A Broken Land

CHAPTER ONE

As he walked along the Strand later that day, and not for the first time in his life, Callum Jardine had been left to reflect on the effect of coming back home from an area of conflict, something he had done after the Great War and more than once since; the discomfort caused by both the experience of battle and his personal knowledge of what was happening in the Horn of Africa, set against the palpable indifference of those with whom he now mingled on one of London’s busiest thoroughfares.

If the people he jostled and passed had concerns about events elsewhere in the world, it did not show; the Italians were busy annexing Ethiopia, using liberal doses of poison gas against spear-carrying tribesmen and civilians, while Nazi Germany, having torn up the Treaty of Versailles, had remilitarised the Rhineland, daring both France and Britain to react and crowing when they failed.

Having got away with that breach of their international obligations, the Nazis were now putting the thumbscrews on Austria to join them and create a Greater German Reich, stirring up what support they had to create instability. Here at home, Britain’s own fascist leader, Oswald Mosley, was ranting and raving at his blackshirts, being praised by the Daily Mail and becoming more like a cut-price version of Adolf Hitler every time he opened his mouth.

He could not help but wonder at what occupied the minds of those on the crowded pavements, apart from the everyday need to earn a crust. Was it sport perhaps? Fred Perry had won at Wimbledon for the third time; the Indian cricket team was struggling through a long summer of defeats, the supporters thrilled by Wally Hammond’s century, showing a return to form for England’s best batsman; and across the pond Max Schmeling had knocked out Joe Louis.

If the nation was still in the grip of an economic depression it hardly showed in the metropolis, especially in the short dead-end road that led to the imposing entrance of the Savoy Hotel, filled with taxis and long black limousines, all overseen by a magnificently attired doorman. The effects were being felt elsewhere, in mining villages and valleys, in the northern industrial centres and idle shipyards.

That induced a slight feeling of guilt, given his destination. Still, lunch at Simpson’s was always something to look forward to: properly aged rib of beef or saddle of lamb carved at the table, though it was not a place where the matters on which he was ruminating would stir even an eyebrow. To the denizens of Simpson’s the unemployed were lazy, not benighted, the dropping of mustard gas on innocents, as long as they were black or brown, more likely to lead to a degree of indifference rather than condemnation.

The spread of fascism in Europe, from the Black Sea to the Baltic, would be seen as a minor irritation in one of the great food bastions of the British upper crust; the clientele tended to be people who had a lot of admiration for anyone who made the trains run on time, added to a less than charitable attitude towards trade unions or workers demanding a decent standard of living.

Peter Lanchester was already ensconced, nursing a schooner of sherry, looking very much at home in the Grand Divan. The dark-panelled dining room was full, as usual, and there was the odd glance of recognition as the new arrival made his way to the table — London society was a touch incestuous and he was, after all, a person who carried with him a certain amount of notoriety; not many people can claim to have been acquitted of murder in an infamous crime passionel.

Good manners insisted he made eye contact with the one or two people who could be said to be part of his wife’s social circle, as well as some of the very attractive ladies present. He was, by nature, incapable of ignoring them. In turn, they could not disregard the arrival of an extremely good-looking man, well dressed but with a hint of the rogue in him, obviously very fit and sporting a deep and even suntan of the kind hard to achieve under English skies.

‘Cal, old boy! You look as if you have just come back from yachting with our besotted monarch.’

Said loud enough to be overheard at several tables, the remark was greeted with blank looks by the ignorant and a cold stare by the very few in the know. Edward, the yet-to-be-crowned King of England and Emperor of India, was sailing in the Mediterranean with his American lover, Wallis Simpson, divorced once and filing for a second, causing tongues to wag in the higher reaches of society, though the great unwashed at home were being kept in ignorance by a self-imposed news blackout. Every other national press in the world was openly speculating on how far the golden boy would go.

‘The American newspapers are saying he wants to marry her,’ Cal said quietly, as he slid into his seat, nodding at the invitation to join Peter in a sherry.

‘Cause a hell of a stink if he tries. Anyway, how do you know what the American papers are saying?’

‘Had a letter from a journalist chap I met in Ethiopia. Seems they’d rather print front-page stories about our king-emperor and his less-than-chaste mistress than anything about Italian atrocities.’

‘Romance sells newspapers, poison gas dropped on fuzzy-wuzzies does not.’

