As he heard the water bubble he was thinking that was one thing he now lacked unless he abandoned that cargo. La Rochelle was not on the route to anywhere, it was one of those places you came to or went from, or left by sea, and if his position was threatened he had few alternatives on how to avoid anyone seeking to arrest him.

That he was in a risky business went without saying, and that was made doubly so by the nature of who those weapons were for and the fact that there was a French embargo on weapons to Spain as well. What was irritating him now was the resemblance to Hamburg; it was just too pat and the similarities were too great.

Yet he could not just dismiss what was on offer until he knew the threat it posed to that which he was already engaged in. The men fighting against Franco’s forces in the Cantabrian Mountains needed those weapons, and job number one was to get them loaded aboard ship and on their way.

‘How’s that coffee coming along?’ Peter called.

‘Nearly there.’

‘Fetch out the old confiture, Cal, there’s a good chap, the old stomach is rumbling somewhat.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘ Must have been a bit hairy in Czechoslovakia, Cal, buying and shipping out your cargo with the nation mobilised for a possible war with the Hun.’

Peter had emptied the coffee pot and chewed steadily on his bread and jam to the point of swallowing half the loaf, a time during which Cal Jardine had kept off the subject and stuck to conversational generalities to allow himself time to think; now he was being dragged back to the present and what might become a dilemma. For a moment he wondered whether to answer, but given what Peter already knew it seemed harmless to oblige.