Getting the information from MI5 had been relatively easy and had nothing to do with an exchange of favours. Sinclair had spent many years seeking to combine the two services but had been rebuffed time and again. For all that, his opposite number, Vernon Kell, the head of the domestic intelligence service, knew that he had not given up hope, just as he knew that such affairs and infighting tied everyone up in such a Gordian knot of bureaucratic nonsense as to be a nightmare.
So any request that seemed reasonable from Sinclair was met, and if Kell wondered at the secrecy surrounding the application for telegram transcripts, and the demand that it stay strictly between the two of them, that too was easy to accede to.
His secretary entered to advise him his car was waiting, with a frown that was intended to impart that keeping waiting a high-powered delegation from Paris, including the French PM and Foreign Minister, was very bad manners indeed, but he was less concerned than she.
They were with their political equivalents and that always went on too long; such people were too fond of the sound of their own voice to adhere to a timetable, quite apart from the fact that they seemed to derive some pleasure from keeping in suspense those people they referred to in private, or certainly thought of, as their minions.
Part of the visiting party included his counterpart in French Intelligence and he would share with that man the fact that he had an independent and covert operation going on in Czechoslovakia, one in which he was happy to communicate the results, albeit the French were well placed there themselves.
Naturally he would be expected to ask for something in return and he would, out of a curiosity prompted by what Peter Lanchester had told him on his return, request a record of the calls from abroad made to certain proto-fascist organisations in France; that such records existed he had no doubts.
The telegrams were locked in his desk drawer; his briefcase was waiting for him to take out, within it the latest digest of intelligence from the Central European Desk. Emerging to cross a sunlit pavement, Sir Hugh reflected that it was probably sunny all the way across the continent of Europe. Odd that what he was carrying hinted at dark and threatening clouds.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘ I think the thing that set me up most was the sea journey back to the States.’
Corrie Littleton was talking about her convalescence in what had, so far, been a very pleasant dinner, during which she had, surprisingly, asked for wine; Cal remembered her as a strident teetotaller, but as a result of her serious wounds, she had turned to alcohol to ease down from a possible morphine addiction.
‘And not just the sea air. On the transatlantic there was the dishiest doc you have ever seen in your life. Boy, do those sailor’s whites make a guy look good, especially the shorts.’
‘You should see me in a kilt.’
‘Do you mind, Cal, I’m eating,’ she replied, forking some goulash into her mouth, only speaking again when that had been consumed. ‘So when are you going to tell what game you are playing here in Prague?’
‘Who says I’m going to tell you?’
She threw back her head and laughed. ‘You better had, bud, ’cause I am a hot reporter these days.’
She had been something of a thorn in Cal’s side in Ethiopia, forcing diversions on his objectives in a search for her archaeologist mother, that not aided by a tongue that seemed, in his case, to be made of acid. Yet she could handle a gun, complained little of the discomfort of travelling and proved she was a woman by making moon eyes at an aristocratic, arrogant French flyer.
It was also true she had been stalwart when called upon, helping, without any experience at all, to run a field hospital in which it had been necessary to quickly overcome any natural squeamishness and deal with the horrendous wounds caused by modern weapons. In short, Corrie Littleton was quite tough.
‘So you’d best just open up.’
Recalling the way he had lost contact with Moravec, Cal was thinking right now there was nothing to say. Then Vince nudged him and he saw coming through the tables the bloke his boxing friend had nearly floored. The young man said nothing, just dropped a card onto the table by Cal’s side and carried on. Corrie Littleton tried to snatch it but failed; after a quick look it went into a pocket.
‘Whose side are you on?’ Cal asked as a way of diverting her. ‘The Germans or the Czechs?’
‘I’m supposed to be neutral.’
‘Hard to be that,’ Vince said.
‘I agree, and when it’s the little guy against Goliath there’s really only one side to be on.’
‘Is that the policy of your rag?’
‘It’s not a rag, Cal, it’s a magazine and they don’t have a view either way and nor do they want headlines. What they need is a set of features that sells copies. How the place is, under the threat of invasion — are the locals coping, what do they think of the democracies, not just here in Prague but in the Sudetenland as well? And to do that I need to go there and be free to operate openly.’
Cal did a good job of looking sorry for her; Vince did it better — he meant it.
‘With what’s happening in Nuremberg the Czechs have got kinda jumpy about journalists travelling around the border areas and they’re insisting they need police escorts. I’d need accreditation papers to do my job.’
‘You can go as a private citizen, I think.’
‘What would be the point of that? My request to go there is with the Interior Ministry but they seem to be taking their damn sweet time to process it.’
‘It must be crowded in those parts right now,’ Vince said.
‘Not so, Vince, the head honchos up there are not talking, so all the journos are stuck with the political shenanigans here in Prague, all writing the same copy. Quite a few will be lighting out for Nuremberg, where at least something’s happening.’
‘Mass hysteria is happening.’
‘Which I don’t want to cover anyway, because my stuff is supposed to be human interest. I don’t suppose you have any pull in this neck of the woods, do you?’
‘If I had, why would I use them on your behalf?’ Cal replied, avoiding the implications of that query, not that he could oblige.
That got him sight of a paprika-stained tongue. ‘If they take much longer I might just be obliged to shimmy over to the Nazi Party Rally. I’ve got accreditation for the Reich and it will be exciting on the last day when Hitler speaks, though that will be crowded.’
‘Take my word for it, the place will be heaving with lunatics.’
‘I was talking about journalists.’
‘What makes you think I wasn’t? What are the chaps in the bar saying about what’s happening here in Prague?’
‘To a man they’re saying it stinks. That Lord Runciman guy Chamberlain sent over is a patsy, going through the motions, judging by the speech he made today at his latest press conference. And where has he gone off for the weekend to find out how the Czechs feel? To spend time in the castle of some well-heeled German aristocrat up north near Carlsbad called Prince Hohenlohe, that’s where. The word in the bar of the Ambassador is it’s all a set-up to sell the victims down the river.’
‘Typical reporters’ talk.’
‘Don’t knock it, some of those guys have seen it all and are too long in the tooth to fall for any old line.’ Another mouthful of goulash later, Corrie added, with narrowed eyes and what Cal thought was her best effort at a winning smile, ‘But if I can’t do the Sudetenland my readers would sure like a tale of derring-do and gunrunning. I can do it off the record, no names or places.’
‘Pity I can’t oblige, I always wanted to see my name in print.’
‘You will one day, buster, but it will be on a charge sheet.’
They continued to spar throughout the main course, into the dessert and coffee, she probing, he fielding, watched by a mainly silent and amused Vince Castellano, who knew there was something between the pair other than the apparent mutual antagonism that peppered their conversation, until finally Cal indicated he and Vince had to go.