Traitors' Gate (2 page)

At the awful picture he conjured up the others fell silent for a moment. All of them knew that shipping tonnage we could not possibly afford to lose, hundreds of escort vessels
manned by the cream of the Navy, and many thousands of our best troops—in fact everything that Britain could scrape together short of sufficient squadrons of the R.A.F. to protect her from invasion—must be gambled in this great operation.

While they still stood silent a Lt.-Colonel, his fair hair slightly ruffled and his blue eyes a little blurred from having sat up till one in the morning reading staff papers, joined them. Smiling round, he said, ‘Well, chaps; what’s cooking?’

The Brigadier gave him a twisted smile. ‘We’ve headed the Yanks off from getting themselves and us slaughtered on the French beaches; but
Gymnast
is on. That’s definite. The P.M. has given it a new code name, though. In future it is to be know as “Operation
Torch
”. At best, in about a year from now, we’ll have the whole of North Africa. At worst, the chaps we got off from Dunkirk, and God knows how many thousands more, will be in Davy Jones’s locker. Everything depends on the Germans being kept in the dark up till the very last moment. Even when our convoys are reported going through the Straits of Gib. the Boche must be led to believe that we intend to land the troops anywhere other than in Algeria. Thank God that’s not my headache. It’s yours, Johnny; so here’s good luck to you!’

The Brigadier finished his whisky and added, ‘You’ll need it. This is about the toughest assignment any man has ever had.’

* * * * *

At the time of the above conversation no one could possibly have foreseen that Fate had designated Gregory Sallust to play a key role in this tough assignment, and even less that his uninvited participation would make him liable to court-martial, imprisonment and disgrace.

To explain how this came about it is necessary to go back four months. To be precise, to the morning of Monday, March 30th, when at the breakfast table Gregory opened a buff envelope.

After one glance at the flimsy it contained, he sat back and roared with laughter. It was a ‘call-up’ paper, notifying him that he must report for a medical examination within fourteen days or become liable to grievous penalties.

His mirth was understandable seeing that for the past two and a half years he had been in closer and more constant conflict
with the Nazis than had any member of our fighting Services. As a secret agent he had been parachuted into Germany in September 1939. Since then he had pitted his wits against
Herr Gruppenführer
Grauber—the dreaded chief of the Gestapo’s Foreign Department—in Finland, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France and Russia.

On the other side of the breakfast table the Countess von Osterberg raised her tapering eyebrows. It was largely those eyebrows and her high cheekbones that gave her such a startling resemblance to Marlene Dietrich, and caused her still to be spoken of by those who had known her before her marriage as ‘the beautiful Erika von Epp’.

In response to her look of interrogation Gregory flicked the paper over to her and said, ‘Early this month the Government extended the call-up to include men aged 41 to 45. It never crossed my mind that the measure would apply to me but, of course, it does.’

Having glanced at the paper, Erika smiled. ‘But surely, darling, your name is on some special list; and all you need do is to let the people who sent this know that?’

‘No. I’m privately employed by Sir Pellinore. For many years past the old boy has used a part of his millions to throw spanners in the works of the enemies of Britain, and on several occasions I have been the spanner. It was natural enough that when the war came he should ask me to carry on with the good work, and I’ve always preferred to play the part of a lone wolf. If one gets caught then it can only be through one’s own ill-luck or stupidity.’

‘Whenever you set off on a mission, though, the military authorities give you every assistance, and when you went to Russia you were accredited to the British Embassy.’

‘Old Pellinore is persona grata with everyone who matters, from the King down, and he often pulls strings to get things done for the War Cabinet that they prefer not to appear in themselves; so it is easy for him to get me any help I require. But the fact remains that I am not even unofficially associated with any of our Intelligence Services.’

‘Sir Pellinore could soon arrange that for you.’

‘No doubt. But I don’t want to be. I would be under orders then, and perhaps be roped in to play a part in some cloak and dagger job that I thought ill-conceived. When it is my life I am gambling with I prefer to make my own plans and keep them
to myself. Besides, twice in the past year old man Grauber has as near as damn it got me; so I don’t feel inclined to give him another chance. At least, not yet, anyway.’

