‘They’re not real Nazis, they’re fairies.’
Peter Lanchester had, as was required, made his report to Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, leaving out nothing about the dust-up outside La Rochelle and the suspicion that some kind of leak had come from London.
‘Is that a line of enquiry you intend to pursue, Peter?’
‘Only with your permission, sir.’
Quex nodded at what was the correct response, if not one he always got from his subordinates. It was in the nature of the game of which he was part that you needed to recruit mavericks and misfits — to Sir Hugh the man before him was of that stripe.
Some had mere harmless eccentricities, like his Berlin man’s insistence on rattling around the German capital in a very obvious Rolls-Royce. Yet others were subject to a variety of types of paranoia, seeking and seeing, even inventing conspiracies where none existed, though they were less harm to the aims of the country and the service than those whose caprices tended to allow them to miss what should have been obvious.
More dangerous still were those with an agenda of their own, and what he had been told tended towards that being the case in La Rochelle, though the motives were mired in a great deal of conjecture.
Only three people had known the actual destination of those weapons, but there were enough folk under him who had strong views on events in Spain. Not that whoever had set that in train would necessarily have wanted to see anyone killed, but their personal ideology might have blinded them to the possible results of their actions.
‘Best left with me for the time being, Peter,’ Quex said, ‘though I am getting some grief from Noel McKevitt on the Central European Desk regarding you wallowing about in his patch. I think it would be best if you mended the fence there by having a little chat with him.’
‘I don’t know him well, sir.’
‘I’m sure you’ll find him charming,’ Quex responded, his tone wry enough to hint at the exact opposite. ‘Now let us turn to Jardine — is he in?’
‘I believe so.’
‘Did you talk to him about Kendrick?’
‘The subject never came up, sir.’
‘Good. Might make him nervous to know that our man in Vienna has been arrested by the Gestapo.’
The older man was looking at his desk, this while Peter wondered if he would be enlightened any further on what was a very strange case indeed. Captain Thomas Kendrick, acting, as did most SIS station operatives, under the guise of being a passport control officer, had not only been arrested, but also interrogated in what was still a baffling case to SIS.
He had been on station for two years, so it was a fair bet that the previous Austrian Government had known precisely his role and that would have devolved to the Nazis when they marched into Vienna earlier in the year to effect their so-called Anschlu?.
Why wait five months to act and then why, against all protocol, announce to the world in screaming headlines that you have arrested a British SIS officer for espionage when there was no evidence in London that Kendrick had done anything remarkable?
‘The Hun are sending us a message in this Kendrick business, Peter, telling us they can arrest who they like and whenever they like and use it for their damned propaganda.’
‘We could expel Kendrick’s German equivalent in London, sir, who is, after all, engaged in exactly the same kind of game.’
‘We should, Peter, but orders from on high tell me to stay my hand.’ The look Peter Lanchester got then was a hard one that silently told him not to pursue that remark. ‘But it may impact on Jardine. Perhaps he should be made aware that it is not just us who want him to take up the baton, which I suspect you could arrange.’
As a way of telling his man that he knew he still had his previous connections, Quex could not have chosen a better way without actually saying so. It was also by way of an order.
‘I can leave that with you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Peter replied.
‘On second thoughts, don’t drop in on McKevitt until I have had a sniff around. I still think you should do so, but perhaps when we are a little longer along the track.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
If the pub in which he had drunk with Vince was a smoky den, the Lamb amp; Flag in Covent Garden was equally bad, though the clientele tended to be better heeled. The walls and ceiling were dark and so nicotine stained they were near to the colour of the dark-brown wood of the bar, as well as the furniture that lined the outer walls.
Cal, being a non-smoker, was not much of a man for pubs because of that, but at least at the Lamb, in the summer, you could drink outside on the cobbled cul-de-sac and enjoy the warm weather. There was no piety in his being a non-smoker; he had, like every young man of his generation, been once addicted to the weed.
He had decided to give it up when he had seen a fellow officer on the Western Front take a fatal bullet in the side of his head a second after he lit up. Some people said cigarettes could kill; he knew they could, just as he knew that the desire for one was best avoided when you could not be certain of a decent supply.
Snuffly Bower smoked like a chimney; he was also a man so enamoured of his expensive camel-coloured Crombie overcoat that he would wear it on what was a warm day. The rest of his clothing was of equal quality, if a little loud in the dog-tooth check. Again, as usual, he had on his brown bowler hat and was at a full table surrounded by fellow drinkers, all of whom, in too-sharp suits and shifty appearance, had the air of those who existed on the edge of the law.
An illegal bookmaker by trade and undoubtedly a fence, Cal had often wondered what Snuffly’s given name was, though he had no doubt how he had come by his moniker by which he was known. Snuffly’s lips never moved without the accompaniment of a twitch of his substantial purple hooter and a loud sniff, followed by a touch of his knuckle as, like that of a gloved boxer, it swept across the tip.
His illegal beat was the nearby fruit and vegetable market and in this locale it was well established that he was king. Anyone who wandered into his patch from nearby Soho or from south of the Thames would be welcome as long as they were not on the fiddle, for if they were, he could be brutal. The hail-fellow-well-met, which was his natural front, was just that; Snuffly was a villain to his toecaps and a very handy man with the knife he always carried.
‘Mr Jardine, as I live and breave!’ he cried when he spotted Cal in the doorway, before turning to his companion. ‘Move your fat arse, Freddy, old son, an’ let a real gent park his.’
Freddy slid out quickly, with Snuffly still beaming. ‘What can I get you?’
‘I’m on my feet, Snuffly, it’s my shout.’
‘Did I not say he was a gent?’ came the reply, aimed at those still sitting with him. ‘Pint of Bass then, Mr Jardine, if you don’t mind.’ The nose twitched, the air was inhaled and the crooked thumb moved. ‘You up west for a bit of fun?’
Cal just shook his head before moving to the bar to order a whisky and water as well as Snuffly’s pint. By the time he had been served and turned to go back the man was on his own and soon they were sitting side by side talking in subdued voices. To begin with it was small talk: business was bad, the coppers were bent and there were folk — ‘You would not believe it, guv’ — who did not see the need to make sure that his life was peaceful.
As soon as it got to the real purpose of Cal’s visit, Snuffly removed his brown bowler hat, put his elbow on the table and held it out so it covered their faces; he had, as Cal knew from past visits, a morbid fear of lip-readers.
‘I need two passports and driving licences to go with them.’
As Cal said this he passed under the table the set of photographs he had just had done as well as a slip of paper with the necessary details, names and addresses taken from the telephone directory, to cover himself and Vince.