The Burning Sky

CHAPTER SIX

Train journeys are good for thinking and the return trip allowed Jardine plenty of time to ponder on what Basil Zaharoff had said, the primary conclusion being that it made sense, mostly in money terms. The old man had promised to check on matters for him and let him know what was going to be available and who to contact in the Rumanian War Ministry to facilitate matters. He had sent a preliminary telegram to Lanchester, telling him that Bucharest was the place to do business and arrangements should be made to bank funds there, and some early moves taken on transportation, with Zaharoff adding another bit of advice.

‘At the risk of stating the obvious, Jardine, nothing will happen unless the wheels are oiled, and the Rumanians do not come cheap. I have had dealings there over many years and I know they expect to be bribed and that their preferred currency is Swiss francs.’

‘Especially if I am in a hurry.’

‘Try not to let it appear so, for if they suspect you are eager, the price of help will double, at least.’

Now he was speeding back through France weighing the alternatives. It was a case of supplying a decent amount of old equipment as against a small quantity of new, the cost of the alternative being prohibitive, even if it could be found. Striking was the simple fact that the most potent arms dealer in Europe, albeit he was no longer really active, had not offered him anything other than information — not even an old competitor who could help. Quite apart from the politics of standing aside in Abyssinia, the major manufacturing countries were looking to their own needs and, apart from Germany, they were keeping what they made at home.

That the Germans had been rearming for fifteen years was an open secret: Jardine moved in circles well aware of this, and any government with an intelligence set-up knew it too. They had opened secret factories in Russia, as well as in Germany itself, for the one thing the Great War had not done was to tame the ambitions or power of the Great General Staff. Even before Hitler, the now-defunct Weimar Republic had relied on the army, and the Nazis had been required to seduce and reassure the military in order to see them into power.

Back in his London hotel room, he laid out the bones of what he had discovered to Lanchester. ‘So there we have it, Peter — not perfect, perhaps less than satisfactory, but given the time, maybe the best we can do.’

‘What would be required if the answer is to go ahead?’

‘Funds available as I have already outlined, to buy the goods and transport them to the Black Sea, a ship waiting at Constanta to take them to the Horn of Africa, and some way of assuring me that once that vessel is off Somaliland there is a way to get them to where they need to be. I presume that has been thought about in advance.’

‘We have a representative out there, a district officer primed to do what is required.’

‘Who?’

‘Chap called Mason, who is also our link to those around Haile Selassie, and the idea is that once the weapons are on the way you go in and set up the operation overland with his aid.’

‘Which has to be carried out in secret, Peter, because if the Italians even get a sniff they will scream blue murder.’

‘He has assured us this can be done.’

‘By road?’

‘God no, that would be too obvious, seeing there’s only one road in and out and it runs past the barracks of the Somali Camel Corps. The powers that be in British Somaliland would throw you in the clink if they caught you, and impound the goods. The Ethiopians will provide the men and transport to get them across a discreet part of the border.’

‘That sounds very like camels.’

‘Spot on, old boy. The main road, not much of one I am told, runs through Hargeisa, the administrative centre of British Somaliland, while the railway from Djibouti to Dire Dawa is under French control, given they built it. Neither is useable.’

‘Would you be offended if I said this whole idea is a bit half-cocked? I have to buy a load of weapons and get them to the Horn of Africa, with no feeling of assurance that when I get there I will not be kyboshed by my own government, then sneak them overland across what might well be a bloody desert.’

‘Using the old slave trade routes, Cal, which, I’ll have you know, are not entirely redundant.’

‘There are too many “ifs” in this, Peter.’

‘Never knew any operation to be different, Cal. “If” number one! Will the backers agree to what is being proposed? “If” number two, can you get hold of what is available in the time we have? Three, can they be got, by ship, to the Somali coast? Four, can we get them ashore and across one of the least hospitable places on the planet to where they can do some good?’ Lanchester leant over grinning and slapped him on the back. ‘Bloody simple, really.’

‘One step at a time in other words?’