Erika needed no reminding how near a shave Gregory had had last time, for she had been with him, and it still made her flesh creep to think of the sort of death that Grauber would have meted out to them. Yet, even so, death had reached out grisly fingers after their escape. That had taken place early in December and, as a result of exposure to the bitter cold, both of them had gone down with pneumonia while Gregory, in addition, was suffering from two cracked ribs.

Fortunately they had been met on the Swiss shore of Lake Constance by their devoted friend Stefan Kaporovitch, the ex-Bolshevik General with whom they had fled from Finland in April 1940. Stefan had secured prompt medical aid, stood by until they became convalescent, then arranged for them to be flown back to England.

Sir Pellinore had sent them up to Gwaine Meads, a great rambling mansion situated on the Welsh border, that had been in the possession of his family since the Wars of the Roses. The greater part of it was now an R.A.F. hospital maintained by him out of his private fortune; but he had retained one wing for his own use, although he never found time to stay in it himself. At the moment Erika and Gregory were its only occupants as there had been no newcomers since the end of February, when Sir Pellinore had arranged for Stefan to become a consultant to the Russian Section of the War Office; so he and his charming French wife, Marie, had gone to live in London.

By then Erika had sufficiently recovered to resume the duties she had undertaken at Gwaine Meads before she had been tricked into returning to the Continent. Technically she ranked as an enemy alien, but Sir Pellinore had saved her from internment by vouching for her, and she had since played a dual role, giving her able brain to the financial administration of the hospital and her ravishing presence to lightening the boredom of the convalescing officers.

Gregory, on the other hand, was lazy by nature and, in spite of the acute shortage of staff on the estate caused by the war, refused to be inveigled into any regular commitment. He knew little of mechanics and practically nothing about electricity; he had never used a spade, detested weeding, and considered
that the only thing more soul-destroying than looking after horses was to look after cows, pigs or chickens. So he was useless in garage, stables, garden and farmyard. But he did spend a lot of his time yarning with the gallant young men who were knocking hell out of the Luftwaffe and, occasionally, he would labour furiously from dawn to dusk for several consecutive days on some suddenly self-imposed task, such as painting the summer house or reputtying the vinery.

It was now the end of March and, although for well over a month past he had again been reasonably fit, as he had just said to Erika, he felt no urge as yet to get back into the war.

Standing up, he walked over to the sideboard to pour himself a second cup of coffee. As he did so, Erika surveyed him critically. He was lean and loose-limbed; of medium height but actually somewhat taller than he looked from his habit of walking with his head thrust forward, which made him appear to have a permanent stoop. His lantern-jawed face had two deep laughter lines etched like brackets on either side of his thin-lipped, resolute mouth. His eyes were brown and his eyebrows slightly bushy. From the outer end of the left one a white scar ran up towards the dark smooth hair that made a ‘widow’s peak’ in the centre of his forehead. On occasions such as the present, when something had occurred to worry him, he always reminded Erika of a very dangerous caged animal plotting to break free. After a moment she said:

‘Each time you go abroad means months of agony for me, and the risks you have already run are far greater than most men have to take in a war. You would have nothing with which to reproach yourself if you decided against ever going again on a secret mission. Why not accept this as a kindly decree by Fate that, for the rest of the war, your chances of coming through should be no worse than those of any other Army Officer?’

‘Officer, eh!’ Gregory gave a cynical laugh. ‘My sweet, you don’t understand. This is not like the old war in which chaps such as myself could volunteer at the age of seventeen and were commissioned straight from our Public Schools. Now, people are called up in batches as required—the gallant, the cowards, the intelligent and the morons—and pushed through the military machine like so many sausages. Under this crazy system it takes a year at least for even the most promising young man to become a Second Lieutenant.’

Erica was descended from a long line of Generals and in Germany the ‘officer caste’ was still more sharply divided from the rank and file than it had ever been in Britain. Her big blue eyes wide, she stared at Gregory and exclaimed:

‘You don’t … you can’t mean that they would put a man like you in the ranks?’

