‘Not so, Vince, the head honchos up there are not talking, so all the journos are stuck with the political shenanigans here in Prague, all writing the same copy. Quite a few will be lighting out for Nuremberg, where at least something’s happening.’
‘Mass hysteria is happening.’
‘Which I don’t want to cover anyway, because my stuff is supposed to be human interest. I don’t suppose you have any pull in this neck of the woods, do you?’
‘If I had, why would I use them on your behalf?’ Cal replied, avoiding the implications of that query, not that he could oblige.
That got him sight of a paprika-stained tongue. ‘If they take much longer I might just be obliged to shimmy over to the Nazi Party Rally. I’ve got accreditation for the Reich and it will be exciting on the last day when Hitler speaks, though that will be crowded.’
‘Take my word for it, the place will be heaving with lunatics.’
‘I was talking about journalists.’
‘What makes you think I wasn’t? What are the chaps in the bar saying about what’s happening here in Prague?’
‘To a man they’re saying it stinks. That Lord Runciman guy Chamberlain sent over is a patsy, going through the motions, judging by the speech he made today at his latest press conference. And where has he gone off for the weekend to find out how the Czechs feel? To spend time in the castle of some well-heeled German aristocrat up north near Carlsbad called Prince Hohenlohe, that’s where. The word in the bar of the Ambassador is it’s all a set- up to sell the victims down the river.’
‘Typical reporters’ talk.’
‘Don’t knock it, some of those guys have seen it all and are too long in the tooth to fall for any old line.’ Another mouthful of goulash later, Corrie added, with narrowed eyes and what Cal thought was her best effort at a winning smile, ‘But if I can’t do the Sudetenland my readers would sure like a tale of derring-do and gunrunning. I can do it off the record, no names or places.’
‘Pity I can’t oblige, I always wanted to see my name in print.’
‘You will one day, buster, but it will be on a charge sheet.’
They continued to spar throughout the main course, into the dessert and coffee, she probing, he fielding, watched by a mainly silent and amused Vince Castellano, who knew there was something between the pair other than the apparent mutual antagonism that peppered their conversation, until finally Cal indicated he and Vince had to go.
‘Anything to do with that card you pocketed?’
An index finger was used to tap the side of his nose before Cal asked, ‘You OK to get a cab on your own?’
‘I’m a big girl now, Cal,’ Corrie replied with a girlie lilt.
Having seen her into the aforesaid taxi he and Vince walked up the street till they saw their man emerge from a doorway several yards ahead — a gap he maintained, turning left then right into a backstreet so ill lit it had Vince on edge, eyes darting and fists clenched in case of trouble. The car Cal had been alerted to on that card was waiting, engine purring, and the two men got in, the lead fellow now in the front passenger seat.
‘Does he speak English?’
Cal could only mean the driver, who had engaged the gears and moved off without a word being spoken. ‘No.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes.’
‘How well?’
‘Three years at the London School of Economics.’ There was a mid-European accent, but not much of one. ‘Most of my fellow students went to the Sorbonne and are French-speaking.’
‘Why did you follow me?’
‘On the general’s orders, to see where you stayed.’
‘He must have known I was at the Meran as soon as he made the phone call I asked for.’
‘A clever man might book into more than one hotel to make sure he was not exposed.’
‘And the Meran is where you picked us up tonight?’
‘Yes.’
‘Inside or out?’ Cal saw the young man’s shoulders shrug as if it made no difference; it did to him and he asked again.
‘I was outside in Wenceslas Square.’
‘So you did not enquire about me at the Meran reception desk? Ask who was staying in room 47?’
The silence was the answer and that was not good; the last thing Cal wanted was people seeking information on him at a hotel reception desk, especially since this youngster would have had no name with which to enquire, which was bound to raise curiosity about him as a guest. Anonymity was a precious commodity to be preserved if possible, which was why he had not told Moravec the name he was travelling under at the cathedral.
Irritated as he was, there was no point in crying over spilt milk. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To the old Jewish cemetery.’
‘Why there?’
‘It’s safe.’
There was a temptation to probe about that, to ask if it was as bad as Moravec had made out, or was it just the paranoia of a man who spent his life in the spying business? But there was little point, so he just sat back and relaxed as the car weaved through the light night-time traffic, crossing the river, until they stopped by the long wall of the old cemetery, alighting to walk to the gate.
There was a moment outside while checks were made on both sides of the gate but finally they went through into the gloomy interior. Moravec was waiting for them inside and, without speaking, they set off on a walk through the now defunct graveyard, packed with tilted headstones, with the other two well back to avoid them being overheard. The intelligence chief was not even about to trust the young man he had sent to fetch them.
Cal could hear Vince questioning the young fellow, not in any pressured way, just curious about his time in London, what he had studied, what he thought of the place and had he come across any fascists at the LSE, but inside those replies there would be nuggets of information that might provide clues for future use, given neither had any idea exactly where this was heading.
On a clear night with a near-full moon and a sky full of stars, even in a part of the city low on the spill from street lighting there was no need for any extra illumination, though it did give a ghostly air to both their surroundings and the Moravec-Jardine conversation as they walked down the gravel paths that criss-crossed the burial ground.
Cal was wondering what Moravec wanted with him but was equally determined not to initiate anything; he would wait to hear what the intelligence chief had to say and that became frustrating, as Moravec seemed to want to talk about anything and nothing, thankfully mostly in German.
He was treated to a potted history of the Czechs, without doubt and unsurprisingly in the Moravec exposition the cleverest and most industrious of the former inhabitants of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Quite naturally that included a comprehensive list of the manifest failings of the rest of the groups with whom they competed for imperial attention in what had, until its dismemberment in 1919, been a somewhat rickety edifice.
To the Czech way of thinking it was made up of lazy Slovaks, mercurial Hungarians, puffed-up Poles, insular Ruthenians and double-dealing Rumanians, all beholden to soft overfed Austrians, with the rest, a good dozen races, not, it seemed, to be considered as human at all and a polity riven with the kind of deep-seated anti- Semitism that made men like Hitler.
‘And you can see how we Czechs did not just tolerate the Jews, but lived alongside them in harmony and mutual industry. There were no pogroms in Prague and as of this moment we are walking through a thousand years of Jewish history.’
Then he was on to the German minority, grudgingly admitted to be hard-working and industrious, though politically they had nothing to complain about, with the whole separatist campaign being orchestrated, if not forced,