‘Precisely.’

‘You could lose your shirt on this.’

‘It’s not my shirt.’

‘How long before we know the funds are available for use in Rumania?’

‘They are in place now, Cal, in a Swiss bank, three hundred thousand pounds sterling, with the reserve if you need more, which means that you and I should pack our bags for Bucharest.’

‘You’re coming too?’

‘Old chum, I trust you, but not with that much lolly. I am there to sign the cheques.’

* * *

There were two people to see before heading east, the first being the man who had recruited him for the Hamburg operation. He took Elsa Ephraim with him to the huge heath-side house in Hampstead, though after the introductions, she was asked to wait outside.

‘Now, that is a real looker,’ said Sir Monty Redfern, as always, when using an ‘r’, making it sound as if there were several instead of just one. ‘I didn’t know you liked them so fresh.’

‘I admit to temptation, Monty,’ Jardine replied, ‘and I was sorely tempted a few nights back, but I kept my buttons done up because she is young and naive.’

‘So you are a fool.’

‘How was New York?’

‘Too many Jews, what do you think, and loud, so loud. Worse than Palestine, my God!’

Patron of several Jewish charities, Sir Monty was a self-made millionaire who had earned his money in chemicals, never boasting that he started with nothing as a fifth son of refugees selling such things as bicarbonate of soda door to door; such tales had to be dragged out of him. Money had not sophisticated him much: he dressed in clothes he had owned for years and his shoes were never polished, but if anyone in Britain was doing what they could for the Jews of Europe it was he, because, as he insisted, anti-Semitism was not confined to Germany, there was plenty of it in Britain.

‘You raised some funds?’

‘Not as much as those crooks could have contributed.’ To Monty there were only crooks or good people; there was nothing in between. ‘Of course, they have their own organisations who are pleading for lolly.’

Jardine laid the money belt he had brought from Hamburg on the desk. ‘This will help.’

Monty picked it up and weighed it in a way that made Jardine think he could count the unseen contents; maybe he could.

‘I took a lot of money off those Jews who could afford to pay and used it to get anyone too poor but under threat through the port.’ The word ‘Communist’ hung in the air, but was unmentioned. Jardine had got several Reds out from under the threat of a National Socialist bullet, but it was not a thing to make public. Few countries wanted Jews, none wanted to import revolution and no one of that political persuasion had been sent on to England. ‘That is what is left over.’

‘Jardine, you I should employ to sell my chemicals, then I would be rich, no?’ That was followed by a frown. ‘You have taken care of your own needs.’

‘I have.’

‘Good.’ Monty knew and approved of the Jardine rule: never work for nothing. As he had observed, there were not many rich Jews in his native Scotland, the competition was too stiff. ‘Now, your young lady.’

‘She wants to help.’

‘You think perhaps she would consider to make an old man happy?’

‘Your wife would kill you.’

‘What do you think she does already? Spend, spend, spend!’

‘She could act as some kind of secretary.’

‘My wife sees that kind of secretary, I will be eating my own balls for dinner.’

‘Talk to her, see what comes up.’

‘Jardine, I know what will come up, it is what I will do then that counts. Now, what are you up to?’

‘Who says I am up to anything?’

‘When God gave me this big hooter, Jardine,’ Monty said, grabbing his hooked nose, ‘he did it so I could smell my fellow humans telling fibs. You will be up to something or you would have asked me if there was some job needing doing.’

Jardine grinned and explained: not one to trust easily, he trusted Monty Redfern absolutely.

‘That is a good cause, those poor black people, even if they are misguided religious. There are many Jews in that land, but not that Haile Selassie. Lion of Judah, my arse. How can you be that and not be Jewish, eh? You know Bucharest?’

‘I don’t even know Rumania.’

‘There are good people there, but many bad ones, too, and it is not the easiest place to be Jewish. It’s hard to lay blame — forgive me saying this, but I know, ’cause deep down I am still Russian, the Bukovina Jews are dumb Hasidic bastards. But there are some good Ashkenazim and Sephardim in Bucharest.’

