by John Gardner
There had been a hopeless jumble around the middle of the reception. Any experienced operator would have insisted on a recount. It was not until George began working at it that he realised how bad the whole thing was. Whichever way he tried, it came out
BALTHAZAR WILL RETURN NEXT MOON. DO NOT ACCEPT GHYEBNSH AMTETAN AND GLYXJY. DEEPLY CONCERNED REGARDING VIABILITY OF LEMINHJS FARHELMN AND MOTORBLADE. LISTEN OUT ON SCHEDULE.
It was signed MARS. Ramilies himself; and the muddle was indecipherable. He had no idea what “motorblade” was supposed to mean. Confusion.
The longer he looked at the scrambled message, the more depressed George became. “Do not accept” jumble. What was he not to accept? The Hiram the Wizard token from his mother? If so, how far could he go with Michel Downay, or even Angelle Tours? Or any of them? Were they “deeply concerned regarding viability” of the whole operation? If so, they were too late.
He thought again—was it Maman or Downay? Here I am being seduced by the SS, working for Ramilies, side by side with Michel Downay, and heavily attracted by the girl Downay had used and lived with.
To say that George was worried at that point was an understatement in trumps.
He burned the sheaf of notes, and went back into the main room, head buzzing with thoughts about his worth as an agent in the field; a manipulator of great, if evil, men through the dreamings of a sixteenth-century occultist.
Angelle sat very still, her knees primly together, in one of the chairs by the stove. Her face was too tranquil for comfort. It was as though she had just painfully accepted the news of a terminal illness, or that a reprieve from a death sentence had not been granted. Acquiescence was written all over her, as though she knew there was a penalty for life—which there is—and she was about to be called to account.
George went over, bent down, and kissed her, She clutched at him, and it was like being dragged down into a deep pool, so that in the end he had to slide his lips to one side to gain breath, gasping as though emerging into sunlight. It was like that often over the next few hours: a whirlpool which took both of them down with it.
They used her bed on that last night, and whispered close together in the darkness. It was hot and there was hardly any noise from the street below her window. Sometime long after midnight, she held him to her and laughed. “Hiram the Wizard. You have removed the crown instead of fixing it to my head forever. That is how I shall think of you now—always—my Wizard.” As she spoke, her body stiffened, and she repeated it—“Hiram the Wizard.”
He wondered, of course, if Angelle was now trying to play the token to him. But the situation had become so complex that he said nothing, except that was the name she should use when she went to the safe apartment on the Rue Cambon. All the details.
It seemed to calm her and they drifted into sleep, then woke, suddenly. She was sweating and said it was a nightmare. George realised he had also dreamed—a dream full of cartoon characters of Ramilies, Downay, Kuche and Wald, Himmler and the Chaplinesque Hitler, all emerging in grotesque shapes from a bubbling cauldron tended by the old Bruegel woman at the house where the original reception committee had taken him.
Again they fell into a shallow doze. Woke. Made love. Then woke again to the slam of the door. Michel Downay was back and calling their names loudly from the living room.
“It is all arranged,” he said. “We have the bastards now.”
“Thank you for being so frank, George.” Herbie made a note on his pad. He made notes all the time—a small misdirection, lest George thought he was being taped.
“I think it’s everything of importance.” George looked weary.
“I mean thank you for being so frank about Angelle.”
“Oh.” He smiled. “‘When I was a young man courting the girls.’ A lovely lady.”
“Lovely indeed, George. You feel up to going on?” It was not quite three-thirty.
“We have to go on, don’t we? Only the rest of today, tomorrow, and a few hours on Thursday. Got to tell all. Orders.”
Herbie put out a huge hand, gently. “I know you don’t like it, George, but it just might be important.”
“Bloody Kraut. You’re too bloody thorough by half.” He laughed. “Well, there’s a lot to tell, my old Deutsche buddy. Downay’s mad plan; the hell on that train; the nightmare at Wewelsburg.”
