Background to Danger (2 page)

The meeting signified its approval of this sentiment.

“Ten days ago,” added Mr. Balterghen calmly, “I received news that at the November session, concession reform would be defeated.”

For a moment there was dead silence. Then everyone began to talk at once. The chairman held up his hand.

“I can appreciate your feelings, gentlemen,” he said amiably; “they are much the same as were my own when I was informed. But allow me to give you the reasons for this setback. I would like to say, at the outset, that no blame attaches to our agents in Rumania. They have done their work admirably. The failure has resulted from one thing and one thing only—a scurrilous article published in Bucharest.” He produced a battered newspaper from the folder in front of him and held it up. “This is the sheet. It is called—I translate freely
—The Work People
and it is published by the United
Socialist Party of Rumania.”

“Reds!” said Lord Welterfield violently.

“Actually,” said Mr. Balterghen, “the United Socialists are not affiliated to the Communist International; but they are, I agree, very much of the Left.”

“Same thing,” snapped Lord Welterfield.

“However,” went on the chairman, “I don’t suppose any of you gentlemen read Rumanian. I do; so I propose to read to you one or two extracts from the article. It is entitled, “The Vultures Gather,” and after a rather wordy preamble on the subject of capitalist intrigue it gets down to business. Who, it asks, are the directors of the Pan-Eurasian Petroleum Company? The question is rhetorical, for it goes on, I’m afraid, to give our names supplemented by a series of biographies which are such obvious lies that I will not trouble to translate them.”

“What,” said Lord Welterfield, incautiously, “do the blackguards say about me?”

Mr. Balterghen glanced at the paper.

“Lord Welterfield,” he read, “colliery owner and millionaire. Famous for his patronage of sport. Less well-known as the man who employed
agents provocateurs
to provoke a riot in a colliery town during a strike, and for his numerous offences against the Factory Acts.”

“Lies!” shouted Lord Welterfield shrilly; “it was never proved who employed the men. I absolutely deny it!”

The chairman sighed.

“Exactly, Lord Welterfield, we are agreed that the entire article is socialist propaganda. I assume, gentlemen, that we can take this portion as read?”

There were hasty murmurs of assent.

“Very well. It goes on: ‘There is a movement afoot to effect sweeping concession reforms. What exactly is meant by reform in this case? Simply, that the Government is asked to break its contracts with existing oil
concessionnaires
in
order that the Pan-Eurasian Petroleum Company can have the lion’s share of the increasing trade with Italy. Now there are three unsavoury aspects of this business. The first is that there has evidently been wholesale bribery in Governmental circles—there can be no other explanation of this sudden desire for revision. The second is the now familiar spectacle of foreign capitalist exploiters meddling with the destinies of the Rumanian people. The third is the obvious dangers of such a revision. The Pan-Eurasian Company probably has allies amongst the British and American interests already in our country; but what of the other nations? Nicholas Titulescu, manœuvred from office and poisoned by the Fascist Iron Guard, is no longer here to protect our interests. But the people must fight on without him. Our foreign alliances are too valuable to be jeopardised by corrupt officials and capitalist pawns …’ The article,” continued Mr. Balterghen, “lapses here into mere abuse. The entire story is, of course, a flagrant distortion of the truth of the case. We are business men and we are anxious to do business with the Rumanian Government. We are not interested in politics.”

There were several “hear-hears.”

“All the same,” went on the chairman, “the article has caused us serious inconvenience. The paper was suppressed and its offices were destroyed by a band of youths armed with hand-grenades, but too late to prevent wide distribution of the article. The public prosecutor has been compelled to charge several of our friends in the Government with corrupt practices, public interest has been aroused, and, though Concession Reform is tabled, it will not be supported.”

A stout man at the other end of the table cleared his throat loudly.

“Then we can’t do anything so far as I can see.”

“On the contrary, Sir James,” said Mr. Balterghen, “we
can do a great deal. I have, anticipating the confidence of the meeting, retained the services of a man with considerable experience in matters of this sort. He has worked for me before. His services will be expensive, but I think I can safely say that the results will warrant the expenditure.”

