They Used Dark Forces (50 page)

‘The situation is utterly different,' replied Gregory angrily. ‘When I was last here it was early in the war. Only a few nations were involved. As the others had not then lined up there was still scope to apply power politics to the smaller countries. Now they are all in it up to their necks and there's no way in which I could suggest aiding Germany, even if in this case I were prepared to work against the interests of Britain. Some freak of fortune may enable you to save yourself, but unless Goering's memory fails him, I tell you my number is up.'

After a few moments' thought Malacou said, ‘From what I remember of your horoscope your situation is now much as it was when you were trying to find out what was going on at Peenemünde. You have again entered a period of danger, but there is a fair chance that you will come through it. If you will agree to let me help you I could assure your doing so.'

‘How?' Gregory asked, giving him a suspicious look.

‘At night we can be sure of remaining undisturbed here. I could perform a ceremony. The Lord of this World does not abandon his followers, as you seem to think. If you are prepared to acknowledge him as your Master, he——'

Taking a pace forward, Gregory seized Malacou by the neck of his jacket, shook him violently and roared, ‘You filthy Satanist. Get to hell where you belong. I'd sooner die first. For two pins I'd kill you here and now.'

His thick-lipped mouth agape with terror, Malacou staggered back and collapsed into an armchair. Perspiration had started out on his dark forehead. With a long thin hand he wiped it away. Then, when he had recovered a little, he whined:

‘I was only trying to help you. Remember we are at one in our hatred of the Nazis, and we need one another. I look on you as my friend. Think back on how I hid you all those weeks at Sassen, and by my skill as a hypnotist saved you much pain.
Were it not for me and the power I derive from my Master you would not be alive today.'

‘You helped me then because you had read in the stars that I would save your life later,' Gregory snarled. ‘And had I not been fool enough to indulge with you in that damned thought transference I'd not be in this accursed country now, but safe in England.'

‘You are unfair. From having established rapport with you I enabled you to do your country a great service by getting the mechanism of the giant rocket out of Poland. I risked my life to achieve that and have since paid dearly for it. I have told you, too, that together we shall soon strike another great blow against the Nazis. Surely it is that which counts above all else.'

Gregory stared down into Malacou's big dark hook-nosed face with its sensual mouth and clever, slightly slanting eyes. Apart from Stefan Kuporovitch, whom he trusted completely, he had never worked with anyone, greatly preferring to play the lone wolf; and he resented it intensely that in this last phase of the war fate should have thrust such a partner as Malacou on him. The man was unprincipled, evil, and to save his own skin would undoubtedly prove treacherous. Yet there was much in what he said. They were allies against the Nazis and in this thing together. Giving a shrug, Gregory said in a calmer tone:

‘You are right. Abusing you won't get me anywhere and there's no sense in our quarrelling. As far as I can see our only hope of saving our skins—or mine, if you prefer it—is to impress Goering with our ability to predict coming events to the same degree as we did Loehritz and Kaindl. If we can be useful to him in that way, even if he does recognise me he may anyhow keep me on ice for the time being.'

With obvious relief, Malacou sat up and said, ‘That's better. Now tell me everything you know about him, to help me get a sense of his personality.'

Thrusting his head forward Gregory began to pace up and down the room with panther-like strides, while speaking in crisp sentences. ‘To look at he is a big, fat, jovial brute whom one would think to be interested only in wine, women and song. He has earned himself the reputation of being greedy for wealth, is ambitious, vain and utterly ruthless towards his
enemies. He is, of course; there can be no doubt about that. But appearances are deceptive. In that great head of his he has a first-class brain or, anyhow, he had, although it's said that in recent years he has ruined it with drink and drugs. Whether or not he has we shall find out when we meet him.

‘One thing is certain. He has bags of courage. In the First World War he was a fighter pilot. His exploits were second only to those of von Richthofen. He commanded what was known as a “circus” and with it shot down scores of Allied aircraft. When the war ended he refused to surrender its aircraft to the Allies. Instead he and his officers burnt them and swore to stand together when the time came for Germany to revenge her defeat.

