The Black Baroness

by Dennis Wheatley

  In the Mess Gregory saw a copy of the order that General Camelin had issued that day. It said: ‘Any soldier who cannot advance should allow himself to be killed rather than abandon that part of our national soil which has been entrusted to him.’ So, clearly, for the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies to have played his last card by such a backs-to-the-wall command, the situation was really critical.

  The farmhouse was filled to capacity but Peachie managed to secure a double bed for Gregory and himself in a cottage near by, and they slept on it in their clothes, ready to be up and doing at a moment’s notice in any emergency.

  At five o’clock they were wakened by shells screaming into the village and knew that the battle was on again. The Germans had taken Brussels in their stride and now that daylight was approaching they were launching new attacks upon the hard-pressed British. In the farmhouse the Mess orderlies were going about their business quite unperturbed and to Gregory’s surprise and pleasure he was given bacon and eggs for breakfast as well as lashings of hot tea. Reports had come in from the advance company that German tanks were approaching so the remainder of the battalion was already mustering in the village street. Gregory saw no cause to delay any further and knew that he would only be in the way of the others if he did, so he thanked his hosts and, wishing them luck, set out along the road to Brussels.

  There were a number of other civilians about, mostly villagers or refugees from the city. With what appeared to Gregory the height of foolhardiness, they ignored the German planes which were once more buzzing overhead and the shells which were bursting only a few hundred yards away, to stand about on the higher ground so that they could get a good view of the battle that was opening, but their presence suited him very well as it meant that he was in no way conspicuous.

  He had scarcely covered half a mile when the planes dive-bombed the village; but fortunately, by that time, the troops had moved out of it, scattering to north and south to take up their positions. A few hundred yards further on a crossroad was being crumped every few moments by the shells of a German heavy battery, so he took to the fields and gave it a wide berth. Five minutes later a British Tommy popped up from behind a hedge and called on him to halt, threatening him with a rifle; but Gregory spoke to him in English, giving him the names of half a dozen officers of his battalion, and told him that it was his job to go forward to get information.

  ‘Crikey!’ exclaimed the Tommy. ‘You don’t mean to say we’ve got a Fifth Column too?’

  ‘Yes; I’m it,’ Gregory laughed.

  ‘Right-oh; pass, chum; but you’ve got your work cut out against half the German Army dressed as Belgians.’ The man put up the rifle and waved him on.

  Twice more he was challenged by solitary Guardsmen but each time they let him through and although a few bullets were now whistling about he continued to walk forward, considering that to display himself openly in his civilian clothes was his best protection. Yet on crossing a field towards a group of houses he had a narrow squeak; a machine-gun opened fire, tearing up the grass about ten yards to his left. He could not tell if the gun was badly aimed or if it was fired by a Jerry who thought it would be fun to scare the wits out of a solitary Belgian, but he leapt for the ditch and Jay there until the gunner ceased fire; then he cautiously crawled forward on his hands and knees until he came to the nearest house. Standing up, he walked round it, and on turning the corner to get on to the road again he ran straight into a patrol of German infantry.

  A Feldwebel immediately pointed an automatic at him so he shot up his hands and spoke in German. ‘It’s all right. Sergeant; I am a German officer on special service. Hold your fire for a minute while I show you my passport,’ and slipping his hand into his breast-pocket he produced the now much-worn document which had so often established his identity as Oberst-Baron von Lutz.

  The Corporal glanced at it, called his men sharply to attention and saluted. Gregory pocketed the passport again and with a little nod to the group walked on. British shells were now screaming overhead and the staccato rattle of machine-guns interspersed by the occasional crack of rifles showed that the battle had been joined in earnest behind him; but now that he had crossed no-man’s-land the most perilous part of his dangerous morning walk was over.

