He came again the following afternoon, bringing with him a thin, flexible riding switch, and he spent an hour in her cell. Perhaps he did not wish the Russians to hear her screaming, or it may have been that he delighted to start her torment very gently, since he did not apply the switch savagely but struck her on the hands, the hips, the upper arms and the calves of the legs, little stinging blows every few minutes, while he taunted her and told her some of the things that he had in mind to do to Gregory.
On Sunday and Monday he came again and plied his switch each time with increasing vigour until the tender flesh of her whole body was criss crossed with thin, aching red weak. On the Sunday she fought him, driving her nails deep into his cheek above the bandage and burying her teeth in his hand; but he hit her a blow in the stomach that drove the breath from her body and doubled her up in a writhing heap on the floor. On Monday, with the intention of rousing the guard, she deliberately began to scream the moment her tormentor entered the room; but the soldier who came in response to her screams was not the wide eyed young peasant who had brought her the water three nights before. He was a sullen looking lout who, on a sharp word from Grauber, shrugged his shoulders and slammed the door. After that she could only moan and submit to each further vicious little flick which was never hard enough to harm her seriously but which in succession were fraying her nerves to tatters.
The remainder of each twenty three hours, when Grauber was not with her and she was not drowsing in torpid nightmare ridden sleep, she spent in an agony of dread anticipating his next visit. She no longer even noticed the lice and bed bugs that were now swarming on her or cared about her filthy, unwashed condition; and thought only of the fresh torments that were in store for her. But on the Tuesday afternoon when she shuddered with apprehension at hearing the key turn in the lock of her cell a new figure entered; a tall, thin faced man in the uniform of a German General.
Scrambling to her feet she ran towards him stretching out her bruised hands and stammering a plea for his protection, but he gently pushed her back and closed the door carefully behind him.
"You don't remember me, Frau Gräfin?" he said in a low voice.
"Why, yes “she exclaimed. "You're Rupprecht von Geisenheim."
He nodded. "Yes. I'm the head of the German Military Mission to the Soviet and I don't know if you know it, but this camp is Marshal Voroshilov's Headquarters."
The tears sprang to her eyes as she muttered: "Oh, take me away from that fiend Grauber, he he's killing me by inches."
Von Geisenheim shook his head sadly. "I can't possibly express how sorry I am for you, but you know the power of these Gestapo chiefs. It's more than my life is worth to try to give you my protection in fact, I am risking a great deal by coming to see you here today, and I only decided to chance it because Grauber has gone into Leningrad for the night."
"Why have you come, then?" she cried desperately.
"Just to tell you two things which I thought might enable you to die more bravely. Firstly, I wanted you to know that the man you are in love with did not desert you; he moved heaven and earth to get an order for your release and to reach Kandalaksha before the Gestapo."
"I know that," she said quickly. "I know that."
"I'm aware of his real identity," the General went on, lowering his voice to a whisper. "We recognized each other when he arrived here. We were together in the fight that night at the Adlon, but by a miracle none of the Gestapo people who were there appear to have noticed me, so I was not arrested afterwards."
"You-you're one of us, then?" Erika said slowly.
"Yes. And the movement is still going on. As you know, it was only our friends in Berlin who revolted on the night of November the 8th. Since the Putsch was a failure the officers who commanded at the battle fronts and in the garrisons all over Germany did not join in, so there are still many thousands of us who are ready to make a new bid for freedom when the time is ripe. You have been out of things for the last three months so you know nothing of our new plans and therefore can give nothing away however much they may torture you. But I wanted you to know that, although you will not live to see the day, all that is best in Germany will yet rise to overthrow Hitler and make our people great, free and respected again.
Thank you." she murmured, the tears streaming down her face. "Thank you, Herr General; it was good of you to come to me. I shall bear things better now that I know that our country is really to be freed from men like Grauber and all the evil they have brought into the world."
"You see now why I must resist the dictates of all decency and chivalry," Von Geisenheim went on. "By seeking to intervene on your behalf I should 'Jeopardize my life; and it is my duty to live because I have work to do for the salvation of Germany. You will die, I know, with the courage of a true von Epp; in the meantime I can only wish you fortitude." Clicking his heels he bowed low over her swollen, blistered hand and kissed it; then he left the room as quietly as he had come.
