Faked Passports

by Dennis Wheatley

  FAKED PASSPORTS

  Dennis Wheatley

  Edited by Miranda Vaughan Jones

  FOR

  JACK YOUNGER

  My soldier stepson. With deep affection and the wish that crossed swords and batons may one day grace the shoulders of his tunic, crowning his success in the profession of arms which he chose when still a boy.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  I The Backwash of the Bomb

  II Hunted

  III The Colonel-Baron Von Lutz

  IV “Hands up, Herr Oberst-Baron!”

  V Death in the Forest

  VI The Horrible Dilemma

  VII Invitation to the Lion’s Den

  VIII The Waiting Room of the Borgia

  IX “He who Sups with the Devil needs a Long Spoon”

  X Grand Strategy

  XI Faked Passports

  XII The Red Menace

  XIII The Beautiful Erika Von Epp

  XIV To Singe the Gestapo’s Beard

  XV Herr Gruppenführer Grauber Wins a Trick

  XVI A Question of Identity

  XVII The Trials of an Impostor

  XVIII Wanted for Murder

  XIX The Undreamed-of Trap

  XX Hell in the Arctic

  XXI The Man Without a Memory

  XXII Out into the Snow

  XXIII The Women’s War

  XXIV Buried Alive

  XXV The Diabolical Plan

  XXVI Hunted by Wolves

  XXVII The General with a Past

  XXVIII Gregory Gambles with Death

  XXIX The Battle for Viborg

  XXX Voroshilov Signs two Orders

  XXXI Grauber Intervenes

  XXXII The Road to Berlin

  A Note on the Author

  Introduction

  Dennis Wheatley was my grandfather. He only had one child, my father Anthony, from his first marriage to Nancy Robinson. Nancy was the youngest in a large family of ten Robinson children and she had a wonderful zest for life and a gaiety about her that I much admired as a boy brought up in the dull Seventies. Thinking about it now, I suspect that I was drawn to a young Ginny Hewett, a similarly bubbly character, and now my wife of 27 years, because she resembled Nancy in many ways.

  As grandparents, Dennis and Nancy were very different. Nancy’s visits would fill the house with laughter and mischievous gossip, while Dennis and his second wife Joan would descend like minor royalty, all children expected to behave. Each held court in their own way but Dennis was the famous one with the famous friends and the famous stories.

  There is something of the fantasist in every storyteller, and most novelists writing thrillers see themselves in their heroes. However, only a handful can claim to have been involved in actual daring-do. Dennis saw action both at the Front, in the First World War, and behind a desk in the Second. His involvement informed his writing and his stories, even those based on historical events, held a notable veracity that only the life-experienced novelist can obtain. I think it was this element that added the important plausibility to his writing. This appealed to his legions of readers who were in that middle ground of fiction, not looking for pure fantasy nor dry fact, but something exciting, extraordinary, possible and even probable.

  There were three key characters that Dennis created over the years: The Duc de Richleau, Gregory Sallust and Roger Brook. The first de Richleau stories were set in the years between the wars, when Dennis had started writing. Many of the Sallust stories were written in the early days of the Second World War, shortly before Dennis joined the Joint Planning Staff in Whitehall, and Brook was cast in the time of the French Revolution, a period that particularly fascinated him.

  He is probably always going to be associated with Black Magic first and foremost, and it’s true that he plugged it hard because sales were always good for those books. However, it’s important to remember that he only wrote eleven Black Magic novels out of more than sixty bestsellers, and readers were just as keen on his other stories. In fact, invariably when I meet people who ask if there is any connection, they tell me that they read ’all his books’.

  Dennis had a full and eventful life, even by the standards of the era he grew up in. He was expelled from Dulwich College and sent to a floating navel run school, HMS Worcester. The conditions on this extraordinary ship were Dickensian. He survived it, and briefly enjoyed London at the pinnacle of the Empire before war was declared and the fun ended. That sort of fun would never be seen again.