  As he advanced the houses became more frequent and many of their occupants were standing at their windows or in the street, so the further group of Germans that he met took no notice of him. A long column of tanks clattered by and from the dents and scars upon them he saw that they had already done considerable service. By eight o’clock he had left the suburbs and penetrated to the centre of Brussels. It had taken him just seventy-two hours to do the journey from Rotterdam which he should normally have accomplished in an hour and a half.

  It was a very different city to that which he had left fourteen days earlier. The streets were almost deserted except for the columns of German troops. Shops and houses were closed and shuttered, but he noticed with relief that the city did not seem to have suffered much from aerial attack. Here and there a bomb had wrecked a building or blown a hole in the road but the damage was not one-thousandth part of that which had been done in Rotterdam.

  In the neighbourhood of the Royal Palace the damage was more severe, so it seemed that the Germans had been up to their old game of endeavouring to eliminate the Head of the State, but as he turned into the Rue Montoyer he saw that it was practically untouched. There was only one great gap among the houses, where a bomb had cut like a knife clean through the block.

  Suddenly he looked again and halted, utterly aghast. The empty air above that great pile of débris was where Erika’s flat had been; the whole building had been blown to fragments.

  17

  Dark Days in Brussels

  For a long time Gregory was too stunned to do anything but stand there, staring at the empty gap between the houses where Erika’s apartment had been. He was very far from a pessimist by nature yet, perhaps because they had escaped so many dangers, it had never occurred to him that Erika might be the casual victim of an air-raid. As he stared he began to surfer untold agonies, one symptom of which was a real physical pain right down in the pit of his stomach, at the thought that she was irretrievably lost to him.

  Unnoticed by him an elderly man had shuffled up behind him, and he started as a thin, quavering voice at his elbow said in French: ‘That was a big one—that was. I live three streets away, but we heard it above all the rest, and I said to my wife, I said: “That’s a big one—that is”—and sure enough I was right. Twenty bodies they took out of that pile of ruins, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more of them buried there yet.’

  ‘Go away!’ snapped Gregory, turning on the old ghoul furiously.

  ‘All right, all right.’ The elderly man looked slightly offended. ‘I’m only telling you what I saw. Six men, nine women and five children they brought out, though most of them were in bits, and I don’t doubt there’s more bodies under that heap yet.’

  ‘Go away!’ repeated Gregory. ‘Go away.’ Then, as his unsolicited informant turned to dodder off, it suddenly occurred to him to ask: ‘What time did the bomb fall?’

  The old man piped up with an angry squeak. ‘Find out for yourself; I’m not giving any more details to a rude fellow like you.’

  In one stride Gregory had caught him up and, seizing him by his skinny neck, shook him like a rat. He dropped his stick, his hat fell off and his pale-blue eyes showed wild panic.

  ‘Now,’ said Gregory; ‘answer me! When did that bomb fall?’

  ‘Two nights ago—near on one o’clock,’ choked the little man, and taking to his heels the second that Gregory released him he began to run down the street.

  Gregory groaned. At one in the morning Erika would almost certainly have been at home; but his faculties were beginning to return to him and without another glance at the retreating figure he had assaulted he started to run down the street in the opposite direction. There were no taxis to be had or he woul
d have secured one an hour earlier, directly he had reached the centre of the town; so he ran and walked alternately all the way to the Hotel Astoria.

  When he arrived there twenty minutes later he found that the hotel was still open but had been taken over as a German Staff Headquarters. There were a number of cars outside, a sentry was posted on the doorway and officers were constantly going in and out.

  Having thrust his German passport under the sentry’s nose, which resulted in the soldier’s springing to attention and presenting arms, he hurried inside. To his relief he found that the Belgian head porter had been retained to continue his duties. He inquired at once if the man knew what had become of Kuporovitch.

  The porter told him that the Russian had left Brussels early the previous Tuesday morning in a car, with a lady.