“What’s he going to do?” wheezed the stout man facetiously; “shoot the socialists down? Whiff of grape-shot, eh?”

The meeting laughed heartily and felt a little better.

Mr. Balterghen twisted his lips slightly. It was his way of smiling.

“Perhaps such extreme measures won’t be necessary. The man in question could, I suppose, best be described as a propagandist.”

“Well,” said Lord Welterfield, “as long as the fellow isn’t a Red, he can call himself anything he likes as far as I’m concerned.”

“Then, gentlemen, I take it that I have your permission to deal with this man. I should like to make it clear, however, that, for the moment, I propose to keep the nature of the measures to be taken absolutely confidential.”

The meeting looked knowing, declared that it had every confidence in the chairman’s judgment on the matter in hand, and, after a few formalities, dispersed weightily to luncheon.

Mr. Balterghen returned to his office. Blundell followed him in.

“Colonel Robinson is waiting in room 542, Mr. Balterghen. Shall I show you the way?”

They went down in the lift and walked along a corridor.

“Here, sir.”

Mr. Balterghen opened the door and went in. Blundell heard his employer say “Ah, Stefan!” and noticed that Colonel Robinson’s arm seemed to be a trifle stiff at the elbow as he shook hands. Then they began talking in a language
he did not recognise. It sounded like a cross between Russian and Italian.

“Colonel Robinson my foot!” said Blundell to his wife that evening. “If that fellow’s name is Robinson, then I’m Hitler. Salt, please.”

W
ITH
a thick woollen scarf wound twice round his neck, his shoulders hunched and his hands thrust deep in his overcoat pockets, Kenton waited at Nuremberg for the Frankfurt-Linz train. An icy November wind blustered through the almost deserted station, swinging the enamel reflectors and causing mad shadows to dance on the platform. He shivered and, leaving his suitcase, started to walk up and down in the lee of a small station building.

A thin, intelligent-looking man, Kenton gave the impression of being older than his thirty years. It was, perhaps, the mouth. There was a pleasant quality of humour combined with discretion in the rather full lips. He looked more like an American than an Englishman and was actually neither.
His father had come from Belfast, his mother from a Breton family living in Lille.

As he paced the Nuremberg platform that night, his self-contempt increased with the numbness of his feet. It was not, he told himself, as if he enjoyed gambling. It bored him; but he had in him that unhappy quality of recklessness that decrees that when the possessor once starts to gamble he shall go on until all the money in his pocket has gone. It had happened to Kenton before; but as he had always been a sufferer from one of the two principal diseases of newspapermen, lack of money—the other is cirrhosis of the liver—it had not mattered much. Now, however, it was more serious, for, in his pocket that day, he had been carrying his entire fortune, four hundred odd marks.

Kenton was accounted a good journalist. It was not that he possessed the miraculous nose for news that detects the visiting film star behind the dark glasses and dirty mackintosh. His qualifications were of a different order.

Most foreign news comes from the permanent correspondents of individual papers and the agency men. The free-lance abroad does not, as a rule, stand a very great chance against them. Kenton, however, had three important assets: the ability to learn foreign idiom quickly and to speak it with an un-English accent, a very sound knowledge of European politics, and a quick and shrewd judgment of news values. The first was the most valuable. The majority of English men and women working abroad speak the language of the country fluently. Very few speak it as it should be spoken. Kenton was one of those who did. That advantage made the difference between getting and not getting an occasional crumb of exclusive news.

It had been in search of such a crumb that he had come to Nuremberg. Some of the high Nazi officials were gathered together, and it had been rumoured that important decisions were to be made. Nobody had known what the
decisions were about; but they were almost certain to be unpleasant and, therefore, news.

Ninety per cent of political reporting consists of waiting for conferences to end. The time is usually passed in a bar. At Nuremberg it was the Kaiserhof. When Kenton had arrived there had been several correspondents he knew already installed. Among them was the Havas Agency man, a Pole, whom he liked. It had been this Pole who had produced the poker-dice.

Kenton had lost steadily from the first.