‘They certainly would. Having held a commission in the last war counts for nothing in this one. And, as I am over forty, I’d probably find myself employed as a grave digger, or as an orderly in the Sanitary Corps. But I won’t have it! I’m damned if I will! I don’t mind danger but I’ve always loathed drudgery and discomfort.’

For a moment he glowered down at the small buff form, then he tapped it angrily with his forefinger. ‘Still, I can’t ignore this. Old Pellinore must get me out of it somehow. I’d better pack a bag and take the first train to London.’

Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust was one of those remarkable products which seem peculiar to Britain. In his youth he had been a subaltern in a crack cavalry regiment and during the Boer War he had won a well-deserved V.C. A few years later, his ill-luck at some of the little baccarat parties that friends of his gave for King Edward VII, and his generosity towards certain ladies of the Gaiety chorus, made it necessary for him to leave the Army and he accepted a seat on the Board of a small private Bank which operated mainly in the Near East.

His acquaintances thought of him as a handsome fellow with an eye for a horse or a pretty woman, and an infinite capacity for vintage port, but very little brain—an illusion which he still did his utmost to maintain—so the Directorship had been offered to him solely on account of his social connexions. To the surprise of those concerned he took to business like a duck to water.

Under his bluff, jovial manner there lurked a most subtle
mind, and his transparent honesty seemed to have such an hypnotic effect on Orientals and Levantines that they usually failed to realise that he had got the best of the deal until they were well on their way home. Other Directorships had followed. By 1914 he was already a power in the City; after the war he had refused a peerage on the grounds that there had been a Gwaine-Cust at Gwaine Meads for so many centuries that if he changed his name his tenants would think he had sold the place; foresight had enabled him to bring his companies safely through the slump of the early 1930’s and he had emerged from it immensely rich.

Although his name was hardly known to the general public, it had long been respected in Government circles. To his great mansion in Carlton House Terrace, Diplomats, Generals, Colonial Governors and Cabinet Ministers often came to consult him privately on their problems and they rarely left without having drawn new strength from his boundless vitality and shrewd common sense.

He was well over seventy, but the only indication of his age was the snowy whiteness of his hair, his bushy eyebrows and luxuriant cavalry moustache. His startlingly blue eyes were as bright as ever, he stood six feet four in his socks and could still have thrown most men of forty down his staircase.

When Gregory arrived at Carlton House Terrace he was told that Sir Pellinore was at a meeting in the City; but, knowing that he would be expected to stay the night, he had his bag carried up to the room he usually occupied, then went into the library to await his host’s return.

It was a fine lofty room at the back of the house with a splendid view across St. James’s Park to the Admiralty, the Horse Guards and the other massive buildings in which throbbed the heart of Britain’s war machine. For a few minutes he stood looking out at the tender green of the young leaves now breaking on the trees of the park, then he took from one of the shelves a copy of James Hilton’s
Lost Horizon
and became immersed once more in that wonderful story until heavy footfalls sounded on the landing and Sir Pellinore came marching in.

‘Hello, young feller! Glad to see you!’ he boomed, grasping Gregory’s hand in his leg-of-mutton fist. ‘So you’re fed up already with kickin’ your heels in the country, eh? Well, I’d hoped you’d continue to take it easy for a bit, but we’re a long
way from having won the damn war yet; so if you’re spoilin’ to have another crack at the Nazis it’s not for me to stop you.’

Gregory gave a wry grin. ‘You’re off the mark for once. I didn’t come here to ask about another mission and I do want another few months of idleness. But, unless you can pull a fast one for me, I’m not going to get them. I’ve been called-up.’

‘Well, I’ll be jiggered!’ Sir Pellinore slapped a mighty thigh encased in pin-striped trousers. ‘What a lark! Strap me, but this is the funniest thing I’ve heard for years.’

‘It struck me as funny too, to begin with. But it is no laughing matter. D’you realise that they would bung me in the ranks and perhaps make me a mess-waiter?’