The Sultan’s Daughter
Dennis Wheatley
Edited by Miranda Vaughan Jones
For
Derrick Morley
Ambassador Extraordinary and ‘Most Secret’
during the years we spent together in the
Offices of the War Cabinet and for
Marie José,
this tale of great days in France.
With my love to you both
Dennis
Contents
Introduction
1 The Great Risk
2 A Most Unwelcome Encounter
3 The Lesser Risk
4 A Desperate Situation
5 Roger Digs his Grave
6 The New Babylon in 1798
7 When Greek Meets Greek
8 The Liberators
9 ‘Who wouldn’t be a Soldier, ah! It’s a shame to take the pay’
10 Love at First Sight
11 The Battle of the Nile
12 The One Who Got Away
13 The Loves of the Exiled
14 Pastures New
15 The Looker-on sees most of the Game
16 No ‘Happy New Year’
17 Shanghaied for Further Service
18 The Siege of Acre
19 A Bolt from the Blue
20 The Unholy Land
21 Plague and the Great Temptation
22 Back into the Secret Battle
23 Out of the Past
24 The Great Conspiracy
25 The Fateful Days of Brumaire
26 The Revolution is Over
A Note on the Author
Introduction
Dennis Wheatley was my grandfather. He only had one child, my father Anthony, from his first marriage to Nancy Robinson. Nancy was the youngest in a large family of ten Robinson children and she had a wonderful zest for life and a gaiety about her that I much admired as a boy brought up in the dull Seventies. Thinking about it now, I suspect that I was drawn to a young Ginny Hewett, a similarly bubbly character, and now my wife of 27 years, because she resembled Nancy in many ways.
As grandparents, Dennis and Nancy were very different. Nancy’s visits would fill the house with laughter and mischievous gossip, while Dennis and his second wife Joan would descend like minor royalty, all children expected to behave. Each held court in their own way but Dennis was the famous one with the famous friends and the famous stories.
There is something of the fantasist in every storyteller, and most novelists writing thrillers see themselves in their heroes. However, only a handful can claim to have been involved in actual daring-do. Dennis saw action both at the Front, in the First World War, and behind a desk in the Second. His involvement informed his writing and his stories, even those based on historical events, held a notable veracity that only the life-experienced novelist can obtain. I think it was this element that added the important plausibility to his writing. This appealed to his legions of readers who were in that middle ground of fiction, not looking for pure fantasy nor dry fact, but something exciting, extraordinary, possible and even probable.
There were three key characters that Dennis created over the years: The Duc de Richleau, Gregory Sallust and Roger Brook. The first de Richleau stories were set in the years between the wars, when Dennis had started writing. Many of the Sallust stories were written in the early days of the Second World War, shortly before Dennis joined the Joint Planning Staff in Whitehall, and Brook was cast in the time of the French Revolution, a period that particularly fascinated him.
He is probably always going to be associated with Black Magic first and foremost, and it’s true that he plugged it hard because sales were always good for those books. However, it’s important to remember that he only wrote eleven Black Magic novels out of more than sixty bestsellers, and readers were just as keen on his other stories. In fact, invariably when I meet people who ask if there is any connection, they tell me that they read ‘all his books’.
Dennis had a full and eventful life, even by the standards of the era he grew up in. He was expelled from Dulwich College and sent to a floating navel run school, HMS Worcester. The conditions on this extraordinary ship were Dickensian. He survived it, and briefly enjoyed London at the pinnacle of the Empire before war was declared and the fun ended. That sort of fun would never be seen again.
He went into business after the First World War, succeeded and failed, and stumbled into writing. It proved to be his calling. Immediate success opened up the opportunity to read and travel, fueling yet more stories and thrilling his growing band of followers.
He had an extraordinary World War II, being one of the first people to be recruited into the select team which dreamed up the deception plans to cover some of the major events of the war such as Operation Torch, Operation Mincemeat and the D-Day landings. Here he became familiar with not only the people at the very top of the war effort, but also a young Commander Ian Fleming, who was later to write the James Bond novels. There are indeed those who have suggested that Gregory Sallust was one of James Bond’s precursors.
The aftermath of the war saw Dennis grow in stature and fame. He settled in his beautiful Georgian house in Lymington surrounded by beautiful things. He knew how to live well, perhaps without regard for his health. He hated exercise, smoked, drank and wrote. Today he would have been bullied by wife and children and friends into giving up these habits and changing his lifestyle, but I’m not sure he would have given in. Maybe like me, he would simply find a quiet place.
Dominic Wheatley, 2013
1
The Great Risk
It was late on a dismal February afternoon in the year 1798. For the past ten days the weather had been so bad in the Channel that no ship had dared to put out from the little harbour of Lymington with a reasonable hope of running the blockade and safely landing a passenger, or a cargo of smuggled goods, on the coast of France.
But in the lofty rooms of Grove Place, the home of Admiral Sir Christopher Brook, a small, square mansion looking out across the Solent to the Isle of Wight, it was warm and quiet. The heavy curtains were already drawn, shutting out the winter cold and the steady pattering of the rain. In the dining room the soft light of the candles glinted on the silver and crystal with which the mahogany table was laid. Opposite each other sat two people—the Admiral’s son Roger and his guest Georgina, the widowed Countess of St. Ermins. They had just finished dinner.
