A Bitter Field

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The summons for Sir Hugh Sinclair to attend a private meeting at 10 Downing Street with the prime minister was uncommon indeed — he normally briefed the Home Secretary — so much so that it engendered in him a desire to know what was going on before he obeyed the summons.

So he telephoned next the First Lord of the Admiralty, Duff Cooper, who was a member of Chamberlain’s Cabinet, albeit one who was vocally unhappy with the present policy, though only in private conversation. That required Cooper to make some enquiries before ringing back.

‘Neville thinks you are up to something, Quex.’

‘It’s my job to be up to something, Freddy.’

‘I can’t be certain, but I think Inskip has been whispering in Neville’s ear that you are acting against Government policy.’

‘Indeed. No details I suppose?’

‘Sorry, old chap, can’t oblige.’

‘Thanks anyway, Freddy.’

‘Be just like being had up before the beak, I shouldn’t wonder.’ That was followed by a laugh from a man who did that a lot. ‘And what a beak.’

When Sir Hugh arrived in Downing Street it was to see fishing rods being loaded into the back of the PM’s Humber, along with a basket for his catch, making the head of SIS wonder how anyone could call standing flicking his rod by a riverbank at this time of trouble correct behaviour. When he was shown into the Cabinet room it was to find the PM dressed in tweeds and plus fours, obviously ready for departure.

Normally in a wing collar and black coat, such country apparel did not improve Neville Chamberlain’s appearance; he was still the pigeon-chested fellow of caricature, tall with his slight stoop and that vulture-like face dominated by dark heavy eyebrows over the nose about which Duff Cooper had made his jest.

The only person present was his newly appointed cabinet secretary, Edward Bridges, so fresh to the job that he took no part in the conversation; surprisingly he took no minutes either as Chamberlain began to speak in that rather high voice of his, not, Quex noted, while looking him in the eye.

‘Sir Hugh, I would like your latest appreciation of the state of affairs over the Sudetenland.’

‘I briefed the Home Secretary only two days ago, sir.’

‘I’m well aware of that; has anything altered in the meantime to change your opinion of events?’

‘No, sir, I fear that Lord Runciman’s mission is mired in intractability, that whatever President Benes offers will be rejected and that the whole of Henlein’s campaign is being orchestrated from Berlin.’

‘You have taken no unusual steps in Czechoslovakia that would fall across the line of Government policy?’

‘No, Prime Minister, and neither would I contemplate such a course.’

‘Matters are coming to a head, Sir Hugh, perhaps as soon as Herr Hitler’s leader’s speech at Nuremberg. I want nothing between now and that occasion to in any way give the German Chancellor or the leadership of the Sudeten German Party cause for concern. It could be, in short, turned into a flashpoint from which things would either be said or done from which even the best intentions could never recover.’

‘Do you have any specific instructions, sir?’

‘Only that your task is to support the elected government.’

‘As always.’

Only then did Chamberlain look directly at him and there was nothing benign in his eye.

‘Your car is waiting, sir,’ Bridges said, failing to disguise that he had been instructed to remind his boss, in short, to curtail the exchange as soon as the PM had issued what amounted to a warning.

‘Ah yes. Do you fish, Sir Hugh?’

‘Sad to say, only in troubled waters, Prime Minister.’

‘They can be smoothed by application, but not by anyone acting in excess of their instructions.’

What had been said to him and by whom? There was no point in asking with the beak nose bobbing in dismissal. As he exited the heavy door Quex was tempted to look at the watch he wore in his waistcoat, to let Chamberlain know that he had dragged him up from Victoria for an interview that had lasted all of two to three minutes and that in consequence he was annoyed to be treated worse than a servant; he did not do it from a lifetime’s habit of concealing his emotions.

Making his way down Whitehall and then across Parliament Square and along Millbank, with the tip of his unnecessary brolly beating out an increasingly angered tattoo on the pavement, it did not take long to nail the potential culprit who had engineered this event but the question remained as to what to do about it.

If it was McKevitt, then he was entitled to his concerns about policy; Quex did not run a dictatorship but an organisation that had ample room for the free airing of views, even of dissent.

But the protocol was that such a thing was internal, it was not to be taken outside the walls and if the Ulsterman had done so it was not merely because he disagreed but that he had another motive, and given his ambition was close to an open secret, that did not take long to arrive at either.

Still ruminating on that, he returned to his office to find the latest telegram transcript from Peter Lanchester, which told him what was being planned in Czechoslovakia, which in order to approve meant all he had to do was nothing. Was it the right policy to pursue?