That remark had got Lanchester a glare, the return look — arched eyebrows added to a cynical grin — an indication that it had been a deliberate attempt to get under Cal’s skin. To his guest, Peter Lanchester had always been a mite free with his tongue when it came to the common insults, reflecting the attitudes of those with whom he mixed — members of London’s clubland, the country house set and golfing bores.

Eschewing the temptation to react, he had decided to stick to the king. ‘Not that one should care a fig what the booby is up to with his clapped-out paramour.’

That got an arched and cynical eyebrow. ‘You call our future king a booby?’

‘So would you if you’d met him.’ Reacting to the enquiring look, Cal had added, ‘Lizzie introduced me to him, given he moves in the same social circle as my too-easily-bored wife. As a man, he is short in the arse, vacuous in expression, vain, pig-ignorant and, for reasons best known to the gods, beloved by the great British public or the press that feed their fantasies.’

‘Quite a condemnation.’

‘I assume I am here for a purpose, Peter, and that has nothing to do with Edward Windsor?’

‘Little bird told me you were off to Barcelona?’ Cal was surprised, wondering how he knew, but he had merely nodded as a tall schooner of Manzanilla Pasada was placed before him. Lanchester had then smoothed a hand over his black swept-back hair and looked at him keenly. ‘Which prompts me to ask, Cal, if you have ever heard of a body called Juan March Ordinas?’

‘Hails from Majorca and has made a tremendous pile, originally from tobacco smuggling, though he was quite active during the war as well, shipping supplies of arms through the Mediterranean on the q.t. for both sides. Pals with the monarchical party, though he was threatened with choky after King Alfonso abdicated in ’31 and the Republic came into being. Not fancying a prison cell, he then escaped to Gibraltar where the powers that be, namely His Majesty’s Government, refused to hand him back to Spanish justice.’

‘And I thought I was going to surprise you.’

‘Come on, Peter, in the world in which I move Juan March is quite well known. You can’t amass illegal millions through smuggling without flagging yourself up to your competitors, not to mention those who might want to avail themselves of your routes and shipping. He also dabbled in lots of other nefarious things. My guess is he did a bit of spying for us in the war and I daresay there are some skeletons in our Whitehall cupboards as far as March is concerned that no one wants made public, hence the privilege of protection.’

‘He is holed up in London, Cal, and making mischief.’

‘Nature of the beast.’ Presented with a menu, Cal had aimed it at his host. ‘I hope you are not seeking to inveigle me into risking my neck for the price of a decent luncheon, because, let me tell you, he is not a fellow to mess with, he’s a killer. Quite a few who tried ended up floating face down in the Med.’

That had got a mischievous look. ‘Risking your neck is something you would do whether I asked you to or not.’

Callum Jardine was unable to fault that; he had only been back in London for a few weeks and already he had felt a sense of boredom setting in, not aided by his own personal problems of a socially active wife he could neither ignore nor live with. Peter Lanchester knew him too well; they had served as soldiers together in the last months of the Great War and afterwards in seeking to contain an insurgency in Mesopotamia.

It had been a loose connection, recently strengthened by what had happened in Germany, Romania and Ethiopia, but he could not say, in any way, that he knew the man well. There had been hints of a job with British Intelligence in some capacity, but Cal had no idea if he was still employed or was, as he had hinted, on the scrap heap due to financial cutbacks brought on by government economies.

Lanchester had come to Hamburg the previous autumn to both warn and engage his old acquaintance, claiming to represent a group of wealthy or well-connected individuals who had combined to seek to put a check on the threat of fascism to Great Britain. But, apart from a couple of obvious names — and you could only speculate if he was telling the truth regarding those he had revealed — he had consistently declined to mention the identities of most of his backers.

That they had power had been proven by the way the task Peter had asked him to perform, as well as aided him to execute, had been both financed and facilitated; that it had been risky went without saying — the clandestine purchase and shipment of the weapons of war could never be anything else. In the process, Jardine’s opinion of Peter Lanchester, not terribly high to begin with, had risen several notches; he was not a fellow with whom he shared much in common in the political or moral line, but he was both brave and gifted.

‘So, apart from the love of my company, Peter, why this?’

‘Over there in the corner,’ Peter had whispered, ‘those three chaps, glowering at the world in general and at each other in particular.’

That was said with a nod past his guest’s shoulder; too experienced to jerk his head round, it was several moments before Cal Jardine had looked to where Lanchester indicated. The table had been as described, but there seemed to be something not quite right about the party, a stiffness that made conversation look difficult. The impression was fleeting — it had to be, because he could not stare — but it was visible that they were either earnestly engaged in serious discussion, or possibly in disagreement.

