They Used Dark Forces (11 page)

Gregory shot the Russian a startled glance. While he thought it probable that his friend was right in believing the doctor to be a Jew, he did not agree that they stood any risk of being betrayed by him; and even if he owed his powers as an occultist to the Devil that was no affair of theirs.

What mattered was that he and his daughter were providing them with a secure base from which to begin their operations. This attempt to unmask him was, therefore, not only pointless but dangerous. Rather than run any risk of their giving his secret away, he might decide to rid himself of them. Into Gregory's mind there flashed the memory that witches and warlocks were said to employ poisons—and Malacou was a doctor.… Swiftly coming to his feet, he intervened.

‘Stefan, what on earth gave you such an idea? Before we left London we were informed that Colonel von Altern had been a Military Attaché in Turkey, and Frau von Altern has told us herself that she is a Turkish lady. There is no basis whatever for your imputation, and you have abused your position as a guest by making it. Your faulty knowledge of German has misled you, too. The
Herr Doktor
did not imply that you would betray me; only that a certain combination of our stars might bring me into danger. I insist that you apologise at once.'

As he spoke he held the Russian with his eyes, endeavouring to convey to him that, although he had made a most regrettable gaffe, Malacou might not take its implications seriously if he were offered a complete withdrawal.

But before Kuporovitch could reply Malacou held up his hand. His thick lips parted in a smile and he said, ‘I might have known that a Russian would smell out a Jew, since they
were for centuries the most pitiless enemies of my race. Of course Khurrem and I are Jews by blood; but for obvious reasons we take advantage, she of the fact that she is a German by marriage and I that I am a naturalised Turk, to conceal it. However, that makes no difference to the fact that we and you have a common interest in destroying the Nazis.

‘When I considered whether I should allow you to use Sassen as a base for your mission I realised that if one or both of you were caught my daughter and I would pay the penalty for having given you a roof over your heads and that even if we swore that we had no knowledge of your activities that would not save us. So if now you gave it away under torture that we are Jews our case would be no worse. That being so, I see no reason why I should not admit that my name was Malacchi and tell you why I changed it.'

‘I assure you that I intended no slight upon your race,' Kuporovitch put in hastily.

‘Possibly.' Malacou's smile gave place to a frown. ‘But you are old enough to recall the treatment meted out by your race to mine when Poland formed part of the dominions of the Czars. That Hitler has since sought to destroy my people utterly does not cause Jews of my generation to forget the pogroms. I have only to close my eyes to see again the Polish village in which I was born, a
sotnia
of Cossacks charging down its narrow street using their knouts like flails on corn as they drove the terrified people before them. Men, women and children fell screaming beneath the hooves of the horses. Then the houses were broken into, their poor furniture thrown out into the street to make a bonfire, the men unmercifully flogged, the women shorn of their hair and raped, the children forced to defile themselves by being made to eat pigs' offal.'

It was a terrible picture that he drew, but Gregory remembered reading accounts of such purges in his youth; and Kuporovitch knew it to be a true one. The latter said:

‘I know it,
Herr Doktor
. But Russia has since endeavoured to make amends for the old Imperial Government's persecution of the Jews. They now enjoy equal status with all other Soviet citizens. In the past twenty years I have known a number of Jews whom I respected and counted among my friends.'

Malacou shrugged. ‘Oh, I do not hold you personally to blame. I recall those years only to explain why I left Poland in 1903.'

After pausing a moment, he added, ‘If we are to work together we must trust one another. Sit down now, and I will tell you about myself.

‘With the little money I could scrape together, I succeeded in joining an uncle of mine who had already established himself as a merchant in Turkey. During the First World War our business prospered and by 1919 I had amassed a small fortune. I had gone into commerce only as a matter of necessity; so I sold my business and as a man of independent means I was then able to give all my time to my real interests.