In a very acute sense it went right against what he had just been told by the PM — it was active when Chamberlain wanted passivity and if the truth emerged it would not be a warning he would be given but the door.

Two problems combined in one solution: he needed to check the machinations of McKevitt, keep the operation that Lanchester had alerted him to in progress while ensuring if it all went tits up the blame lay squarely at another door. The finger was soon on the intercom buzzer to his secretary.

‘Ask Noel McKevitt to come and see me, would you, as soon as he has a moment free?’

Translated that meant ‘immediately’ and was taken as such by the recipient. McKevitt knew that Inskip had passed on his concerns, just as he knew their knowledge of each other and shared interests were well known.

That meant Quex was going to be hauled in and told to mind his p’s and q’s on Czecho and he had enough respect for the man to think it would not take his boss long to unearth the connection; the call from the top floor told him he already had.

He was thus well prepared to face Sir Hugh Sinclair’s wrath with the certain knowledge that he was fireproof — there was no way he could be sanctioned for merely doing his job and if he was it would go all the way back up to Downing Street; the man under threat was the man he was going to see.

‘Noel, nice of you to respond so quickly. Do take a pew.’ As his backside hit the chair, Quex followed up that jolly greeting. ‘I’ve just had an interesting chat with the PM.’

‘Really,’ McKevitt replied, putting as much marvel into the tone as he could and also wondering why the old man’s secretary had stayed in the office, taking a chair well away from the discussion.

‘Aye, he’s worried about Czecho — and who can blame him, what?’

Beware of the cat that smiles, McKevitt was thinking, for if the old man was not actually grinning his tone was too jocular for what he had just gone through.

‘Wants nothing to upset the apple cart,’ Quex continued, ‘and as I pointed out to him, that will not be easy, what with the Hun stirring things up. Look what they did to Kendrick in Vienna.’

And what, McKevitt thought, has that got to do with the price of coal?

‘He fears an incident that will somehow compromise his sterling efforts to sustain the peace. What chance do you think there is of something cropping up in, say, Prague, that the Germans could exploit?’

The temptation to say ‘You would know better than I’ was one that had to be suppressed.

But he was not going to give this old sod the answer he wanted, which was that such a scenario was unlikely, so that, at some future date and backed by the testimony of his secretary, he could openly claim to have asked for a reassurance only to find it not forthcoming. Best seek to be non-committal, not definite, opaque.

‘Sure, if they tried anything, it might be there all right.’

‘Exactly my point to the PM, they may attempt a repeat of what happened to Captain Kendrick.’

‘Prague is not Vienna, sir.’ Presented with a chance to be sarcastic he was not about to pass it up. ‘The Gestapo has, as far as I’m aware, no power of arrest there.’

‘True, but any accusation that excessive numbers of our chaps in situ, and you know the numbers better than I, are involved in using their skills to aid the Czechs might appear in the German papers at any time.’

‘I felt that more muscle was needed there, sir; it is after all the present hot spot in my area of responsibility and it could impact on its neighbours.’

‘And very apposite that was to move more men in, but how will the Hun see it? What if they publicise the number of our Prague agents in the same way they splashed on Kendrick, with the added information that the establishment has increased threefold. Shipping in more bodies might come back to haunt us, and even if it’s untrue what they claim, the mud, the PM fears, might stick and, I have to tell you, he was even more alarmed to hear we had reinforced the station recently, thus increasing such a risk.’

‘I considered it worth an extra effort to keep the Government informed.’

‘And, my dear chap,’ Quex cried, ‘it was a brilliant ploy at the time, which I told the PM.’

‘But not now?’

‘No, it now involves a risk Mr Chamberlain does not want to take! With his agreement I’ve decided to pull out all our chaps in Prague, including those you have shipped in from other stations. They, of course, can go back to their previous posts.’

The thought could not be avoided: he’s heard about my request to search for new arrivals and he wants to put the mockers on it to give his man, and now I am convinced there is one in place, a free run.

‘Only it has to be done with maximum discretion, Noel, and we cannot risk even a coded cipher. So I want you to go to Prague yourself and close down the operations there. It must not, I repeat not, be revealed to either the press or the Germans that we have done so.’

‘To ensure discretion will take time. Embassy folk have wagging tongues.’

‘Yes, it will, though shipping the extras back should be straightforward.’

‘When do you want me to go?’