‘I think that by then he had married. The girl was rich and beautiful and, if I remember, a Swede. Anyhow, her name was Karin. She was the love of his life. That's why, although he married again after her death, he called this place Karinhall. For a while they lived in Sweden. It was then that he first took to drugs, and for a time he had to go into a home on that account. But it did not impair his brain.

‘In due course they returned to Germany. Hitler was then no more than a soap-box orator. The two biggest planks in his platform were the danger from Communism and the injustice of the Versailles Treaty. Both of them appealed strongly to Goering. He was one of the very few well-born Germans who gave his allegiance to Hitler in those early days. And Hitler owes an immense amount to him. He was in a position to persuade many wealthy industrialists to support with funds Hitler's anti-Communist movement. He became the first chief of the Nazi strong-arm squads that formed Hitler's bodyguard. Goering is no wishy-washy idealist who just did not like the idea of the Communists getting control of Germany—as they might well have done in those days. He went out with a gun in his hand to break up the Communist Party.

‘While Hitler did the talking Goering used every ruthless means in the book to destroy Communism in Germany, including kidnapping the leaders and having them shot. It was that which enabled Hitler to be elected legally as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler acknowledged the fact by promoting him from an ex-Captain to Field Marshal overnight. But
Goering's usefulness did not end there. As I have told you, he has brains as well as guts. Hitler put him in charge of re-creating the German Air Force and for years he worked like a demon at the job.

‘He became the head of a vast industrial concern, the
Hermann Goering Werk
, of which you must have heard. By it he not only built the Luftwaffe but became the king-pin in rearming Germany. He is the sort of man who, even if he had been born a poor boy in the Balkans, would have made his millions. He had an extraordinary grasp of essentials and was a glutton for work.

‘Today we know the Luftwaffe's initial successes have tailed off into failure. Fat Hermann, as the Germans used affectionately to call him, has lost a great part of his popularity. But he is still too mighty a prop to Hitler's throne for Hitler to dispense with. The other Nazi leaders hate him, because he has never subscribed to the socialist side of National Socialism and he was much too much of a realist to approve the elimination of the Jews, who were so valuable to German industry. He did his utmost to protect Selma's friend, Hugo Falkenstein, the Jewish millionaire, and he is still the leader of the right-wing Nazis who loathe Goebbels because they know that, given half a chance, he'd turn Germany into a ‘Workers' State'.

‘He is at daggers drawn with Ribbentrop, too, because he never believed that the British people were effete, and he saw the danger of Germany entering on another world war against the British Empire. He did his utmost to stop Hitler going to war; but as he failed in that, being the complete cynic that he is, he's made the best of things and turned this place into a vast Aladdin's cave of looted treasure for his own enjoyment.

‘Well, there is Hermann Goering for you. I'm told that at private parties he often appears in fancy dress and that his favourite costume is that of a Roman Emperor. Anyhow, he is the nearest thing to Nero in our age and it's my guess that now the Nazi Empire is cracking right, left and centre he is cheerfully fiddling. But that, and in his ostentation and debauchery, is where the resemblance ends. Because he has what Nero never had: brains and guts.'

‘Can you give me his birth date?' Malacou asked.

‘No, I'm afraid I can't. But we could get it from some book of reference that is bound to be in the house.'

‘We must, so that I can draw his horoscope.'

There, for the time being, they left matters. By luck, Malacou found an old
Wer ist's
? among the books in the room that gave him the date he required, and he set to work on it with the sidereal tables he had brought with him from Sachsenhausen. Having spent twelve hours on Goering's horoscope, Malacou took from the
Wer ist's
? the birth dates of several other leading Nazis and for the following days, with Gregory's help, worked on them.

