She was given no chance to speculate further at the moment as Grauber’s hand closed on her arm again and they all moved towards the main door. Perhaps Einholtz had left it unlatched; in any case it opened at his touch and, switching on the lights as he went, he led them down the short passage to the banqueting hall.
“I think we might start by having some supper,” Grauber announced in his high voice. “I’m quite hungry after our drive.”
“Jawohl, Herr Gruppenführer,” Einholtz replied quickly. “If you will keep an eye on the woman, I will arrange it. We don’t want her jumping out of the window again.”
Grauber glanced at the doctor. “He will see to that. I’d like a word with you before you go.”
They had automatically gone forward to the big open hearth. While the doctor remained near Erika the other two walked back towards the passage and stood for a few moments conversing in the doorway to it.
As Erika sat down in one of the high-backed armchairs her glance fell upon the big, brass-faced clock that was ticking away above the carved wood mantel. The hands stood at a quarter past three. It seemed inconceivable to her that barely five hours had elapsed since she had left the castle; since nearly four of those must have been occupied by her journeys to and from the shores of the Bodensee. Yet, actually, her attempt to get the launch, her arrest, the short run into Friedrichshafen and her soul-shattering experiences at the Gestapo office had all been encompassed in little more than an hour.
She wondered vaguely what had happened to Kurt. Perhaps, having no more use for him, Einholtz had shot him before leaving the castle; or possibly he had been handcuffed to his own bed and locked in his room. Then, for the first time, the question entered her mind as to what had happened to the Gräfin Bertha. Somehow she had taken it for granted that the game old woman had got safely back. But had she? On the way to Friedrichshafen Einholtz had disclosed that he had known the part she was playing all the time. The terror Erika had felt in the Gestapo office had put that out of her mind, but now she suddenly became acutely anxious for her mother-in-law. Grauber and Einholtz were not the sort of men to neglect their habit of exacting a bitter payment from anyone who sheltered and aided any fugitive from the mockery of Nazi justice.
The clock had ticked through ten minutes when Erika heard footsteps in the passage, and with a fresh surge of apprehension saw the old Countess come in.
She had a heavy dressing-gown over her nightdress and she was followed by Helga, who was similarly, if more attractively, clad. Einholtz brought up the rear.
Grauber, who had sat down near the entrance to the hall, came to his feet, clicked his heels and bowed from the waist with ironical politeness as he presented himself:
“Gruppenführer Grauber, I have heard quite a lot about you tonight, Frau Gräfin, and I am most interested to make your acquaintance.”
The old lady had her chin in the air, and her dark eyes surveyed him as though he was something that the cat had brought in.
“What do you want with me?” she snapped. “How dare you get me out of bed at this time of night.”
“I want some supper,” he purred. “And you, Frau Gräfin, are going to get it for me. As you cannot have been in bed for much more than an hour, it is quite fitting that you should get up again; so that, unexpected by you as the sequel to your recent adventure may be, you should not be deprived of witnessing its results.”
As she made no reply he brought down the short whip that he was carrying with a smart smack on the leather of the chair behind him, and barked, “Supper, you old cow, or the next time this whip falls it will be your hide that it will lash!”
For probably the first time in her life the Gräfin Bertha showed fear. She had seen Erika, dishevelled, battered, and with one eye bunged up from a great purple bruise, slumped in a chair at the far end of the room, so she needed no telling what had happened. The blood drained from her face and, without a word, she silently turned about.
Einholtz grinned at Helga, and gave the lush-looking maid a friendly slap on the bottom. “Go and keep an eye on the old bitch,” he laughed, “and make her put her back into it. You’ve got nothing to worry about. You’ll be leaving here tomorrow. We can use a girl like you.”
With an answering laugh Helga followed her ex-mistress out of the room.
The clock ticked metallically on for another quarter of an hour. Erika was wishing that instead of shooting Einholtz ineffectively in the boathouse she had turned her pistol on herself. She did not know what was going to happen, but the atmosphere of the place was now heavy with the foreboding of some unbelievably ghastly scene that was soon to be enacted there.
Then there were footsteps again and her mother-in-law came back, carrying a tray so heavily laden that her aged arms could scarcely bear its weight. Helga walked jauntily behind her carrying three bottles of Hock.
Suppressing a sob, the Gräfin Bertha set the heavy tray down on the table. With palsied hands she set out the plates, cutlery and three dishes containing the best cold food the larder had to offer. When she had done, Helga snapped at her:
“Get the glasses, quick now!”
“Go with her, Helga,” said Grauber, quietly. “I don’t want our charming hostess to rat on her own party.”
While the two women were away the men drew chairs up to the table. Grauber set one for Erika and bowed to her. “The Gräfin von Osterberg will not refuse to join us in her own home, I’m sure.”
During the past half hour Erika’s limbs had stiffened as she sat. When she stood up a score of pains seared through her and she gave a little moan, but she tottered to the table and sank down in the high-backed Jacobean elbow chair that Grauber was holding for her.
The Gräfin Bertha returned with another tray. While she set the glasses on the table Helga uncorked the wine. The three men helped themselves to the food and all of them offered the dishes to Erika, but she shook her head. Her swollen tongue was now dry in her mouth and a morsel of food would have choked her, even had she been willing to eat with them.
