A Bitter Field

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.

‘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.’

That sounded like the Austrian Corporal all right: ‘unalterable will’ was one of his favourite sayings and a mantra adopted by those who worshipped him and his creed, as though the mere application of willpower could achieve whatever was desired, regardless of obstacles. It was an uncomfortable truth that, up till now, against all the odds, the little moustachioed bastard had been right.

‘Most of his senior generals are terrified of what he proposes and fear that he will use his leader’s speech at Nuremberg to declare his intention to invade.’

That was only a few days away. ‘Will they act if he does?’

‘If your country was at risk like mine, would you rely on a group of German generals to save you?’

‘No. Is there any prospect of help from elsewhere?’

‘The Polish jackals will not give us aid, they will not even let the Soviets cross their land to help us because they are itching to take back the Teschen coalfields, this while the Hungarians are circling like vultures too, waiting to feed on our carcass. Without help from the West we are doomed.’

‘You’re still negotiating.’

That produced a snort, which was supposed to pass for a laugh. ‘Let me tell you, my friend, a few days ago our president called in the two deputies Henlein has appointed to deal with us. He gave them a blank sheet of paper and a pen and asked them to write for themselves the conditions by which we could avoid a conflict, guaranteeing to accept whatever they wrote in advance.’

‘That sounds like surrender.’

‘It was not quite, but I think they were shocked. Oh, these men, they wrote such a list and Benes accepted it in a bid to avoid our country being smashed. Then we had a riot up north in Moravia, engineered by the German deputies, in which they claim a policeman struck a deputy with his whip. You will not yet have seen your English papers reporting this, but suddenly we are again, in Germany, killing innocents even if no one died. And what happened to those terms that our president agreed to?’

‘Don’t tell me, no longer acceptable.’

Then, surprisingly, he reverted to his grammarless English and the previous point. ‘If we you give proof absolute of what Hitler planning, what with it would you do?’

‘What kind of proof?’

‘The details of attack.’

That required a long pause; was he being offered such proof? ‘Get it back to London, put it in the hands of those who could make use of it.’

‘The newspapers also?’

‘Perhaps. That would not be for me to decide.’

Even in the gloom Cal saw the smile. ‘Politicians the newspapers fear when they do not them control.’

‘Why do you speak in English when your German is fluent?’

‘Not fluent my English, is it, like Vaclav?’ Finally the young man had a name. ‘I am wound, but practise I must, my friend, if I need flee. If Germans come, a bullet only I can expect.’ The switch back to German was seamless as was the change of subject. ‘There are only four places where this truth you seek exists.’

I seek, Cal thought. So this is where he’s going?

‘Naturally, the entire plan is at the headquarters of the German army in Berlin, along with those for defending at the same time the Rhineland from a French invasion.’

‘I hope you’re not going to suggest I go burgling in the Bendlerstra? e.’

The idea of Cal picking the locks on those Berlin offices tickled him and caused him to chuckle, before going on to say where other plans were kept, equally impossible to get at: Hitler’s Bavarian retreat, the Berghof, high in a large fenced-off and SS-guarded compound in the Obersalzberg, another set with the designated field commander who was, at this moment, engaged in training his troops for the invasion under the guise of autumn manoeuvres.

‘You seem to know a lot about something supposed to be a secret.’

Moravec was too wise to fall for that bit of fishing. He obviously had good sources right at the top of the German state but they were not going to be discussed. ‘Case Green…’

‘Which is?’

‘The name of the plan for the invasion of Czechoslovakia; the one for the defence of the West is Case Red. The Sudeten German Party does not have the plan but it holds documents given to Henlein by Hitler only five days ago relating to the invasion plan for Bohemia and Moravia, so that they know what to do when it comes.’

‘Such as?’

‘What assets to seize or destroy, where the Wehrmacht columns will seek to penetrate our defences so that they can cause mayhem in the rear areas, as well as their own targets to attack, like roads to block, certain bunkers and the Czech police stations.’

