The Man who Missed the War

by Dennis Wheatley

  Exactly the same routine was followed as that at Rakil’s screening except that, in this case, the blind operator was an elderly man. Within a few moments of their having seated themselves on the stools on either side of the narrow table, the screen in front of them began to undulate.

  As the first picture formed within it, Philip felt an awful twinge of homesickness; it was Trafalgar Square. The magic camera entered it from the north and advanced through it towards Whitehall. Pausing a little way down the famous street it turned through a stone archway on the right, and Zadok said:

  ‘This is the Admiralty. On the left of the courtyard are the private apartments of the Navy Minister. He is always styled First Lord.’ The field of vision slewed towards the main building and went upstairs to the first floor. There it entered several rooms where a number of Admirals seated in them were duly named, and their jobs briefly outlined.

  Zadok then took them across the street to the War Office, down Whitehall to Combined Operations Headquarters, back again past the Cenotaph to Downing Street, through the Foreign Office and across the inner courtyard to the Air Ministry; at each of which a similar procedure was followed.

  The picture then descended Clive Steps, showed a swift panorama of St. James’s Park with its lovely lake, now made yet more lovely by the tender spring green of the budding trees that surrounded it, and came to rest on the back of a huge block at the end of Whitehall.

  ‘This building,’ said Zadok, ‘is for our purpose much the most important that we have yet visited. It is the Offices of the War Cabinet. In its upper floors many gifted people connected with the Government do highly specialised work. On its main floors all the most important meetings governing the strategy of the Armed Forces of the British Empire are held. In its basement live the little band of officers, Captains and Commanders, R.N., Colonels, Lieutenant-Colonels and Majors, Group-Captains and Wing-Commanders, less than thirty in all, who work under the direct instructions of the Chiefs of Staff. From this small body germinate the broad plans which eventually animate the nine million six hundred thousand men the Empire now has in arms. The Prime Minister first disclosed their existence to us. He was heckled in the House about lack of co-operation between the Services, and he retorted that these officers of the three services ate, slept and lived together as part of his own Ministry of Defence.’

  Passing Special Police, Home Guards with revolvers strapped to their waists, soldiers armed with tommy-guns and finally a special guard of Royal Marines, the picture entered the building and visited the offices of a number of key personalities. As it swept through the basement, Zadok remarked:

  ‘It was these people and their predecessors who did all the foundation work on the operation which most concerns us—the Return to the Continent. In certain ways some of them still play a part which will have an enormous bearing on its success or failure. So they need careful watching. But the broad plan passed out of their keeping last autumn. A British General named Morgan—his friends call him Freddy—was charged with examining the whole plan and working it out in detail. He was given a large special staff of British and American Navy, Army and Air Force officers to assist him. Then, early this year, the American General Eisenhower—he is always referred to as Ike—was recalled from North Africa, appointed Supreme Allied Commander in Western Europe and made responsible for the invasion. We will now go to his headquarters.’

  The picture on the screen dissolved to form again a moment later outside a big block in a London square. It passed between the white-helmeted American sentries and upstairs to a long series of rooms. The Supreme Commander was not in, but they found his Chief of Staff, General Bedell-Smith, talking to General Morgan and the Deputy Supreme Commander, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder. The conversation did not mean much to Philip, but Zadok later remarked that having come in on it had well repaid his otherwise fruitless afternoon.

  By this time the screening had lasted for very nearly three hours, so when General Bedell-Smith’s visitors left him Zadok brought it to a close. Owing to the variety of scene, both Philip and Gloria were far more impressed than they had been on the previous afternoon, and they were much more inclined to look forward to their new work now that they knew a little about some of the important people they would be watching.

  During the next few days they sat in with Zadok’s Number One team, gradually accustoming themselves to the colloquialisms used by the high-level planners, the nicknames of the war leaders, the meanings of the principal code-words and the rooms in certain buildings where special information was most likely to be picked up.

  The Number One team was mainly concerned with the War Cabinet, the Chiefs of Staff and General Eisenhower. The Number Two team overlooked the Service Ministries, the Foreign Office, the American and Russian Embassies and attended all Secret Sessions that were held by Parliament. But recently a new factor had entered the picture. General Eisenhower had charged General Sir Bernard Montgomery, the C.-in-C. 21st Army Group, with the responsibility for the actual assault on the coast of France. In consequence, the final plans would now be made at his Headquarters in Western London, and it was in order to keep himself informed of any new development which might arise there that Zadok had decided on the creation of a Number Three team.

  Philip had asked that Gloria should take down for him deliberately with the idea that between them they might be able to fake or distort all the most important evidence that they secured before turning in their reports, but at their first sitting they had to abandon all hope of this.

  To their annoyance they found that Zadok had appointed the thick-lipped Quetzl, and a woman called Velig, to act as their collaborators, and both were old hands at the game. The result was that, as soon as Philip tried misinterpreting a policy which was being enunciated by one of General Montgomery’s Staff Officers, the Atzlanteans promptly came to his assistance with corrections. They might not be able to speak very good English, but it was clear that, apart from the colloquialisms which sometimes foxed them, they understood it very well. After three futile attempts, in all of which he was caught, but which were fortunately put down to his lack of experience at the work, he decided that he had better give up.

