Traitors' Gate (51 page)

‘I saw what a warren of towers and gates the place is when they brought me in here,’ Sabine volunteered. Then she pointed to the windows. ‘But there’s nothing on that side. It overlooks an embankment and the river. Perhaps you could let me down with a rope?’

‘That’s a possibility,’ he agreed. ‘I’ve had no chance yet to make a detailed study of the place. We mustn’t rush our fences, and I mean to pay you several visits so as to acquire a thorough knowledge of the set-up before deciding on a plan. That is why I want you to answer some questions about the Moldavians. I was specifically instructed to get out of you all I could about them, and if I go back empty-handed I may not be allowed to see you again.’

‘In that case I’ll try not to be too cagey. What exactly do they wish to know?’

He took out the list and handed it to her. Several of the questions were about members of the Embassy staff—what views they expressed on the course of the war, whether they appeared to be short of money, etc.; others were about frequent visitors to the Embassy; and others again about people not connected with it but with whom Sabine had been seen while she was being watched.

‘These are the sort of things they have been asking me for the past three days,’ Sabine commented. ‘Some of the answers I don’t know, but I could have answered most of them and only refrained because I thought it wiser to refuse to talk at all. As it is going to help I’ll tell you all I can.’

For some minutes he took notes of the information with which she furnished him; then he asked, ‘Was it to Colonel Kasdar that you actually gave your stuff?’

‘None of the questions on the paper ask me definitely to incriminate anyone,’ she protested, ‘so why should you ask me to?’

‘That last question was off the record, and I should have told you so. I have a very good reason for wanting to know which of the Moldavians it is who is acting as a Nazi agent, and you must trust me. I suggested Kasdar because he is the M.A. and I chanced to see you dining out with him. Am I right?’

‘Yes, it was Vladan Kasdar. But he is a nice person; and I should hate to get him into trouble.’

‘As he is sheltering behind diplomatic privilege the worst that could happen to him is that our F.O. should declare him
non persona grata
, and ask for him to be sent home. Anyway, you need lose no sleep about him, because now I know that he was your contact I mean to keep him in the clear. I shall cast suspicion on someone else: probably that nasty piece of work the Second Secretary Nicho
ŭ
lic. Now, I want you to write a line for me to Kasdar.’

‘Must I?’

‘Yes. After I have got you out of here—that is, if I can—without his aid there would be very little chance of your avoiding recapture.’ As Gregory spoke he pushed along the table his fountain pen and a sheet of the paper he had been using to make notes. Then he told her that all he needed was a few lines addressed to Kasdar, saying that she had seen him that day
and he was completely to be trusted.

When she had written them and passed the paper back, she remarked, ‘How nice you look in uniform. I thought so that night I saw you in the Café Royal. What rank do those three rings on your arm give you?’

‘Wing Commander.’

‘That is
Colonel de l’Air
, isn’t it?’

‘Yes; though I’m a very phoney one, and have nothing to do with aircraft. It is simply that the system here, generally speaking, is that the rank one holds goes with the job one does. Mine is a Wing Commander’s post; so, although I was temporarily seconded for special duty abroad, they kept on putting me up a rank a month until I reached it.’

Gregory asked her then how she was being treated.

She replied that the food was awful, and that she would give anything for some good warming wine to drink in the evenings as the fog which rose from the river most afternoons seemed to penetrate everywhere, and made her cold and miserable. But she had no legitimate complaints, and preferred being there to the one night she had spent in Brixton with its awful smell of cooked cabbage and disinfectant.

From his pocket he produced a box of pills, and said as he gave them to her. ‘Hoping that I’d be allowed to see you, I had these made up yesterday. They’ll do you no permanent harm, but if you take them according to the instructions on the box they will cause you to run a temperature. Take care that neither of the wardresses sees them and make a start tonight.’

‘Of course, if you wish me to.’ She raised her dark eyebrows. ‘But what is the idea?’

