They Used Dark Forces (51 page)

The Reichsmarschall sat enthroned at the outer centre of the horseshoe. As Gregory had thought might prove the case, he was clad in a white and gold toga and had a laurel wreath on his head. He had become enormously fat, his eyes were pouched, his cheeks loose and puffy and on his sausage-like fingers there gleamed rings worth several thousand pounds. No actor in a play would have given a better representation of one of the most dissolute Roman Emperors.

Kaindl led his two charges into the centre of the horseshoe and presented them as Herr Protze and Herr Malacou. Goering ran his eyes over them and spoke:

‘Colonel Kaindl tells me that you predicted our victory in the Ardennes and other matters correctly. Let us hear now what else you can tell us of the course the war will take.'

Gregory drew a deep breath. He was standing within ten feet of Goering and had escaped immediate recognition, but at any moment some expression on his features or in his voice might give him away. With a bow, he replied:

‘Excellency, it is necessary that my colleague be seated. He will then fall into a trance and I shall interpret the communications that he receives from the entities of the outer sphere.'

A chair was brought, Malacou sat down, closed his eyes and, after taking several long breaths, began to mutter. As Gregory felt sure that everyone there must realise that Germany could not now possibly win the war, and that if he held out false hopes no-one would believe him, he said:

‘Alas, through my colleague, the entities speak of no further German victories; but the soldiers of our great Führer will fight desperately in defence of the Reich. May will be the month of decision. Overtures for peace will be made. At that time there will be dissension in the
Partei
. Many prominent members of it will then die, but Your Excellency will not be among them. By March the Anglo-American armies will be across the Rhine and the Russians across the Oder. In May Berlin will become a doomed city; but it seems that resistance will continue in the south with the object of obtaining better terms from the Allies than they will be willing to give in May.'

Goering shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘You tell us little that from the way things are going we might not guess for ourselves.'

Now that Gregory was, as it were, right up in the firing line, he had got back his nerve and was on the top of his form. With a smile, he replied, ‘That the views of the Herr Reichsmarschall should coincide with fore-knowledge obtained from beyond confirms the soundness of his judgement. But to obtain more than an outline of general events is not possible. I can only add that war will continue to inflict the world at least until next August, and that in that month a disaster will occur in Japan that will affect the whole world.'

‘What kind of disaster?'

‘It will be in the nature of an earthquake or a violent eruption, but there are indications that it will be brought about by man.'

Suddenly Goering's eyes lit up. ‘
Lieber Gott
! Could it be that the Allies are really so far advanced in developing an atom bomb?'

Gregory shrugged. ‘That is more than I can say; but many thousands of Japanese will die in the disaster. And now, if it
please Your Excellency, my colleague can be the vehicle for much more precise predictions about individuals than about generalities. Would you like to be the first to have your future told?'

Goering shook his head. ‘No. I am content to wait and see what fate sends me.' Then he gestured to a woman on his right and added, ‘Make a start with this lady here.' Turning to the woman, Gregory bowed and asked her for the loan of something she always carried. She gave him her gold cigarette case and he handed it to Malacou. He then fetched a chair, sat down opposite the woman and asked her to lay her hands on the table, palms up. Smilingly she did so. For a few moments he studied her hands in silence, meanwhile he conveyed to Malacou what he read in them. Malacou, who was seated behind him, was at the same time psychometrising the cigarette case and communicating his thoughts. By working simultaneously on the same subject in this way they checked their findings, and when Malacou began to mutter Gregory pretended to interpret.

He told the woman that as a child she had had a serious accident that had affected her spine, that she had married twice and that her present husband was an airman, that she had two children, a boy and a girl, both of whom had been sent out of Germany, he thought to Sweden. Then he predicted that she would survive the war, have two more children and go to live in some southern country, he thought Spain.

With astonishment, she declared him to be perfectly right about her past and Goering clapped his mighty beringed hands.

