Traitors' Gate (19 page)

‘Oh come!’ she protested. ‘Please don’t pretend that you are still in love with me.’

‘I wasn’t an hour ago. Now I’m not so certain. Anyhow, I very soon can be.’

‘You are saying that because you hope to persuade me to let you get away with whatever you are up to.’

‘I’m not. You must know that you are lovely enough to turn any man’s head—especially one who has such memories of you as I have.’

She gave a quick sigh. ‘Yes; it was wonderful while it lasted.’

‘It ended all too soon; only because I had to go back to England and it was impossible for you to go with me.’

‘I … I know,’ her voice faltered a little.

As they swayed to the music he drew her closer. ‘Being with you here again like this makes it seem as if the years between have been no more than a one-night’s dream.’

‘But they haven’t been a dream!’ Her words came faster now and she looked up into his face with troubled eyes. ‘It is common knowledge that I’m Ribb’s mistress, and even if I were not we couldn’t pretend they have. Our countries are at war, and you have as good as admitted that you are here as a spy. How can you expect me to ignore that and continue to lie to people about your being a Frenchman I met in Paris?’

‘Listen, Sabine. This is the truth. I am not a spy; but I am here on a secret mission.’

‘Well, that’s much the same thing, isn’t it?’

‘Not necessarily; and not in this case. If I can succeed in my mission I honestly believe that it will be a good thing for Hungary.’

‘In that case there is nothing to stop your telling me about it.’

‘Nothing except time. This dance must be nearly over and, anyhow, to go properly into the matter I’d need an hour at least. What are you doing tomorrow?’

‘I don’t really know. Ribb will be up at the Palace most of the day, having conferences with Admiral Horthy; and probably in the evening too. I expect I shall do some shopping, lunch with friends and bathe in the afternoon. But that has nothing to do with it. This thing has got to be settled tonight.’

‘Why? Are you afraid I’ll run away?’

‘You might. Perhaps it would be the best solution if you did. That is, if I could be certain that you had left the country.’

He smiled down at her again and stuck his chin out. ‘Well, I’m not going to. There is too much at stake. So if you are really set on getting me off your conscience tonight, there’s only one way you can do it. You’ll have to call in the police.’

‘Oh, Gregory, you are a brute! You haven’t changed a bit. You’re just as dictatorial as ever.’

‘You haven’t changed, either. But I’m not a brute. You know jolly well that I am the easiest, softest creature in the world, and that you never had the least difficulty in twisting me round your little finger. Look, why not cut out your shopping and all that tomorrow and spend the day with me?’

She closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘No, no. Get thee behind me, Satan.’

‘Why should I when it’s such a joy to look at your face, Angel?’

Her eyes remained closed, their long dark lashes making fans upon her cheeks; but her lips broke into a smile, as she murmured, ‘We’re being absolutely crazy.’

‘What is there crazy about trying to snatch a little happiness from life. If we can’t put the clock back altogether we could for a dozen hours tomorrow.’

‘Oh, you’re incorrigible!’

‘No; just human. I’ll tell you about this mission of mine;
then we’ll forget the damn war and enjoy ourselves.’

Suddenly she opened her eyes. They were bright as stars and brimming with laughter. ‘All right,’ she nodded, ‘you win. Where shall we meet?’

At that moment the band stopped. Under cover of the clapping he said, as he took his arm from about her, ‘Let’s start the day just as we used to, with a swim at the Gellért. I’ll meet you there at eleven o’clock.’

She pressed his hand before letting it go, and whispered, ‘That would be lovely, darling. Now we must think up some more funny stories about our time in Paris to keep Ribb in a good temper. Be careful how you look at me, though, because sometimes he gets jealous.’

Gregory was much too old a bird not to heed her warning; so he did not ask her to dance again, although he danced with Madame Szalasi and twice with Fräulein Weiss. Between-whiles he played the part of a cultured Frenchman who is something of a buffoon, and amused the party with cynical stories illustrating the hypocrisy and stupidity of the English. He found Ribbentrop somewhat conceited and very self-opinionated but, apart from that, congenial company.