‘The one with his back to you is MI6,’ Lanchester had continued, idly casting his eye over the menu. ‘Name of Cecil Beeb, and the grey-haired chap is Douglas Jerrold, editor of the Catholic Review, a nitwit who thinks the sun shines right out of Oswald Mosley’s alimentary canal. He makes support of the Mail look tepid. Swarthy one is Luis Bolin, London correspondent of a Spanish newspaper, also, coincidentally, very anti the present Republican government.’

‘And?’

‘Would you not be interested in what they might be talking about, given where you are off to?’

‘I’m not as nosy as you, Peter.’

‘A little bird has let us know Senor March is up to no good in the Iberian Peninsula.’

Even if he had not wanted to be intrigued, Cal had been unable to help it. ‘Go on.’

‘We think there’s going to be a military revolt in Spain, seeking to topple the Popular Front government, and Juan March is helping to finance the generals leading it. Rumour has it he has piled in over fifteen million US dollars already, with more promised when the balloon goes up.’

It had been hard not to look impressed, indeed not to emit a soft whistle, that being a very serious amount of money, but, taking into account March’s background and those who constituted his enemies, the man’s action made a certain sense.

‘It was the Republic that sought to put him in jail,’ Cal had replied, ‘so he can’t love democracy much, but from what I know of Juan March, which I admit is limited and second-hand, making money is his prime concern. Mind, if he pays out that much to put the soldiers in power, he can name his fee if they succeed.’

Since being apprised of the commission from Monty Redfern he had quite naturally sought to recall what he knew of present-day Spain, a seriously troubled country racked by endless political infighting, not that such a thing was new — it had been going on for years. Industrial walkouts, agrarian uprisings from peasant labourers, a full-blown revolution in the mining region of the Asturias involving a bloody military put-down, the whole mixed with various regions seeking autonomy from Madrid.

Yet when Cal had read of such things as general strikes he had to remind himself that there had been that in the United Kingdom ten years previously while he had been in the Middle East — the difference with the Iberian model being that the peasantry tended to murder the landowners and vice versa, while the industrial workers used guns and the authorities everything including tanks, artillery and bombs to put them down.

‘We also have information March is shipping weapons and that he has been in contact with both Berlin and Rome about further supplies.’

‘And the “we” you represent don’t like it.’

‘Not a bit.’

‘While HMG?’

‘Is either ignorant, which is doubtful, or indifferent, which is likely. We are paying the price for not stopping Hitler in the Rhineland and Mussolini in Ethiopia, we’ve a dictator now in Portugal, as well as a string of rightist governments throughout Central Europe, and that can only get worse if Spain goes the same way.’

There had been the temptation to press, Lanchester having connections that put him in a position to know much of what went by the name of ‘official thinking’, but it would have been pointless; he was close-lipped on anything like that.

‘Has anyone bothered to tell Madrid of what you suspect?’

‘I should think everyone has, but they either don’t believe it or are very sure it is all talk and will not come to fruition. Besides which, they are always being bothered by false alarms regarding military revolts. General Sanjurjo, the chap they are talking about as being the titular leader of this one, tried it on four years ago and fell flat on his hidalgo face.’

‘They did put him in jail.’

‘Then let him out again!’ Peter had protested. ‘Why they didn’t just shoot the bugger when they had the chance escapes me.’

‘You must reckon this one more serious.’

‘We do, because it is more comprehensive and better organised and that may have been conveyed to the Spanish government. But they are, Cal, a race not traditionally known for rapid activity or cohesive action at any time, while their army, if you exclude the chaps in Morocco, are bloody useless.’

That was an area in which Cal Jardine did possess knowledge, it being necessary to his trade. Nothing hardens and trains troops like battle, the element that also creates an esprit de corps. The Spanish Army of Africa, which included a unit modelled on the French Foreign Legion, had been fighting Riff tribesmen for decades. They were hard and professional; the concomitant of that was a body of experienced field officers accustomed to leading soldiers in combat right up to and including men who were now senior Spanish generals.

‘They are not completely at the old siesta, mind,’ Lanchester had continued, as if reading his guest’s mind. ‘The government have sent the dangerous brass hats off to far-flung postings to put a block on them plotting. Chap called Franco, who is army chief of staff and considered very suspect and second only to Sanjurjo, they have exiled to the Canary Islands.’

‘That won’t stop them,’ Cal had insisted. ‘Ever heard of radios?’

