A Bitter Field (11 page)

A nod saw both glasses filled, with Peter copying the tasting ritual. Rated as among the best wines in the world, a Domaine de Romanée-Conti was not something to be consumed in a rush, so the two lingered there for some time, reminiscing and planning.

Tempted as Cal was, there was no point in taking Vince Castellano for anything like a similar meal in Paris; he was not in favour of eating what he called ‘foreign muck’ and besides, there was no time, given they had airline reservations on a busy route that now provided the only convenient way into Czechoslovakia that did not involve a massive detour. It was a taxi from Gare du Nord to the airport, followed by a long wait to be processed through to a flight that only carried fourteen people.

Anxious French customs officers were behaving as if Cal and Vince were entering the country, not leaving, which perhaps only served to underline the nervous nature of everyone in Europe when it came to Czechoslovakia. Passports were scrutinised, luggage carefully examined, with both Cal and Vince staring at the man carrying out the latter task with the bland indifference of the seasoned traveller.

The country was of particular concern to France, who had had a strong hand in its creation, the same applying to Poland – building up allies on its eastern front to contain Germany, which was bound to be resurgent, had been its most serious political objective after reparations when negotiating the Treaty of Versailles.

She had also spent two decades and much treasure training the
Czech armed forces and building their defences; indeed there was still a military mission in Prague under a senior French general, that to give credence to a treaty of mutual protection that included Russia – a pledge to come to their aid if they were attacked by Germany and, of course, vice versa. Easy to sign, it was a damn sight more difficult to honour in the prevailing climate.

The daily newspapers they had read on the way over the Channel showed the rhetoric was being ramped up in Berlin as the delegate members headed to Nuremberg for their Tenth Party Congress, to be called, since they had taken over Austria in their manufactured coup, the ‘Rally of Greater Germany’.

The whole of this was being faithfully reported as a wondrous event by the right-wing dailies, most notably Lord Rothermere’s
Daily Mail.
In essence, if more measured, many of the others were not far behind, only the
News Chronicle
and the
Daily Herald
showing natural doubt, and the
Manchester Guardian
outright disgust.

All reported the rants from Hitler and Goebbels in the build-up to the Congress, about the supposed atrocities being committed by the Czechs against the poor beleaguered Sudetenlanders, whose only desire was, naturally, to be allowed to live their lives according to their own lights.

There was still no mention of any desire to be reunited with their brethren across the border, though Cal suspected from his briefing that was now the aim of Konrad Henlein and the
Sudetendeutsche Partei,
which he led, even if, as he did, he continued to deny it.

He had lived in Nazi Germany long enough to know the value to the state of the big lie: scream ‘atrocity’ loud enough and often enough on the radio and in the press and even the most sceptical observer begins to see reasons to believe it to be true, especially if
there are no outlets to present an opposite point of view.

If that had been true in a country where the totalitarian reality stared one in the face, how much more effective was it in those supine democracies where the populace could barely comprehend the awful truth of National Socialism, people who would also, very likely, struggle to point out Czechoslovakia on a map.

Vince had an easy way of putting the whole thing into perspective; for him, all he saw in the
Daily Mail
, the paper which was most vocal in its support for Hitler, Mussolini and that ‘turd’ Oswald Mosley, was lies. This constituted a trio which, even with his Italian parentage, he hated with a passion. It was, in his pithy phrase, ‘Pure bollocks, guv.’

Eventually they got aboard the twin-engined DC2 and it took off, lumbering into the air with a full passenger load and, flying from an airport to the north of Paris, it soon took them over some of the old battlefields of the World War. For anyone who had been there the scars in the landscape, though they were green and verdant instead of mud-brown now, were unmistakable.

From on high on a clear summer day the line of the trenches, gentle depressions now, stood out starkly in the fields of grazing land and wheat, running from north-west to south-east, as did the mass of craters that littered the otherwise fertile fields surrounding them, holes that regularly threw up body parts.

There were trees again where their predecessors had been reduced to matchwood, rebuilt farmhouses, and cows grazing contentedly in well-ordered pastures. When you thought of the millions who had perished on that restored landscape it was easy to see very good reasons to not want to go through the whole thing again.

