Quickly von Torgau closed the door behind them. Sally went up to him straight away and twined her powdered arms around him, flinching at the touch of his Army tunic. ‘It’s not very intimate,’ she murmured. He pulled away from her.
‘Sally,’ he said, erect and stern, ‘intimacy is not what I want. I am a German officer. You are English. You must see that your presence here compromises me greatly. All I desire now is to be sent to fight for the Fatherland. Any taint, any suggestion that I am not wholly loyal, can prevent that. Or worse.’
Sally moved close to him again and gazed, wide-eyed, into his face. ‘Oh, Christian, you wouldn’t turn me down? Don’t you remember?’
‘No, Sally. I don’t remember. I don’t want to remember. You – you were an aberration, a corrupt part of my life I wish to forget. My one wish is to get you out of here and on your way back to Spain.’
‘Oh, Christian,’ she said, in a low, desolate voice. Standing on her toes she put her arms around his neck again and kissed him on the mouth.
He pulled free and held her by the shoulders. ‘Stop that! Stop that – or I shall become very angry with you! I’m going into my secretary’s room to find the official stamps for the document I’m going to give you. Sit down. Stay where you are. Don’t make a sound. Don’t move until I return.’
But as he spoke Sally was unbuttoning the metal buttons of his tunic. ‘Oh, Christian, just one more time …’
He pulled his arms from the tunic, leaving it in her hands, and crossed the floor rapidly to his secretary’s office. ‘Do as I say!’ he shouted. ‘Sit down!’
Inside, Sally heard him opening and shutting drawers. While he did so, Sally, who had sat down as instructed, went rapidly through his tunic. In the breast pocket she found the letter, which was later to be named, in official circles, the German Letter. As she read it she heard Christian banging yet another drawer shut. He swore.
The letter, dated three days earlier, came from Adolf Hitler’s office. It was a personal letter, amiably informing Major Graf von Torgau that at last the writer was able to comply with his most urgent requests to be sent on active duty for the Reich. He would be attached shortly to the command of General von Runstedt for the launching of the attack to the east. The letter concluded by hoping that Gräfin Julia remained in good health and ended cheerfully, ‘Auf Moscou’. It was signed by Hitler himself.
Sally stood up, holding the letter, and ran across the room. She let herself out as quietly as she could and found herself at the top of the big staircase with no choice but to go down and pass the guards at the entrance to the building. Everything inside her screamed for a less dangerous course, but there was none, so she went down calmly, always expecting to hear Christian behind her. However, he must have remained in the smaller office for longer than she had thought. She knew, though, that as soon as he entered the room in which they had been he would immediately discover the loss of the letter. She passed the guards, saying in German, ‘Major Graf von Torgau asked me to meet him outside,’ and went through the gates unmolested.
Once she was out of sight of the Crillon she began to run. She hoped there would be a gap between the time Christian found she was gone and his discovery that the letter from Hitler was missing – and that Christian would hesitate about making public Sally’s embarrassing – to him – departure.
Mercifully it was thirty minutes before curfew and people were still in the streets. She slowed down: a running figure is always conspicuous. She found a tram, and began to make her way back to the warehouse.
There was still no hue and cry, no Army cars speeding about, no soldiers launched into the streets. Perhaps the letter was a hoax. But how likely was it that Christian von Torgau would be carrying anything but a genuine letter from Adolf Hitler? In his tunic pocket, next to his breast?
Perhaps, she thought, as the tram rumbled on through the dark streets, that he had not yet discovered it was missing. More likely he had, but was making every effort to get it back quickly without exposing himself as the officer who had permitted a woman to obtain an important letter from the Führer.
At the warehouse a man was throwing sacks furiously into the back of a van while the driver sat in front, engine running. He shouted something at the other from the window. They were trying to leave Paris before curfew. From the corner of the yard, where she was hiding, Sally saw the loader start back into the warehouse just as the driver bent over to light a cigarette. She raced across the yard and dived into the open back of the van, crawled in and was pulling some sacks over her just as the man returned with another heap and threw them in. He closed the door with a slam and the van started. In the darkness Sally finished covering herself, breathing heavily. So far, about half an hour after her theft of the letter, she had been lucky. However, by now they might have declared an emergency and closed the checkpoints. But when the van stopped the enquiries she could hear from the interior of the van were brief and sounded routine. Then they were on their way again.
