Prague don’t be surprised to find there are certain communications between London and France that are also under surveillance, by the Deuxième Bureau if not by us. I’m wondering if a request to them for certain information would go unacknowledged.’

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ McKevitt replied, his face expressionless.

  ‘I wonder,’ Peter barked over his shoulder as he went out of the door.

  After a day of endless talking at Downing Street, during which many a bellicose statement had come from the French delegation about standing up to Hitler, meeting more measured assertions from their British counterparts, it was fairly plain to Sir Hugh Sinclair that matters had not moved on one centimetre, never mind an inch; it was all talk and no go.

  There had been no time to beard his French counterpart, Colonel Gauché, during the day, both men being too busy advising their own superiors, but as usual there was a formal dinner in the evening and th
ey were seated next to each other, where, conversationally, they competed to see who could most mangle the other’s native language.

  For all the difficulties that entailed, communication was achieved as they discussed what might come out of the forthcoming gathering of the Nazi bigwigs in Nuremberg. Gauché had a very good intelligence operation in Czechoslovakia – hardly surprising given they were formal allies, with a proper signed treaty and France had bankrolled a lot of the Czech armaments through loans and subsidies – but when it came to Germany the British had the upper hand.

  A free flow of shared information was never possible with two intelligence agencies – not even internally did they always cooperate – but within the bounds of mutual jealousies and natural Anglo-Gallic mistrust they did help each other and the Frenchman saw nothing to trouble his conscience in having one of his men examine the records of foreign calls made to such outfits as the Jeunesses Patriotes.

  ‘The call,’ Sinclair said, ‘C’est from Angleterre, dans le middle de Août.’ Then he flicked a finger over his shoulder. ‘Votre glass c’est empty, Colonel.’

  The Frenchman replied, but not in words Sinclair was sure he understood; the man was nodding and that would suffice.

  While Vince was reading his day-old News Chronicle Cal had his nose buried in the freshly delivered German newspapers that had come in on the overnight trains which still ran over the disputed border as though there was no problem. It was one of the features of Prague that you could buy almost any newspaper published in the world if you didn’t mind old news.

  The Czechs prided themselves on being internationalists, as people with a world view, not a narrowly parochial one, and in the cafés and bars in normal times you could get into a well-informed discussion about what was happening in the four corners of the globe; not now – even the foreign press was full of what was taking place in Bavaria.

  If there was a deep fascination, allied to a visceral fear of what the Nazi Party was up to in Nuremberg, it certainly, in Cal’s mind, would never extend to the speeches, which were the usual Aryan claptrap mixed with justifications for no freedom, low wages for workers and the need for vigilance against foes, who would be manufactured if they did not exist, all wrapped up in nice language about the beauty of their ideology.