‘I can carry a certain amount of money and I will do so, but to conceal big sums is impossible, apart from being too risky. I did some business in Czechoslovakia recently…’
‘I won’t ask in what.’
‘The trouble I had in transfers, getting to Switzerland and back again, held everything up for weeks and that was before the Nazis marched into Austria. In what I am proposing to undertake, if I do need funds, and there is a chance I will not, I don’t think I will have the time to put the arrangements in place, and I am certainly disinclined to travel the way I did previously now that Hitler controls both the borders and the route.’
‘Makes sense,’ Monty replied.
‘You do trade in Czechoslovakia, don’t you?’
‘A bit,’ he shrugged, ‘but maybe not much longer.’
‘Even if you still do business in Germany?’
That got Cal a hard look. ‘So, shame me. I have mouths to feed.’
Monty’s business was chemicals; he had built up an international trading empire over several years and, being Jewish, he would seek opportunities and profits wherever they could be had. If that included Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy so be it, though he no doubt salved his conscience by the way he used the money he made to aid those he saw as being in ideological peril.
Cal was one of the few people to whom he had been open about that; he had been obliged to in order to fund Hamburg and he was not ashamed of it. He had started out as the child of immigrants selling bags of bicarbonate of soda door to door in the East End of London as a youth, for pennies. That was also something Monty never forgot: he knew where he came from and he was never going to risk going back.
What his international contacts gave him was an ability to shift large sums from country to country, even to the notoriously difficult Nazi Germany, without anyone taking too much notice, while it also allowed anyone purporting to act on his behalf to withdraw levels of cash in foreign banks that would not raise an eyebrow. At the same time, with a phone call, he could raise credit in another country in a way denied to mere mortals.
‘I need access to an amount of money that is too open-ended to calculate, as well as a letter of credit and documentation saying I am representing Redfern Chemicals, and I will guarantee redress when I come back home.’
‘Cal, I know you are not on your uppers, but that could be a lot of lolly. I would hate to see you needing my charity.’
‘The loan is not to me, Monty, it’s to the British Government.’
That narrowed the eyes. ‘I am not skint but I think they have more lolly to spread around than me. And why should I give those crooks a loan, already?’
‘Don’t worry, I intend to give details.’
Which he did, leaving out nothing: the machine guns for Spain were explained, if not appreciated, as well as how he had been found and asked to help, every part of that except the firefight he had got into outside La Rochelle, but most importantly why he needed to avoid taking money directly from the Secret Service account. Monty listened without interruption, nodding occasionally, then frowning at one or two of the proposed actions or suppositions as to where matters might go.
‘So you might need cash in Germany, as well?’
‘I shouldn’t, but you never know. I like to think if I end up there, people will act from principle, not for money.’
‘Take it from Monty Redfern, Cal, if you think like that you will be sadly disappointed.’
‘I know it’s a lot to ask for.’
‘It’s too much to ask for, Cal.’ Sensing the disappointment he was quick to explain. ‘You I trust, and I mean that with my life, but these crooks in Whitehall would promise the moon to get what they want, then say it’s cheese when the time comes to pay. I deal with them already, my boy, and I know that what I say is true.’
‘I could try and get some kind of guarantee,’ Cal replied, wondering what kind of sum Peter Lanchester could get committed in the kind of arrangement they had discussed, or indeed, whether he could get any committed at all.
Cal said that without the faintest idea of how he might achieve such a thing. The only matter on which he was certain was this: that if he needed sudden large sums of money while abroad, and his experience told him he might, the Government machine moved too slowly to oblige, quite apart from the fact that there was no way of keeping such transactions secret from the kind of people who had already got him and Peter Lanchester into trouble; getting funds from HMG could be fatal.
It was with obvious caveats that he outlined what he hoped would happen with SIS and Monty softened somewhat; he was happy to match any sum already committed as long as he had assurances that Cal would be in a position to reimburse him. If he sensed the assurances he was given were speculative he had the good grace to keep that to himself and he did have one possible solution.
‘Look, in Prague, you go see Elsa. She knows how to contact me, and if the need is a good one — and she will have to be convinced — then maybe we can do something.’
‘I’d still like the documentation.’
Monty nodded. ‘That’s easy, I’ll have Marita do the letters and, because it will make you safer, I will send cables to Germany and Czechoslovakia to say that a representative of mine might call to do some personal business.’
‘I won’t be travelling under my own name,’ Cal said, pulling out the same details he had given to Snuffly Bower, ‘and as well as your letters I need you to use your clout to get visas for Czechoslovakia and Germany.’
Monty shook his head and took the proffered list. ‘God alone knows why you do these things, Cal, but if it is any help, I am glad you do.’
CHAPTER NINE
He returned to the Goring to find two messages, one from Peter Lanchester asking him to be at the Savile Club at seven that evening, with the added information that it was important. There was no explanation as to why but it was not a summons he thought he should ignore, which was not entirely the case with the second one.
That was from his wife, a slightly irritable missive to say she knew he was back in London and why had he not called — no doubt someone spotted him at the Goring. Among the many reasons that might make people like Monty Redfern wonder why he did what he did, Lizzie Jardine had to be numbered as a possible part.
She was a wife he could not live with, a woman who, because of her staunch Catholic upbringing, would not countenance divorce but who, nevertheless, did not see her religion as being a bar to either infidelity or making him miserable.
He could not look at any note from her without the recurrence of the very unpleasant memory which had blighted, probably, both their lives, certainly his own. On his surprise return from the Teschen region he had found his wife in bed with a lover. Still in uniform, still armed with his pistol, he had pulled it out and put a bullet in the man’s left eye.
That had made the Jardines a true cause celebre. Quite naturally he had been arraigned for murder, which led to a trial at the Old Bailey. What had surprised society more than the act was the fact that he had been acquitted, it being termed a crime of passion. To this day Cal knew wherever he went he attracted both comment and interest, not least from women, who saw him not only as a good-looking man, but also as a dangerous but enticing prospect.
‘Lizzie.’
‘Darling, you are being cruel again.’
That voice, that tone. ‘I only got back yesterday.’
‘Am I allowed to know from where?’
‘Somewhere that you would find extremely boring.’
‘If I was with you I might not be bored.’
‘Lizzie, if you were with me you would be throwing the crockery at the walls after twenty-four hours. Bored no, furious yes.’
‘That is mean.’
‘No, my darling, it is true.’
Such events had happened too often; the usual pattern was a night out with Lizzie in which she would introduce him to all her louche, and to Cal’s mind, tedious friends, the kind of people reported in the society columns of the daily newspapers as though what they did — basically the same thing night after night — was of interest. It always ended in tears, too often in the morning.