They Used Dark Forces
( Gregory Sallust - 8 )
Dennis Wheatley
On a cloudless night in June 1943, Gregory Sallust parachutes into Nazi Germany. His mission is to penetrate the secrets of Hitler's "V" rockets. But before he can reach his objective, he becomes unwillingly involved with Ibrahim Malacou hypnotist, astrologer and son of Satan. Though their long and uneasy partnership is sustained by a common hatred of the enemy, their decision to use occult forces to destroy Hitler will imperil Gregory's immortal soul...
THEY USED DARK FORCES
There, alone at the long narrow table, Bormann was sitting. Fixing his cold steely eyes on Gregory, he asked, 'Herr Major, is it true that you predicted the crossing of the Rhine at Remagen by the Americans a week before it occurred?
'Jawohl, Herr Parteifьhrer,' Gregory replied promptly
Bormann stood up and said, 'The Fьhrer requires an explanation of how you obtained this intelligence.'. As he spoke he pushed open a door on his right and signed to Gregory to go through it. A moment later Gregory found himself face to face with Adolf Hitler.
Author's Note
In obtaining the factual background of the progress of the war, the conspiracy to blow up Hitler and the detailed account of the last weeks of his life, I consulted many books, but I wish to express my indebtedness particularly to Sir Winston Churchill's The Second World War (Vols. IV, V and VI), Chester Wilmot's The Struggle for Europe, Milton Schulman's Defeat in the West, General Westphal's The German Army in the West, Gerald Reitlinger's The S.S., Alibi of a Nation, The Yon Hassell Diaries, Fabian von Schlabrendorff's account of the July bomb plot, Kazimierz Smolen's Auschwitz and H. R. Trevor Roper's The Last Days of Hitler.
In my account of the attitudes and actions of Hitler's personal staff I have taken only one liberty. At a certain point in the story I have had Obergruppenfьhrer Fegelein, Himmler's liaison officer at Fьhrer H.Q., relieved by Obergruppenfiihrer Grauber. But my description of Grauber's attempt to save himself, and what followed, is exactly what happened to Fegelein.
D.W.
A LETTER FROM GREGORY SALLUST
My dear Dennis,
I don't much like the idea of it becoming publicly known that for the best part of two years I was closely associated with a Satanist, but I appreciate that you cannot chronicle my adventures during the latter part of World War II without disclosing that.
It is very understandable, too, that as over eighteen million copies of your books have been sold, and nine of those books are about myself, many of your faithful readers should continue to demand that you should let them know whether my beloved Erika ever got free from her hateful husband, what happened to beautiful, wicked Sabine, and if my old enemy Gruppenfьhrer Grauber met with his just deserts.
There are, of course, plenty of well-authenticated accounts of those terrible last days in Berlin; Goering's dismissal, Himmler's treachery and Hitler's savage attempt to involve the whole German people in his own ruin; but, although the faith he placed in astrologers is well known, no-one has yet described how his belief in supernatural guidance influenced his final decisions.
How much Malacou and I contributed to his committing suicide it is impossible to say; but Malacou was unquestionably a disciple of the Devil and, knowing your capabilities, I have no doubt at all that in recording those unforgettable weeks that I spent with Hitler in the bunker you will write a spy story to top all spy stories. So let me down lightly and go ahead.
Yours ever,
P.S. Knowing your usual kindness in replenishing my cellar whenever you use my material, I may mention that I have developed a particular liking for the Moet et Chandon in the Dom Perignon bottles. No doubt you, too, have found it quite outstanding.
