The Burning Sky by Jack Ludlow

Cal?’
    Here we go again, Jardine thought. Why can I not stay away from her? What is the matter with me? He so wanted to not sleep with her but he knew he would weaken, even as he looked around the packed room and wondered who else had enjoyed the privilege. She would drink just a little too much and get all romantic; he would have lowered his resistance by exactly the same means and he would sashay her into that bedroom at Connaught Square, hoping he could avoid looking at the bedhead and remembering the face of the naked man sitting up, his eyes wide with fear, just before he put a bullet in the left one.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    ‘O ur friend does not look in a good mood this fine morning,’ said Peter Lanchester to Vince Castellano, as they watched Cal Jardine, a luggage porter alongside, heading towards the ticket barrier. His shout echoed as it always does in a railway station. ‘Had a good night, did we?’
    ‘Do shut up, Peter, and let’s get out of this bloody country.’
    ‘I sense domestic harmony has not reasserted itself.’
    ‘When was the last time you ’ad a belt round the ear’ole, Mister Lanchester?’ asked Vince, ‘’cause I can see one coming your way.’
    ‘Long time since Cal and I exchanged blows.’
    ‘Them mess dinners were a bit ’airy.’
    Cal Jardine marched past them, his face still stiff: last night had conformed to the usual script, with much tender lovemaking, but so had the morning with its customarymutual recriminations. He needed some of that sea air to clear his head, and some action to salve his soul.
    First stop was Belgium, a place where, in Vince’s parlance, they could ‘tool up’. Lanchester’s Mauser had gone into the North Sea as soon as he and the Ephraims had cleared the Elbe, Jardine’s pistol into the Danube at the Czech border, neither wishing to be caught bringing a gun into England. By the same token it was not an easy place to buy personal weapons, but Brussels was, and even if they were going to a country at peace, some kind of weaponry was a sensible precaution. They bought two ex-US Army Colt Automatics, while Vince got himself a vicious-looking hunting knife. In passing, Jardine took a shine to a rather natty leather attaché case.
    ‘I’m going to have to get you a new suit, Vince,’ Jardine insisted, looking at the light-brown pinstripe with very pronounced lapels.
    ‘You don’t like me togs?’
    ‘You look like a bookie.’
    ‘I wish I was a bookie, the robbin’ bastards.’
    They bought him something dark blue and discreet, with Vince insisting he now looked like a ‘bleedin’ undertaker’. The next train was a sleeper via Paris to Milan, then another to Vienna and finally on to Bucharest, the city they called Little Paris. Jardine could immediately see why, laid out as it was in wide boulevards and big open squares and parks in a way that mirrored the designs of Napoleon III’s architect, Baron Haussmann.
    It was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, at the height of its pomp, which had built most of Bucharest, turning itfrom a sleepy and desolate conurbation into a jewel on the Dambovita river, all of this explained to Vince by Peter Lanchester.
    ‘The good baron tore down old Paris to rebuild it and apparently it was pretty grubby and smelly. As well as bringing light and air it provided very good fields of fire for artillery, given the city was prone to riot. If your lot got uppity he could mow you down and I daresay they can do that here too.’
    ‘If the old git is still breathing send him to the Elephant & Castle, that could do wiv a clear-out – and not just the houses.’
    They booked into the Hotel Palace Athénée – Jardine in a suite, given he needed to look well heeled, and a telegram went off to Zaharoff via his secretary Drouhin, to say where they were staying; you did not use the name of his employer in a public communication if you did not wish to immediately set off alarm bells. His contact name, Colonel Ion Dimitrescu, came by