The Black Baroness (37 page)

The Colonel told him that the Guards were at Uccle, just south-west of the capital, and that if he took the road to the right he would find the village about three miles along it. Peachie then introduced his passenger and said that Gregory was anxious to get through to Brussels as he had work of importance to do there.

‘I’m afraid it’s too late to do that,’ said the Colonel promptly; ‘the Germans have already occupied the city.’

‘That won’t stop me,’ Gregory replied. ‘I speak German fluently and I have a German passport, so I could easily pass myself off as a German agent.’

The Colonel brushed up his moustache and eyed Gregory with considerably more interest. ‘In that case it’s up to you, but I’d strongly advise you to wait until morning.’

‘Why, sir?’

‘Because, although the whole front is in a state of flux, we have established some sort of line just behind Brussels, so there’s a mile or two of territory outside the suburbs which is more or less no-man’s-land at the moment. It will be dark by the time you get there and during the night the sentries on both sides will be potting at any moving object they may see, so the fact that you’re in civilian clothes won’t be the least protection to you. But if you wait until daylight you should be able to walk straight through the battle-zone and you only have to risk being killed by a stray shot or shell, as neither side is likely deliberately to shoot down a civilian.’

Gregory immediately saw the sense of this argument. Ever since he had been released from the Police Headquarters in Rotterdam he had been cursing the succession of delays which had prevented his getting back to Erika, but now that the Germans had got to Brussels before him there was no longer quite as much point in his pressing forward without the loss of a moment. He felt confident that she would have had the sense to evacuate before the Germans arrived, and was probably now somewhere among one of the columns of refugees that had left
Brussels that morning; so his only reason now for wishing to get into the city was because he felt sure that she would have left some message for him in her flat to say where she intended to go.

Once he knew that, even with the country in its present state of confusion, he would probably be able to reach her in another twenty-four hours; but as long as he had no idea at all where she had gone, with every form of communication broken down, it might take him days—or even weeks—to find her. It seemed, therefore, that for the sake of securing any message she might have left him it was not worth risking being shot in a night-crossing of no-man’s-land, when by waiting for a further eight or ten hours he would be able to cross it with comparatively little danger.

Peachie suggested that Gregory had better come with him to Uccle and take pot-luck for the night about any accommodation that might be going there; so on Gregory’s agreeing they took leave of the Colonel and turned down the side-road.

At the village they found Peachie’s battalion temporarily resting, as there was now a lull in the fighting, the Germans being fully occupied with the take-over of the Belgian capital. A Mess had been established in a large farmhouse and while Gregory and Peachie ate a meal there they listened to the accounts given by several officers of the last two days’ fighting. All of them were extremely bitter about the Fifth Column activities in Belgium. One of their brother-officers had been shot through the back of the neck and killed when walking down a road miles behind the line, and another had halted his car in a quiet area to offer two Belgian peasant women a lift, upon which one of the women had pulled out a pistol and shot him through the head.

They said that we had no weapon at all to compete with the Germans’ small, quick-firing howitzer and that at short range our old-fashioned rifles were almost useless against the tommy-guns which were carried by every German infantry-man. On the other hand, everyone present agreed that the Germans were a poor lot when it came to hand-to-hand fighting; thy would not face the bayonet at any price and, in spite of constant bombardment and machine-gunning from the air, every time our men got a chance to get at the enemy they were putting up a magnificent performance.

In the Mess Gregory saw a copy of the order that General
Camelin had issued that day. It said: ‘Any soldier who cannot advance should allow himself to be killed rather than abandon that part of our national soil which has been entrusted to him.’ So, clearly, for the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies to have played his last card by such a backs-to-the-wall command, the situation was really critical.

The farmhouse was filled to capacity but Peachie managed to secure a double bed for Gregory and himself in a cottage near by, and they slept on it in their clothes, ready to be up and doing at a moment’s notice in any emergency.

