A Bitter Field

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Jimmy Garvin got to Cheb long before the car carrying Callum Jardine and Corrie Littleton, though he was unaware of the fact. All he knew was that by jumping off the train as soon as it entered the station and running for the ticket barrier he had a chance to get into a position to see if she followed, unsure what to do when he saw there was no sign of her.

He knew, having looked at his watch as the train drew in, that it was bang on time, which led him to reflect on that often-quoted saw mouthed by those idiots who admired Benito Mussolini, that ‘he had made the trains run on time’. Why was such an accolade never applied to an efficient democracy like Czechoslovakia?

Bartlett had told him about the car she had got into, so he assumed she must be coming by road, so his first task was to find himself somewhere to stay that was not the Victoria Hotel. Being a bit of a spa town, a sort of minor Carlsbad, there were quite a number of places dedicated to those taking the waters and he elected to walk to find one.

The difference outside the station — managed and run by Czechs — was palpable, the buildings flying flags showing more of the black-red-black ensign of the Sudetenland than the far fewer Czech tricolours. Added to that there was a grimness about those people he passed, their looks not aided by the wet weather, albeit, given the puddles in the road, the worst of the downpour had passed and was now just a light drizzle.

The choice of one flying the national flag was deliberate; Jimmy knew the object of Corrie Littleton’s visit and he guessed she would park herself as close to Konrad Henlein as she could.

In a place with few visitors now — no one was coming for the waters in a potential war zone — he soon realised that in the hotel he chose he was the only guest; no wonder he had been greeted and fussed over like a saviour.

In the Maybach the hood was now firmly closed, the heavy rain beating a tattoo on the windscreen with which the small wipers were struggling to cope, creating a cocoon which closed them in and seemed to make more intimate their conversation, with Corrie now talking about her upbringing.

Cal knew she came from Boston but was now treated to the fact that she had gone to Bryn Mawr, which was apparently a prestigious and famous woman-only college in Pennsylvania, right up there with Harvard and Yale.

‘But no boys?’

Corrie laughed. ‘We were told we did not need them.’

‘End of the human race.’

‘To prosper, not procreate, but we could do that too if we went looking.’

‘Did you?’

‘Once or twice.’

The tone of that response was not a joyful one, which made Cal wonder if she had been let down in her past. He couldn’t ask; he was not well enough acquainted for that and it did not fall in the need-to-know category regarding what they might face in Cheb.

‘Is that a petrol pump by the roadside?’ Cal said, peering through the rain, which was as good a way as any of avoiding that subject.

‘What, again?’

They had stopped and filled the car in each sizeable town through which they passed — an eight-litre V12 engine used a lot of fuel — but that was not the reason; Cal liked as full a tank as possible on the very good grounds that you never knew when you were going to need it.

Corrie had broken him down earlier by refusing to be diverted, and in truth he could see that she needed the background she claimed, and he had to admit being married and the circumstances of his attachment. Oddly, like his last days in London, he found his wife a subject he could now discuss without the onset of gloom.

‘I was young and going off to war, Lizzie was beautiful and…’ Cal paused. ‘You have to be facing that kind of thing to know what drives men and women to rush into matrimony.’

‘You mean apart from stupidity.’

‘Was it Doctor Johnson who said “the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully”? The Western Front was a bit like that. No one told you but the average survival time of a subaltern when there was a big battle on was about two weeks. I was lucky — I survived.’

‘But you were in love, right?’

‘Very much so, but the time we had was too tight to allow for much investigation of what made us tick. My wife craves excitement.’

‘And you don’t?’ Corrie said with disbelief.

‘Maybe that was the mutual attraction, but my adventures tend to be outdoors.’

That confused her until the message struck home, which produced, ‘Sorry I asked.’

‘Don’t be.’

‘It’s a bitch she won’t give you a divorce. I suppose you’ve been a good boy yourself?’

He was not going there; one, he had not been and two, if you’re a gentleman you don’t boast about your conquests. Besides there was an affair he wanted to avoid mentioning because that would still be painful.

‘I hope you are not preparing a profile for your magazine.’

‘Make a good one, especially if you have had lots of love affairs. International adventurer with the soft heart of a romantic poet.’

Cal was suddenly very serious. ‘Don’t ever go thinking I have a soft heart, Corrie, because I haven’t. If you run my name through your records I suspect it will come up even in the USA.’

‘Why not save me the time?’

‘It doesn’t make for contentment.’

‘Sounds like you did something real bad.’