His previous endeavours to forecast the end of the war had got him little further than any fairly well-informed person could judge from the continued advance of the Allied Armies. This was because although nations, like persons, have associations with the heavenly bodies, the former are much more nebulous as no birth date can be affixed to them. But his calculations concerning the fates of the Nazi leaders enabled him to form a much clearer picture.

It emerged that a great gap would be torn in their ranks early in the coming May. Both Himmler and Goebbels would take their own lives and a number of others would die in one way or another. There followed a hiatus of seventeen months until October '46. Ribbentrop, Keitel, Jodl, Rosenberg, Frank and Kaltenbrunner would then all be hanged and Goering commit suicide. But Borgmann, Doenitz and Speer appeared to have a good chance of escaping similar fates.

That of Hitler remained uncertain. He would be in extreme danger of death during the first crisis, but it might be only that one of the doubles he was believed to use was reported dead; so that it would be thought he had committed suicide, while he went into hiding and continued in secret to direct the war.

Further to this, from the more nebulous data it looked as if by April the Russians would be in Berlin, the Americans on the Elbe and the British in possession of the greater part of Western Germany. It also appeared that at that time General Alexander would inflict a final defeat on the German armies in Italy, that both Himmler and Ribbentrop would try to negotiate a peace and that Goering, as Hitler's already
appointed successor, would, temporarily at all events, assume the leadership.

In spite of what looked like the collapse of Germany in May, Malacou was convinced that fighting would continue on a large scale at least until August; but this might be in the Far East and he predicted that, in that month, something like an earthquake would occur in Japan, and that this would have serious repercussions throughout the whole world.

From these predictions they deduced that the arrival of the Russians in Berlin would precipitate a major crisis; perhaps a revolution in the Party, in which Himmler and Goebbels would get the worst of it. But that this would bring about an end to the war did not follow. Goering and the other leaders living on until October '46 appeared to indicate that under them the many S.S. Divisions and hard core of the Nazis, possibly still controlled by Hitler, would continue to resist long after Berlin had fallen. Considering the enormous superiority of the Allied forces this seemed improbable, yet that possibility could not be ruled out in view of Malacou's opinion that the great hanging would take place somewhere in South Germany, and it was obvious that if a last stand were to be made it would be in the natural redoubt formed by the Bavarian Alps.

Meanwhile although Gregory tried hard to keep his mind on these deliberations, he lived in constant fear of the summons that might end his life. He ate the good food that was brought up to them scarcely noticing what it was, and for four nights hardly slept from apprehension of the fate that the near future might hold for him. The long hours of waiting frayed even his strong nerves and he reached a point when he began to pray that Goering would send for them; so that he might know the best or worst.

The summons came on their fifth night at Karinhall, January 25th. At seven o'clock that evening Kaindl came in and said, ‘I returned only this afternoon with the Reichsmarschall from one of his tours of inspection. Tonight he is giving a small dinner party and he has ordered me to produce you to entertain his guests afterwards. As he always dines late it will probably be about ten o'clock before I come for you; but you had better be ready well before that. If you do well he will probably
keep you here. If not you will be sent back to Sachsenhausen and I shall be on the mat for having misled him. So for both our sakes do your utmost to make yourselves entertaining.'

Malacou assured him that he need have no fears and humbly thanked him for the chance he was giving them. When he had gone they did their best to smarten themselves up, then settled final details about such of Malacou's forecasts as they would give out and those it would be politic to withhold. At eight o'clock their dinner was brought in, but after a few mouthfuls Gregory found it next to impossible to swallow the food and pushed his plate aside. Throwing himself on his bed he lay there and, by thinking of his beloved Erika, somehow got through the final period of waiting.

Soon after ten Kaindl came for them. They accompanied him down to the ground floor and into a spacious dining room. It was so large that a horseshoe table occupied less than half of it, and Gregory saw that Goering's idea of a small dinner party consisted of at least twenty people. Most of the men were in uniforms bedecked with Knight Stars, Iron Crosses and other decorations, but three of them were in dinner jackets and the women were all in décolleté evening dresses.