‘Only with our own supply of weapons can we prevent this,’ Laporta said, having been silent for a longer time than Cal had ever known him to be; for all their political differences, he clearly respected Andreu Nin. ‘Without that we will be powerless.’
‘I come back to my point about money,’ Cal said to him in French.
‘And I, my friend, say to you that we will find whatever funds you need.’
‘Where?’
‘Not all of the gold has gone to Moscow. The government must be persuaded to give us the use of what is left.’
It took no great imagination to guess at the mayhem that would cause and it was hard to believe it could be done secretly; the communists were bound to find out.
‘Juan Luis, you cannot beat the Nationalists if you are openly fighting each other in government.’
‘You did not like the notion of a fascist Spain, my friend.’
‘No, I did not.’
‘Would you prefer a Stalinist one?’ asked Laporta, doing an immediate translation for the POUM leader.
Even if the answer was a heartfelt negative, the question was not one to reply to in haste. In his time, mostly in situations of some comfort and detachment from reality, Cal had met too many people who looked at the Soviet Union with blinkered stupidity. For all the opaque nature of the world in which he had moved over many years, there was a clarity about certain areas that never reached the ears of those outside it, and one of those was the truth about life in Stalinist Russia.
The people who lived on its borders had no illusions, those who had escaped its clutches even less, all the way back to the White Russians who had fled in 1917. Many of both types, forced onto the margins of society by their exile and required to exist in clandestine trades, nevertheless had contacts inside the communist state. One voice spouting outright condemnation could be put down to personal prejudice; a chorus as loud as that which had assailed his ears spoke the truth: if anything, Soviet Russia was worse than Nazi Germany.
‘All I can do is put out some feelers,’ he said, after a long pause.
‘Will you do that, querido?’
‘Not tonight, I need some rest.’
The expression on Florencia’s face then told Cal Jardine that was a forlorn hope.
The cable he sent to Monaco the next morning had to be extremely circumspect; Cal could mention no names, not even his own, and for a location he used his room number. But it was coded in such a way that it would have taken more than a cryptographer to unravel it, given it was between two people who knew each other enough to reference things known only to them. It also went to a nominated address and box number in which the recipient was not named.
The reply he received came within a day and not from the principal to whom it had been sent, albeit Cal was assured he was aware of the contents of both the message and the reply. It had been sent by his private secretary, whom Cal Jardine had met before, this referenced by the date of that meeting without using his name.
Drouhin told him that his master was unwell, and given he was about to celebrate his birthday – no number was used but Cal reckoned he would be eighty-seven – that was a concern. However, should his old friend care to visit, he would seek to find out beforehand where the kind of consignment hinted at could be both located and purchased, though the market was at the moment very difficult.
His suggestion that Florencia should accompany him – Monte Carlo being an enticing place to visit and one which would be made even better in her company – was turned down flat. How could she leave Spain in the midst of what was a fight to the death with the fascist pigs, now intent on taking the capital? There was a question about whether he should leave; the news that came in over the next days was alarming, but rationally, what could he, one man, do? Best to act as requested and go.
The problem did exist of getting across the French border and he worried about the land route, even though Juan Luis assured him the crossing was controlled by the CNT – with the communists complaining about their fighters being blocked from crossing into Spain. That was still a place where the communists were bound to have a presence, and how comprehensive that could be he did not know; they might well check the names on every passport by bribing the French border guards, just to ensure they knew who was coming and going.
The look in the anarchist’s eye that implied he was taking caution too far he declined to respond to – it was his habit to always overdo safety where possible – but there was another consideration: going out would be easy, the French would be lax about that, coming back would not. Besides, the land route was long and would involve several changes of train once in France.
The solution was a boat, one of the many abandoned in the harbour by the owners who had fled Barcelona and scooted to the Nationalist side of the divide. They had not been left to rust but had provided an opportunity for the kind of men who may well have made their living smuggling before the war in less salubrious craft – he did not enquire.
All Cal needed to do was to get to a landfall close to Marseilles, and without any details as to who he was and why, with people who had already paid the necessary douceurs to the overburdened French customs men to be allowed to trade – not a problem on a long coastline dotted with tiny fishing ports near-impossible to police. These were places that had been involved in smuggling ever since tariffs were invented, close to a city in which he had spent some of his formative years, and known to be the crime capital of France.
Once there, it was a simple train journey to his destination, much of it spent in the dining car.
His first impression of Monaco was that it was beginning to recover some of its gloss, which, like the whole of the Riviera, had been knocked by the Great Depression. At one time the winter watering hole of the British upper crust and American millionaires, they had found their pounds and dollars, of which they had less to disburse, insufficient to spend several months avoiding the weather back home, gambling merrily away at the casino.
The man he had come to see had saved that establishment from bankruptcy and it was possible he still owned it, though he never went there or gambled at the tables. No one knew for certain; Sir Basil Zaharoff’s dealings were always clouded in secrecy whatever activity he engaged in.
Drouhin’s face was grave as he came to greet Cal, nodding to the rather burly servant who had stood by him that it was safe to depart; in the house of a man who, for all that he was long retired, had dealt in arms for decades and was known by the soubriquet of ‘The Merchant of Death’, while searching a visitor for the means to assassinate the owner would not do, no one was trusted to be left alone.
‘Monsieur Jardine.’ Cal shook his hand; he did not really know the man, having met him only briefly on a previous visit, but he knew that Sir Basil trusted him absolutely, so he could do so too. ‘My patron is sleeping at the moment, but if you will, we can take a drink on the terrace and you can outline your needs to me.’
‘How ill is he?’
‘It is serious, monsieur,’ Drouhin replied, his face sad, his eyes quickly turning lachrymose, while he rather embarrassingly crossed himself; that, however, told Cal Jardine that whatever assailed the old man was likely to be terminal. ‘He is still lucid when awake and has particularly made a point of his desire to see you.’
‘I’m grateful.’
‘My patron has a high regard for you, monsieur,’ Drouhin replied, as they exited onto a terrace with a magnificent view of the harbour, with Cal wondering why that should be. ‘He is most anxious that, if we can assist you, we should.’
There were courtesies to get out of the way while they waited for a servant to bring a tray of coffee – how was your journey, the weather, etc, which, contrary to the British view, is an international obsession, not just one on which Albion is fixated. Once the coffee was served and the manservant gone, it was time for affaires. Little explanation was required given from where he had come.