But he had to hand a party of Germans he could use and no need to tell them why he wanted their help. Speeding back to his office he gathered up Resnick and his party of five, the man who had tailed Jardine being the fifth, and they set off for Constanta at high speed, on a journey down a good highway that should take no more than three hours. As long as he got to that cargo before it was loaded he would be saved and the Germans could shoot Jardine if they so wished.
It was dark long before the last of the grain was loaded under arc lights, at which point Jardine took his dock workers to an empty warehouse he had found, where both food and drink in abundance had been laid out on trestle tables. Before indulging, each man was invited up to receive a very generous payout for their services and then it was a time for toasts.
Thanking them he could not do in German: these men were at the very minimum militant socialists, with a visceral hatred of fascists, so Vince was given the task, this done in a stumbling combination of Italian and Rumanian followed by a toast, which turned into not just one, but dozens, often with linked arms.
Jardine felt he would be in need of hollow legs, drinking water as often as he could to remain sober and not always getting away with it. Then the band arrived, a group of lively fiddlers, and the merriment increased in a part of the world where men dancing together was a commonplace.
The dock workers were soon drunk, while on board the MS Tarvita the captain had covered his holds, got his engines started and his crew alerted to weigh, which he did as soon as permission came from the unsuspecting harbour master. The ship exited the actual port through a narrow entrance too easy to close, anchoring in the outer roads of the Black Sea, the motor boat sent back in for the passengers.
A fretting, furious Dimitrescu arrived with his Germans — they were told to stay in the car — while the railway manager was dragged from his home and threatened with death unless he told the colonel the whereabouts of the wagons. Dimitrescu’s heart nearly stopped when he was told they had been passed straight through to the quayside for loading. Back in the car they raced to the docks to find the named ship gone.
The noise of the fiddlers in the warehouse was audible on a warm night with the doors open and, leaving the car, all seven of the new arrivals walked towards the sound, to see before them flat-capped men drinking and spinning as they danced, clearly either drunk or well on the way. So dense was the crowd it took time to catch sight of Jardine at the back; they did not see either Vince or Peter Lanchester, who had detached themselves from the dancing much earlier and taken up station on either side of the doorway, out of sight.
‘Jardine!’ Dimitrescu yelled; it did not silence the music but it did interrupt the flow. It was the man he had shouted at, approaching the players and holding up his hand, who brought the fiddling to a stop.
‘Colonel Dimitrescu, how pleasant to see you, and of course you too, Herr Reisner.’
There was a temptation to call him by his real name and rank; it had to be suppressed: he was bound to wonder how Jardine had acquired it and it was sound policy never to give anything away that you did not have to. The SS man produced a pistol and his subordinates were in the act of doing the same when Lanchester shouted out for them to stay still, aiming his Colt at the head of the leading German.
‘Seven against one, Herr Jardine, not good odds, I think. You are a criminal and I have come to take you back to Germany where you will beg to be called a piece of shit.’
‘If you try, you will die for certain, for my friend is a very good shot. The next person to get a bullet, I suspect within a split second, will be you, Colonel.’
‘You think you will get away with this?’
‘Vince, tell our Rumanian friends what this lot are trying to do.’
That took time, longer for a group well-oiled, but the growling started when the word ‘Germans’ was used, and grew as Vince told them the fascists had come to arrest the man who had paid them all that money and provided the drink, the food and entertainment. It became loud shouting and the workers began to close in on Dimitrescu and the Germans, forcing them to back away.
‘You see, Colonel, you will have to shoot a lot of people and use Germans to do it. I wonder how that will be considered in the higher offices of the state. Herr Reisner could be had up for murder if he uses that gun, and I should think the police here are no less brutal than they are in Germany. Perhaps he will beg to be called a piece of shit.’
Jardine addressed the SS man directly. ‘I suggest, mein Herr, that you leave the Colonel and I to talk, for I have something interesting to tell him. Alternatively, your men can pull out their weapons, but you will certainly die and I think my friends here, who are drunk enough to do violence, will tear everyone else to pieces even if they are armed.’
‘Go, Herr Obersturmbannfuhrer.’
That got raised eyebrows from Jardine. ‘A Lieutenant Colonel, I am flattered.’
‘No.’
‘Do as I say,’ Dimitrescu hissed. ‘You are in my country.’
It made sense: Dimitrescu was in enough trouble as it was; a massacre of innocents by foreign policemen would not help. Reisner backed off, not because he was asked to, but because he knew he would die if he did not, Jardine speaking as soon as he was out of earshot.
‘There is a letter at the British embassy, which will be copied to various people if anything happens to me: for instance, if I am detained by a ship of your navy. I will be out of your territorial waters within a few hours in any case, and I will make a point of sailing down the coast of Bulgaria where you dare not come close or you might start a war. If I even see a Rumanian warship on the horizon, I will send a radio message, which will trigger the release of my letter. That details everything we have talked about, the price you demanded and for what, where our business took place and also with certain embellishments.’
‘It won’t be believed.’
‘I’m afraid it will be. You see, the money — not the full amount I grant you, but a substantial payment — is already in your bank account, Colonel, paid in by my colleague this very day, so it will look as though you deliberately betrayed your country and sold me the consignment from Germany instead of the redundant weapons. These are the embellishments I mentioned. Where we met as well, that little bank well away from your ministry. I doubt the man who runs it will sacrifice his life for yours. Do yourself a favour, blame the Opposition, blame someone else, but don’t blame me, or the British Government. If you do, the contents of that communication will be made public.’
‘You think you are clever?’
‘You now sound like something from a cheap thriller, but the answer is not that I am clever, it is that I have won. Now, my new friends are going to escort me and my colleagues to a motor boat, which will take us out to our ship.’
He threw his arms out and shouted for the music to play again, kissed every dock worker he could get close to and headed out of the warehouse door surrounded by a crowd of happy drunks, shouting abuse at the disconsolate Germans, who were given a shouted parting shot.
‘Who needs guns when you have such friends!’
Dimitrescu was glaring at him and Jardine was sure he could see his mind working out how to get that letter from the British embassy in time to do something about his dilemma. That glare got him a responsive grin and a wink: the second letter, carrying the same information, had gone to Israel Goldfarbeen, with a suggestion he show it to the political opposition, sent for the very simple reason that he had no faith in the diplomats of his own country to do the right thing.