Going through the door Jardine touched the mezuzah, and told Vince to do so too, which got him an approving nod. The room they entered had a fire in the grate, even though it was a warm night, which was thankfully dying.
‘You Jewish, Mr Hardeen?’
‘It’s Jardine and no, pure Gentile, but I have been to Palestine.’
The hands went up. ‘Dos gefelt mir.’ The confusion on Jardine’s face being obvious, he added, ‘You don’t speak Yiddish; why would you?’
‘No.’
‘And you have been to Eretz Yisrael, I should be so lucky.’
He looked past Jardine to Vince, who was introduced, and then a bottle of wine was produced, three glasses poured, toasts proposed and seen off, all in genial good humour. Goldfarbeen asked about Monty Rotefarn, an ‘eizel’ for changing his name to the English, and they talked about him for a while, which made Jardine realise how little he really knew about his Jewish friend.
Goldfarbeen, as a young man, had gone to London to study theatre, met and befriended Monty before he was rich, and here he was the theatre administrator, the man who raised and spent the money to keep the place going, some of it sent from Hampstead. An hour passed and the fire died completely before Jardine looked at his watch. He needed to move things on.
‘So, Mr Hardeen, what can I do to aid you?’
Geniality evaporated the more Goldfarbeen heard, and Jardine was pretty open, only leaving out for where the weapons were destined. By the time his visitor was finished he was shaking his massive head.
‘You have picked a bad man to do business with.’
‘You know him?’
‘Bucharest is like a village, my friend, and everyone gossips.’
‘I don’t care if he’s bad, as long as the business is completed.’
‘Dimitrescu is an anti-Semite, but that matters not, nine out of ten of the people of Rumania are that, but I would not trust him and I would advise you to do the same.’
‘He don’t trust him,’ Vince growled.
Goldfarbeen’s beard was on his ample chest and he was thinking. ‘Would I be allowed to ask about and see what is in the wind?’ Jardine was about to say ‘discreetly’, but he sensed that was superfluous. ‘This is a country split in two, Mr Hardeen, and for every one of the far right there is one on the near right and they make it their business to spy on each other.’
‘No one on the left?’
‘None with power, but the closest are the liberals, who would skin Dimitrescu in acid.’
‘Very liberal.’
The great belly shook as he laughed. ‘This is not England, my friend. Here they think and act like Turks.’
‘They was right bastards,’ Vince spat. ‘We saw some of what they did in Mesopotamia, didn’t we, guv?’ Jardine nodded. ‘Every place you walk you’s treading on bones. Made us look like saints.’
‘What do you think you will find out?’
‘A great deal, Mr Hardeen, half of it nonsense, but once I have sorted out fantasy from fact, I will pass on what I hear and you may decide what to do with it. Now I get my coat and walk you back to where you can get a trasura.’
‘Just tell us; we can go alone.’
‘No, my friend, for out there, lurking in the dark, are the Roma, the double curse of Rumania, people who will cut your throat just for your shoes.’
Coat on, Goldfarbeen picked up a large stick with a knob at one end; it was not to aid his walking.
Jardine saw Peter Lanchester set off for Constanta — he was taking an early morning train — where he was to meet up with a representative of one of the people who had set this whole enterprise in motion; Peter had not said the supporter was in shipping, he did not have to. Whoever represented them in Rumania had received a telegram from London, and it had been sent before they departed. It had informed them of the imminent arrival of an English-flagged freighter that was to wait there for a cargo: Lanchester was going down to check things out.
Having barely finished breakfast in a deserted dining room, Jardine finally realised the bellhop, who was bearing aloft a note and calling out for attention, was using a scrambled version of his name. It was from Goldfarbeen, though he had used only his initials, and it posed a simple question. Would he know why a message had been sent to Berlin triggered by his name? He was out of the hotel looking for a phone in seconds and to hell with his watcher.
‘I made a few calls.’
‘You must have been up all night.’
‘Who sleeps, Mr Hardeen? I am cursed because I cannot, so better to do something than toss and turn and get my wife’s elbow in the belly. First, I spoke to one member of the Peasants’ Party, who said there was something up, and he put me on to another contact who recognised your name.’
Jardine was wondering how, given Goldfarbeen’s pronunciation.
‘That set bells ringing like I am the patriarch, already, so I thought I would spread a little money around, promised you understand, which is the quickest way to get things done in this sheise country.’
‘I’ll pay you back.’
‘Montague will set it straight. I went to a fellow who is in military intelligence, like they have such a quality in Rumania, who tells me a certain colonel asked them yesterday to find out about you, Mr Hardeen. He tells me you are an interesting man, but what is important is he found out you are wanted in Germany for something which happened in Hamburg.’
‘I know what that is.’
‘I hope the man you murdered was German, the bastards.’ Jardine was about to correct this statement, but what was the point? ‘That colonel is very friendly with the Germans and he has sent them a message last night to say you are in Bucharest. It was also he who did the business you told me of last night, the little package you say is coming from Germany. He will have an interest in that. I think your English expression is a finger in the pie.’
‘You must have good sources.’
‘I have a lot of people who hate other people, and even more people who live higher than they can afford who would betray their mother.’
‘Would my man have me arrested and hand me over?’
‘I thought about that before calling you, and if you will take the opinion of an old Jew, he is a man who loves money and is known to be greedy. He likes fast cars, expensive women and the casino. If he is going to hand you over it will be for payment. When you think what to do, keep that in mind.’
‘I need to know if arrest is possible.’
‘Don’t worry, I will find for you, but who is going to pay to have you thrown in jail? If you don’t hear from me, call me back before you meet with your colonel again.’
‘Let’s hope I have time for that.’
‘If you do not, you will know beforehand.’
With a silent blessing to Monty Redfern, Jardine walked back to the hotel, called Vince’s room to wake him up and sat down to think. What he had to work out was worrying, the safest thing being to get out of Rumania right away, taking Vince, and either trying to contact Lanchester to take a boat or leaving him a letter at reception, which he would pick up when he got back. Mulling over what Goldfarbeen was telling him he might have time to do something, and it all hinged on one fact: would Dimitrescu find out he knew of the message to Berlin?
‘So he has sent a message to Berlin,’ Jardine said, rhetorically, to a bleary-eyed Vince Castellano, a surprisingly late riser. ‘Who to?’
‘Can I order some bleedin’ breakfast?’
‘That arrives where?’ The response was a shrug: Vince had never been a morning person. ‘If he is buying arms it is from the War Ministry. They have to tell someone else, who then has to act on it.’
‘If you say so, guv.’
‘Vince, when you have filled your face, I want you to go out and buy some rations, you know the kind of stuff, things that don’t go off. Take them to the car and leave them there, then come back here.’