‘It was,’ Cal replied, not seeking to keep the bitterness out of his voice. ‘Another checkpoint ahead, so go to work on your smile.’

‘Physician heal thyself.’

‘You’re right,’ Cal replied; memory of the blood-spattered wall of his marital bedroom had made him glare.

‘Right,’ McKevitt snapped, looking at the first replies that had come back from Miklos. ‘Get those numbers off by telegram to the passport office in London. I want the names on them checked for anything that isn’t right and I want a rocket up their arse so they don’t just bury it.’

‘You still have not told us what it is you are after, Noel.’

McKevitt looked up at Major ‘Gibby’ Gibson, the Prague station chief, and gave him the coldest stare he could, which was coming it a bit high with a man of his age and experience, some twenty years in the service and an unblemished record.

‘There are things you don’t need to know, Gibby, but when you do you will be informed.’

Gibson wanted to reply that this was his patch, even if the fellow he was talking to was the man who ran the London Desk and, though junior in years, his superior. Though a hierarchy like any other government body, the SIS ran on slightly different lines and it was simply not done to override a station chief, and even worse to do so in such a public manner as to undermine his local authority. McKevitt in briefing everyone had done just that.

With the extra staff he had been given, plus his own skills and contacts, Gibson had done a good job of keeping London up to speed on everything happening in both the capital city and beyond, yet he had been obliged to drag men off what he saw as valuable work to meet the needs of Noel McKevitt, which might just have been acceptable with an explanation.

If it had displeased him to issue the orders, they had been received just as badly by those tasked to execute them, all professionals who felt they were being sidelined from proper intelligence work to do the kind of thing usually allotted at home to lowly beat coppers, and such a feeling had permeated most of the building.

Down in the basement Cipher Room he handed over McKevitt’s list to the clerk who ran it and gave him orders to route it through Broadway. Coming from just down the road would ensure a faster response than anything from hundreds of miles away.

‘And Tommy,’ Gibson said. ‘I’m in need of a little favour.’

‘Whatever you need, Major,’ the clerk replied, giving, as he always did, Gibby’s old military rank; he was a man who was unfailingly polite to everyone, who knew the names of, and never failed to ask after, wives, children and girlfriends — in short, the major was popular.

Gibson went to a desk to compose, with the codebooks, a despatch of his own to Broadway, pre-dating it to the day the original instruction had come from the Central European Desk to check the British nationals.

In it he did not criticise McKevitt’s demand — that would be counterproductive — but he did feel the need to point out how that would impact on the amount of hard information coming out of the Prague station in the coming days with his men so occupied.

When he handed it over to the clerk, Tommy read it, fingered the date and smiled.

‘I owe you one, Tommy.’

‘You don’t owe me a thing, sir, happy to be of service.’

Tommy was typing before Gibson left the Cipher Room; that would land on Noel McKevitt’s desk and he would only read it on his return to London, the delay being explained away easily as just one of those standard cock-ups that happen daily.

But it would cover Gibson’s back if what was happening was questioned on the top floor, a standard precaution in any establishment where there was competition for the plum postings, added to a culture of passing the buck if things went amiss.

With the weather clearing a bit, and approaching what the ethnic Germans would call the border, it was just possible to see the troop concentrations by the roadside, tented encampments and lorry parks stretching into the misty distance under canopies of trees to protect against air attack.

At the next checkpoint there were tankettes, Tancik vz. 33s, that if they looked impressive to Corrie, Cal knew would be mincemeat to the latest armoured vehicles the Germans could put in the field, but what it told him, without the need to look at road signs or maps, was that they were now in the disputed areas.

The flags came next and increased the further north-west they drove, rising into the high hills, the not-quite-mountainous region of the Bohemian borderlands; to the ethnic Germans this might be the province of Carlsbad, but to the Czechs it was Karlovy Vary.

By the time they got to Cheb the red and black horizontally striped banners were ubiquitous, nowhere more so than on the Victoria Hotel itself, which was festooned with them, and just in case you did not know what it was, there were men outside in the dun-brown-coloured uniform of their Sturmabteilung counterparts across the frontier and, like them, wearing side arms in big leather holsters.

The incongruity of a uniformed porter rushing to their car as soon as they stopped nearly had Cal laughing, it was so out of keeping with everything else he could see, and that was replicated in the hotel reception, which if the lobby was dark and rather Teutonic in its decor, conformed to what was needed: a desk at which to register, couches on which to sit, pastoral scenes on the walls and vases full of flowers to give a peaceful ambiance, and two staircases leading off from the lobby.