It was the Nazi Foreign Minister’s easy affability that had first opened to him the road to fame. On Anneliese’s money they had lived in a comfortable villa in the rich Berlin suburb of Dahlam, and made themselves a popular host and hostess. To their parties had come Von Papen, Himmler and then Hitler. The latter found Ribbentrop useful to him in giving colloquial translations of leading articles in the British and French press and then the villa at Dahlam made an excellent rendezvous for holding secret meetings. In it, during January 1933, had been hatched the conspiracy which led to the aged Hindenburg’s giving his agreement to a Von Papen-Hitler coalition government, and from then on the genial host of the conspirators had never looked back. Many of his fellow party chiefs resented his arrogance and doubted his abilities, but the ex-house-painter, Hitler, was so abysmally ignorant of all foreign affairs that he could never be persuaded that Ribbentrop was not a second Bismarck.

Even conceding that to be an absurd exaggeration, by comparison Gregory found the Hungarian Nazi a dull dog, the A.D.C. only a moderately intelligent yes-man, and the two women of very limited mentality; but that was a good, rather
than a bad, thing as it left him free to concentrate on the two principal members of the party.

Soon after two o’clock it broke up. Ribbentrop and Szalasi both had large cars waiting for them, and from the point of the island their ways lay in opposite directions across the two halves of the bridge which joined it to the opposite banks. As the Germans and Sabine were staying in Buda they offered Count Lászlo a lift, and the Szalasis, who lived in Pest, said they would drop Gregory at the Vadászkürt. But before they parted he managed to get a brief word with the Count.

‘It was a near thing,’ he confided, ‘but I’ll only have myself to blame now if she gives me away. I’m spending all tomorrow with her; so please let the others know why I shall not be able to turn up at our meeting. I can’t make any further contribution, anyhow, so I’d be only a listener. But do press them to get something definite from General Lakatos. It is more urgent than ever now that I should get away from Budapest. I want to leave on Saturday.’

Count Lászlo had proved himself the most reasonable and helpful member of the Committee, and he promised to do his best; so Gregory took such comfort from that as he could, but he knew that during the next day or two he would be faced with a most tricky piece of tight-rope walking.

In spite of his light-hearted fooling with Sabine during the first part of their dance together, he had soon realised that the only way to prevent her from turning him over to the police was to invoke her happy memories of their love affaire. That had not proved difficult; but, with her slender body pressed to his and her lovely face so close, his own memories had flooded back to him with most unsettling clarity.

He wondered now just how much that had influenced him in suggesting that they should spend the whole day together—when an hour’s talk over a drink before lunch would probably have been sufficient to satisfy her curiosity and secure her silence—but he decided that, although it had been an added incentive, he would have done the same with any woman in similar circumstances, solely because she was Ribbentrop’s mistress. It was certain that a conceited man like the
Reichsminister
talked freely with his intimates, so Sabine must be privy to many Nazi secrets. She might prove as close as an oyster but such a chance to pick up red-hot inside information about the enemy was one nothing would have induced
him to miss, and to make the utmost of that chance, necessitated his getting her to himself for as long as he could.

The disturbing fact was that when he had proposed this long session he had had in mind no more than a day spent together as old friends, whereas she seemed to have read into it more than that. Recalling the words he had used to win her over, he could not blame her; but just before they left the floor she had called him ‘darling’, and she had said it in a tone which implied her expectation that, if only for a few hours, when next they met they would resume their old relationship.

Such a prospect had no strings to it—provided that it was only for a few hours. But later, in conversation at the table, it had emerged that, while Ribbentrop was returning to Berlin on Saturday afternoon, Sabine was staying on in Budapest to attend the wedding of an old friend the following Tuesday before driving back to Berlin in her own car. That meant that from Saturday evening she would be her own mistress; and Gregory foresaw that if he had not left Budapest by then, a situation was likely to develop which would put him in a fix.

He did not want to be unfaithful to Erika, but he knew his Sabine; and one of her attractions for him had been the frank joy she took in giving rein to her passions. He knew, too, the truth of the old saying that ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’. After a long day spent together, and with Ribbentrop out of the way, it was a certainty that she would expect matters to reach their logical conclusion. And if, after having again aroused her passion for him, he refused to play …?