By Dennis Wheatley
Novels
The Launching of Roger Brook
The Shadow of Tyburn Tree
The Rising Storm
The Man Who Killed the King
The Dark Secret of Josephine
The Rape of Venice
The Sultans Daughter
The Wanton Princess
Evil in a Mask
The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware
The Irish Witch
Desperate Measures
The Scarlet Impostor
Faked Passports
The Black Baroness
V for Vengeance
Come into My Parlour
Traitors Gate
They Used Dark Forces
The Prisoner in the Mask
The Second Seal
Vendetta in Spain
Three Inquisitive People
The Forbidden Territory
The Devil Rides Out
The Golden Spaniard
Strange Conflict
Codeword Golden Fleece
Dangerous Inheritance
Gateway to Hell
The Quest of Julian Day
The Sword of Fate
Bill for the Use of a Body
Black August
Contraband
The Island Where Time Stands Still
The White Witch of the South Seas
To the Devil A Daughter
The Satanist
The Eunuch of Stamboul
The Secret War
The Fabulous Valley
Sixty Days to Live
Such Power is Dangerous
Uncharted Seas
The Man Who Missed the War
The Haunting of Toby Jugg
Star of Ill Omen
They Found Atlantis
The Ka of Gifford Hillary
Curtain of Fear
Mayhem in Greece
Unholy Crusade
Dennis Wheatley They Used Dark Forces
The Ace up Hitler's Sleeve
BY MIDNIGHT the aircraft was far out over the North Sea. She was a Mosquito, fitted with extra fuel tanks for the long flight to the Baltic coast of Germany. It was there, in about two hours' time, that Gregory Sallust and his companion were to be dropped. They were lying on their backs,, side by side in the narrow bomb bay. It was pitch dark down there, yet too cold and uncomfortable for any hope of sleep. As the 'plane droned on and the minutes crawled by, many thoughts drifted through Gregory's mind.
He was thinking of the last time he had come in secret to the Continent. It was now May and that had been in the previous August. He had been sent on a mission to Budapest to assess the possibilities of drawing Hungary into the war on the side of the Allies. A number of Hungary's leading magnates had shown willingness to commit their country, provided that an Anglo-American force should land that autumn in France and thus occupy such first-line German units as were not engaged in Russia.
But Gregory had not got back to England until the end of September. During- his absence Churchill had persuaded the Americans to accept instead his plan for occupying French North Africa. By then every available division had been committed to Operation `Torch', so the negotiations with the Hungarians had had to be abandoned and in due course Germany had forced Hungary to declare war on the Allies.
The delay in Gregory's return had been caused by his having had the ill-luck to run into his old enemy Gruppenfьhrer Grauber. By the skin of his teeth and with the aid of the lovely. Sabine Tuzolto he had got away; but he had had to come home via Turkey, and a journey down the Danube concealed in a barge is a far from speedy means of transport.
Yet, as he thought again now of those lost, sunny, autumn days chugging slowly down the great river, he smiled. For a few hectic weeks in 1936 Sabine had been his mistress. When they met again in wartime Budapest, no less a man than Ribbentrop had become her lover. That had led to complications. But, as a result of the Grauber episode, she t
oo had been forced to escape from Hungary. Had they not shared a cabin on the barge, they would not have been human.
In a beauty contest the judges might well have hesitated between the dark-haired, magnolia-skinned loveliness of the Hungarian Baroness and the golden, blue-eyed, Nordic perfection of Erika von Osterberg. But for Gregory there had never been any question of choice. Between him and Sabine it had been no more than physical attraction and enormous fun; although fun that he had had to pay for dearly when he had got his entrancing Hungarian mistress back to London. Erika whom, for a score of qualities that Sabine lacked, he truly loved, had learned of his brief infidelity and he had come within an ace of losing her for good.
Sabine, too, had caused him one of the worst headaches he had ever had in his life. He had brought her to England in the innocent belief that he was saving her from the vengeance of the Gestapo. Where he had slipped up was in never having visualized the possibility that Sabine, convinced that Germany would win the war, had agreed to Ribbentrop's suggestion that, to rehabilitate herself with the Nazis, she should make use of Gregory to get into England as a spy for them.
