‘Do you know the form his demands will take?’ enquired the Bishop.
‘Only in general. It is certain that he will ask for further reinforcements for the Russian front, and for much greater supplies of food than we are sending to Germany at present. He will probably also ask us to receive considerable numbers of refugees from the bombed cities. They would be useless mouths, of course: old people and young children who cannot be employed in the German factories.’
‘That,’ said the Bishop, ‘is a burden we should accept on humanitarian grounds. What else?’
‘He may ask us to issue another loan, or even suggest a capital levy to be devoted to a common war chest.’
A grin spread over the handsome face of the one-armed Colonel János Orczy. ‘We can rely on the Baroness to get us out of that one.’
Gregory gave him an enquiring look, but it was Count Lászlo who satisfied his curiosity. ‘Ribbentrop’s mistress, the Baroness Tuzolto. She is a Hungarian, and a very beautiful one. Of course she is a Nazi, but she naturally protects the interests of her country as far as she can. On more than one occasion already she has acted as the secret intermediary between him and our magnates. He is completely venal and if the bribe is big enough will agree to anything provided that he can see his course clear to explain it away to his master. No doubt we’ll have to find more men and food, and perhaps float a new loan. But she always travels with him and, if there is any suggestion of a levy affecting the great estates, she will buy him off for us.’
They then began to discuss the Heads of Agreement, but their views were so divergent that although they talked for another hour-and-a-half they did not get very far. When it came to fixing their next meeting, it transpired that all of them except Colonel Orczy had arranged to spend the weekend in the country; so Monday was the earliest day they would all be available. Gregory pleaded the urgency of getting matters settled, but in vain. The Bishop said that he could not neglect his spiritual duties in his diocese, old General Baron Alacy had his annual tenants’ party on his estate, and the others said it would be pointless to continue the discussions without them.
The casual postponement of deliberations on which so much hung, and the additional danger to himself of remaining in Budapest even two days longer than was strictly necessary, filled Gregory with annoyance and frustration, and he made no great effort to conceal his feelings. Seeing his long face, János Orczy slapped him on the shoulder and cried cheerfully:
‘Don’t look so glum, my friend. Even should that Police Lieutenant speak of you to the Germans, we will find some way to get you safely out of the country. And there are worse places than Budapest for a little relaxation. Come out to dinner with me tonight and we will forget this wretched war for—a while.’ Then Count Lászlo added, ‘I am returning to Nagykáta for Saturday and Sunday nights. Why not come with me? Mihály Zapolya would, I know, be delighted to see you. I’ll call for you at your hotel tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock.’
Gregory gratefully accepted both invitations, and a few hours later the young Colonel took him to a restaurant in a back street of Buda. It had low vaulted ceilings, all the furniture was bright red painted with Hungarian flowers, and the waitresses were dressed in gaily embroidered national costume.
For their main course they had goose. The whole bird was cut into joints and served on a low revolving wooden dish placed in the centre of the table, so that by swivelling it round they could help themselves to any joint that took their fancy. A feature of the place was its famous Tzigane band which played alternately gay and soulful music. The gypsies too wore brilliant costumes embellished with bunches of many-coloured ribbons. A bald old man with a face like a wrinkled walnut performed prodigies on the Tzimberlum, and the leader, walking among the tables, drew marvellous melodies from his fiddle. Later in the evening their music grew wild and passionate, and gypsy girls with flashing eyes, their dark hair streaming out behind them, whirled madly in ancient dances.
The sight and sound of so much revelry made Gregory feel that the war and its cares were more remote than ever, and when, after a session in a night-club that did not end until five in the morning, he got back to his hotel, he was in fuller agreement than ever with his charming host that there were worse places than Budapest for a little relaxation.
Six hours later Count Lászlo called for him as arranged and he spent a pleasant but uneventful weekend at Nagykáta. On the Monday they received bad news which plunged the household into gloom. The Regent’s eldest son, Stephen Horthy, had been killed in an aircraft disaster. As he had been nominated heir-apparent this was a sad blow; for it once more put Hungary’s future in the melting pot, and raised the not altogether welcome possibility of an Italian Prince being invited to mount the throne.
