‘Are you not worried about being overheard?’

‘Jimmy, I hope the Gestapo are listening in. The truth, for once, will do them a power of good.’

Lying soaking an hour later, Cal was not thinking about the second bout of lovemaking he had just been enjoying with Corrie Littleton, pleasant as that was, but about what might be asked of him when he met Veseli in an hour’s time – and he knew it was not just going to be beer, food and listening to Hitler; that box in the back of his car was there for a purpose and it did not take a genius to work it out.

He was going to be asked to blow Henlein’s safe, which was pushing things a bit; while he knew about explosives, there was a skill to being aware of the right quantity needed to blast open a lock of a hardened steel door without killing yourself in the process and this was no trial-and-error situation.

Also, it must have been planned from the outset; Moravec, he suspected, had suckered him into this, playing up his need for subterfuge in his own capital city, ramping up the nerves, dangling before him the enticing prospect of material that would answer his purpose without the risk of going into Germany.

How convenient it must have been, his turning up, a man with the skills needed, an expert in covert warfare, guns and explosives, abilities they had talked about months before. How long after he got Janek to initiate contact had Moravec seen that he might be the solution to a problem he was wrestling with?

Cal had to assume it had been from the outset and he had been manoeuvred, pulled and pushed like some puppet, with Corrie Littleton the icing on the Moravec cake, which, if nothing else, showed that the intelligence chief was not only very quick to see a possibility but capable of acting on it with equal speed.

The other fact, which was inescapable, lay in the certain knowledge that someone else had been set to undertake what he was going to be asked to do and stood down when he arrived as a better alternative.

The reason? He was a foreigner, the original person tasked to blow Henlein’s safe and steal those documents had to be Czech, so was that sanction from the president to do nothing real or just another bit of flummery to suck him in?

Odds-on it was Veseli, but by using Cal, Moravec might get what he wanted, avoid censure if there was to be any and leave his best agent in place, which might not have been possible if Veseli did the deed.

How, if it was Veseli doing the job, had the Czech agent planned to get away? That, as Cal examined it, did not make sense. Once his cover was blown he was stuck miles from safety with everyone who had once trusted him baying for his blood, and he was not an easy man to disguise; even amongst Aryans he stood head and shoulders above them.

Imagining some of his Brownshirt thugs catching up with him and thinking of the treatment they would mete out should not have induced feelings of gratification, but it did; it was only a flight of the imagination and if Moravec had finagled him into this, Veseli must have known and been complicit.

The church clock striking six had him rise from the water; it was time to get ready.

* * *

‘Jimmy,’ Corrie said, as she opened the door to find the young reporter looking abashed, in fact hopping from foot to foot; she was, after all, wrapped in a huge bath towel.

‘Sorry to catch you in … er … your … er …’ he mumbled away at the towel. ‘Thought it was time to come and say hello.’

‘I’ll say, but I would be more interested to know why you ran away yesterday.’

‘I’m not supposed to be here,’ he replied, in a flash of what seemed like inspiration until he realised he would have to run with the lie and he had no idea where to go.

‘I guess you’re trying to find a story that will get you out from under Vernon,’ Corrie replied, unwittingly throwing him a lifeline. ‘As you can see, Jimmy, I was just getting dressed.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Look, I am meeting someone in the bar in fifteen minutes.’

‘Callum Jardine,’ Jimmy replied, immediately realising that was a mistake.

The hand that grabbed him and pulled him inside the door was not gentle, nor was the way it was slammed behind him.

‘How the hell do you know his name?’

Tempted to lie, there was not one he could think of and that left only the truth. ‘Vernon knows him from Madrid and he saw you get into his car.’

‘You little schmuck, you’ve been sent to tail me.’

‘Instructed, Corrie,’ Jimmy pleaded. ‘I am only doing what Vernon told me to do.’

‘Sit in that chair and say not another word.’ Corrie went to the phone and asked for Cal’s room number, hissing when he picked up his end, ‘Doc, my room now! No, it’s not that, it’s serious. Quick as you can.’

She turned to see Jimmy standing over the typewriter and what she had written was lying beside it. ‘Get away from that and sit down.’

‘How the hell did you know we were coming to Cheb?’ she demanded when he complied.

‘Vernon knew.’

Pacing back and forth, she began to curse, because it could only have come from the hotel. ‘That low-life snake! To think he acts like he’s an English gent, when he is full of shit.’

‘I say,’ Jimmy protested; he was no stranger to foul language, only not in the mouths of the fairer sex.

‘Don’t you “I say” me.’

The gentle knock at the door heralded Cal and he was inside quickly, to be given a gabbling explanation of who Jimmy was and what he knew. When the ‘how?’ came it was Corrie’s turn for contrition.

‘It’s standard behaviour, Cal, you gotta tell your editor when you go somewhere.’

‘The telephone would have been better.’

‘What, a transatlantic call for that? He would have had my ass.’

Turning to face Jimmy, Callum Jardine wondered why the youngster shrank away. Then he realised he was wearing his rimless specs, and with his en brosse hairdo, allied to the expression on his face, he must have looked to him like he was Gestapo.

‘Relax.’

‘Easier said than done.’

‘I’m not going to hurt you, am I?’

‘I don’t know, are you?’

Cal had to shut this lad up, but how? One thing was for sure: threats would be counterproductive unless he was not prepared to let him out of his sight, indeed out of this room.

‘Jimmy – it is Jimmy, yes?’ That produced a still-fearful nod, even though Cal had smiled. ‘I am going to need your help and so is the British Government.’

‘You’re working for the Government?’

‘I am.’

‘Doing what?’

‘I can’t answer that, and I am afraid, Jimmy, even if you were told you would not be able to write about it. If you submitted it to your paper … by the way, who do you write for?’

‘News Chronicle.’

‘Good newspaper,’ Cal said, ‘got the right ideas about Hitler. The story would be subject to a D-notice, in fact, I suspect it will be buried in the files of SIS for a hundred years or more, it’s so sensitive.’

‘So you might as well tell me what it is.’

‘Corrie, get dressed, we are meeting Veseli in the lounge shortly.’

‘Sure, I’ll use the bathroom, but don’t let that little bastard near my notes.’

When she had gone, Cal addressed a young man pained by the way she had described him. ‘You must know about the Official Secrets Act, Jimmy.’

‘I do, but I don’t see what difference that makes if the story is not going to come out anyway.’

‘It means I can’t tell you anything, because if I do, I will suffer the consequences.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘What don’t you believe?’

‘All of it, the Government, you working for them, D-notices.’

The sigh was audible. Cal had a choice: stepping closer, he could take this little bugger by his carotid artery and either kill him or render him unconscious and do so in utter silence. What then? He would either have a body to deal with or he would have to truss him up and for how long? And he could still scream blue murder as soon as he was released.