At five o’clock they were wakened by shells screaming into the village and knew that the battle was on again. The Germans had taken Brussels in their stride and now that daylight was approaching they were launching new attacks upon the hard-pressed British. In the farmhouse the Mess orderlies were going about their business quite unperturbed and to Gregory’s surprise and pleasure he was given bacon and eggs for breakfast as well as lashings of hot tea. Reports had come in from the advance company that German tanks were approaching so the remainder of the battalion was already mustering in the village street. Gregory saw no cause to delay any further and knew that he would only be in the way of the others if he did, so he thanked his hosts and, wishing them luck, set out along the road to Brussels.

There were a number of other civilians about, mostly villagers or refugees from the city. With what appeared to Gregory the height of foolhardiness, they ignored the German planes which were once more buzzing overhead and the shells which were bursting only a few hundred yards away, to stand about on the higher ground so that they could get a good view of the battle that was opening, but their presence suited him very well as it meant that he was in no way conspicuous.

He had scarcely covered half a mile when the planes dive-bombed the village; but fortunately, by that time, the troops had moved out of it, scattering to north and south to take up their positions. A few hundred yards further on a crossroad was being crumped every few moments by the shells of a German heavy battery, so he took to the fields and gave it a wide berth. Five minutes later a British Tommy popped up from behind a hedge and called on him to halt, threatening him with a rifle; but Gregory spoke to him in English, giving him the names of half a dozen officers of his battalion, and told him that it was
his job to go forward to get information.

‘Crikey!’ exclaimed the Tommy. ‘You don’t mean to say we’ve got a Fifth Column too?’

‘Yes; I’m it,’ Gregory laughed.

‘Right-oh; pass, chum; but you’ve got your work cut out against half the German Army dressed as Belgians.’ The man put up the rifle and waved him on.

Twice more he was challenged by solitary Guardsmen but each time they let him through and although a few bullets were now whistling about he continued to walk forward, considering that to display himself openly in his civilian clothes was his best protection. Yet on crossing a field towards a group of houses he had a narrow squeak; a machine-gun opened fire, tearing up the grass about ten yards to his left. He could not tell if the gun was badly aimed or if it was fired by a Jerry who thought it would be fun to scare the wits out of a solitary Belgian, but he leapt for the ditch and Jay there until the gunner ceased fire; then he cautiously crawled forward on his hands and knees until he came to the nearest house. Standing up, he walked round it, and on turning the corner to get on to the road again he ran straight into a patrol of German infantry.

A
Feldwebel
immediately pointed an automatic at him so he shot up his hands and spoke in German. ‘It’s all right. Sergeant; I am a German officer on special service. Hold your fire for a minute while I show you my passport,’ and slipping his hand into his breast-pocket he produced the now much-worn document which had so often established his identity as
Oberst-Baron
von Lutz.

The Corporal glanced at it, called his men sharply to attention and saluted. Gregory pocketed the passport again and with a little nod to the group walked on. British shells were now screaming overhead and the staccato rattle of machine-guns interspersed by the occasional crack of rifles showed that the battle had been joined in earnest behind him; but now that he had crossed no-man’s-land the most perilous part of his dangerous morning walk was over.

As he advanced the houses became more frequent and many of their occupants were standing at their windows or in the street, so the further group of Germans that he met took no notice of him. A long column of tanks clattered by and from the dents and scars upon them he saw that they had already done considerable service. By eight o’clock he had left the
suburbs and penetrated to the centre of Brussels. It had taken him just seventy-two hours to do the journey from Rotterdam which he should normally have accomplished in an hour and a half.

It was a very different city to that which he had left fourteen days earlier. The streets were almost deserted except for the columns of German troops. Shops and houses were closed and shuttered, but he noticed with relief that the city did not seem to have suffered much from aerial attack. Here and there a bomb had wrecked a building or blown a hole in the road but the damage was not one-thousandth part of that which had been done in Rotterdam.

In the neighbourhood of the Royal Palace the damage was more severe, so it seemed that the Germans had been up to their old game of endeavouring to eliminate the Head of the State, but as he turned into the Rue Montoyer he saw that it was practically untouched. There was only one great gap among the houses, where a bomb had cut like a knife clean through the block.

