‘Still, that must be pretty dull for you,’ Gregory grinned at her. ‘And what a shocking waste of the very best fissionable material.’ Next second he was cursing himself for what he had said. If he remained there she was going to prove a terrible enough temptation without his leading her on.
‘Don’t worry,’ she smiled back. ‘Kurt is away for a few nights now and then; and there are the afternoons. I’m sure those old Viennese psychologists would approve my methods. The Führer has said that it’s our duty to entertain our heroes on leave from the front, so I stave off getting any complex about suffering from night starvation by playing fairy godmother to a variety of young men.’
‘I hope you haven’t become altogether promiscuous,’ Gregory remarked.
‘No. Hardly that. But you know well enough that I’ve never been exactly frigid. And I dare not take a regular lover for fear of complications. Even with the bombing there are still parties. In fact, more hectic ones than ever. Now we’re all so afraid that every night will be our last, half the women in Berlin have become like alley cats. They’re half drunk most of the time and will go with any man who asks them. People aren’t even shocked now when they go into their hostess’s bedroom and find a couple on the bed. I have only to go to a party to be besieged by a dozen applicants; and if I feel that way I make a date, or see the night out with the man I like best.’
‘But, reverting to von Osterberg, how extraordinary that, of all people, you should have had to take on Erika’s husband.’
Sabine shrugged. ‘I don’t see anything very strange about that. As far as we know these plotters are quite a small clique, and he just happens to be one of them. You’re not jealous, are you? After all, you’ve been hitting it up with the poor man’s wife.’
‘Good lord, no. Why should I worry? I’ve got the best part of the bargain.’
‘That’s not very complimentary.’
‘I meant that as far as this foursome is concerned I’m more fortunate than you are,’ he amended hastily.
‘Foursome!’ Sabine repeated with a sudden laugh. ‘In the old days, if only Kurt were younger and more attractive, we might have had one. In Budapest it was quite a thing for two couples to go off to some place in the country for the weekend and for the husbands to swop wives or mistresses, then finish up by all playing games together. When it came to a free-for-all I bet I would have made Erika jealous before I’d finished with you.’
Gregory shook his head. ‘My dear, you are incorrigible, and the most lovely piece of wickedness. But such a situation is never likely to arise, and I’d like to talk about the present. As I’ve told you, I’m on the run. Not actually being hunted at the moment, but I’ve no papers, no ration card and very little money. I had all these things, of course, but my wallet was stolen while I was sleeping in an air-raid shelter last night; so I’m really up against it. For old times’ sake, would you be willing to hide me for a while?’
Her face remained expressionless as she replied, ‘I don’t know. I’ve my own skin to think of. You admit that you are here as a spy. I ought to say “Yes”, then when you are asleep do a Delilah on you and send for the police.’
‘I’m sure you wouldn’t do that,’ he smiled; then added seriously, ‘Besides, if you did, I’m armed and agile; so it could only result in several people getting killed.’
‘Including me, if you had the chance?’
‘No. I couldn’t do that after what we’ve been to one another. Not even if it meant the difference between my getting away and being captured.’
‘I believe you mean that,’ she said quietly. ‘So you win. We’ve both risked being put on the spot for one another before, so we’ll risk it again. But tell me what you’re really up to here. Not this nonsense about stopping the war single-handed.’
‘It’s quite simple. In London they know that the air-raids must have hit Berlin pretty badly, but not how badly. Air-reconnaissance photographs give a general idea, but no more; and for months past the Allies haven’t had an agent here worthy of the name. For eye-witness reports of conditions in the industrial districts and actual buildings of importance destroyed they’ve had to rely on the accounts of neutral diplomats who have refused to stick it here any longer and returned to their own countries; and, of course, by the time they reach London such reports are weeks out of date. To come here and find out is a pretty tough assignment, but the chaps who run that sort of thing knew that I know Berlin and can pass anywhere as a German; so they came to me in prison and offered to annul the remainder of my sentence if I’d take this trip and come back with the goods.’
‘You want me to hide you, then, while you spend a week or so checking up on the damage that’s been done to the city?’
‘No. I’ve seen quite enough already to put in the sort of report that will satisfy them. My problem now is to get home. With my wallet I lost the coded names and addresses of two neutrals living in Berlin who, I was told, might help me in an emergency, as well as my forged identity papers and money; so I’m stranded. What I want you to do if you possibly can is to get other papers for me and some cash; so that I can make my way to a neutral frontier.’
‘I can let you have all the money you need,’ Sabine replied; then she added with a worried frown, ‘But to get identity papers for you is going to be far from easy.’
‘Money is more than half the battle,’ said Gregory quickly. ‘For a good round sum I might be able to buy a passport from some minor official in a neutral Embassy; but to find such a man would take time and I don’t want to embarrass you with my presence for longer than I can help. Another possibility would be for me to hang about in a well-populated district while an air-raid is in progress and hope to find someone just killed, then take his papers.’
