‘They’re a bit given to grievances, the Poles, old boy.’
‘They’re also a bit given to doing something about them. Half a sniff and they will take the Teschen region back and challenge anyone to oppose them. The only thing that’s stopping them is the Czech army, and if they are fighting the Germans-’
‘Enough, Cal, please. I don’t need a lesson on the last twenty years of European history.’
‘A point on which we fundamentally disagree!’ Cal snapped. ‘Our whole country needs a lecture on precisely that, especially the idiots in Downing Street.’
‘Let’s leave the Poles out of it, and the Russians for that matter. I can tell you, flat out, HMG wants nothing to do with Stalin.’
‘If you want to put a spoke in Hitler’s ambitions, Peter, unpalatable as it is, you will need the Russians, just as we did in 1914. Necessity makes for strange bedfellows.’
‘Shall we get back to the subject at hand, Cal, which is the need to find out how far the Czechs are prepared to go to stand up for themselves?’
If he was expecting an answer to that question he did not get one, and what Cal did say threw Peter Lanchester completely.
‘Are you sure you are working for HMG?’
‘What!’
‘Don’t take this personally, but it is the nature of what I do to be suspicious…’
‘Something that has not gone unobserved,’ Peter growled.
‘Much as you don’t want to, I think you are going to have to be open with me about certain things, or this conversation is going nowhere.’ The silence that followed was, to Cal Jardine, a clear indication that there were indeed ‘things’. ‘For instance, I would like to see the passport on which you travelled to France.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘Because it has to be your own and that is worrying.’
Peter took refuge in sipping his G and T, so Cal had to press.
‘I can think of only one reason why you did not use a hotel in La Rochelle and why we had to go to so much trouble to clean up that apartment you were staying in, and the car for that matter. Your prints were all over both and you are not travelling on false papers.’
Peter shrugged and smiled, though it had a forced quality to the recipient. ‘I told you, standard procedure and, I might add, it was done to protect you as much as me.’
‘I shouldn’t need it, given I do have a false passport.’
‘You can’t be too careful.’
‘Which is only a viable reason if you suspect my real identity has been leaked to the French, a leak that could only have come from London, and if that is the source, then it is from the outfit you claim to work for. Now you are asking me to go into Czechoslovakia for those same people, a prospect that does not fill me with confidence that whatever identity I use will remain a secret.’
‘Will you accept my reassurance that, in the present case, your own name is known to only three people?’
‘What about the shipment of arms?’
‘That was known to a whole raft of folk, coming in the way it did as a standard bit of intelligence. But all this is straying off the point, Cal, because the only real one is: are you in or not?’
‘Sorry to be a spoilsport, old chum, but it’s chapter and verse or no can do. I need to know where you stand with those for whom you work and what the risks of exposure are once an operation is in place.’
Peter drained his drink and stared out to sea for half a minute, obviously weighing up the odds of being open, and his voice was low and for once forcefully earnest as he finally spoke.
‘I am going to tell you, because I trust you, Cal, but I do want you to know there is not another soul in the world to whom I would impart what I am about to say.’
‘I’m flattered,’ Cal said, his surprise evident. ‘Given we have not always seen eye to eye and we have been, how shall I say, on opposite sides of most arguments.’
Peter now looked like a man who had been put on an embarrassing spot, not blushing exactly but close to it; if there was one area where he was utterly typical in the possession of a national characteristic, it was in anything to do with any revelation of personal regard for another man.
‘I don’t dislike you, if that is what you are driving at, which was not always a statement I could readily and honestly have made before our little escapade in Hamburg and what followed. You are, without doubt, one of the most awkward buggers it has ever been my misfortune to deal with, but I do not think you will betray a confidence.’
Having gone as far as he was prepared to nail their relationship and got a complicit nod he felt secure to carry on. ‘When it comes to how bad things are in SIS I have not told you the half of it. In order to seal off the possibility of being wrong-footed, Quex has set up a separate bureau.’ Seeing the eyebrows rise at the name, Peter added, ‘Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, boss of MI6, or SIS if you prefer. “Quex” is his nickname.’
‘I won’t ask why.’
‘I am part of that bureau, code-named Operation Z, which is housed in a separate set of offices to the main body-’
Cal cut across him. ‘And in order not to alert those considered unreliable you cannot use the normal facilities of the main organisation, like the acquisition of false documentation on which to travel?’
‘If I had asked for a false passport it would have set minds wondering about what I was up to.’
‘Which should be none of their business.’
‘My dear chap, when it comes to being nosy SIS would not give ground to the most assiduous suburban curtain twitcher — hardly surprising when you consider it, given the job we all do entails sniffing out secrets other people want to keep.’
‘In the end, obviously, even taking those precautions did not work, Peter, and if what you have just told me is true, then where you had come from and where you were headed to was definitely leaked in London, and whoever did it either knew or guessed what you were on the trail of.
‘It saddens me to say that you are very probably correct, though I’m damned if I know how or whom.’
‘You went to Brno and, I presume, talked to the SIS contact there?’
‘I did.’
‘Then some bugger did as you did and put two and two together. Christ knows there’s not much more there to interest British intelligence in Brno other than an arms factory. Who, apart from you, is staffing this new lot?’
‘A couple of chaps like me, dragged back in, and even they are being kept in the dark about what I’m up to, just as their operations are a mystery to me. The idea is to avoid those on station at the various embassies as well, and seek to get information from the people carrying out business in those places in which we are interested. Naturally, what most are doing is legit, but one who is not, such as your good self, could be a priceless asset.’
‘Your idea?’ Peter nodded. ‘I take it this old lot are not too enamoured of what your boss is up to with his new incarnation.’
‘They’re bloody livid.’
‘Enough to seek to queer the pitch and get you and I killed?’
‘Not me, old boy, for in their wildest dreams they would not imagine that I would get so close to the actual movement of weapons.’
‘Me, then.’
‘In your case it would, to such people and should the information surface, be a pleasure to have done so. You may well see yourself as some kind of “holy warrior”, but you might be surprised at the number of folk that observe you in quite a different light.’
‘They don’t seem to be too fond of you either, Peter, because whatever you say, you too could have been killed and no one seemed concerned enough to tell you so.’
‘Sadly, no.’
‘But the question remains, say I agreed to go back to Czechoslovakia, what am I looking to do?’
‘Find the means to stop Jerry,’ Peter replied, ‘and for the love of God do not mention the Russians again.’
