They Used Dark Forces (27 page)

Gregory nodded. ‘I heard that when I was in Switzerland, a long while ago, at the time they had only got them on the drawing board and I could hardly credit it.'

‘Well, that's not far off the estimate our people made from the photographs taken over Peenemünde; and now we know it for a fact. What is more, the boffins have worked it out that
each one that lands on a densely populated area will turn a quarter of a square mile into rubble, kill four thousand people and cause a further ten thousand casualties.'

‘God, how awful!'

‘Have another, Kümmel,' said the Deception Planner.

‘Thanks,' murmured Gregory, ‘I need it.'

That day Gregory was not due on duty in the War Room until ten o'clock in the evening, so after lunch he went down to his flat in Gloucester Road and slept through the rest of the afternoon. As he gradually came out of his slumber he remained temporarily unconscious of his surroundings, but could see Malacou quite distinctly. The occultist was in a smallish room that had good but old-fashioned furniture. In his subconscious Gregory had seen the room several times before and knew it to be Malacou's study in his old house at Ostroleka.

With him there were two men of the
Totenkopf S.S
., and it was clear that he was in trouble. But it was not in connection with the money of which he had defrauded the von Alterns, otherwise the men would have been
Staatspolizei
. These were members of a special organisation known as
Einsatzgruppen
, composed of criminals and fanatics embodied by Himmler for the purpose of exterminating the Jews. One of them held Malacou's passport and was questioning him closely about it. Clearly they believed him to be a Jew and on that account he was in grave danger of being taken off to a concentration camp.

From previous telepathic communications Gregory had received during the past six weeks he already knew the background of the situation. Malacou had proved wrong in his assumption that, owing to the great number of Jews in Poland and the German's need of the crops they grew, the majority of them had been left at liberty. Earlier that had been the case and it was only the Jews in Germany who had been sacrificed to the Nazi ideology. But both Hitler and Himmler were so obsessed with the idea that the Jews were the deadly enemies of the whole human race that in 1943 Hitler had agreed to let Himmler apply his ‘final Solution of the Problem' to every territory over which the Swastika flew.

For many months past a systematic round-up of the Jews had been operating, not only in Poland but in France, Belgium, Holland and even countries as distant as Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. As they were too numerous in Central Europe to be dealt with at once individually they had, at first, simply been herded into ghettos in the larger cities. Then concentration camps with gas chambers had been constructed and staffed with Himmler's
Einsatzgruppen
. To these the Jews were now being moved in batches and tens of thousands of them had already been liquidated.

In consequence, when Malacou arrived in Ostroleka he had found that all his relatives were either dead or confined to the Warsaw ghetto. Extremely uneasy in mind, but not knowing where else to go and protected by his Turkish passport, he had settled down there and had been living very quietly. But evidently someone who knew he had been born there a Jew, and had a grudge against him, had given him away.

Although Gregory had no cause at all to love Malacou, he could not now help feeling sorry for him and was very relieved when the Nazis, having found that his passport was in order, decided not to arrest him until further enquiries had been made into his past.

In the Cabinet War Room on nights when there was no special activity it was customary at about two o'clock in the morning for the four duty officers to lower the lights and doze beside their telephones. That night, soon after Gregory had settled down, he seemed to be watching Malacou. The occultist was now outside his tall, narrow-gabled house in the small town street. With Tarik's help he was loading food into an old-fashioned pony trap; and soon after, with Malacou loudly lamenting as he drove off, it clattered away into the night. From this it was evident that he thought it too dangerous to await the results of the threatened investigation and had decided to leave Ostroleka while he still had the chance.

During the fortnight that followed Gregory caught several glimpses of the fugitives. For a week they hid in the depths of a wood, then when he next saw them they were following a narrow track that wound between tall forests of reeds in a desolate area of marsh. Both of them were bowed under
huge bundles strapped to their shoulders, so evidently they had had to abandon the pony and trap. Two days later he saw them again, now installed in a cottage in the middle of the marshes. It was sparsely furnished but had obviously been abandoned for some time, as they were patching a hole in the roof, through which water had seeped leaving stains on a dresser in the living room. He gained the impression that it was a shooting lodge which in happier times had been used for duck shoots by the owner of some manor house in the vicinity and, owing to its isolated situation, it looked as if Malacou could hope to remain there in safety.

