The Black Baroness (15 page)

After consultation with von Ziegler and Gregory the Major began to make his dispositions for the attack. Half the troops were ordered out of their cars and down the bank to the water’s edge. For many miles past this long arm of the Mjose Lake had had the appearance of a river and it had gradually narrowed until here it was no more than two hundred yards wide. A number of the Germans began to blow up rubber boats that had formed part of the contents of the drums which had been dropped with them, while others cut branches with which to paddle themselves across; the intention being that one half of the force should continue along the road and that the other half should advance along the far side of the water so that Lillehammer could be attacked simultaneously from two directions.

While the troops were still busy blowing up the boats von Ziegler said to Gregory: ‘The men in the cars will have to wait here until the others are ready to go forward.’

‘Quite,’ Gregory agreed. ‘But in the meantime, since you and I are in civilian clothes, don’t you think it would be as well if we drove on in one of the cars to see if the Norwegians have posted a guard at the entrance to the town?’

Von Ziegler shrugged. ‘As they can’t know that there are any German troops within miles of them that’s most unlikely; and
if we meet with any opposition our fellows on the other bank will be able to enfilade and outflank it.’

‘Oh, certainly. But as the King is in the neighbourhood there’s just a chance that some local reservists have been erecting a road barrier, and I really think it’s up to us to spy out the land and make quite sure that our men are not exposed to any unpleasant surprises.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ the airman admitted, ‘and we can’t be too careful. Major Helder will need a car so we’ll leave him mine. The men who were in yours have gone down to the river, so we can use that.’ As he spoke he walked towards it and, getting in, they drove at an easy pace towards the town.

It was just the opportunity for which Gregory had been waiting. During the whole of the last hour he had been acutely conscious that it was up to him somehow or other to get another warning through to the King of this new danger that threatened him, yet he had been completely powerless, for he was at von Ziegler’s mercy so long as they were surrounded by troops; but now that he had the airman on his own again he had at least an even chance of overcoming him, since the weapons of both had been taken from them by the Norwegian police the night before.

Gregory believed in never taking any unnecessary risks, and von Ziegler was sufficiently powerful to knock him out in a scrap by a lucky blow, so he decided that the best thing to do was to drive straight in to the police-station and hand the German over to the authorities; then they could telephone to the King a warning of what was impending. But his plan was frustrated by an irritating though quite simple mishap.

Earlier that morning he had realised that his petrol was getting pretty low, but as he had not been driving the car for the past hour he had not thought about the matter since, and now, with a sudden sputtering of the engine, the petrol gave out. Fortunately they were only half a mile from the first houses of the town and two hundred yards ahead there stood a petrol station, so they got out and walked towards it.

In front of the station there was—somewhat to Gregory’s surprise—a handsome Rolls-Royce which was just being filled up. As he and von Ziegler halted beside it, waiting to ask the pump attendant if he had a tin of petrol, the solitary occupant of the Rolls turned round, looked at Gregory and, flinging open the door of the driving-seat, jumped out. He was a tall, thin,
prosperous-looking individual with a drooping moustache and a beautifully-cut suit of Glenurquhart tweeds. Advancing on the petrified Gregory he exclaimed in English with jovial delight:

‘Well, I’ll be jiggered! If it isn’t my old friend, Gregory Sallust!’

As Gregory was in civilian clothes there was nothing whatever about him to indicate that he was posing as the
Colonel Baron
von Lutz, and the tall man’s recognition was so convincingly confident that Gregory knew that he would never be able to persuade von Ziegler that any mistake had been made. At that second he caught the German’s eye; in it amazement was struggling with sudden comprehension and the dawn of fanatical hatred.

Gregory could almost see the thoughts racing through the German’s brain. He was putting two and two together with extraordinary rapidity. He had been too wrapped up in his own plan to kidnap or kill King Haakon to wonder why a German staff-colonel should, within five hours of the invasion, have completed any work he had to do and be at liberty to set off into the blue as a casual helper in this wild chase. Here was the explanation. His companion for the last twenty-seven hours was not a German officer at all, but a British spy. The Rolls-Royce car had a diplomatic number-plate, so evidently its owner was an Englishman who had escaped from the British Legation in Oslo, and he had given away this old friend of his, Mr. Gregory Sallust, without realising what he was doing.

