In mid-March, a shade regretfully yet eager to be again in the swim of things, Gregory returned to London and once more put on the uniform of a Wing Commander. Both his uniforms dated from August 1942, so he thought it time he had another. When he was measured for it at Anderson and Sheppard’s he told his cutter that he was in no hurry for it, as he did not mean to use it until he next went on leave. To order it proved a waste of money, for he never went on leave again.
12
The New Menace
Gregory’s colleagues in the War Room were mainly other Wing Commanders, Lieutenant-Colonels and Commanders R.N., all middle-aged or elderly men specially selected from the host of officers who had served in the First World War and had been eager to serve again. As they were all intelligent and charming people the War Room could be described as a ‘happy ship’. They welcomed Gregory back with drinks in the tiny mess and invitations to lunch at their clubs, but were much too discreet to ask him where he had been during the past ten months.
Neither did any of them go out of their way to pass on to him such information as they had picked up about the plans for ‘Overlord’—the codeword for the coming invasion of the Continent—but from conversations with senior officers and Cabinet Ministers who looked in at the War Room late at night, and usually seemed to assume that only very special secrets were kept from its staff, Gregory soon had a very good idea of what was going on and he discussed such matters with Sir Pellinore, who was always extremely well informed.
They had resumed their arrangement that Gregory should have supper with the elderly Baronet every Sunday evening. Like everyone else, Sir Pellinore’s household was subject to rationing, but he had tackled that problem with his usual vigour and every week had sent up from Gwaine Meads supplies of non-rationed items, such as poultry, turkey eggs for omelettes and home-smoked eels. So after meals that were treats to Gregory they retired to the library and, stimulating their minds with ample potations of pre-1914 Kümmel and old brandy, reviewed every aspect of the war.
Sir Pellinore continued to deplore the fact that as the Americans had more men and more money they were in a position to dictate how the Allies’ forces should be employed. Among their major stupidities he counted their flat refusal, in spite of Churchill’s most desperate pleas, to spare a single Brigade to take over Rhodes from the Italians before the Germans had a chance to get there; thus having ruined our excellent prospects of persuading Turkey to enter the war as our allies.
The reason the Americans gave was that they needed every man they could lay hands on, not alone for the cross-Channel operation but to stage a subsidiary invasion of the south of France. And for this project they also intended to rob General Alexander of the best Divisions from his Army in Italy.
In the meantime things were going no better there. With a resolution that could only be admired, the Germans were obeying their Führer’s order that there should be no withdrawal. They had clamped down like a vice on the country and terrorised the Italians into continuing to keep the railways and their supply services going. Meanwhile, the Anzio beach-head continued to be boxed in.
After the great battle for Cassino in January there was a temporary lull. But it had flared up again in mid-February and, although the American General Mark Clark had the historic monastery reduced to ruins by bombing, that got the Allies no further.
On the 16th of the month the enemy made a ferocious assault on the Anzio bridgehead and it was again touch and go whether the seventy thousand men now crammed in there were to be driven into the sea. They succeeded in clinging on to their few miles of Italian soil, but only at the cost of terrible casualties. In mid-March there came the third great battle for Cassino, but the Germans held the heights and the Allies were again driven back with fearful losses. Strategy had gone by the board, the Allies were now paying an appalling price for entering Europe by way of Sicily and the Italian campaign had degenerated into the same ghastly war of attrition and futile sacrifice of life that had been waged for so long by the bone-headed Generals of the First World War on the Western Front.
Each time Sir Pellinore and Gregory met, after deploring the situation in Italy the Baronet asked gruffly, ‘Got yourself out of this habit of thinking about that Black Magician feller yet?’
But Gregory always had to shake his head and say, ‘No. Whenever I’m at a loose end for a few minutes during the daytime, or when I wake in the mornings or am dropping off to sleep at night, he still comes through. I just can’t help it. And, to be honest, in a way I don’t want to. To know what’s happening to him holds an extraordinary fascination.’
