by Jack Ludlow
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.
EPILOGUE
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.’
‘His agents?’ Cal was thinking of Veseli.
‘His to decide on.’ Quex stood. ‘Now I must go and seek to advise a government intent on adding to their foolishness.’
‘Not possible.’
‘Oh it is, Mr Jardine. They are talking about guaranteeing Poland’s borders.’
‘Vince, in my bag is a fortune in German marks. Could you do me a favour and take it to Prague and then fly home from there? Give it to Elsa Ephraim at the Jewish Emigration Centre and tell her it comes from the Reichsbank. She will be tickled to think she’s using their money to get her people to freedom.’
The last person to talk to was Corrie and she was very mature. ‘You’re not free to marry and I’m not willing to give up my career.’
‘So how do we stay in touch?’
She tapped her forehead. ‘Up here, Cal, up here, where there are good memories. And – who knows? – we are flotsam who gravitate towards war zo
nes. We both like trouble, so I guess we will meet more often than you think possible.’
‘I hope you believe me when I say I want that.’
She bent forward and kissed him. ‘Take care, Doc.’
About the Author
JACK LUDLOW is the pen-name of writer David Donachie, who was born in Edinburgh in 1944. He has always had an abiding interest in history: the Roman Republic, Medieval warfare as well as the naval history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which he has drawn on for the many historical adventure novels he has set in these periods. David lives in Deal with his partner, the novelist Sarah Grazebrook.
By Jack Ludlow
THE ROADS TO WAR SERIES
The Burning Sky
A Broken Land
A Bitter Field
THE REPUBLIC SERIES
The Pillars of Rome
The Sword of Revenge
The Gods of War
THE CONQUEST SERIES
Mercenaries
Warriors
Conquest
Written as David Donachie
THE JOHN PEARCE SERIES
By the Mast Divided
A Shot Rolling Ship
An Awkward Commission
A Flag of Truce
The Admirals’ Game
An Ill Wind
Blown Off Course
Enemies at Every Turn
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
13 Charlotte Mews
London W1T 4EJ
www.allisonandbusby.com
First published Great Britain in 2012.
This ebook edition first published in 2012.
Copyright © 2012 by DAVID DONACHIE
(writing as JACK LUDLOW)
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–1176–5
