‘Jesus Christ Almighty, if it isn’t my old pal, Doc Savage.’
The cracked American voice, reminiscent of someone with a bad throat, might have been behind him but he knew it to be female, just as he knew who it was, though such knowledge brought him no more pleasure than the nickname she had once regularly used to insult him — the moniker of some inane American cartoon character he had never heard of or read.
Walking on and ignoring it was not an option; he had to turn round and be smiling broadly as he did so. The last time he had seen Corrie Littleton she had been in some distress, in the latter stages of a recovery from a wound caused by an Italian bomb, pale-faced and all skin and bone, not that she had ever been fulsome; he had once decided she was rangy rather than skinny.
Now she was very obviously recovered and was no longer clad in slacks and a masculine sort of shirt-blouse he remembered as standard dress, but in a smart grey suit, jacket and pencil skirt, with an expensive handbag and shoes to match. Her hair, slightly reddish on the side of auburn, which she had worn loose, was now carefully arranged under a pert hat.
‘Corrie,’ he responded.
‘Cal…’
He moved forward with speed, immediately taking her arm to push her towards a clutter of settees where they could sit down.
‘Hey, buster.’
Cal’s response came out of the side of his mouth as a desperate whisper. ‘Do shut up for once, there’s a good girl.’
‘Hell, your manners ain’t altered.’
‘Let’s sit and talk.’ She tried to resist being put on her backside but he was too strong, and he made sure their backs were to the door he had just come through. ‘And don’t use my bloody name.’
‘Oh.’
‘That’s right.’ There was no need to say he was here on the same kind of business he had been doing when they first met and Cal did not bother to try and explain. Corrie Littleton might be a pain in the posterior but she was not dumb. ‘What in the name of creation are you doing in Prague?’
She responded to his low tone of voice in a similar vein. ‘Working, which I kinda guess is what you are doing too.’
‘What kind of work can you be doing here?’
‘That, from you, is typical, like a woman can’t do any work. I am here reporting for Collier’s Weekly.’
‘You’re a journalist?’
The reply had all the sarcasm he recalled so well. ‘I always knew you were smart.’
‘How did you end up doing this?’
‘Thank Tyler Alverson. I thought if he could do it, so could I, and I must say he was sweet when we got back stateside. He put me on to people who could help, though that had to wait till I had fully recovered.’
Alverson had been with them both in Ethiopia and Cal had come across him in Madrid as well, when the city was under siege. A long-in-the-tooth self-confessed hack of a foreign correspondent, he was a man Cal liked and admired; he was also a fellow who was to be found where there was anything approaching action.
‘Don’t tell me, he’s here too.’
‘As far as I know he’s in Berlin, though he might turn up in Prague to slam your guy Runciman when he’s finished pussyfooting around.’ Her raised crooked two fingers, on both hands, implied parentheses; the look in her eye was implicitly one of scepticism. ‘He’s supposed to be assessing the situation, as if we don’t know what it really means. Damn bastard’s been here for weeks and all he’s done is play footsie with the Germans.’
‘He might not have done, the situation’s complex.’
Cal replied in that positive manner, even though he did not believe his own words. He had really only said them to give himself time to think, because Corrie Littleton’s presence might present a complication. A reporter, she would be bound to want to know what he was up to, as would Tyler Alverson if he showed up.
‘You staying here?’ She nodded. ‘Room number?’
‘One of the best, 48.’ Seeing that the praise did not register, she added. ‘Overlooks Wenceslas Square.’
‘OK. I am going to leave, but I will call you.’
‘How about you give me your contact number and I’ll call you.’
‘No.’
‘I could yell out your name, let the whole world know you are here.’
‘You could, but if you want to guarantee I clam up, that would be the best way to do it. I will call — and tell Tyler if he shows up that I will talk to him too, but not to shout out if he sees me, and that goes for Vince Castellano.’
‘He’s here too?’ Her eyes narrowed in a face that was attractive, if not conventionally beautiful. ‘Sounds as if you and Vince are involved in something juicy.’
‘Or maybe nothing at all, Corrie.’
‘The Doc Savage I recall was not that kind of guy.’
For once, that nickname did not annoy him; it would allow him to communicate without the use of his name. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
‘Give Vince my regards.’
His cockney friend was pleased with the message — he and Corrie had always got on — though Cal was less enamoured with what Vince had to tell him about what the fellow tailing them had done, in fact he was mystified.
‘Sod went straight to the phone after you went up in the lift and I sidled over to see if I could cop the number he dialled. Missed that, but the bugger was loud enough to overhear his voice, not what he was saying, though. The thing is, guv, whoever the sod was talking to, he was doin’ it in English.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The telegram Cal Jardine composed and sent off to London was gobbledegook to anyone but Peter Lanchester; sent to his home address to avoid complications it was delivered before six in the evening. It told him he had made contact with those who could help and asked if anyone from the embassy might be tailing the head of Czech Intelligence and how many operatives were in place.
Unbeknown to both, such was the nervousness of the British state regarding events in Czechoslovakia that the sister service to the SIS had people in place to monitor that kind of traffic between the two capital cities. If MI5 did not know the contents of Cal’s message or whom it was from, they knew to whom it was addressed.
Part of their job was to compile a list that kept the SIS Central European Desk informed. The register of the day’s traffic was thus passed on to Broadway where the recipient’s name set off the bells with the man who ran it; normally he was above that sort of thing unless it was deemed important.
Following on from Peter’s previous trip to Brno and the subsequent trail that led to La Rochelle it smacked of conspiracy and produced in Noel McKevitt the kind of expletive-filled apoplexy he reserved for times when he was alone and unobserved, the kind that turned the air blue and had those outside his office exchanging looks and shrugs.
They were messing about in his patch again without telling him and there could only be one reason for such behaviour — they were acting to achieve something he could not support and the only thing he could think of was some kind of attempt to embroil the country in Central Europe that went against Government policy.
It also, after a period of thinking, occurred to him that unravelling that might give him some leverage to demand answers to any number of questions, and that had him send off a message to the station chief in Prague, basically asking him to check on new arrivals of British nationality in the capital or Brno, journalists and diplomats excluded, as a Code One priority — there should not be too many with the continuing crisis.
Then he turned to flicking through his address book for the number of an old colleague, asking for an outside line; this was not a call to risk being overheard by the switchboard.