Through these occult communications he was convinced that in March Gottlob von Altern had succeeded in obtaining a court order to become Willi’s guardian and take over the Sassen property. Malacou had then tried to come to an arrangement with Gottlob to retain the ruined Castle as a tenant. This had looked like going through, but, early in April, Malacou had found himself in further trouble. Gottlob’s accountants had been going into the financial transactions at Sassen since Ulrich von Altern’s death and unearthed the fact that Malacou had sold several of the outlying farms for a very considerable sum. When called on to repay the money he had been unable to do so because, although it was still unknown to the lawyers, believing that Germany was certain to be defeated and the mark become almost worthless, he had smuggled the money out to Sweden.
To get it back soon enough to satisfy the von Altern lawyers would have entailed a big risk of the authorities finding out what he had done and such currency offences were punishable by a heavy prison sentence. His efforts to secure time to pay had been unavailing and a fortnight later he had learned by his own mysterious means that a writ had been issued against him, charging him with having defrauded Willi. Knowing the verdict must go against him and that he would be sent to prison, he had decided on flight. With Tarik he had driven by night over the Polish border and, after various subterfuges to avoid being traced, had reached his house at Ostroleka.
As the spring advanced the preparations for ‘Overlord’ increased in tempo. The work to be undertaken was immense. Hundreds of trains had to be earmarked for carrying troops and stores to ports, roads widened, camps built, hards constructed in the estuaries of rivers for embarking into the many types of landing craft, shipping brought from all over the world and concealed, as far as possible, in the northern ports, Mulberry harbours made and camouflaged, thousands of maps printed, innumerable measures taken to deceive the enemy about the date and place of the landings and scores of conferences held. Yet, in spite of everyone concerned working day and night, D-Day had to be postponed from May to June.
While all this was going on the enemy was also extremely active. Although he still had no idea when and where the invasion would come, such vast preparations for it could not altogether be concealed. In consequence, from Norway right down to Biarritz, thousands of forced-labour gangs were at work strengthening the Atlantic Wall.
With grim determination, too, the Germans continued to press on the preparations to launch Hitler’s great hope—the secret weapon. Owing to raid after raid by the R.A.F., they had been forced to abandon work on the big launching sites on the French coast first spotted by our reconnaissance aircraft. But they had since developed a smaller type which was much harder to find. Many of these were also destroyed, but hardly a day passed without new ones being discovered.
It was one night early in May that Sir Pellinore asked Gregory, ‘If “Overlord” is successful what do you reckon the chances are of the house-painter feller throwin’ in the sponge shortly afterwards?’
‘None,’ replied Gregory promptly. ‘Hitler is a maniac and will fight to the last ditch.’
‘That’s my bet. But how about the German Army? D’you think that if they get a good lickin’ in Normandy they’ll rat on him?’
‘I doubt it. They would probably like to; but it’s not in the nature of the Germans to defy a master. I should say the only chance of a sudden collapse is if someon
e bumps Hitler off.’
‘That’s my view, too,’ Sir Pellinore agreed gloomily. ‘Then if the war goes on into the autumn, it looks as if we’ll have to face up to those bloody great rockets.’
‘But I thought that after Peenemünde they had abandoned work on them.’
‘So did we all. But we’ve recently had it through from the Polish Underground that they didn’t. Seems the swine got goin’ again on ’em as soon as they could up on the Polish marshes. New place is north-east of Warsaw and out of range of our bombers, so there’s damn’ all we can do about it.’
Soon afterwards Gregory had confirmation of Sir Pellinore’s unpleasant news. The new menace and its possible consequences began to be hinted at in uneasy whispers by his colleagues in the War Room. Then a week later, when lunching with an old friend of his—who had been a Cadet with him in H.M.S. Worcester and, since 1941, had worked in the Deception Section of the Joint Planning Staff—he cautiously led up to the subject.