“And what followed. Wermut.”
“Yes, Wermut. Wormwood…”
“Give me another half hour, then I’ll get tea. Okay?”
“Right.” George leaned back in his chair. “So, we woke up to find bloody bearded Michel Downay back home and as pleased as a ram with two cocks.” He grinned.
31
PARIS 1941
“IT IS ALL ARRANGED.” Michel was still in his coat, leaning on the ebony cane, Looking dishevelled and tired. Then he laughed, almost the laugh of a maniac, throwing back his head. For a second, his bearded face looked very young, the eyes extraordinarily bright. George wondered if he had been with a woman; the eyes had the particular sparkle which comes afterwards.
“I have interrupted.” He laughed again. “I have become a sexual term, yes? Monsieur Coitus Interruptus.”
George put an arm around Angelle. She had wrapped herself in a flimsy robe. He had just managed to climb into his trousers. Angelle was shivering, but it was not possible to tell if it was with fear or rage.
“What is it you’ve arranged?” George tightened his grip around the girl’s shoulders.
“The storming of the Bastille and the Winter Palace; the Siege of Troy. All is arranged, and I have a new quatrain for you, Georges.”
There was a real scent of danger in the air, blossoming between Michel and George. Angelle still shivered, and George quietly suggested she should get dressed. She gave a simple wag of the head and disappeared through the door and down the passage with Downay calling after her that coffee would be a good idea.
The apartment was cold, for they had let the stove die down, unbanked before bed. Dawn had not yet started to glimmer outside, and the taste in George’s mouth was sour, his eyes sore and heavy. The whole feeling was of that waiting quiet time, as though the apartment itself resented people in it being up and awake.
George’s watch showed four-thirty. “A new quatrain?”
Michel Downay’s mouth dropped, the smile vanishing as he spoke:
“In his great castle, at the round table,
The Standard-Bearer, surrounded by his knights,
Will die, slain by those who come summoned
By him for the prophet’s sake.”
It took a few seconds for the meaning to sink home, and in that time Angelle came up quietly behind George, whispering that she was going to get coffee.
“Michel?” There was an echo in George’s voice. “What nonsense have you arranged? The Standard-Bearer will die…?”
“Simple, my dear Georges. Simple and complete.” He was taking off his coat, one hand resting on the top of a chair to steady himself. “You would agree, from what our friends Kuche and Wald have said, that the SS have summoned us into the presence. “You are going to see the Standard-Bearer at Arthur’s Court,’ that’s what Wald said—right?”
“Yes.”
“We are being summoned into the presence of Himmler himself. The direct result of your Himmler quatrains is that we are to meet Himmler.”
George said that it looked that way.
Michel continued, “We are to be taken to Himmler’s sacred castle, his monastery at Wewelsburg where he holds court and passes some mystic hours with the high priests of the SS. We, George; you and I are to be invited in—to explain ourselves. You realise that? Into the place where he keeps the Holy Grail. We go by train. Soon. With a very small guard.” The smile again, thin this time beneath the beard. “On the journey—which, if you haven’t yet worked it out, will be long and arduous—there is going to be a slight readjustment. A changing of the guard. Suddenly, our own people will be with us. That is what I have been
arranging.”
“To what end?” Knowing already and appalled by it.
“Once inside that godforsaken castle we will be close enough to carry out a military coup. The one known attempt on Hitler’s life—the Biergarten fiasco—failed, and was probably meant to fail. The assassination of his right-hand man, the Reichsführer SS, will not fail, because we will be close enough to do it.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Crazy. No. I am a realist.”
“To what end, though?” George went on to point out that he was, to all intents and purposes, an officer of the British Armed Forces, sent to collaborate with Downay on one specific mission. That mission had now virtually been accomplished. He had not been sent to assist in some crack-brained operation which included an attempt on the life of the Third Reich’s second man.
Michel simply smiled, dropping into a chair—gently as a man will ease himself into a warm bath.