‘I would have thought soonest done soonest mended, wouldn’t you? You can go in on a diplomatic passport, so I would like you to drop everything else and travel as soon as you can.’

McKevitt made a good fist of looking thoughtful, but he had come to one conclusion while Quex was still talking. ‘It might be best to get everyone out as soon as possible, over a day or two, including the regulars, and stay around to clear up anything outstanding myself.’

‘Good thinking, I’m sure with you there any risks will be sealed down tight.’

Making his way back to his own office, McKevitt was nearly laughing. The old man had just handed him the keys to unlock his suspicions and, while he was there, he would find out what was going on and put a stop to it, but not before he had laid at the door of those who needed to know the truth that Sir Hugh Sinclair was not only losing his touch, he was actively thwarting the policy of those who employed him.

Odd that Quex was happy too, for Jardine, by the time McKevitt got there, would be long gone from Prague and the Ulsterman had no way of connecting anything to him, doubly so given he was travelling under an assumed name.

The man might seek to stir things up but that would only play into Quex’s hands, and if it all went up in the air and an incident did occur, how could he carry the can for anything, when the head of the relevant section was on site and in control?

For all Veseli’s certainties it was an anxious two days and a testing exchange of telegrams before on the Saturday morning the invitation came from Henlein’s press office to say the visit was on and that two rooms were waiting for Corrie in the Victoria Hotel.

Moravec phoned Cal to confirm, again without using either his name or hers, that Corrie would be given full access to the SdP leader on the Sunday. Cal then called the Ambassador Hotel and alerted Corrie that he was on his way and for her to be ready to move.

Throwing economy to the winds — it was Moravec’s money after all — Cal had hired a really luxurious and very powerful German-made car, a dark-green Maybach Zeppelin with a soft top, a V12 engine and a top speed that exceeded a hundred miles an hour if you had the courage to push it hard.

It was also a very weighty car which, apart from a tank, would smash to bits anything it hit — if he had to run he wanted to do so in something hard to catch and impossible to knock off course. He had also bought a good camera, a long lens and several rolls of film, as well as a hunting knife which he would just leave in the car to be found if anyone wanted to search; hiding it would only make it seem suspicious.

‘I like the bins,’ Vince said, when Cal tried on the pair of rimless spectacles he’d bought. ‘You’ll look a bit like Himmler now you’ve got your barnet cut short.’

Cal ran a hand across his now-short red-gold hair, then nodded to the telegram he had compiled for Peter Lanchester, lying by the open book of short stories.

‘I don’t know why I bother with coding messages. I could get you to telephone Peter and talk to him in cockney.’

‘Only one problem, guv, he wouldn’t understand a bleeding word I was saying to him.’

‘True, I struggle enough.’

Cal had begun splitting the notes in his money belt; half he would leave with Vince and the rest he would take. His friend had a simple way of keeping the currencies separate: they went into different pockets.

‘You say you’re going to get tooled up when you get to this place.’

‘That’s the deal, I’ve asked for a Mauser.’

‘A bloke doing the job you’re supposed to be at would not carry a shooter.’

‘He’s about to become a reformed character.’

‘One who’s out on a very long limb, guv, and as for involving Corrie, well…’ The undertone of what Vince was saying came down to the fact that he was unhappy about being left behind. ‘She’s a game bird, but this might be pushing it a bit.’

‘She will have instructions to dump me if I’m exposed, say that I used her.’

‘Corrie won’t do that, guv.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because,’ Vince replied with slow deliberation, ‘she fancies you.’

‘Rubbish. I’ve got to send that telegram to London,’ Cal responded, ducking the implications of that statement. ‘I’ll get dressed, then let’s get my own bag packed and into the car.’

‘You taking all the documents?’

Vince was referring to those hidden in the Tatra.

‘No point, and if they were found they would only get the noses sniffing for more. You sure of what to do if the balloon goes up?’

‘How many times do you want me to tell you?’

Vince had instructions, if the emergency was so dire as to be irresolvable, to think only of himself, to go to the Jewish Emigration Centre and find Elsa Ephraim, using Cal’s name and that of Monty Redfern — she would know how to get him out to safety if he could not use either of his own passports, and given the money he was holding there was always bribery.

‘Just as long as you remember not to try and come and get me.’

Leaving his backup man in Prague was essential to maintaining that vital link with London, and the temptation to move him closer to the place where Cal would be operating had to be put to one side. There was still a deep nervousness about leaks or even active disruption from the offices of MI6 and nothing Peter Lanchester had sent so far indicated such a threat had been either positively identified or neutralised.