The second subject was a younger woman. Having told her accurately about her past, Gregory said, ‘You, too, will survive the war,
gnädige Frau
. But not without injury. I regret to say that in an air-raid you will lose your right arm. You will also become a widow, but you will marry again, an elderly man who will provide you with every comfort.'

The third was a good-looking but rather sullen-faced woman. About her, spontaneously, Malacou sent Gregory a thought. As all that mattered was to impress Goering he decided to use it. When he had told her past, he said, ‘Within six months you will become the mistress of a Russian officer.'

Her eyes blazing with anger the woman sprang to her feet and slapped his face. But Goering roared with laughter and the rest of the guests followed his lead.

When the clamour had subsided Gregory started on his next subject. She was what the French term a ‘
belle laide
'. Her hair was a true gold and Gregory thought that he had rarely looked into a pair of more magnificent eyes; but her mouth was a thick gash across her face, and enormous. As he looked at her he suddenly wondered if she could be Sabine's friend, Paula von Proffin of the letter-box mouth. When his reading of her hand and the thoughts Malacou sent him tallied with what Sabine had told him of Paula he felt certain of it. Malacou also conveyed to him that she would be raped to death by Russian soldiers. Looking at her with pity he decided to give her no idea of that. Instead, after telling her that she had had a hard early life as a model, then married a banker who had left her penniless, he added, ‘Your life will not be a long one, so make the most of it. At all events you are now married to an immensely rich man who can afford to indulge you in every luxury.'

Again Goering roared with laughter. Then, leaning forward towards a middle-aged man in a dinner jacket who was seated near him, he bellowed, ‘Listen to that, Hans. And you pleading poverty before dinner. You'll not be able to deny little Paula anything after this.'

From that Gregory surmised that her new husband must be one of the chiefs of the
Hermann Goering Werk
, and that was why they were among Goering's guests.

Paula gave Gregory a ravishing smile and he turned to the next woman along the table. Among other thoughts, Malacou informed him that she had a venereal disease. So in her case he ended by saying, ‘For the present I would advise you to lead the life of a nun; otherwise you will give anyone you go to bed with a present that he will not thank you for.'

She, too, jumped up in a fury, but Gregory sprang back in time to evade the slap she aimed at him. Again the cruel laughter rang out and, bursting into tears, the woman ran from the room.

‘Well done,' wheezed Goering. ‘Well done. I shall find you invaluable.'

So it went on through the women, then the men took their turn. Most of them were to survive, but three were to die, and Gregory told them frankly that they would give their lives for the Führer; but he refused to give them particulars or dates. One among them was a Naval Captain and Malacou told Gregory, both by telepathy and by confirming it in the muttered Turkish that at times he used to ensure that Gregory got his thoughts exactly, that the Captain was a traitor in the camp and using his position to spy on Goering.

Gregory made no mention of that, but when he had told all their fortunes he addressed the Reichsmarschall. ‘Excellency, these psychic investigations into your guests have revealed one piece of information that I have not disclosed. It is for your ear alone and important to your safety. If you would give me a few minutes in private …'

Goering's eyes held his for a moment, then the elephantine Chief of the Luftwaffe nodded, heaved himself up from his great ivory and gold throne and said, ‘Come with me.'

Picking up the skirts of his toga, he led the way out to an ante-room. On the walls there was a fabulous collection of paintings by the Dutch Masters. A great curved table desk occupied the centre of the room. With a grunt Goering lowered himself into a chair behind it, signed to Gregory to take another, and said:

‘Well, go ahead.'

‘That Naval Captain,' Gregory replied. ‘I don't know his name. But my colleague is certain that he has been planted here to spy on you.'

A broad grin spread over the Reichsmarschall's fat face. ‘I know it. He is my Naval Attaché, but in the pay of Himmler. I keep him on a string. Better the Devil you know than the Devil you don't. As long as he is here Himmler won't send anyone else to spy on me. I feed him with what I want that crazy fool to know.'