‘Is it not lunacy to give the details to such amateurs? From what I know they are not soldiers but street fighters at best.’

‘That is what has happened and it also proves that Henlein is in Hitler’s pocket. The man is no more than a puppet.’

Cal was trying to imagine that on the table of Chamberlain’s cabinet room and the effect it would have; it would blow the appeasement policy out of the water and expose the Sudeten German leader as a fraud.

‘And you know where this is kept?’

‘It is in the possession of Henlein.’

‘Then why don’t you just break in and steal them?’ Cal asked, though he suspected he knew the answer.

‘That riot I told you of, the man who was supposed to have used his whip, was dismissed. So was the police chief and six more of his men.’

That was followed by a deep sigh and a long and windy explanation of the constraints Moravec was under. He had strict orders himself from the president’s office to do nothing that would make a bad situation worse while the British envoy, Lord Runciman, was in the country; in short, nothing that would antagonise the Germans or give the democracies an excuse to walk away from supporting Czechoslovakia.

To launch an assault on the building in which those documents were located was out of the question when the slightest act like an arrest, even for the proper imposition of order as it had been in Moravia, was blown up by the German press into an atrocity, another excuse for Hitler to rant on about the ‘plight’ of his racial brethren. That impacted in the West, weakening the hand of those trying to press for a policy of standing up to him.

The police in the Sudetenland had even stricter orders now to avoid provocation. Following the riot and the dismissal of Czech officials, they had been required to stoically bear it when the more rabid Nazis took to the streets to taunt them.

They had been backed up by the Sudeten German Freikorps, a group based on Hitler’s SA, who had hurriedly rushed to their side, with their uniforms, flags and arms, to parade through the streets where the riot had taken place singing ‘ Deutschland uber Alles’ and the ‘ Horst-Wessel-Lied’.

Konrad Henlein would not take part in the negotiations with the Czech Government or any other body — Moravec suspected that was again on Hitler’s orders — and nor would any of the other top men in the SdP like Frank. It was becoming increasingly clear there were no concessions which would satisfy the Sudeten German Party: every time their terms were met they upped their demands — this, he was sure, on instructions from Berlin, so the Fuhrer would have his ‘excuse’ to invade.

Not that standing off made any difference; Goebbels, or at least the German newspapers and radio stations he controlled, just made things up. They screamed daily about fabricated Czech atrocities: the beating of innocent civilians, children included, women being molested and in many cases raped, brutal police raids in which houses were reduced to rubble and furniture thrown out into the streets to be smashed, assassinations of activists and all the usual claptrap of Nazi propaganda.

‘My hands are tied, I cannot move, for if I even attempt to do so against the express orders of the Government, someone in my department will leak my intentions before I make a move, perhaps even to the Germans, and next day it will be banner headlines in the Volkischer Beobachter.’

So your outfit is split, just like MI6, Cal thought, though he did not say so. His other thought was to thank God he was a free agent, and it was that which underlined what Moravec was driving at: if he could not act he needed someone to do it for him, hence this little walk and talk.

The Czech was angling for him to be that someone. He had a lot of sympathy for his plight, but natural caution kept him from speaking even if he had a shrewd idea what was coming, not something to contemplate without serious consideration. If Moravec was frustrated by his silence, and he probably was, he hid it well.

‘I now know for certain you are not connected to the British embassy.’

And I won’t ask how you know, Cal thought; Moravec would have people in every embassy that employed Czechs as drivers, cooks and interpreters, which was just about everyone except the Germans and Soviets, the latter too paranoid to ever employ locals in their legations.

‘How do you know this document is where you say it is?’

‘Trust me to do my job.’

‘A spy in place, perhaps?’

‘You would not answer that, neither will I.’

It was time to nail him. ‘If you want help, and it sounds to me very much like you do, you’re going to have to answer that and a lot more besides.’