Sabine shook her dark head so that her hair shimmered in the sunshine. ‘No. To approach anyone on the staff of an Embassy is too great a risk. He might agree to get you what you want, then when you went to collect it turn you in to the police. But your second suggestion has given me an idea. People are brought home dead or dying every night. Their wives or relatives are then left with their papers. I’ve known several women who’ve lost their menfolk in the last few months. I could go to see them and sound them out. I might be able to get a set of papers for you that way.’
‘Bless you, my dear. I’ll never be able to repay you.’
She patted his hand. ‘Dear Gregory, you never know. These days we’re all living on the edge of a volcano. If I do survive the war I’ll probably find myself penniless. If so, I’m sure I could count on you to see me through to better times.’
‘Of course you could. Now about hiding me. Where do you suggest that I lie low? How about the rooms over the garage?’
‘Yes, they are furnished and empty. My car’s still there, but I had to get rid of my chauffeur over a year ago when it became impossible for even people like me to get petrol. We all go about on bicycles now. I see no reason, though, why you shouldn’t occupy one of the top bedrooms in the house. Kurt never goes up there and it would be more convenient for Trudi to bring you your meals.’
‘Are you absolutely certain you can trust her?’
‘Yes. I shall simply tell her that you are in trouble with the Nazis. That will be quite enough. She is Hungarian but her mother was a Jewess. And what those fiends are doing to the Jews in Budapest is beyond belief. Hitler is positively obsessed by his fanatical determination to exterminate the whole Jewish race. Ribb told me it was that much more than strategic considerations that led to his taking over Hungary. There were more than a million Jews in Budapest alone; mostly good honest people who ran all our industries and commerce for us. I gather it was the sweeping advance of the Soviet Armies that decided Hitler to go into Hungary and kill all the Jews while he had the chance; and Himmler, who from the beginning has made race-purity his overruling passion, urged him to it. They sent a man named Adolf Eichmann there. He is the head of what is termed the “Office of Jewish Emigration”, but it would be bett
er styled “The Office of Wholesale Murder”.’
‘He is the brute who drove all the Jews in Poland into ghettos, then systematically slaughtered them, isn’t he?’
‘That’s the man, and as his Einsatzgruppen could not shoot the poor devils quickly enough he invented the gas chamber. They sent him to Budapest in March and he made his headquarters the Majestic Hotel. The hordes of Jews rounded up were so enormous that they overflowed the ghettos; so thousands and thousands of them were packed into cattle trucks, ninety to a truck—can you imagine it?—to be sent to Germany. But only a handful ever got here. The trains were shunted on to sidings and the people in them left to starve to death.’
‘God, how appalling!’
‘Isn’t it? And no-one can stop it. The Generals try to when they get the least chance; but Bormann’s Gauleiters have the power to overrule them. It’s said now that Himmler’s ape-men have murdered over four million Jews.’
Gregory shook his head. ‘After all, there are great numbers of decent Germans. One would think they’d get together and stage some sort of protest at such hideous barbarity.’
‘They daren’t. Everyone knows what is going on, of course, and about the tortures that are inflicted on the prisoners in the concentration camps. But no-one mentions these horrors above a whisper. They’d pay for it with their lives if they did. But let’s get off this frightful subject and go across to the house.’
The interior of the villa was much as Gregory had expected: a flight of stairs led straight up from the hall; on one side was a drawing room that ran the whole length of the house, with a bay window looking towards the road and French windows leading on to the garden at its other end; off it, beyond a velvet curtain, there was a small writing room; on the other side of the hall was a dining room and, in rear of it, the kitchen.
Up on the top floor Sabine showed Gregory the room he was to occupy. It was comfortably furnished and, she said, had been used by her manservant when she had had one. Trudi’s room and two others were on the same floor, but there was no bathroom; so Sabine told him he would have to wait until Kurt had gone to his laboratory then use the one on the first floor.
Down there she showed him her luxuriously furnished bedroom, which was as big as the drawing room, and off it, above the back hall, was the bathroom. Beyond that lay a dressing room and the best spare bedroom, in which von Osterberg usually slept. As they came out of the bathroom she smiled, and said:
‘Kurt goes off to his work every morning at half past eight. Trudi will bring you up your breakfast as soon as he has gone. I don’t usually get up till ten o’clock or later; so perhaps when you’ve had your bath you would like to come and keep me company?’
Her smile made the implications of this invitation quite unmistakable, and Gregory knew that, although he had found sanctuary, he had come to the edge of a precipice.
17
A Nation in the Toils
Gregory made no immediate reply. The thin laughter lines on either side of his mouth deepened in the suggestion of a smile. Yet, had Sabine known it, this half-smile was not one of pleasurable anticipation; it was caused by a quirk of cynical humour at a thought that had suddenly flashed into his mind.
He was thinking again of the cockroach and the armpit of the tortoise. To escape from that devouring beast the Gestapo by jumping into the bed of one of the loveliest ladies in Berlin surely transcended any other possible way of emulating that life-saving feat. It could happen only to one dearly beloved by the gods.
She had no need to remind him of the sensual delights her slim white body had to offer. During the last half-hour her full red lips, big liquid eyes, shining hair, the scent she used, her every movement, had brought back to him a score of memories of their nights together in Budapest and on the Danube.