He went to the back of his desk and opened an address book, penning a quick name and address. ‘Call on this fellow, tell him I sent you. If you need anything he will help. Now, show in that delightful young lady and let me dream the dream I can look forward to repeating when I try to get to sleep tonight.’

Jardine’s next stop was in South London, at a gym down the Old Kent Road. He walked through the door to the smell of sweat and high-odour embrocation. The place needed a lick of paint, if not several, and the windows were missing several panes, with bits of cardboard where there should be glass, while the lights were bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Around the room lay the various things required to keep a boxer at his peak — hanging punchbags, weights, mats for floor exercises — while in the middle was a full-sized ring in which two young fellows were sparring.

Shouting at them from the ringside was Vince Castellano, a one-time soldier in Jardine’s regiment and a useful welterweight boxer. A tap on the shoulder made him turn round, which revealed a flattened nose and the scarred eyebrows of a fighter, as well as a couple of proper bruises. The voice had the slight slur of badly fitting false teeth.

‘Good God, guv, what are you doin’ ’ere?’

‘Come to see you, Vincenzo.’

‘Keep sparring, you two,’ Vince shouted, ‘my old CO has come to call.’

‘It’s a long time since I was that.’

‘Must be three years since I seen you last, Mr Jardine, when you’d just got back from South America.’

‘I’ve still got the hangover and the bruises.’

‘That was a right night out that was, eh? You should never have taken me to that posh club up west. Toffee-nosed gits.’

‘And you should not have tried to fight everybody in there including the coppers who came to arrest us.’

‘Shouldn’t drink, should I, guv? But you knew that, so I always blamed you for that barney. That’s why I let you pay the fines.’

‘How’s business?’

‘Dire and don’t it show? Fallin’ down, this gaff is. I only keep the place goin’ ’cause of the kids. If they wasn’t ’ere ’alf of them would be in choky.’

‘How’s your Italian?’

‘Bit rusty, I only really speak it wiv me mum. Took her home a couple of years back for a visit.’

‘I remember you telling me.’

‘Not a success, was it? Most of her family think the sun shines out of Mussolini’s arse when I think he’s a pot-bellied git.’

‘Passport still valid?’

‘Yeh.’

‘I am going to do a job where I need someone to trust to mind my back. It might have a place for an Italian speaker too, and it pays well.’

Vince looked around his dump of a gym. ‘I got to keep this place goin’, guv, bad as it looks.’

‘Could anyone take it over for six months?’

‘Only if I could pay ’em.’

‘That can be arranged, Vince, but let me say this before you think about it: the job could be dangerous.’

‘Everythin’ you do is dangerous, guv.’ Jardine made a pistol with his finger and thumb. ‘That dangerous?’

‘Yup, but there’s enough pay to keep this place open and you in beer for a year.’

‘When d’you need to know?’

Jardine penned a number and handed it over. ‘You been in the ring again, Vince?’

‘Naw, feet are too slow now.’

‘The bruises?’

Vince touched his upper cheek. ‘Got them fightin’ Mosley’s mob, blackshirt bastards.’

‘Politics, Vince?’

‘Can’t let them just walk about shouting abuse just ’cause someone’s a Jew, ain’t right.’

Jardine looked around the decrepit gym. ‘You’re probably doin’ good work here, Vince — what if you had a benefactor?’

‘He’d need deep pockets.’

‘And if I could get you one?’

‘When was the last time somebody kissed your arse?’

‘Pay. Twenty quid a week and whatever it takes to get someone to replace you here. You can ring me tomorrow.’

‘To hell with that, I’m in for twenty smackers a week. Lead on, Macduff.’

Jardine rang Monty Redfern that night to tell him about Vince’s gym and how he got the bruises. It was a near-certain bet that the Jewish millionaire would back that.

‘All I remember of Vince Castellano was that he was a bloody handful,’ Lanchester remarked. ‘Fine boxer, mind. Did the regiment proud.’