In the afternoon Gregory and Count Lászlo returned to the capital to find black streamers hanging from the windows of most of the houses and a general air of depression; but they did not feel called upon to postpone the next meeting of the Committee and drove straight to an apartment owned by the Count in which it was to be held.
This was situated in a suburb of Buda, and with a twinkle in his merry dark eyes the hunchback took Gregory from a sitting room that had a dining alcove through into a bedroom almost entirely filled by an enormous low bed. He then opened a wardrobe and displayed to him a collection of some twenty women’s dressing-gowns of varying colours and rich materials.
On Gregory’s raising an enquiring eyebrow, the Count laughed and said: ‘You did not think I lived here, did you? Nearly everybody who is anybody in Budapest has a little place like this in which to receive his girl-friends discreetly. You might perhaps suppose that my unfortunate deformity makes success in that direction difficult for me, but I can assure you it is quite the contrary. Women are my passion and their greatest weakness is their curiosity. Few of them can resist the temptation to find out if I am as good a lover as other men, and God has kindly compensated me by giving me quite unusual virility. There is hardly a pretty Countess in Budapest who has not been tumbled on that bed, and then come back to be tumbled again.’
Recalling what Levianski had said about the morals of the Hungarian aristocracy, Gregory thought it unlikely that the Count was boasting. Moreover he was not altogether without evidence of their lighthearted ways himself. While at Nagykáta the charming bronze-haired Countess Elizabeth had made it unmistakably plain that she would have liked to enter on an affaire with him, and had even gone to the lengths late one night of coming along to his bedroom with a book which she said she thought he might like to read.
The meeting went quite well until it came to the question of the territories lost by Hungary under the Treaty of Trianon being retained or restored to her. At first the Committee were set on demanding every square inch of land that had ever been Hungarian soil; but Gregory said they must be reasonable, as the Allies could not be expected to penalise all Hungary’s neighbours on her account. Then, each member stood out for the permanent absorption of lands in which his own family had once owned estates.
After a long wrangle to which Gregory listened in silence, he put it to them that he thought they would be well advised to confine their terms to the retention of Transylvania and the granting of a port on the Adriatic, as those were reasonable requests, whereas it was unlikely that the Allied Governments would consent to any alteration of the frontiers of pre-1939 Czechoslovakia.
On the question of Austria, the old General proved the nigger in the wood pile as up till 1919 an uncle of his had owned a local railway in a strip of country that had been given to the Austrians, and its loss had considerably reduced the fortune of that side of his family. At their meetings he had so far done little but mumble through his walrus moustache, but on this matter he became angrily loquacious and the meeting broke up without having got any further.
Next day they met again at the Bishop’s quarters, which were a sumptuous private suite looking on to a charming cloister garden in a monastery situated in the oldest part o
f Pest. Gregory’s opinion of the prelate as a man of God was not a high one. He was only in his early thirties but very fat and very lazy. At Nagykáta Mass had been celebrated every morning by 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 on 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 realised, until Count Szegényház told him, that the Romans had brought civilisation 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 radio-active 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 Orczy 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. 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 acitivities 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 Lászlo gave Gregory dinner and afterwards they went to the Piccadilly, which had the most glamorous cabaret of the luxury night-clubs on the Margareten-Insel. 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 maître d’hôtel to a reserved table on the edge of the dance floor. The leading couple were a tall man with a high bald forehead and a strikingly beautiful dark-haired girl.
‘There’s Ribbentrop,’ remarked Count Lászlo, ‘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 recognised 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.
9
Playing With Fire
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 maître d’hôtel 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 Maître d’hôtel only shook his head, showing that she had simply asked if he knew who Gregory was.
Count Lászlo 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 old 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 recognised 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 thick-set man in the uniform of the Arrow-Cross Party, who was apparently playing host, had 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 recognised a man who must be a British spy.
Under his breath Gregory murmured to Count Lászlo, ‘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.
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