Clever girl though she was, she had been caught. By most subtle intrigue, great daring and the reluctant help of his powerful friend and patron Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust, Gregory had enabled her to return to Germany, but had sent her back with false information about the objective of the `Torch' convoys, which were then already on their way to North Africa.
When Gregory's age group was called up, Sir Pellinore had secured for him a post in the Map Room of the Offices of the War Cabinet and towards the end of November he had resumed his duties as a Wing Commander there. As he was not actually a member of the Joint Planning Staff, he was never officially aware of the forward plans under consideration. But owing to his constant contact in the famous fortress basement below Whitehall with those responsible for the High Direction of the war, there was little that he did not know about what was going on and differences of opinion between the Allies on the way in which their forces should be used.
It was one such difference that had deprived them, after the splendid initial success of `Torch', of the magnificent achievement envisaged by Churchill. The original British plan had been for a third Allied landing at Philippeville in Tunisia, two hundred and fifty miles further east along the coast than Algiers. But the Americans had flatly refused to agree and insisted instead that the third landing should be made at Casablanca, a thousand miles away from the enemy on the Atlantic coast. Their excessive caution had cost the Allies dear. A force based on Philippeville could have seized Tunisia before the Germans had had time to reinforce it. Within a month Montgomery's Eighth Army, advancing from the east, could have joined up with `Torch' and the whole North African coast from Morocco to Egypt would have been in Allied hands.
Instead, owing to transport difficulties the advance of the Allied Army from Algiers had been held up and, with their usual swift ability to take counter-measures at a time of crisis, the Germans had poured troops into Tunisia. Through the winter months, with growing depression, Gregory and his colleagues in the Map Room had seen the `Torch' forces robbed of their great prize and become bogged down.
As Gregory's mind roved over the events earlier in the year on the other battle fronts, he felt there could now be no doubt that the tide had really turned in favour of the Allies.
During the second winter of the vast campaign in the East the Russians had taken their first revenge for the destruction of their cities and the brutal slaughter of their civilian population ordered by the Nazis. After their failure to take Stalingrad the German Sixth Army had been surrounded and virtually annihilated, only Field Marshal Paulus and ninety thousand men out of his twenty-one divisions surviving to become prisoners.
From the date that General Sir Harold Alexander had taken over as Commander-in-Chief Middle East, British fortunes had also prospered there. His offensive to pin Rommel's Army down while the `Torch' landings were made had resulted in the great victory of El Alamein, and General Montgomery had lost no time in following up this success. In eighty days the Eighth Army had driven the enemy back over a thousand miles and on February 2nd General Alexander had sent his famous telegram to Mr. Churchill, the words of which Gregory remembered well:
Sir. The orders you gave me on August 15 I942 have been fulfilled. His Majesty's enemies together with their impedimenta have been completely eliminated from Egypt, Cyrenaica, Libya and Tripolitania. I now await your further instructions.
Rommel, although boxed up in Tunisia, had by then the advantage of mountainous country defending both his flanks and a constant stream of reinforcements being poured in across the narrows from Sicily; and he still had plenty of kick left in him. But by March 28th Montgomery's Eighth Army had forced the Mareth Line, on April 7th his forward patrols met those of the U.S. Second Corps pressing south-east, on May 7th the Allies entered both Bizerta and Tunis, on the 13th Alexander could telegraph the Prime Minister: The Tunisian campaign is over. All enemy resistance has ceased. We are masters of the North African shore.
Had the Americans let Churchill have his way this triumph might have been achieved five months earlier, but when the final victory was gained its results were spectacular. A score of enemy Generals, a thousand guns, two hundred and fifty tanks and many thousands of motor vehicles fell into the Allies' hands; and nearly twice the number of the enemy captured by the Russians at Stalingrad were made prisoners.
To this splendid victory the Navy and the R.A.F. had both made great contributions. In fact, without their tireless seeking out and destruction of transports bringing succour to Rommel and key points in his defences its achievement would have proved impossible.