Suddenly he looked again and halted, utterly aghast. The empty air above that great pile of débris was where Erika’s flat had been; the whole building had been blown to fragments.

For a long time Gregory was too stunned to do anything but stand there, staring at the empty gap between the houses where Erika’s apartment had been. He was very far from a pessimist by nature yet, perhaps because they had escaped so many dangers, it had never occurred to him that Erika might be the casual victim of an air-raid. As he stared he began to surfer untold agonies, one symptom of which was a real physical pain right down in the pit of his stomach, at the thought that she was irretrievably lost to him.

Unnoticed by him an elderly man had shuffled up behind him, and he started as a thin, quavering voice at his elbow said in French: ‘That was a big one—that was. I live three streets away, but we heard it above all the rest, and I said to my wife,
I said: “That’s a big one—that is”—and sure enough I was right. Twenty bodies they took out of that pile of ruins, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more of them buried there yet.’

‘Go away!’ snapped Gregory, turning on the old ghoul furiously.

‘All right, all right.’ The elderly man looked slightly offended. ‘I’m only telling you what I saw. Six men, nine women and five children they brought out, though most of them were in bits, and I don’t doubt there’s more bodies under that heap yet.’

‘Go away!’ repeated Gregory. ‘Go away.’ Then, as his unsolicited informant turned to dodder off, it suddenly occurred to him to ask: ‘What time did the bomb fall?’

The old man piped up with an angry squeak. ‘Find out for yourself; I’m not giving any more details to a rude fellow like you.’

In one stride Gregory had caught him up and, seizing him by his skinny neck, shook him like a rat. He dropped his stick, his hat fell off and his pale-blue eyes showed wild panic.

‘Now,’ said Gregory; ‘answer me! When did that bomb fall?’

‘Two nights ago—near on one o’clock,’ choked the little man, and taking to his heels the second that Gregory released him he began to run down the street.

Gregory groaned. At one in the morning Erika would almost certainly have been at home; but his faculties were beginning to return to him and without another glance at the retreating figure he had assaulted he started to run down the street in the opposite direction. There were no taxis to be had or he would have secured one an hour earlier, directly he had reached the centre of the town; so he ran and walked alternately all the way to the Hotel Astoria.

When he arrived there twenty minutes later he found that the hotel was still open but had been taken over as a German Staff Headquarters. There were a number of cars outside, a sentry was posted on the doorway and officers were constantly going in and out.

Having thrust his German passport under the sentry’s nose, which resulted in the soldier’s springing to attention and presenting arms, he hurried inside. To his relief he found that the Belgian head porter had been retained to continue his duties. He inquired at once if the man knew what had become of Kuporovitch.

The porter told him that the Russian had left Brussels early the previous Tuesday morning in a car, with a lady.

Gregory’s heart bounded with hope, only to sink again a moment later as the porter went on to add that the car belonged to the lady, who was a great friend of the Russian gentleman, as during the past five weeks she had often called at the hotel and taken meals with him in the restaurant. That could only refer to Paula, as was confirmed when Gregory asked the porter to describe the lady and he said that she was very good-looking with dark hair and with a rather high colour. He was quite certain that no other lady had been with them and that Kuporovitch had departed without giving any hint as to his destination, or leaving any message for anyone.

He thanked the man and staggered out into the strong sunshine of the street. It seemed a little odd that Paula should have fled from Brussels, as there was no earthly reason for her to be afraid of the advancing Germans; but on second thoughts Gregory realised that if she remained in captured territory she would become useless to them. Evidently her instructions had been to get out before they arrived so that she could continue her work in western Belgium or France in the rôle of a refugee from Nazi persecution. But he could not understand at all why Kuporovitch had failed to leave some message for him. The Russian must have known that Erika’s death now left him as the sole link between the Allies and the activities of Hitler’s secret weapon in the Low Countries, and although it seemed that, for Gregory, the end of the world had come, he realised in a dull fashion underneath his pain that the war must go on.