Criminals and those who lived the life of the quasi-legal had a natural survival strategy, particularly in the big commercial and industrial cities where once the Reds and socialists had ruled, places where people still had the guts to make jokes debunking Hitler and his satraps, the most obvious of those being Berlin – no wonder the Führer hated the place.

Cal’s beat had been the Hamburg quarter of St Pauli, a place of hucksters, whorehouses, prostitutes in windows and highly suspect drinking dens dedicated to fleecing their itinerant customers – visiting sailors or provincials come to test out the fleshpots – a district where they also showed a cunning ability to circumvent the endless freedom-limiting decrees.

Was there enough of that commodity in an institution like the armed forces to curb Hitler and his plans for expansion? In many ways, especially in its codes of conduct, it was still the Kaiser’s army – the officer corps hidebound in its traditions, fiercely clinging to its codes of honour and obedience, those hiding, in too many cases, the hypocrisy of professional ambition.

A lot of questions, few definitive answers, but the other nagging uncertainty was natural: should he get involved at all? Though he had been active in many places either fighting, training or supplying weapons, the last four years seemed to have been an ongoing fight against Fascism in its various incarnations, first in Hamburg, then Ethiopia and lastly Spain; this was no exception.

Yet if he lacked one thing it was an ideology; his politics did not go much beyond a hatred of any government dedicated to killing or imprisoning innocents to maintain power, and that included Communism. Peter was not the only person who openly wondered at what triggered his actions; Callum Jardine often asked himself the same question.

Was he a soldier of fortune, an international crusader or out of his mind, nothing more than a psychotic thrill-seeker, never happy unless he was in some place where the bullets were flying or there was order to be circumvented? He had never known the answer and it did not surface now as sleep took over.

What the captain of the freighter called his ‘motor launch’ was a bit less than that – one of his lifeboats fitted with an outboard motor – and since he did not want to re-enter French territorial waters, that meant in excess of a three-mile boat ride in a vessel that seemed designed to ship water over the bows in any kind of sea, and the one on which they were travelling was excessively choppy.

Their destination was the sandy beach on the southern shore of a low-lying peninsula called the Ile d’Oléron, a rocky sandbar jutting out into the Bay of Biscay, which became an island at very high tide. In a country with such a huge and fragmented coastline, the chances of being intercepted by authority were low, while the island was a place to which folk travelled for sea and sunshine, so that strangers excited no comment.

Peter’s small suitcase had been replaced with a sailor’s ditty bag and once on land it was a hot and dusty trek to find first the road which acted as a spine along the island, then wait for an infrequent bus to take them to the mainland and a town big enough to have a railway connection to the regional capital of Angoulême and the main route north.

The journey back to and across Paris to the Calais boat train provided ample time to talk, eat, doze, make a decision and plan; there was no thought of stopping en route, which would have required a hotel and the necessary registration. Bar that, it seemed all the difficulties lay on the opposite side of the Channel.

‘If I’m going to do as you ask, I have to put in place my own plan, because I tell you this, Peter, I will deal only with you and I would ask that you tell no one where I am, what I’m doing and to whom I’m talking.’

‘You can’t do this alone, you need money, papers and the means of keeping in contact as well. What if I seek to come out to help you?’

‘Do you know Prague?’

‘No.’

‘Matters not, we have to work out a way to stay in contact.’

‘Funds?’

‘Demand a lump sum of money from SIS, a decent one, and bank it in your own name, payment to be sorted out when the operation is complete. Transferring money to Czechoslovakia is too risky, too open to being picked up, and besides, that will avoid currency controls.’

‘Do you still have funds there?’

‘That’s a question I don’t need to answer.’

Peter nodded; he thought he just had, but it was moot if they were his own or what was left over from his work for the Spanish Republic. If it was the latter, then the use of them for the purpose outlined lay on Cal’s conscience, not his.

‘Are you sure you can get good enough papers without my help?’

‘One of these days I must introduce you to some of my more low-life contacts.’

‘One of these days I might need them, which is certain to be true if this goes wrong.’

‘There’s no other safe way. If you can’t trust the SIS people who provide false documents not to blab, neither can I, so I will set up a new identity and you and I will organise the method of communicating. But I stress it has to be secure, just you and me. No SIS, no Quex, and if that person trusts you as much as I do, maybe we can do something useful.’

‘He will ask for some assurance that you can be that.’

Cal grinned. ‘With your charm, Peter, that should not be a problem.’

The remark failed to amuse. ‘And the other matter will be left to me as well.’

That was a statement not a question and judging by the look that accompanied the words it was not something Peter was looking forward to, for the other thing which had been discussed on the way home, and it could hardly be otherwise, was the level of contact which existed between certain people in SIS and European right-wing organisations.

‘I don’t see how I can help in that regard,’ Cal added.

The acknowledgement of that truth came with a sigh.

They parted company at the Gare du Nord, Peter going to Calais while Cal took another set of trains north through Brussels to the Hook of Holland, so landing at the port of Harwich instead of Dover, which was a precaution to avoid their arrival being connected. This, in terms of security was possibly excessive, but as Cal insisted, that was a commodity no one ever died of.

From there and by the boat train he went to his old London haunt, the Goring Hotel, a rather stuffy establishment behind Buckingham Palace, a place once frequented by the wife of a monarch and now used by a very respectable, rather conformist clientele, which suited him, since anyone not of the right type stuck out a mile.

That he arrived looking a touch grubby by comparison to his normal self did not raise an eyebrow, though there was bound to be curiosity in regard to someone who tended towards the well dressed; Mr Jardine was a good and loyal customer, inclined to tip well, and he would soon be back to normal – his luggage was stored in the hotel basement and every room had a well-stocked en suite bathroom.

It was while he was lying in the bath, enjoying a good soak in the company of a bottle of Sancerre and cogitating on how to keep going and maintain arm’s-length contact with Peter Lanchester in a strange country, that he had what he considered a good idea. The best solution if a crisis blew up would be to have a trusted intermediary and he knew just where to find one.

‘Hello, Vince.’

Backed on to the boxing ring ropes in his Old Kent Road gym, covered in perspiration and with his head in a protective helmet, arms up to ward off the rain of blows being aimed at him, it was not the most apposite time for Cal to introduce himself, especially since the distraction made his situation worse and he got a blow to his ear that looked hard enough, had he been wearing them, to have rattled his false teeth.