On May 11th a new offensive was launched against the Gustav Line and for the following week the battle in southern Italy again raged with maximum intensity. Then, on the 23rd, the Allies at last succeeded in breaking out of the Anzio bridgehead; but D-Day was just approaching and all thought in the Cabinet Offices was concentrated on the final preparations for it. Quite unexpectedly, Gregory became involved in them when Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Peck rang him up and asked him to come up to his office in the Air Ministry.

Richard Peck had for some time past held the post of Assistant Chief of Air Staff (G). This entailed handling all the problems that the other Air Chiefs had neither the time nor the inclination to tackle. One job he had taken on of his own initiative was to make himself the Overlord of Air Ministry Press Relations and, one day when lunching with him at a corner table that was always reserved for him at Quaglino's, Gregory had happened to mention that for several years he had earned his living as a foreign correspondent. It was on that account that the Air Chief Marshal had sent for him. Having given Gregory a cigarette, he said:

‘Our American friends are extremely generous with their money but by no means so generous about their tributes to the part we are playing in the war. Reading their papers every day, as I do, one would get the impression that Britain has become no more than a base for Uncle Sam's gallant boys to pitch into the Germans. Later, of course, there will be many more American troops fighting on the Continent than there will be British, because their reserves of manpower are much
greater than ours. But for Operation “Neptune” the actual landings will be about fifty-fifty. What is more the success or failure of the operation depends entirely on us, because it's the British Navy that's got to put the troops ashore. Even so, you can take it from me that our chaps won't get more than a tiny paragraph in the American dailies. And then it will be on the lines, “poor old Britain is pretty exhausted after the tough time she's been through but she helped us all she could”.

‘Now I want the American people to know the truth and there is one way I can do it. We don't stand a hope with the dailies, but we can get signed articles by writers of repute into the weeklies and glossy magazines. To do that I've combed the R.A.F. for well-known authors and others and had them seconded to me for the few days that count to act as temporary war correspondents who will cover the landings. I've got Terence Rattigan, Dennis Wheatley, Christopher Hollis, Hugh Clevely and a score of others and I'm sure you would write a really lively report, so I'd like to have you, too. Are you willing to play?'

‘Certainly,' Gregory agreed at once. ‘If Brigadier Jacob will release me from the War Room there's nothing I'd like better than to fly over the beaches.'

The Air Chief Marshal shook his head. ‘No. In your case that's not on. The same applies to Wheatley. General Ismay has already ruled that no-one employed in the Cabinet Offices must be exposed to the risk of being shot down. They know too much. If they fell into the hands of the enemy and had their thumbs screwed off they might give things away. But don't let that worry you. There will be so much smoke going up from shells and bombs that you wouldn't be able to see the coast of Normandy anyhow. I have a much more interesting assignment for you. I want you to go down to Harwell and see General Gale take off with the 6th Airborne Division. That will be the spearhead of the invasion.'

As a result of his conversation with Sir Richard Peck, on the sunny morning of June 3rd Gregory left London in an Air Ministry car. Owing to the rationing of petrol the Great West Road was almost empty, so the car soon reached Maidenhead. In peacetime the river there would have been gay with picnic parties in punts and launches, but it was now still and deserted. The car sped on past the even lovelier reaches of the upper Thames, then across downlands until over the horizon there appeared the widely spaced hangars of Harwell Aerodrome.

It was a peacetime R.A.F. station with well-designed buildings and commodious quarters, but as it was now also the headquarters of the 6th Airborne Division it was crowded with soldiers as well as airmen. Gregory reported to the Adjutant who took him to the mess, where within half an hour he had made a dozen new friends.

