Goering shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘You tell us little that from the way things are going we might not guess for ourselves.’
Now that Gregory was, as it were, right up in the firing line, he had got back his nerve and was on the top of his form. With a smile, he replied, ‘That the views of the Herr Reichsmarschall should coincide with fore-knowledge obtained from beyond confirms the soundness of his judgement. But to obtain more than an outline of general events is not possible. I can only add that war will continue to inflict the world at least until next August, and that in that month a disaster will occur in Japan that will affect the whole world.’
‘What kind of disaster?’
‘It will be in the nature of an earthquake or a violent eruption, but there are indications that it will be brought about by man.’
Suddenly Goering’s eyes lit up. ‘Lieber Gott! Could it be that the Allies are really so far advanced in developing an atom bomb?’
Gregory shrugged. ‘That is more than I can say; but many thousands of Japanese will die in the disaster. And now, if it please Your Excellency, my colleague can be the vehicle for much more precise predictions about individuals than about generalities. Would you like to be the first to have your future told?’
Goering shook his head. ‘No. I am content to wait and see what fate sends me.’ Then he gestured to a woman on his right and added, ‘Make a start with this lady here.’ Turning to the woman, Gregory bowed and asked her for the loan of something she always carried. She gave him her gold cigarette case and he handed it to Malacou. He then fetched a chair, sat down opposite the woman and asked her to lay her hands on the table, palms up. Smilingly she did so. For a few moments he studied her hands in silence, meanwhile he conveyed to Malacou what he read in them. Malacou, who was seated behind him, was at the same time psychometrising the cigarette case and communicating his thoughts. By working simultaneously on the same subject in this way they checked their findings, and when Malacou began to mutter Gregory pretended to interpret.
He told the woman that as a child she had had a serious accident that had affected her spine, that she had married twice and that her present husband was an airman, that she had two children, a boy and a girl, both of whom had been sent out of Germany, he thought to Sweden. Then he predicted that she would survive the war, have two more children and go to live in some southern country, he thought Spain.
With astonishment, she declared him to be perfectly right about her past and Goering clapped his mighty beringed hands.
The second subject was a younger woman. Having told her accurately about her past, Gregory said, ‘You, too, will survive the war, gnädige Frau. But not without injury. I regret to say that in an air-raid you will lose your right arm. You will also become a widow, but you will marry again, an elderly man who will provide you with every comfort.’
The third was a good-looking but rather sullen-faced woman. About her, spontaneously, Malacou sent Gregory a thought. As all that mattered was to impress Goering he decided to use it. When he had told her past, he said, ‘Within six months you will become the mistress of a Russian officer.’
Her eyes blazing with anger the woman sprang to her feet and slapped his face. But Goering roared with laughter and the rest of the guests followed his lead.
When the clamour had subsided Gregory started on his next subject. She was what the French term a ‘belle laide’. Her hair was a true gold and Gregory thought that he had rarely looked into a pair of more magnificent eyes; but her mouth was a thick gash across her face, and enormous. As he looked at her he suddenly wondered if she could be Sabine’s friend, Paula von Proffin of the letter-box mouth. When his reading of her hand and the thoughts Malacou sent him tallied with what Sabine had told him of Paula he felt certain of it. Malacou also conveyed to him that she would be raped to death by Russian soldiers. Looking at her with pity he decided to give her no idea of that. Instead, after telling her that she had had a hard early life as a model, then married a banker who had left her penniless, he added, ‘Your life will not be a long one, so make the most of it. At all events you are now married to an immensely rich man who can afford to indulge you in every luxury.’
Again Goering roared with laughter. Then, leaning forward towards a middle-aged man in a dinner jacket who was seated near him, he bellowed, ‘Listen to that, Hans. And you pleading poverty before dinner. You’ll not be able to deny little Paula anything after this.’
From that Gregory surmised that her new husband must be one of the chiefs of the Hermann Goering Werk, and that was why they were among Goering’s guests.
Paula gave Gregory a ravishing smile and he turned to the next woman along the table. Among other thoughts, Malacou informed him that she had a venereal disease. So in her case he ended by saying, ‘For the present I would advise you to lead the life of a nun; otherwise you will give anyone you go to bed with a present that he will not thank you for.’
She, too, jumped up in a fury, but Gregory sprang back in time to evade the slap she aimed at him. Again the cruel laughter rang out and, bursting into tears, the woman ran from the room.
‘Well done,’ wheezed Goering. ‘Well done. I shall find you invaluable.’
So it went on through the women, then the men took their turn. Most of them were to survive, but three were to die, and Gregory told them frankly that they would give their lives for the Führer; but he refused to give them particulars or dates. One among them was a Naval Captain and Malacou told Gregory, both by telepathy and by confirming it in the muttered Turkish that at times he used to ensure that Gregory got his thoughts exactly, that the Captain was a traitor in the camp and using his position to spy on Goering.
Gregory made no mention of that, but when he had told all their fortunes he addressed the Reichsmarschall. ‘Excellency, these psychic investigations into your guests have revealed one piece of information that I have not disclosed. It is for your ear alone and important to your safety. If you would give me a few minutes in private …’
Goering’s eyes held his for a moment, then the elephantine Chief of the Luftwaffe nodded, heaved himself up from his great ivory and gold throne and said, ‘Come with me.’