“Georges, it is an opportunity not to be missed. What do you really think they intend to do with us at Wewelsburg? Welcome us with open arms? It’s the SS we’re dealing with, not your Lord Baden Powell’s Boy Scouts. Idiots they may be, but they are not foolish enough to be taken in for long. We can only keep this Nostradamus game going for a short time.”
“The idea was to penetrate the Ministry of Propaganda…Goebbels’ bright lads…”
“And we’ve ended up with Himmler on a plate. Yes, we might have caused some unpleasantness for a while. They would have played with us. But in the end it would inevitably be the firing squad. Or worse. The way I see it, we can make a maximum effort. Kill off one of the most dangerous beasts and possibly, just possibly, get away with it.” He stopped short as Angelle appeared with steaming coffee.
She smiled at George as she placed his mug on the table near his arm. The smile clawed at his guts.
When she had gone, he asked what had actually been done, and Michel told of his visit to Maman and her husband, and of the meeting they had called during the night.
George thought of the Rouberts’ smart apartment with the Rembrandt in the hall. He wondered if it had changed much now the SS were billeted there. Come to that, he wondered how Michel Downay had managed to hold his little party there with SS officers so close. When challenged on it, Downay gave a superior smile and said that they were being well cared for at the time. Some of his “students” George presumed. Then Downay outlined the plan which had been agreed on and put into effect.
George listened, heart sinking. He thought about the wireless transmitter under his bed, and of Ramilies. Could he warn Ramilies of the madness taking place here? Warn him and then cut loose?
“You don’t approve of the strategy?” Downay swallowed a mouthful of the scalding coffee.
George told him, in plain words, that he thought some people might call the plan brave, if foolhardy. Personally, he wanted nothing of it.
“You have a better suggestion?”
He had, but there was no way to do it—no hope of running for cover, or making some haphazard exit from France. The trap, thought George, was there, and he was caught in its claws; Ramilies’ claws; the saw-toothed claws of the SS; Michel Downay’s mad claws; and the velvet, honeyed claws of Angelle Tours.
Light started to filter through the curtains, and Michel said he would go and pack; maybe get a little rest. As he reached the door—
“Georges, are you armed?”
“No.”
“I’ll see to it then.”
“Not wise.”
“The object is to come through in one piece,”
“I have my hands. They can be lethal.”
“No doubt. They’ll stop bullets also?”
Angrily he said that he would rather go unarmed. At least until the first part of the operation was completed safely. If it ran true, and there were no snags, it would take place sometime that night—around nine or ten o’clock, just inside Germany. At Aachen. Michel made some comment about always having regarded the English as being mad, and left.
Angelle was in her room, lying on her back, the dress discarded and replaced once more by the thin robe which barely covered her nakedness, the material clinging to her breasts and stuck to the curve of her thighs, as though they were damp.
She cried, repeating George’s name again and again as he stretched out beside her, tears soaking his face. He soothed, and tried to convince her that, if she did as she was told, all would be well.
Once more he went through her instructions—to give them ten minutes after they had gone, then check that the building was not being watched. She had to go then, fast and with the suitcase wireless. The old couple in the Rue Cambon would know what to do. “Just tell them you’ve come from Hiram the Wizard and they are to check with Mars.”
Yes, he told her, he was going to Germany; but if the plan worked—Michel’s plan—he could be back in Paris inside a week. She must not worry. If possible, the people in the Rue Cambon must persuade London to get her out. “If I don’t see you back in Paris, I’ll see you in London. Soon.”
“I don’t trust Michel” was all she said.
They made love once more, among tears and whispers. Only then did George tell her that he loved her.
The parting was brutal. The facts simple, the emotions indescribable, as though they were both being torn to pieces.
