‘I have had the manager send a telegram to Zurich, if that is acceptable, just to check the account exists.’
‘Essential I would say, wouldn’t you?’
‘So?’ he asked, nodding to the folder, once again closed, assuming there was no need to wait for a reply.
‘I think we can very much do business, Colonel Dimitrescu.’ Then Jardine made a big play of looking around the office. ‘But I think when we do, the price I pay should reflect the unusual nature of our surroundings, don’t you?’
‘I have already explained-’
Jardine cut him off, but with some gentility. ‘Please, Colonel, I am a man of the world and as long as I get that which I seek I have no other concerns. I will deal with you in good faith, but I think it is obvious you are acting … how shall I say it? … at the very limits of your authority, perhaps.’
He was not one to surrender too easily. ‘I am acting as the representative of my nation.’
‘I was good enough to give to you the details of my banking facility. Would you be good enough to respond?’
‘It is too early for such a thing.’
Jardine was thinking, good try, old cock, but not good enough. Time for a little bit of a lie, so that Dimitrescu started operating to his timetable instead of the other way round. ‘As I told you, I called at the British embassy this morning. I established they are happy to arrange for me to see the Minister of War.’
‘You mentioned these weapons?’
‘Of course not. I said I was trying to sell some British products, and they were keen to aid me. A forged business card does wonders. Now, do we do business, or do I accept their offer?’
‘You are living very dangerously, Herr Jardine.’
‘I think we both are.’
‘It does not seem to occur to you that I am acting on the instructions of that very same minister.’
‘Then you have nothing to fear in me meeting him.’ Jardine leant forward. ‘Come, Colonel, I have no interest in what you are up to or who stands to gain from it, I am merely keen to get what I want for as little as I am required to pay, so that I can increase the profit I make when I sell it. It is business.’
Dimitrescu opened the folder and looked down the notes Jardine had made. There was no need to enquire if he had got to the totaclass="underline" his hiss of anger was too audible.
‘An opening gambit, Colonel, but it has a purpose and that is to tell you I expect to pay a good price, but not an unreasonable one.’
Dimitrescu did not hesitate: he came back with a figure three times that on the paper before him and they were off, back and forth, edging closer until they seemed close to a deal on one just above twice what Jardine had proposed, a point from which he refused to budge. But then, neither would the colonel, and that was when Jardine recalled Goldfarbeen saying the weapons had been loaded onto railway wagons.
‘I’ll tell you what, Colonel, I will agree that price if you get my weapons to Constanta.’
Dimitrescu was quick to agree, unaware the man he was negotiating with knew such transportation was, to him, probably cost-free; time to close him out.
‘Naturally, the weapons being on the dockside, ready to be loaded, would represent the completion of the transaction. I am sure your bank has a branch in the country’s main port.’
‘Dimitrescu wants the money more than he wants to do the Germans a favour and he won’t move till that’s in his bank. We complete the deal, he tells them to come and nail me, and by the time they get here I will be in the middle of the Black Sea, we will have our weapons and, I can tell you, at a price a lot less than I expected to pay. It’s a good deal, and you don’t have to get involved except in the money transfer, and you can do that from here.’
‘Your show, old boy,’ Lanchester said. ‘No point in hiring a dog …’
‘Don’t you dare finish that sentence!’
‘Heel, boy,’ Lanchester joked. ‘I’d best get word to London that matters are coming to a head.’
‘You don’t want to meet Dimitrescu, anyway.’
‘It wasn’t him I wanted to meet, it was those dark-haired floozies you told me about.’
‘I missed out on that an’ all,’ Vince cut in.
‘It is our misfortune, Vince, to be in cahoots with a selfish bastard. So what’s the process, Cal?’
‘We need speed, so the transfer will have to be by telephone, telegrams will take too long, which means you have to set up a line to Switzerland from this hotel and keep it open.’
‘Can you do that?’ Vince asked.
Lanchester shrugged. ‘Grand luxury hotel, they should be used to that sort of thing.’
‘I will phone reception from Constanta on another line with a coded message, you process the funds, I will insist he is on to his bank in the same way, and as soon as all is complete I put a gun to his head and tell him if he tries to stop me leaving with the weapons his brains will be all over the wall. Simple, really.’
‘I can spot one or two flaws.’
‘So can I, but I will have Vince with me. They don’t know about him and he will have your Colt Automatic.’
‘I’ve only ever fired a rifle and a machine gun.’
‘It’s easy, Vince,’ Lanchester said.
‘Must be,’ Vince retorted, ‘if a bleedin’ officer can do it.’
Jardine responded, ‘You just point it and pull the trigger, like James Cagney in The Public Enemy.’
‘What’s the timing?’ asked Lanchester.
‘Dimitrescu is calling in the morning, Peter. I’ll tell you then.’ Jardine pulled a card out of his pocket. ‘This is the place he and I went to last night. Why don’t you take Vince there and have a night on the firm?’
‘You?’
‘Whacked, Peter.’
‘And don’t we know why. Anything else we might need to have a romantic evening?’
‘Cotton wool.’
Cal Jardine stopped at the bar of the Athenee Palace to have a drink, before dinner and an early night. That a stranger spoke to him in a hotel bar, on hearing him order from a multilingual barman, was not anything to remark upon, nor even that the man was clearly German and wanted someone to talk to over a drink; after all, they did much business in Rumania. Besides, as he said, he was keen to try out his English, which he feared was becoming rusty, evidenced by his accent and grammatical errors when he spoke it.
There is a certain air about some men, and for a businessman in machine tools, Herr Reisner, with his firm handshake, seemed very fit. When Jardine deliberately laid a hand on his upper arm as they got up to go into dinner, it was clear the fellow had hard biceps. He also had scars in certain places on his face and cheeks, nothing too obvious, but the little mementoes that come from action; Jardine had seen enough of those in his own shaving mirror, and there was also a similarity in the skin: he was a man accustomed to the outdoors.
His hair was blond, the eyes — a startling blue — were rarely concealed by a blink, while they had at the corners the kind of lines that came from peering at a strong sun. In the none-too-taxing enquiries he made about his presence in Bucharest and his business, the replies were just a shade too slow in coming, as if he had a flimsy cover story, while every time he asked Jardine about his reasons for being in Bucharest, there was just the slightest trace, a tightening of the upper jaw, that indicated those replies were being measured against another narrative.
Dinner over, Jardine politely declined a late-night stroll or a nightcap, pleading a long and tiring day, and went back to his room, his first act to lock his door and jam a chair against it. Then he rang Lanchester’s hotel and Vince’s room, leaving a simple code they would understand and no German should. It took time for the receptionist to get the letters down when he spelt it out and he made the man read it back.