The Man who Missed the War

by Dennis Wheatley

  It was only a few days after this that Zadok spoke one morning quite openly to Philip of the Atzlantean plans to sabotage operation OVERLORD, as the Anglo-Americans had named their plan for the return to the Continent.

  ‘OVERLORD,’ he said, ‘is by far the greatest and most complicated operation of war that has ever been undertaken. Its complexity far exceeds the much weightier Russian offensives because, to be effective, an entire army must be landed on the coast of France within the space of a few days. That means not only getting ashore several hundred thousands of men but also many thousands of lorries, hundreds of tanks, each weighing several tons, hundreds of guns, millions of boxes of ammunition, motor cycles, staff cars, petrol, food, balloons, ground equipment for airfields, and the innumerable other items all of which are absolutely essential to the waging of modern war. And it does not end there. It is not enough to get these huge swarms of men ashore with their initial requirements. They will be eating, firing and consuming petrol every hour of the day and night from the second they land. If their supplies run out even for an hour they will be in great danger; if their supplies are cut off for a day they will be lost. Yet everything for their maintenance must be sent in day after day over the open beaches.’

  ‘Yes,’ Philip agreed with apparent cheerfulness. ‘If you can get a really good storm going they won’t stand a hope in hell.’

  Somewhat to his surprise, Zadok replied: ‘We must prevent their ever starting if we can. It is a pity that we cannot let them land in good weather, then stop their supplies of food and munitions reaching them a few days later. I feel that, if we could keep them cut off for even three days, that would be quite sufficient to enable the Germans to drive the whole Anglo-American army back into the sea. But the Lord Toxil does not agree with me. He says that the risk is too great. He fears the tremendous tenacity which both the British and the Americans display once they have committed themselves to a course of action. He thinks, too, that the opposition we shall be up against will make our own task no light one.’

  ‘What sort of opposition?’ asked Philip, striving to keep out of his voice the excitement he felt at the thought of the secret machinations of the Atzlanteans being met with any opposition at all.

  Zadok shrugged his skinny shoulders. ‘ OVERLORD is the crucial operation of the Second World War. If the Anglo-Americans succeed in establishing an army in France during June, Hitler will be caught between two fires. We may be able to help him to keep going for a year or so, but in the end he will be inevitably crushed. On the other hand if the Anglo-Americans fail in June they will never be able to land an army based on Britain in France at all. Years must elapse before any other method of doing so could become a practical proposition. Long before that Russia will become exhausted and Hitler will have rockets with a great-enough range and power to destroy the big city ports of the American eastern seaboard. It will then only be a matter of time before Hitler is able to soften Britain sufficiently to invade and conquer the island. Once that is accomplished the shipbuilding yards and aircraft plants of all Europe will be at his disposal. Then it will be the turn of America. That is what hangs on the success or failure of OVERLORD. Others are just as well aware of that as ourselves. I speak now not of the living but of the dead. On D-Day every spiritual force, even to the most distant past, which has contributed to the Anglo-Saxon civilisation and the making of the Free Democracies in both hemispheres will be thrown in against us.’

  ‘You mean,’ said Philip slowly, ‘that, as well as a down-here battle on the physical plane, there will also be a titanic conflict in the unseen spiritual world above?’

  ‘Exactly. That is why the Lord Toxil is not prepared to take the risk of allowing the Anglo-American spearheads to get ashore. By not doing so we miss a chance of offering a fine sacrifice to Shaitan in the thousands of Anglo-Americans who would be killed and drowned if their Army was driven off again; but as against that, if we succeed in preventing the invasion altogether, in due course Hitler will be able to offer up the whole Anglo-Saxon race, in the same way as he is now eliminating the Poles and countless thousands of other people in his concentration camps.’

  Philip nodded. ‘Yes, I see the idea. But how long will you be able to ensure really bad weather in the Channel in midsummer? Even if the Allies can’t go in on June the Fifth, as they have planned, they might still be in time to overrun Hitler’s V-weapon sites if they go in at the end of the month.’

  ‘They would never be able to get ashore then, and they will know it, so the attempt will not be made,’ Zadok replied with a crafty smile flickering over his thin lips. ‘This enterprise is so vast that one human brain can hardly grasp it. You have already seen some of the hundreds of ships and landing craft that are assembling along the south coast of England, but there are many hundreds more on the west coast and in the great ports up in the north; then there are the naval task forces which are still up in Scotland. All these must be brought down to the assembly point off the Isle of Wight. That cannot be done in a day. The movements southwards will start at least a week before D-Day. By D-minus-Two there will be such an armada massed within a hundred miles of Southampton that any German reconaissance plane seeing it will know that the invasion is due to start immediately.’

  Then the Anglo-Americans will not be able to achieve surprise in any case?’

  ‘They might still do so if the R.A.F. can keep all German aircraft off from D-minus-Two. But even if the concentration is reported on D-minus-One that will not allow sufficient time for the Germans to bring their strategic reserves into a suitable position to resist the blow.’