  Gregory’s heart bounded with hope, only to sink again a moment later as the porter went on to add that the car belonged to the lady, who was a great friend of the Russian gentleman, as during the past five weeks she had often called at the hotel and taken meals with him in the restaurant. That could only refer to Paula, as was confirmed when Gregory asked the porter to describe the lady and he said that she was very good-looking with dark hair and with a rather high colour. He was quite certain that no other lady had been with them and that Kuporovitch had departed without giving any hint as to his destination, or leaving any message for anyone.

  He thanked the man and staggered out into the strong sunshine of the street. It seemed a little odd that Paula should have fled from Brussels, as there was no earthly reason for her to be afraid of the advancing Germans; but on second thoughts Gregory realised that if she remained in captured territory she would become useless to them. Evidently her instructions had been to get out before they arrived so that she could continue her work in western Belgium or France in the rôle of a refugee from Nazi persecution. But he could not understand at all why Kuporovitch had failed to leave some message for him. The Russian must have known that Erika’s death now left him as the sole link between the Allies and the activities of Hitler’s secret weapon in the Low Countries, and although it seemed that, for Gregory, the end of the world had come, he realised in a dull fashion underneath his pain that the war must go on.

  It was that thought which stirred him into fresh activity. While the old man had been talking to him his imagination had conjured up a ghastly picture of his beautiful Erika, her golden hair in wild disorder, her blue eyes open but dull and blood trickling from the corner of her mouth, as she lay crushed and broken among those ruins. In the last half-hour that nightmare vision had kept returning to him and he knew that he must exorcise it from his brain if he was to retain his sanity. The only way to do that was to work and to kill Germans—that was it—work and kill—work and kill—so that his mind should be occupied for every moment of his waking hours. Then when he dared to think of her again he must think of her only as he had seen her in Munich, or on that first evening that he had played butler to her in Brussels—as bright, laughing and unbelievably beautiful.

  He had walked some distance without even thinking where he was going; but now he checked himself and turned down the hill towards the centre of the town. When he reached the broad Boulevard Anspach he halted opposite the Metropole Hotel. There were three cars outside and at that moment a porter came out carrying some luggage; so the hotel was evidently still open and had not yet been taken over by the Germans.

  As he stepped forward to enter it a fresh wave of pain engulfed his whole mentality. It was here, barely a fortnight ago, that he had said good-bye to Erika. For a second his footsteps faltered; he thought of turning round and making for the Grand, but he knew that now, if ever, he must be firm with himself. Bracing his muscles he went in, reclaimed the suitcase which he had left there under the name of Colonel-Baron von Lutz and asked for a room. There were plenty of rooms available, as four-fifths of the guests had fled bag and baggage the previous day, but the desk clerk told him that most of the staff had also left, so he would have to put up with certain inconveniences. He said that he did not mind that and the clerk gave him the key of a room with directions how to find it, as there was no page available to take him up.

  Once upstairs he turned on a hot bath, stripped and got into it. For over an hour he lay soaking there, keeping up the temperature by adding more hot water from time to time. He had not done too badly for sleep since his escape from Holland—a good night at Harwich and about six hours in the cottage outside Brussels where he had wakened that morning—and his exertions since leaving England had not been great; so he was not particularly tired after the seven or eight miles that he had walked since dawn; but the hot water helped to relax his mind as well as his limbs and while he lay there he tried to plan what his next move should be.

  During his days of imprisonment and of subsequent travel the Black Baroness had never been far from his thoughts. The fact that when he had run her to earth Grauber, of all people, had been in her suite, and that the Gestapo Chief had treated her with great deference, fully confirmed his belief that she was not only hand-in-glove with the Nazis but regarded by them as an ally of considerable importance. That she had got the best of him in their first encounter only made him the more determined to find some way of putting a stop to her activities; but the question was how to set about it.