‘I don’t think he drinks anything like he used to, and who knows, those fists of his might come in handy.’

‘So where are you off to in best bib and tucker?’

Jardine pulled a face. ‘I’m taking Lizzie to dinner and dancing at the Cafe de Paris. Apparently “Hutch” is playing tonight, and no doubt there will be two idiots trying to convince us of some new dance craze that is going to sweep the universe.’

‘Ah, the lovely Lizzie Jardine.’

‘Don’t you start, Peter.’

‘You cut her too much slack, old boy.’

‘I think you have that the wrong way round.’

‘Would you divorce her if she agreed, Cal?’

‘I would if that was what she wanted but I would have to get an annulment from the bloody Pope.’

‘A gentleman to the last, but that’s not what I asked.’

‘Peter, it’s none of your business. Now, if all our arrangements are in place, Vince and I will meet you at Victoria tomorrow morning.’ Picking up his shiny top hat, Callum Jardine, dressed in white tie and tails, bowed Lanchester out through his door. The Humber he had ordered was purring gently outside and that took him to Connaught Square to pick up his wife, who was, as usual, not ready.

‘Fix yourself a drink, Cal, I shan’t be long.’

‘When have I heard that before?’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

Going into the drawing room he stared at the furniture with distaste; Lizzie had redecorated once more — it was a biannual event — and this time all the furniture was white, even the sideboard which had on it the bottles and glasses. He poured himself a malt whisky, pleased that his wife had left out a jug of water, a pinch of which was put in the glass to release the peat flavours. That he took to the long French windows overlooking the garden square.

How many times had he stood at these windows waiting? Too many, the record being an hour — that had led to a row about the time it took her to get made up and dressed, then to an even more furious altercation when she found out he had sent the taxi away on the very good grounds the poor bugger had to make a living, which he did not do idling outside their house. There was no point in being cross; in fact, if she took long enough they might give the table he had booked away. He would much rather go to the Bag O’ Nails anytime.

‘Now, you have to admit, Cal, that is a record.’

Turning slowly he looked her up and down, knowing Lizzie had quite deliberately posed under a tall standard lamp to be admired, and admirable she was. Blond, with a pixie face and that bloody pert nose, wearing a white dress overlaid with silver, she had been the most beautiful debutante of her year, and daft Callum Jardine, fresh from the wilds of Dumfriesshire, tall, handsome, golden-haired and soon to be a dashing officer, had been the one who won her hand. He had suffered nothing but trouble and heartache since.

‘Well, are you going to say anything?’

‘Is white this year’s colour?’

Her tongue came out. ‘You are a pig, Callum Jardine.’

‘True,’ he replied, damned if he was going to compliment her. ‘Shall we go?’

The food at the Cafe de Paris was not inspiring, served as an adjunct to the entertainment, rather than on its own merits. They had danced a quick foxtrot right after cocktails, then had dinner to the sound of ‘Melancholy Baby’ and ‘The Very Thought of You’, with Lizzie mouthing along and making moon eyes at the singer, even more outrageously when ‘Hutch’ came on to play.

‘Pity Edwina Mountbatten has got her claws into him, darling,’ he whispered mischievously.

‘Just make sure Dickie doesn’t get his bits into you, Cal. He does so love a handsome man.’

‘I wish he would try, I haven’t killed anyone for a while.’

That made her frown deeply. ‘Must you bring that up?’

‘Sorry,’ he replied insincerely. ‘I thought it was proof I loved you.’

The eyes went dewy. ‘Do you love me, Cal?’

Here we go again, Jardine thought. Why can I not stay away from her? What is the matter with me? He so wanted to not sleep with her but he knew he would weaken, even as he looked around the packed room and wondered who else had enjoyed the privilege. She would drink just a little too much and get all romantic; he would have lowered his resistance by exactly the same means and he would sashay her into that bedroom at Connaught Square, hoping he could avoid looking at the bedhead and remembering the face of the naked man sitting up, his eyes wide with fear, just before he put a bullet in the left one.