‘Precisely.’

‘So,’ Cal had asked, with a very slight jerk of his head towards the trio of gloom. ‘Why the interest?’

‘Jerrold over there is a fanatic and has introduced Cecil Beeb to Bolin, a man funded by the money of Juan March, who, as you say, would be eager to return home and has a bottomless pit of lolly to play with. If certain key generals are going to revolt, the only way some of them can get to the mainland in time to be effective is by aeroplane — Franco particularly — which makes it doubly interesting when we see such people lunching with a chap who just happens to be both a virulent anti-communist and a qualified pilot.’

‘You plan to keep an eye on Beeb?’ That had got a nod, as Cal Jardine added, not without irony, ‘Is it not a little bit obvious to let yourself be seen?’

‘Cal, old boy, we don’t have the resources to keep a clandestine eye on the bugger twenty-four hours a day, so the plan is to let him know he is under observation. Induce caution, don’t you know.’

‘And me?’

‘Since you are off to sunny Barcelona I thought it only fair to warn you.’

Such a throwaway line had raised the suspicion that Lanchester was being disingenuous; if Cal Jardine knew all about the villainies of Juan March, it was quite possible that one or more of the people who had been pointed out to him were conscious of his name and the nature of his past activities as a gunrunner.

Indeed, that might explain the atmosphere at their table; with limited resources, Peter Lanchester was stirring the pot by letting them be seen together, creating in the mind of the trio the impression that he had lines of enquiry and sources of information that, in truth, did not exist. As Cal had already said, the clandestine movement of arms was a business where knowing what others were up to was part of the game.

‘Of course,’ Peter had added, ‘it would also be of advantage if you were to keep an ear to the ground and let us know if anything occurs to stir the pot.’ That had got a wave of the menu. ‘Now we must choose some food and you must tell me about these People’s Olympics of yours, which I must say sounds dire.’

That had been like a throwing down of the gauntlet, teasing Cal to enquire as to how he knew so much and even, perhaps, to seek the source of his information; he was not prepared to play.

‘It could be fun,’ he had responded.

‘What!’ Peter had exclaimed, genuinely shocked. ‘All those pious lefties, Bolsheviks and anarchists?’

That had been said far too loudly and attracted looks and arched eyebrows from nearby tables that would have been less troubled, in such surroundings, if he had publicly uttered every filthy swear word in the canon.

Peter Lanchester thought he had Beeb taped, unaware that the fellow he looked to be taking on a picnic, Hugh Pollard, in the company of a couple of very attractive girls, was, as well as another MI6 operative, an aerial navigator. He had followed them to Brighton and observed the consumption of the food from their hamper and taken some pleasure in watching the females disrobe to both sunbathe and swim.

It was perfectly natural that on their way back to town from a day of sun and sea, they should pass through Croydon on the A23; what was not expected was that instead of driving straight on past the airport as they had on the way down, they should swing their open-top touring car into the avenue that led to the terminal building. Worse, they drove straight past that onto the tarmac, where a twin-engined de Havilland Dragon Rapide was already fired up, its engines warm.

If they had luggage, it was clearly already aboard, proving that their departure was a well-planned operation. Peter Lanchester did what he could to stop them, which was not much — he had no official capacity and the staff at the airport, when bearded, could only say the flight plan was one to take the aircraft to Paris, giving them no reason to block the take-off.

By the time he could get on the blower to someone with the power of prohibition, the Rapide was already airborne, the two attractive girls waving frantically from the car. On the observation deck he spotted the journalist Luis Bolin with a pair of binoculars in use. If there had been any doubt about the nature of the flight, the presence of the right-wing Spanish newspaperman laid it to rest. The flight plan was a myth and the projected revolt of the Spanish generals looked to be imminent.

The cable Peter Lanchester sent Cal Jardine was simple; it implied if he had no reason to stay, it might be time to hotfoot out. The recipient had indeed carried out the task for which he had come; the hostels and other accommodation for the Olympians had been paid for and Monty Redfern had change coming, while the opening ceremony was to take place on the morrow.

Yet, for all the febrile atmosphere of the city and the country, screaming headlines in the various journals, marches and countermarches and also a couple of high-profile political assassinations in Madrid — one of a prominent left-winger, the other, no doubt in revenge, the killing of a leading anti-socialist — the sun was shining, the food and wine were excellent and, of course, there was his interpreter, daughter of a Spanish father and an English mother, the blonde, petite and devastatingly beautiful Florencia Gardiola.