Come into my Parlour

by Dennis Wheatley

  And now he was leaving it all. Once the muffled booming was drowned by the drone of the engines in the aircraft that was to take him to Siberia, the odds were he would never hear another bomb or shell explode in his life. He disliked physical danger as much as any sane man, but his escape from it now was no consolation. He could not reconcile himself to the thought that he had been compelled to throw in his hand while the war was still unwon; but it was no good crying over spilt milk now, and he supposed that he would get used to a safe but monotonous existence in time.

  The van seemed to be taking them further out of the city than the airfield lay at which they had arrived, but Voroshilov still held a dozen or more airfields within the wide perimeter of his defences, and there was no particular reason to suppose that they would be taken to the one which was used by aircraft going to and from Moscow.

  They had been on their way for over three-quarters of an hour and must have covered, Gregory thought, well over twenty miles, when the van slowed down and pulled up.

  Both he and Kuporovitch heard the rear door unlocked, then a sharp plop, as though a cork had been drawn from a bottle of champagne. There followed a curse, the sound of stumbling, a fall and more hearty cursing. Evidently the guard must have missed his footing in the darkness as he opened the door, and taken a tumble. He, or someone else, scrambled in; there was a jangling of keys and the two cells were unlocked. The man with the keys snapped a handcuff on Gregory’s right wrist and linked him to Kuporovitch by snapping the other bracelet on the left wrist of the Russian. Then he gave them a push towards the open doors of the van.

  A little awkwardly they scrambled out of the back of the Black Maria. There was no moon but snow was falling gently, and by its faint light they realised at once that they had not been taken to an airfield. The van had pulled up at the far end of a mean back street, or, rather, a cul-de-sac, since it terminated abruptly in a tumbledown wharf, beyond which could be seen the glimmer of lapping water.

  Facing them, as they jumped down, was a burly, fur-clad figure, with a big automatic clutched in one hand and a lightless torch in the other.

  It was not until their feet were on the ground that either of them noticed another fur-clad figure, but this one lay face downwards in the snow, quite still, a few feet away where it had rolled into the gutter.

  The man with the torch suddenly flicked it on and shone it in their faces.

  “It’s them all right!” he said. “Quick now, and we’ll get them down to the boat!”

  Every muscle in Gregory’s body stiffened. The light was too dim for him to make out the big man’s features, half-hidden as they were by the fur hood he wore, but he had spoken in German.

  Gregory would have known that voice anywhere in the world. They had been rescued, if one could call it that, but only to fall, manacled, into the hands of his bitterest enemy—Herr Gruppenführer Grauber.

  Chapter XIV

  Out of the Frying-Pan Into the Fire

  For a moment it seemed to Gregory that he must be dreaming—or the victim of some nightmare aftermath from the strange drug he had recently taken. Yet the height and the great hulking shoulders of the figure that faced him tallied exactly with his vivid memories of the Chief of Gestapo Department, U.A.-l.

  Next moment the voice came again: “Schuster! Kommen Sie her! Schnell!”

  That high-pitched voice was Grauber’s without a doubt; and now Gregory’s eyes were more accustomed to the half-light he could just make out the heavy jowl, cruel mouth, and sharp nose of his old antagonist.

  The impulse to make a dash for it had seized him at the first sound of Grauber’s voice, but the second he moved he felt the pull of the handcuff that attached him to Kuporovitch, and realised the futility of such an attempt. Shackled together as they were they could neither fight nor run with any hope of succeeding in either. Grauber loomed in front of them with his big automatic at the ready, the man who had released them from the cells had just jumped down behind them from the van, and a third man, Schuster, no doubt, came hurrying round from its front.

  Gregory’s eyes fell on the cylindrical attachment that stuck out from the muzzle of Grauber’s pistol. It was a silencer, and it explained the noise as though a bottle of champagne had been opened, that they had heard just after the van door had been unlocked. He now recollected hearing a short succession of similar sounds just after the Black Maria had halted some half-hour before. They must then have been somewhere on the edge of the city. Evidently at some lonely spot Grauber’s two men had held up the van, shot the driver and the N.C.O. carrying its keys, taken their places, and brought the van to this waterside slum. Grauber must have been waiting there and, immediately his man now impersonating the N.C.O. had unlocked the door at the back of the van, shot the remaining guard as he was about to get out.