‘Miss Corrine Littleton, of Collier’s Weekly. ’ She threw out a hand to indicate Cal, standing back because this was her show now. ‘And my interpreter. I believe you are expecting us.’

The man behind the desk wore a pince-nez and had that superior air of hotel receptionists of not-quite-top-flight establishments everywhere, who always behave as if they are doing you a favour by letting you soil their pristine accommodation. This one had the added non-attraction of having in his lapel a Nazi Party swastika badge.

Out came a heavy ledger, and the receptionist ran a finger down what Cal suspected was an imaginary list — this was not the most desirable destination hostelry in the world right at this moment — then shook his head as if someone might have got something wrong by even thinking of letting a room, finally replying in rapid German to acknowledge the booking of two rooms.

‘Did he say yes or no, Doc?’ Corrie asked.

Cal took over, annoyed that already she was not calling him by the name on the passport, and went through, with some surprise, the usual registration process with their passports, which did not take long, and soon they were being escorted up one of the sets of stairs, followed by both porter and their bags, to rooms on the fourth floor.

‘No elevator?’

‘They’re hardy mountain folk round here — and it’s a lift.’

‘What do we do next?’

‘Wait to be contacted. That snotty sod downstairs will now, no doubt, tell whoever we need to meet that we are here.’

‘I could sure use a drink.’

‘Lobby, ten minutes,’ Cal replied, ‘so could I.’

Corrie was still complaining about her ‘lousy Martini’, Cal reading a local newspaper, when the woman Cal decided on first sight to call the ‘Ice Maiden’ appeared and came towards them, dressed in dirndl-type clothing as if the rest of her appearance was not enough to mark her out as German.

Her blonde hair was braided tightly from the front of her head to the back and she was stunning-looking, with clear skin and large bright-blue eyes, if a trifle severe of expression and, tellingly, with no sign on her hands of a matrimonial band. Being a gentleman, Cal stood up, but it was the still sitting Corrie she addressed.

‘Fraulein Littleton?’

‘I prefer Miss.’

That response was ignored. ‘And Herr Barrowman, your interpreter, Ja?’

‘You speak good English, Fraulein…’

‘Metzer,’ she replied. ‘I help run our leader’s press office. English is very necessary to counter the fabrications of the foreign journals.’

‘Or,’ Corrie snapped, ‘to understand the complexities.’

She might as well have said ‘lies’. Cal, seeing the eyes narrow, was quick to intervene, his voice genial, at the same time seeking to throw Corrie a warning glance; she needed, he needed these people to think they were sympathetic.

‘Which Miss Littleton has come a long way to unearth. I must say I too will find it fascinating to explore the way you have united the people of Bohemia and Moravia into such a powerful political body. It’s quite an achievement and one we discussed on the way from Prague.’

It was almost comical — indeed it would have been in peaceful times — the way her face changed at the mention of the Czech capital. It was as if someone had just farted and walked away from a bad smell.

‘You must be tired after your journey, Herr Barrowman, and I have to tell you it is too late in the day to meet with Herr Henlein, there would not be enough time before he goes home to dine with his family.’

‘How admirable that a man with so much to do, a man indeed of destiny, has time to keep his family obligations.’

‘That is something he does every evening, Herr Barrowman, unless there is a crisis. The hotel houses his offices but he rarely sleeps here.’

‘Well that suits me, Fraulein, I need to work up some notes.’

Cal noted the tone of Corrie’s voice, which was not friendly, but it perfectly matched the utterly insincere smile with which the Ice Maiden responded; it was cold enough to freeze a volcano.

There was something in the air and Cal knew what it was: the Ice Maiden was smiling at him but not at her, which reminded him of the atmosphere Lizzie created when she saw a rival, something she was inclined to spot often and at a hundred paces. His wife could not bear it that anyone around her should be able to compete for male attention.

The Ice Maiden, even if he did not know her, was doing the same, but why was Corrie Littleton reacting in the way she did?

‘I am sure you know already, Fraulein Littleton, what it is you want to ask our leader. A typewriter and paper will be sent to your room, Fraulein Littleton, along with ample paper so you may write up your article.’

‘I was just going to make notes and do the composition when I get back to Prague.’

‘But our leader would be very interested to see what you write.’

‘And no doubt make some suggestions for alterations.’

‘He must be careful not to be misrepresented.’

‘I am used to my own machine.’

‘If you struggle with what we send you, I am sure we can find someone to type for you.’

