Traitors' Gate

by Dennis Wheatley

  Gloomily Gregory decided that the Dieppe raid had probably queered his pitch. Even if Sir Pellinore could get the Hungarian plan adopted it looked as if the odds were all against the required fifteen divisions of Anglo-American troops being launched against the Continent before winter set in, and it now seemed very doubtful whether Stalingrad would be able to hold out until winter. However, he knew that speculating on such matters would get them no further. His job was to reach home as soon as he possibly could in order to submit his report to the people who took the big decisions.

  When Pipi left the room, Gregory flung the paper aside and began to think of his own affairs. He and Sabine had got one another into a pretty mess. But for her he would never have gone to the Arizona, and but for that it was very unlikely that he would have come face to face with Grauber. But for him she would never have acted against the interests of the Gestapo, and but for that she would not have been condemned to go into exile.

  By bringing them together again Fate had played the very devil with his plans, and had stymied him each time he had tried to wriggle free. That was no fault of hers; it was his for having refrained from following his own judgment and acting with his usual ruthlessness.

  He realised now that admiration for the fight she had put up the previous night had led him to act like a sentimental fool. He should not have waited to hear the outcome of Grauber’s quarrel with Ribbentrop, or to say good-bye to her, but should have got out while the going was good. He was armed and had plenty of money on him. He should never have listened to her in the first place, after she had got him out of the police station, but gone off on his own. Under cover of darkness he could have got clear of the city at any hour of the night, and by now would have bribed some lorry-driver to give him a lift on the way to the frontier.

  Getting up, he crossed to the window, and from behind a partly-drawn curtain, peered out. As he had half expected, a knife-grinder whom he had seen down below in the street when he had looked out earlier was still there. The man was not now even pretending to sharpen knives against his treadle wheel, or to secure custom from the palaces opposite, but was just leaning against his barrow smoking a cigarette. Obviously he was a Gestapo agent who had been sent to keep watch on that side of the Tuzulto Palace.

  Returning to his armchair, Gregory began to wonder just how much pull Grauber had in Budapest, and decided that it was probably considerable. The order to the police that Ribbentrop meant to obtain from Admiral Horthy, that they should not interfere with Sabine, would not apply to him and at best it would make them no more than neutral while he was in her company. As long as he remained with her in her palace he would probably be safe; but she had to leave during the coming night at latest, and once out of it he must expect that Grauber would ignore the law and go to any lengths to get him. To attempt a break out on his own now, in daylight, would obviously be suicidal; so it seemed that there was no alternative but to wait and go with Sabine. There was just a chance that her plan might succeed, but he was far from happy about it.

  He looked through the books Pipi had brought him with the idea of starting one to take his mind off his anxieties. On the jacket of one there was the picture of a slim dark girl pointing a small automatic at a man in a dinner-jacket. The girl had a faint resemblance to Sabine and Gregory’s thoughts promptly turned from the picture to the lovely passionate girl who had jumped into his bed the night before.

  With a smile he recalled the intensity of her fury when Ribbentrop’s arrival had interrupted their love-making; although he knew that his own fury would have equalled hers had not the necessity for keeping his mind clear to cope with what might prove a new danger forced him to purge it of emotion. Until he actually had her in his arms he had forgotten the feel of the exceptionally satin-like quality of that lovely magnolia skin of hers; and that, although her arms and legs were strong, her torso had a yielding softness which gave the impression that except for her spine she had no bones between her shoulders and her lower limbs. All day they had been steadily stoking one another’s fires of desire, and the moment her arms closed round his neck the check administered by his ill-fated meeting with Grauber at the Arizona had been wiped from his mind as though it had never occurred. The scent of her had gone like wine to his head and the dew of her mouth was like honey to his lips.

  ‘What a night we would have had! Perhaps better even than our first,’ he thought to himself with a sigh, ‘if it hadn’t been for Ribbentrop.’