Nor was it simple to equate the trouble of the country to which
they were headed with the peaceful-looking parts of France over which they then flew, those that had been occupied but untouched by trench warfare, the very fields over which Cal and Peter Lanchester had advanced to battle.

That was until, just over the broad grey River Rhine, their passenger aircraft was buzzed by a couple of German single-engined fighters, seemingly, according to the steward, a common practice, a way of telling those on board that their passage in a Czech aircraft was only possible through German tolerance.

Just over an hour later the rolling hills of Bavaria gave way to the more broken country of Southern Bohemia, part of that chain of hills and deep forested valleys in which lay the formidable Czech defence line, copied from the French Maginot Line, which Cal had described to Peter Lanchester.

Not that anything could be seen of the artillery-filled cupolas and machine gun-bearing pillboxes, but to an experienced military eye it was very possible to understand how formidable it could be to advance into a terrain in which it would be easy to inflict casualties on and hurt even a well-equipped enemy.

The next cause for exhilaration was when the banking plane showed the numerous church spires of one of the jewels of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire: Prague, the city of a hundred churches, looked peaceful at this distance and that was maintained when they landed, to be greeted by folk who seemed grateful they had troubled to travel to their country, whatever their purpose.

Cal liked the Czechs despite their airs; they tended to speak German as a second language, which meant he could communicate, drove their cars on the left, were honest, if rather strict in their morality, and proud to be citizens of an independent nation, that
proved by the calm way they had mobilised in May in the face of Hitler’s bluster, getting to the colours some eight hundred thousand fighting men and forcing the Führer to back down.

Most had been stood down but it was obvious the country was still feeling threatened. There was a strong military presence at the airport and Cal had noticed both sides of the runway were lined with trucks, which could be driven on to the concrete strip to block it in the event of an emergency. The Czechs had an air force, but it was nothing compared to the Luftwaffe.

There were knots of soldiers on the route into the city and, even if the roadblocks had been moved to the side, evidence of a state of emergency was more obvious still the closer they got to the city centre. All the shop and office windows were still taped to counter the effects of blast and some of the larger buildings remained as Cal had last seen them, sandbagged at their entrances; this was a country on edge.

It seemed much more crowded than before and there were, too, beggars on the streets in a quantity Cal had not seen on his last visit, when he had passed through on his way to and from Brno. There would be refugees from the borderlands, and not just Jews or communists; anyone who dreaded the consequences of war would have tried to get out of the way of the feared invasion.

Much as he liked luxury, they needed to reside somewhere discreet, so the reservations Cal had made were at the Meran Hotel and in the names of the passports supplied by Snuffly Bower. He was now Thomas Barrowman and Vince, Frederick Nolan. They had discreetly switched their documents at the airport, once they had cleared Czech customs, their original travel papers going under the reglued false bottoms.

The Meran was an old family-run establishment, not in any way luxurious but central and not the sort of place in the lobby of which Cal was likely to run into the army of journalists now camping out in the Czech capital. On his previous visit he had stayed at one of the other top establishments, the Alcron, where he was known as Mr Moncrief, and that he would have to avoid.

The Czechs, not surprisingly given their staunch association with France, had adopted many of her customs; they operated on a similar system of hotel registration, in which the passport details were entered on cards to be picked up by the local bobbies before being sent on to the Ministry of the Interior where they were filed.

After a bit of juggling due to the influx of refugees, he and Vince managed to get separate rooms. They were lodged in a narrow building hemmed in on both sides by others of equal height. The hotel had a single front entrance, easy to watch, and at the rear the back doors led to a series of alleyways that would make it easy to disappear into a main thoroughfare without anyone in pursuit being sure of the direction taken.

Rule number one in a foreign country was to make sure you had a safe way out, and that could only be by a passage through Poland or Rumania and not by air or train, where papers would be bound to be rigorously checked, so a whole day was spent in doing what he and Vince had done in Bucharest two years previously.

They bought a reliable second-hand car for cash, in this case an early model of the Tatra 77, which if it looked odd to the Anglo-Saxon eye was at least, with its aerodynamic body, reasonably fast. Next came clothing, along with the necessary maps, non-perishable food and a supply of water as well as cans of petrol. Another absolute necessity was to have cut a couple of spare door keys.