In other theatres, too, the Navy and R.A.F. had been getting on top of the enemy. The ability of Britain to continue to wage the war successfully depended entirely upon keeping open her sea communications and during 1942 the threat to them had increased to a truly alarming degree. By March 1943 Admiral Doenitz had no fewer than two hundred and twelve U-boats at his disposal and so great a number enabled them to hunt in packs, with disastrous results to our convoys. In that month sinking’s rose to an all-time high and the Allies lost seven hundred thousand tons of shipping.
But in February Air Marshal Jack Slessor had been appointed to Coastal Command. By new tactics and devices he had forced the U-boats to come to the surface and fight it out shell for shell with his aircraft. The major encounters had taken place during that spring in the Bay of Biscay, so it had become known as the ` Battle of the Bay'. In April shipping losses had been reduced by nearly sixty per cent against those of the previous month and by mid-May Slessor had broken the back of the U-boat menace once and for all. The public little realized the immense significance of this victory, but in reducing Germany’s prospects of winning the war it was second only in importance to the Battle of Britain.
Over Europe, too, fleets of British bombers by night and American bombers by day were now incessantly breaking through the enemy's defences to pound his cities into ruins. On the 17th of May, only a few days before Gregory had left the Cabinet Offices to go on leave prior to setting off on his present mission, he had seen the report of one of the most devastating raids ever inflicted on the enemy. Wing Commander Guy Gibson had led in sixteen Lancaster’s of No 617 Squadron. They had been loaded with a new type of bomb and the Squadron had launched these powerful missiles on the waters of the two huge reservoirs controlled by the Mohne and Eder Dams that fed the heart of the industrial Ruhr. Early reconnaissance next morning had shown that the breaching of both dams had caused millions of tons of water to flood an area miles in extent, scores of armament plants had been rendered useless for months to come and thousands of munition workers' houses made untenable.
To this far brighter picture of the war in Europe it could be added that Japanese aggression had also now been brought under control. Between their treacherous massacre of the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour in December 1941, and t
he summer of 1942 they had conquered Malaya, Hong Kong, Sumatra, Java, Burma, Borneo, the Philippines and scores of other islands, while their warships sailed unchallenged from Kamchatka down to the northern waters of Australia and from the Indian Ocean eastward two thousand miles out into the Pacific.
The Americans, by extraordinary feats of improvisation and daring, had first held the Japanese in the Pacific, then built up forces large enough: to go over to the offensive.
The great clash had begun in August 1942 with battles in the Coral Sea, in the neighbourhood of the Solomon Islands and desperate fighting in the jungles of Guadalcanal. With magnificent courage and tenacity the famous United States Marine Corps had held on to these, against great odds, while the Australians in the jungles of New Guinea had rivalled their Allies' bravery. In the naval battles between August and January over forty- warships had been sunk and hundreds of aircraft shot down, but by the spring of 1943 the Japanese had been driven out of New Guinea, Guadalcanal was firmly in American hands and now, in May, the enemy was everywhere on the defensive.
To outward seeming, therefore, it appeared to be only a question of time before both Germany and Japan were finally defeated. But those who were responsible for the High Direction of the war were far from being as sanguine as the public about the outcome. They had learned that a new development in warfare was maturing which might not only cancel out the superiority in men and material they now enjoyed, but reduce Britain's cities to ruins, render her ports unusable and make it impossible ever to invade and conquer Hitler's `Fortress Europa'.
As early as the autumn of 1939 British Intelligence had reported rumours that German scientists were experimenting with some form of long-range weapon… From then on, at lengthy intervals, corroborative reports had come in; but it was believed that this new, secret weapon was still in its infancy and not likely to emerge from its experimental stage for several years, by which time it was anticipated that the war would have been won. Until December 1941 it had not even been known if the German scientists were working on a revolutionary type of cannon, a rocket or a pilotless aircraft; but chance had led to Gregory finding out at least that much.
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