It seemed much more crowded than before and there were, too, beggars on the streets in a quantity Cal had not seen on his last visit, when he had passed through on his way to and from Brno. There would be refugees from the borderlands, and not just Jews or communists; anyone who dreaded the consequences of war would have tried to get out of the way of the feared invasion.
Much as he liked luxury, they needed to reside somewhere discreet, so the reservations Cal had made were at the Meran Hotel and in the names of the passports supplied by Snuffly Bower. He was now Thomas Barrowman and Vince, Frederick Nolan. They had discreetly switched their documents at the airport, once they had cleared Czech customs, their original travel papers going under the reglued false bottoms.
The Meran was an old family-run establishment, not in any way luxurious but central and not the sort of place in the lobby of which Cal was likely to run into the army of journalists now camping out in the Czech capital. On his previous visit he had stayed at one of the other top establishments, the Alcron, where he was known as Mr Moncrief, and that he would have to avoid.
The Czechs, not surprisingly given their staunch association with France, had adopted many of her customs; they operated on a similar system of hotel registration, in which the passport details were entered on cards to be picked up by the local bobbies before being sent on to the Ministry of the Interior where they were filed.
After a bit of juggling due to the influx of refugees, he and Vince managed to get separate rooms. They were lodged in a narrow building hemmed in on both sides by others of equal height. The hotel had a single front entrance, easy to watch, and at the rear the back doors led to a series of alleyways that would make it easy to disappear into a main thoroughfare without anyone in pursuit being sure of the direction taken.
Rule number one in a foreign country was to make sure you had a safe way out, and that could only be by a passage through Poland or Rumania and not by air or train, where papers would be bound to be rigorously checked, so a whole day was spent in doing what he and Vince had done in Bucharest two years previously.
They bought a reliable second-hand car for cash, in this case an early model of the Tatra 77, which if it looked odd to the Anglo-Saxon eye was at least, with its aerodynamic body, reasonably fast. Next came clothing, along with the necessary maps, non-perishable food and a supply of water as well as cans of petrol. Another absolute necessity was to have cut a couple of spare door keys.
It took time to do all that, even more in a strange city to find a safe place to park and leave the Tatra, Cal insisting it must be on both a bus and tram route that ran from the city centre. Once that was found, under the front passenger seat went their proper documents, passports and Cal’s genuine driving licence; from now on they would operate on those provided by Snuffly Bower.
The last thing to do was to remove and hide the distributor cap in the boot of the car, thus immobilising the engine; the Czechs might be an honest lot, but with the number of refugees around, many of them people seeking to get out of the country right now — Prague alone had a population of Jews rated at forty thousand — there was a high risk of a long-parked car being stolen.
‘Right,’ Cal said, once they were back near Wenceslas Square. ‘Food, a good night’s sleep, and in the morning I will set about seeing what we can do.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The initial contact when buying those light machine guns, given to him by a Spanish republican envoy, had been a ministerial aide called Janek. He had a Catalan wife and worked at the offices of the Czech Finance Ministry as an aide to the minister.
To carry out the trade had involved Cal in several secret meetings with him, before he was passed on to others, but the notion of just calling at his home and saying hello was not one to contemplate. This was an operation in which there was no way of knowing where it would lead; he could not involve the man’s family or jeopardise his livelihood.
Nor could he visit him at the ministry without raising questions about an association that was supposed to be for that one transaction only and had been kept within a strict circle of those who needed to be consulted and squared politically, both to process the payments and call in the necessary documentation to transport the guns out of the country. What had been done might have had the nod from above, but it was illegal and thus stood as a career risk to those who had participated.
Cal did, however, know the cafe at which the man took a cup of morning coffee before going to work and he was there before him, keeping his face hidden until Janek walked in, a clutch of morning papers under his arm. For someone not versed in the craft of the intelligence game, Milas Janek was good; there was no startled reaction, indeed no apparent reaction at all.
He made his greetings to the habitual morning crowd and indulged in the usual banter of well-worn jokes, probably about weather and wives, though being in Czech they were a mystery to Cal. He exchanged normal pleasantries with the staff and in every respect acted as if a man who could threaten his continued employment was nowhere to be seen.
It was instructive, though, to see him light up a cigarette, to notice the ever so slight tremor in the hand that held the match as it went to the tip, as well as the deep concentration he gave to his newspapers as he flicked through the pages. Having seen him in this place before, at another time and on other prearranged business, Cal was aware Janek was nervous.
There was nothing he could do to make him immediately less so, as he had no intention of speaking to him in public. The wait for him to finish was longer than normal; Janek was taking his time, no doubt wondering if Cal would go away, but eventually he had to make moves to leave. He would be due at his desk, just outside the office of the finance minister.
Cal was on his heels as he exited the cafe, heading out onto a bustling street made noisy by the volume of traffic and the passing of screeching tram wheels, in which getting to Janek’s shoulder presented no problem other than the fact that he might be jostled by those hurrying in the opposite direction, and when he spoke, in German, his voice was low.
‘I need to be put in touch with Moravec.’
Janek did not turn his head, staring straight ahead as he replied. ‘Why?’
‘For the good of Czechoslovakia.’
‘Easy to say.’
‘I’m not here to buy weapons this time.’
‘Just as well, we need all the guns we have got for ourselves.’
‘Moravec can answer certain questions I want to pose.’
Janek actually sounded surprised. ‘You want to pose?’
‘To which I need answers,’ Cal hissed, deciding to take a flyer and make a claim that was way outside his brief. ‘And so does the British Government.’
That broke his stride a little, but they walked on in silence for some twenty paces before Janek spoke again. ‘That bench ahead, you see it?’
‘Yes,’ Cal replied, his eyes flicking to the named object some twenty yards along on the edge of the pavement, a double back-to-back seat shaded by a tree.
‘I am going to sit facing the street.’
Cal immediately killed his pace — Janek had been walking quite fast — to open a gap between them and watched as his man did as he had said, dusting the seat with a flapping hand then easing himself down and opening one of his newspapers to cover his face. Cal sat with his back to him facing the shopfronts, crossing his legs and adopting the air of a curious bystander.