Helga took a chair next to Einholtz and began to help herself lavishly to the cold meats. As she was munching her first mouthful she grinned maliciously up at the Gräfin Bertha and said:
“You stay where you are and wait on us. Come on, give us some wine.”
The old lady picked up one of the bottles of Hock, walked round to behind Erika’s chair and poured her a full glass. “Drink that, child,” she said gruffly, “you need it.”
It was the only time she had spoken since her first appearance and the sound of her voice did Erika good. She felt certain that the old woman understood it was through no fault of hers that the Gestapo men had come to the castle and were inflicting these indignities upon its aged chatelaine. She gratefully drank the golden wine. It stung her sore tongue a little but eased the dryness of her mouth and its warmth made her feel slightly stronger. Having poured out for the others, the Gräfin Bertha walked quietly to an armchair by the dead embers of the fire and, picking up her workbag, began to knit.
The nightmare meal seemed to drag on interminably, yet barely twenty minutes had passed when Grauber pushed away his plate. The others followed suit, lit cigarettes, and passed round the third bottle of Hock.
In the ensuing silence Erika became a prey to the most frightful fears again. What were they going to do now? How would this night of horrors end?
Grauber tipped back his chair, looked across at her and said:
“After the feast, the entertainment. That is the proper order of things, isn’t it, Frau Gräfin? Tonight, in this marvellous old hall, which makes so perfect a setting for such a scene, we shall be privileged to witness a somewhat unusual spectacle. Herr Doktor, oblige me by getting out your apparatus.”
The soulless eyes behind the heavy lensed spectacles showed no trace of emotion. Like an automaton the Gestapo-trained operator, who had not uttered a single word since Erika had first set eyes on him, stood up. Walking over to the big leather case that he had brou
ght with him, he produced a set of batteries, the coils of flex and the two poker-like terminals. Einholtz pushed aside some plates for him and he set them on the table. After making a quick test he spoke at last:
“All is ready, Herr Gruppenführer.”
The blood had drained from Erika’s face as Grauber looked at her again, and said:
“As I was remarking to Herr Oberstleutnant Einholtz earlier tonight, you do not stand up well to physical torture. You are one of those highly strung women who are damnably obstinate yet faint as soon as some trifling persuasion is offered to them. No information can be extracted from an unconscious body, so as far as the Herr Doktor’s apparatus is concerned, and other similar treatments, you are a very poor subject.”
Erika felt certain that he was playing a cat-and-mouse game with her. He was deliberately encouraging her to hope for mercy in order that she might be plunged into greater depths of despair when, as she knew already, it emerged that not a trace of mercy existed in his perverted and evil heart. But he went smoothly on:
“I have seen many women under examination with various scientific aids, and the sight of your paroxysms would hold nothing new for me. But I promised our friends an unusual spectacle, and I will give it to them. It would interest me to see how a really aged woman reacts.”
Turning away, he added suddenly to Helga: “You are the Gräfin Bertha’s personal maid. Strip her of her clothes.”
“Stop!” Erika’s cry rang round the hall as she sprang to her feet. “I will not have it!”
Grauber looked up at her, his single eye lit by a self-congratulatory smile. “I had an idea that might bring you to heel,” he purred. “It never fails to intrigue me that people who are prepared to die rather than talk themselves will often cave in rather than see others touched; although I confess that I don’t pretend to understand it myself.”
“You wouldn’t, you swine,” she flared at him.
He shrugged. “Now you feel differently you may as well get it over. Tell me what Gregory Sallust is up to in Russia and I will send the Gräfin Bertha back to bed.”
Erika slumped down in her chair again and buried her face in her hands. She knew that she could not possibly sit there and let them strip that hidebound, dogmatic, but courageous old woman naked, far less allow them to practise upon her the vile indignity that had turned the Friedrichshafen prostitute from a stalwart woman into a quivering, slobbering jelly. It was unthinkable, and Gregory himself would be the first to agree to that.
Frantically she wondered what the effects of giving away the reason for his journey into Russia would be to him. But she could not see that it would in any way jeopardise his safety. His mission was so wide and general in its scope that to disclose its objects would reveal no vital secret.
Suddenly Grauber brought his great fist crashing down on the table. The plates were still rattling as he shouted: “I’ve wasted enough time on you. Are you going to talk, or am I to make that old bitch jump around as she hasn’t done since she went on her honeymoon?”
Erika started upright. “Yes! I’ll tell you!” she gasped. “Gregory has gone to Russia to find out three things. How much of their manpower the Russians can arm and put in the field. How much territory they can afford to give away before they are forced either to make a stand or surrender; and the state of Stalin’s health.”
Grauber’s solitary eye opened wide, then an amazed smile spread over his heavy features.
“But this is marvellous!” he cried. “Sallust is the best agent that the British have got. If I can capture him now he will have that information. And those are the three things that I would give half my private fortune to know.”