She was safely out of Paris, but she had no idea where they were going. She could bang on the back of the vehicle behind the driver’s seat, attract his attention and cause him to stop. But would he turn her in? They seemed to be going north, the right direction for the Channel coast so she decided to risk staying there quietly. She might be able to get out when eventually the driver opened the van door. That part of her adventure was almost the worst of all, being bumped along in darkness to who knew where – a German Army base, perhaps?
The van turned into a farmyard. Dogs barked. The back was flung open, the driver reached in for some bales of empty sacks and pulled them out. A man’s voice, close to the van, said, ‘You’ve got the money?’ Sally stayed quite still.
It seemed to her that she was on the supply line, bringing food from the farms to Paris. But she could not be sure that those who owed their living to the German authorities would be prepared to help her. She’d better get out unseen. But the activity around the van did not stop, money was handed over, news about crops and families was exchanged, the van doors were slammed and they were on their way again.
There was another stop, almost the same, and then, an hour later, four hours after they had left Paris, they pulled up. Sally thought the driver must be taking a nap.
She, too, tried to sleep, but could only doze. Then for no reason, she started, so violently that her leg hit the side of the van. Fully awake she lay still, hoping that the driver had not heard. She had just relaxed when she heard the van doors open and she was blinded by the light of a torch.
Her story was ready. As her papers showed, she was a shop assistant. She was being pursued by an ugly German major and, to avoid trouble, she thought she would disappear secretly to Dinard where her father had a chemist’s shop. This she told the driver, who listened without sympathy.
‘You understand, Monsieur?’ she said. ‘I have money. I can pay you for my journey.’
‘How much?’ he said. ‘And what else can you give me?’
Finding herself on a dark road late at night with a burly man asking about money and other potential benefits, Sally was afraid. ‘I think I’ll walk,’ she said, and turned away. He came after her and she crippled him as they had taught her while she was doing parachute training. She got back into the van and drove four miles to the next village where she dumped it, knowing that when her would-be attacker recovered he would report the loss to a countryside that must by then have been thoroughly alerted. She found a stone wall beside the road and hid behind it. But at dawn on these country roads, in her pink suit and city shoes, she would be as noticeable as an elephant, so she was forced to get back into the van and drive north through the night. At dawn she abandoned it and walked the last mile to the farm where she had been received on landing. Her host drove the van ten miles and rolled it into a ditch.
Some days later the same antique aeroplane came in through dark and heavy cloud to rescue her. Though fired on by enemy bombers, the cloud protected them. They landed safe; S
ally’s mission was over.
Chapter 28
‘Anyway,’ said Bruno, ‘the letter Sally brought back was strong confirmation of what other reports were indicating – that Hitler planned to attack Russia. It was very useful. She went to the Cabinet Office to tell her story. Some suspected the letter was a trick, intended to decoy the Allies into believing that Germany intended to invade Russia and altering their strategy accordingly. But in the end the story was accepted, chiefly because Churchill himself believed it and acted accordingly. When the attack on Russia by Germany actually came, Pym was in clover. He began to take the credit for organising Sally’s mission. He became famous in the intelligence services as the man who had brought off this great coup. It has been said that the matter so enhanced his reputation that it kept him safe from suspicion for years after he should have been detected. There was always someone around, when doubts arose about Pym, who would mention the famous German Letter. Briggs couldn’t prevent himself from saying that he’d always thought French letters more Sally’s style.
‘Some of the glory rubbed off on Pontifex Street. Sir Peveril filled the flat with flowers and Pym was promoted. I don’t know for certain why Sally didn’t get a decoration.’