It took time to do all that, even more in a strange city to find a safe place to park and leave the Tatra, Cal insisting it must be on both a bus and tram route that ran from the city centre. Once that was found, under the front passenger seat went their proper documents, passports and Cal’s genuine driving licence; from now on they would operate on those provided by Snuffly Bower.

The last thing to do was to remove and hide the distributor cap in the boot of the car, thus immobilising the engine; the Czechs might be an honest lot, but with the number of refugees around, many of them people seeking to get out of the country right now – Prague alone had a population of Jews rated at forty thousand – there was a high risk of a long-parked car being stolen.

‘Right,’ Cal said, once they were back near Wenceslas Square. ‘Food, a good night’s sleep, and in the morning I will set about seeing what we can do.’

T
he initial contact when buying those light machine guns, given to him by a Spanish republican envoy, had been a ministerial aide called Janek. He had a Catalan wife and worked at the offices of the Czech Finance Ministry as an aide to the minister.  

To carry out the trade had involved Cal in several secret meetings with him, before he was passed on to others, but the notion of just calling at his home and saying hello was not one to contemplate. This was an operation in which there was no way of knowing where it would lead; he could not involve the man’s family or jeopardise his livelihood.  

Nor could he visit him at the ministry without raising questions about an association that was supposed to be for that one transaction only and had been kept within a strict circle of those who needed to be consulted and squared politically, both to process the payments and call in the necessary documentation to transport the guns out
of the country. What had been done might have had the nod from above, but it was illegal and thus stood as a career risk to those who had participated.

Cal did, however, know the café at which the man took a cup of morning coffee before going to work and he was there before him, keeping his face hidden until Janek walked in, a clutch of morning papers under his arm. For someone not versed in the craft of the intelligence game, Milas Janek was good; there was no startled reaction, indeed no apparent reaction at all.

He made his greetings to the habitual morning crowd and indulged in the usual banter of well-worn jokes, probably about weather and wives, though being in Czech they were a mystery to Cal. He exchanged normal pleasantries with the staff and in every respect acted as if a man who could threaten his continued employment was nowhere to be seen.

It was instructive, though, to see him light up a cigarette, to notice the ever so slight tremor in the hand that held the match as it went to the tip, as well as the deep concentration he gave to his newspapers as he flicked through the pages. Having seen him in this place before, at another time and on other prearranged business, Cal was aware Janek was nervous.

There was nothing he could do to make him immediately less so, as he had no intention of speaking to him in public. The wait for him to finish was longer than normal; Janek was taking his time, no doubt wondering if Cal would go away, but eventually he had to make moves to leave. He would be due at his desk, just outside the office of the finance minister.

Cal was on his heels as he exited the café, heading out onto a bustling street made noisy by the volume of traffic and the passing
of screeching tram wheels, in which getting to Janek’s shoulder presented no problem other than the fact that he might be jostled by those hurrying in the opposite direction, and when he spoke, in German, his voice was low.

‘I need to be put in touch with Moravec.’

Janek did not turn his head, staring straight ahead as he replied. ‘Why?’

‘For the good of Czechoslovakia.’

‘Easy to say.’

‘I’m not here to buy weapons this time.’

‘Just as well, we need all the guns we have got for ourselves.’

‘Moravec can answer certain questions I want to pose.’

Janek actually sounded surprised. ‘You want to pose?’

‘To which I need answers,’ Cal hissed, deciding to take a flyer and make a claim that was way outside his brief. ‘And so does the British Government.’

That broke his stride a little, but they walked on in silence for some twenty paces before Janek spoke again. ‘That bench ahead, you see it?’

‘Yes,’ Cal replied, his eyes flicking to the named object some twenty yards along on the edge of the pavement, a double back-
to-back
seat shaded by a tree.

‘I am going to sit facing the street.’

Cal immediately killed his pace – Janek had been walking quite fast – to open a gap between them and watched as his man did as he had said, dusting the seat with a flapping hand then easing himself down and opening one of his newspapers to cover his face. Cal sat with his back to him facing the shopfronts, crossing his legs and adopting the air of a curious bystander.