  To have persisted would have inevitably aroused suspicion, and Philip knew that if he once did that it was almost as good as signing death warrants for Gloria and himself. It was already clear that they could be useful to Zadok, but they were certainly not indispensable; and the fanatical Atzlanteans appeared even ready to seize on any excuse which gave them an opportunity to make a sacrifice to their terrible god.

  Philip and Gloria at first found it difficult to become accustomed to the ubiquity, depth and fierceness of this sadistic craving, but after a time they came to realise that their companions were animated by the same type of fanaticism as had caused the priests of the Spanish Inquisition to commit such terrible atrocities in the name of their religion.

  When Zadok’s Number Three team started work in earnest it was decided that the newcomers should henceforth be given the freedom of the recreational apartments and take their meals with their fellow-workers. They were allowed to keep their own room for sleeping or resting in, which was a great relief to them, but the new arrangement enabled them to learn much more about the strange and sinister community of which they had perforce become members.

  Most of their companions had been married but were so no longer, as their marriage partners had failed to make the grade and had been sacrificed to Shaitan at the age of forty. Such studious and gifted couples as had qualified for the hierarchy were no longer regarded as husbands and wives and saw little of one another if their duties, as was most frequently the case, caused them to be assigned to different messes.

  Every individual had his or her own apartments, similar to those assigned to the newcomers, but they were the only couple allowed to share a room, this concession being made solely on account of their youth and the fact that, since they were of another race, they could be treated differently wi
thout the risk that the exception made in their case would have an ill effect on the discipline of the community. All manifestations of sex were forbidden on pain of death to these middle-aged Atzlanteans of the underworld, as it was considered that love affairs would have the effect of weakening their powers of concentration. On receiving their appointments to the hierarchy they had left their youth behind, just as they had left any children they might have had, since the chances were all against their ever seeing any of their offspring again.

  There were two ways only in which they might possibly do so. Ranking immediately below the Seven, there existed a Council of Eleven, the members of which were responsible for the administration and supply of the underworld. The Eleven, of which Coxitl, who had brought Philip and Gloria from the valley of the Leprechauns, was one, were the only people who were allowed to leave the underworld after having been given a permanent place in it. They might, therefore, see their children when visiting the valleys. The other possibility was that a child of one of the hierarchy might be brought into the underworld as a servant. But such an occurrence was a matter for dread rather than rejoicing, since for the least offence the servants were dismissed—and dismissed meant being dragged by Coxitl’s troop of litter-bearers to the Temple and there handed over to the ferocious priests for sacrifice.

  The more that Philip and Gloria saw of their companions the more fully they realised the utter impossibility of making any real friends or allies among them. Generations of iron discipline in this Totalitarian State had moulded them into a cold, cruel race from which the milk of human kindness seemed to have drained entirely away. They were human now only in appearance. Their hearts were the steel organs of robots and their perverted minds functioned only to plan and gloat upon the destruction of mankind.

  The Atzlantean week consisted of five days instead of seven, and theoretically the teams of operators, gazers and recorders were supposed to have every fifth day off, but whether they actually got it or not depended on the amount of activity going on in the spheres they covered. Zadok’s Number One team had not had a day off for many months since, even when the War Cabinet and Chiefs of Staff Committee were not sitting, they had to follow the indefatigable Prime Minister to Chequers and often listen there to his brilliant discourse far into the night.

  Number Three team was more fortunate since General Montgomery and his two colleagues who held equally responsible posts in the other services, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey, and Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, and General Omar Bradley, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army of Liberation were all away from their headquarters a great deal, making personal inspections of the formations which were to take part in the invasion and witnessing demonstrations of secret equipment which was to be used for the first time in connection with it; and to follow them, except for some special purpose, was considered unnecessary. In consequence, Philip and Gloria got their days off fairly regularly and utilised a good part of them in finding out as much as they could about what was going on in the other spheres.

  By putting all sorts of bits of information together, they formed a picture which Philip put into words one night when discussing the situation with Gloria.

  ‘It’s clear that the Russians have been pressing the Anglo-Americans to form a second front for a long time past. We know that Roosevelt and Churchill, accompanied by their Chiefs of Staff and other high-ups, had a big conference with Stalin and his boys at Teheran last January. As far as I can make out, Uncle Joe put the screw on. He probably said: “Apart from your occupying a dozen German divisions in North Africa and a few more in Italy, I’ve done all the fighting so far. It’s quite time you chaps did a bit—and this time I really mean it. I’ve already lost ten times the number of men in killed and prisoners that you have, and my food situation behind the lines is deteriorating pretty badly. Hitler would be only too pleased to call off his war with Russia at practically any price now. I don’t like Hitler and I don’t want to let you boys down; but if you’re not prepared to give me a definite promise that you’ll open a second front this summer I really will have to reconsider the situation.” ’

  Gloria nodded. ‘That’s about it, Boy. Although the President seems to have been mighty keen on opening a second front for ages past.’

