Count Zapolya's private chaplain in the ornate chapel of the house. The servants all attended as part of their daily routine and a good sprinkling of the family; but, according to the Countess Elizabeth, the Bishop never did so. When telling Gregory this, she had added with a smile that he said that he preferred to perform his devotions in the private oratory adjacent to his bedroom, but she was sure that was only an excuse for him to lie abed.
Nevertheless he was an intelligent man and a fluent talker; and he succeeded in arguing the General round about Austria. But when they went on to discuss Czechoslovakia all five of them united to declare that not only would they retain Ruthenia but they must have back the far larger Slovakia.
The Czechs were to the Hungarians as a red rag to a bull; and Gregory knew enough of European history to be aware of the reason. For many centuries the two great Kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia had been deadly rivals, until Austria absorbed them both. Bohemia had fared worst as, after a crushing defeat in the seventeenth century, nearly the whole of her nobility had been barbarously executed and every vestige of independent power taken from her. Hungary, on the other hand, had remained a Kingdom, and her magnates had been strong enough to exact terms from the Austrians by which they preserved their ancient rights and their own Diet and refused to acknowledge the Emperor except by the title of King of Hungary. Yet the destruction of the Czech nobility had resulted in the rise of a powerful middle class which had developed trade and industry in a way that left Hungary far behind. In consequence, to the ancient hatred of the Hungarians for their neighbours in the north had been added a sour jealousy, coupled with contempt for them as a nation of bourgeois. To have had to surrender Slovakia and Ruthenia to them in 1920 had therefore been the bitterest pill of all and having got these back in 1940 they were determined to keep them.
When it became clear that the Committee would not budge without many hours of further persuasion, the exasperated Gregory suggested that this one question should be left open for the time being, so that he need no longer delay his departure. It then transpired that Colonel Orczy had sent a message to General Lakatos, one of the principal commanders of the Hungarian forces on the Russian front, asking him to return to Budapest for consultation on an urgent matter. The General was known to be violently anti Nazi, so was entirely to be trusted, and they wanted his professional opinion upon the number of Anglo-American divisions it would be necessary to land on the Continent in order to hold the German armour in the West. But the General was not arriving until Friday and Gregory had to agree with the Committee that his report would be of little practical value if he left before he could include in it their stipulations of this highly important point; so it was now obvious that he would not be able to get away until the weekend.
Had he been left to himself except for these meetings he would have been driven nearly mad by frustration, but the members of the Committee made up for their dilatoriness in business by lavish hospitality; for they were all intensely proud of their beautiful city and delighted to do the honours of it.
He had, of course, known that Buda had once been the most important bastion of the Roman world against the savage hordes that inhabited the lands north of the Danube; but he had not realized, until Count Szegenyhaz told him, that the Romans had brought civilization to Hungary long before they had to Britain, and five hundred years before the Germans were slowly emerging from a state of barbarism. The Count, who was a learned antiquarian, had a fine collection of ancient, pottery and weapons and, as Gregory showed much interest in them, took him on a fascinating tour of the National Museum. They also visited the Roman baths at Aquincum, and the thermal establishment at which for close on two thousand years countless sufferers had received relief by being packed in radioactive mud.
The Bishop took him to the Matthias Church to see the sacred relics and to the Bergberg where he had the Coronation regalia in the treasury specially brought out for Gregory to examine. Colonel Janes motored him up to the Fortress of Ofen and the heights of the Bocksberg, then took him to dine with the Officers of the Guard at the Royal Palace. The old General invited him to lunch at the Houses of Parliament and afterwards to witness a session in the Hall of the Magnates, as the Upper Chamber was called.
On Wednesday 27th the Committee did not meet, as on that day the funeral of Stephen Horthy took place. He had been in his middle forties and neither brilliant nor particularly popular, but as the Regent's heir he was given a State funeral.