Among them was Wing Commander Macnamara, whose aircraft was to tow the glider that would take General Richard Gale to France, and the Station Commander, Group Captain Surplice, who his officers united in saying was the finest C.O. under whom they had ever served. Squadron Leader Pound, a veteran of the First World War and Principal Administrative Officer, then took Gregory to the Briefing Room.

There, behind a locked door with an armed sentry on guard and blacked-out windows, another beribboned veteran was preparing the maps from which the air crews would be briefed when the signal came through that the ‘party' was definitely on. Then at six o'clock the visitor was taken on a tour of the great airfield with its broad runways and scores of parked
aircraft and gliders. They were wearing their war-paint: special recognition signs painted on only the night before, after the camp had been ‘sealed'. No-one who now entered it would be permitted to leave or write or telephone from it until the invasion had taken place.

After the drive round, Major Griffiths, who was to pilot the General's glider, took Gregory up for a twenty-minute flight in it. There was a stiff wind so it was a little bumpy, but that did not worry him. The roar from Macnamara's towing aircraft came plainly back to them; then, as he cast off, there came a sudden silence and a few minutes later they glided safely back on to a runway.

Next Gregory attended a preliminary briefing. It took the form of a colour film showing a part of France. For those in the long, darkened room it was just as though they were seated in a huge aircraft flying over the country shown in the film. Again and again they seemed to be carried over the German-held beaches to the fields on which the paratroops were to be dropped and the gliders come down, while the commentator pointed out the principal landmarks by which the pilots could identify their objectives.

Back in the big mess Gregory found it now packed to capacity with equal numbers of officers in khaki and Air Force blue. They all looked wonderfully fit and their morale was terrific. Macnamara introduced him to General Gale, a huge man with a ready laugh, shrewd eyes, a bristling moustache and a bulldog chin.

They soon discovered that they were the same age. ‘And a damn' good vintage, too,' said the General.

An officer asked the General what weapon he was going to take for the battle. He roared with laughter. ‘Weapon! What the hell do I want with a weapon? If I have the luck to get near any of those so-and-sos I'll use my boot to kick them in the guts.'

After dinner Gregory drank and laughed with a score of officers; then, as they drifted off to bed, he stayed up for another hour talking to General Gale alone. Among other things they discussed the qualities that make a good leader, and the General said:

‘Efficiency; that's the only thing that counts. If the men know that you really know your job, they'll follow you blindly anywhere.'

Gregory did not agree. He argued that efficiency might be nine-tenths of the game, but the last tenth was personality. To make his point he instanced that his companion was wearing light grey jodhpurs instead of battle-dress.

‘What's that got to do with it?' the General wanted to know. ‘I wear the damned things because they're comfortable and I hate the feel of that beastly khaki serge.'

‘Exactly,' Gregory laughed. ‘Most people would be shy about dressing differently, but you don't care a hoot. You've the courage of your convictions and if you have them about clothes you must also have them about running your show.'

When they at last went to bed they were a little worried about the weather, but they knew that a postponement of the operation would not even be considered unless it became exceptionally bad. That Saturday night hundreds of ships were already moving to their concentration points, so the security of the whole operation might be jeopardised if the invasion were put off even for a single day.

In the morning the weather had worsened. Nevertheless a Wing Commander Bangey took Gregory up for a flight in one of the paratroop-dropping aircraft. They did a practice run over a diagonal road that had a certain similarity to a road in the target area and the crew went through the exact drill they would follow when they were dropped in France.

Then, when Gregory got back, the blow fell. At 11.30 the Station Commander sent for him to tell him that the operation would not take place that night.

Both Gregory and General Gale were utterly appalled. They were the only people on the station who realised the full implications of a postponement. There were now over four thousand ships which had moved up in the night and many thousands of smaller craft massed round the Isle of Wight. The enemy had only to send over one recce plane and he would learn that the invasion was just about to start. That would give him twenty-four hours in which to rush additional
troops to the French coast and when our troops landed they would find every gun manned.