Vince Castellano was no mug as a pugilist; he had been more than handy in his younger years, good enough to box for and win many bouts for the regiment of which both he and his company commander, Callum Jardine, had been part. It was that ability which had gone some way to mitigating his punishments for the many offences Vince had committed against King’s Rules and Regulations – the colonel did like a winner.

His problem now was the age of his sparring partner, who looked to be no more than twenty, tall, strong and muscular where it mattered, plus the fact that his blood was up and he was enjoying himself so much that the call to back off went nowhere.

Thankfully Vince had guile to compensate for the differences and when he took the blow he fell away far and fast enough to regain some control, to parry what came next and get past his opponent’s guard. The short jab to the jaw stopped him dead and the shout to calm down finally registered.

‘Thanks a lot, guv,’ Vince gasped, hanging over the ropes. ‘Just what I needed, a clout round the ear ’ole.’

‘The boy looks good,’ Cal replied, nodding to his equally puffing partner.

‘He would be if he had any brains. Thick as a brick he is, ain’t you, James?’ The lad nodded as Vince pulled off his gloves, then his helmet, shaking his head and sending beads of sweat flying in all directions. ‘Is this a social call?’

‘Not really.’

‘I hope you ain’t come to get me into trouble.’

Cal knew to smile. ‘Would I?’

‘Let me get washed and changed.’

Vince was quick and within ten minutes they were sitting in a smoky pub, a fug to which Vince was quick to add with a lit cigarette, drinking pints of bitter, Cal not coming to the point right away but catching up with his old one-time sergeant, whom he had not seen since the fighting they had shared in Barcelona and the Catalan countryside. But curiosity was not long delayed and nor, it seemed, was Vince in any ignorance of what was happening in Czechoslovakia.

‘If my paper is right they are in a bit of shit. What do you need from me?’

‘I need my back covered and I might need a way of communicating that does not involve telephones or bits of paper.’

‘With who?’

‘Your favourite companion, Peter Lanchester.’

‘Old snooty bollocks, eh,’ Vince laughed. ‘Not that I dislike the sod as much as I used to when he was an officer. We got on quite well on the last job. How long we talking about?’

‘I doubt more than a month.’ When Vince looked into his beer Cal quickly added, ‘Look, I know the gym is important …’

‘Runs itself now, guv, really, and as you just saw I am having a bit of trouble at the old sparring. Getting too old.’

Cal wondered if, in fact, Vince was bored. He had been a terrific if troublesome soldier, a good man in a scrap, bouncing from sergeant to private and back again at regular intervals, but whatever joy he took from his training of youngsters – as he often said, keeping them out of jail – seemed to have withered. He sensed something of the same in Vince as he had himself, an old soldier’s recklessness that came from never being willing to just settle back into Civvy Street.

‘Good money I hope?’

‘Same as before, Vince, twenty quid a week and all found.’

‘I don’t get a raise?’

‘Make it guineas.’

‘Done,’ Vince said, pulling out another cigarette. ‘When do we leave?’

‘I have a couple of things to sort out. I’ll ring the gym, but sort out your passport and pack a bag.’

The reply was a nod to the empty pint glass. ‘Another one?’

‘Things to do,’ Cal said, downing his beer and standing up, his hand waving. ‘I would leave you here to choke on the smoke but I need you to have your photo taken.’

‘What for?’

‘Safety. We might be going into Germany as well.’

‘That means danger money,’ Vince replied, with a laugh, ‘but I’ll waive that if I get a chance to chin a few Nazis.’

‘You can do that at Hyde Park Corner or the East End.’

And he had. Vince was not one to let folk like that do as they pleased. If Mosley’s Blackshirts came out, so did people like Vince to do battle with them. That got a loud and dismissive snort.

‘They’re not real Nazis, they’re fairies.’

Peter Lanchester had, as was required, made his report to Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, leaving out nothing about the dust-up outside La Rochelle and the suspicion that some kind of leak had come from London.

‘Is that a line of enquiry you intend to pursue, Peter?’

‘Only with your permission, sir.’

Quex nodded at what was the correct response, if not one he always got from his subordinates. It was in the nature of the game of which he was part that you needed to recruit mavericks and misfits – to Sir Hugh the man before him was of that stripe.

Some had mere harmless eccentricities, like his Berlin man’s insistence on rattling around the German capital in a very obvious Rolls-Royce. Yet others were subject to a variety of types of paranoia, seeking and seeing, even inventing conspiracies where none existed, though they were less harm to the aims of the country and the service than those whose caprices tended to allow them to miss what should have been obvious.

More dangerous still were those with an agenda of their own, and what he had been told tended towards that being the case in La Rochelle, though the motives were mired in a great deal of conjecture.

Only three people had known the actual destination of those weapons, but there were enough folk under him who had strong views on events in Spain. Not that whoever had set that in train would necessarily have wanted to see anyone killed, but their personal ideology might have blinded them to the possible results of their actions.

‘Best left with me for the time being, Peter,’ Quex said, ‘though I am getting some grief from Noel McKevitt on the Central European Desk regarding you wallowing about in his patch. I think it would be best if you mended the fence there by having a little chat with him.’

‘I don’t know him well, sir.’

‘I’m sure you’ll find him charming,’ Quex responded, his tone wry enough to hint at the exact opposite. ‘Now let us turn to Jardine – is he in?’

‘I believe so.’

‘Did you talk to him about Kendrick?’

‘The subject never came up, sir.’

‘Good. Might make him nervous to know that our man in Vienna has been arrested by the Gestapo.’

The older man was looking at his desk, this while Peter wondered if he would be enlightened any further on what was a very strange case indeed. Captain Thomas Kendrick, acting, as did most SIS station operatives, under the guise of being a passport control officer, had not only been arrested, but also interrogated in what was still a baffling case to SIS.

He had been on station for two years, so it was a fair bet that the previous Austrian Government had known precisely his role and that would have devolved to the Nazis when they marched into Vienna earlier in the year to effect their so-called Anschluß.

Why wait five months to act and then why, against all protocol, announce to the world in screaming headlines that you have arrested a British SIS officer for espionage when there was no evidence in London that Kendrick had done anything remarkable?

‘The Hun are sending us a message in this Kendrick business, Peter, telling us they can arrest who they like and whenever they like and use it for their damned propaganda.’

‘We could expel Kendrick’s German equivalent in London, sir, who is, after all, engaged in exactly the same kind of game.’

‘We should, Peter, but orders from on high tell me to stay my hand.’ The look Peter Lanchester got then was a hard one that silently told him not to pursue that remark. ‘But it may impact on Jardine. Perhaps he should be made aware that it is not just us who want him to take up the baton, which I suspect you could arrange.’