Suddenly Roger pushed back his chair, looked directly into the lovely face of his companion and declared, ‘Georgina, I must be the stupidest fellow alive in that despite all the opportunities I’ve had, I’ve lacked the sense to force you into marrying me.’
Georgina’s dark curls danced as she threw back her head and gave her rich low laugh. ‘What nonsense, Roger. We have oft discussed the matter and———’
‘Aye,’ he interrupted, ‘and reached the wrong conclusion. God never put breath into a couple more suited to share the trials and joys of life; and you know it.’
He was just over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and slim hips. His brown hair swept back in a high wave from a fine forehead. Below it a straight, aggressive nose stood out between a pair of bright blue eyes. From years of living dangerously as Prime Minister ‘Billy’ Pitt’s most resourceful secret agent, his mouth had become thin and a little hard, but the slight furrows on either side of it were evidence of his tendency to frequent laughter. His strong chin and jaw showed great determination, his long-fingered hands were beautifully modelled, and his calves, when displayed in silk stockings, gave his tall figure the last touch of elegance.
She was a head shorter, and the full curves of her voluptuous figure were regarded in that Georgian age as the height of feminine beaut
y. Her face was heart-shaped, her eyes near-black, enormous and sparkling with vitality. Her eyebrows were arched and her full, bright-red lips disclosed at a glance her tempestuous and passionate nature.
But, apart from the physical attractions with which both of them had been blessed, Roger was right in his contention that neither had ever met another human being in whose company each had known so much happiness.
After a moment Georgina shrugged her fine shoulders, smiled and said, ‘Dear Roger, that no two lovers could have had more joy of one another I’d ne’er deny; but marriage is another thing. We agreed long since that did we enter on wedlock the permanent tie would bring ruin to our love. ’Tis because I have been your mistress for only brief periods between long intervals that the flame of our desire for one another has never died.’
‘Of that you cannot be certain, for we have never put it to the test. Besides, physical desire is but one ingredient of a successful marriage. Another factor is that we both have young children. That you care for my little Susan like a daughter and let her share your Charles’s nursery is a debt I’ll find it hard ever to repay; but it would be far better for them if we were legally united, so that we became “mother” and “father” to both.’
‘In that you have an argument I find it difficult to refute, for I know none I’d as lief have to bring up my little Earl to be a proper man. Yet it does not shake my opinion that other considerations outweigh it.’
‘I’ll revert, then, to the point I made a moment since. It was that we have never made trial of our passion for long enough to form an idea of how durable it might prove. Look back, I pray you, on our past. There was that one unforgettable afternoon when I was but a boy and you seduced me———’
‘Fie, sir! Seduced you, indeed! ’Tis always the man who———’
‘Fiddlesticks, m’dear. You had already allowed another to rob you of your maidenhead, whereas I———’
‘Pax! Pax!’ Georgina laughed. ‘Let’s say that both of us had just reached an age when there was naught for it but to succumb to the hot blood of our natures.’
‘So be it,’ he smiled back. ‘But that was in the summer of ’83 and it was well on in the autumn of ’87 before I held you in my arms again. After a few months of bliss we had to separate once more, and then—’
Georgina gave a sudden giggle. ‘I’ll ne’er forget that night in ’90 when we made our pact that if I accepted my Earl you would marry Amanda. Then we slept together.’
‘And, shame upon us,’ Roger smiled, ‘became lovers again for the six weeks before our respective marriages. But after that we played fair by our spouses. At least you did, although I deceived Amanda four years later with Athenäis de Rochambeau and she me with the Baron de Batz. It was not until I got back from the West Indies in the spring of ’96 that, after near six years and Amanda’s death, I once more shared your bed.’
‘We had that glorious spring together, though. Three whole months of bliss.’
‘Could I have foreseen that our idyll was to be so abruptly terminated through that fiend Malderini, I’d not have been content to spend those months lotus-eating, but would have persuaded you then to marry me.’
‘No, Roger! No! Years before that we had decided that to marry would be to court disaster.’
He shrugged. ‘Anyway, I missed my chance and was forced to flee the country. While I was travelling in India and with General Bonaparte in Italy, another eighteen months sped by. This Christmas brought me the sweetest present I could ever wish for—your lips on mine the night after my return. Yet here we are a bare six weeks later and I must once more tear myself away from you.’
Roger leaned forward and went on earnestly, ‘Think on it, my love. It is now fourteen years since the sweet culmination of our boy-and-girl romance. We vowed then that, though we’d consider ourselves free to make love where we listed, each of us would ever hold first place in the other’s heart. We have kept that vow, yet in all these years we have lived scarce ten months together.’
Georgina slowly shook her head. ‘Dear Roger, I am most sensible of it and have oft felt a great yearning for you when you have been in distant lands. Yet your own statement is the answer to your argument. Had we married, with yourself abroad for years at a stretch it could have been no more than a mockery of the state. Made as I am, unless I’d taken lovers during your long absences I’d have burst a blood vessel, and had you not done likewise you would have returned to me as dried up as a sack of flour. It would have meant either that or spending our brief reunions reproaching one another for discovered infidelities.’