Chapter X
Into Russia
In the summer of 1939 a specially chartered aircraft could easily have carried a passenger from London to Moscow in a single day, but in the summer of 1941 such a journey was one of the most difficult, hazardous and wasteful of time that anyone could undertake. It would have been easier, safer and far quicker to travel to Honolulu or Mandalay, since direct stratosphere flight had not yet been established between Britain and Russia, and the great swathe of Nazi-held Europe cut the two Allies off from all normal means of communication.
As it was, Gregory and Stefan Kuporovitch had to wait for a suitable day when an aircraft could fly them from Southern England far out into the Atlantic, to avoid the unwelcome attentions of enemy aircraft based on the French Biscay coast, and so to Gibraltar. From Gibraltar they had to run the gauntlet of the Western Mediterranean to besieged Malta, the single foothold still retained by the Allies in the centre of the inland sea. Thence, in constant danger from German and Italian war ‘planes, they had to make another thousand-mile flight to Cairo. Having safely accomplished these three long hops they could congratulate themselves on having got through the most risky part of their journey, but the worst of its delays, discomforts and uncertainties still lay ahead.
Anxious as Sir Pellinore had been that they should reach Russia as soon as possible, he had not dared to make a request for any special priority to be accorded to their travel permits after Cairo. The Russians having been virtually barred out of Europe for so long and then having, of their own choice, for many years restricted all but official contact with the outside world, were extremely suspicious of their new Allies. Even members of the Military Mission, sent to help them, found themselves subject to the most infuriating delays and scrutinies; and if the least indication had been given that Messrs. Sallust and “Cooper” were en route for the Soviet Union on matters other and more urgent than routine work under the British Press Attaché, a score of excuses would have been produced to prevent them entering Russia at all.
In consequence, from Cairo onwards, the two travellers had to make the best arrangements they could for themselves and, as civilians of no apparent importance in a military zone, their path was far from being strewn with roses. Their cover, as journalists, which they had perforce to disclose wherever they went, proved, in most cases, a hindrance rather than a help; for the majority of responsible officers live in perpetual, and not altogether unfounded, dread that any visiting pressman might later write up some “human interest” story which, while innocent enough in itself, would give away to the enemy information prejudicial to forthcoming operations. But the worst of their troubles arose from the fact that German agents, French quislings, and anti-British schemers of the Arabic world had, between them, succeeded in making the Near East a seething cauldron of unrest throughout the whole of the summer.
In May, the pro-Nazi Premier of Iraq, Raschid Ali, had staged a coup d’état, kidnapped his boy king and declared against the British; necessitating offensive operations which had left a certain bitterness in their wake. In June, the Vichy French in Syria had given the Germans facilities to establish air bases there, and although the bitter resistance of the Petainists had been overcome by the 12th of July, they were still doing all they could to sabotage British interests. The situation there was now further complicated by the high-handed actions of the Free French and the hatred of the Syrian Nationalists for all Frenchmen irrespective of their politics, which led to riots, shootings and every sort of trouble for the unfortunate British, who, on the one hand, did not wish to antagonise their Free French allies, and, on the other, were appallingly embarrassed by the recently published “Atlantic Charter”, under which the Syrians claimed their right to independence. On top of this the violent, avaricious and despotic Shah of Persia had sold himself to the Nazis, refused to expel the hundreds of agents they had established in his country and had declared his intention of resisting by force of arms any attempt by the British and Russians to use his territory as a military supply route in their common struggle against Germany.
During the middle and latter part of August, Gregory and Kuporovitch were tempted a score of times quietly to fade out and, ignoring the British military controls, make their own way to the Russian frontier. They would certainly have reached it more quickly, but the tr
ouble was that they would then not have the requisite number of rubber stamps on their passports to show that they had arrived there by orthodox means, and it was absolutely essential that they should enter Russia without the least suspicion attaching to them. In consequence, they had to kick their heels in transit camps and small hotels for days on end in Cairo, Haifa, Damascus and Baghdad while awaiting the okays of security officers.
On 25th of August, British and Russian forces entered Iran, and on the 28th, the Persian Army, having offered only a token resistance, was ordered by the new Premier, Ali Faranghi, to cease fire. By pulling a fast one, that their status as pressmen entitled them to go to the front as much in Persia as it did in Russia, the two travellers succeeded in entering Iran with the British forces operating from Khaniquin; but when they linked up with the Russians advancing south from the Caspian they were not allowed to proceed further. Luckily, however, a genuine war correspondent decided to make for Teheran and gave them a lift in his car to the Persian capital.
Here they were able to make direct contact with the Russian authorities in the Soviet Legation. Their passports and visas were all in order but they met with a sponge-like combination of politeness and procrastination which resisted all their efforts to get any satisfaction for ten days. Gregory had little doubt that, in the meantime, their suspicious allies were making enquiries about them in Moscow, but he knew that it would be futile to leave Teheran for the frontier until they had secured the special permits without which, visa or no visa, no one was now allowed to cross it.
At last permission to proceed was granted; a Russian courier was attached to them and, having accompanied them to the border, saw them safely into an old-fashioned but comfortable broad-gauge train on the Soviet side, with strict injunctions that in no circumstances were they to leave it until they reached the capital. On Friday the 12th of September, six weeks after leaving London, they arrived in Moscow.
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