  Her meeting with Grauber in Rotterdam, only an hour before ths Blitzkrieg was due to open, indicated that her work in Holland had been completed and that she had met him to receive fresh instructions for future operations in some other field; so the probability was that when she had flown out of Holland she had gone to France or Britain. For Gregory to reach either, now that he was behind the German line, presented certain difficulties, but these, he felt, were by no means insurmountable. He had crossed the battle-line in safety only that morning and as long as the contending forces remained in a state of fluidity he saw no reason why he should not cross it again without any greater risk than that which is run by a soldier who is engaged in open warfare; but it would mean another long and tiring journey on foot and when he got through to friendly territory he did not quite see what he was going to do there.

  Now that he had lost touch with Paula and Kuporovitch he had no means of getting fresh information about the Baroness’s movements, and by this time she might be anywhere from Edinburgh to Monte Carlo; so it seemed that he might spend weeks snooping about in city after city without coming upon any trace of her and, meanwhile, close at hand the greatest battle in history was raging. The more he thought it over the more certain he became that he could serve his country to much more useful purpose at this hour of crisis by remaining where he was and learning anything he could of the Germans’ intentions, before endeavouring to recross the firing-line, than by setting off now, empty-handed.

  Having shaved and dressed he went down to the restaurant, and found that it presented a very different scene from when he had last entered it. There were now few civilians at the tables but many groups of German officers and, not for the first time, he thought with some bitterness of the enormous advantages reaped by the enemy from being the aggressor. Just as in the last war the Germans could, and did, render any town or village within range of their guns either untenable or dangerous, while in a retreat they deliberately razed every house to the ground so that our men should not even have the benefit of roofs under which to shelter; whereas, since we always fought in friendly territory we had to respect property, even to some extent in the actual battle area, and when the enemy made a victorious advance he could use captured towns as safety zones for troop-concentrations or to give his men rest and enjoyment with complete immunity, as there could never be any question of our shelling such cities as Brussels, Oslo or Amsterdam.

  In spite of the shortage of staff an excellent meal was still obtainable, as no food stocks had yet been commandeered and the supply in Brussels was abundant; but for once in his life he took no interest in ordering his meal and accepted the waiter’s suggestion withou
t comment, asking the man at the same time to bring him any papers that were available.

  The waiter returned with the single sheet of an emergency edition which had been run off the press about ten o’clock and was the only paper that had been published in Brussels that morning. From a small sketch map he saw that the bulge south of Sedan had considerably enlarged and was spreading towards the west, while in the south the Germans had nearly reached Rethel. Liège and Namur were now both surrounded but were fighting on. The most alarming news, however, was a report that the Belgians had abandoned Antwerp. That seemed to Gregory an extremely serious matter as the great fortifications of the city formed the bulwark of the northern end of the Allied line, and if the Germans once broke through there they would have outflanked the Northern Armies.

  When his food came he realised that he was still feeling too sick to eat more than a few mouthfuls, so he abandoned the uneven contest, paid the bill and went out to see if any of the shops were now open. He found that quite a number of the smaller places had taken down their shutters in preparation to doing business with such of their old customers as remained in the city or with the troops of the all-conquering Army, since shopkeepers must do their best to earn a living even when their city has been occupied by an enemy.

  Having bought himself a few necessities he took them back to the hotel, then went out again, taking the road which led east towards Louvain. Nearly all civilian traffic had ceased, so he had made up his mind to a long, dreary tramp; but in the suburbs he was fortunate enough to see an empty farm-cart proceeding in the direction that he wanted to go, so he hailed the driver and secured a lift.

  The man told him that the Germans had commandeered the hay in his barn that morning and had made him take it in for them to a depot which they had established on the outskirts of the city, and that he was now returning home. Gregory said that he was a commercial traveller who had been caught in Brussels and wished to get back to his family in Hasselt, as he was acutely anxious to learn if his wife and children had escaped harm. The two of them then exchanged gloomy forebodings about the fate that had overtaken their country, as the farm wagon trundled on through the afternoon sunshine with the sound of the guns behind it growing gradually more distant.