‘Your kindness overwhelms me,’ Corrie said, with very sweetly delivered irony.

‘Might I suggest,’ Fraulein Metzer said to Cal, her face going from frosty to smiling, ‘that you dine in the hotel and we will set a time for tomorrow.’

‘Sunday?’

‘With the amount of things happening in our poor land everyone must work, even on a supposed Holy Day.’

‘Time to freshen up,’ Corrie said, finishing her drink and glaring at the German woman. ‘I’m feeling a little soiled.’

‘I take it a promenade after dinner would not be forbidden?’ Cal asked, his tone pleasant to cover for Corrie’s acidity.

The Ice Maiden’s big blue eyes got bigger. ‘What a strange expression, Herr Barrowman; how can such a thing as going for a walk be forbidden in a free country?’

Jimmy Garvin was sitting at the cafe attached to the station, wondering if he could avoid buying another beer and wishing he had the kind of expenses that went to the Vernon Bartletts of this world; the money they all spent in the bar of the Ambassador was staggering.

Not that he had been shocked by their excess, given it was exactly the same in and around Bouverie Street where the paper had its offices, a culture of drinking that often saw stories filed from the floor of a pub rather than a reporter’s desk.

He did not know how lucky he was; the station cafe was Czech-owned and thus silent, while inside the hotel, those he was waiting for were sitting, trying not to look bored at the interminable speech being delivered from Nuremberg by Joseph Goebbels.

His voice was rather nasal and even if Corrie could not understand what he was saying she could recognise the tone of mockery in it, his jokes, which Cal knew to be heavy and unfunny, roared at by his audience as well as laughed at by many sharing the dining room.

No one talked; it was either considered impolite when the Minister of Propaganda was making a speech, or their fellow diners were afraid to look as though they did not believe every lie he was telling. The exception to the sarcasm was any mention of the Fuhrer, which came with great ‘ Heils! ’, and then he went into that standard Nazi trick of the ever rising crescendo of threats, which would be shattered against the iron wall of National Socialism.

The worldwide Jewish conspiracy would not halt the forward march of the German Volk; beware Bolshevism and the Slavic hordes, for the righteous anger of the Aryan master race was moving forward to face and defeat their machinations. During all this Cal had to struggle not to shout at the big radio relaying this, his only compensation the best part of a bottle of very good wine; Corrie only had one glass.

‘Make out you’re not feeling well,’ Cal insisted as he drained the last of that and leant toward her looking concerned.

‘What?’ Corrie whispered.

‘Mop the brow, clutch the stomach, unless you want to listen to all this drivel. He will go on for at least another hour.’

She gave a sterling performance of a woman in some distress, doing as he bid, clutching his hand and, with her auburn near-red hair and pale skin, able to look ill without really trying. Cal stood and helped her to her feet and with a backward glance of deep apology to the fascists still listening to Goebbels they left the room.

The sight of Corrie Littleton and her companion, under the canopy of light outside the hotel, emerging into the cool evening, had him draining the dregs he had been hanging on to, only to realise that when the time came to move, what he had consumed, several steins, needed to be got rid of. The hesitation, whether to use the toilet or not, allowed him to see that as soon as the pair walked on, a couple of Brownshirts appeared from the shadows to fall in behind them.

‘That was not the finest meal I have ever consumed,’ Cal said, ‘but the wine was OK.’

‘Take it for what it was, free.’

That brought a happy smile. ‘It’s nice to eat on someone else’s expenses.’

‘I hope my boss in New York knows about fine Moselles.’

‘If you like I’ll write him some recommendations, the Germans make some very superior wines.’

‘He drinks beer.’

‘Then he should have come instead of you, Bohemia is the home of beer.’

Cal, as he said that, made to cross the road, which naturally allowed him to look behind him. The two fellows in uniform and jackboots made no attempt to avoid his eye, indeed the way they were looking at him and Corrie, it was as if they were lining them up for the firing squad.

‘We are being followed.’

‘Big deal, we’re not going anywhere.’ Corrie looked back and waved, which made the pair look even more grim than before. ‘Nice guys, cheerful.’

‘The trouble with Fascism is that it allows the real shits to have a bit of power. Give an idiot a uniform and he will do anything you want him to do to keep it.’

For all his flippancy, it was worrying that they were being tailed, even if it was obvious. At some point Cal had to make contact with Veseli and there were no arrangements in place, which left it all to the other man.

‘They’re gonna demand to see what I write before we leave, aren’t they?’

‘Probably more than that, Corrie; once they’ve approved it don’t be surprised if they want to cable it to New York for you.’

