The Burning Sky by Jack Ludlow Page A

good, and I suspect the pilots are dashing johnnies. Ground troops are not the best, but they never were, given their officers are more interested in being well barbered than being well trained. Some good regiments, the Alpine chaps are top class, but there are also Blackshirt units in their bits of the Horn of Africa and I suspect they are rubbish, a bit like your Hun SA.’
    ‘Then why use them?’
    ‘Forget all that guff about Italy needing colonies, Cal, this is a political enterprise to bolster the regime, and it is my guess that whoever is in charge has instructions to put Mussolini’s ex-street-fighting cadres at the front of the battle so he can claim it is Fascist willpower which has overcome the fuzzy-wuzzies—’
    Jardine interrupted. ‘Can we call them Ethiopians, please?’
    Even hissed, that got them attention, so Lanchester rose. ‘What about a walk in Green Park, oh sensitive one?’
    He had to sign for his bill and don his new bowler before they exited, crossing Piccadilly to the park, with Lanchester resuming where he had left off, as they sauntered down paths filled with office workers out enjoying the sunshine, with the odd tourist admiring Buckingham Palace or the bas-reliefs on Decimus Burton’s Hyde Park Corner arch.
    ‘If we can get stuff in to augment the local weaponry, and they can kill enough Blackshirts, it might cause him big trouble at home. Bringing him down is probably asking for the moon, but if we can remind the Eyeties of the cost ofconflict that can only be to the good. If it keeps them out of Hitler’s embrace, then—’
    ‘They will fall out over Austria when Hitler invades, which he will do if they don’t agree to a political union, especially when the Ösis become part of the Greater German Reich and demand the Trentino region back.’
    Lanchester sighed. ‘They know not what they did at Versailles, do they, slicing up and parcelling out bits of the old German and Austrian empires?’
    ‘I think they knew, Peter, but I don’t think they had much choice.’
    ‘If we have to fight the Hun again, I will personally shoot the first bugger to mention an armistice or peace terms. So, how do we feel about the job, which comes, by the way, and I have not mentioned it, with a very healthy stipend?’
    With a private income, money was only of concern to Jardine because it was a bad idea to work for nothing; even in Hamburg he had taken a small amount in pay. ‘I’ll look at the salary when I’ve looked at everything else. What paperwork do you have, order of battle and that sort of stuff?’
    ‘Quite a lot.’
    ‘Maps too – what about arms?’
    ‘That’s your bailiwick, old boy. The only thing I will say for certain is they cannot be bought or shipped from these shores.’
    ‘Then I need to see some people before I commit to anything, here and overseas.’
    ‘Fair enough. How long?’
    ‘Couple of weeks, Peter, but be warned, I might turn you down flat.’ The look Lanchester gave him then was discomfiting, being too knowing: he knew his one-time fellow officer could not resist an underdog or a cause. ‘I mean it, Peter.’
    ‘Of course you do, Cal, old boy. Now where are you staying?’
    ‘Across the park at The Goring.’
    ‘Not with the ex-wife?’
    ‘Hardly.’
    ‘Still not forgiven you?’
    Jardine shook his head fiercely, making it obvious that was not a subject he wanted to reprise and the forgiveness bit was a dig: who was to forgive whom? He had come back from the war to find his wife’s lover in bed with her. Still carrying his service revolver he had immediately shot the fellow dead. It had been quite a cause célèbre at the time, especially when, at the subsequent Old Bailey trial, the jury had acquitted him of murder. Lizzie Jardine was one reason to stay out of London. With his wife, it was a case of make up for a bit then fall out again, and with her being a Catholic, even if she was not in the least bit moral, divorce was out of the