so, but there are plenty of locals in Asch who would come to his aid to fight us, so taking even that would not be easy.’
‘Even if you took him by surprise?’
‘A difficult thing for a Czech to do when they cannot even get into his hotel if they are local, and no stranger would be allowed entry unless they could prove they were ethnic Germans.’
‘Go in numbers?’
‘How many? Remember, in Cheb too he is surrounded by his own kind who would be keen to protect him.’
Veseli took over. ‘And how can we surprise him when we would need the army to take the place?’
‘Understand,’ Moravec interjected, ‘that apart from manning the defensive emplacements in the borderlands, most of our troops have been withdrawn from the disputed provinces to locations where they pose no threat to the German minority. Left in place it would be too easy for Goebbels to claim the soldiers were committing atrocities.’
‘Even the police in Cheb are kept in their station unless an incident occurs they must deal with, and they have strict instructions to stay well away from the Victoria Hotel.’
‘I need copies of those ambush plans and I need to go and take a look to see if there is any way that I can implement what you dare not.’
‘You need more than that, my friend,’ the older Czech replied. ‘You need a reason to be there.’
‘Understand, sir,’ Veseli said, the honorific making Cal wonder to whom he was talking until he realised that in introducing his agent Moravec had not given him any name. ‘Cheb is not a large town and it is ninety-ten per cent ethnically German, Asch almost wholly so.’
He paused to make sure Cal understood.
‘They are doubly suspicious of strangers at the moment, regardless of their nationality, unless they know why it is they have come there, and given the number of members of the SdP in both places, any outsider would be treated a suspicious person as a matter of course and watched.’
‘Presumably, then, you do not go under the name of Karol in Cheb?’
The two other men only exchanged a half a flicker of a look, but it was enough to tell Cal that Karol Veseli was not his real name, but certainly his given one in a Czech-spelt version and, he suspected, if asked to spell it, though it would sound the same, it would read very differently. Given his looks, added to what he had just said about Cheb, it was clear he could not move around there without arousing suspicion unless he was a long-term resident himself.
Cal knew something about small towns, having spent four years before the World War in a Scottish one and found himself an outsider to people who knew each other from their very first day at school right through to their places of work. Without those connections it was hard to discover who was cousin to whom and to understand all the local matters that constituted old enmities and long-standing grudges.
In such places you watched the generations come and depart, caught sight of the same faces in their main streets, shops and events, as well as seeing your fellow citizens procreate and age. Captain Karol Veseli, or whatever he was called, to do what he did in such a community, had to be either wholly or partly an ethnic German and he certainly looked like one.
So it was a fair bet he was a ‘traitor’ to his own kind, or a Czech patriot, depending on which side of the divide you occupied. Whatever, he was playing a very dangerous game in which there was only one price for exposure and it would not be just a bullet; discovered, he would be ripped limb from limb.
‘I doubt we would be sitting here if you did not have some notion of how we can visit there and move around freely.’
‘Last night you were observed dining with an American female journalist,’ Moravec ventured, his tone cautious. ‘A Miss Corrine Littleton.’
There was no point in Cal asking how he knew her and her occupation; it was his job to know and Moravec already knew he and Vince had been followed to the restaurant. Question: did her job have a bearing on that card being dropped on the table? Had that been part of a jigsaw Moravec was toying with?
Cal knew also enough about intelligence work to realise that a lot of what went on was manipulation and he wondered if that was what he was being subjected to now. He had come to Prague looking for facts about dissent in Germany and now he was being edged in another direction entirely, not that it made much difference if the end result was the same.
‘How well are you acquainted with the lady?’ While Cal was considering how to reply to that, Moravec added, ‘You seemed to be friendly from what was observed-’
That’s all you know, Cal thought.
‘-much more so than the men with whom she drinks in the hotel bar.’ That got the older Czech a look of deep curiosity, to which he responded, ‘The barman, who has good English, observes that they treat her with little respect, that if they are kind, they talk down to her.’
‘Because she’s a woman?’
‘No, because she drinks little, but more because she lacks experience.’ That was followed by a sardonic smile. ‘You will know that such men have been in many places and seen many wars and perhaps they drink so much to forget what it is they have seen. To them our troubles are just another crisis. They are, I suspect, full of cynicism.’
Cal had met many a war correspondent in his travels, more recently in Madrid, and that was a description which entirely suited them; they drank like fish, would roger anything female that moved and looked willing, while they took not a word they were told at face value for the very good reason they had heard it all before.
‘But your Miss Littleton is not that, which might make her perfect for what we have in mind.’
‘For some time now,’ Veseli cut in, before Cal could nail that statement, ‘it has been suggested to Konrad Henlein that he should cease to avoid the international press, that he should stop hiding away in his hotel suite and grant an interview to a selected journalist from the democracies to insist he wants peace. What better time could there be than now, when the trumpets are blaring in Nuremberg?’
The person who would be pressing for that could be the agent they had in place, whoever he was.
‘He will not countenance, naturally, a French or British publication, but an American one he is less troubled by, given there is a large German population in the USA to whom he would like to be able to speak and who could be counted on to put pressure on the US Government to give consideration to his aims.’
‘Or,’ Moravec said bitterly, ‘his lies.’
‘I take it he has agreed.’
‘I think such an opportunity would please a young lady American journalist, don’t you?’ Moravec replied softly. ‘And I can say a request would be received favourably from such a person.’
Cal recalled what Corrie had said about the borderlands being hard to get into without a police escort and the frustration that was causing her.
‘I think any one of them would trip over themselves to get an interview with Henlein, especially if it was not the whole pack.’ For some reason the thought of the way her peers were treating Corrie annoyed him. ‘And for Miss Littleton it would be one in the eye to all those fellows you say are patronising her.’
‘“Exclusive”,’ Moravec said in English, ‘they call it, I think.’
‘But she has been told she cannot go there without being escorted by the police. I can’t see Henlein agreeing to having a Czech policeman present while he’s interviewed.’
‘Naturally,’ Veseli added with a grave expression, ‘for a woman journalist to travel to a dangerous part of our country alone would not be wise, and you are right that Henlein would not accept that anyone from the Republic should escort her…’
‘But two British nationals?’
‘No, we had in mind one only,’ Veseli said. ‘To drive her, look after her welfare and, of course, interpret.’
Moravec took up the baton. ‘You can, after all, easily do such a thing for her.’
He was not about to respond to that right away, so it took several seconds, while he was under close scrutiny, before he nodded at the logic; she would have to have an interpreter and some kind of bodyguard would be wise, but how could that be squared with the local police?
‘That, I think, can be arranged,’ Moravec said, ‘by my talking to Colonel Dolezal, while to Henlein, to lift such a requirement at his request would only look like the kind of Czech collaboration he now takes for granted.’