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Although the soldiers lining the streets were in their drab wartime uniforms the magnates gave the procession a touch of semi oriental splendour, and Ribbentrop and Count Ciano walked side by side at the head of the group of notables representing Axis and neutral countries. Out of sympathy for the mother and father every shop in Budapest was closed and all activities for either pleasure or profit suspended; but on the following day the black streamers had disappeared from the windows and the city returned to normal.
That night Count Laszlo gave Gregory dinner and afterwards they went to the Piccadilly, which had the most glamorous cabaret of the luxury nightclubs on the Margaretenlnsel. They had been there for about an hour, drinking champagne and watching the lively singing and dancing of a bevy of near naked beauties, when there was a sudden hush and many heads were turned towards one of the entrances.
A party of six people was being obsequiously bowed by the maitre d'hotel to a reserved table on the edge of the dance floor. The leading couple v/ere a tall man with a high bald forehead and a strikingly beautiful dark-haired girl.
'There's Ribbentrop,' remarked Count Laszio, 'and his pretty Baroness.'
Gregory turned to look, then caught his breath in surprise and consternation. The girl was his old flame Sabine.
Next moment she glanced in his direction. Their eyes met. Her arched eyebrows went up and her scarlet lips opened a trifle. He knew then that she had recognized him. It was too late to slip away. The danger he had foreseen from an unexpected meeting, when he had thought about her after his bathe on his first afternoon in Budapest, re-entered his mind like the shrilling of an alarm bell.
Playing With Fire
Chapter 9
Gregory had hoped that if he did run into Sabine she would be alone and that, by hinting at the reason for his being in Budapest, he might ensure her sympathetic silence. Anyway he had felt confident that he would be able to overcome any feeling she might have that it was her duty to hand him over to the police.
Even had she had friends with her of her own nationality, and from surprise at seeing him had greeted him with an exclamation in English, dangerous as such a situation would have been he might, with luck, have put up a bluff of some kind which would have stalled off any immediate action.
But to come across her in the company of a Nazi, let alone Hitler's Foreign Minister, was a thing that he had never remotely contemplated. Still worse, from what he had heard she made no concealment of the fact that she was Ribbentrop's mistress, and a convinced Nazi herself.
As they stared at one another from fifteen paces' distance he, kept his face completely immobile. For her English lover to turn up in Budapest during the war was so unlikely that, if he showed no signs of recognition, he thought there was just a chance she might decide that she had been misled by a resemblance. But instead of looking away, while Ribbentrop was motioning the rest of his party to the places at the table where he wished them to sit she touched the maitre d'hotel on the arm and pointed at Gregory.
His heart missed a beat. For a second he thought she was telling the man to have him watched, so that he did not slip away, while sending for the police. But the maitre d'hotel only shook his head, showing that she had simply asked if he knew who Gregory was.
Count Laszlo turned to him with a smile. 'The Baroness seems to be interested in you.'
'Unfortunately, yes,' Gregory replied in a low voice. 'It is several years since I've seen her; so her present name conveyed nothing to me. But she turns out to be an ol
d friend of mine; and as she is now a friend of Nazi No. 4, that may have extremely unpleasant results for me before I am much older.'
The laughter died in the hunchback's merry brown eyes. 'You mean she knows you to be an Englishman?'
'That's it. And the moment she looked in this direction she recognized me. By keeping a poker face I hope I've sown doubt in her mind; but if she tells her new boyfriend her suspicions my goose will be properly cooked. For me to make a hurried exit might precipitate catastrophe; but I want to get out of here as soon as I can without appearing to be making a bolt for it. Would you send for the bill, so that the waiter won't come running after us if we get up to go in about fifteen minutes.'
Ribbentrop's table was now empty. After a thickset man in the uniform of the Arrow Cross Party, who was apparently playing host, bad ordered wine, all three couples moved out on to the dance floor. But each time the dancing brought Sabine in view of Gregory her wide dark eyes became riveted, over Ribbentrop's shoulder, on him. He gave the impression that he was unconscious of her glance, keeping his own in another direction; but he was watching her out of the corner of his eye, and wondering with acute anxiety at what precise moment she might decide to tell her partner that she thought she had recognized a man who must be a British spy.