  ‘So has Churchill for that matter. We know now that he had put his people on to plan the taking of Cherbourg in an operation called “Sledgehammer” before the United States had even entered the war; and if it hadn’t been for the mess-up in North Africa he would have done “Round-up” as a full-scale invason in 1943. The only reason that the big-shot sailors, soldiers and airmen have hesitated is because they realise better than anyone else the appalling risk of such an operation. After all, the Germans couldn’t do it. They funked it even when they were at the height of their power, and Britain was almost unarmed, and alone. The trouble with an invasion is that once it’s started there can be no pulling back; no breaking off the battle and cracking in again a fortnight later a bit further along the line. If this thing does go wrong it will have the most appalling repercussions. To start with, a great part of the best manhood of Britain, the States and Canada will certainly be killed. And, if it looked as if the Allies would never be able to land an army in France at all, that’s the one thing that really might make U.J. throw in his hand. That brings us back to what I started to say. I don’t believe for a moment that Uncle Joe ever had the least intention of ratting on us, but one can hardly doubt that the Anglo-Americans came back from Teheran definitely committed to opening a second front this summer.’

  ‘To my mind ‘tis just as well they did,’ Gloria remarked. ‘What hope would they have of defeating Hitler if they left it even to the autumn? By then poor old London will be a heap of rubble from his V-bombs, and all these fine landing-craft we see on the screen when we take a trip down to the South Coast will be smashed to smithereens or sunk in the mud of the harbours.’

  ‘I know. It’s the very devil, isn’t it? Even if we could escape and get home and, more fantastic still, persuade them to call off the invasion, it wouldn’t do any good in the long run. Yet, the alternative is to sit here and see the whole thing sabotaged by a most frightful storm.’

  ‘But do you really think, Boy, these devils here will be able to create such bad weather as to sink all these fine modern ships?’

  ‘God alone knows!’ Philip muttered. ‘We’ve never had a chance to see what they can do yet, because they’ve been husbanding every ounce of power they can put by for D-Day. But it’s not a matter of sinking the ships; if they can raise even a moderately heavy sea that will be quite enough to prevent our landing-craft getting their freights safely on to the beaches.’

  As it so happened they were to witness a demonstration of the Atzlanteans’ powers to control weather conditions many thousands of miles away on the following afternoon.

  Zadok did not always conduct the screenings personally. He spent most of his time with Number One team, and one of his deputies named Kishdil usually directed Number Three’s operator. On this occasion the two senior teams both happened to be observing scenes of which Zadok was particularly anxious to have a record, so he came hurrying in to Number Three.

  He gave quick instructions in Atzlantean, which neither Philip nor Gloria understood, but they saw the picture at which they were gazing suddenly dissolve and, a moment later, its place was taken by a wide expanse of sea.

  As the picture came into focus they could see two groups of warships several miles distant from each other. From what Philip remembered of his father’s books showing the silhouettes of the principal ships in the navies of the world, the first group consisted of the German battle-cruiser Hipper and a light cruiser of the Köln type. The second included a British battleship mounting a four-gun barbettee forward, which made him believe her to be of the King George V class.

  Visibility was fair, and the sea moderate. They could see two British aircraft darting high above the flak the Germans were sending up an
d evidently keeping their own ships informed of the enemy’s position. Zadok meanwhile had given some orders to the assistant who was sitting up at the far end of the room near the retorts. A lever was pulled over, electric flashes came and went in a number of tubes and bulbs, then a large retort gradually filled with what appeared to be red vapour. At another order from Zadok the lever was pulled back and the red vapour disappeared.

  Philip stared at the sea-scape, expecting every moment to see rain come sheeting down, but nothing happened. Zadok noticed his anxious expression and said in English:

  ‘Number Two team was observing a conference at the Admiralty when a signal was brought in for the First Sea Lord. Fortunately, he read it out to his companions. It was a report that the spotting aircraft of a British Squadron had picked up the Hipper off the Norwegian coast and that the Squadron was closing in. I’ve done my best to save the Germans, but it needs half an hour for any action taken here to affect the weather in Europe.’

  It was difficult for Philip and Gloria to restrain themselves from cheering the British Squadron on during the half-hour that followed, but the ships seemed well matched for speed, and the British gained only very slowly on the Germans as they raced through the water towards the shelter of the Norwegian fjords. With only a few minutes to go the British battleship fired two shells at maximum range. They sent up great fountains of water only a few hundred yards from the Hipper’s stern. Then the outline of the ships became very faintly blurred. It had begun to rain. The battleship fired again—a four-gun salvo this time. The Hipper heeled right over under the impact of the explosions close to her port side, and tons of water cascaded down on to her deck; but the scene had now gone misty. It was raining hard. Rocking back on to an even keel, the German changed her course. The next salvo from the battleship missed her by a quarter of a mile. It was evident that the range-finders could no longer see the target, and the German was now shrouded even from the aircraft overhead by the pouring rain. Zadok heaved a sigh of relief, while Philip cursed silently as the Hipper altered course again and slipped away unseen to the security of her hideout in the Norwegian coast.