‘You mean apart from stupidity.’
‘Was it Doctor Johnson who said “the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully”? The Western Front was a bit like that. No one told you but the average survival time of a subaltern when there was a big battle on was about two weeks. I was lucky — I survived.’
‘But you were in love, right?’
‘Very much so, but the time we had was too tight to allow for much investigation of what made us tick. My wife craves excitement.’
‘And you don’t?’ Corrie said with disbelief.
‘Maybe that was the mutual attraction, but my adventures tend to be outdoors.’
That confused her until the message struck home, which produced, ‘Sorry I asked.’
‘Don’t be.’
‘It’s a bitch she won’t give you a divorce. I suppose you’ve been a good boy yourself?’
He was not going there; one, he had not been and two, if you’re a gentleman you don’t boast about your conquests. Besides there was an affair he wanted to avoid mentioning because that would still be painful.
‘I hope you are not preparing a profile for your magazine.’
‘Make a good one, especially if you have had lots of love affairs. International adventurer with the soft heart of a romantic poet.’
Cal was suddenly very serious. ‘Don’t ever go thinking I have a soft heart, Corrie, because I haven’t. If you run my name through your records I suspect it will come up even in the USA.’
‘Why not save me the time?’
‘It doesn’t make for contentment.’
‘Sounds like you did something real bad.’
‘It was,’ Cal replied, not seeking to keep the bitterness out of his voice. ‘Another checkpoint ahead, so go to work on your smile.’
‘Physician heal thyself.’
‘You’re right,’ Cal replied; memory of the blood-spattered wall of his marital bedroom had made him glare.
‘Right,’ McKevitt snapped, looking at the first replies that had come back from Miklos. ‘Get those numbers off by telegram to the passport office in London. I want the names on them checked for anything that isn’t right and I want a rocket up their arse so they don’t just bury it.’
‘You still have not told us what it is you are after, Noel.’
McKevitt looked up at Major ‘Gibby’ Gibson, the Prague station chief, and gave him the coldest stare he could, which was coming it a bit high with a man of his age and experience, some twenty years in the service and an unblemished record.
‘There are things you don’t need to know, Gibby, but when you do you will be informed.’
Gibson wanted to reply that this was his patch, even if the fellow he was talking to was the man who ran the London Desk and, though junior in years, his superior. Though a hierarchy like any other government body, the SIS ran on slightly different lines and it was simply not done to override a station chief, and even worse to do so in such a public manner as to undermine his local authority. McKevitt in briefing everyone had done just that.
With the extra staff he had been given, plus his own skills and contacts, Gibson had done a good job of keeping London up to speed on everything happening in both the capital city and beyond, yet he had been obliged to drag men off what he saw as valuable work to meet the needs of Noel McKevitt, which might just have been acceptable with an explanation.
If it had displeased him to issue the orders, they had been received just as badly by those tasked to execute them, all professionals who felt they were being sidelined from proper intelligence work to do the kind of thing usually allotted at home to lowly beat coppers, and such a feeling had permeated most of the building.
Down in the basement Cipher Room he handed over McKevitt’s list to the clerk who ran it and gave him orders to route it through Broadway. Coming from just down the road would ensure a faster response than anything from hundreds of miles away.
‘And Tommy,’ Gibson said. ‘I’m in need of a little favour.’
‘Whatever you need, Major,’ the clerk replied, giving, as he always did, Gibby’s old military rank; he was a man who was unfailingly polite to everyone, who knew the names of, and never failed to ask after, wives, children and girlfriends — in short, the major was popular.
Gibson went to a desk to compose, with the codebooks, a despatch of his own to Broadway, pre-dating it to the day the original instruction had come from the Central European Desk to check the British nationals.
In it he did not criticise McKevitt’s demand — that would be counterproductive — but he did feel the need to point out how that would impact on the amount of hard information coming out of the Prague station in the coming days with his men so occupied.
When he handed it over to the clerk, Tommy read it, fingered the date and smiled.
‘I owe you one, Tommy.’
‘You don’t owe me a thing, sir, happy to be of service.’
Tommy was typing before Gibson left the Cipher Room; that would land on Noel McKevitt’s desk and he would only read it on his return to London, the delay being explained away easily as just one of those standard cock-ups that happen daily.
But it would cover Gibson’s back if what was happening was questioned on the top floor, a standard precaution in any establishment where there was competition for the plum postings, added to a culture of passing the buck if things went amiss.
With the weather clearing a bit, and approaching what the ethnic Germans would call the border, it was just possible to see the troop concentrations by the roadside, tented encampments and lorry parks stretching into the misty distance under canopies of trees to protect against air attack.
At the next checkpoint there were tankettes, Tancik vz. 33s, that if they looked impressive to Corrie, Cal knew would be mincemeat to the latest armoured vehicles the Germans could put in the field, but what it told him, without the need to look at road signs or maps, was that they were now in the disputed areas.
The flags came next and increased the further north-west they drove, rising into the high hills, the not- quite-mountainous region of the Bohemian borderlands; to the ethnic Germans this might be the province of Carlsbad, but to the Czechs it was Karlovy Vary.
By the time they got to Cheb the red and black horizontally striped banners were ubiquitous, nowhere more so than on the Victoria Hotel itself, which was festooned with them, and just in case you did not know what it was, there were men outside in the dun-brown-coloured uniform of their Sturmabteilung counterparts across the frontier and, like them, wearing side arms in big leather holsters.
The incongruity of a uniformed porter rushing to their car as soon as they stopped nearly had Cal laughing, it was so out of keeping with everything else he could see, and that was replicated in the hotel reception, which if the lobby was dark and rather Teutonic in its decor, conformed to what was needed: a desk at which to register, couches on which to sit, pastoral scenes on the walls and vases full of flowers to give a peaceful ambiance, and two staircases leading off from the lobby.
‘Miss Corrine Littleton, of Collier’s Weekly. ’ She threw out a hand to indicate Cal, standing back because this was her show now. ‘And my interpreter. I believe you are expecting us.’
The man behind the desk wore a pince-nez and had that superior air of hotel receptionists of not-quite-top- flight establishments everywhere, who always behave as if they are doing you a favour by letting you soil their pristine accommodation. This one had the added non-attraction of having in his lapel a Nazi Party swastika badge.
Out came a heavy ledger, and the receptionist ran a finger down what Cal suspected was an imaginary list — this was not the most desirable destination hostelry in the world right at this moment — then shook his head as if someone might have got something wrong by even thinking of letting a room, finally replying in rapid German to acknowledge the booking of two rooms.
‘Did he say yes or no, Doc?’ Corrie asked.
Cal took over, annoyed that already she was not calling him by the name on the passport, and went through,