There would have been more alarm had it been known that a man from the Prague station, one of those brought in from Bucharest, was trawling the hotels with a Czech interpreter for a list of guests from the United Kingdom, with an emphasis on those newly arrived; an attempt to save time by checking the flight manifests of the Czech airline, the quickest way in, had been rudely rebuffed.

Having been at it for two days and starting with the luxury places, it was Saturday before he got to the Meran, and he and his man entered just as Cal and Vince exited carrying the canvas bag.

The Czech made for the desk, the MI6 man standing back, where he went through the routine of being jolly with the man at reception, agreeing that times were bad for everybody except those with rooms to let, before asking if there were any people staying who might need his services as an English interpreter.

That was not an absurd thing to ask; Czech was a Slavic language that only the locals spoke and even then it broke down into several dialects and that was before you got to Slovak, Ruthenian and Hungarian.

It had no international presence, so that any visitor from any country, especially Britain and those with Latin-derived tongues, struggled to get the bus or tram, never mind do business; even fellow Slavs from neighbouring countries would have to strive hard to be understood.

The reply he got, that of the only two British guests staying, one, a Mr Barrowman, certainly spoke fluent German, was responded to with initial disappointment, though he did ask about the other, only to be told the receptionist had never exchanged a word with him, but he could if he had to — thankfully he spoke a bit of English and French.

‘Been here long, have they, ’cause they might have picked up a bit of Czech?’

‘A week… or was it Tuesday they checked in? Not sure.’

‘Been here before?’

‘No, they made the reservation from London, though by telegram, so they must know Prague well.’

‘Still, friend,’ the interpreter said, pacing out his questions so that it did not seem like an interrogation. ‘Even German might not be enough if they are here to do business, eh? Are they businessmen? Would you give them my card if I left one?’

The receptionist shrugged and accepted the proffered card; there was no harm in it and his interpreter visitor bade him a hearty farewell, then walked out onto the street followed by his MI6 employer, who listened to what the Czech had been told.

He reckoned this pair fitted the bill more than any of the other names he had turned up, not that he knew, apart from finding British passport holders with no known reasons for being here, precisely what the bill was. Still, it was not his job to decide that — such a task fell to the station chief — and he had many more places to check.

‘OK, Miklos, on with the motley, what!’

Miklos had studied hard and reckoned himself a good English speaker, but as he watched his employer head off he wondered what the hell he had just said.

There was one thing Cal had forgotten to cover and that was because he was not in the same profession as Corrie Littleton. A good journalist never goes anywhere, and especially to somewhere dangerous, without telling the person who employs them, in her case her editor in New York, and nor would she go off without leaving a forwarding address.

That was a telegram she composed on her account at the hotel because the first thing a journalist learns is never to spend their own money and never be entirely truthful about your expense account either, because spare cash is not only handy, it can be essential for both work and pleasure; you cannot, for instance, submit a chit for sexual gratification in some foreign whorehouse.

Some of those males she drank with sparingly in the bar of the Ambassador were given to visiting such places and were not deterred by a female presence from mentioning it. They were also, to a man, experienced reporters, who knew that a good way to keep ahead of your competition was to know what they were up to.

Thus, on arrival at their hotel in the location of a story, and even before they made friends with the bar staff, they would approach the concierge and slip him a decent sum to keep them informed and their competitors in the dark about what they themselves were up to.

Where Corrie, in her lack of practical experience, fell down was in not doing first that; then what she should have done when she gave him the telegram was to slip him something to stay quiet because of the name and destination that would leap out even if he struggled with English.

It was doubly unfortunate that a very experienced English correspondent called Vernon Bartlett spotted her on the way out of the hotel after Cal had called for her to come down.

‘Where are you off to, young lady, and by the side entrance?’ he asked, coming in from a late-morning constitutional walk.

‘Nothing doing in Prague, is there, Vernon, so I thought I’d go down to the border and see how many Jews the Rumanians are letting in.’

‘As many as have the means to bribe the border guards, I should think.’

‘Still…’

‘Well, good hunting,’ Vernon replied, moving to go in for a cup of coffee and one of those big cream cakes so loved by the Czechs. ‘We shall miss your gracious company in the bar.’

‘“Gracious” is not the word I would use, Vernon, “debauched” is more appropriate. Did you stay on last night?’

Nearly everyone was leaving to go to Nuremberg for Hitler’s big speech, an event enough to give an excuse for a leaving bash.