‘Those were the study of the Microcosm and the Macrocosm, as occultists term the relation of the little world existing in each human being to the vast structure of the universe. I am not, in fact, a doctor of medicine, but my researches into the human body provided me with sufficient knowledge to practise as one; and I do so here in order to secure the goodwill of the local population. But that is a side issue.

‘Seven, as you may perhaps know, is the mystic number and the key to the Eternal Logos. It is for that reason the candlesticks that stand in front of the tabernacle in our synagogues have seven branches. People who have the number 7 are by their nature more psychic than others; they have the gift of intuition and nearly always make good clairvoyants. As I was born on the 7th day of the 7th month I was exceptionally endowed with the power to make contact with supernatural forces. My name of Abraham gave me an additional 7, but Malacchi produces a 3. That is the main reason why I changed it. Ibrahim, of course, has the same numerical value as Abraham, but Malacou gave me yet another 7, and so increased the power of the vibrations which have proved such a great asset in my occult operations.'

‘I see,' Gregory murmured. ‘But in making the change were you not also influenced by your wish to pass in future as a Turk?'

‘Certainly,' Malacou admitted promptly. ‘In nearly every country Jews have the misfortune to be despised and misunderstood on account of their race. In 1907 I had married my
uncle's niece. Three years later I lost her, but she had blessed me with a daughter. By the time I retired Khurrem was already ten and I had great ambitions for her. When I changed my name it was not difficult to select a Turkish ending to it which would give me the additional 7 that I desired. Both Khurrem and I by then spoke Turkish fluently; so when we cut adrift from our Jewish acquaintances and moved surreptitiously from Istanbul to Ankara we were accepted there as Turks.'

‘Then von Altern had no suspicion of your origins,' Gregory remarked.

‘None whatever. Khurrem met him at a reception and at once fell in love with him. As a race I have never liked the Germans, but Hitler had then only recently come to power and I failed to foresee that his animosity against the Jews would lead to such terrible consequences for my people. Khurrem's happiness was involved and I had always hoped that she would marry a nobleman. Like many Prussian aristocrats, von Altern had great pretensions but little money; so I used a part of my fortune to buy him for her.'

‘Father!' Khurrem suddenly broke in, ‘did you need to tell them that? Ulrich was a fine man and made me very happy.'

He shrugged. ‘Daughter, our bona-fides having been called in question, I wish to give the whole truth about ourselves to these our friends. It is true that Ulrich, his political ideologies apart, filled the role of a good husband towards you. Had I not secured fore-knowledge that he would, I should never have offered him the inducements which led to his taking you as his wife.' Glancing at Gregory and Kuporovitch in turn, the doctor added:

‘When Khurrem left with her husband for Germany, Poland had for eighteen years again enjoyed her independence as a sovereign State. Turkey no longer had anything to offer me, so to be nearer my daughter here in Prussia I decided to return to Poland. Those of my relatives and old friends who had survived naturally welcomed me. They were no longer being persecuted and in various ways I was able to be of service to them. But in September '39 there came this new war. Hitler had by then made clear his unrelenting enmity towards all Jews. To escape becoming compromised through my friends
there, who knew me to be a Jew, I used my Turkish passport to leave Poland and became a resident here at Sassen. As Khurrem was the wife of a pro-Nazi officer, no-one has ever questioned her Turkish father having come to live with her. There,
Herren
, you have my history and present situation.'

Gregory made a little bow. ‘We are most grateful to you,
Herr Doktor
, for having been so frank; particularly as your private life is no concern of ours. Can you now advise us how best to proceed with our mission?'

Pointing with a long, smooth finger to the horoscopes, Malacou replied, ‘These leave me in no doubt that in due course an opening will be given you. For the moment I can only suggest that you should pay a few visits to Greifswald and there scrape acquaintance with as many people as possible. One of them might provide you with a lead.'

‘Why not Wolgast?' Gregory asked. ‘That is much nearer to Peenemünde and the ferry to Usedom goes from it.'