  ‘You hope then to hold the concentration there by bad weather long enough for the Germans not only to spot it but to move up their reserves?’

  ‘That is our plan. On June the Third, D-minus-Two, we shall start our storm. The cloudy weather should ensure a German aircraft being able to slip in and out without being shot down by the R.A.F. On June the Fifth, or at the latest the Sixth, the Germans will know that the invasion is imminent. If we can give them till June the Tenth they should have completed their redispositions. The R.A.F. will see and report these German troop movements. From that point the Anglo-Americans will know that it would be suicidal to attempt the operation, so the invasion forces will be dismantled and the project of landing an army on the Continent will be indefinitely postponed.’

  It was on the same day as this discussion that Zadok first pointed out General Gale to Philip. For some little time now the block in the West End square and the headquarters in Western London had both been semi-deserted. General Eisenhower and General Montgomery had moved to their Invasion Headquarters. Such changes were easy for the gazers to trace as, if some prominent personality disappeared for a few days, he could almost certainly be picked up by one of the teams on his next visit to the Offices of the War Cabinet, and his car with its flying pennant followed back when he left for his new location. So the principal places of interest for Number Three team were now a great area of hutments covered with camouflage netting in Bushey Park, a little way outside London, and a lovely old country house set in fine private grounds down in Hampshire.

  That afternoon the Number Three team had been overlooking a conference about marshalling areas, at which General Montgomery was present, and when it broke up he took aside another General, a big, powerfully built man who stood half a head taller than most of the other people in the room, to have a word with him alone.

  Zadok was standing behind Philip at the time, and he said: I want you to take careful note of the big man to whom General Montgomery is now talking, so that you will recognise him again. His name is Richard Gale, and is he the Major-General Commanding the Sixth British Airborne Division.’

  Philip found himself looking for a moment straight into a broad, tanned face with a short brown moustache, It was a face that radiated humour, kindliness and great personality. When the General spoke, his voice was slow, deep and full of quiet confidence. Then, at something that the littl
e pointed-nosed Commander-in-Chief said he gave a grand, infectious laugh.

  ‘That man is dangerous,’ said Zadok in his reedy voice from behind Philip’s head. ‘He is not only very brave and very clever, but he knows how to win the confidence of his men. I have kept my eye on him for a long time. He was one of the original members of the Joint Planning Staff that now work in the Offices of the War Cabinet. Very early in the war, when Britain had no airborne forces, he was among the first to realise the enormous possibilities of this new arm. He managed to get away from the War Office and has played a leading part in the training and development of the parachutists and glider-borne troops. It was his division, the Sixth Airborne, that went into Sicily. He has now been chosen to play a key rôle in the invasion. Whenever you pick him up listen carefully to all he says and see that it is included in your report.’

  When Philip told Gloria the Atzlantean plans to counter the invasion, in the privacy of their room that night, he also told her of the other, greater battle which was preparing between the powers of Darkness and the powers of Light.

  ‘ ’Tis no surprise to me at all,’ she said, when he had done. ‘If the Good God has thought fit to rob us of our babies and send us to this hellish place for some purpose of his own, ‘twould be giving ourselves airs to think that we’re the only ones receiving the great guidance.’

  ‘Yes, that must be so,’ Philip agreed with a smile. ‘Although I must confess the idea had never occurred to me before. D’you really think, though, that at this time lots of people are seeing visions and dreaming of dead friends who set them on a certain course as the Canon did with us?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’ Her blue eyes were very serious. ‘But if any proof that some such thing were going on were needed just look at the Mulberries.’

  They had literally been looking at the Mulberries at the same time as Admiral Tennant, who was responsible for them, had been doing two days before. This code-word covered the greatest secret of the war. It had first been laid down that a prime essential to a successful invasion was the speedy seizure of a port in order that heavy equipment could still be got ashore, even if the weather suddenly deteriorated. Then various people had expressed the opinion that the Germans, knowing this, would concentrate all their toughest units round the ports, and thus the Allies might find it impossible to capture one during those all-important early days of the operation. The only alternative seemed to be to face the risk of going in over the beaches. But suddenly the idea had been advanced that the Allies should build two great ports in Britain, tow them over to France in pieces, and plant them on chosen strips of coast. The scores of huge floating piers—many of which were over two hundred feet in length and forty feet broad and deep—now lying along the south coast of England, were the result. If the Mulberries proved successful the unloading of the ships supplying the invading forces would be able to continue, whatever the weather.

  ‘Of course,’ said Philip, ‘I see what you mean. Bad weather in the English Channel in June is almost unheard of, so some outside entity, such as the Canon was to us, must have put it into some living person’s head that the chance that the weather might be rough was much greater than most people thought, and therefore every possible precaution must be taken.’

  ‘Yes, and more than that, Boy. The Blessed Saints must have had a high old time persuading the old diehards that these newfangled things, with the mountain of work they entailed, were both necessary and practical. Just think now what Zadok told us of the labour that went into the making of those Mulberries.’

