‘I met Kelemen in Italy, and being older he did not have to have his family’s approval to marry me; and, of course, when I returned like a sheep to the fold as a Baroness, mother was delighted. Kelemen’s having made an honest woman of me, she naturally expected that after his death I would make another good marriage, but I disappointed her by becoming Ribb’s mistress instead. She wouldn’t have minded so much if I had gone back to having brief affaires with anyone who took my fancy, but a permanent liaison with such a prominent statesman is impossible to conceal, and she is such a hypocrite that she refuses to recognise that living out of wedlock with one man is much less reprehensible than going to bed with half-a-dozen in the course of a year. So, once again, my name with her is mud.’
As Sabine lay face down on the mattress her chin was resting on her crossed arms. She had taken off her bathing-cap and her dark hair fell on either side of her face leaving a central parting down the back of her head. Where the parting ended there was one small curl about the size of a farthing on the nape of her neck. Looking down on her Gregory felt an almost irresistible desire to bend forward and kiss it; but, forcing the thought from his mind, he said:
Tell me, why did you enter on this affaire with Ribbentrop?’
‘Because I prefer it to playing hole in the corner games with men that I don’t really love.’
‘Surely you can’t love him. Even decent Germans consider him an awful blackguard.’
‘I don’t love him; but he has something else to offer. He provides me with an intensely interesting life. He is not much of a lover, but he is clever, amusing, tolerant and a charming companion; so I like him quite a lot. As for being a blackguard, that is a matter of opinion. Most men who climb to such a high position in the world have to put the end before the means at times; and when he was Ambassador to Britain there were plenty of people among the English aristocracy who did not regard him as too much of a blackguard to court his friendship. He became a great favourite with the Cliveden set.’
‘That’s true,’ Gregory admitted thoughtfully. ‘And I can quite understand how fascinating you find it to be on the inside of all that’s going on. Have you ever met Hitler?’
‘Oh yes. I have twice stayed at Bertchesgaden.’
‘Do tell me about it.’
Suddenly she turned over and sat up. ‘No. That’s the sort of thing I don’t talk about to anyone—and you are the very last person to whom I’d risk giving something away. Anyway, now I’ve told you all about myself it’s quite time you came clean with me.’
It was now half-past twelve, and the terrace was much more crowded than when they had first come out on to it. Two groups of sun-bathers had settled themselves quite near enough to overhear anything Gregory and Sabine said unless they kept their voices very low, so he said:
‘Look. I’m not trying to stall on you, and we’ll stay here if you like. But we don’t want to run the risk of anyone reporting this conversation; so don’t you think it would be wiser if we went somewhere a bit more private?’
She considered for a moment. ‘Well, perhaps you’re right. But where?’
‘Let’s go up to the Hármashatárhegy.’
‘It’s quite a long way.’
‘What matter? You have a car, and I imagine that you are immune from such annoyances as petrol rationing. The shortage makes it all the more likely that it will be almost deserted. Anyhow, the tables in the garden are set far enough apart for us to talk freely.’
‘When we have dressed we could go down and talk in the car.’
‘What I have to say will take quite a long time. It will be close on one before we’re dressed, and by the time I’m through we are going to be jolly hungry. It would be much more sensible to have our talk while we lunch.’
‘But I didn’t mean to lunch with you.’
‘You’ve got to lunch somewhere, and this is just the day to lunch up on the mountainside among the birchwoods. Come along!’ She was already sitting up; taking one of her hands, he stood up himself and pulled her to her feet. Then he added, with a grin, ‘If we were alone in a sandy cove I’d give you a good spanking for being so obstreperous.’
She smiled at that. It called up another memory. They had gone for the weekend to a small hotel on a little frequented part of Lake Balaton. A good-looking American had been staying there on his own and had tried to get off with her. Gregory had told her that he did not want to have to take the fellow outside and give him a lesson; so she must not encourage him by returning his glances, and that if she did he would give her a spanking. She was not the least interested in the American, but out of devilment she had smiled at him that night as they were leaving the dining-room. Gregory had not appeared to notice, but he had suggested a walk in the moonlight and taken her down to the little cove a good half mile away from the hotel. There, after a brief struggle, he had got her in a wrestler’s lock with his left knee under her stomach and his right leg crooked over her calves to keep her legs down. Then he had torn off her drawers and spanked her until she had yelled for mercy. It had really hurt, but all the same she had loved it; and when, with tears still wet on her cheeks, he had made love to her afterwards that had been absolutely marvellous.
In the pale blue and silver Mercedes they roared along the bank of the Danube, turned into the valley between the St. Gellért and main Buda hills and out into the country. The way wound up through woods that at times formed cool tunnels and at others dappled the road with sunlight. Moving at such speed along an almost empty road, the drive did not take long, and by half-past one they were seated at a table in the garden of the inn.
Only half-a-dozen tables were occupied so they were able to get one between two others that were empty, but adjacent to the rustic railing that ran round the little plateau which had been made into an outdoor restaurant. The ground dropped away below them and from where they sat they could see for many miles. In the distance the capital, with its innumerable domes and spires, looked like a fairy city, and to either side of it the Danube wound away to disappear in the faint haze of the summer heat.