Bruno stood up to go: ‘It’s late for an old man,’ he said, and left Greg wondering about this strange episode in Sally Bowles’s increasingly mystifying life. He decided suddenly to put into operation an idea that had been crystallising in his mind. ‘Auf Moscou, Greg,’ he advised himself.
Chapter 29
‘We’re lucky – the snow’s not bad there yet,’ Alistair Bradshaw remarked comfortably, stretching out with his whisky in his club-class seat. ‘But, in case it gets worse, my wife’s packed my skiing gear.’
Alistair was the businessman brother of Greg’s friend Hugh, with whom he, Katherine and two others had shared a house in Cambridge during their student days. ‘I heard this Pym guy was trying to come home years ago,’ he added. ‘There was an outcry. He must be, what?, eighty plus now?’
‘Eighty-three,’ Greg agreed.
‘You wouldn’t want to be that age in Moscow today,’ said Alistair.
Club class of the BA flight to Moscow was full of businessmen, British, American, Canadian, Russian and others whose origins were harder to decide. Documents were read, laptops were used, some low conversations broke the silence.
With unwanted candour, Alistair told Greg about his girlfriend, whom he wished to make his third wife, though his second wife was not yet aware of this. ‘It’ll cost a bomb,’ he told Greg. ‘But luckily since number one, Deborah, remarried I’m not paying alimony to her any more. I could have kissed the bloke she married, poor sod.’
Greg gave a noncommittal answer and began to wonder if it was such a good idea to have hooked on to Alistair as a travelling companion. Hugh had said his brother knew the ropes, having made several business trips there already, that what a traveller needed in Russia, these days, was expert guidance. And since Alistair, opportunely, had been leaving in a few days’ time, and there turned out to be room on the plane, Greg had tagged along. However, the club-class fare was higher than the economy one he would have paid if travelling alone. And he wasn’t sure why Alistair was going to Russia or how he planned to spend his time there. He had spoken vaguely of investigating the prospects of his merchant bank’s setting up an office there. But what did that mean?
To Greg’s eyes, the plane’s cabin looked like a combination of the eight-fifteen commuter train to London from some prosperous suburb and a dining-car full of gangsters heading for Cicero in the 1920s. There were Russian faces, seamed and battered, ones you wouldn’t want to meet alone in an alley on a dark night. There were American and European predators, too, looking less like men out on parole after serving a term for manslaughter, but probably, Greg suspected, just as dangerous in their way as the others.
He cheered up, ordered a drink and grinned. He said to Alistair, ‘It’s great to be moving.’
‘Do you think you’re going to find Pym?’ asked Alistair, his face indicating his suspicion that Greg was mad. Adrian Pym had been in exile in the Soviet Union since 1951 when, exposed as a double agent, he had fled to Moscow with Geoffrey Forbes of the Foreign Office. Greg had obtained Pym’s current address in Moscow from Hugh, who had contacts on a newspaper. Hugh had only handed it over on condition that Greg told him what he found out when he talked to Pym.
‘You tell me everything,’ Hugh had told him. ‘I want the tapes. It may be a story. Either Pym’s going to die or he’ll get repatriated on compassionate grounds. The last time he tried the Cold War was still on and there was no way. The Yanks would have hated it. But now it just might come up again. But remember to stick with Alistair.’
Meanwhile, Greg himself was not sure if Pym would talk to him, or even be fit enough to do so. To Greg he seemed a fantastic, legendary figure, like a dragon, a man left behind by Khrushchev, then Gorbachev and the ending of the Cold War.
Alistair said now, ‘Be careful, Greg. Russia’s not a safe place unless you know what you’re doing. Any doubts, check with me.’
Greg regarded him dubiously. Since the end of Empire men like Alistair had reverted to the old buccaneering habits of their ancestors, travelling the world looting like privateers. How could he tell that Alistair wouldn’t shaft him – sell him – lie to him? He’d do it to anybody else.
