‘Hails from Majorca and has made a tremendous pile, originally from tobacco smuggling, though he was quite active during the war as well, shipping supplies of arms through the Mediterranean on the q.t. for both sides. Pals with the monarchical party, though he was threatened with choky after King Alfonso abdicated in ’31 and the Republic came into being. Not fancying a prison cell, he then escaped to Gibraltar where the powers that be, namely His Majesty’s Government, refused to hand him back to Spanish justice.’

‘And I thought I was going to surprise you.’

‘Come on, Peter, in the world in which I move Juan March is quite well known. You can’t amass illegal millions through smuggling without flagging yourself up to your competitors, not to mention those who might want to avail themselves of your routes and shipping. He also dabbled in lots of other nefarious things. My guess is he did a bit of spying for us in the war and I daresay there are some skeletons in our Whitehall cupboards as far as March is concerned that no one wants made public, hence the privilege of protection.’

‘He is holed up in London, Cal, and making mischief.’

‘Nature of the beast.’ Presented with a menu, Cal had aimed it at his host. ‘I hope you are not seeking to inveigle me into risking my neck for the price of a decent luncheon, because, let me tell you, he is not a fellow to mess with, he’s a killer. Quite a few who tried ended up floating face down in the Med.’

That had got a mischievous look. ‘Risking your neck is something you would do whether I asked you to or not.’

Callum Jardine was unable to fault that; he had only been back in London for a few weeks and already he had felt a sense of boredom setting in, not aided by his own personal problems of a socially active wife he could neither ignore nor live with. Peter Lanchester knew him too well; they had served as soldiers together in the last months of the Great War and afterwards in seeking to contain an insurgency in Mesopotamia.

It had been a loose connection, recently strengthened by what had happened in Germany, Romania and Ethiopia, but he could not say, in any way, that he knew the man well. There had been hints of a job with British Intelligence in some capacity, but Cal had no idea if he was still employed or was, as he had hinted, on the scrap heap due to financial cutbacks brought on by government economies.

Lanchester had come to Hamburg the previous autumn to both warn and engage his old acquaintance, claiming to represent a group of wealthy or well-connected individuals who had combined to seek to put a check on the threat of fascism to Great Britain. But, apart from a couple of obvious names – and you could only speculate if he was telling the truth regarding those he had revealed – he had consistently declined to mention the identities of most of his backers.

That they had power had been proven by the way the task Peter had asked him to perform, as well as aided him to execute, had been both financed and facilitated; that it had been risky went without saying – the clandestine purchase and shipment of the weapons of war could never be anything else. In the process, Jardine’s opinion of Peter Lanchester, not terribly high to begin with, had risen several notches; he was not a fellow with whom he shared much in common in the political or moral line, but he was both brave and gifted.

‘So, apart from the love of my company, Peter, why this?’

‘Over there in the corner,’ Peter had whispered, ‘those three chaps, glowering at the world in general and at each other in particular.’

That was said with a nod past his guest’s shoulder; too experienced to jerk his head round, it was several moments before Cal Jardine had looked to where Lanchester indicated. The table had been as described, but there seemed to be something not quite right about the party, a stiffness that made conversation look difficult. The impression was fleeting – it had to be, because he could not stare – but it was visible that they were either earnestly engaged in serious discussion, or possibly in disagreement.

‘The one with his back to you is MI6,’ Lanchester had continued, idly casting his eye over the menu. ‘Name of Cecil Beeb, and the grey-haired chap is Douglas Jerrold, editor of the Catholic Review, a nitwit who thinks the sun shines right out of Oswald Mosley’s alimentary canal. He makes support of the Mail look tepid. Swarthy one is Luis Bolin, London correspondent of a Spanish newspaper, also, coincidentally, very anti the present Republican government.’

‘And?’

‘Would you not be interested in what they might be talking about, given where you are off to?’

‘I’m not as nosy as you, Peter.’

‘A little bird has let us know Señor March is up to no good in the Iberian Peninsula.’

Even if he had not wanted to be intrigued, Cal had been unable to help it. ‘Go on.’

‘We think there’s going to be a military revolt in Spain, seeking to topple the Popular Front government, and Juan March is helping to finance the generals leading it. Rumour has it he has piled in over fifteen million US dollars already, with more promised when the balloon goes up.’

It had been hard not to look impressed, indeed not to emit a soft whistle, that being a very serious amount of money, but, taking into account March’s background and those who constituted his enemies, the man’s action made a certain sense.

‘It was the Republic that sought to put him in jail,’ Cal had replied, ‘so he can’t love democracy much, but from what I know of Juan March, which I admit is limited and second-hand, making money is his prime concern. Mind, if he pays out that much to put the soldiers in power, he can name his fee if they succeed.’

Since being apprised of the commission from Monty Redfern he had quite naturally sought to recall what he knew of present-day Spain, a seriously troubled country racked by endless political infighting, not that such a thing was new – it had been going on for years. Industrial walkouts, agrarian uprisings from peasant labourers, a full-blown revolution in the mining region of the Asturias involving a bloody military put-down, the whole mixed with various regions seeking autonomy from Madrid.

Yet when Cal had read of such things as general strikes he had to remind himself that there had been that in the United Kingdom ten years previously while he had been in the Middle East – the difference with the Iberian model being that the peasantry tended to murder the landowners and vice versa, while the industrial workers used guns and the authorities everything including tanks, artillery and bombs to put them down.

‘We also have information March is shipping weapons and that he has been in contact with both Berlin and Rome about further supplies.’

‘And the “we” you represent don’t like it.’

‘Not a bit.’

‘While HMG?’

‘Is either ignorant, which is doubtful, or indifferent, which is likely. We are paying the price for not stopping Hitler in the Rhineland and Mussolini in Ethiopia, we’ve a dictator now in Portugal, as well as a string of rightist governments throughout Central Europe, and that can only get worse if Spain goes the same way.’

There had been the temptation to press, Lanchester having connections that put him in a position to know much of what went by the name of ‘official thinking’, but it would have been pointless; he was close-lipped on anything like that.

‘Has anyone bothered to tell Madrid of what you suspect?’

‘I should think everyone has, but they either don’t believe it or are very sure it is all talk and will not come to fruition. Besides which, they are always being bothered by false alarms regarding military revolts. General Sanjurjo, the chap they are talking about as being the titular leader of this one, tried it on four years ago and fell flat on his hidalgo face.’