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bullets, having first checked the safety was on. ‘The idea was that I would take you back to Blighty to meet a group of people who share your concerns.’
    ‘And you, Peter?’ That got a raised eyebrow. ‘You don’t strike me as a knight in shining armour. Quite the reverse, in fact.’
    ‘I am a messenger, Cal, what I believe is irrelevant.’
    ‘Funny that, Peter, I always had you down as someone who lacked beliefs.’
    ‘It makes for a contented life.’
    Jardine went to stand by the window, far enough back from it to not be observed. ‘My question?’
    ‘I represent a group of people who think that unchecked fascism is a danger to our national security.’
    ‘Can’t fault that.’
    ‘But they are not in government.’
    ‘Churchill?’
    ‘Most folk think he’s just a mad old warmonger.’
    ‘That’s not an answer.’
    ‘It will do for now, old boy.’
    ‘You said a group of people?’
    ‘An eclectic mix who think if we back Ethiopia and put a stopper on Mussolini it will make Hitler think twice about disturbing the peace.’
    ‘It won’t, but I need names.’
    ‘Not yet, Cal, just take my word for it they exist and that the funds are available to aid the world’s underdogs.’
    ‘Most people I know think Fatso Mussolini is a genius for making the Italian trains run on time, especially those with a few quid and no brains. They are the same ones who admire Adolf and think Britain would be better off with someone like him in charge. You know the type, shoot a few miners and the world will be safe.’
    ‘Shall we leave politics out of it for now?’
    ‘If you insist, but guns cost a lot of money and they are not easy to come by without everyone knowing about it, the arms trade being somewhat incestuous by nature.’
    As he was speaking, Jardine went to the door and, opening it, peered out just enough to look along the street. When he looked back at Lanchester it was with a less than happy face.
    ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘That lorry, they are taking far too long to load it.’

CHAPTER THREE
    ‘C an you stop your Yids?’
    Jardine, who now had his own pistol out, was, for the first time, really sharp. ‘Peter, this is not the bloody golf club, will you stop calling them that.’
    ‘Can you?’
    ‘There’s no telephone here.’
    ‘Something of a flaw in the organisation, I hazard. I’m beginning to regret accepting this commission, all this danger is not my cup of tea at all.’
    That laconic statement got Lanchester a look and a wry smile: Jardine had been right when he declined to accept that they were really friends, but they had served together as young subalterns in the last months of the Great War, and whatever else the man was he was no coward; he had been a damned fine officer with a mind sharp enough to know when it was foolish to be brave, as well as when it was necessary to employ just that qualityto carry forward his men. They had both stayed on in the army after the war, Lanchester because he was open about not being fit for anything else, Jardine for his own personal reasons.
    That he lacked convictions did not single Lanchester out from his fellow regimental officers: they were all racial bigots to a degree, with the concomitant drawback that some of them were certifiable dunderheads as well – not all the donkeys in the British army were generals. Lanchester was far from the exception: it had been Callum Jardine who was the outsider in his declarations that what they were doing in the Middle East on behalf of the British Government was utterly wrong and likely to produce the exact opposite result of what was intended.
    You did not pacify the locals by dropping bombs on rebellious Iraqi villages, killing more women and children than the targeted fighters, acts carried out at the behest of government ministers like the aforementioned Winston Churchill, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time. These policies were something about which Peter Lanchester had been