The Burning Sky

by Jack Ludlow

  The home of Sir Basil Zaharoff was, like many dwellings in Monte Carlo, built into the side of a hill. He was not a man to call upon unannounced and Jardine had sent him a letter before going to see Amherst, though given he had dealt with the old man before, he was sure he need not wait for a reply. Reputedly the richest man in Europe, Zaharoff had many soubriquets, the least attractive that he was the original ‘Merchant of Death’. Cal Jardine had always found the infamous arms dealer courteous, of lively mind and a person of wide interests and strong personal attachments.

  He was shown into a large study overlooking the yacht-filled harbour to find his man sat behind an enormous desk, before open windows. ‘Captain Jardine?’

  ‘That, Sir Basil, is not a title I use, quite apart from the fact that my fellow officers, serving and retired, think it infra dig to use any army rank in civilian life below major.’

  ‘Why would that be?’

  ‘Captain is a naval rank and vastly superior to its army equivalent.’

  ‘Ah, your English habits, so strange to we foreigners, regardless of how much time we spend in your country.’

  God he’s aged, Jardine thought: the moustache was dropping, the goatee beard straggly and the skin falling from his cheeks, but that was not a comment one would make to anyone, and certainly not to a person of his eminence.

  ‘You will forgive me not standing to greet you, my legs are not what they once were.’ An arm was waved to invite him to sit, to which Jardine agreed; he was offered an iced cocktail, which he accepted, and then engaged in twenty minutes of polite conversation, which he enjoyed. ‘But you have not come to see me for the chit-chat, I venture.’

  ‘No. I have been engaged to see if I can get some modern weaponry into Abyssinia.’

  It was hard for such a wracked face to fall but his did. ‘Oh dear, Jardine, that is not, I think, very wise.’

  ‘When was what you and I do wise?’

  ‘You hoist me, as you say, on the petard.’ That was nonsense, of course, Zaharoff being one of the wisest men he had ever encountered: he might be an arms dealer, but he was knowledgeable and no hypocrite. ‘You know I am no longer active, I have retired to this prison for the rich.’

  ‘But I suspect you know who is.’

  ‘I hear things, that is true, for I have kept many of my contacts; but I will say this, it will be hard to purchase modern weaponry for such a cause, and I suspect not easy to get it to where it is needed if you can.’ He began to tick off the sources. ‘Belgium and Czechoslovakia are the least scrupulous as of this moment, but you would require very deep pockets, especially without political clearance from your own government.’

  ‘My government must know nothing of what I am doing.’

  ‘Something I suspected must be the case, Jardine, or why come to see an old fellow like me, eh? Discreet purchase raises the cost – and substantially, my friend – quite apart from the fact the rascal Hitler is now being open about his rearmament programme instead of doing it in secret, as he and the General Staff have been doing for a decade and a half now. The two countries I mentioned will need to look to their own armouries in the face of his actions – they border Germany, after all.’

  ‘I won’t mention a figure, but I suspect money might be constrained.’

  What Lanchester had mentioned did not go far in Zaharoff’s world, but typically he did not ask him the source of any money, it being none of his concern.

  ‘The Italians are pouring much treasure into the Abyssinian venture, more, in truth, than they can afford.’

  ‘They are overextended?’ The emphatic nod was good news: it meant that the tactics outlined by Amherst had an even better chance of success – nothing drains money like an open-ended conflict.

  ‘I point out to you, Jardine, a number of things pertinent,’ Zaharoff said, ticking them off on his fingers. ‘A lack of money means a dearth of supply, while even if you were able to buy the most modern weaponry, your Abyssinians would not be able to use it without instructors. Even with such men to teach them you do not have time on your side. My information is that the Italian build-up of forces is near to complete. The only thing stopping them from moving is the lack of an aggressive commander, and Mussolini can alter that tomorrow.’

  ‘I don’t know this General De Bono.’

  ‘Nearly seventy years of age, which is well past the time a man might be at his peak.’

