‘Has Peter been allotted the funds I might need?’
‘Peter has access to anything you might need, but we have to be cautious. When you are dealing with a man who delights in conspiracy, as Neville Chamberlain does, you must not give him sight of one, for he will exploit that to his own ends.’
‘I wonder you didn’t resign — in fact you could do so now.’
‘I would dearly love to have done so previously, Mr Jardine, but the PM moved me and when he did I was replaced with someone who agreed with anything he cared to say. Now I have at least a certain amount of access and to lose that by what would be an empty gesture would not aid matters. Good luck.’
Then he was gone, passing Peter Lanchester and indicating he wanted an equally quiet word. They conversed by the door of the lobby for a few moments, heads close, then Vansittart disappeared and Peter then came to join Cal.
‘He’s a decent man, Van, don’t you think, old boy? Chamberlain’s been very shabby in the way he has treated him.’
‘Did you find out anything about La Rochelle?’
‘Not yet,’ Peter replied, slightly thrown by the abruptness of the enquiry.
‘That’s a priority. If what your Sir Robert is hinting at is true and the answer does not lie in Czechoslovakia, I am going to have to go back into Germany, and being betrayed there will be a damn sight more inconvenient than what happened in France.’
‘I am working on it, but I have to be careful not to create the kind of suspicion that will alert certain people. That can only make matters worse.’
‘Let’s have another drink, shall we?’
Peter nodded towards his attire. ‘Are you not due somewhere?’
‘I am, but the person concerned has never been on time in her life.’
‘A lady, what?’ Peter cried, clearly curious. ‘Far to go?’
‘Connaught Square,’ Cal replied with a trace of defiance. It was wasted; Peter knew that was the Jardine family home but he was not going to invite a rebuke by saying so.
CHAPTER TEN
‘ If I did not know you better, Callum Jardine, I would suspect you are already tipsy.’
He had drunk more than normal, probably for the purposes of Dutch courage, but whatever the reason it meant he was not prepared to reply in his usual sardonic manner.
‘Lizzie, you don’t know me at all.’
She was doing it again, standing where the light flattered her, just under a soft standard lamp. She had not been ready when he arrived, leaving him to pour another drink and wonder at the change of furniture — it seemed to take place between each of his visits. Last time it had been all white, now it was predominantly black lacquer, with the most alarming charcoal-grey and white zigzag carpet.
She too was dressed in black, in a garment that flickered with each tiny movement as the sequins that covered it caught the light. This was Lizzie’s usual opening gambit, to look seductive and vulnerable, and it had always affected him in the past. Yet now he felt different, less engaged, an observer more than a participant in her game and he knew in his heart it had nothing to do with alcohol.
Lizzie Jardine was still beautiful, not as she had once been, the debutante catch of the year who had taken the eye and heart of a young and newly commissioned Scottish officer preparing to go off to war. Then she had been a gamine creature; almost bird-like in fact, going on to fill out with full womanhood, making her a true beauty in her prime years.
What was different now? The figure had not changed much, though he suspected there were things needed to keep it tight. Was it the fine crow’s feet around the eyes, now too deep to be entirely hidden by make-up, or the small vertical lines rising from her upper lip?
He was not as entranced as he had been in the past and suddenly he knew why: Spain had cured him. There he had fallen deeply in love with a woman who was everything Lizzie was not and it had nearly cost him his life, that fight against a force as dark or perhaps darker than Fascism.
Whatever, if Communism had robbed him of the future he envisaged, the consequence of the affair was present now, for looking at Lizzie he felt none of the magnetic pull he had suffered from previously.
‘Well?’ she said, spinning slowly and sparkling as she did so.
‘The taxi is waiting,’ he replied, putting down his empty glass.
He helped her put on her short cloak, which exposed him to the smell of her perfume warmed by her flesh. Previously a cause of an immediate physical reaction, that was also absent and somehow she sensed it and the knowledge was in her eyes when they met his own, though as was her way it was selfishness that held sway.
‘I do hope you are not going to be beastly, Cal, you know how rude you can be to my friends — and me, when I check you. I don’t want my evening ruined.’
‘I promise not to be rude,’ he replied.
Moments later they exited the front door and descended the exterior steps to the pavement, where stood the throbbing taxicab. Opening the door he took her elbow to aid her to get inside but he did not follow, instead taking out his wallet and passing to the driver a five-pound note.
‘The lady will tell you where she wants to go. There is more than enough to cover the fare and keep the change for yourself.’ With that he went to the open door, his voice firm and his look steady as he shut it. ‘Goodbye, Lizzie.’
The delighted cabbie took off immediately he heard the door click shut and all Cal was left with was the vision of her perplexed and pixie face staring out of the back window — that and a feeling of release that lasted all the way as he meandered across Hyde Park. It was maintained down the back wall of Buckingham Palace, as he made his way back to the Goring Hotel, there to sleep like a lamb.
It took several days to sort out what was needed, not least the false documents from Snuffly Bower, but when he did pick them up they were, as usual, perfect and they were delivered to Hampstead so Monty could get him visas. At Cal’s request Peter provided a document signed by Sir Hugh Sinclair that would indemnify Monty Redfern for any expenses incurred in pursuance of the task he was undertaking.
He also had him withdraw various sums of money in different currencies — dollars, korunas and German marks — in mixed denominations that could be concealed in a money belt, funds for which he was obliged to sign. The longest wait was for the necessary visas, but they finally arrived along with Monty’s letters of introduction and — a nice touch — business cards for Redfern International Chemicals.
The other item, not actually asked for and sent to the Goring, was a briefing on the way the crisis had developed: newspaper cuttings in the main, plus comments from various Government officials, one of which was a note signed by Vansittart, in which he assessed the spokesman for the German Czech minority, Konrad Henlein.
The leader of the Sudeten German Party had visited London three years previously to present his case to the British people: in essence that he sought no union with Germany, just political rights for his people. Vansittart’s view, and he had met Henlein in the company of Winston Churchill, was that he was a reasonable fellow and no demagogue.
In later notes he had added that he thought he, like everyone else, might have been duped by the fellow’s unthreatening manner because of the overwhelming evidence that Henlein had moved further towards Hitler in the intervening years to become a spokesperson for the Nazi aims of conquest.
There was also a lengthy report from the Central European correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, who had done a sweep through the disputed areas of Bohemia and Moravia, and for once it was quite a balanced piece of reportage, which saw the Sudetenland question from both sides.
In his view the German minority had complaints but they were minor; the Czech nation was democratic, the Sudetenlanders had the right to vote and had several political outlets across the spectrum, from Nazis through social democrats to the Workers’ Party, the first two of which had sent strong groups of elected representatives to the Prague parliament where they were free to plead their cause.