‘Talk.’

There was no time for long explanations as Cal outlined what he was after and why. ‘The only person who has the information is Moravec, but I doubt it is safe to just turn up at the Interior Ministry desk and ask for him.’

‘You’re right, the place is crawling with German agents, not all of them from the border areas.’

‘The ministry, you mean?’

‘The whole city!’ Janek spat. ‘Even I might be being followed.’

Cal glanced back to where Vince was standing, idly looking at shoes in a shop window. He was without a lit cigarette, a sign that he had spotted no one taking an excessive interest in either Cal or Janek.

‘As far as I can tell you are not.’ Cal spun and used the back of the bench to lever himself up, surreptitiously dropping a card into Janek’s lap as he did so. ‘Get Moravec to call me at this number and ask to be put through to room number 47.’

‘What name?’

‘He doesn’t need that. Make it a personal visit and don’t you speak to him on the phone. After that you are out of it.’

‘A piece of advice.’

‘What?’ Cal replied, bending to retie his shoelace.

‘Speak English on the streets even if you are not understood, it will be better for you. Your German sounds too good, too natural and nothing like the accent of a Sudetenlander or a German resident of Prague. Even they know it’s considered unpatriotic to speak the language of our enemies right now and use Czech in public. My fellow countrymen are not too fond of real Germans at the moment.’

‘Just get Moravec to call.’

Cal walked back the way he had come, passing Vince without saying a word. His minder waited for ten seconds, then began to follow, his eyes ranging over those between them looking for things he had noticed before: an item of clothing, particularly distinctive shoes, they being the one thing, unlike a coat or a hat, which could not be quickly changed.

The voice sounded different on the phone, soft and near to a whisper. He did not know the man that well anyway, having met him only briefly, but Moravec spoke in heavily accented English and got his tenses all wrong. That nailed him.

‘St Vitus’s Cathedral at the rear of the high altar, three o’clock.’

Cal put the phone down without responding; there was no need to, though he did wonder at such an obscure location, as well as the need to meet in such secrecy in what was his contact’s own backyard. Still, Moravec was head of Czech counter-intelligence and perhaps being clandestine was a habit more than a necessity. Besides, he could do what he liked; it was Cal who needed him, not the other way round.

Gathering up Vince he took him to a restaurant in the old town, and when he ordered some food and a couple of beers, he took Janek’s advice and spoke loudly in English, like a tourist, though there were precious few of those around these days, which guaranteed them a great deal of attention.

As usual, there were locals who overheard him and were eager to talk, either to practise their own language skills or to find out what his country might do to assist their own, not a conversation in which he could give them much of a positive nature without telling outright lies.

As they left, a card was pressed into Cal’s hand with a guttural smiling invitation from the proprietor to return soon. Then it was a slow walk for Cal, Baedeker guide in hand, like a sightseer, through the old town and across the Charles Bridge, admiring the statues that lined it at intervals, flicking through the book to get the names of the various saints, with Vince his usual several dozen paces behind.

As Vince pointed out with a chuckle as they reunited in the cathedral entrance, if anyone was trying to tail Cal they must be going mad with the stopping and starting he had been doing. The upriver breeze had been welcome on what was a hot Central European day but the effect had faded by the time they had progressed uphill to Hradčany castle and the massive cathedral that lay within its walls.

Like all great churches St Vitus’s imposed a degree of silence on all those who entered; no one spoke above a whisper as they examined the plaques in the walls as well as the statuary, most of which were in the high arched nave.

As Cal made his way to the rear of the high altar Vince had already dropped back, seeking to look inconspicuous, but both suspected that Moravec, if he was going to all this trouble, would have some of his people watching and that in itself provided what security was required to cover the meeting. Cal stopped when the voice spoke from behind a stone pillar.

‘Mr Moncrief.’

Addressed by the name he had been using previously to buy those Spanish weapons, Cal responded in the affirmative.

‘Or should I say Mr Jardine?’

‘Either will do, General,’ Cal replied.

But he did not add the name he was using on the passport he had acquired from Snuffly Bower, just as he had not vouchsafed it
to Janek, on the very good grounds that he had no idea what this meeting would produce.