  That got a smile. ‘I cannot recall if it is polite to remind a man of his age and when he was at his most active.’

  ‘You were always a flatterer, Jardine.’ Seeing his guest then frown, he added, as he rang a bell on his desk, ‘But never a sycophant.’ A sober-suited fellow answered the bell. ‘Drouhin, bring me the files on Abyssinia and Rumania.’

  Zaharoff was smiling at him now, but Jardine did not react, albeit the idea of a file on Rumania was intriguing: what purpose could that possibly have? Reaching into his pocket he pulled out the Italian order of battle and gave it to his host. ‘Perhaps your man Drouhin would like to copy out this document.’

  Zaharoff put a pince-nez on his stark, bony nose and looked at the document, nodding. He had always been a magpie when it came to intelligence; one of the reasons he had been so successful was his ability to outguess his opponents as well as governments through a network of well-placed informers.

  ‘Interesting. Thank you.’ Drouhin was back, carefully placing the files on the desk. The old man handed over the order of battle to Drouhin, who apparently needed no telling what to do, then opened the top folder and extracted a paper as the secretary left, handing that to Jardine.

  ‘Here is an appreciation of Emilio De Bono. He’s a long-serving soldier, successful as a young man, and now a member of the Fascist Grand Council. On the face of it he is a strong supporter of Mussolini, though my reports have him as a man who clings to the monarchy, and the King of Italy does not always see eye to eye with Il Duce. De Bono is a sentimental fellow, he cries readily and often, which argues he is no great warrior or a man who will see the blood of his troops spilt without conscience. I have also here his original plan for the invasion of Ethiopia, which involved nothing like the number of troops on this paper you have given me.’

  That was a separate folder and, given to Jardine, one he examined with professional interest, because its nature indicated a cautious commander who had set out limited objectives to be captured over time with the emphasis on security at each stage of his advance. How the hell Zaharoff had come by it was a mystery and it made Jardine wonder if the order of battle he had handed over was quite as interesting as the old fellow had said – he probably had it already. Clearly he still spent a lot of money – and he had masses to disburse – on his own spies.

  ‘Do you have the new plan?’

  ‘Unfortunately no, Jardine, and you, of course, have not seen that which you have just looked at.’

  Possibly untrue, but not something to question; the other file was. ‘Rumania?’

  ‘The Germans, as well as rearming, are also selling – they need the currency, after all – and one of their clients is Rumania. They are re-equipping their forces, and in that file is a list of what we suspect the Germans are supplying. Not tanks or field artillery, of course, for they have only just begun to manufacture those in quantity, but they had a surplus of small arms, given they have been secretly making them since the foundation of the Weimar Republic.’

  Jardine took the list and examined it: Mauser rifles in the shortened K98 version, MG38 machine guns and 50 mm mortars.

  ‘What that means, of course, is that the Rumanians have a lot of old equipment to dispose of. Austrian Mannlicher rifles and old-pattern Maxim machine guns, which I sold them myself.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘If the Ethiopians have anything, it will be weapons of that vintage. They will be much more likely to use them wisely than anything they require to be instructed to use, but that is not the real point. Such items will also be cheap.’

  CHAPTER
SIX

  Train journeys are good for thinking and the return trip allowed Jardine plenty of time to ponder on what Basil Zaharoff had said, the primary conclusion being that it made sense, mostly in money terms. The old man had promised to check on matters for him and let him know what was going to be available and who to contact in the Rumanian War Ministry to facilitate matters. He had sent a preliminary telegram to Lanchester, telling him that Bucharest was the place to do business and arrangements should be made to bank funds there, and some early moves taken on transportation, with Zaharoff adding another bit of advice.

  ‘At the risk of stating the obvious, Jardine, nothing will happen unless the wheels are oiled, and the Rumanians do not come cheap. I have had dealings there over many years and I know they expect to be bribed and that their preferred currency is Swiss francs.’

  ‘Especially if I am in a hurry.’

  ‘Try not to let it appear so, for if they suspect you are eager, the price of help will double, at least.’