Gregory ordered a cup, made half from sparkling and half from still wine with pricked fresh peaches in it, and they ate cold Fogas, the most delicious of the Lake Balaton fish, garnished with fresh-water prawns. But while the waiter took their order and served them they kept off the subject they had come there to talk about.
He asked her if she had again run across Lord Gavin Fortescue—the dwarf with the distorted body and mind who had very nearly had both of them murdered—and she replied that she thanked all her gods that she had not. He told her then that he had heard rumours that for some years past Lord Gavin had been living in South America.
She enquired affectionately after Sir Pellinore—who had been very kind to her during the difficult time she had spent in England—and he was able to tell her that the elderly Baronet was as hale and hearty as ever. Then, for a good part of the meal, they talked about the extrordinary adventure that had first brought them together.
With their wood-strawberries they drank Tokay. It was not Imperial, as that had left the Imperial cellars only as a personal gift of the Emperor to other crowned heads on their birthdays, or to Ambassadors on their departure after many years en post in Vienna. But the wine-waiter dug out for them a little bottle of 1874 from the vineyards of the Duke of Windezgratz. Its grade of Five Puttanos indicated that five small barrels—the maximum number—of grapes that had been left on the vines until they were almost raisins had gone into the big cask of earlier-vintaged wine; and age had taken off its original cloying sweetness. This nearest thing to bottled sunshine had the flavour of honey diluted with fine dry sherry, and it provided the perfect complement to their two heaped plates of little red, highly perfumed Fraises-des-Bois.
When they were halfway through them Gregory said, ‘Now for the awful truth about my nefarious activities.’ Then he told her the object of his mission, but he made no mention of how he had progressed with it.
Sh
e listened to him with grave wide eyes, and when he had done asked:
‘What conclusion have you come to as a result of your enquiries?’
‘That I have been wasting my time,’ he lied, returning her gaze without the tremor of an eyelid. ‘Of course, there are a certain number of people in every country who would like peace at any price; but from those I’ve talked to there doesn’t seem to be much hope of getting Hungary out of the war.’
‘Whom have you talked to?’
‘A number of chaps that I’ve picked up in bars. Count Lászlo was one, of course; but naturally I dared do no more than sound them while playing my rôle of a Frenchman who is inclined to be a bit pro-de Gaulle. There was only one exception. After three years of war London is hopelessly out of touch with what goes on here, as we have no permanent agents stationed in Hungary at all. But they gave me the name of one man to whom I could come clean with safety. He is a Jewish merchant and he gave me a far from encouraging general idea of what I should hear from other people later, although naturally he and all his race would like to see Hungary go over to the Allies.’
‘Naturally. And no one can blame these wretched Jews for hating the Nazis.’
‘Well!’ he smiled. ‘That’s all there is to it, and I hope I’ve convinced you now that I am not a spy.’
‘No.’ She drew hard on her cigarette. ‘You are not a spy but, by God, you are a saboteur. Blowing up all the bridges on the Danube and the Arsenal would be just nothing to what you are attempting to do.’
‘That depends on how you look at it,’ he replied quietly.
‘There is only one way I can look at it. You came here with the idea of trying to get Hungary to desert her allies. If she did Germany might lose the war.’
He nodded. ‘She will lose it anyway. It’s only a matter of time.’
‘I don’t agree. Hitler now has a firm grip on Europe from Northern Norway to the Pyrenees, and from Crete to the Gulf of Finland. He can do what he likes with Vichy France, which gives him North Africa from Casablanca to the Egyptian frontier, and the few remaining neutrals—Sweden, Spain, Portugal—dare not lift a finger against him. He has only to finish off Russia and, to use your own phrase, it will then “be only a matter of time” before the British and Americans have to agree a peace on such terms as he cares to give them.’
‘My dear, you are making the same mistake of under-estimating the British as your friend Ribb did when he was Ambassador and told his master that we hadn’t got the guts to fight. Nothing short of invasion and conquest could enable Hitler to impose a peace on Britain; and he missed his chance of that in 1940.’
‘It will come again. Once he has put Russia out of the war, he will be able to send two hundred divisions to do the job.’
‘That won’t help him. They would still have to cross the Channel, and the R.A.F. is now infinitely stronger than it was in the Battle of Britain. An attempt to invade now could lead only to a massacre in which hundreds of thousands of Germans would be drowned.’
After a moment she said, ‘You may be right about that; but one thing is certain. Even with their air superiority the British could not invade the Continent. And if they did refuse Hitler’s terms that would not just lead to a stalemate. He would send armies down through Turkey and Egypt into Asia and Africa. Within a year he would have conquered India and all Africa down to the Cape, while bigger than ever U-boat fleets got a stranglehold on Britain and starved her into surrender.’
‘You are forgetting the United States.’