‘No, I could see it was turning into a real session so I baled out not long after you.’

‘There’ll have been some fine heads this morning.’

‘I’ll say, there was not a soul at breakfast, bar me.’

‘I took mine in my room.’

‘To avoid the groans of those who stayed up, I suppose. We should run a sweepstake on who misses the Munich train, someone’s bound to.’

‘Well,’ Corrie said, with as much veracity as she could muster. ‘Must be off, ’cause I’ve got a train to catch.’

As she made for the door, Bartlett did not go into the dining room; instead, not entirely convinced by what he had been told, he waited a few seconds then followed her, ready to duck out of sight if she looked back. The revolving doors to the side entrance were panelled in glass and he saw the rather severe-looking man who took her small case and put it in the boot of the big dark-green Maybach, the sight making him curious.

Vernon Bartlett had covered the Spanish Civil War in the early days and been in Madrid during the first nationalist siege of the capital in ’36, staying in the same haunt as many of his peers, some of the same hard-drinking lot that were now ensconced in the Ambassador.

He was sure he had seen the same fellow now helping Corrie into the car in the saloon of the Florida Hotel drinking with two stalwart boozers, Ernie Hemingway and Tyler Alverson, and had been at one time introduced, which, with his press instincts, he remembered clearly.

He had no real knowledge of what Callum Jardine did, only that he had taken an active part in fighting the nationalists on behalf of the republicans, added to the fact that he was a man of some mystery who had not, the last time he had seen him, been wearing glasses or sporting a rather Germanic haircut.

What the hell was Little Miss Just-Started-in-the-Game doing with a character like that, and was she really going to catch a train? Next stop was the desk of the hotel concierge, and though it was just on the off chance, he had in his hand a twenty-koruna note which produced the information as to where Corrie Littleton was off to and what she was about to get.

‘Well damn me,’ Bartlett swore, when it was relayed to him, a precis of the contents of the telegram that a hotel boy had taken to be sent on Thursday morning, as soon as the telegraph office opened its doors. ‘Cheb of all places — talk about the cunning little vixen!’

Of course, it was necessary to pay out more money to ensure that he was the only one privy to this information and as he did so he reflected on two things: that the life of a luxury hotel concierge was certainly an enviable one given the amount of cash they garnered for their favours, the other being that he was blessed as a fellow who could decline to get sloshed at the drop of a hat.

When he got to the dining room he observed that many of his peers had emerged from their rooms to drink copious amounts of coffee — Americans, French and British, nursing hangovers from the previous night’s debauch in the hotel bar, all of them receiving a hearty greeting in a loud voice, accompanied by a backslap, that was certain to cause their heads to ache.

Over his coffee and cream cake Vernon Bartlett mused on what to do about that which he had uncovered; he was off to Nuremberg to cover the leader’s speech at the Nazi Party Rally on Monday himself, and even if it was likely to be an occasion of thundering and repetitive boredom he was reluctant to change his plans — his editor would not be pleased if he did, especially this year, when Czechoslovakia was bound to be one of Hitler’s topics.

Thankfully, he had been sent out a young tyro to help cover what was the biggest story on the Continent and do the kind of legwork a man of Bartlett’s experience found too tedious: the daily briefings from the various Czech spokesmen and what that dry stick of a so-called mediator, Runciman, was up to, or what, more likely, he was avoiding, like coming up with any solution to the crisis.

Jimmy’s travel accreditation had come through from the Interior Ministry days ago, but he wondered, as he played with the sugar in the bowl, what could the young fellow do? Certainly he could shadow Corrie Littleton and find out the exact nature of her assignment, which might be more than she had said.

If Henlein was agreeing to an interview, and he already knew the Sudeten leader to be a master manipulator in his relations with the press, it might mean matters were coming to a head in the disputed regions and for his paper not to be there would be seen as a failure, quite possibly on his part, because regardless of right and wrong, it was never the editor who was the latter, always the man on the spot.

‘Ah! James,’ he cried, as his assistant came into the room, looking as ever like the keen young chap he was, more student than adult. ‘Just the fellow I’m looking for.’

Expecting to be invited to sit down, Jimmy Garvin was surprised when his normally urbane boss leapt up, grabbed his arm and aimed him straight out through the dining room door, Bartlett’s voice a whisper as he explained to him what he wanted him to do.

‘I shall be holed up at the Bayerischer Hof in Bamberg and you can keep me posted by telegram, and if it’s really hot stuff, use the phone.’