  He started three books but after a chapter or two of each found that their stories could not hold him. His mind was too occupied with anxiety about the coming bid to get out of Budapest. It was utterly infuriating to think that less than twenty-four hours earlier he could have left without the least trouble, whereas now, if things went wrong, less than another twenty-four hours would see him shanghaied over the frontier to Austria and being taken to pieces in a Gestapo torture chamber. The thought of the lovely young girl who had given him his passport at the S.O.E. Headquarters in London flickered through his mind. Diana; yes, that had been her name, and he had promised himself that he would bring her back the biggest tin of foie-gras he could find. No hope of that now.

  Somehow he got through the morning and at half-past one Pipi brought him up lunch on a tray. He ate it slowly to kill time and, when Pipi had taken the tray away, lay down on the bed hoping that, as he expected to be up all night, he would be able to get a sleep. But sleep would not come. Thoughts of Grauber still plagued him.

  It was certain that the Gruppenführer would be spending the day pulling every gun he had with the Hungarians. No doubt he would do his damnedest to get the Police to co-operate with him and, in spite of the Regent’s order, hold up Sabine’s car when she left in it. They would be loath to offend him, but might search the car on the pretext that they believed her to be helping a wanted criminal to escape by carrying him off in its boot. If they did hold the car up it was a certainty that his thin disguise as Sabine’s chauffeur would never get past Grauber.

  Even if the police refused their help there was still the Arrow-Cross. As they were Nazis and most of German or Austrian blood, their first loyalty was not to Admiral Horthy but to Hitler. Major Szalasi had funked offending Ribbentrop on the previous night but it had been plain where his real sympathies lay. He could keep a clean bill himself by not appearing personally in the business and afterwards denying that he had had any hand in it, yet give Grauber the loan of several troops of his young Jew-baiters to block the streets.

  Last, but by no means least, there were Grauber’s own thugs at the Villa Petoefer. They would stick at nothing, and even if one of them committed murder Grauber would only have to call on Berlin for enough pressure to be exerted to have the matter hushed up.

  That he stood little risk of being murdered outright was Gregory’s one small rag of comfort. If he was once recognised as Sabine’s chauffeur, it would be the easiest thing in the world to shoot him from the pavement; but Grauber wanted him alive. There could be no doubt about that, and it would be a poor look-out for the Gestapo man who killed him, or even did him a serious injury, before he was under lock and key.

  A little after four o’clock he was at last relieved from further harrowing day-dreams by Sabine’s coming in to him. As he sat up with a jerk she made straight for the armchair, gave a sigh of tiredness from her exertions, threw herself into it and kicked off her shoes.

  Slipping off the bed, he lit a cigarette for her and after a few puffs she reported that so far all had gone well. Ribbentrop had secured all the necessary papers for her and had explained to the Regent that she had fallen foul of the Gestapo, who might endeavour to have her and her chauffeur arrested on their way out of the country. Horthy had promised to give an order personally to his Chief of Police that she was not to be molested, and one of his secretaries had telephoned instructions to Zagreb that she, her man and her car were to be allowed across the frontier without being subjected to any formalities. But Ribbentrop had again warned her t
hat she must not delay her departure beyond the coming night, as it was certain that Grauber would already have appealed to Berlin for help. By the morning at latest Himmler would be making a personal issue of it with the Regent that Tavenier must be caught and herself hauled in for questioning by the Gestapo.

  She had given her solicitor a power of attorney to deal with her affairs and meet her liabilities during her absence, had taken out from her bank in cash all the money that she had immediately available—which amounted to about six hundred pounds—and had collected, to take with her, the most valuable of the Tuzolto family jewels.

  ‘By Jove!’ Gregory smiled down at her. ‘You have had a day! No wonder you’re tired. Was anything said about, er—your old friend Commandant Tavenier?’

  She nodded. ‘Ribb is no fool. I’m sure he believes that you are still here; and he probably guesses that I mean to take you out as my chauffeur. Anyhow, he is extremely anxious that you should not be caught, from fear of what the Gestapo boys might screw out of you. It is a hundred to one they would force you to say that I was an enemy agent and make it appear that he had been guilty of confiding secrets to me that only the inner ring of Nazis are supposed to know. He has told Admiral Horthy that you are one of his private operatives and he has special reasons for not wishing the Gestapo to know that; so the Police are being briefed to ignore any request that Grauber may make for help to catch you.’