  Philip did think. He remembered Zadok saying weeks before that every engineering firm of any size in the whole of Britain had been called in to help. Millions of tons of steel and concrete had been required, thousands of labourers; and so many tugs would be needed to tow these huge piers across the Channel that there were not enough in all the ports of the United Kingdom, so that further fleets of sea-going tugs were now being brought from North Africa and the United States. To do the job at all production had had to be stopped on scores of other items of urgently needed war equipment, many of them of the highest priority. And all this for what? To attempt the seemingly impossible. To try out something that never even had been contemplated in the history of the world before. No less than the prefabrication of two huge harbours in which many thousands of tons of supplies could be unloaded in a single day; and their towage over nearly a hundred miles of open sea to a hostile shore where they were to be fitted together and made serviceable in a matter of days in the very face of the enemy. And this mad scheme with all the gargantuan labour it entailed had been undertaken solely because the English Channel might become rough in midsummer.

  As Philip drew Gloria’s head of flaming curls down on to his shoulder, he murmured: ‘Yes, darling. Such a scheme could never have got past all the conscientious but unimaginative people who would normally have opposed it, if there weren’t hundreds more like ourselves who are being inspired by those Great Powers who do not mean to see the Light perish from the world.’

  The thought was a great comfort to them, yet, as they fell asleep, but for each other they still felt very much alone.

  The weeks had slipped by, and May was now well advanced. Each day brought new evidence that the preparations for the Allies’ return to the Continent were nearing completion. Every harbour and every rivermouth from Harwich right round the South Coast to Avonmouth were packed with shipping in endless variety, great and small according to the anchorages. Huge areas of England had been closed to visitors. In Sussex, Hampshire and Dorset, great tracts of country had been cordoned off for the reception of the invasion forces who were to be sealed into them and no longer allowed to communicate with the outside world once they had been briefed in the parts they were to play.

  Thousands upon thousands of British and American soldiers were moving to their battle stations. Night after night endless columns of tanks, guns, lorries and jeeps moved steadily southwards; hundreds of trains with millions of tons of munitions steamed slowly but methodically from every part of the United Kingdom towards the southern ports. Every airfield in the southern counties was packed to capacity with aircraft. Day by day the fighter screens that were put up became more numerous and more vigilant in their task of protecting all vital ground preparations from being observed by the enemy. Night and day Bomber Command and the United States Eighth Air Force sent out ever greater numbers of their heavies to destroy such important targets as the bridges over the Seine and innumerable communications centres, often far in the interior of France, while the Tactical Air Forces made great offensive sweeps and the aircraft of the Coastal Command hurled their explosives at the enemy lairs, from which submarines and E-boats might be sent to play havoc among the great armada, once it sailed.

  To Philip and Gloria these days were a time of ever-increasing anxiety. Having reached this sinister underworld in such a strange succession of circumstances, they had not the least shadow of doubt that they had been sent there for a definite purpose; yet they could form no idea of what that purpose was. Each night they prayed with all their strength that the Canon would again appear to one of them in a dream and give them some new direction. But he did not do so, and at length they came to the conclusion that, the gods having given them free will, they were not to be ordered to do anything. This was to be the test of their courage and integrity; it was to be left to them what action, if any, they should take.

  Yet what action could they take which would have any material effect against the natural forces controlled by this powerful and well-organised body that lived for the sole purpose of abetting Evil?

  For weeks past they had endeavoured to learn something of the secrets of the magno-electric forces which the Atzlanteans could wield with such terrible effect; but there they had come up against a blank wall. The only thing they had found out was that the operative power was generated in great caverns in another part of the mountain, and by an entirely separate group of Atzlanteans with whom those they
knew never came into contact. The only actual manifestation they had ever seen was the red vapour that filled a large retort on the far wall of the medium chamber whenever an operation was actually in progress. They did not even know how to start to get to the caverns where the power was generated, so there was not the faintest possibility of their being able to sabotage the main source.

  Philip still had his automatic with four bullets in it. He thought of endeavouring to assassinate as many as possible of the Seven, but he had never seen more than two of them together since the day of his arrival. He could shoot Zadok or Rakil, or perhaps both, but their colleagues would carry on for them, and there seemed no reason at all to suppose that the killing of these two evil old men would have the least effect on events in distant Europe.

  Again and again Philip and Gloria discussed the matter, but they could see no way in which by giving their own lives they could strike a blow that would aid their countries or harm one single German. When they woke on the morning of June the Third, which was D-minus-Two, they had still made no plan and were near despair from their fruitless efforts to think of one.

  That afternoon Zadok assembled all his assistants, and with the aid of a map gave them details of the final invasion plan. The operation was to be launched against selected beaches along approximately fifty miles of the Normandy coast between the base of the Cotentin Peninsula and the mouth of the River Orne. The Americans were to go in on the right and the British on the left. The two flanks were to be covered by the Airborne forces of the respective armies, which would be put down just after midnight on D-minus-One. The landings on the beaches were to take place some six hours later, early in the morning of D-Day.