He had taken to Moravec on that first meeting earlier in the year but the man was the head of Czech Foreign Intelligence and he had fish to fry that Cal knew nothing about. Just as Moravec would not vouchsafe to him things he did not need to know, neither would Cal be entirely open in return.

‘I never expect you to meet again.’

Moravec had chosen to speak in English, when they would have both been more comfortable in German; Cal felt he had no choice but to do likewise.

‘Nor I.’

‘Our contact me tells, you are this time not in Prague on behalf of Spanish Republicans.’

‘No.’

‘If as he me tells, you are British Government representing, why not through the embassy work?’

‘I only said that to get to you. I am not representing the British Government and have nothing to do with the embassy. I doubt the need to explain that to someone in your position, and besides, I am here for a quite different purpose to anything they might be acting on.’

‘Only thing they acting on is seeking number of Jews to process, many out of the country trying to get. You would think they would London advise best way to deal with exodus is to tell to keep within own borders the Germans.’

‘On pain of another war.’

‘Exact!’ Moravec responded, so loudly it produced a slight echo, showing a natural frustration at the lack of open support from the
democracies. ‘Instead in the London newspapers we read is we who in not give Hitler what he wants are unreasonable being.’

Justified as it was, Cal did not want to listen to condemnation of his own government or the stories Downing Street was feeding to the press to soften up opinion. ‘The last time we spoke, you made mention of doubts in certain German minds regarding Hitler’s intentions.’

‘I did.’

‘I wondered if you had any more intelligence on that.’

‘Is that why you here?’

‘The only way certain parties can see to aid Czechoslovakia is to bring to the attention of the British Government just how strong that opposition is, perhaps with enough power to alter the course of German ambitions.’

‘Depose Hitler the only way that to do.’

‘If it could be established that by standing up to him such an outcome could be achieved it might alter the nature of those press reports you have just mentioned. It might stiffen the resolve of those in power to oppose him.’

‘Who you represent real, Mr Moncrief?’ Again Cal found the use of that name slightly jarring, but he was left with no time to consider it. ‘You have made plain it not truly the British Government by your own words.’

‘Are there people in Prague, General Moravec, who think it would be best to let Hitler have the Sudetenland for the sake of peace?’

‘Few only, but yes.’

‘Then accept there are those in London who disagree with the way things are being carried out by our government and want to do something to stop it.’

‘Names.’

‘Some you will know, General, for they have the capacity to be open, and those you don’t I will not divulge because they do not.’

Moravec did not reply and Cal supposed he needed time to think on what had just been said. He was leaning against one of the long stone pillars that supported the high arched roof, and even if he was not a churchgoer, he had often wondered at the effort and artistry that had gone into such constructions as these great cathedrals, many of which he had stood in with something approaching awe: Notre Dame, Canterbury, Chartres, Bourges.

Masons had chipped away at stone for decades to produce these smooth blocks that lay on each other and seemed to be bereft of mortar, had carved the gargoyles and decor, exactly reproducing the same design again and again, and then had come along men with lead, glass and vision to create the great stained glass window which now dimly lit the place where he stood.

It was not too fanciful to see that shattered, to see the great pillars break and tumble. In Spain, Cal had seen the effect of aerial bombardment. If the Luftwaffe was let loose over this jewel of a city then they would do to Prague what the Condor Legion had done to Guernica and tried to do to Madrid – destroy it – and that thought was in the mind of everyone who lived in the city.

‘You suggesting,’ Moravec said, eventually, ‘we can something get with my help?’

Amazing though this wonderful building was, Cal had to again ask himself: why here? Why all the subterfuge? And then he recalled what Janek had said that morning. ‘Why are we meeting in such secrecy, General?’

The sigh was audible and seemed to fit the surroundings in which
they had met. ‘Even in my own city, safe from the eyes of my enemies I am not.’

‘German agents?’

‘Those, yes, and traitors, like those you ask about.’

That induced an unpleasant thought: if there were forty thousand Jews in Prague there had to be, in what until twenty years ago had been part of a German-speaking empire, at least that number of Germans who had made their homes here during the rule of Vienna.