move the car and so Noel McKevitt had taken station in the lobby, this after he had sent Miklos to the receptionist to flash that false warrant card again and order him to alert the man with the wispy fair hair sitting over there if Mr Nolan came back and asked for his key.
But a quick recce had revealed the back entrance and Miklos, duty done, was sent to cover that, arriving seconds before Vince reached the ground floor and made for the back door. Well oiled, it opened noiselessly and there before Vince was the back of a big bloke looking up and down the street, his hands in his pockets.
Stick or twist? There was really no option and no time to consider if this man blocking his way was a proper copper. If he was here, and whatever he was, the front had to be covered too. Dropping his bag, Vince stepped forward. Miklos heard the soft plop of it hitting the ground and turned to see coming toward him, smiling, the man he had spoken to previously.
Small and wiry, Miklos reckoned the little fellow to be no match for him, a thought he was still holding when he woke up about ten minutes later, having not seen the jab that hit him in the midriff, nor the fist that clouted the side of his head. All he could do was groggily stagger through to the lobby and tell McKevitt, now joined by Gibby Gibson, that their bird had flown.
An hour later Signor Vincenzo Castellano, who knew that to stay on the streets was too dangerous, was just down the road at another big hotel called the Paris demanding a room in fluent Italian. ‘ Posso avere una camera? ’ That was the language with which he had grown up, as the child of immigrant parents, and his name on the passport he had fetched from the Tatra was the Italian spelling.
Making a bit of fuss and waving his arms in a very Latin way, he had to hope that his British passport, albeit the details were recorded, would not cause anyone to be too curious. Just because he had got away from the Meran did not mean he felt completely safe; he was still a stranger in Prague without the ability to easily communicate and with no knowledge of the depth of the threat he was facing.
Was it time to get out through Elsa Ephraim? But could he do that without first getting in touch with Cal, because if his passport was blown, then so would be the other one Cal was using, and his real documents, without which he would be left stranded, were still in the Tatra. Vince had not been a soldier for many years, but he knew the self-imposed regulation by which you always tried to abide: never leave a comrade in peril.
Could he telephone or send a telegram to Cheb? But that would mean using the Barrowman name and there was no way of knowing what risk was attached to that, yet that had to be weighed against the risk of doing nothing.
In the end, given the language problems he might face at the other end, he opted for telegram and once that was done it was getting late in the day. Not wanting to drive in the dark, he decided to eat, then sleep, ask for an early call and head off at dawn.
‘Do you have any idea how many hotels there are in Prague, Noel?’
They were back in the embassy, Miklos was being checked out and patched up by a first-aider and Gibby Gibson was wondering if he should slip a sedative to his increasingly unstable Northern Irish boss, who might have a reputation for being a cool customer, but was showing no signs of it now.
‘I don’t care, I want them all checked out.’
They had a description, taken from the reception desk at the Meran and handsomely paid for, but in terms of resources what McKevitt was asking for was out of the question.
‘You might be better looking for the other chap, Barrowman.’
‘How? The bastard could be anywhere.’
‘If, as we suspect, he’s travelling on false papers like his mate then he’s committing a crime.’
‘And?’
‘If he’s staying in any kind of hotel, his details will be registered as a matter of course.’
‘Like in France and Germany, you mean?’ McKevitt demanded.
‘The embassy can inform the Czech authorities that they have reasonable grounds to suspect that a British subject is in their country under an assumed name for purposes of which we have no idea. I have to tell you, Noel, if they are given information like that, right now they will smell German spy.’
‘Who do we tell?’ McKevitt demanded. ‘I hope you are not going to say to me “the police”. If they are anything like the lot we have at home it will take them a week to get off their arse.’
‘The man we want is Colonel Dolezal, who runs the Czech equivalent of MI5.’
‘They’re not much better,’ the Irishman spat, thinking of Barney Foxton. ‘How well do you know him?’
Gibson knew the meaning of the question: could Dolezal be trusted? ‘Well enough.’
‘Then let’s get hold of the bugger and tell him the fella we’re after is dangerous.’
‘Is he, Noel?’
‘More than you know, Gibby,’ McKevitt replied.
‘If I can tell Dolezal why that is, it might speed up his search.’
But you would not see it as I see it, McKevitt thought, not see that a man who might drag our whole nation into a war was the most lethal kind of problem we could have — and how can you tell some Czech sod who would want us involved that I am trying to put the mockers on our staying out of their stupid little predicament?
‘Hint he’s a spy, Gibby, that will have to do, and Christ, with what’s going on it should be enough.’
Having done as requested, Gibby Gibson waited till McKevitt was out of the way and made another visit to the Cipher Room, this time to send a cable to Quex himself. He wanted to ask if the outfit had any information on two men named Barrowman and Nolan, whom his station chief seemed intent on pursuing without saying why, though he checked first with Tommy that McKevitt had not sent anything similar.
‘Hasn’t been in touch with London at all, Major, since he arrived.’
‘Not at all?’
That was peculiar; it was standard practice when chasing suspects to keep Broadway informed of progress — doubly so when they had only really got the names — not necessarily the top floor but certainly his own desk, to keep abreast of things whoever McKevitt had left in charge. What was the bugger playing at?
‘If he does, Tommy, tip me the wink will you?’
Colonel Capec Dolezal had a lot on his plate in a country prepared for war and in a city swarming with potential spies, so the request from Major Gibson only got attention because he was a good and trusted friend to his country and he sounded alarmed, as if this Barrowman might pose a substantial risk.
The name was added to what was a daily bulletin distributed throughout the country, a combination of police notices, intelligence dilemmas and threats to guard against that went out every morning. In a nation on high alert there were a lot of warnings being issued to the various branches of government and the only way to distribute such alarms as needed to be disseminated and ensure they might be acted on was in writing.
With the name in question, police station commanders in Prague would have their men check the hotel registration files for the past ten days. Cables were sent off to offices in other Czech cities — they would print and send out what they received locally; the one place excepted from the full effect of this was in the disputed border territories where the staff in the telegraphic office were a mix of German and Czech.
So for places like Cheb it was added to a series sent off with the despatch riders who distributed the bulletin to the various checkpoints and army headquarters that covered the country, and even when the bulletin was received, care had to be taken about what to act on and what to ignore, given the potential for any act to stir up trouble.
Cal was doing his exercises again when the telegram from Vince was delivered to his door and when he read it, even if it was not in code, he reckoned that it was secure, given the chances of anyone being able to read a mixture of rhyming slang, cockney and seriously colloquial English in this part of the world was zero; it took him some time to decipher the series of short sentences himself.
Hubble bubble was trouble; flown the coop simple; could be Old Bill needed no explanation and nor did done a runner; Nolan brief gone west, yours too probably, old one best took some working out; think about being on your toes did not. Trying for a meet — twelve dart finish. Will bell. Vince.
The hushed curse made no difference at all and it was exactly the reverse of what he had expected; Cal thought if anyone got into trouble it would be him and he could think of no rational explanation as to how it could be otherwise. Vince had got into some difficulty and had been forced to leave the Meran, his false passport the cause,