The other Wing Commander made a grimace and said, ‘As it is not a plan, there’s no reason I shouldn’t tell you what I know about it; although, of course, everything possible will be done to keep it from the public, so as to avoid a panic. There’s no doubt about it that Jerry is banging off these things in Poland, and that in a few months’ time we may get them here. The high-ups are fairly peeing their pants at the thought of what may happen to London.’
‘Has anyone found out yet exactly how much damage they will do?’ Gregory asked.
‘Yes. There is quite a useful Underground in Poland, and I gather we’ve received a pretty accurate picture of these things from them. I was representing my little party only yesterday at a high-power meeting. It was called by the Home Office to discuss re-evacuating London and that sort of thing. Sir Findlater Stewart took the chair. He said that these rockets each weigh seventy tons and have a twenty-ton warhead. Just think of what that means.’
Gregory nodded. ‘I heard that when I was in Switzerland, a long while ago, at the time they had only got them on the drawing board and I could hardly credit it.’
‘Well, that’s not far off the estimate our people made from the photographs taken over Peenemünde; and now we know it for a fact. What is more, the boffins have worked it out that each one that lands on a densely populated area will turn a quarter of a square mile into rubble, kill four thousand people and cause a further ten thousand casualties.’
‘God, how awful!’
‘Have another, Kümmel,’ said the Deception Planner.
‘Thanks,’ murmured Gregory, ‘I need it.’
That day Gregory was not due on duty in the War Room until ten o’clock in the evening, so after lunch he went down to his flat in Gloucester Road and slept through the rest of the afternoon. As he gradually came out of his slumber he remained temporarily unconscious of his surroundings, but could see Malacou quite distinctly. The occultist was in a smallish room that had good but old-fashioned furniture. In his subconscious Gregory had seen the room several times before and knew it to be Malacou’s study in his old house at Ostroleka.
With him there were two men of the Totenkopf S.S., and it was clear that he was in trouble. But it was not in connection with the money of which he had defrauded the von Alterns, otherwise the men would have been Staatspolizei. These were members of a special organisation known as Einsatzgruppen, composed of criminals and fanatics embodied by Himmler for the purpose of exterminating the Jews. One of them held Malacou’s passport and was questioning him closely about it. Clearly they believed him to be a Jew and on that account he was in grave danger of being taken off to a concentration camp.
From previous telepathic communications Gregory had received during the past six weeks he already knew the background of the situation. Malacou had proved wrong in his assumption that, owing to the great number of Jews in Poland and the German’s need of the crops they grew, the majority of them had been left at liberty. Earlier that had been the case and it was only the Jews in Germany who had been sacrificed to the Nazi ideology. But both Hitler and Himmler were so obsessed with the idea that the Jews were the deadly enemies of the whole human race that in 1943 Hitler had agreed to let Himmler apply his ‘final Solution of the Problem’ to every territory over which the Swastika flew.
For many months past a systematic round-up of the Jews had been operating, not only in Poland but in France, Belgium, Holland and even countries as distant as Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. As they were too numerous in Central Europe to be dealt with at once individually they had, at first, simply been herded into ghettos in the larger cities. Then concentration camps with gas chambers had been constructed and staffed with Himmler’s Einsatzgruppen. To these the Jews were now being moved in batches and tens of thousands of them had already been liquidated.
In consequence, when Malacou arrived in Ostroleka he had found that all his relatives were either dead or confined to the Warsaw ghetto. Extremely uneasy in mind, but not knowing where else to go and protected by his Turkish passport, he had settled down there and had been living very quietly. But evidently someone who knew he had been born there a Jew, and had a grudge against him, had given him away.
Although Gregory had no cause at all to love Malacou, he could not now help feeling sorry for him and was very relieved when the Nazis, having found that his passport was in order, decided not to arrest him until further enquiries had been made into his past.