Picking up the skirts of his toga, he led the way out to an ante-room. On the walls there was a fabulous collection of paintings by the Dutch Masters. A great curved table desk occupied the centre of the room. With a grunt Goering lowered himself into a chair behind it, signed to Gregory to take another, and said:
‘Well, go ahead.’
‘That Naval Captain,’ Gregory replied. ‘I don’t know his name. But my colleague is certain that he has been planted here to spy on you.’
A broad grin spread over the Reichsmarschall’s fat face. ‘I know it. He is my Naval Attaché, but in the pay of Himmler. I keep him on a string. Better the Devil you know than the Devil you don’t. As long as he is here Himmler won’t send anyone else to spy on me. I feed him with what I want that crazy fool to know.’
Gregory smiled. ‘Then my warning is redundant, Herr Reichsmarschall. But Herr Malacou and I are deeply grateful for the way in which you have rescued us from prison and are anxious to be of service to you in any way we can.’
For a moment Goering studied Gregory’s face intently, then he said, ‘Tell me, Herr Protze, how much of this clever act of yours is trickery? There are no means by which your predictions about the future can be checked, but all my guests are well-known people; so you and this Oriental fellow for whom you appear to act as manager might have obtained particulars about their pasts from ordinary sources.’
‘No,’ Gregory replied firmly. ‘I assure Your Excellency that Herr Malacou is a genuine mystic. After all, both of us have been confined at Sachsenhausen for the past four months; so what possible opportunity could we have had to ferret out facts about the lives of your guests?’
Goering nodded. ‘Yes. You certainly seem to have a point there. The Führer and Himmler swear by this sort of thing; but I never have. I’m still c
onvinced that the occult has nothing to do with it. My belief is that you have only the ability to read people’s thoughts about themselves, and make up the rest. Still, that’s neither here nor there. The two of you provided us with an excellent entertainment, and in these days we haven’t much to laugh about. You may go now. Tell Colonel Kaindl to give you a glass of wine and to protect you from those angry women, and that I’ll rejoin my guests presently. I’ve a few notes I wish to make.’
As he spoke, Goering took a sheet of paper from a drawer and picked up a pen.
Having thanked him, Gregory came to his feet, gave the Nazi salute, turned about and walked towards the door. He was breathing freely now and his heart was high. He had come through the ordeal undiscovered and the party had been a huge success. The cold, the hunger, the lice, the stink and the nightly fatigue from which he had suffered for so many weeks at Sachsenhausen were finished with. He was safe now and he bad only occasionally to amuse the Reichsmarschall at the expense of his guests to continue enjoying the good food and comfort of Karinhall.
He had just reached the door when Goering’s voice came clearly from behind him. ‘By the by. When you last saw her, how was my old friend Erika?’
23
The Other Side of the Curtain
‘… My old friend Erika?’ For a moment Gregory strove to persuade himself that his mind had played him some trick and that he had only imagined hearing Goering speak those words; yet he knew it had not. When they had first come face to face that evening or, if not then, a little later, some feature, mannerism or tone of voice had struck a chord in the Reichsmarschall’s memory. And that chord had resulted in no vague feeling that they had met on some previous occasion. His mention of Erika showed that he had definitely identified Gregory as the British agent whom he had been within an ace of having had shot in 1939.
Gregory was so near the door that his instinct was to dash through it. A second’s thought told him that any attempt to escape would be foredoomed to failure. Already Goering might have taken a pistol from his desk and have him covered. At best he could hope only for some desperate minutes blundering down the long corridors before he was cornered by the guards. Since, at last, he had come to the end of his tether it was better to accept defeat gracefully.
Slowly he turned on his heel and faced the monstrous figure clad in the Roman toga. Goering raised a hand with fingers the size of sausages, heavy with rings, and beckoned:
‘Come here, Englishman. I recognised you by the scar above your eyebrow, but I forget your name. What is it?’
‘Sallust,’ Gregory replied quietly, walking back to the desk and standing at attention in front of it.
‘I remember now. Before I could recall only that years ago you risked your life by coming here to ask my help because you believed Erika to have fallen into the clutches of the Gestapo.’
‘That is so, Excellency. Then you entertained me to dinner. Afterwards we spent the night making a plan to induce the Finns to refuse Russia’s demands and go to war.’
‘Jawohl, jawohl. What a lifetime away that seems. But it all comes back to me. Although our countries were at war it was in our common interest to induce the Finns to fight; and I spared your life because you had the wit to suggest a way in which that might be done.’
Gregory managed to raise a smile. ‘Although our countries are still at war it is possible that we may still have interests in common. I served you well in Finland, perhaps …’
‘No, no!’ Goering gave a harsh laugh. ‘Times have changed. Neither you nor anyone else can pull us out of the mess we are in. The game is up; and however able you may be, this time I can find no use for you.’