That night she tried to fortify herself again with the thought that what she was undergoing was no worse than the sufferings of thousands of other men and women in the German concentration camps who had earned the hatred of individual Nazis or of the countless Czechs and Poles they had enslaved. Yet the knowledge that these brute beasts, who were now seeking to bring the whole world under the scourge of their whips at the orders of their soulless, power lusting Leader, would be swept away in due time by the forces of Good which were rallying against them was scant comfort beside the fact that she had yet so much to suffer before she died.
On the Wednesday morning she was shivering with fear again and even the sound of prolonged cheering in the camp about eleven o'clock did not rouse her curiosity. At three o'clock in the afternoon the door of her cell opened once again to admit Grauber.
He was in high good spirits and told her that the Russo Finnish War was over. As he plied his switch from time to time he gleefully outlined the humiliating terms which the unfortunate Finns had been forced to accept after their magnificent resistance. In a spurt of rage Erika flared at him:
"You laugh too soon, you filthy brute. The Russians and you Nazis can smash these small people at your will, but you yet have Britain and France and America to deal with and they'll get you in the end; then the German people will revolt and crucify every one of you."
He laughed and flicked her across the face with his whip. "You little wild cat; you're talking nonsense. And, anyhow, if things do go that way you'll never live to crow over us. Now this war's over I'm going back to Berlin and I mean to take you with me. You remember that private cell of mine in my own house? We can have many pleasant little sessions there when
I'm off duty. Auf weidersehen, Frau Gräfin. He stressed the last
word mockingly as he turned and left her.
That night of Wednesday, March he 13th, was the worst of
all the ghastly nights that she had spent during the past fortnight. The picture of the cell of which Grauber had spoken was constantly before her eyes; he might keep her there for weeks while satiating his sadistic brutality upon her. All night through she tossed and turned and when morning carne she could hardly think coherently. She was afraid now that she would go mad
before she died and barely had the strength to wonder what was about to happen; when, long before dawn, her cell was opened, her furs were thrust at her by one of the Russian soldiers and she was led outside to a sleigh.
In the faint Light she saw that Grauber was already sitting in it dressed for a journey. He was wearing his eagle crested peaked cap, instead of the fur papenka that he had worn on his visits to her hut, but he had a fur coat over his uniform and its collar was turned up round his ears to protect him from the cold. A Russian soldier was driving the sleigh and another sat on the box beside him. When she got in Grauber grunted at her as he moved over a little to make room, and the sleigh drove off.
Once it was clear of the wood it turned south. A few miles further, having reached the coast line, it left t
he shore and drove on, continuing in the same direction over the ice. Erika roused herself for a moment to wonder if they were taking a short cut to the nearest railway station by crossing a big bay; but she was so cold and utterly wretched that she no longer cared. Grauber, hunched up in his furs beside her, had gone to sleep and, having been roused so early, she tried to follow his example.
A bitter wind was blowing and it was still dark when, after two hours' driving, they reached a break in the ice beyond which blue water could be faintly seen. The sleigh halted and, getting out, Grauber began to flash a torch. His signal was answered.
A quarter of an hour elapsed and the sound of oars splashing in the water became perceptible; then a boat drew up along, side the edge of the ice.
Grauber motioned to her to get into the boat and she obeyed he turned back to talk to the two soldiers for a few minutes. She noticed that in comradely Russian fashion he shook hands with them before he joined her. The boat pushed off and were rowed away through the gloomy dawn light to a small tramp steamer which was standing out about half a mile away in the bay where the ice had melted. Some sailors helped Erika up the ladder and Grauber followed her. The boat was hoisted in and the ship's engines began to turn over.
Erika had already guessed what was happening. Now that the ice in the Baltic was breaking up it would be quicker and more comfortable to go down by ship to Danzig than to spend two nights sitting up in a railway carriage on a journey through Russia and Poland. Grauber was standing beside her on the deck as she watched the icy shore of mutilated Finland recede. Suddenly she felt him put his arm through hers and the voice she loved more than anything else in the world said:
"Take it easy, darling."
She swung round with a half strangled cry. Her companion had taken off his uniform cap and removed the black eye shade. Next moment she was in Gregory's arms.
"But how-how did you do it?" she gasped between her sobs f joy when at last he released her.
His old gay smile lit up his lean, strong face. "I was a day too late when I arrived at Kandalaksha and I reached there in a raging fever that held me up for three days; but I left again on Monday evening. When I heard the Gestapo had sent a plane to fetch you I felt certain that must have been Grauber's work so I hurried back to Voroshilov's headquarters. Von Geisenheim told me what had happened and we planned this coup directly I got in last night."