  ‘Well, that’s some comfort. I suppose the next thing is to fix things up with your chauffeur? I only hope to God he doesn’t refuse to play.’

  ‘I’ve already done that.’ She gave a tired shrug. ‘I had a talk with Mario first thing this morning. I had to in order to get his passport so that it could be specially visa’d.’

  ‘Of course. I realise that. But do you mean that he has agreed to let me have it, and to hand over his uniform?’

  ‘Yes. I felt sure he would. He was one of Kelemen’s most trusted servants, and since his master’s death he has transferred his allegiance to me. When I told him that helping you meant a great deal to me he agreed at once; and when he knew that it was the Germans we were planning to do in the eye he was absolutely delighted. I had great difficulty in persuading the old boy even to accept a present.’

  ‘The old boy!’ Gregory echoed in alarm. ‘I’m not exactly in the junior subaltern class myself, but if you really think of him as old, I may have difficulty in passing for him, even in the distance.’

  ‘He is older than you; but not all that much. It’s only his hair’s having gone grey early that makes me think of him as of Kelemen’s generation. You needn’t worry about that though. I mean to lightly powder your hair where it will show beneath the cap.’ Picking up her bag, she took a packet of papers from it, picked one out, handed it to Gregory, and added ‘Look, here is his passport. You had better keep it.’

  Opening it quickly Gregory looked at the photograph. To his relief he saw that Sabine had been right. Mario had at least a superficial resemblance to himself. On close examination they could not possibly have been mistaken for one another, but that did not matter as Sabine had a special authorisation for passing the frontier with her chauffeur and they would not have to answer any awkward questions. The important thing was that both he and Mario were of the long-faced type, with straight noses and good chins; so, with the chauffeur’s cap pulled well down, and seated behind the wheel of a car, Gregory felt that after dark there would be a good chance of the watchers, outside taking him for the Italian.

  Having expressed his satisfaction, he said, ‘Now, tell me, when you left the house did you see any suspicious types lurking about the courtyard entrance?’

  ‘Yes. When I first went out, at about half-past ten, there was a man with a barrow of tomatoes; and hawkers don’t come into these streets as a rule. When I got back, about midday, he had gone but a pavement artist had taken up his position opposite, and I’ve never known one choose that pitch before. I’ve been out and back twice since, and he is still there. There seemed to be one or two loungers farther down the street, too, who didn’t quite fit into the usual scene.’

  ‘I expected as much. This side of the palace is being watched as well; a knife grinder first thing this morning and later a crippled beggar who is selling matches. When you went out I take it you used your car. Did you drive yourself or have Mario drive you?’

  ‘Mario drove me all three times. I wanted to keep my mind free to think about things, and not have to be bothered with parking.’

  ‘Did anyone attempt to stop you?’

  ‘Oh no, there was nothing of that sort.’

  Gregory gave a sigh of relief. ‘Thank God for that. It means they are far less likely to now they are used to seeing the car come out with you in it driven by Mario. You’ve made me much more confident about my chances of passing as him when twilight has fallen.’

  ‘He is going over the car now—filling her up and seeing that she is in apple-pie order for a long run.’

  ‘Good! My sweet, you think of everything. You’ve done a wonderful job.’

  She smiled a little wanly and stood up. ‘I’ve got to get you out somehow, and myself; otherwise, as soon as Grauber gets some extra backing from Berlin, it is going to be very unhealthy round here for both of us.’

  ‘You’re dead right about that.’ He put an arm about her. ‘But after your long day, you’re all in, darling. Lie down and rest for a bit on the bed.’

  Turning her head she gave him a quick kiss, but pulled away before he could return it. ‘No. I still have to pack. And when I do next lie on your bed it is going to be for twenty-four hours without a break.’