  Now he was speeding back through France weighing the alternatives. It was a case of supplying a decent amount of old equipment as against a small quantity of new, the cost of the alternative being prohibitive, even if it could be found. Striking was the simple fact that the most potent arms dealer in Europe, albeit he was no longer really active, had not offered him anything other than information – not even an old competitor who could help. Quite apart from the politics of standing aside in Abyssinia, the major manufacturing countries were looking to their own needs and, apart from Germany, they were keeping what they made at home.

  That the Germans had been rearming for fifteen years was an open secret: Jardine moved in circles well aware of this, and any government with an intelligence set-up knew it too. They had opened secret factories in Russia, as well as in Germany itself, for the one thing the Great War had not done was to tame the ambitions or power of the Great General Staff. Even before Hitler, the now-defunct Weimar Republic had relied on the army, and the Nazis had been required to seduce and reassure the military in order to see them into power.

  Back in his London hotel room, he laid out the bones of what he had discovered to Lanchester. ‘So there we have it, Peter – not perfect, perhaps less than satisfactory, but given the time, maybe the best we can do.’

  ‘What would be required if the answer is to go ahead?’

  ‘Funds available as I have already outlined, to buy the goods and transport them to the Black Sea, a ship waiting at Constanta to take them to the Horn of Africa, and some way of assuring me that once that vessel is off Somaliland there is a way to get them to where they need to be. I presume that has been thought about in advance.’

  ‘We have a representative out there, a district officer primed to do what is required.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Chap called Mason, who is also our link to those around Haile Selassie, and the idea is that once the weapons are on the way you go in and set up the operation overland with his aid.’

  ‘Which has to be carried out in secret, Peter, because if the Italians even get a sniff they will scream blue murder.’

  ‘He has assured us this can be done.’

  ‘By road?’

  ‘God no, that would be too obvious, seeing there’s only one road in and out and it runs past the barracks of the Somali Camel Corps. The powers that be in British Somaliland would throw you in the clink if they caught you, and impound the goods. The Ethiopians will provide the men and transport to get them across a discreet part of the border.’

  ‘That sounds very like camels.’

  ‘Spot on, old boy. The main road, not much of one I am told, runs through Hargeisa, the administrative centre of British Somaliland, while the railway from Djibouti to Dire Dawa is under French control, given they built it. Neither is useable.’

  ‘Would you be offended if I said this whole idea is a bit half-cocked? I have to buy a load of weapons and get them to the Horn of Africa, with no feeling of assurance that when I get there I will not be kyboshed by my own government, then sneak them overland across what might well be a bloody desert.’

  ‘Using the old slave trade routes, Cal, which, I’ll have you know, are not entirely redundant.’

  ‘There are too many “ifs” in this, Peter.’

  ‘Never knew any operation to be different, Cal. “If” number one! Will the backers agree to what is being proposed? “If” number two, can you get hold of what is available in the time we have? Three, can they be got, by ship, to the Somali coast? Four, can we get them ashore and across one of the least hospitable places on the planet to where they can do some good?’ Lanchester leant over grinning and slapped him on the back. ‘Bloody simple, really.’

  ‘One step at a time in other words?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘You could lose your shirt on this.’

  ‘It’s not my shirt.’

  ‘How long before we know the funds are available for use in Rumania?’

  ‘They are in place now, Cal, in a Swiss bank, three hundred thousand pounds sterling, with the reserve if you need more, which means that you and I should pack our bags for Bucharest.’

  ‘You’re coming too?’

  ‘Old chum, I trust you, but not with that much lolly. I am there to sign the cheques.’

  * * *

  There were two people to see before heading east, the first being the man who had recruited him for the Hamburg operation. He took Elsa Ephraim with him to the huge heath-side house in Hampstead, though after the introductions, she was asked to wait outside.

  ‘Now, that is a real looker,’ said Sir Monty Redfern, as always, when using an ‘r’, making it sound as if there were several instead of just one. ‘I didn’t know you liked them so fresh.’