Gregory smiled. ‘Then my warning is redundant,
Herr Reichsmarschall
. But Herr Malacou and I are deeply grateful for the way in which you have rescued us from prison and are anxious to be of service to you in any way we can.'

For a moment Goering studied Gregory's face intently, then
he said, ‘Tell me, Herr Protze, how much of this clever act of yours is trickery? There are no means by which your predictions about the future can be checked, but all my guests are well-known people; so you and this Oriental fellow for whom you appear to act as manager might have obtained particulars about their pasts from ordinary sources.'

‘No,' Gregory replied firmly. ‘I assure Your Excellency that Herr Malacou is a genuine mystic. After all, both of us have been confined at Sachsenhausen for the past four months; so what possible opportunity could we have had to ferret out facts about the lives of your guests?'

Goering nodded. ‘Yes. You certainly seem to have a point there. The Führer and Himmler swear by this sort of thing; but I never have. I'm still convinced that the occult has nothing to do with it. My belief is that you have only the ability to read people's thoughts about themselves, and make up the rest. Still, that's neither here nor there. The two of you provided us with an excellent entertainment, and in these days we haven't much to laugh about. You may go now. Tell Colonel Kaindl to give you a glass of wine and to protect you from those angry women, and that I'll rejoin my guests presently. I've a few notes I wish to make.'

As he spoke, Goering took a sheet of paper from a drawer and picked up a pen.

Having thanked him, Gregory came to his feet, gave the Nazi salute, turned about and walked towards the door. He was breathing freely now and his heart was high. He had come through the ordeal undiscovered and the party had been a huge success. The cold, the hunger, the lice, the stink and the nightly fatigue from which he had suffered for so many weeks at Sachsenhausen were finished with. He was safe now and he bad only occasionally to amuse the Reichsmarschall at the expense of his guests to continue enjoying the good food and comfort of Karinhall.

He had just reached the door when Goering's voice came clearly from behind him. ‘By the by. When you last saw her, how was my old friend Erika?'

‘… My old friend Erika?' For a moment Gregory strove to persuade himself that his mind had played him some trick and that he had only imagined hearing Goering speak those words; yet he knew it had not. When they had first come face to face that evening or, if not then, a little later, some feature, mannerism or tone of voice
had
struck a chord in the Reichsmarschall's memory. And that chord had resulted in no vague feeling that they had met on some previous occasion. His mention of Erika showed that he had definitely identified Gregory as the British agent whom he had been within an ace of having had shot in 1939.

Gregory was so near the door that his instinct was to dash through it. A second's thought told him that any attempt to escape would be foredoomed to failure. Already Goering might have taken a pistol from his desk and have him covered. At best he could hope only for some desperate minutes blundering down the long corridors before he was cornered by the guards. Since, at last, he had come to the end of his tether it was better to accept defeat gracefully.

Slowly he turned on his heel and faced the monstrous figure clad in the Roman toga. Goering raised a hand with fingers the size of sausages, heavy with rings, and beckoned:

‘Come here, Englishman. I recognised you by the scar above your eyebrow, but I forget your name. What is it?'

‘Sallust,' Gregory replied quietly, walking back to the desk and standing at attention in front of it.

‘I remember now. Before I could recall only that years ago you risked your life by coming here to ask my help because you believed Erika to have fallen into the clutches of the Gestapo.'

‘That is so, Excellency. Then you entertained me to dinner. Afterwards we spent the night making a plan to induce the Finns to refuse Russia's demands and go to war.'

‘
Jawohl, jawohl
. What a lifetime away that seems. But it all comes back to me. Although our countries were at war it was in our common interest to induce the Finns to fight; and I spared your life because you had the wit to suggest a way in which that might be done.'

Gregory managed to raise a smile. ‘Although our countries are still at war it is possible that we may still have interests in common. I served you well in Finland, perhaps …'

‘No, no!' Goering gave a harsh laugh. ‘Times have changed. Neither you nor anyone else can pull us out of the mess we are in. The game is up; and however able you may be, this time I can find no use for you.'