‘Damn,’ she spat, taking his arm.

‘So I have to get you back to Prague in time to correct what they receive. Best make two sets of notes, let them see one, the flattering stuff, and keep the real copy on you at all times.’

That had Cal’s arm squeezed tightly, which he enjoyed. ‘Are you training me to be a spy, Cal?’

‘Much more devious that that, my dear Corrie,’ he grinned, ‘I’m helping you to be a journalist.’

‘“My dear?”’ she said softly, and questioningly.

Their promenade had brought them to the crowded central square, clearly the old central marketplace, where loudspeakers were playing Goebbels’ speech to a large mixed assembly, many of them in uniform, some holding flaring torches, all listening intently one minute, then crying out in passion the next, and that made them stop.

‘He’s still going strong.’

‘Public radio,’ Corrie said. ‘On the streets, just like Times Square.’

‘You should visit Germany, they have this in every main street, square and in the railway stations — loudspeakers on the buildings and lamp posts to tell the population what to think.’

Cal had got it wrong about the length of Goebbels’ speech, for the little mountebank was coming to the end of his peroration, his voice hoarse, his demands for the nation to be faithful to the Fuhrer and his iron will like some gospel preacher, the crowd now screaming at his every word so that it melded into one indistinguishable howl, with the same from the far end of the square.

Now the radio started billowing out martial music as, no doubt, Goebbels was played off the podium to march down an avenue of thousands of cheering supporters, hundreds of banners, and illuminated with swaying searchlights. Both Cal and Corrie had seen the newsreels and whatever you thought about the Nazis it had to be admitted they knew how to stage such an event.

Not to be outdone the local Nazis in their brown uniforms were forming up, the civilians moving out to form an avenue down which they could pass; clearly they had decided to march through the town with their flaring torches and their own massive swastika banners.

Having assembled at the bottom of the square in ranks, a shouted order filled the air and they were moving. Cal and Corrie stood to one side as they came closer, the boots cracking on the cobblestones loudly enough to be heard even over the sound of their raucous singing.

The men were dressed like their escorts, who were now standing with their arms outstretched in their fascist salute: dun-brown uniform shirts buttoned to the neck, gleaming jackboots and riding breeches, a Sam Brown-style belt and shoulder strap and a swastika armband.

‘That, if you don’t know the tune, is the “Horst Wessel Song”, Corrie. He was one of those idiots I told you about who was stupid enough to get himself killed in a street brawl with the Communists. Now he’s a Nazi martyr.’

It was the soft, kepi-type forage cap that had stopped Cal from really looking at the man leading the parade, two flag-carrying acolytes a pace behind, goose-stepping with his arm up, a tall very Aryan figure, and it was only when he got really close and he could see the face that he realised that he was looking at the man he had been introduced to as Captain Karol Veseli.

The head did not turn, not even the eyes flicked sideways as he stamped by, so Cal, unsure if he had been spotted, raised his hat so that his face was in full view, an act which shocked Corrie.

‘Jesus, what are you doing?’

‘Making friends locally, Corrie, which, if you want your story, you better get doing too.’

Jimmy Garvin, well back, had been able to keep tabs on Corrie Littleton by just watching those following her, without having the faintest idea of where it would lead; he certainly did not want to be seen or to talk to her, it was more in the nature of something to do.

‘Christ Almighty!’

He actually swore out loud when he saw that hat come off the head of the man he had been told was Callum Jardine and the sight did not fit with what Vernon Bartlett had told him, which, while not a fully formed picture, had been underlined by one very salient fact: Jardine was a rabid anti-fascist.

What was a man with his background, albeit that it was mysterious, doing raising his hat to a bunch of Brownshirt thugs? Jimmy Garvin might be young but he was not stupid and even if he did not know it yet he was already imbued with something that could only be called a nose for a story.

Right now he was thinking this was all wrong and there were only two conclusions to draw from that. One that Vernon Bartlett was wrong about this Jardine, or that this man with a funny background was up to something here in the Sudetenland, and he was inclined to plump for the latter. The question was, should he contact Bartlett and ask for instructions?

That he decided against that was hardly a surprise; handed a possible scoop no journalist, however much he’s a tyro, is going to give it away to anyone else. The really hard question was, how was he going to pursue it?

At that same moment Cal was wondering about Veseli, even more certain that was not his real name in this neck of the woods. But he was less worried about how he was going to make contact; in that outfit he could walk right into the Victoria Hotel and just say hello.