It was nothing to do with concocting a tale to inform him of what happened, more a coded warning to stop poking around asking questions, the reasons being straightforward: to tell McKevitt to have a care how he behaved in future, if indeed — and there was no proof — he had behaved improperly in the recent past.
‘Sure, you must be a fast worker to unearth all that.’
‘Keen to impress, shall we say, being fresh back in the fold. Anyway, I lost all trace of the cargo and we have no idea where it went, if indeed the dust-up outside La Rochelle was to do with that. It was not something I was able to establish.’
‘You did enquire at the local gendarmerie?’
‘Good God no! Quite apart from the struggle I would have had to find a reason, I would have risked my cover.’
‘Well I made some enquiries through Paris and I can tell you it was a damn sight more than a dust-up.’ McKevitt pushed his chair back and folded his arms. ‘Did you know there was a British cargo ship sitting in the harbour?’
‘I assume there were several.’
‘But not one in particular, say one chartered in Dublin by a character called Moncrief?’
‘No.’
‘Not that our Dublin lads think that’s his real name. It sailed that very night.’
‘But,’ Peter said, leaning forward and looking like a man who had succeeded in something, ‘was it loaded?’
‘I have no idea and neither, it seems, do you. It’s quite possible it was and the weapons got to their intended destination, which, I am going to speculate, you don’t have a clue about either?’
‘My assumption is that whatever was planned would have had to be aborted.’
‘But you don’t know for certain?’ That brought forth a slow shake of the head, which in turn engendered a sharp response. ‘Which means, Lanchester, it appears to me as if you made a right Horlicks of your first mission back, because you should know.’
‘Perhaps,’ Peter replied, forcing himself to look and sound the same, even if, inwardly, he was seething. ‘But we will keep our eyes and ears open in case it resurfaces. How goes things in your bailiwick?’
‘Now, why would I tell you? Everything that comes across my desk goes upstairs, Lanchester. Maybe, since you are one of Quex’s new blue-eyed boys, you should ask him to let you see what I send him.’
It was interesting: most people being deliberately rude could not avoid accompanying it with a matching irate expression — McKevitt could.
‘Look, old chap,’ Peter said, glad to see that form of address produced a flicker in the McKevitt eye — it was an expression he obviously disliked. ‘We know you are not waving flags at what Quex had decided to set up.’
‘No, I’m not, and neither are the others who have put in years of uninterrupted service. Morale is at rock bottom.’
‘But we are all on the same side,’ Peter said, standing up, ‘all trying to get to the right result, are we not? If I find out anything of use to you, I will happily pass it on and I hope — indeed, I am certain — you will do the same in reverse.’
‘If you will forgive me, Lanchester,’ McKevitt said, dropping his eyes to his desk, ‘I have a rate of work to get through.’
‘My old school head was less brusque than that bastard and that, sir, is saying something.’
Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, the aforementioned Quex, allowed himself a very slight twitch of the lips, not a smile but an acknowledgement that what was being said was true. ‘He’s an acquired taste all right, but it takes all sorts to do our kind of work, does it not?’
‘And he’s been asking far too many questions about me, sir.’
‘Happens when one’s nose is put out of joint, and his was very much so when he found out he was being bypassed.’
‘How did he find out?’
‘You turning up in Brno would not have gone unnoticed, Peter.’
That seemed to be too sanguine a response; better to seek to dig the man out. ‘For my money he has pursued it beyond what is natural. I have it in mind, sir, to slip McKevitt some false information, to see if I can get him to break cover and expose himself.’
‘Whatever you think of him, he is on our side.’
‘I think he knows precisely what happened in La Rochelle and who was involved and he is not one just to sit on his hands. He’s talked to both the Paris and Dublin embassies and, for all we know, asked them to dig further. It might be best to put him off any scent he picks up regarding Callum Jardine and those like him.’
‘And how would he do that, Peter?’
You do not say outright to the head of an intelligence agency that his organisation is riddled with factions, that it is a hotbed of rumour and suspicion made worse by your recent actions, even if you know he is aware of the fact and spends much of his working life using that tension to good effect; Peter Lanchester had to be tactful but he also had to say his piece, for if McKevitt was devious, so was the man he was talking to.
‘Just as a precaution, given my sole concern is to protect our man in place, who is, after all, not officially a member of MI6 and is therefore very vulnerable, even to the machinations of his fellow countrymen. Contact with Prague goes through McKevitt, which allows him to issue instructions that we would know nothing about, while withholding information he feels he has no need, or reason, to pass on.’
‘You are implying that if he found out about Jardine being in Prague, he might not bother to let me know?’
Quex paused, having stated the obvious, albeit with a palpable air of disbelief.
‘As long as you keep me properly informed, we will be able to deal with any problems that arise and, I might add, McKevitt’s a clever bugger, who will reckon that anything coming from you is tainted and that will only excite his interest. Best leave him alone, Peter.’
Given the nervous state of Frantisek Moravec, the leaving of the cathedral was a damn sight more cautious than the arrival. Vince was well behind Cal as he reprised his sightseeing act on the Charles Bridge. When he stopped in front of the statue of St Elizabeth and managed to look both up and back Vince was very obviously smoking and made a point of shoving out his cigarette to flick off the ash; they had a tail.
That did not say who it was, it could be that Moravec had put somebody to keep an eye on them, but to accept that as the case was a bad idea; it was safer to think the worst, to suspect that by meeting with the head of counter-intelligence he had laid himself open to scrutiny by someone whose aims were not benign.
It also appeared that Moravec might be right: he was not able to operate unobserved in his own capital city. Cal made no attempt to identify who was doing the following — Vince had spotted him and would give him a description later — but it did mean that he would need to act upon it. Had anyone overheard the exchange in the church? Unlikely, they had spoken in near-whispers.
Sauntering on, still playing the tourist, Cal peered at buildings and statues. He had no intention of leading their man back to where he and Vince were staying, but made instead for the Ambassador Hotel, even if such a place carried with it the risk of him being recognised, being, he knew, the chosen watering hole of all the foreign correspondents.. A five-star establishment, it had a precious asset: more than one entrance and exit, which made losing a man on his own easy.
The lobby was abuzz with conversation being carried out in several different languages and, like every luxury hotel he had ever entered, there seemed to be an overabundance of well-dressed women, some, no doubt, of dubious purpose. But it was busier by far than the Savoy in London; diplomats too used the Ambassador, and right now every country in Europe felt they needed to have folk in place outside their embassy staff to tell them what was going on.
Cal moved through to the desk, engaged one of the receptionists to ask an innocent question, then went to one of the bank of lifts and allowed himself to be taken up to the fourth floor. He immediately dropped one floor and took another lift, a different one with a different operator, back down to the lobby and without looking around made for a more discreet exit, which took him through a residents’ lounge.