Once there, the man proceeded to unpack his things and hang them up, and that included his dinner jacket. ‘Dinner will be served in an hour and dress is informal, mein Herr, shall I lay out what I think appropriate?’
‘Please do.’
‘With your permission, I will take the rest of your clothes when you have changed and have them sponged and pressed.’
‘Thank you.’
The fellow was a perfect servant, except when he was finished and about to depart he gave Cal a crisp, full-armed, Nazi salute.
The two-fingered response was only produced when he had gone.
In a blazer and open-necked shirt, Callum Jardine still felt overdressed compared to his host, who was clad in a long, sleeveless hunting waistcoat of soft brown leather, green trousers and he too was in a white shirt and tieless. Never having seen Göring outside of newsreels, it was interesting to observe he was thinner than he looked on film, although still well built. The smile was the same, though, a full affair that pushed out his cheeks, rosy either from fresh air or the unnecessary fire in the huge grate.
‘Herr Moncrief.’
‘I don’t quite know what to call you, sir.’
Göring went over to a table full of bottles and, having established that Cal would drink whisky and water, made it for him. Interesting that in a house full of servants, this conversation was not going to be overheard by anyone. The glass, crystal, weighed a ton but the whisky was a single malt.
Göring laughed and finally replied to the question. ‘As long as you do not call me what they do in the part of Spain from which you have come. That, I do not think, would be flattering.’
‘No. That would be rude.’
‘Sit, Herr Moncrief, and tell me something of yourself.’
This was a situation in which Lizzie’s brother’s true story was no good. He was a lounge lizard who worried whether his tie matched his spats, never quite deciding, and letting his man do it for him after an hour of agonising. A life spent in the clubs of St James seeking to outbore the bores; that tale was not going to impress this man.
Added to that, Hermann Göring was no fool; he could not have got to his present position if he was. In the dog-eat-dog pit of Nazi politics he was a top man, and that also meant he was a ruthless killer. For all the smiles and the amiable expression he could have Cal taken out like a shot without blinking.
‘I don’t think it will surprise you to know that is not my real name.’
‘No.’ Göring waited, only speaking when Cal did not. ‘Am I to be told what your real name is?’
‘I rather suspect you might know already. You do, after all, have a great deal of resources with which to check up on people.’
‘Captain Callum Jardine.’
‘Not a serving captain and I never use that rank.’
‘You’re an interesting fellow, but I cannot see why you have become involved in this particular transaction. My information, which I will admit to you is limited, does not have you down as a fellow traveller of communists.’
‘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.’