A Bitter Field Read Free

money, political contacts or both, and the ability to employ them in places in which they could be of use.
    ‘Still in touch, of course,’ Peter replied, ‘and helpful it is, given there is some hope the mood might just be beginning to swing their way on reining in the dictators. Not at the top, you understand – Chamberlain is still convinced his policy is the right one – but let us say since Anthony Eden resigned the ground is shifting very slightly under the feet of those committed to appeasement.’
    ‘About time.’
    He reappeared holding the enamel coffee pot. ‘Damn thing works on steam, I gather.’
    ‘Don’t fret on my account, Peter, I’ve had several cups already while I was having a bit of fun with those fellows watching my movements.’
    ‘I knew you were in some kind of trouble, as soon as you raised that damned paper I knew it. Took a bit of quick thinking, that did.’
    ‘Which does nothing to explain your presence in La Rochelle. I hope you have not come all this way to tell me to desist.’
    ‘Would it matter if I had?’
    ‘No, and since we are not at home I don’t see how you could.’
    ‘There are ways, old boy. For instance, I could always tip off the chaps at the old Deuxième Bureau , tell ’em what I suspect, though judging by the way you are being tailed it looks as if they are aware already. Weapons for Ireland they won’t give a damn about but they are hotter than we are on Spain.’
    Peter shook the pot. ‘Do you know how to work this damn thing, Cal? You are, after all, practically a native.’
    ‘I’ve told you I don’t want coffee.’
    ‘Selfish to the last, as always. What about me?’ Peter replied peevishly, the cigarette jerking between his lips as he looked around the poorly furnished room. ‘Because of what you are up to I had to rent this dump. A hotel was out of the question.’
    Even if it struck Cal as unusual, there was a certain logic in that; every French hotel registered their guests by their passports, names and home address, while the completed forms were collected by the local gendarmerie, leaving an undesirable record of who stayed where and when – even with false papers, for anyone involved in intelligence, it was probably better to stay out of the system if you could.
    Cal stood up and took the battered blue pot, waved the smoke out of his face and went past Peter into the kitchen, to where there was an open tin of ground coffee. The filling of both the base and the metal filter he carried out while talking, also the lighting of the gas onto which the pot was placed, his mind working on a couple of nagging inconsistencies.
    ‘Surely you have not come all this way to have me show you how to make coffee French-style?’ he asked eventually.
    ‘No. The powers that be I mentioned want your services and I have been sent to rope you in.’
    ‘To do what?’
    ‘The usual, old boy, to risk life and limb for little or no reward.’
    The coffee pot had to begin to make a bubbling sound before Cal replied to that, which left a very long conversational gap. It was like Hamburg all over again, where Peter had turned up with information that Cal’s activities had come to the attention of the authorities, bringing the threat of possible arrest by the Gestapo. That had led to a very hairy and hurried departure not only for them, but also for a Jewish family he was in the process of extracting. Escape had been a close-run thing in which he had only avoided being taken up by the amount of time and effort he had put into setting up more than one escape route for himself.
    As he heard the water bubble he was thinking that was one thing he now lacked unless he abandoned that cargo. La Rochelle was not on the route to anywhere, it was one of those places you came to or went from, or left by sea, and if his position was threatened he had few alternatives on how to avoid anyone seeking to arrest him.
    That he was in a risky business went without saying, and that was