  Somehow the Gestapo Chief had found out that they were prisoners, and were being taken to a certain airfield that night. He had laid his plans accordingly, and with his usual efficiency. In consequence, Voroshilov’s plans had suffered a most appalling miscarriage. Gregory knew that, rather than this should have happened, the Marshal would have shot every prisoner in the Lubianka. His worst fears had been realised; two men who knew all the secrets of Soviet strategy had fallen into the hands of the enemy.

  As the driver joined them, Grauber addressed his two men: “Fels! Schuster! You have done well. I am pleased with you. Before we leave we should hide the van—also the body of this brute I shot just now. I do not want the Ogpu nosing about this wharf. Pick him up and throw him in the van. You, Schuster, will drive it to the end of the street. On the left is a warehouse that we have rented. It has nothing in it except a few cases of explosives. There is plenty of room for the van and we will leave it in there. Fels, you will come with me.” After a second he went on, speaking for the first time to his prisoners.

  “Mr. Sallust, we meet again. Your companion is, I believe General Kuporovitch. You will both walk down the street in front of me. Any monkey tricks and you know what will happen.”

  Apart from Grauber’s party the cul-de-sac was entirely deserted. A wood yard occupied one side of it and some lightless buildings the other. The Russian lying in the gutter was quite dead. Schuster took his feet and Fels his shoulders. They heaved the body into the Black Maria and slammed-to the door. As Gregory watched them he was praying that a patrol of Soviet police or troops might come on the scene. Some unforeseen interruption resulting in a mix-up might still provide a chance for him and Stefan to get away; but it was now nearly eleven o’clock and all the inhabitants of this grim district seemed to have gone home for the night.

  Schuster ran round to the front of the van and Fels, drawing an automatic, turned to help Grauber guard the prisoners.

  “Quick march!” snapped the Gruppenführer, and they set off down the street.

  At an opening through a tumbledown paling he gave the order to halt, and kept them covered with his pistol while Fels left them for a few moments to unlock and drag open the doors of the wharfside warehouse. The Black Maria was driven in, Fels and Schuster closed the doors and rejoined their Chief. The temperature was well below freezing and a crisp carpet of snow covered the ground. Their footfalls made no sound, apart from a faint crunching. A lorry rumbled past the far end of the street, then there was silence again.

  “This way,” Grauber muttered, and led them diagonally across the wharf to a place where a flight of wooden stairs led down to the water. Tied up at their bottom a small launch was gently rocking.

  “Take care, the steps are slippery,” Grauber warned them. “I don’t want my men to be put to the trouble of fishing you out of this ice-cold water.”

  At the sound of his voice two figures emerged from the cabin of the launch; one held it in to the steps with a boat-hook while the other began to untie the painter.

  “Ready?” murmured Gregory to Stefan as they reached the bottom of the stairs—since the handcuffs now linked them like Siamese twins—and together they stepp
ed on to the narrow deck of the boat.

  “Get in the cabin,” ordered Grauber, following them on board. Then he turned and looked back to the top of the stairs where Fels and Schuster were still standing. “Gute Arbeit, Jungens! Auf Wiedessehen.”

  “Danke, Herr Gruppenführer” the men’s voices came back. “Heil Hitler!”

  “Heil Hitler!” repeated Grauber, and the boat pushed off. He settled himself on the after edge of the cabin well, where he could both keep a watch on his prisoners and a look-out over its low roof. The man in the stern started a motor and the launch nosed her way out to sea. She was showing no lights, the exhaust had been muffled and the falling snow limited visibility, so there seemed little prospect of her being spotted and challenged by a harbour patrol.

  After they had been going for a few moments, Gregory said: “I congratulate you, Herr Gruppenführer, on this very remarkable coup.”

  “Silence!” piped Grauber, curtly. “We shall have plenty of time for a nice little talk later.”

