V for Vengeance (15 page)

‘But I thought Churchill was so marvellous,' remarked Kuporovitch.

‘So he is—a man in a million, God bless him! But he can't do everybody's work, and I expect he's much too busy running the fighting end of the war with the Naval, Military and Air
Chiefs to know the half of what's going on. I only wish I were a big enough shot to get ten minutes with him and tell him what the ordinary people are saying about some of their so-called leaders; then persuade him to let me loose in Whitehall with a hatchet!'

‘Calm yourself, my friend, calm yourself!' purred the Russian. ‘After all, it is the British way to muddle along, is it not? And in due course no doubt things will improve themselves.'

‘That's all very well,' Gregory grunted, ‘but if Fleet Street can do it, why the hell can't the Government?'

‘Fleet Street? What have they done?'

‘Why, carried on of course. I mean all the big national newspapers. Fleet Street has caught it worse than most places, and the majority of our big newspaper buildings have been hit in the past month; but they manage to get their papers out just the same. They only allowed the air raids to interfere for one single day—September the 7th, the first night of the blitz. They went to ground then like everybody else, but within twenty-four hours they had made up their minds that if the life of the country was to go on they'd got to stick at their jobs, blitz or no blitz! Although we've got no gas or water or air raid shelters worth the name, and it takes an hour to telephone and half the day to cash a cheque, we still get our morning papers as regularly as clock work.'

‘That's a good show,' Kuporovitch muttered, as the Ack-Ack batteries in Hyde Park blasted hell out of the night. ‘A very good show.'

‘Yes,' returned Gregory. ‘That's a very good show. But it's pretty grim to think of all the heroism the people are displaying while these wretched Ministers and high-up Civil Servants are letting the country die standing on its feet.'

As they ran up Piccadilly Kuporovitch remained silent. He was at first inclined to think that the strain of being out night after night fire-fighting was beginning to tell on Gregory's nerves; but when he considered the matter he realised that Gregory was the last man to get the jitters and that as there was no reason at all for him to lie about matters there must be real reasons for his intense indignation.

Bombs crumped in the distance, and the anti-aircraft
barrage continued to play its hideous tune, but by the time they reached the Hungaria Gregory had calmed down. The restaurant on the ground floor was no longer in use, but the big grill-room below it was still carrying on, and the
maître d'hôtel
, Monsieur Vecchi, who was an old friend of Gregory's, led them to a corner table in the low gallery.

‘Well, how are things, Josef?' Gregory asked him as they sat down.

Vecchi's unfailing smile lit his round face. ‘We must not grumble, Mr. Sallust. Many people have gone to the country but quite a lot of our old friends remain, and they still come here. We closed the big room upstairs because peoples prefer to dine and dance in basements these days; also we make arrangements for our guests to sleep here if they wish.'

‘By Jove! That's a grand idea!' Gregory grinned. ‘Do many of them take advantage of your hospitality?'

‘A dozen or so, every night. Those who have a long way to go to their homes; but for the rest we still manage to get taxis. What would you like to order for your dinner?'

As Gregory was entertaining a Russian he decided on a Russian meal: Vecchi's famous hot
hors d'œuvre, bortch
and chicken
à la Kiev
, all of which were specialities that he had acquired when, many years before, he had been
maître d'hôtel
at the Astoria Hotel in St. Petersburg, before the Revolution.

Kuporovitch remembered the hotel well from the days when he was a young Czarist officer, and for a few moments they talked together in Russian. Then Vecchi left them to give instructions about their dinner.

The meal was excellent, and Kuporovitch was delighted to see pre-Revolution Russian dishes again, of all places in bomb-torn London. They washed it down with a magnum of Louis Roederer 1928, and over it Kuporovitch gave Gregory details both of his convalescence and of the mission which had brought him to England.

Gregory agreed at once about the importance of establishing proper liaison with Lacroix and that it could be best done by his going to France.