‘Go back to your hotel. There you will find a package waiting for you. Examine it tonight and I will call tomorrow and arrange another meeting.’

The package was bulky and when it was laid out it covered not only the bed but the floor as well, information relating to a small town called Cheb in Czech, Eger in German, which Henlein and Frank were using as their personal headquarters and from which they were running their political affairs.

No doubt they had chosen Cheb for the very good reason that it lay only a few miles from the German border; Henlein’s house was even closer in a hamlet called Asch, practically right on the boundary line. The SdP leader was taking no chances on a crackdown; any hint of trouble and he and his family would be in Germany and safe from arrest.

Frank had his HQ at the local Nazi Party HQ, which appeared to be a substantial edifice, while Henlein’s was over two floors of the Victoria Hotel, which was a three-storey classical-styled building in the centre of the town opposite the Cheb-Eger railway station, through which ran the Paris-to-Prague Express.

The detail of both locations was comprehensive: the package contained maps of both town and hamlet, as well as the surrounding country, photographs of the streets around both Henlein’s house and Frank’s HQ, and building plans of the hotel itself, where anything really vital would probably be kept.

There were armed members of the local Freikorps guarding the Victoria, day and night, their strength and a rota included, as well as the number of people employed there during the day, all checked as being of the right stripe, because it was still a working building so there was also included an estimate of the rate of occupancy by guests.

The only speculation was the location of the safe that contained the details of Hitler’s invasion plan — they would have to be kept under lock and key — which was assumed to be in Konrad Henlein’s own suite on the first floor.

Everything being, of course, in German, Cal spent as much time translating for Vince as he did examining the documents himself. The Londoner was swift to one conclusion.

‘They must have a bloke on the inside, guv, and he’s got to be close to the boss man, not just one of the hotel staff. If you’ve read it right this practically tells you what this Henlein bloke had for breakfast.’

‘They must have the place under permanent surveillance too, Vince. You don’t compile all this without you can watch them day and night, which makes me curious. How come the Heinies haven’t spotted they are being clocked?’

‘Heinies?’

‘That’s what Henlien’s men are called, and every other Sudeten German now, I shouldn’t wonder, even if they are dead against him.’

‘Maybe his lot are thick.’

‘They’d have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to suspect they are being watched by Czech security, and there’s another thing. Moravec says that he cannot trust everyone in his own department.’

‘So how many folk know about a file like this lot?’

‘That’s right, and if they do, would they go so far as to betray the secret? That means it’s possible the likes of Henlein will be aware that this file we are looking at exists.’

‘He must be well on guard for somebody trying to break in to his bit of the hotel.’

‘I think that’s what Moravec is going to ask us to do.’

‘An’ I’m thinking we shouldn’t touch it with a bargepole.’

Cal had a map open now and was fingering the route to Cheb from Prague, as well as the distance to the German border, which even at a generous estimate could not be more than half an hour.

‘There is another alternative. Old Henlein must be nervous, ready to run if he thinks he’s going to be arrested. He’s not going to leave something like that behind, is he, and it’s not going to be in his house.’

‘You think he could be spooked into doing that?’

If Cal was smiling at the thought when he looked up, such a feeling was not replicated in Vince’s expression and it was not necessary to say why. They were two strangers in the country and on the face of it they had no means of bringing about what was being discussed.

‘I don’t know yet, but having seen all this, I can’t think that Moravec does not have something like that in mind.’

‘One that keeps him clean and might get us in deep shit.’

‘You’re not suggesting we don’t give him a hearing, Vince?’

‘I might,’ Vince sighed; he knew his old company officer too well, knew when an idea had taken hold that excited him. ‘But I’d be wasting my breath.’

‘And this might be too good an opportunity to turn down. Cast-iron evidence of what Hitler is up to is just what we need, and those plans do just that.’

Once everything was tidied away and Vince had gone back to his own room, Cal sat down with the laborious task of composing another telegram to Peter Lanchester, this time outlining what he thought was on offer.