Under his breath Gregory murmured to Count Laszlo, 'For, God's sake tell me some funny stories to make me laugh. The only hope I have of foxing this woman is to sit on here for a bit appearing unconcerned and natural.' Then he began quite openly to ogle a pretty blonde who was sitting at a nearby table. She looked a little surprised by these sudden attentions, but having taken stock of Gregory's lean good looks she responded, at intervals when her companion was not looking at her, with sly half smiles.
Getting up, Gregory went over to her table, made a formal bow to the man who was with her, and asked if he might ask her for a dance. Her companion looked far from pleased but, taken by surprise and seeing the smile with which she greeted the invitation, he mumbled his consent. Gregory led the blonde on to the floor, grasped her firmly and began to tell her how, as a visitor to Budapest, he found the city enchanting and her the loveliest thing in it. Her name was Terezia and she was a model in a smart dress shop. He secured her address and telephone number, and said he would ring her up next day; a promise that he had no intention of keeping. Then he took her back to her table and returned to his own hoping that Sabine, who must have observed the incident, would conclude from it that no spy who had been detected would have the nerve to remain within call acting the role of a playboy.
Ribbentrop's party had now resorted themselves. He was dancing with a statuesque redheaded woman and Sabine, who had evidently declined further dancing for the moment, was back at the table with the Arrow Cross man. As Gregory gave her an anxious sidelong glance, he saw that her dark head was bent over the table. Count Laszlo had paid the bill, and ogling the blonde then dancing with her had occupied a good quarter of a hour; so he murmured to the Count, 'I think we might go now.'
As they stood up, he saw that Sabine was bending over the table because she was writing a note. At that moment she lifted her head, saw that he was about to leave, and made a gesture with her hand that he should stay where he was. He responded with a look of blank surprise appropriate to receiving a signal from a complete stranger; but she beckoned up a waiter, folded her note and pointing out Gregory sent the man over with it.
It was impossible for him to ignore the approaching waiter. Another few moments and he might have been out of the place, but now he had been caught. Cursing under his breath, he sat down, then took the note from the plate the waiter held out to him. Unfolding it he read the single line in her well remembered spidery writing:
You can't fool me. What are you doing in Budapest?
So much for his bluff that he was not who she thought him. It was clearly futile to attempt to maintain it any longer. And there was now no escape from giving her some explanation. All he could hope to do was temporarily to stall her off from telling her friends that he was English by inducing her to play up to one of his cover stories until they could talk together alone.
For him to pretend to be Fritz Einholtz with Ribbentrop in the offing would be a suicidal risk, as the Foreign Minister might have known the Gestapo Colonel. On the other hand, if he posed as Tavenier there was just a chance that the Arrow Cross man might be Puttony's chief, and that the Lieutenant had confided to him that Tavenier was really only a cover name for Obersturmbannführer Einholtz.
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Ribbentrop was just returning to the table, so would see Sabine receive the reply to her note. It was certain that he would question her about it, and if she said Gregory was a Frenchman of her acquaintance the Arrow Cross man might try to show how well-informed he was by telling her that she was mistaken and revealing what he believed to be the truth. For a moment Gregory contemplated fabricating an entirely new identity for himself. But that would not do either, as scores of people in Budapest now knew him as Commandant Tavenier and it was quite possible that one of the other women at the table had been at some party he had attended and heard him addressed by that name.
His mind turning over like a dynamo, he decided that the lesser risk was to continue to pose as Tavenier; so he picked up a menu and wrote on the back of it in French:
My dear Baroness,
Only the fact that you are in such illustrious company prevented me from reclaiming your acquaintance. I still treasure the memory of Paris when you were staying there as the guest of my aunt in 1936. Permit me, I beg, to call upon you tomorrow morning, so that I may tell you of my adventures after my recall to the army and how, after being evacuated' from Dunkirk, I succeeded in getting back to France. I rejoice to see that these few years have made you more ravishingly beautiful than ever.
