‘I do what I do for money.’

‘The Republicans will be crushed.’ Those words went with a hardening of the expression on his face, slight but noticeable. ‘Germany will not allow them to triumph.’

‘A man in my profession has no given right to supply the winning side.’

The thoughts that were spinning around in Cal Jardine’s head made it hard to keep a poker face. How much did Göring know about what he had been up to in Hamburg? Was he familiar with his exploits in Romania? Was this all an elaborate trap, or would he go through with the agreed deal?

‘And how are you to be paid, given what is stored in Athens is for what I am supposed to supply?’

That was responded to with a conspiratorial smile and a lie, which came easily. ‘Naturally, there is more than one pot of gold. My trade, my fee, will be simultaneous with yours, but in a different location. I have no desire to trust my funds to a Greek bank, and before you ask, I will decline to tell you how high it is.’

Göring’s chest heaved slightly. ‘I have no concern about that, Herr Jardine, except that if it is too substantial it may be enough to allow you to retire.’

‘People like you and I don’t retire, we love the game too much.’

‘It can be a deadly one.’

‘That, if I may say so, is part of the thrill.’

‘We shall eat together, and you will tell me about the places you have been and the things you have seen. Sadly, apart from Sweden and seeing the fields of France from the air, I have not been able to indulge in much travel.’

Göring was an engaging host and it was obvious that sitting at table being served fish from his lake and wild boar that he had shot himself, the one subject that was not to be discussed was arms sales, not with servants in the room. Cal was able to talk knowledgeably about hunting and fishing in Scotland, which he had done with his father, while his host listed the delights of the surrounding forests.

For a top Nazi he was remarkably free of the cant that generally peppered their speech – racial superiority, Aryan eugenics and the like – and, given he was an affable host, Cal had to keep reminding himself that this was an ex-fighter ace, a winner of the highest Imperial German decoration for bravery, Pour le Mérite, who had been with Adolf Hitler from the very earliest days.

In 1923, Göring had taken a bullet in the lower gut during the so-called Beer Hall Putsch, ending up in an Austrian hospital where he had become addicted to the morphine that they used to ease his pain. He had risen as Hitler had risen, not just because he was a close comrade, but also because he was a man who would do anything to achieve power and would certainly do the same to maintain it.

It was also clear that he had a degree of respect for his guest; it was one of those things that people who had fought in the Great War found quickly, a sort of shorthand route to understanding – both had seen the death and destruction, both had survived, and that meant they could talk almost like old comrades.

He was interested in Palestine, where Cal had helped some of the Zionist settlers to fight off their Arab neighbours, more as a place to which the Jews, a pest to him, could be despatched, than in anything else, and, of course, the war in the Peninsula was referred to, his opinion of Franco not a flattering one.

‘I am glad you agree that Madrid is the key, Herr Jardine, but taking it by frontal assault is not the way to gain the prize. Talk to our generals and they will tell you that the way to win is to cut the capital off from its bases of supply.’

‘Or to bomb them into submission.’

‘A large city is a difficult target; not impossible, but the means to achieve that goal would have to be much more than the Condor Legion could put in the air.’

‘You do not see it as barbaric, bombing civilians?’

‘Herr Jardine, war has changed and will go on changing, but what you call “civilians” have never been safe from we warriors. Perhaps a few hundred years ago you and I might have met in the joust, but then it would not have troubled our chivalry to go and cut up a few peasants and perhaps rape their daughters. We would certainly have stolen anything they possessed. There is no good pretending that war can be fought with rules; best to forget any of that nonsense and get it over as quickly as possible.’

‘Will we have another war?’

‘It can be avoided.’

‘How?’

‘Give Germany back what she lost at Versailles. We have no objections to you ruling the waves, in fact the Führer admires the British Empire, but we are the land power to match your sea power. Let us look to our backyard and we will leave you to your oceans.’

‘I think there are one or two nations that might object.’

‘Nations? Is Poland a nation? No, like the rest it is the construct of a fool of an American president and men who were too supine to tell him to mind his own business.’ That thought obviously angered him. ‘The Americans do not understand Europe, and nothing proved that more than Woodrow Wilson’s stupidity at Versailles.’

His voice dropped. ‘We want peace, Herr Jardine; we need peace to restore Germany.’

‘And once restored?’

‘Then we can destroy the Bolsheviks and I hope and expect that is a crusade in which, instead of being enemies, the British Empire and the Greater German Reich will be allies.’

When Cal thought about what those same Bolsheviks were doing in Spain it was a tempting prospect, but he doubted it would ever come to pass. Göring barked an order and the dining room was cleared.

‘You are a calm man, Herr Jardine, and I admire that. When I invited you here, I was not sure what to do with you.’

‘Are you now?’

Göring stood up. ‘I am going to retire. Sleep well.’

There was no sign of Göring in the morning, but he did hear the sound of distant gunfire, so he assumed he was hunting. There was plenty of other noise, made by workmen building, sawing and hammering, and a pre-breakfast walk showed that Carinhall was a construction site – if Göring needed money, this was where it was going.

On his walk he tried to sum up the man – he had a feeling if he got away from here, still questionable, he might be asked. Göring was a bit of an opportunist, which did not mean he did not believe in the German destiny of which he had spoken the previous night; in that he was passionate and perhaps that was why he was a Nazi, they being, to him, the only people who could restore the country to what it had been in his youth.

Yet for all his more open perspective and lack of humbug, he was as deluded as any of his comrades; he sincerely believed in an absolute impossibility, that Great Britain would let Germany have a free hand on the Continent. It was a chilling thought, and one he had harboured for many years, that there was going to be another war and maybe one that would be even more terrible than the last. Old Sir Basil saw it too, so did Peter Lanchester and his mysterious cabal of backers – why could not the politicians and the people who voted for them?

‘It’s not impossible,’ he said out loud. ‘It can be stopped and it must be stopped.’

‘Herr Jardine.’ It was Brauschitz. ‘When you have breakfasted I will fly you back to Unterlüss.’

Well that answers one question, he thought. He’s not going to shoot me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Jardine had a lot of things he thought wrong with the Germans, and that came from growing up as a young schoolboy in Hamburg, having spent his formative years in a French lycée, which, it had to be said, made him exotic enough to avoid the bullying that might have come his way and very popular with the girls.

As a nation, never mind individuals, they were damned serious and too ready to take offence. Try being five minutes late for a meeting in a coffee bar and it was like the fall of the Roman Empire; what you say is what you mean – the exact opposite of the way the British behaved. A friendship declared was like a blood ceremony without a cut, and God help you if you failed to meet the obligations.