It was that he had had in mind when he had told Count Lászlo that, if she gave him away, he would have only himself to blame. If he was not out of Budapest by Saturday he would be safe only if he put his scruples behind him. And even that was not the final issue. If he did find that Sabine was inclined to be indiscreet about Nazi affairs, and that with patience he could wheedle really valuable information out of her, to make the utmost of such a marvellous opportunity he would feel it his duty to stay on in Budapest as long as she did. Then there could be no escape from becoming her lover again.

He was honest enough with himself to admit that should that happen one side of him was going thoroughly to enjoy it; but the other side was his private conscience, and as far as that was concerned, Sabine was no longer just an old flame. She had become fire—and he was playing with it.

The St. Gellért Baths were, perhaps, the nearest thing of their kind in the modern world to those palatial establishments for health, social intercourse and sensual pleasure that had been such a prominent feature of Roman civilisation. The great building stood facing the Danube on the slope of the Gellért hill at the southern end of Buda.

In its lower floor there were marble halls and corridors leading to scores of rooms in which patients consulted their doctors and every variety of treatment could be given. On the next level there was a true replica of a Roman swimming bath. Towering columns flanked its sides, on its broad paved surround stone seats, where the bathers could rest awhile, were interspersed with larger-than-life-size statues of the gods and goddesses, and the water in it bubbled; for it was known as the ‘champagne bath’, from being aerated by pipes set in its bottom so that swimmers should enjoy additional friction as they passed through these aerial fountains. On the same floor there were long corridors of rooms in which dozens of male and female attendants plied their trade as masseurs.

Above, and set still further back into the slope of the hill, was another swimming pool open to the skies. The tiles with which it was lined gave the effect of the water in it being blue, and at regular intervals a mechanism connected with it created artificial waves, so that bathers could take their choice of going in either when it was rough or smooth. The pool was set in a horse-shoe shaped arena, the base of which was occupied by a restaurant. Outside it there were tables shaded by gaily coloured umbrellas. Round the rim of the horse-shoe there was every type of well-sprung lie-low, swing-seat and basket chair, and the whole was protected from the wind by a sixty-foot high bank planted with flowering shrubs and flowers.

At a few minutes before eleven Gregory was waiting for Sabine on the broad flight of steps outside the entrance. She arrived shortly afterwards, driving herself, in a pale blue and silver Mercedes. When she had parked the car she greeted him without a smile and a shade hesitantly.

‘I can’t think what got into me last night. I behaved like a sentimental schoolgirl. This morning I was in half a mind not to come; but I couldn’t quite bring myself to have you arrested without first having heard what you have to say’.

‘I’m glad of that,’ Gregory replied with becoming seriousness, ‘because if you had I am quite sure that for ages to come you would have suffered the most terrible remorse from having sent me to my death.’

‘You seem to be more concerned for me than about yourself.’

‘Naturally.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Once dead I wouldn’t have anything to worry about.’

She gave him a reluctant half-smile. ‘Aren’t you even a little bit afraid that I might put my duty before sentiment, and tell the police I know you to be a British secret agent?’

From the higher step on which he stood he smiled down on her, then shook his head. ‘No, not even a little bit. You are far too nice a person to betray an old friend; and, anyhow, you’re quite wrong about me being here as a spy.’

‘I wish I could believe that; but knowing the sort of man you are, how can I?’

‘What’s come over you this morning? I suppose it must be that having me on your conscience gave you a bad night. Come on; let’s go inside and bathe. Then we’ll have our talk and, if you really feel you must, you can put the police on to me afterwards.’

‘I’m not going to bathe with you. And you’re right about my having had a bad night. I’ve been worrying myself silly over this thing, and I want to get it settled right away.’

Gregory saw now that he would have to go all out to win her round again, otherwise she might prove a really serious danger to him; so he said earnestly: ‘Listen, Sabine. I may have been exaggerating a bit when I said that if you denounce me I will be shot. You must know that I’m not the sort of man to allow myself to be arrested while there is fighting chance of keeping my freedom. But I might quite well be caught before I could get across the frontier. If I were, there would be nothing you could do about it afterwards. Like it or not, you would be compelled to give evidence that I am an Englishman and that, coupled with the fact that I am here under a false identity, would certainly lead to my being condemned as a spy; and in wartime spies
are
shot. So for both of us this is a really
serious matter, and you will feel much more capable of taking a right decision about it after you have freshened yourself up with a swim.’