With my most distinguished compliments,
Etienne Tavenier.
Folding the menu over, he gave it to the hovering waiter to take to her. Then he said in a low voice to Count Laszlo, 'I only hope to God that will do the trick. If her memories of our affaire are as delightful as mine, it should unless that Arrow Cross chap knows that the real Tavenier is still living in France.'
The Count smiled. 'You are most fortunate to have had an affaire with her. Not only is she very beautiful, but she is one of the most intelligent and amusing women I have ever counted among my friends.5
'You know her well, then?'
'Oh yes. I have known her since shortly after she left her Convent. In fact, I might even claim to have contributed a little to her education; although that came a year or two later when she had become bored with the limited conversation of handsome young officers.'
Into Gregory's mind there flashed a picture of the enormous bed at Count Laszlo's discreet apartment in the suburbs. But his gaze was riveted on Sabine, She had read the note and was talking to Ribbentrop; then she spoke to the Arrow Cross man. Gregory was on tenterhooks for what seemed an age while he watched them conferring together, but actually it was only two minutes before she beckoned to the waiter again and sent him over with a message. Hurrying between the tables he bowed and delivered it:
'Gentlemen, the Herr Reichsaussenminister presents his compliments and asks that you will join his party.'
Count Laszlo half covered his mouth with a hand that held a cigarette, and murmured quickly behind it in French, 'This is Hungary, not Germany; so you do not have to go. Walk out if you like. I will express your regrets and tell them you had to leave because you have a date with a lady.'
'No,' Gregory replied in the same language, as he stood up. 'If she has given me away they'd have the police after me in ten minutes. Better to face the music and hope things will turn out all right. If not, please don't involve yourself. Say you hardly know me that we met in the bar and as we were both alone decided to share a table.'
A few moments later they were bowing in turn over Sabine's hand. To Gregory's great relief she greeted him in French. Then she introduced them to the others at
her table, explaining that the Arrow Cross man was their host. He proved to be Major Szalasi, the leader of the Hungarian Nazi Party, and the red-haired woman was his wife. The third man, a tall blond fellow, was Ribbentrop's aide-de-camp, Captain Von Trott, and his companion, a girl whose looks were a little marred by a mouth as wide as a letter box, was a Fraulein Weiss.
The bull necked Szalasi had shown no dangerous reaction when Sabine, having asked Gregory's present rank, had presented him as Commandant Tavenier; so, this second hurdle being behind him, he took one of the extra chairs that had been brought up, accepted the glass of champagne Szalasi poured for him, and entered with zest into his part.
For the first minute or two Sabine regarded him with a coolly detached expression, but with truly Gallic exuberance he launched into an invented account of how he had taken her boating on the lake at Vincennes and fallen in, and she had nearly brained him with an oar while trying to help him out, upon which her dark eyes began to brim with merriment. Mischievously she enquired after his mythical aunt and was hard put to it to maintain a suitable expression of sorrow when he told her in a tragic voice that in the first year of the war the poor lady had had the tip of her nose bitten off by her pet poodle, and that as a result she had died of sepsis.
For the benefit of the others he changed from French to heavily accented German; as he described his agony of indecision as to whether it was his duty to shoot the poodle as the murderer of his aunt. Then, breaking off abruptly, he declared that this was no place in which to talk of death, and soon he and Sabine were outbidding one another in absurd, entirely fictitious, stories beginning, 'Do you remember,' and everyone at the table was laughing with them.
It was Ribbentrop who turned the conversation to more serious matters by saying, 'I understand, Herr Major, that you were evacuated from Dunkirk and spent some time in England. It would be interesting to have an eye witness's account of that operation as the enemy saw it, and to have your impressions of London under war conditions.'
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