It must have been this spy who had somehow managed to warn King Haakon to leave his Palace at a moment’s notice. It was this wolf in sheep’s clothing who on the previous night had suggested that instead of remaining in the police-station to be bombed they should give warning of the air-raid; so he had managed to save the King again on the specious excuse that if they saved themselves they could always capture or kill him the following day. Now it was this snake that he had been nurturing
in his bosom who had proposed that they should go ahead of the column to make quite certain that Lillehammer was undefended; but evidently his intention had been to get yet one more warning to the King so that he could leave the town before the German troops came up. Von Ziegler was an ambitious man and he had counted upon receiving signal honours from his
Führer
for the capture of King Haakon; now he saw how step by step his plan had been foiled by the British agent whom he had been fool enough to take as his companion and confidant.

With a roar of rage he sprang; but Gregory side-stepped and put out a foot to trip him. For once Gregory had met his match. Von Ziegler was still much too concerned for the preservation of his own plans to be willing to risk sabotaging them further for the joy of injuring the man who had tricked him. The thing uppermost in his mind at that moment was the urgent necessity of escaping from the two Englishmen, who might try to hold him prisoner, and of getting back to his troops round the bend of the road. He had leapt at Gregory only in order to drive him out of the way. Swerving suddenly, he jumped into the driving-seat of the Rolls. Its tall owner grabbed at him but he fended him off with one hand while releasing the brake with the other. Next minute the big car slid away in a cloud of dust.

Gregory could not help admiring the tactics by which von Ziegler had made his get-away and he smiled at the Englishman. ‘Well, Gussy, old friend, I’m afraid that’s good-bye to your Rolls.’

The Honourable Augustus Langdon-Forbes stared after four thousand pounds’ worth of the world’s most excellent machinery, which was now streaking southward. Then he looked ruefully at Gregory.

‘Who’s your ill-mannered friend? I seem to know his face.’

‘You should,’ Gregory smiled. ‘He’s the Air Attaché at the German Legation in Oslo and he rejoices in the name of Captain Kurt von Ziegler.’

‘Of course. Still, damn’d unsporting of him, I think, to make off with my car like that without so much as “by your leave”.’

‘There
is
a war on, Gussy, old thing,’ Gregory remarked quietly.

The other’s eyes suddenly flickered with amusement. ‘So I gather. In recent months we’ve even had one or two dispatches about it from London.’

‘I should have thought you might also have seen something of it yourself in the last few hours. Did you by any chance pass through Hamar early this morning?’

‘Yes; and I found it a most regrettable sight—most regrettable. I see no reason at all why we and the Germans shouldn’t kill one another, if we feel that way, without burning up the houses of a lot of unfortunate Norwegians.’

‘The Germans considered that they had an excellent reason. They were out to capture King Haakon—and they’ll get him yet if we don’t do something about it. Do you by any chance speak Norwegian?’

‘A word or two. I’ve been
en poste
here for over two years you know.’

‘Enough to make yourself understood over a telephone?’

Augustus Langdon-Forbes’ brown eyes twinkled again. ‘I might succeed in that.’

‘Come on, then; you must get on to the police—or, better still, to the Sandvig’s house, where the King is staying, and warn him to get out at once. There’s a column of German troops lurking round the corner up there all ready to come racing into the town, and another lot are making their way up through the trees on the other side of the water.’

‘God bless my soul! D’you really mean that, Gregory? I know the German motor-cyclists are pretty swift movers but I never thought that they’d get here as quickly as this.’

Gregory had turned and was striding towards a long, low building just beside the petrol station, as he replied grimly: ‘They didn’t come on motor-cycles; they dropped straight out of the sky like a lot of lovely fairies who had been cursed by a wicked witch and turned into sa usage-eating hoodlums with two-ton boots.’

‘Parachute troops, eh?’ Augustus said lazily.

‘How did you guess, Gussy dear?’