  ‘I admit to temptation, Monty,’ Jardine replied, ‘and I was sorely tempted a few nights back, but I kept my buttons done up because she is young and naive.’

  ‘So you are a fool.’

  ‘How was New York?’

  ‘Too many Jews, what do you think, and loud, so loud. Worse than Palestine, my God!’

  Patron of several Jewish charities, Sir Monty was a self-made millionaire who had earned his money in chemicals, never boasting that he started with nothing as a fifth son of refugees selling such things as bicarbonate of soda door to door; such tales had to be dragged out of him. Money had not sophisticated him much: he dressed in clothes he had owned for years and his shoes were never polished, but if anyone in Britain was doing what they could for the Jews of Europe it was he, because, as he insisted, anti-Semitism was not confined to Germany, there was plenty of it in Britain.

  ‘You raised some funds?’

  ‘Not as much as those crooks could have contributed.’ To Monty there were only crooks or good people; there was nothing in between. ‘Of course, they have their own organisations who are pleading for lolly.’

  Jardine laid the money belt he had brought from Hamburg on the desk. ‘This will help.’

  Monty picked it up and weighed it in a way that made Jardine think he could count the unseen contents; maybe he could.

  ‘I took a lot of money off those Jews who could afford to pay and used it to get anyone too poor but under threat through the port.’ The word ‘Communist’ hung in the air, but was unmentioned. Jardine had got several Reds out from under the threat of a National Socialist bullet, but it was not a thing to make public. Few countries wanted Jews, none wanted to import revolution and no one of that political persuasion had been sent on to England. ‘That is what is left over.’

  ‘Jardine, you I should employ to sell my chemicals, then I would be rich, no?’ That was followed by a frown. ‘You have taken care of your own needs.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Good.’ Monty knew and approved of the Jardine rule: never work for nothing. As he had observed, there were not many rich Jews in his native Scotland, the competition was too stiff. ‘Now, your young lady.’

  ‘She wants to help.’
/>   ‘You think perhaps she would consider to make an old man happy?’

  ‘Your wife would kill you.’

  ‘What do you think she does already? Spend, spend, spend!’

  ‘She could act as some kind of secretary.’

  ‘My wife sees that kind of secretary, I will be eating my own balls for dinner.’

  ‘Talk to her, see what comes up.’

  ‘Jardine, I know what will come up, it is what I will do then that counts. Now, what are you up to?’

  ‘Who says I am up to anything?’

  ‘When God gave me this big hooter, Jardine,’ Monty said, grabbing his hooked nose, ‘he did it so I could smell my fellow humans telling fibs. You will be up to something or you would have asked me if there was some job needing doing.’

  Jardine grinned and explained: not one to trust easily, he trusted Monty Redfern absolutely.

  ‘That is a good cause, those poor black people, even if they are misguided religious. There are many Jews in that land, but not that Haile Selassie. Lion of Judah, my arse. How can you be that and not be Jewish, eh? You know Bucharest?’

  ‘I don’t even know Rumania.’

  ‘There are good people there, but many bad ones, too, and it is not the easiest place to be Jewish. It’s hard to lay blame – forgive me saying this, but I know, ’cause deep down I am still Russian, the Bukovina Jews are dumb Hasidic bastards. But there are some good Ashkenazim and Sephardim in Bucharest.’

  He went to the back of his desk and opened an address book, penning a quick name and address. ‘Call on this fellow, tell him I sent you. If you need anything he will help. Now, show in that delightful young lady and let me dream the dream I can look forward to repeating when I try to get to sleep tonight.’

  Jardine’s next stop was in South London, at a gym down the Old Kent Road. He walked through the door to the smell of sweat and high-odour embrocation. The place needed a lick of paint, if not several, and the windows were missing several panes, with bits of cardboard where there should be glass, while the lights were bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Around the room lay the various things required to keep a boxer at his peak – hanging punchbags, weights, mats for floor exercises – while in the middle was a full-sized ring in which two young fellows were sparring.