‘Be just like being had up before the beak, I shouldn’t wonder.’ That was followed by a laugh from a man who did that a lot. ‘And what a beak.’
When Sir Hugh arrived in Downing Street it was to see fishing rods being loaded into the back of the PM’s Humber, along with a basket for his catch, making the head of SIS wonder how anyone could call standing flicking his rod by a riverbank at this time of trouble correct behaviour. When he was shown into the Cabinet room it was to find the PM dressed in tweeds and plus fours, obviously ready for departure.
Normally in a wing collar and black coat, such country apparel did not improve Neville Chamberlain’s appearance; he was still the pigeon-chested fellow of caricature, tall with his slight stoop and that vulture-like face dominated by dark heavy eyebrows over the nose about which Duff Cooper had made his jest.
The only person present was his newly appointed cabinet secretary, Edward Bridges, so fresh to the job that he took no part in the conversation; surprisingly he took no minutes either as Chamberlain began to speak in that rather high voice of his, not, Quex noted, while looking him in the eye.
‘Sir Hugh, I would like your latest appreciation of the state of affairs over the Sudetenland.’
‘I briefed the Home Secretary only two days ago, sir.’
‘I’m well aware of that; has anything altered in the meantime to change your opinion of events?’
‘No, sir, I fear that Lord Runciman’s mission is mired in intractability, that whatever President Benes offers will be rejected and that the whole of Henlein’s campaign is being orchestrated from Berlin.’
‘You have taken no unusual steps in Czechoslovakia that would fall across the line of Government policy?’
‘No, Prime Minister, and neither would I contemplate such a course.’
‘Matters are coming to a head, Sir Hugh, perhaps as soon as Herr Hitler’s leader’s speech at Nuremberg. I want nothing between now and that occasion to in any way give the German Chancellor or the leadership of the Sudeten German Party cause for concern. It could be, in short, turned into a flashpoint from which things would either be said or done from which even the best intentions could never recover.’
‘Do you have any specific instructions, sir?’
‘Only that your task is to support the elected government.’
‘As always.’
Only then did Chamberlain look directly at him and there was nothing benign in his eye.
‘Your car is waiting, sir,’ Bridges said, failing to disguise that he had been instructed to remind his boss, in short, to curtail the exchange as soon as the PM had issued what amounted to a warning.
‘Ah yes. Do you fish, Sir Hugh?’
‘Sad to say, only in troubled waters, Prime Minister.’
‘They can be smoothed by application, but not by anyone acting in excess of their instructions.’
What had been said to him and by whom? There was no point in asking with the beak nose bobbing in dismissal. As he exited the heavy door Quex was tempted to look at the watch he wore in his waistcoat, to let Chamberlain know that he had dragged him up from Victoria for an interview that had lasted all of two to three minutes and that in consequence he was annoyed to be treated worse than a servant; he did not do it from a lifetime’s habit of concealing his emotions.
Making his way down Whitehall and then across Parliament Square and along Millbank, with the tip of his unnecessary brolly beating out an increasingly angered tattoo on the pavement, it did not take long to nail the potential culprit who had engineered this event but the question remained as to what to do about it.
If it was McKevitt, then he was entitled to his concerns about policy; Quex did not run a dictatorship but an organisation that had ample room for the free airing of views, even of dissent.
But the protocol was that such a thing was internal, it was not to be taken outside the walls and if the Ulsterman had done so it was not merely because he disagreed but that he had another motive, and given his ambition was close to an open secret, that did not take long to arrive at either.
Still ruminating on that, he returned to his office to find the latest telegram transcript from Peter Lanchester, which told him what was being planned in Czechoslovakia, which in order to approve meant all he had to do was nothing. Was it the right policy to pursue?
In a very acute sense it went right against what he had just been told by the PM — it was active when Chamberlain wanted passivity and if the truth emerged it would not be a warning he would be given but the door.
Two problems combined in one solution: he needed to check the machinations of McKevitt, keep the operation that Lanchester had alerted him to in progress while ensuring if it all went tits up the blame lay squarely at another door. The finger was soon on the intercom buzzer to his secretary.
‘Ask Noel McKevitt to come and see me, would you, as soon as he has a moment free?’
Translated that meant ‘immediately’ and was taken as such by the recipient. McKevitt knew that Inskip had passed on his concerns, just as he knew their knowledge of each other and shared interests were well known.
That meant Quex was going to be hauled in and told to mind his p’s and q’s on Czecho and he had enough respect for the man to think it would not take his boss long to unearth the connection; the call from the top floor told him he already had.
He was thus well prepared to face Sir Hugh Sinclair’s wrath with the certain knowledge that he was fireproof — there was no way he could be sanctioned for merely doing his job and if he was it would go all the way back up to Downing Street; the man under threat was the man he was going to see.
‘Noel, nice of you to respond so quickly. Do take a pew.’ As his backside hit the chair, Quex followed up that jolly greeting. ‘I’ve just had an interesting chat with the PM.’
‘Really,’ McKevitt replied, putting as much marvel into the tone as he could and also wondering why the old man’s secretary had stayed in the office, taking a chair well away from the discussion.
‘Aye, he’s worried about Czecho — and who can blame him, what?’
Beware of the cat that smiles, McKevitt was thinking, for if the old man was not actually grinning his tone was too jocular for what he had just gone through.
‘Wants nothing to upset the apple cart,’ Quex continued, ‘and as I pointed out to him, that will not be easy, what with the Hun stirring things up. Look what they did to Kendrick in Vienna.’
And what, McKevitt thought, has that got to do with the price of coal?
‘He fears an incident that will somehow compromise his sterling efforts to sustain the peace. What chance do you think there is of something cropping up in, say, Prague, that the Germans could exploit?’
The temptation to say ‘You would know better than I’ was one that had to be suppressed.
But he was not going to give this old sod the answer he wanted, which was that such a scenario was unlikely, so that, at some future date and backed by the testimony of his secretary, he could openly claim to have asked for a reassurance only to find it not forthcoming. Best seek to be non-committal, not definite, opaque.
‘Sure, if they tried anything, it might be there all right.’
‘Exactly my point to the PM, they may attempt a repeat of what happened to Captain Kendrick.’
‘Prague is not Vienna, sir.’ Presented with a chance to be sarcastic he was not about to pass it up. ‘The Gestapo has, as far as I’m aware, no power of arrest there.’
‘True, but any accusation that excessive numbers of our chaps in situ, and you know the numbers better than I, are involved in using their skills to aid the Czechs might appear in the German papers at any time.’
‘I felt that more muscle was needed there, sir; it is after all the present hot spot in my area of responsibility and it could impact on its neighbours.’
‘And very apposite that was to move more men in, but how will the Hun see it? What if they publicise the number of our Prague agents in the same way they splashed on Kendrick, with the added information that the establishment has increased threefold. Shipping in more bodies might come back to haunt us, and even if it’s untrue what they claim, the mud, the PM fears, might stick and, I have to tell you, he was even more alarmed to hear we had reinforced the station recently, thus increasing such a risk.’
‘I considered it worth an extra effort to keep the Government informed.’
‘And, my dear chap,’ Quex cried, ‘it was a brilliant ploy at the time, which I told the PM.’
‘But not now?’
‘No, it now involves a risk Mr Chamberlain does not want to take! With his agreement I’ve decided to pull out all our chaps in Prague, including those you have shipped in from other stations. They, of course, can go back to their previous posts.’