Poker-dice is not a good game for those who don’t know when to stop, for it combines the most dangerous aspects of poker with the simplicity of dice. Large amounts of money can thus be lost, and won, quickly and effortlessly.

By the time it had been learnt that the conference would issue no press
communiqué
that day, but resume the sitting on the morrow, Kenton had just five
Pfennige
left in his pocket. He had explained the situation to the other three players and, amid murmurs of regret and goodwill, drinks were called for. Over them, he had taken the opportunity to point out that the bankruptcy was merely temporary and that he possessed funds in Vienna. All that remained, he had added, was to get to Vienna. The Havas man had promptly volunteered a hundred marks. Feeling several sorts of worm, Kenton had accepted it as gracefully as possible, ordered and paid for another round of drinks, and left soon after for the station. There he had found that the only through train to Vienna that night carried first and second
luxe
only. If
mein Herr
wished to go third class there was a slow train that went as far as Linz in Upper Austria, where he could change for Vienna. He had resigned himself to waiting for the Linz train.

He had been waiting for three-quarters of an hour when the Night Orient Express from Ostend came in, flecked with melting snow. Behind the steamy windows of the coaches,
braided waiters hurried towards the first-class restaurant car. He heard the clatter of dishes and the clink of glasses. From where he stood out of the wind he could see a destination board on the side of one of the sleeping-cars—Wien, Buda-Pesth, Belgrade, Sofia, Istanbul. The Orient Express looked warm and luxurious inside and he was glad when it moved out. At that moment it seemed to epitomise all the security and comfort—bodily, financial and gastronomic—that he craved. He wallowed in self-pity.

It would not have been so bad if his jaunty claim to funds in Vienna had been founded on fact; but it was not. He had no money whatever in Vienna. He was going there with the faint hope that a Jewish instrument maker he knew would lend him some. Kenton had been able to help him get his family out of Munich in the bad days of 1934 and the instrument maker had been grateful. But, for all Kenton knew, his old friend might have left Vienna. Or he might have no money to lend. That, Kenton told himself, would be far worse. He would have to explain that it didn’t matter at all really, and the little man would feel miserable. Jews were sensitive about such things. Still, it was his one chance, and in any case, he couldn’t be worse off in Vienna than he was in Nuremberg.

He dug his fists deeper into his overcoat pockets. After all, he had been broke before—not always through his own folly either—and invariably something had turned up to help him. Sometimes it had been a good news story, sometimes an unexpected cheque from his New York agent for second rights on a long-forgotten article. Once he had been at the Sofia railway station when the King of the Bulgars had left for a destination unknown. The chance remark of a ticket inspector to a German commercial traveller had sent him scurrying to the telephone with the first news of a projected meeting between Boris and Carol. Perhaps Hitler would be on the Linz train on his way to meet the leader of the Austrian
Social Democrats. The idea entertained him and he amused himself by sketching in the events that might render that fantastic encounter feasible. By the time the Linz train arrived he was feeling almost cheerful.

It was practically empty and he had a compartment to himself. The seats were hard, but not so hard as Nuremberg platform. He slung his suitcase on to the rack, wedged himself into a corner and went to sleep.

The cold woke him as the train was pulling out of Ratisbon. Another passenger had entered the compartment and opened the window an inch. The stream of icy air mixed with smoke from the engine completed what lack of food and the hardness of the seat had started. Suddenly, he was wide awake, cold, stiff, hungry and wretched. All the artificial optimism he had so painstakingly acquired had gone. For the first time he was conscious of the true seriousness of his position.

If Rosen wasn’t in Vienna, what exactly was his next move? He could, of course, wire home to a paper for money; but they would probably refuse him. His contributions were of necessity spasmodic, and if he preferred running round as a free-lance abroad to a nice steady job doing police-court news in London, that was his own affair. Gloomily, he searched his mind for information on the subject of the Consular Service. What were the qualifications for becoming a “Distressed British Citizen”? An English sailor he had once met had spoken contemptuously of a “cargo of D.B.C.s” loaded at Cape Town. He saw himself consigned, with a label round his neck, carriage paid from Vienna to London. Looking round for something else to think about, he glanced at his fellow passenger.