Already, during the past five days, Gregory had racked his brains in vain for some means of intriguing Goering into sparing him should his true identity be discovered. Now, he had made his bid and, as he had expected, having no concrete proposal to offer, it had been rejected. He began to wonder if the Reichsmarschall would have him taken out and shot at once, or give an order for him to be executed in the morning.
Goering again raised his hand. Gregory thought that he was about to press the bell on his desk to summon the guard, but the gems on it flashed as he waved it towards a chair and said, ‘Those people in the next room bore me. Sit down again and tell me about yourself. How long have you been in Germany? What have you been up to, and what did you hope to gain by masquerading as a fortune-teller?’
It was seven months since Gregory had left England and even any information that could have been extracted from him under torture was long out of date; so he had no hesitation in relating how he had been flown into Poland to collect the mechanism of a V.2 and had become stranded there.
‘What damnable luck,’ Goering commented. ‘And on account of that stupid firework, too. I always maintained that to manufacture a weapon that was as expensive as an aircraft, yet could deliver only one medium-sized bomb, was the height of idiocy; but the Führer wouldn’t listen. Instead he let that loud-mouthed little crook Goebbels build it up as a war-winner, with the result that the people no longer believe our broadcasts. When I think of the millions in money and man hours that went into that damp squib it makes me hopping mad. With the same cash and effort I could have added ten thousand ‘planes to the Luftwaffe and made the Normandy beaches present a very different picture. But go on. What happened to you then?’
Having no doubt that within eight hours at most he would be dead, Gregory took some pleasure in describing how he had killed the two S.S. men in Malacou’s cottage and disposed of their bodies, then made his way to Berlin dressed in an S.S. uniform. But, having told how he had got rid of it, he temporarily abandoned the truth in order to protect Sabine; simply saying that he had hidden for some days in an empty boathouse on the Wannsee, and during the nights broken into a number of garages until he found one with a car that had a driving licence in the locker and for which there was a good supply of petrol. To that he had only to add that the licence had happened to be that of Prince Hugo von Wittlsebach zu Amberg-Sulzheim to return to a true account of all that had since befallen him.
Goering listened to all this with interest and, at times, amusement; but when Gregory spoke of the success that Malacou had had while at Sachsenhausen in predicting the future, the Reichsmarschall frowned and said, ‘Surely that was no more than intelligent guesswork. For a long time past I could have foretold the way things would go for Germany and been right in all but minor matters.’
‘No doubt,’ Gregory agreed. ‘But you had all the information available to go on, whereas Malacou, cooped up as he was in a concentration camp, had nothing other than rumours and news that was often weeks old. Even you could not have foreseen that the British airborne landings at Arnhem would prove a failure.’
‘Oh yes I could. Montgomery’s successes have been due mainly to his extreme caution and being backed by overwhelming air power; but for once he stuck his neck out. It was clear to us that he had allowed the airborne forces to be put down too far ahead for them to be supported by his armour, since it had to advance along a road that our artillery was able to enfilade from both sides.’
‘Perhaps. But remember, you had the battle maps showing the dispositions of the opposing forces to judge from; whereas Malacou had nothing. And the Ardennes offensive. How could he possibly have known in adance about that by any ordinary means?’
‘No; well, possibly you are right. Do you really believe what he said about May being the critical month for Germany, with us Nazi leaders at one another’s throats and some of us trying to negotiate a peace?’
‘I certainly do.’
Goering gave a heavy sigh. ‘I would to God we could get peace tomorrow. We are finished. There is no way out. Nothing to be done. The nation is dead already but, still animated by the will of the Führer, refuses to lie down. And to think that we had the game in our hands; the whole world for the taking, in 1941.’
‘You still had Britain against you, and the people were solid behind
Churchill. We should never have given in.’
‘In the end you would have been forced to,’ Goering replied with a bitter laugh. ‘That is, if I’d had my way. You and I know that the real danger to the civilisation of the Western World is Communism—or, to give it another name, Soviet Russia. But Russia could wait. She would not have dared attack us, so we ought first to have devoted our entire energies to putting an end to the Government systems in other countries that tolerated Communist Parties within them. We had already made ourselves the masters of Austria, Czechoslovakia, half Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France, Yugoslovia and Greece. Italy, Spain, Rumania, Portugal and Finland already had Governments that had made Communism illegal. Sweden and Switzerland could have given us no trouble. In Europe only Britain remained as the refuge of our real enemies, who continue to take advantage there of your outworn custom of affording asylum to anarchists, saboteurs and revolutionaries. If Germany had not dissipated two thirds of her strength by invading Russia, we could have brought such weight to bear on Britain that she would have found herself compelled to accept our terms and become our ally in a war to destroy the Soviets.’
‘I doubt it, Excellency. And what of the United States?’
‘The Yanks, eh?’ Goering gave a great bellow of laughter. ‘Surely you are too intelligent to share the belief common among Englishmen that the top Americans are really the friends of Britain? Under a screen of good will their State Department never ceases to work for the disruption of your Empire. They care only for making money, and in the markets of the world Britain is still their most formidable rival. For all their vaunted democracy, did they rush to help Britain and France in 1939? Certainly not. They sat back smugly watching their greatest trade competitors exhaust themselves.’
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