  Catching her arm he jerked her back, held her tightly to him for a moment and gave her a long fierce kiss. As he released her he laughed, ‘So you shall, my pet; and that is an earnest of what I’ll do to you. If you want a real rest we’d better shut ourselves up for a week as the Spanish peasants do on their honeymoons. I’m told they spend the last twenty-four hours sleeping.’

  ‘Darling!’ she gasped, when she could get her breath. ‘I’m a fool to admit it, because as soon as we’ve left Hungary you’ll be all I’ve got; but I’m crazy about you.’

  Her words sobered him a little, but he did not show it. Giving her a swift pat on her small behind, he said, ‘Get your packing done as quickly as you can, then come back to me. We must have a meal before we start, so let’s have it together up here, and while we are eating we can fix up final details.’

  She agreed and left him. He then made another attempt to settle down to one of the books. This time, by using considerable concentration, he managed to keep his mind on a novel by Gilbert Grankau called Three Englishmen. After he had been reading for about an hour and a half, Pipi came in carrying a chauffeur’s topcoat and a suitcase containing the rest of Mario’s uniform. Unpacking the case, he suggested that Gregory should see how the uniform fitted, then pack in the case such of the Baron’s things as he wished to take with him.

  The uniform proved a little tight across the shoulders and slack round the hips, but as he and Mario were much of a height it was otherwise not a bad fit. There was a tin of talcum powder in the bathroom, so he used some of it to make grey the hair above his ears. Then he went through the wardrobe and chest of drawers again, selected the most useful of the Baron’s clothes and packed them into the suitcase.

  He had only just finished when Pipi returned with cocktails, and ten minutes later Sabine, having changed her summer frock for a suit of light travelling tweeds, joined him. Now that she could relax, and her mind was no longer occupied with matters it was essential that she should see to, her spirits had fallen to a low ebb. She did not actually reproach Gregory for being the cause of a complete upheaval in her life, but it was clear that she was greatly worried and distressed at having to abandon a position which gave her security, interest and carefree pleasure for a very uncertain future. In the circumstances he could not do less than promise to take care of her, while thrusting into the back of his mind
the infernally difficult problem of how he could manage to do so.

  After a couple of Martinis she cheered up a little; then Pipi brought in their early dinner on a wheeled tray. She apologised for the meal being cold but said that the kitchen staff were still in ignorance of his presence in the house and had been told that she was dining out; so Magda and Pipi had had to scrounge food for them from the larder. Gregory refrained from remarking that, even so, it was a feast compared with anything that could have been got in a London hotel after three years of war, and did ample justice to the smoked ham, cold duck and foie-gras. A bottle of champagne followed by a good ration of very old Baratsch put good heart into them, and they were both feeling fairly optimistic when, soon after eight o’clock, they went downstairs to set out on their hazardous journey.

  To assist the illusion that she was being driven out to dinner Sabine did not wear a hat, and had had her sable coat laid on the floor in the back of the car. Instead of it she put on over her tweeds an exotic cape of white ostrich feathers. For the same reason such luggage as they were taking had all been stowed in the boot, with the exception of a pigskin beauty box containing her jewels, which she was carrying herself and could be hidden under the rug she would have over her knees.

  The garage was a part of the old stables occupying the whole of the left side of the courtyard, but it could be reached from the main block of the house by an interior passage. Pipi and Magda escorted them to it and Mario was already there giving a last loving polish to the bonnet of the Mercedes. Gregory had driven many cars so he had no doubts about his ability to handle it; but after thanking Mario for his help with the passport and uniform he got the Italian to give him a thorough run over its dashboard and the engine. Pipi meanwhile went out to reconnoitre the street and returned to say that it was as quiet as was usual at that hour. Gregory ran the engine for a few minutes to get it thoroughly warmed up, Sabine got into the back, the good-byes were said and ‘good luck’ called in low voices by the faithful servants. At Gregory’s signal Mario pulled up the roller shutter at the exit end of the bay. With a gentle purr the car moved forward, turned and headed for the entrance to the courtyard.