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.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Back in his room Cal checked to see if it had been searched while he was out, discovering that if the person who had done the looking had not been good enough, the job had been carried out very professionally indeed.

Not a sock or a shirt was out of place and his canvas bag was exactly where he had left it, as were the things he had used to wash and shave before dinner. The letters from Redfern International Chemicals, which he had left on the dressing table, would have been examined too.

Naturally, the bed had been turned down and the heavy coverlet folded back by the room maid, a standard act in any hotel, which had made it impossible to employ the normal precautions on the door. This would also cover for any small movements that occurred with his visible possessions should the searcher make a mistake.

The small slip of folded paper he had inserted into the base of one of the drawers was just where he had left it, but missing was the single strand of his now very short red-gold hair that had been folded inside, one so small it would not have been visible unless the person doing the scrutiny was looking for it and impossible to spot under artificial light on a polished wood floor.

There was no shock attached to the discovery; he was an unknown quantity in a place where suspicion had to be rife for the sake of what they were trying to achieve. He assumed that Corrie’s room had likewise been done over while they were having their dinner and their promenade – at least one lucky person had avoided having to listen to Goebbels.

He was still not quite over the shock of seeing his supposed contact leading that parade but he had to assume that right now he was safe, just as he had to trust Veseli to make whatever moves he had in mind and they had to have been pre-planned. It was all very well being active, but sometimes passivity was the right strategy, as expounded by the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

A few things were necessary for a good night’s sleep: a heavy oak chair should be shoved under the door handle, which, if it would not stop anyone entering who really wanted to, would create enough noise and delay for him to react. His fountain pen, a Montblanc Meisterstück, he put on the bedside table; you could get a good grip of the body, and the nib made a dangerous weapon. Next he rolled really tight a local newspaper he had brought up from the lobby, which jabbed end on into someone’s face would stop them dead and used in the right place could even kill.

Having been given a room overlooking the front of the hotel, but to one side, so he had a good view under the front canopy, Cal, busy doing his morning exercises to the sound of church bells, was drawn to the window by the sound of mild cheering and several vehicles entering the square below.

Really it was the small truck behind the big Mercedes that was making the noise on the cobblestones, open at the back and containing two files of rigid SA men in greatcoats, a dozen in number, all with rifles between their legs, while there was another car in front with what also looked like bodyguards.

The Mercedes in the middle stopped before the front door and another escort leapt out from the front to open the rear door. All Cal saw of the man who got out, to a raised arm salute, was the top of a soft trilby hat and a besuited arm responding with a lazy salute.

It had to be Konrad Henlein but the question uppermost in Cal’s mind was the size of the escort and its armament – if that was standard he would need half a company of trained infantry to ambush him, and Moravec and Veseli must know that.

Responding to the telephone he picked it up to find it was Corrie asking him if he was ready to go down to breakfast. ‘Why, do you need an escort?’

‘I just want somebody to talk to and no one speaks English.’

‘Maybe Fräulein Metzer will join you.’

‘That will not be a good start to the day, the stuck-up bitch.’