  Gregory had a very good idea what form that “nice little talk” would take, and wondered unhappily just how much the Gestapo Chief knew of his dealings with Marshal Voroshilov. Without inside information of some kind he could not possibly have arranged the hold-up of the Black Maria, and if he was aware that his prisoners had had three long interviews with the Marshal he would use all the ruthless ingenuity of which he was such a master to extract every ounce of information that he could from them. By comparison with the prospect that now lay ahead of them, a prolonged sojourn in Siberia seemed to offer almost boundless joys.

  The launch ran on for about half an hour; then there came a low call of warning from the second sailor, who was crouching on the forward deck. The engine was shut off and for a few moments they drifted silently. Kuporovitch, screwing his head round to peer through a porthole behind him made out the black hulk of a slowly moving ship. When it had passed the engine was switched on again and, slewing round to port, they began to follow in the ship’s wake.

  In the next quarter of an hour he caught sight of the faint outline of several other vessels; all of them smaller ones riding at anchor and, from his observations, he had now formed a pretty shrewd idea where they were. Leaning his head close to Gregory’s in the darkness, he whispered:

  “I think we are now passing Kronstadt. It must have been at Oranienbaum that the prison van set us down. From there a spit of sand runs out for about four miles, nearly to Kronstadt Island, and beyond its tip is the only channel out into the Gulf of Finland. Some time back we turned at the point and——”

  Low as his whisper was, Grauber suddenly caught it and, jumping down into the well, snarled:

  “Quiet, there, unless you want to feed the fishes,” and gave the Russian a heavy kick on the shin.

  For another half-hour they sat in silence. Ice was not yet forming on the Gulf, but once they had passed from under the lee of the island a bitter wind caught them, and the water became choppy. The engine was shut off again and the two sailors consulted together, then the launch was put into a series of sweeps, first in one direction, then in another. This seemed to go on for a long time and, after what Kuporovitch had said, Gregory could guess what was happening. They must have passed through the Kronstadt defence boom in the wake of a ship taking supplies to places further along the north coast of Esthonia, where the Russians were still holding out; and now they were searching for a U-boat that had sneaked into the Gulf to pick Grauber up.

  His surmise proved correct. At last the sailor on the fore-deck gave a hail. An answering shout came from a little distance away. There was a brief interchange that seemed meaningless but evidently embodied some code word for recognition purposes. The launch turned again, ran on fifty yards and there was a slight bump.

  “Come along,” said Grauber, getting to his feet; and as they climbed out of the cabin they saw that they were alongside the great curved hull of a submarine. A wood-runged rope-ladder had been thrown out over the slope, and some sailors were standing at its top ready to help them aboard.

  Evidently Grauber had no intention of giving either of his prisoners a chance to get away by diving over the side, as he did not unlock the handcuffs that secured them together, but, seeing the difficulty they would have in scaling the ladder, he called out to the sailors to throw down a line. One of the men in the boat caught it, and slipping it round Gregory’s middle made fast the free end in a bowline, so that if he missed his footing the loop would catch under his armpits and the sailors above could take his weight until he recovered it. With the launch bobbing up and down and only one free hand apiece to grab at the ladder, the two prisoners found it a tricky business to get aboard, but, partially supported by the line, they managed it without accident.

  Keeping a safe distance from Kuporovitch’s heels, Grauber followed them; then the launch cast off and drew away into the darkness. On deck the Kapitänleutnant commanding the U-boat received Grauber with the formal politeness due to a high official of the Nazi government, and led the way down through the conning-tower hatch to the main operations room of the ship.

  Gregory had never before been in a submarine and, although this was one of the smaller non-ocean-going type used for operations in shallow waters, he was surprised at its bulk. From the launch it had seemed almost as long as a small destroyer; yet, below decks, on account of its many little compartments and the narrowness of its passages, one had the impression of being in something hardly larger than a fair-sized bomber.

  The captain, a youngish man with close-cropped hair, light blue eyes and a straw-coloured beard, took them along to the tiny Officers’ Mess, asked Grauber’s permission to proceed to sea and, on being given it, left them.