While they talked they could hear now and again the dull thud of a bomb or the more staccato crack of the light A.A.
guns. Once the whole building shook as a big one landed somewhere in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly, but the band played on, and the fifty or so odd people who had braved the blitz to come out to dine and dance appeared quite undisturbed. As Gregory had been out fire-fighting both the previous nights they decided to make an early evening of it, so at eleven o'clock he paid the bill and they got a taxi.

The blackened streets now appeared completely desolate and the anti-aircraft had lessened, but the horrid droning overhead told them that Goering's murderers were still at work, trying to pick out the most congested portions of the city in which to drop their bombs. As the taxi passed Hyde Park Corner a spent shell-splinter thudded on to its roof, but they reached Gregory's flat in safety, tipped the stouthearted taximan liberally and brought him in for a drink. Rudd had made up the bed in the spare room for Kuporovitch, and, too tired to be kept awake by the raid, soon after midnight the two friends were asleep.

The next morning they rang up Sir Pellinore, who was as delighted as Gregory had been to learn that Kuporovitch was still alive, and said that he would be very happy to see them if they came up right away.

The windows of the big library at the back of Sir Pellinore's mansion had been shattered by blast, so the fine view over St. James's Park was now shut out by sheets of weatherboard. The house was just on a hundred years old and had not a steel girder in it, but to those of his friends who had urged him to move to safer quarters the elderly baronet had replied:

‘I'll not let that damn' house-painter feller drive me into some mouldy funk-hole. Think I want to die of pneumonia, eh? My old house is as comfortable as money can make it, and I've got the best cellar of good liquor in London. If the devils get me I'll at least pass out as I've always lived—warm, well-lined, and in a place of my own choosing!'

The old boy's bright blue eyes fairly sparkled when he heard about Kuporovitch's mission, and for the best part of an hour they discussed it. Then Sir Pellinore left them to go and see a friend of his who was attached to the Foreign Office. Later he brought the friend back to lunch with him,
and afterwards they entered into a full council of ways and means.

The P.I.D. man knew Lacroix personally and expressed the greatest keenness to co-operate with him in sabotaging the Nazis and fermenting revolt in France. He said that he could arrange matters with the Admiralty for Gregory and Kuporovitch to be given transport across the Channel and landed at the little island off Saint Jacut on a suitable night; but the date could not yet be fixed as they would have to go into the question of tides. The moon need not worry them as it was not full again until the 20th of October, but it was essential that the landing should take place as near high water as possible and, as nearly as could be managed, midway between the hours of sunset and dusk, in order that the boat that took them across should get the maximum amount of cover from darkness in both approaching and leaving the French coast. Before leaving, he promised to let them know on the following day the best night for making their trip.

That night the two friends dined with Sir Pellinore. Brushing up his fine white military moustache, he cursed the Nazis roundly for having interfered with his kitchen arrangements; in spite of that, they did themselves extremely well, killed two magnums of Krug 1928 and, ignoring the bombers that droned overhead, had a great yarn about the war.

On the following day a note arrived for Gregory by D.R. from the P.I.D. man to say the tide would be full at Saint Jacut on October the 15th between 11.30 and midnight. It would have been better if they could have made their landing an hour or so later, but to do that meant postponing the venture for another two or three days, and that would bring them into the period of the full moon, so they would either have to risk a rather early arrival, while a certain number of people on the coast might not yet have turned in, or put the whole business off until the moon had waned and the tide was suitable again, which was not before the end of the month.

Gregory and Kuporovitch agreed that they must not delay a single day longer than necessary, owing to the Russian's long enforced halt at Lisbon, as, even if they sailed on the 15th, it would be just on a month since he had set out from Vichy. They went to see Sir Pellinore, and it was definitely decided
that everything should be fixed for the night of the 15th.

As they had six days to spare Sir Pellinore suggested that they should spend them at Gwaine Meads with Erika. Anxious as he was to do so, Gregory expressed certain qualms at leaving his fire-fighting squad while the blitz was still in progress.

