enamoured with what Vince had to tell him about what the fellow tailing them had done, in fact he was mystified.
‘Sod went straight to the phone after you went up in the lift and I sidled over to see if I could cop the number he dialled. Missed that, but the bugger was loud enough to overhear his voice, not what he was saying, though. The thing is, guv, whoever the sod was talking to, he was doin’ it in English.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The telegram Cal Jardine composed and sent off to London was gobbledegook to anyone but Peter Lanchester; sent to his home address to avoid complications it was delivered before six in the evening. It told him he had made contact with those who could help and asked if anyone from the embassy might be tailing the head of Czech Intelligence and how many operatives were in place.
Unbeknown to both, such was the nervousness of the British state regarding events in Czechoslovakia that the sister service to the SIS had people in place to monitor that kind of traffic between the two capital cities. If MI5 did not know the contents of Cal’s message or whom it was from, they knew to whom it was addressed.
Part of their job was to compile a list that kept the SIS Central European Desk informed. The register of the day’s traffic was thus passed on to Broadway where the recipient’s name set off the bells with the man who ran it; normally he was above that sort of thing unless it was deemed important.
Following on from Peter’s previous trip to Brno and the subsequent trail that led to La Rochelle it smacked of conspiracy and produced in Noel McKevitt the kind of expletive-filled apoplexy he reserved for times when he was alone and unobserved, the kind that turned the air blue and had those outside his office exchanging looks and shrugs.
They were messing about in his patch again without telling him and there could only be one reason for such behaviour — they were acting to achieve something he could not support and the only thing he could think of was some kind of attempt to embroil the country in Central Europe that went against Government policy.
It also, after a period of thinking, occurred to him that unravelling that might give him some leverage to demand answers to any number of questions, and that had him send off a message to the station chief in Prague, basically asking him to check on new arrivals of British nationality in the capital or Brno, journalists and diplomats excluded, as a Code One priority — there should not be too many with the continuing crisis.
Then he turned to flicking through his address book for the number of an old colleague, asking for an outside line; this was not a call to risk being overheard by the switchboard.
‘Barney, it’s Noel,’ he said into the telephone, having forced himself to calm down. ‘Sure, I was thinking it’s a long time since we shared a jar and a chat an’ it being Friday and all…’
The recipient of the call, Barney Foxton, had been in his job long enough to know what that meant: I want to ask you questions I dare not pose over the telephone; and that led him to speculate what it might be about — not for long — given he knew the post McKevitt held.
‘Both been snowed under, Noel,’ he replied.
That was followed by a short pause that allowed time for speculation. The Ulsterman must want something and Foxton was speculating about his own needs in these troubled times; what could MI6 have that might be of use to him, something for which he could trade?
‘I was thinking,’ McKevitt continued, ‘that we might have a pint. How about that nice little snug bar at the Salisbury in St Martin’s Lane?’
Good choice, Foxton thought: a busy pub and homosexual haunt on the corner of an alley that joined two main thoroughfares, a tiny bar with two doors, one to the street and another to the main saloon, a load of mirrors so you could keep an eye on everyone who came and went without actually looking at them and a clientele that would be too busy with their own concerns to care about anyone else’s.
‘Why not?’
‘This lunchtime, say one o’clock?’
He’s keen, Foxton thought, having failed to drag up anything he could ask for; still, a favour in the bank usually paid off in time so, provided what McKevitt was after did not pose too many problems, he would help if he could.
‘See you there, Noel.’
Peter Lanchester had looked at his deciphered message and wondered what he could do about the major part of it. He had no idea why the Prague station might be following the head of Czech Intelligence to find out who it was he was meeting, while added to that was the certain knowledge that probably the only man in London who had any clue about the answer was Noel McKevitt.
Asking would get him nowhere, in fact it would only alert the Irish bugger to the fact that he was messing about in his pond again, so it was with some surprise that he got a mid-morning telephone invitation to come over to Broadway for a chat, that accompanied by an explanation that left him unconvinced.
‘You know, Peter, I think I let my annoyance get to me the other day. It will not come as a surprise to you that people like me are a bit unsure what Quex is up to with your new set-up.’
Now I am suddenly ‘Peter’. ‘Perfectly natural, Noel, but I can tell you without a shred of doubt any worries you might have are misplaced.’
‘An assumption that it would be best to operate on, would you not say? So why don’t you pop over and we can talk about what you picked up in Brno and beyond.’
‘I’m not sure I picked up any more than you will already know and what we have already discussed.’
‘Only one way to nail that, given I don’t know to the last T what you found any more than you are aware what I am familiar with…’ The rest was left up in the air.
‘Is this about running guns, Noel?’
Peter heard a single sound that he supposed was laughter, though it equated more to a cough. ‘Not my concern; as you know, my patch is Czech land and environs but you have been there and I have not, at least for years, so…’
It was too much of a coincidence; I get a telegram from Prague, then a call from McKevitt, but if that was the connection, turning down the invite would make him even more suspicious than he clearly was already.
‘Can’t do this morning, how about after lunch?’
‘Best make it three-thirty, then, I have a meet arranged that might take me till then.’
He was still pondering on that when the door opened and a messenger entered with a slip of paper, which was handed over, an answer to his request to Quex to be told how many people were on station for the SIS in Prague.
Usually it would be two at best for such a troubled location, more likely one in normal times, it being a bit of an intelligence backwater, while the likes of a major capital might run to a trio or even four if there was trouble brewing. Prague at present had six, four having been hauled in from the neighbouring stations at the request of McKevitt after the May mobilisation of the Czech army.
It was quite indicative of the surprise Quex had felt that he had followed the number six with three exclamation marks; that meant the Ulsterman had increased the Prague staffing without clearing it with his boss, which was stretching his level of accountability somewhat. Would Quex have him in for a haul over the coals or would he do what normally happened, quietly seethe and say nothing, putting it in the memory bank for a later date?
There was never a good time to run an external intelligence service but now was particularly bad, given the way appeasement was pulling things in two directions. By its very nature MI6 required as staff people who, though they might rank as misfits, could think for themselves and often act without instructions, while keeping your cards close to your chest, even with colleagues, was essential. The idea in theory was that everything came together at the top; in practice it was often the very opposite.
Yet Peter’s main concern was to get an answer to Cal. He had said it was important, so the first stop when he left the office at lunchtime was the post office, where he sent a telegram with the single significant letter.