‘Oh, we are not altogether without our sources of information,’ the diplomat: shrugged, ‘and I had a sort of idea that they might try out their new technique if they decided to go for Scandinavia.’

‘Then why the hell didn’t you pass on your “sort of idea” to the War House?’

‘We did, old fellah—we did; but the wallah who received this epic testimony to our foresight and care for our country’s weal probably thought we were pulling his leg. After all, it’s
asking a bit too much to expect a British general to believe in fairies.’

As they hurried into the low building Gregory realised that it was not, as he had supposed, the rather spacious bungalow of the owner of the petrol pumps, but some sort of club. There was a man behind a desk in the hallway, which opened into a broad lounge-room where a number of Norwegians with worried faces were earnestly talking together in little groups.

Langdon-Forbes stepped forward and proceeded to air his word or two of Norwegian. This proved to be a complete and rapid command of the language, without any attempt to speak it as it was spoken by the Norwegians, and his rather high, clipped accent still branded him as Winchester and Balliol although he was speaking in a foreign tongue. What he said to the man behind the desk Gregory did not know, but the man was galvanised into instant activity and two minutes later Gussy was speaking swiftly and clearly on the telephone. As he hung up the receiver he said to Gregory:

‘Well, that’s that. Dr. Koht, the Foreign Minister, is with the King and I spoke to his secretary, whom I know personally, so they will be on their way in half an hour.’

‘Half an hour?’ exclaimed Gregory. ‘That’s no good; the Boche are only just round the corner; once they start they’ll be in the town inside ten minutes—and they may start at any moment.’

‘Sorry; but the King is in his bath. He’s had rather a trying time, poor old chap, and he thought a bath and a bit of massage would restore him. They’ll tell him at once, of course, but it’s bound to take him a quarter of an hour or so to get dried and dressed.’

‘Has he any troops out there to defend him?’

‘No. I asked about that, but Lillehammer is not a garrison town and so he hasn’t even an acting unpaid bombardier for escort—only a few policemen with those funny old revolvers.’

Gregory groaned. ‘We must try and gain him a flying start somehow. I know! We can’t stop the troops across the water but what we
can
do is to stop the motorised column by making a road barrier. We’ll have to be darned snappy about it, though. Go and talk to those chaps in there; tell them as quickly as you can what’s happening and get them to lend a hand dragging out the furniture.’

Langdon-Forbes advanced into the open doorway of the
lounge and raised his high-pitched voice. There was instant silence, and after he had spoken for a moment a fat man stepped forward and said something to him; upon which he turned to Gregory.

‘Our luck’s in. This place is the Lillehammer Rifle Club and our friend here, who is its President, suggests that all the members should get their rifles.’

‘Splendid!’ Gregory nodded to the fat man and added: ‘But for God’s sake tell them to be quick!’

The President called loudly to his friends and a stampede to the gun-room ensued. Two minutes later the first members of the club to reach it came hurrying back with rifles and boxes of ammunition. As they started to run out on to the road Gregory spoke quickly again to Gussy.

‘Tell them that I’m a British officer and that they’d better let me take charge while you act as my interpreter. They won’t stand an earthly if they line up out there in the open. The Germans have got tommy-guns and will simply shoot them to ribbons. The thing to do is to man the windows of the club and lie in wait until the Germans come down the road.’

Gregory’s suggestion was adopted and under his directions the clubmen began to smash the long line of windows; afterwards removing the fragments of glass to prevent their flying when the Germans fired at the place. They then sorted themselves out inside the building while Gregory stood in the doorway watching the curve of the road half a mile away. Word was passed round that not a shot was to be fired until he gave the Norwegian word of command, with which Langdon-Forbes furnished him.

The preparations for the ambush were only just completed in time. A moment later he saw the Rolls suddenly shoot round the corner, and it was followed by a string of about sixteen other cars containing the parachute troops.

He stepped back a little in case he was spotted and von Ziegler took a flying shot at him when the Rolls drew level. Unconsciously holding his breath, he waited until the first four cars had passed him; then with all the strength of his lungs he roared the word for ‘Fire!’