‘Nonsense, my boy! Nonsense!' boomed the baronet. ‘You're unofficially back in the Services now, and this is your embarkation leave. Once you get over to the other side God alone knows when you'll see that young woman of yours again. There are more people still in London than there are in the whole British Army, and if they can't look after their own city they deserve that it should burn. If I had a plane and a load of incendiary bombs I'd drop the whole lot on the Home Office myself; then perhaps the nitwits who run it would wake up to the fact that there's a war on and make fire-watching compulsory. You're under my orders. They are to pack your bags and get off to Wales.'

Gregory demurred no longer and with Kuporovitch left Paddington on the night-train.

Erika was overjoyed to see them both, and for the next few days they almost managed to forget the war with all its horrors and wearisome inconveniences. The staff of the lovely old Tudor mansion had been greatly cut down, and one wing of it was now a convalescent hospital for Air Force officers; but apart from occasional German planes passing high overhead at night to bomb Liverpool, and the sight of the blue-uniformed invalids sitting about the lovely garden when the weather was fine, there were no traces at all of the war. Instead of being two hundred miles away from grim determined London, they might easily have been two thousand, and they lived on the fat of the land from the products of the home-farm.

The wounds in Erika's chest where she had been shot five months before were now entirely healed, but she was still weak from her long illness and had a rather nasty cough as a result of the injury to her lung; but she insisted that she was already as good as well again and that as soon as she was strong enough she meant to take up work which Sir Pellinore had said that he could get for her—translating the contents of German newspapers for the Foreign Office.

Little was said of the mission upon which the two men were going, and Erika made a brave show of hiding her fears from Gregory. Her illness had, if possible, made her more beautiful than ever, and Kuporovitch could see from the way Gregory looked at her that he adored her more than words could express. Although her body was still weak, her fine brain and shrewd wit were as quick as ever, and for hours at a stretch they succeeded in putting the war away from them while they laughed a lot together; yet always in the background of their thoughts was the knowledge that this was only a brief respite. There could be no real peace or prolonged happiness for any of them until the gangsters who threatened Britain and now held a hundred and forty million wretched people prisoner upon the Continent had been utterly destroyed.

At last, on the morning of the 15th, the final good-byes had been said, and Erika waved them away from the doorstep of the old manor-house, with her heart almost bursting, but no tears showing in her deep blue eyes. It was not until the car that was taking them into Shrewsbury had disappeared round the bend of the avenue of great limes that, stuffing the edge of her handkerchief between her teeth, she ran back into the house to give way to a passion of tears.

While in Wales, Gregory and Kuporovitch had received French money, French clothes of a rough-and-ready variety,
cartes d'identité
purporting to have been issued in Paris, and their final instructions; and most of the day was spent in a rather tiring cross-country journey down to Weymouth, which being the nearest port to Saint Jacut, had been selected for their embarkation. At four o'clock they reported to the naval officer commanding there. He passed them on to a Lieutenant Commander, who gave them a high tea in the mess, and immediately afterwards took them past the sentries on to a jetty, at the end of which a long, low, seagoing motor-boat was in readiness.

It was still full daylight, and dusk was not due for another hour or more, but for that time they would have the protection of the Naval Coast Patrol; and it was essential to make an early start if they were to arrive off Saint Jacut by half past eleven. The Lieutenant Commander introduced them to an
R.N.V.R. lieutenant named Cummings, who was in charge of the launch. He was a fat, cheerful fellow, who before the war had been a keen yachtsman and knew the coast of Brittany well; and it was for that reason he had been selected to run them across. There were no formalities to be observed, so as soon as Gregory and Kuporovitch had installed themselves in the small cabin of the launch it cast off and with gathering speed slid out of the harbour.

The sea was moderately calm, but at the speed they were making the boat bumped a lot as she snaked through the little wave-crests, from which a constant spray flew over her. Fortunately, both passengers were good sailors, so they felt no ill-effects, apart from the strain of the constant rocking, since both of them had hoped to sleep for the best part of their six- or seven-hour journey in order that they might arrive fresh at its end; but that proved impossible, as their cramped quarters did not permit of enough space to lie down, or even to curl up in moderate comfort.