At five minutes past eight, Michel Downay and George Thomas sat in the back of the Opel with Wald and Kuche. They seemed both excited and overawed at the prospect which lay ahead. Behind the Opel a large truck trundled carrying baggage and the escort—Waffen SS: a sergeant and four men, spruce and armed to the teeth. They also appeared happy in the knowledge that they were returning to the Fatherland.
In the Opel there was almost a party atmosphere. Wald talking about the honour of it all. Kuche proudly proclaiming that they were to travel in style.
For everybody’s sake, George hoped the style was not one that would cramp the movements of his stepfather. If things were on schedule, Maurice Roubert and his merry men should already be boarding the train at the Gare du Nord.
The small convoy rounded the corner into the Boulevard de Denain. Ahead of them stood the façade of the Gare du Nord, hung with its red swastika drapes. Ahead of that, the rails and track which would bear them to Himmler’s magic castle.
“Good. I get tea now, George.” Herbie made for the kitchen, but could not interrupt George’s flow.
“Herbie, I remember I had a churning sensation in my guts. It was a sense of déjà vu I could not place. It all seemed so familiar—the smell of smoke and grit; stale air and engine oil: a sense of anxiety. Maybe it was memories of going up to Oxford for the first time? You know, leaving the things behind. Lockhill Terrace. The cycle ride to the grammar school. All that.”
“I understand.” Herbie switched on the kettle and fiddled in the cupboard for the cake tin. “A good English custom, this. Afternoon tea. I always like afternoon tea.” He came back to look at George slumped in the chair. “I know you got to Aachen; and I know what happened there”—one enormous hand on the door. “You talked about strange mental things. Did anything of note take place before the operation at Aachen?”
“Oh yes.” George lifted his head and smiled. “A whole bag of tricks happened before Aachen.”
The kettle boiled. Herbie made tea and carried the tray through, placing it on the table between them and saying that he would be mother: pouring and offering cake.
“So a whole lot of things happened? Such as?”
“Such as the arrival of my stepfather.”
“Good tea, this.” Herbie savoured. “Go on. Your stepfather?”
32
PARIS 1941
A SMALL METAL DESTINATION board on the side of the coach announced that the train was going from Paris to Aachen. At least Michel had got that right. At Aachen, his information was that they would be transferred to a German train.
Kuche was also right. They were to travel in style. A whole special co
ach reserved for them: a converted wagon-lits with three sleeping compartments, a day coach, and a small dining car.
This coach, Kuche said, was used by high-ranking officers and had been obtained for them by General Frühling on Himmler’s personal request. They were going the easy way (George wondered which way they would return). When they reached Germany there would be a similar coach to take them on the onward journey. The implication in the SS officer’s voice was that German Railways would provide better accommodation than SNCF.
They sat together in the day coach. Wald and Downay in close conversation, Kuche leaning his head back onto the small antimacassar and looking at George as though trying to hypnotise him.
“We’re not going to Berlin then?” George tried to be ingenuous. “I really don’t understand. I thought it was the Herr Doktor Goebbels who wanted our work; who wished to employ our specialist knowledge. Now you say we have this coach on the orders of Reichsführer Himmler.”
Kuche smiled and drew on his cigarette. A man who held four aces and knew you could not win. Then he leaned forward and began to speak with some elegance.
“You are a scholar, Herr Thomas. I understand that your historical knowledge has contributed much to the interpretation of these prophecies. However, you admit that some of those in the batch we had from you were difficult.” He leaned forward, tapping George’s knee. “I can tell you that what you have found perplexing is more clear to us.” A hand flapped towards Wald. “Some things are immediately recognisable to those of us who have a deep knowledge of our own history and the mystic order of our Society. By Society I mean the SS. We are not just an elite corps formed to wage war, you must understand. We are an order, I suppose akin to the Jesuits of the Roman Catholic Church. We also have rites, ideals, and a mysticism of which we are proud.”
He went on to say there were things in those quatrains which no Frenchman could be expected to recognise. “It is a great honour, you must understand, for Reichsführer Himmler to send for you personally.”