Yet in the story the cockroach had been compared to an early Christian set before a lion. And in a sense that, too, applied. Early Christians had made a fetish of chastity and out of love for Erika he had sworn to himself that while away from her he would remain chaste.
Since getting away from Poland he had several times concentrated hard on trying to let her know by thought transference that he had not been captured and was uninjured; and twice he had felt a response which led him to believe that she was praying for his safety. That she should, by astral means, pick up the knowledge that he was again with Sabine did not seem remotely possible. But she might well get the feeling that he was lying in the embrace of some other woman, and that would make her acutely miserable. Damnably alluring as Sabine was, he knew that he would be guilty of true evil if he risked adding such thoughts to the intense distress that must be afflicting Erika on his account.
As he sought desperately for a way to evade the issue, Sabine said sharply, ‘You’re looking very glum all of a sudden. Is it that you no longer find me attractive, or have you become impotent?’
Her last words suddenly brought inspiration to him. Looking down, he sadly shook his head and asked, ‘Have you not noticed my limp?’
‘Well, yes,’ she admitted. ‘It did strike me that you were limping a little as we crossed the lawn. I thought that maybe you’d just hurt your foot.’
With a heavy sigh he lifted his left leg and showed her the extra half-inch of leather on the sole of his shoe. Then he said, ‘Berlin’s not the only place that has air-raids. We have them in London, too. About six months ago when I was in Brixton Prison a bomb fell on it. My left leg was shattered and I was lucky to escape with my life. On my hip and thigh there are the most ghastly wounds. But they are healed now, so that’s not the worst of it. A piece of flying debris struck me between the legs and carried away the most precious half-inch of flesh a man has on his body.’
‘Oh, you poor darling!’ she cried, putting her arms round his neck. ‘How absolutely frightful for you! What an awful thing to happen. Then you’ll never … never be able to make love again?’
In the past they had always bathed together. Suddenly it struck him that as he was to use her bathroom she might quite possibly walk in on him next morning and, seeing him naked, realise that in spite of his scarred leg he had lied to her. Swiftly he hedged and said:
‘No. Thank God, it’s not as bad as that. The surgeons did a wonderful job of grafting and at least I benefited by being for four months in the prison hospital instead of in a cell; though the pain of the dressings was ghastly. You’d hardly notice anything, but before I left England my doctor said that my only chance of not destroying the good job they’ve done is to continue to count myself out of court for some time to come. Anyhow, for another month or two. For this to have happened and then for me to find you again is the shabbiest trick the Devil has ever played me. But there it is, my sweet; I’m no good to you.’
‘Oh dear, what a tragic disappointment,’ she said unhappily. ‘And from the moment you popped up from behind my hammock my mind’s been full of all the lovely games we used to play. Still, it’s much worse for you and we must just try not to think about it.’ Kissing him lightly, she added, ‘Let’s go upstairs again and get your room ready.’
Together they made up the bed and Sabine dug out for him a flowered silk dressing gown, pyjamas and other things that Ribbentrop had kept there for his visits. Then they went down to select cold food from the larder for his supper. Gregory was surprised to see half a game pie, a salmon trout, the remains of a ham, an Apfelstrudel, a block of Gruyère cheese and a variety of fresh fruit, as well as white rolls, a dozen eggs and a big slab of butter.
‘By Jove!’ he laughed. ‘In spite of rationing you manage to do yourself jolly well. In London we now get only two eggs a month, a scrape of butter, a few rashers of bacon and a chop a week to eke out things like soya-bean sausage and the sort of fish one used to give the cat.’
‘Really!’ She looked at him in astonishment. ‘Surely you have a Black Market?’
‘We have. But only spivs and shysters use it. All patriotic citizens who are determined to win the war refuse to encourage that s
ort of thing.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s different here. You can still get pretty well anything you want if you’ve the money to pay for it, and everyone’s so utterly sick of the war that they don’t feel patriotic any longer. Most of us fear we haven’t long to live, so to hell with rationing. Help yourself to as much as you want, but don’t take the salmon trout. Kurt had it sent to him by a friend, and if part of it’s gone he’ll ask questions.’
While Gregory filled a tray high with good things she went down to the cellar and brought up for him a bottle of hock. By then nearly two hours had gone since his arrival at the villa, and when she had helped him carry the things upstairs she said, ‘It’s close on six o’clock and Kurt will be back soon; so I must leave you.’
Taking her in his arms, he kissed her. Then, as her full soft lips melted into his, he drew away and said, ‘Although I’m on the run I wouldn’t have missed today for anything. How I wish … but there it is, my sweet. A million, million thanks. See you in the morning.’
As soon as she had left him he felt suddenly overwhelmed with tiredness. It was now Tuesday evening and since waking in Bari the previous Sunday morning he had had barely twelve hours’ sleep, and none of that with his clothes off. Undressing slowly, he got into bed, and only hunger impelled him to eat his excellent supper. When he had done he put the tray aside, thought for a moment of his luck in having found Sabine and her generosity in taking a considerable risk to hide him; then instantly fell asleep.
When he roused next morning a grey daylight was filtering into the room, so he turned over and dozed again until there was a soft knock on the door. On his calling ‘Herein’, Trudi appeared with his breakfast.
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