  After the icy cold outside it was stiflingly hot down there. Grauber peeled off his furs, then unlocked the handcuffs so that his prisoners could take off theirs. Having motioned them to a narrow settee behind a flap-table held rigid by a steel angle-bar, he pressed a bellpush. As they squeezed in behind the table a white-coated steward appeared.

  “Food,” said Grauber curtly to the man. “The best you have, and two bottles of my own champagne. This is an occasion to which I have long looked forward.” He grinned malevolently at Gregory.

  “Thanks, Herr Gruppenführer,” Gregory replied. “I hope to return the compliment one day.”

  “You would be more sensible to wish that this meal was to be your last, my friend. Even your imagination is incapable of conceiving all that I mean to do to you when I get you back to Germany.”

  “There is many a slip,” said Kuporovitch belligerently. “These waters are as shallow as the palm of my hand, and there are many sandbanks in them. If this underwater coffin gets stuck on one, Soviet aircraft will spot and bomb it, and you will never get back to Germany yourself.”

  The U-boat’s engines were now humming rhythmically, but it was only moving very slowly and Kuporovitch’s shot had evidently found its mark, as Grauber blanched perceptibly and hesitated a second before he said:

  “Nonsense! Kapitänleutnant Bötticher is an officer of great experience and has operated many times in the approaches to Leningrad. We shall have reached deep water long before dawn.”

  But the Russian’s shrewd attempt to get under Grauber’s skin had also badly shaken Gregory. He could already feel his claustrophobia coming on and the terrifying suggestion that the U-boat might get stuck on the bottom made the perspiration break out on his hands and forehead. To take his mind off his nerve-shattering thoughts he asked:

  “How did you manage to pull of this extraordinary coup? I’ve always known that the Gestapo were pretty good, but I hadn’t imagined that they were quite up to putting such a fast one over the Ogpu.”

  Grauber’s smile suddenly became quite amiable and he was obviously extremely pleased with himself, as he said: “Since you will never go back to Russia, or have an opportunity of communicating with any of your friends there, I don’t mind telling you. It was, of course, entirely luck that
I happened to be in Leningrad myself, but, as you are aware, it is part of my work to supervise all Fifth Column arrangements in cities that are scheduled——”

  “There is no Fifth Column in Leningrad,’ growled Kuporovitch.

  “Isn’t there?” Grauber raised his eyebrows with a sardonically humorous glance. “That is all you know. It is not, I regret to have to admit, as large or as well organised as those I handled in Oslo, Rotterdam, Brussels or Paris, but it is there all right. Anyhow, as I was saying, since Leningrad is scheduled to fall within the next few weeks——”

  “It won’t fall,” said Kuporovitch doggedly. “Not while Clim Voroshilov is commanding there.”

  “He is an old friend of yours, isn’t he?” remarked Grauber with smoothness that filled Gregory with quick apprehension.

  “What makes you think so?” countered the Russian.

  “Oh, my dear General! Because we have never met before, you must not think that I don’t know anything about you. It is my business to find out things about people like you. Officers of high rank whose loyalty to their own country is dubious have often proved most useful to us.”

  “What the hell d’you mean!” roared Kuporovitch, struggling to get to his feet, but unable to do so immediately owing to the fact that Gregory was sitting between him and the passage between the tables, and the table in front of them prevented him from springing forward.

  As Gregory grabbed his friend’s shoulder, Grauber, who was sitting in the opposite corner of the little room behind its other small table, picked up his automatic and snarled:

  “Sit down, or I’ll put a bullet through each of your arms. You will find that painful, but it will not prevent me from getting what I want out of you.”

  Kuporovitch subsided with a muttered curse and the Gestapo Chief went on more quietly: “As I was just going to remark, I have quite a nice fat dossier about your past in my office in Berlin. However, we were speaking of Leningrad. The Führer has issued an order to Feldmarschall Ritter von Leeb that the city is to be captured before the winter sets in. Therefore it followed as a matter of course that I should make a short visit there to ensure that all my arrangements for the final phase are in order. I had completed my work and was just about to leave, when I happened to glance through some gapers at my secret headquarters, and on one of them I caught sight of the name Sallust. It was on the list of the people who had been committed to the Lubianka during the past twenty-four hours.”