‘Anything to do with that card you pocketed?’
An index finger was used to tap the side of his nose before Cal asked, ‘You OK to get a cab on your own?’
‘I’m a big girl now, Cal,’ Corrie replied with a girlie lilt.
Having seen her into the aforesaid taxi he and Vince walked up the street till they saw their man emerge from a doorway several yards ahead — a gap he maintained, turning left then right into a backstreet so ill lit it had Vince on edge, eyes darting and fists clenched in case of trouble. The car Cal had been alerted to on that card was waiting, engine purring, and the two men got in, the lead fellow now in the front passenger seat.
‘Does he speak English?’
Cal could only mean the driver, who had engaged the gears and moved off without a word being spoken. ‘No.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes.’
‘How well?’
‘Three years at the London School of Economics.’ There was a mid-European accent, but not much of one. ‘Most of my fellow students went to the Sorbonne and are French-speaking.’
‘Why did you follow me?’
‘On the general’s orders, to see where you stayed.’
‘He must have known I was at the Meran as soon as he made the phone call I asked for.’
‘A clever man might book into more than one hotel to make sure he was not exposed.’
‘And the Meran is where you picked us up tonight?’
‘Yes.’
‘Inside or out?’ Cal saw the young man’s shoulders shrug as if it made no difference; it did to him and he asked again.
‘I was outside in Wenceslas Square.’
‘So you did not enquire about me at the Meran reception desk? Ask who was staying in room 47?’
The silence was the answer and that was not good; the last thing Cal wanted was people seeking information on him at a hotel reception desk, especially since this youngster would have had no name with which to enquire, which was bound to raise curiosity about him as a guest. Anonymity was a precious commodity to be preserved if possible, which was why he had not told Moravec the name he was travelling under at the cathedral.
Irritated as he was, there was no point in crying over spilt milk. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To the old Jewish cemetery.’
‘Why there?’
‘It’s safe.’
There was a temptation to probe about that, to ask if it was as bad as Moravec had made out, or was it just the paranoia of a man who spent his life in the spying business? But there was little point, so he just sat back and relaxed as the car weaved through the light night-time traffic, crossing the river, until they stopped by the long wall of the old cemetery, alighting to walk to the gate.
There was a moment outside while checks were made on both sides of the gate but finally they went through into the gloomy interior. Moravec was waiting for them inside and, without speaking, they set off on a walk through the now defunct graveyard, packed with tilted headstones, with the other two well back to avoid them being overheard. The intelligence chief was not even about to trust the young man he had sent to fetch them.
Cal could hear Vince questioning the young fellow, not in any pressured way, just curious about his time in London, what he had studied, what he thought of the place and had he come across any fascists at the LSE, but inside those replies there would be nuggets of information that might provide clues for future use, given neither had any idea exactly where this was heading.
On a clear night with a near-full moon and a sky full of stars, even in a part of the city low on the spill from street lighting there was no need for any extra illumination, though it did give a ghostly air to both their surroundings and the Moravec-Jardine conversation as they walked down the gravel paths that criss-crossed the burial ground.
Cal was wondering what Moravec wanted with him but was equally determined not to initiate anything; he would wait to hear what the intelligence chief had to say and that became frustrating, as Moravec seemed to want to talk about anything and nothing, thankfully mostly in German.
He was treated to a potted history of the Czechs, without doubt and unsurprisingly in the Moravec exposition the cleverest and most industrious of the former inhabitants of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Quite naturally that included a comprehensive list of the manifest failings of the rest of the groups with whom they competed for imperial attention in what had, until its dismemberment in 1919, been a somewhat rickety edifice.
To the Czech way of thinking it was made up of lazy Slovaks, mercurial Hungarians, puffed-up Poles, insular Ruthenians and double-dealing Rumanians, all beholden to soft overfed Austrians, with the rest, a good dozen races, not, it seemed, to be considered as human at all and a polity riven with the kind of deep-seated anti-Semitism that made men like Hitler.
‘And you can see how we Czechs did not just tolerate the Jews, but lived alongside them in harmony and mutual industry. There were no pogroms in Prague and as of this moment we are walking through a thousand years of Jewish history.’
Then he was on to the German minority, grudgingly admitted to be hard-working and industrious, though politically they had nothing to complain about, with the whole separatist campaign being orchestrated, if not forced, from Berlin.
Konrad Henlein, the leader of the SdP, was far from the most rabid of their number and, while he was strong in demands for regionalism, had never been a National Socialist. It was only pressure from others, rabid Nazis, and their success in the polls that had forced him to even consider incorporating the Sudetenland in the Reich.
According to Moravec, Henlein had been quite amenable to the Sudetenland regions remaining part of the Czechoslovak Republic, albeit with concessions, a position he maintained until he was outmanoeuvred by the National Socialists, who were being heavily backed financially from Berlin.
With less money to spend on elections Henlein had lost an internal struggle for votes against a faction led by an outright Nazi who was now his deputy, a thug called Karl Hermann Frank. He had then moved to the extreme right only to maintain his own position as leader of the ethnic Germans.
While what Moravec was telling him was of some interest it did not answer the central question of what this clandestine meeting was for. On and on he rambled until finally he came to the point, which was that the invasion was scheduled and the question as to how that knowledge would be received in London if it could be proved beyond doubt that it was not just some outline plan — the reason it had been dismissed before — but a real one ready to be executed.
‘It would have to harden their attitude to Germany.’
‘Enough to stop Hitler?’
‘It’s possible,’ Cal replied, thinking of his conversation in the courtyard of the Savile Club. ‘I can say no more than that.’
‘We cannot give up control of the Sudetenland without losing the means to defend the rest of the country. I suspect you know this.’
‘Of course.’
‘You asked about the Germans who fear Hitler will ruin their country?’
Cal did not speak; this was what he had come to Prague for.
‘That attacking us was bound to cause another war. Three we know of tried to change his mind, wrote strong memoranda saying it was madness, von Neurath, the Foreign Minister, Generals Blomberg and Fritsch; all were got rid of. Now General Beck, the Chief of the General Staff, has resigned, but it has not been made public.’
‘If a man of that stature took such a course there must be others willing to follow him?’
‘None as yet, they are behaving like sheep. Everyone who knows what is planned has been told it is Hitler’s unalterable will.’