Malacou shook his head. ‘For you that is not possible. An area which is three miles deep from the coast has been sealed off, and a permit is required to enter it. Willi von Altern has one. Great quantities of foodstuffs are needed to feed the forced labour now at Peenemünde and he delivers our farm produce to Wolgast by lorry twice a week. But the two of you differ so greatly in appearance that you could not pass as him. However, he could take you to Greifswald and drop you off there.'

‘Good. When does he make his next journey?'

‘Tomorrow, Friday. But that is the 4th of June and in your case caution demands that the influence of both the 4 and 8 should be avoided. After that his next journey will be on Monday. That is one of the best days of the week for you; so propitious for starting to find out what you can.'

For a further hour Gregory and Kuporovitch remained with the doctor, studying his large-scale map of the Peenemünde neighbourhood and talking about the course of the war; then Khurrem took them back through the shrubbery and along to the manor house.

The weekend passed uneventfully. At Gregory's suggestion it was agreed that, while they stayed at Sassen, Kuporovitch
should help on the farm. When Willi von Altern was told of this he became decidedly more friendly, as it seemed that his crippled mind was capable of concentrating only on various tasks that had to be done about the farm and in some of these a strong man's help would be very welcome.

Early on the Monday morning the lorry was loaded up and Gregory set off with him for Greifswald. After a drive of twelve miles through the flat country they reached the town and Willi dropped Gregory off in the main square. The place was much the same size as Grimmen and its buildings were similar in appearance. In the course of an hour he had explored all the principal streets and as by then it was still only a little after nine o'clock he was temporarily at a loss what to do.

By half past nine the usual queues were forming outside the food shops and quite a number of wounded soldiers were strolling aimlessly about. The sight of them decided Gregory to pay a visit to the hospital; so he spent the next half-hour buying from tobacconists as many cigarettes as they would let him have until he had collected several hundred. Then he went to the hospital and secured the willing permission of the matron to distribute them among some of her patients.

As he moved slowly down one of the long wards he spent a few minutes at each bedside talking to the occupant before leaving him a packet of ten or twenty. He was hoping that he might come upon a man who had received his injury as a result of an accident while on garrison duty on Usedom and, perhaps, get him talking about conditions there. But he had no luck. All of them had been wounded on the Russian front, so when he had exhausted his supply of cigarettes he made his way back to the main square.

Going into a small hotel there, which appeared to be the best in the town, he enquired of the landlord the price of a room, then said he was on leave and hoped to get some fishing in the great Greifswald Bay, which lay only a few miles to the north-east of the town. But the man shook his head and said:

‘A few years ago,
Herr Major
, I could easily have fixed you up; but for a long time past the whole coast within fifty miles of here has been a military area. As you are an officer, you might
perhaps get a permit from the area commandant, but I doubt it. They are terribly strict about letting anyone get even a sight of the big experimental station at Peenemünde.'

Gregory thanked him and said he would try his luck, although he had no intention of doing so except as a last resort. As far as he knew his forged papers were all in order, but the type of such documents was changed from time to time and there was always the chance that the ones with which S.O.E. had furnished him were not up-to-date.

In an adjacent café Gregory ordered a drink, then got into conversation with two convalescent officers who were sitting at a nearby table. After a while he again broached the subject of fishing. The elder of the two, a grey-haired Captain, shrugged.

‘You'll get no fishing in these parts now,
Herr Major
. Only the local fishing smacks are allowed to go out, and then only on certain days, under escort. On others they would be endangered by the firing.'

‘Surely that applies only when they are a few miles from the coast,' Gregory remarked. ‘They couldn't come to any harm while far out in the Baltic.'

The younger officer laughed. ‘If I were the captain of a trawler I wouldn't care to risk it. Big Bertha of the last great war was a pop-gun compared with this huge piece they are trying out at Peenemünde. It's said to be able to throw its shells two hundred miles.'

‘Let's hope you're right and from the French coast it will destroy London,' remarked his senior. Then, with a warning glance, he added, ‘But the Provost Marshal would have us on the mat if it got to his ears that we'd been talking about it.'