‘You think we would be free to move around?’
‘It would be part of the arrangements,’ Veseli said, with such assurance Cal wondered if he was the inside man. ‘Anything written about the area must include an impression of what it is like for the ordinary people, though not Czechs, and it would be unwise to approach the many social democrats who live there. That would cause Henlein unease.’
‘And he would know, because?’
‘You will be followed wherever you go.’
‘I would need a car and a good one to befit my supposed occupation.’ He was thinking of that Tatra he had bought, which was not the kind of vehicle to turn up in. ‘And it can’t be anything belonging to the Czech state.’
‘A suitable one can be hired.’
‘There’s only one problem that I can see, quite apart from being unhappy without my own man or anyone else to back me up. Corrie Littleton would have to know what I am trying to do.’
Moravec waved a finger in dismissal. ‘You tell your lady friend that through your contacts you have been able to arrange her a meeting with Henlein. She will, I think, be too excited about that to press home questions you do not want to answer about how it was arranged.’
‘One thing I should tell you, Colonel Moravec — you are talking of a lady who knows what I do for a living and is already curious about what I am up to in Prague.’
‘Ah! She is not, as you would say, a paramour?’ Cal actually laughed, which brought forth two frowns to tell him how inappropriate that reaction was in such a serious situation. ‘It was said to me she might be, given the lady is not married.’
Vaclav must have watched them for a while and observed their animated conversation, while Moravec had done his digging about Corrie Littleton, and they had come to a conclusion that was at total odds with the facts.
Right now he was not committed to anything, nor would he ever have been without he had surveyed the ground. What was on offer was a way to accomplish what he had come to Prague for, but regardless of what Moravec said — and surely he must know it even if he did not want to admit it — Corrie would have to be in on the deal to some extent.
‘The only question that lacks an answer is what you are doing in Czechoslovakia.’
‘I have certain documents, papers from a good friend, to cover that, both here and in Germany. In them it will tell anyone who asks that I am on the lookout for trade opportunities in chemicals.’
Moravec was impressed, but troubled. ‘I had in mind a disguise for you as a German national.’
‘I can’t see the necessity, but there is one other thing: I am not armed and I don’t like the idea of being in bandit country without the means to defend myself.’
It was Veseli — or whatever his name was — who replied. ‘You cannot travel with weapons, it is too risky given our police might search your car, but maybe they can be discreetly provided when you get to Cheb.’
‘Fine.’
‘You must get Miss Littleton to send a telegram to Henlein’s press office at the Victoria Hotel asking for an interview and stating her credentials, while also insisting that she wants to give him and the cause he leads a fair hearing.’
‘She will ask to come to Cheb with her own interpreter,’ Veseli continued, ‘and give your name and the nature of your business.’
‘They will refuse unless she comes unescorted, and once that is granted by us, they will next seek to get her to come alone, but if she declines they will back down.’
There was no point in asking how Veseli knew all this, but Cal suspected he was running whatever agent they had in place, if he was not himself that person.
‘Miss Littleton has not had her accreditation from the Interior Ministry.’
‘That will be seen to.’
‘Then it only remains for me to talk to her.’
‘Time to eat,’ Moravec said, showing a relish wholly at odds with his normal demeanour; clearly he was either a man who liked his grub or Cal’s agreement had relieved him of the worry of a refusal.
As they ate — a very tasty lamb stew Veseli had prepared — they talked. Cal was only partly engaged in the general conversation, mostly background to where he was going and the people who mattered there, while he also had to consider the likelihood of anyone in the Czech borderlands knowing him — unlikely given he had operated in Hamburg.
Still, it would be a good idea to subtly alter his appearance, which could be done in small ways — the wearing of glasses, a different type of hat and even a haircut, though there was no time to grow a moustache.
Eventually, when the light of the day was fading, it was necessary to say farewell to Veseli and return to Prague. A lot of his thinking, in the back of the car, was how long it was going to take him to compose another telegram to Peter Lanchester outlining what he was about to do.
Also, if he was going to involve Corrie Littleton he would have to talk to her, and the sooner the better.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Noel McKevitt and Sir Thomas Inskip were not, in the strict sense, friends; the social milieus in which they moved were too far apart but they did share a certain philosophy, which made their conversation of more import than mere gossip. First of all they were united in their staunch Protestant faith — the vicar of their local church had introduced them — and secondly Sir Thomas had at one time been part of the intelligence community, which to McKevitt meant he was reliable.
Such an occupation had long been left behind by the older man; Inskip, a high-flying lawyer by profession, was a member of the Government, having been given by Stanley Baldwin, the previous incumbent of Number 10, the office of Minister of Defence Procurement, this despite the generally held opinion that he possessed a staggering degree of military ignorance.
Churchill, who had lobbied for the creation of what was, in effect, a minister for rearmament, had expected the job would be given to him. Baldwin thought differently; he had no desire to have someone so bellicose in his government, quite apart from the signal such an appointment would send to the dictator states he was determined to mollify.
Once deprived and Inskip appointed, a furious Churchill, with his usual facility for the killer phrase, had called it ‘The most cynical appointment since Caligula made his horse a consul.’
Inskip’s other trait was a blind loyalty to the serving prime minister, which manifested itself as strong support in the Cabinet for the policy of appeasement. Having lost ministerial office once in the National Government landslide at the start of the decade, Sir Thomas was not about to act in a way that would find himself out in the cold again, and it had to be said his aims were honourable.
Though he had never been a front-line soldier, he harboured, along with many of his contemporaries in age and experience, a horror of a repeat of the blind slaughter of 1914-18, the evidence of which, in maimed ex-soldiers, widows and unmarried women, was still very obvious even after all these years, a subject he had laboured long the night before at the Downing Street dinner for the French delegation.
In some sense Sir Thomas had helped to form McKevitt’s thinking on Czechoslovakia, a country he had insisted was impossible for Britain and France to defend, an opinion he was willing to share with anyone who would listen, and who should be more inclined to do so than the man appointed by the head of MI6 to oversee matters in that country?
‘Mark my words, Noel,’ Inskip had pronounced after church one day. ‘If we seek to aid that country we will end up with stalemate and a repeat of the Western Front, with all the death such a futile exercise produced. I would not sacrifice a single soldier for such a policy and thankfully neither will the PM.’
McKevitt did not question Sir Thomas’s assertion, he took it as fact, assuming, which was quite natural, that a man who spent much of his time with soldiers, seamen and airmen discussing their needs, with a quite brilliant legal brain, had been given a bona fide opinion by those who would have to execute such a course of action.
Yet it was also the case that McKevitt saw war as predictable; you could not hold the Berlin Desk and watch
