German might not be enough if they are here to do business, eh? Are they businessmen? Would you give them my card if I left one?’
The receptionist shrugged and accepted the proffered card; there was no harm in it and his interpreter visitor bade him a hearty farewell, then walked out onto the street followed by his MI6 employer, who listened to what the Czech had been told.
He reckoned this pair fitted the bill more than any of the other names he had turned up, not that he knew, apart from finding British passport holders with no known reasons for being here, precisely what the bill was. Still, it was not his job to decide that — such a task fell to the station chief — and he had many more places to check.
‘OK, Miklos, on with the motley, what!’
Miklos had studied hard and reckoned himself a good English speaker, but as he watched his employer head off he wondered what the hell he had just said.
There was one thing Cal had forgotten to cover and that was because he was not in the same profession as Corrie Littleton. A good journalist never goes anywhere, and especially to somewhere dangerous, without telling the person who employs them, in her case her editor in New York, and nor would she go off without leaving a forwarding address.
That was a telegram she composed on her account at the hotel because the first thing a journalist learns is never to spend their own money and never be entirely truthful about your expense account either, because spare cash is not only handy, it can be essential for both work and pleasure; you cannot, for instance, submit a chit for sexual gratification in some foreign whorehouse.
Some of those males she drank with sparingly in the bar of the Ambassador were given to visiting such places and were not deterred by a female presence from mentioning it. They were also, to a man, experienced reporters, who knew that a good way to keep ahead of your competition was to know what they were up to.
Thus, on arrival at their hotel in the location of a story, and even before they made friends with the bar staff, they would approach the concierge and slip him a decent sum to keep them informed and their competitors in the dark about what they themselves were up to.
Where Corrie, in her lack of practical experience, fell down was in not doing first that; then what she should have done when she gave him the telegram was to slip him something to stay quiet because of the name and destination that would leap out even if he struggled with English.
It was doubly unfortunate that a very experienced English correspondent called Vernon Bartlett spotted her on the way out of the hotel after Cal had called for her to come down.
‘Where are you off to, young lady, and by the side entrance?’ he asked, coming in from a late-morning constitutional walk.
‘Nothing doing in Prague, is there, Vernon, so I thought I’d go down to the border and see how many Jews the Rumanians are letting in.’
‘As many as have the means to bribe the border guards, I should think.’
‘Still…’
‘Well, good hunting,’ Vernon replied, moving to go in for a cup of coffee and one of those big cream cakes so loved by the Czechs. ‘We shall miss your gracious company in the bar.’
‘“Gracious” is not the word I would use, Vernon, “debauched” is more appropriate. Did you stay on last night?’
Nearly everyone was leaving to go to Nuremberg for Hitler’s big speech, an event enough to give an excuse for a leaving bash.
‘No, I could see it was turning into a real session so I baled out not long after you.’
‘There’ll have been some fine heads this morning.’
‘I’ll say, there was not a soul at breakfast, bar me.’
‘I took mine in my room.’
‘To avoid the groans of those who stayed up, I suppose. We should run a sweepstake on who misses the Munich train, someone’s bound to.’
‘Well,’ Corrie said, with as much veracity as she could muster. ‘Must be off, ’cause I’ve got a train to catch.’
As she made for the door, Bartlett did not go into the dining room; instead, not entirely convinced by what he had been told, he waited a few seconds then followed her, ready to duck out of sight if she looked back. The revolving doors to the side entrance were panelled in glass and he saw the rather severe-looking man who took her small case and put it in the boot of the big dark-green Maybach, the sight making him curious.
Vernon Bartlett had covered the Spanish Civil War in the early days and been in Madrid during the first nationalist siege of the capital in ’36, staying in the same haunt as many of his peers, some of the same hard- drinking lot that were now ensconced in the Ambassador.
He was sure he had seen the same fellow now helping Corrie into the car in the saloon of the Florida Hotel drinking with two stalwart boozers, Ernie Hemingway and Tyler Alverson, and had been at one time introduced, which, with his press instincts, he remembered clearly.
He had no real knowledge of what Callum Jardine did, only that he had taken an active part in fighting the nationalists on behalf of the republicans, added to the fact that he was a man of some mystery who had not, the last time he had seen him, been wearing glasses or sporting a rather Germanic haircut.
What the hell was Little Miss Just-Started-in-the-Game doing with a character like that, and was she really going to catch a train? Next stop was the desk of the hotel concierge, and though it was just on the off chance, he had in his hand a twenty-koruna note which produced the information as to where Corrie Littleton was off to and what she was about to get.
‘Well damn me,’ Bartlett swore, when it was relayed to him, a precis of the contents of the telegram that a hotel boy had taken to be sent on Thursday morning, as soon as the telegraph office opened its doors. ‘Cheb of all places — talk about the cunning little vixen!’
Of course, it was necessary to pay out more money to ensure that he was the only one privy to this information and as he did so he reflected on two things: that the life of a luxury hotel concierge was certainly an enviable one given the amount of cash they garnered for their favours, the other being that he was blessed as a fellow who could decline to get sloshed at the drop of a hat.
When he got to the dining room he observed that many of his peers had emerged from their rooms to drink copious amounts of coffee — Americans, French and British, nursing hangovers from the previous night’s debauch in the hotel bar, all of them receiving a hearty greeting in a loud voice, accompanied by a backslap, that was certain to cause their heads to ache.
Over his coffee and cream cake Vernon Bartlett mused on what to do about that which he had uncovered; he was off to Nuremberg to cover the leader’s speech at the Nazi Party Rally on Monday himself, and even if it was likely to be an occasion of thundering and repetitive boredom he was reluctant to change his plans — his editor would not be pleased if he did, especially this year, when Czechoslovakia was bound to be one of Hitler’s topics.
Thankfully, he had been sent out a young tyro to help cover what was the biggest story on the Continent and do the kind of legwork a man of Bartlett’s experience found too tedious: the daily briefings from the various Czech spokesmen and what that dry stick of a so-called mediator, Runciman, was up to, or what, more likely, he was avoiding, like coming up with any solution to the crisis.
Jimmy’s travel accreditation had come through from the Interior Ministry days ago, but he wondered, as he played with the sugar in the bowl, what could the young fellow do? Certainly he could shadow Corrie Littleton and find out the exact nature of her assignment, which might be more than she had said.
If Henlein was agreeing to an interview, and he already knew the Sudeten leader to be a master manipulator in his relations with the press, it might mean matters were coming to a head in the disputed regions and for his paper not to be there would be seen as a failure, quite possibly on his part, because regardless of right and wrong, it was never the editor who was the latter, always the man on the spot.
‘Ah! James,’ he cried, as his assistant came into the room, looking as ever like the keen young chap he was, more student than adult. ‘Just the fellow I’m looking for.’
Expecting to be invited to sit down, Jimmy Garvin was surprised when his normally urbane boss leapt up, grabbed his arm and aimed him straight out through the dining room door, Bartlett’s voice a whisper as he