She shrugged. ‘And you are forgetting the big German and Italian populations over there. America’s heart is not in the war in Europe. It is the Japs she is so mad against; and they are going to take a lot of beating. They will keep the U.S. busy for two years at least, and that will be quite long enough for Hitler to have forced Britain to her knees.’
Gregory naturally refrained from telling her that America was already pouring men and aircraft into Britain with the intention of attempting the liberation of the Continent as soon as the build up was big enough. Instead he said:
‘I quite understand your point of view, but you must admit that you are counting your chickens before they are hatched. All this depends on Russia’s being defeated, and she is very far from that yet.’
‘On the contrary. Russia is on her last legs. She can’t carry on without oil.’
‘I know that, but the Germans will find the Caucasus a hard nut to crack. It is much easier to defend than the great open steppes further north. They will be held up in the mountains and get bogged down there for another winter.’
Sabine gave a superior little smile. ‘The German General Staff aren’t fools; they know that, and they’ll do no more than pin large Russian forces down there. Stalingrad is the key to the situation, and that is why the Russians are fighting so hard to hang on to it. Once Stalingrad falls the Volga will be cut. The supplies of oil which are sent up it will cease and the whole of the Russian front north of Stalingrad must collapse.’
With a rather gloomy nod Gregory admitted, ‘I suppose you are right about that. But inwardly he was smiling. The friend of his who had been with him in the Worcester had said to him a few weeks previously over lunch, ‘The one snag about being on the Joint Planning Staff is that one simply dare not discuss the war with people outside the set-up; and for that reason I’ve had to give up seeing nearly all my old friends. You see, however careful one is, it is practically impossible to talk about what is going on without the risk of giving something away—not actual plans, of course, but while making some general statement.’
And that was precisely what Sabine had done. She had spoken with such assurance all through their conversation that her opinions were clearly those she had heard expressed by Ribbentrop and his friends, and now she had as good as said that the Germans meant only to maintain heavy pressure in the Caucasus while throwing everything else they could possibly rake up against Stalingrad. Coming from such a source it was a piece of information of inestimable value for it meant that, there being no threat to the Russians’ immensely long front to the north of Stalingrad, they could safely denude it of reserves and use them to stem the German advance in the vital sector.
Gregory felt that if, in all other respects, his journey to Budapest had proved a failure, this plum alone would have made it more than worth while. It strengthened his feeling that, come what might, he must contrive to spend as long as possible in Sabine’s company, on the off-chance that from her full scarlet lips there might drop other pearls of strategic knowledge.
‘So you see,’ she was going on, ‘the Russians haven’t a hope. With two months still to go before the winter closes in, the Germans have ample time to mount another all out offensive. The army defending Stalingrad will be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers, and by Christmas Stalin will have been compelled to throw his hand in.’
That was, of course, the very thing Gregory feared himself, and it was in the hope of saving the Russians by taking pressure off them that he had come to Budapest. In the circumstances, he could produce no sound arguments against her contentions; so he tried another tack:
‘Very well, let’s concede that, and look at the broader picture. It still leaves Britain and America in; and the Americans may not take as long as you think to finish off the Japs. Meanwhile, I give you my word that the British would sooner eat cats and rats than accept a dictated peace, and they will keep on bombing hell out of the German cities. It might go on for years and years. Think of the untold misery that will be suffered by millions of people on both sides. Surely it’s up to all of us to try to find some way to prevent that happening?’
‘Naturally,’ she agreed at once. ‘Nobody but a lunatic would want this awful slaughter to go on for a day longer than it is necessary. But your proposal is no solution. If the Hungarian army withdrew from the Russian front the Germans would have to fill the gap. That would leave them without sufficient reserves to make their break-through. Then the war there would drag o
n indefinitely; so you would have brought about the very thing you say you are trying to prevent.’
‘No. Once Hitler realised that he could not finish the Russians off in the foreseeable future, he would have to think again. Given time to train and equip their huge manpower, the Russians will be able to go over to the offensive, and with every month the United States is growing stronger. Hitler would see the red light and put out peace feelers before the tide started to turn against him. If he did so this winter I think there is an excellent chance that an arrangement could be reached by which both sides might save their faces.’
Gregory did not really believe that either side would now stop fighting short of complete victory, but he thought the possibility worth holding out. It proved quite the contrary, for Sabine shook her head and promptly declared:
‘If there were a patched up peace, it would be a bad day for Hungary.’
‘Why do you think that?’ he enquired.
‘Because Bolshevik Russia would have survived, and would continue indefinitely to be a menace to Christian Hungary.’
‘That is an old bogey. You put down your own revolution here in 1919 and for the twenty years that followed Hungary was never threatened by Russia; so I don’t see why you should think that she might be in the future.’
‘You would if you had watched the Soviets’ five-year plans going forward through those years, and realised the overwhelming strength Russia would have attained, given another ten years of peace to develop her resources. And, remember, Hungary is very differently situated from England. We had a common frontier with Russia and if those ruthless swine ever get back to it they could mass their huge armies within a hundred-and-fifty miles of Budapest.’
Traitors' Gate Page 16