He paused to kiss the red weal that ran across her cheek,' where Grauber had struck her the day before, then hurried on: "I already had Voroshilov's order for your release and when I half murdered Grauber a week ago I took everything of his that I thought might be useful to me, including his uniform and his eye patch. With the patch and the bandages he had been wearing it wasn't difficult to get myself up well enough to pass for him in the darkness. The two soldiers on the sleigh were grand fellows who had accompanied me to Kandalaksha and back; but I didn't dare to let you know about my imposture in front of them, because they both speak German."
"But the ship, darling how did you manage to get a ship? And where are we going?"
"We're going to Norway first, as this is a Norwegian vessel. If only Hitler hasn't walked into it before we get there. You remember the plan. And now the Finnish business is settled Denmark and Norway are the next on the list,
"Angela and Freddie " Erika exclaimed. "They were taken away just a week after you left. D'you know what's happened to them?"
"They're all right, my sweet. When I first came South I saw the British Vice Consul in Leningrad and fixed things up with him. No one will ever know who shot those soldiers in Petsamo so the Russians have nothing against Angela or Freddie and the Consul was going to arrange for the British Embassy to demand their release. It came off all right, too, as Kuporovitch told me when I got back to Kandalaksha. A junior secretary from the British Embassy was sent up there to fetch them, so they're on their way home' to a grand honeymoon now."
"Oh, bless them. And you'll be able to get the typescript to London if only we reach Norway safely."
He laughed. "It's been in the hands of the British Government for days. I told the whole story to the Vice Consul in Leningrad, wrote a letter explaining matters to my old friend Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust and swore an affidavit as to how that poisonous plan to brand the Nazi Swastika on every state in Europe, one by one, had come into my possession. He saw at once how damnably dangerous and subtle the whole scheme was and, although he's not supposed to do such things, he agreed to take it himself to Moscow so that it could be flown home in one of the Embassy bags. That was much quicker than my trying to take it myself, and so much more certain."
"But the ship, darling how did you get the ship?"
Gregory turned to a fur clad figure that had been standing near them. "You remember our old friend. General Kuporovitch? We left his little friend Oggie locked in a grain store that's only opened once a week; then the General and I came South together. When we reached Leningrad yesterday afternoon I passed over to him my passport as von Lutz and Voroshilov’s order. With the order, and his new identity as the Colonel Baron, he was able to go out to Kronstadt Bay, where the ice is breaking up, and arrange for the Norwegian captain of this ship to steam out and lie off here till we could join him."
Kuporovitch kissed Erika's hand. "!Madame la Comtesse!" he murmured. "This Gregory of yours is a man in a million and Between us we are ten thousand devils. It is I who have left prison and I feel young for the first time in twenty years. How marvellous it will be to see Paris again. The three of us together, eh? We must celebrate our freedom there for at least a month."
Erika shook her head. "You've forgotten, General, that I'm
German. I can't go to either of the Allied countries before the war is over, since I won't go as a refugee. I'm afraid you'll both have to leave me in Norway."
"Perhaps," Gregory said thoughtfully; "but Norway won't be safe for very long. We three know that; and we know, too, that the Allied Governments won't make a patched up peace after they've seen Goering's typescript. But each time Hitler is compelled to break away from the plan and lash out in a new direction through the pressure of the German people, whom he cannot hold unless he redeems his promise to them of speedy victories, he will weaken himself. Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and the rest each will take its toll of German lives, planes, steel and petrol. Even if Hitler succeeds in overrunning them he will have to police them afterwards and tie up hundreds of thousands of men to keep them under, just as he has already had to do in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. In the meantime, just as in the last war, the British and French 'War Cabinets will be reconstructed to bring in more forceful elements, and while Germany exhausts herself the might of the Allies will constantly increase, until under the leadership of Churchill, perhaps, since he is the most dynamic and inveterate enemy the Germans ever had, the full, colossal power of the Free Peoples will stem the Nazi tide of conquest. Once that happens, Hitler's edifice will go to pieces like a house of cards; so the war may be over much sooner than people think."
"Then perhaps we'll be able to celebrate together in Paris by the Spring." Kuporovitch wafted an ironic kiss from his gloved finger tips to the fading, icy shore of the new territories Just acquired at such appalling cost by the Union of Soviet Slave' Republics and rolled the words round his tongue.
"Ah Paris in the Spring! "
"Yes," said Gregory. "Or Berlin."
The End
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