‘I want you to appear too ill to stand up to further interrogation for a few days. You see, even if I succeed in getting you out of the Tower that alone won’t save you. The police would catch you and pop you back in again unless I can first arrange for you to go to some really safe hideout, or get you shipped off abroad. To make these sort of arrangements takes time. I am confident that M.I.5 won’t send you to trial until they think they have got all they can out of you, but there is a limit to the spread-over that I can manage with the information you can give me. So this is a device for postponing our next talk till, say, Thursday. We had better not risk a longer interval than that in case a specialist is called in and tumbles
to it that you have been doping yourself.’

A few minutes later, he congratulated her on the courage she had shown so far, urged her to keep it up, and rang the bell for Mrs. Sutton to let him out. When the wardress had done so he said to her:

‘Now that I have been put on this case I’d like to get a full picture of the prisoner’s surroundings and the routine she follows. I’ve no wish at all to interfere materially with your arrangements, but sometimes quite slight changes make them much more amenable to reason.’

Mrs. Sutton obliged at once. She reeled off the schedule for Sabine’s day, then took him up the short flight of stairs leading up from the hall. Above was a servant’s bedroom from which the furniture had not been removed and in it Sabine was locked up at nights. When they came down she conducted him over what must in normal times have been a spacious and charming flat. Now, most of its rooms were half-empty, with soot in the fireplaces and on the floors plaster brought down by the bomb blast. They then looked in on the room which was being used by the two wardresses as a bedroom; and lastly visited the kitchen in which the other wardress, a Mrs. Wright, had just started to prepare the evening meal.

Mrs. Wright had carroty hair and a freckled face. She was somewhat younger and a little taller than Mrs. Sutton but looked just as formidable. Gregory shook hands with her. He did not suggest any changes, said that he expected to be there again the following day, and took his departure.

Outside, there were no taxis to be had, so he took the Underground to St. James’s Park, picked up one there and had himself driven to Boodle’s. After an hour spent drinking with friends in his Club, he walked across the road to the M.I.5. building. Five minutes later he was making his report to ‘Himmler’.

Having greatly intrigued the purposeful looking Colonel by giving him Sabine’s version of Ribbentrop’s plot for planting her on Sir Pellinore, Gregory doled out some of the information she had supplied about the Moldavians. After the past failures of his regular interrogators this was quite enough to encourage the Colonel to leave the interrogation in Gregory’s hands, and even to press him to push on with it.

Gregory said that as he was due to go on night duty after dinner and would need a few hours’ sleep in the morning, he would prefer not to go to the Tower again until the following afternoon. He added that he thought it would ease the wheels a bit further if he might provide the prisoner with some drink and, when he had a chance, collect for her some of her warmer clothes that she had left at Carlton House Terrace.

‘Go down there whenever it suits you best, my dear fellow,’ replied ‘Himmler’ cordially. ‘You have made an excellent beginning. I’ll telephone Colonel Faviell and tell him you are to be given access to the prisoner at whatever hours you like. As far as drink is concerned, there is no objection to your supplying her with a few bottles …’ he laughed suddenly ‘… providing, of course, that you don’t expect the “firm” to pay for it. I’ve no objection either to your taking her down some of her warmer clothes. Forgive me now. I still have a lot to do. Let me know how you get on.’

For several days past the Desert Air Force had been carrying out intensive attacks against Rommel’s positions and communications; and, early in the morning, when Gregory and his colleagues were drowsing in the dimmed lights of the War Room, they were roused by the shrilling of one of the telephones. A signal had just come through that by the light of a brilliant full moon, General Montgomery had launched the Eighth Army from El Alamein in operation
Lightfoot
, the full-scale offensive which it had been planned should precede
Torch
.

Later that day, Saturday, October the 24th, after a good sleep, a bath and lunch, Gregory again went down to the Tower. To his considerable satisfaction the Governor informed him that the prisoner had been reported sick that morning. The doctor could not say exactly what was wrong with her. It was not ‘flu but seemed to be a form of low fever. She was in no danger, anyhow for the moment, but in bed, of course, and might not be up to further interrogation for a day or two.