Meanwhile, Alistair had moved on from his sexual war wounds to the grim obsession of his class. Greg wasn’t sure which monologue he liked least. ‘The heap … needs a new roof – water coming in everywhere – Heritage … entail …’ No point in asking why not get rid of the ancestral home. Hard-up Hall, there to be passed on to young Rupert, Hereward, Joe or Nick, was as close to a religion as Alistair would get, and was probably the basic reason for this trip, this bit of business, and so many before and to come. His roof would be repaired if it took blood – other people’s – to do it.
They got off the plane into the grey of Moscow’s October and repaired to a hotel, marbled, gilded, luxurious. There was a bowl of fruit in Greg’s room, peaches, apples, grapes, plums. Outside the hotel were tired grey Russians, groups of youngsters in Levi’s, girls in heavy makeup.
Greg made a phone call. To his astonishment there, suddenly, at the end of the phone, was the legendary spy, Adrian Pym. ‘Do come round, dear boy. Any time will do. I’m not going anywhere.’ In Pym’s light, rather sardonic voice he heard the tone and accent he sometimes caught in Bruno’s speech. Like the clothes in an old photograph, those voices had the style of their times.
If he had expected to find Adrian Pym in a two-room flat in a tower block miles from the centre of Moscow, up four flights of concrete stairs, he had been mistaken. Somehow Pym had made a deal. He lived a short walk from Greg’s hotel. Greg took wide and windy streets under a grey, swirling sky, past the American Express office, with its crowd of hopeful crooks and traders outside, to find himself opposite a park and outside a big pre-Revolution house in the expensive Patriarch’s Ponds area.
He entered the hall, where a man in uniform dozed on a gilt chair, and walked up a handsome staircase to the first floor of the silent building.
He was let in by a thin young man with cropped blond hair, wearing a faded Russian Army uniform and trainers.
‘I’ve come to see Mr Pym,’ Greg said, trying to glance into a rather gloomy interior, from which came the smell of soup. The young soldier nodded, and Greg stepped into a large twilit hall then into a high-ceilinged room where, in near-darkness, Adrian Pym sat. From his window, Greg guessed, he had a pleasant view of the pond, the yellow and white pavilion, trees and bushes.
‘Mr Phillips, welcome,’ said Pym. ‘Forgive me for not standing up.’ Greg advanced, holding out his hand. The face turned up to him was thin and lined. The hand he shook was limp, wrinkled and cold. Pym was a sick man. He smiled up at Greg from the huge, ornately carved wooden chair in which he sat. A brightly coloured rug was tucked over his knees and a big
enamelled stove blasted out heat.
He gestured to the chair opposite him, an upholstered armchair of the kind you might find in any house in Britain or the USA. The hieratic chair in which Pym sat gave him the air of some old, cunning medieval Pope and was, perhaps, for show, Greg reflected. He noted that from where he himself sat he could see a small television set peeping out from under the carved legs of a wooden table. The light from the window was on his own face; Pym was sitting in shadows. Now Pym clapped his hands and the soldier reappeared. Pym spoke to him in Russian.
‘This is Ivan,’ he said. ‘He speaks very little English. He’s in the Army but he helps me for pay. The Russian Army’s starving, as you’ll know. We’ll have a drink.’ During this speech Ivan left the room and Pym said, ‘As for speaking next to no English, how can one tell? If you have anything confidential to say, wait until he’s out of the room.’
It was very quiet. The dark walls, on which paintings hung and two icons, seemed scarcely visible in the gloom. It was as if Pym and Greg were on an island of heat, thrown out by the stove into the vast room.
Ivan returned noiselessly on his trainers with an elaborate metal tray on which stood a bottle of vodka, one of Scotch and a carafe of water. He bent over the low table, which stood in front of the red-hot stove, and placed the tray on it. ‘Hop off, Ivan,’ Pym said dismissively, and this Ivan seemed to understand, for he left the room.
‘Good-looking, isn’t he? So are you,’ Pym said.
Greg, who had previously suspected, uncomfortably, that a factor in Bruno’s co-operation with him had been his own youth and good looks, was now embarrassed by the same sensation. Worse, he wondered if Pym wanted anything from him, like some form of sex, in exchange for information.
After the Cabaret Page 11