Bitter Field

by Jack Ludlow

  He had reckoned without the car, which on the open road and being pushed a bit hard – normally it was used in town and on short journeys – revealed a radiator prone to overheating, evidenced by the pall of steam that began to issue from the bonnet at the second checkpoint, forcing him to pull over.

  Once the steam had dispersed, one of the soldiers keen to assist him identified the problem as a split hose and a very junior conscript was sent off to find a garage where a replacement might be located. So frustrated was McKevitt that he wanted to retrieve the Webley from under the seat where he had hidden it and shoot someone.

  Up ahead Vince Castellano was having a miserable time; every checkpoint was taking over an hour to get through, the traffic backed up for at least a mile and everyone’s papers being checked. Being foreign, he was pulled over for a more serious questioning every time which further delayed his progress and the nearer he got to his destination the jumpier seemed the soldiers.

  It was well into the afternoon that he was obliged to pull over to the side to let past a stream of army lorries, some pulling artillery, and he wondered if the balloon had gone up, the only thing that reassured him the lack of a stream of refugees coming the other way. Then, on what this map told him was the border with the province called Karlovy Vary, he was halted altogether, the only consolation being that everyone else was too.

  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, Fräulein 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 Führer 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; e
ven 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.

  ‘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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The Standartenführer 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 Führer.’

  ‘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.’

  Th
ey 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 glühwein 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.

  ‘Fräulein 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.

  Veseli/Wessely took her gently by the arm to guide her through the crowd, which left Cal to look about him. He saw Jimmy Garvin with a big jug of beer in one hand, a sausage in the other, standing back and not engaging in conversation, no doubt composing a feature about mass hysteria for some future date.

  Then Veseli was beside him, leaning over to talk quietly in his ear while he handed him a bratwurst, wrapped in a linen napkin. There was something hard inside, which Cal’s fingers identified as a key. With the babble of conversation there was no chance of either being overheard and it looked as if they were having a friendly chat.

  ‘Tonight, as Hitler is speaking, the Czech army will enter the so-called Sudetenland and stop all this nonsense.’

  ‘I thought—’

  ‘Never mind that. The key to his suite of offices is in your hand and a layout of the hotel is drawn on the napkin, showing the emergency exit from Henlein’s suite. The papers are in his safe and you have been given the means to get access to what you came for.’