‘Then I’ve had my journey for nothing,’ said Gregory. ‘Unless … yes, unless you will allow me to take the opportunity of going round the Tower. It is years since I’ve seen it properly, and …’

The Colonel was on his feet in an instant, exclaiming enthusiastically, ‘But of course! I’ll show you round myself!
Delighted to do so! Wonderful old place this! In normal times we get thousands of foreign visitors but it staggers me how few English people bother to come here. You would think being able to look at the Crown Jewels would be enough to induce them to visit us even if there were nothing else to see. But there are more things of interest in the Tower than there are in all the other historical buildings in London put together. It is the whole of English history from 1066. Before that even. We have still standing part of the original Roman wall built round ancient London, and in 885 repaired by Alfred the Great. It was in this house that Elizabeth was imprisoned before she became Queen, and Guy Fawkes was tried upstairs in the Council Chamber after the Gunpowder Plot. Come along and I’ll show you.’

They inspected the State Axe and the site of the Block on Tower Hill, where so many noble heads had rolled. In the White Tower they visited the Chapel built by William the Conqueror—one of the most perfect examples of Norman architecture in England—and the wonderful collections of arms, armour and military trophies; then saw the instruments of torture in the basement, and the spot where the bones of the two murdered Princes in the Tower had been discovered in the time of Charles II. But the Bloody Tower was said to have been the actual scene of that crime, and of many others. In the stone walls of its chambers could still be seen the prayers and inscriptions cut so patiently by men and women who had made history and, mostly, left it only for the scaffold.

Coming out of the archway under it, the pit in which lay Traitors’ Gate was immediately opposite them. Crossing Water Lane they halted by the guard rail which fenced off the broad flight of stairs up which Prisoners of State had come after landing from the barge that had brought them down the Thames.

‘May I go down and look through to the far end of the tunnel?’ Gregory asked innocently.

‘By all means, if you like,’ the Colonel replied. ‘But it is blocked up. Has been ever since the Duke of Wellington had the moat drained when he was Governor here. So it comes to a dead end against the embankment, which is at the same level as this on the other side.’

Throwing a leg over the rail Gregory slipped down on to the
top step, ran quickly down the others and across the floor of the old moat to the gate. Its two halves were both formed from five thick horizontal beams, each held to the other by some twenty upright bars about six inches apart. The two central beams had slots holding a stout cross-bar which was secured by the biggest padlock Gregory had ever seen. From end to end it was a foot in length and its semicircular clasp was at least an inch in diameter.

The gate had no other fastenings at its top or bottom, but one glance was enough to show Gregory that the padlock would prove too much for him. To have filed through the hinged clasp would have taken hours and to blow the lock would have needed so big a charge that its explosion must be heard. Even if by bringing in a Bunsen burner he could have cut through the clasp fairly quickly there remained the question of whether he would be able to get the gate open; and there was no way in which he could test that before the event. Each side of it, he reckoned, must weigh something in the neighbourhood of a ton, and all the odds were that it had not been opened for years; so the great hinges would have rusted and made it impossible to shift.

He had no need to peer between the bars to see the end of the tunnel, as it was not flush with the farther wall of St. Thomas’s Tower. The tunnel ran on for some twenty feet, forming another great pit similar to the one behind him; so daylight lit it from both ends. Its sides were formed by stone blocks each about two feet in height, and there were nine rows of them. The arch above the gate was filled by more beams with stout trellis works between them, and under the beam that ran parallel with the top beams of the gate there was a row of wicked iron spikes, so there could be no question of climbing over it.

Hiding his disappointment, Gregory rejoined the Governor, who then took him farther than he had yet been along Water Lane and through a gate in the Outer Wall that led on to the tree-lined embankment—which stretched unbroken from the western to the eastern end of the fortress. Along its whole length, pointing out over the river, were a long line of artillery pieces of all ages, and they went over for a closer look at some of the more interesting ones.

Gregory noted that there had been a sentry on the gate
through which they had come. The gate was only about fifty yards east of St. Thomas’s Tower, and he soon saw that two other sentries were stationed one at each end of the embankment. When he and the Colonel came opposite to the Tower, while they were examining the cannons he stole several quick looks up at it.