‘Nay. Matters need never have come to such a sorry pass as you envisage. Had we faced up to our situation after Humphrey’s death and married then, I would have changed my whole life so as to remain with you.’
‘You changed it when you married Amanda, but for how long did you remain content with domestic felicity? In less than two years you succumbed to the urge to go adventuring again. How can it possibly profit us to con over all these “might-have-beens”? Above all at such a time as this, when within a few hours you will again be on your way to France?’
‘ ’Tis just that which causes me to do so,’ he replied promptly, ‘Your having volunteered to brave the winter journey and accompany me here for the sake of spending a last night or two with me, then tempests having delayed my departure for ten days, have given us a new experience of one another.’
‘You refer to our having for the first time in our lives been for so long completely alone?’
‘I do. With my father absent in his Command at Harwich, and the cousin who keeps house for him staying with friends in London, we might have been marooned on a desert island except for the servants providing us with every comfort. We have eaten, slept and loved, or sat engrossed in conversation by a roaring fire, just as we listed, without a single duty to perform or any social obligation. And for my part I have never been nearer to dwelling in heaven.’
‘In that you speak for me, too,’ she smiled. ‘Time has ceased to be our master, and each night when I have fallen asleep in your arms I have known the sweetest contentment. I would that living with you in this world apart could have gone on for ever.’
‘Then, sweet, have I not made my case: that as soon as it is possible we should marry?’
Georgina sadly shook her head. ‘Nay, my beloved. We must not allow ourselves to be led astray by these halcyon days that we have snatched from life’s normal round. As I’ve already said, to be faced during long separations with the alternative of maintaining a dreary chastity or deceiving one another would be fatal to our love.’
‘There is yet another alternative. I am too far committed to my present mission to ask to be excused of it; but when I return to England I could resign from Mr. Pitt’s service.’
‘Can you say, within a month or so, when you expect your return to be?’ Georgina asked.
He shook his head. ‘Alas, no. Unfortunately there is nothing definite about my mission. It is simply that having established myself as persona grata with the men who now rule France, and particularly with Barras and General Bonaparte, I should return there, keep Mr. Pitt informed, as far as possible, of their intentions and do what I can to influence their policies in favour of British interests.’
‘Then you may have to remain abroad for a year, or perhaps two, as you did during the Revolution.’
‘I trust not, yet I cannot altogether rule out such a possibility. You will recall that when recounting my more recent activities I told you that in Italy General Bonaparte made me one of his A.D.Cs with the rank of Colonel. While I have been in England he has believed me to be on sick leave at my little chateau in the South of France. My orders were to report back to him at the end of January, and I would have done so had not storms delayed my passage. When I do rejoin his Staff I must go where he goes; but the odds are that even he does not yet know how the Directory will employ him, now that Austria has signed a peace with France.’
‘Sin
ce our nation alone now remains in arms against the French, surely they must strike at us. You have said yourself on more than one occasion that they may attempt an invasion in the spring, and that if so this little Corsican fire-eater will be the man to lead it.’
‘You may take it as certain that the Directory favours such a move; and Bonaparte himself becomes like a man crazed with excitement whenever anyone raises in his mind the vision of the glory that would be his if he succeeded in marching an Army into London. At least, that was his dearest ambition until I secretly stacked the cards that led to his being given the command of the Army of Italy; and it may well be that now he is once more dreaming of himself as the conqueror of England.’ Giving a twisted smile, Roger added, ‘If so I’ll be back quite soon, but in a foreign uniform and making it my first business to ensure your not being raped by the brutal and licentious invaders.’
Georgina snorted, ‘ ’Tis more likely that you’ll find yourself back in the sea with a British pitchfork stuck in your bottom.’
‘I’ve good hopes of escaping such a fate,’ he laughed, ‘for it’s my opinion that the French will never get ashore at all. The attempt would be at best a desperate gamble, and Bonaparte has an uncanny way of assessing odds correctly. I think it more than probable that he will decide against staking his whole future on such a hazardous undertaking.’
‘What, then, are the alternatives?’
‘He has several times mentioned to me a grandiose project for leading an expedition to conquer the glamorous East and make himself another Alexander.’
‘Should he do so I asume, from what you have said, that you would perforce accompany him?’
‘No, no!’ Roger laughed. ‘That will not do. I’ve no mind to spend the rest of my life fighting Saracens and savages. Were I faced with such a grim and profitless prospect I’d think up some way to relieve myself smoothly of my aide-de-campship, Personally, though, I think it unlikely that the Directory would agree to Bonaparte taking a large army overseas for his own aggrandisement. Since France is still bankrupt, despite the immense treasure Bonaparte looted out of Italy for her, I count it probable that the minds of the Directors run on renewing the war across the Rhine, or sending him to invade smaller States that have remained neutral, to act again as a robber for France. But all this is speculation. It would, therefore, be unfair in me to disguise from you the possibility that new developments in France might prevent my return this year, or even next.’
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