In the Cabinet War Room on nights when there was no special activity it was customary at about two o’clock in the morning for the four duty officers to lower the lights and doze beside their telephones. That night, soon after Gregory had settled down, he seemed to be watching Malacou. The occultist was now outside his tall, narrow-gabled house in the small town street. With Tarik’s help he was loading food into an old-fashioned pony trap; and soon after, with Malacou loudly lamenting as he drove off, it clattered away into the night. From this it was evident that he thought it too dangerous to await the results of the threatened investigation and had decided to leave Ostroleka while he still had the chance.
During the fortnight that followed Gregory caught several glimpses of the fugitives. For a week they hid in the depths of a wood, then when he next saw them they were following a narrow track that wound between tall forests of reeds in a desolate area of marsh. Both of them were bowed under huge bundles strapped to their shoulders, so evidently they had had to abandon the pony and trap. Two days later he saw them again, now installed in a cottage in the middle of the marshes. It was sparsely furnished but had obviously been abandoned for some time, as they were patching a hole in the roof, through which water had seeped leaving stains on a dresser in the living room. He gained the impression that it was a shooting lodge which in happier times had been used for duck shoots by the owner of some manor house in the vicinity and, owing to its isolated situation, it looked as if Malacou could hope to remain there in safety.
On May 11th a new offensive was launched against the Gustav Line and for the following week the battle in southern Italy again raged with maximum intensity. Then, on the 23rd, the Allies at last succeeded in breaking out of the Anzio bridgehead; but D-Day was just approaching and all thought in the Cabinet Offices was concentrated on the final preparations for it. Quite unexpectedly, Gregory became involved in them when Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Peck rang him up and asked him to come up to his office in the Air Ministry.
Richard Peck had for some time past held the post of Assistant Chief of Air Staff (G). This entailed handling all the problems that the other Air Chiefs had neither the time nor the inclination to tackle. One job he had taken on of his own initiative was to make himself the Overlord of Air Ministry Press Relations and, one day when lunching with him at a corner table that was always reserved for him at Quaglino’s, Gregory had happened to mention that for several years he had earned his living as a foreign correspondent. It was on that account that the Air Chief Marshal had sent for him. Having given Gregory a cigarette, he said:
&nbs
p; ‘Our American friends are extremely generous with their money but by no means so generous about their tributes to the part we are playing in the war. Reading their papers every day, as I do, one would get the impression that Britain has become no more than a base for Uncle Sam’s gallant boys to pitch into the Germans. Later, of course, there will be many more American troops fighting on the Continent than there will be British, because their reserves of manpower are much greater than ours. But for Operation “Neptune” the actual landings will be about fifty-fifty. What is more the success or failure of the operation depends entirely on us, because it’s the British Navy that’s got to put the troops ashore. Even so, you can take it from me that our chaps won’t get more than a tiny paragraph in the American dailies. And then it will be on the lines, “poor old Britain is pretty exhausted after the tough time she’s been through but she helped us all she could”.
‘Now I want the American people to know the truth and there is one way I can do it. We don’t stand a hope with the dailies, but we can get signed articles by writers of repute into the weeklies and glossy magazines. To do that I’ve combed the R.A.F. for well-known authors and others and had them seconded to me for the few days that count to act as temporary war correspondents who will cover the landings. I’ve got Terence Rattigan, Dennis Wheatley, Christopher Hollis, Hugh Clevely and a score of others and I’m sure you would write a really lively report, so I’d like to have you, too. Are you willing to play?’
‘Certainly,’ Gregory agreed at once. ‘If Brigadier Jacob will release me from the War Room there’s nothing I’d like better than to fly over the beaches.’
The Air Chief Marshal shook his head. ‘No. In your case that’s not on. The same applies to Wheatley. General Ismay has already ruled that no-one employed in the Cabinet Offices must be exposed to the risk of being shot down. They know too much. If they fell into the hands of the enemy and had their thumbs screwed off they might give things away. But don’t let that worry you. There will be so much smoke going up from shells and bombs that you wouldn’t be able to see the coast of Normandy anyhow. I have a much more interesting assignment for you. I want you to go down to Harwell and see General Gale take off with the 6th Airborne Division. That will be the spearhead of the invasion.’
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