  He went into business after the First World War, succeeded and failed, and stumbled into writing. It proved to be his calling. Immediate success opened up the opportunity to read and travel, fueling yet more stories and thrilling his growing band of followers.

  He had an extraordinary World War II, being one of the first people to be recruited into the select team which dreamed up the deception plans to cover some of the major events of the war such as Operation Torch, Operation Mincemeat and the D-Day landings. Here he became familiar with not only the people at the very top of the war effort, but also a young Commander Ian Fleming, who was later to write the James Bond novels. There are indeed those who have suggested that Gregory Sallust was one of James Bond’s precursors.

  The aftermath of the war saw Dennis grow in stature and fame. He settled in his beautiful Georgian house in Lymington surrounded by beautiful things. He knew how to live well, perhaps without regard for his health. He hated exercise, smoked, drank and wrote. Today he would have been bullied by wife and children and friends into giving up these habits and changing his lifestyle, but I’m not sure he would have given in. Maybe like me, he would simply find a quiet place.

  Dominic Wheatley, 2013

  Chapter I

  The Backwash of the Bomb

  When the first glimmerings of returning consciousness stirred Gregory Sallust’s brain the aeroplane was thousands of feet above Northern Germany. He was slumped forward in the bucket seat behind the pilot and for a moment he did not know where he was or what had happened to him. With an effort he raised his hand towards his aching head. The hand hovered uncertainly for a second on a level with his lowered chin; then the plane bumped slightly, jerking him a little, so that the feeble movement was checked and his arm flopped inwards towards his body. His greatcoat had fallen open and his fingers came in contact with the Iron Cross that General Count von Pleisen had pinned upon his breast. It was sticky with the half-congealed blood that had trickled over it from the wound in his shoulder. As his fingers closed over the decoration full consciousness flooded back to him.

  It was the night of November the 8th, ’39 and after many weary weeks of desperate hazard and anxiety, pitting his wits against the agents of the Gestapo in war-time London, Paris, Holland and Germany, he had that evening at last succeeded in carrying out the immensely important secret mission which had been entrusted to him. As a result of his work the German Army leaders had risen in a determined attempt to throw off the Nazi yoke and create a new, free Germany with which the Democracies might conclude an honourable peace.

  There flashed back into Gregory’s mind the incredible scene of bloodshed and carnage at which he had been present only a few hours before, when Count von Pleisen, the Military Governor of Berlin, had led his three hundred officers into the great Banqueting Room of the Hotel Adlon to arrest the Sons of Siegfried, a dining-club used as cover by the Inner Gestapo, who were holding their monthly meeting there behind closed doors.

  It had been hell incarnate. Six hundred desperate men in one vast room and every one of them blazing away with an automatic or sub-machine-gun. Some of the Gestapo men had reached the telephones and had warned their Headquarters, the Brown-Shirt barracks and other Nazi centres. The Generals had seized the Centra
l Telephone Exchange and the Broadcasting Station. The people had risen and were lynching isolated Nazis in the streets. Artillery had been brought into action and shells were blasting the Nazi strongholds. But the thousands of S.S. and S.A. men had sallied out to give battle and when Gregory left Berlin they still held the central square mile of the city and, from what little he could gather, certain outlying areas as well.

  In Munich that night Hitler and many of his principal lieutenants had attended the Anniversary Celebrations of their early Putsch with the Nazi Old Guard in the Buergerbrau Keller. As the Army chiefs who had planned the revolt could not be in Berlin and Munich on the same night, and considered it more important to secure the Capital, von Pleisen had reluctantly consented to the placing of a bomb to destroy the Fuehrer. But just before Gregory staggered out of the Adlon news had come through that Hitler and his personal entourage had left the meeting much earlier than had been expected, so although the bomb had gone off and had wrecked the cellar, killing many of its occupants, he had escaped and was reported to be organising counter-measures from his special train.

  Now the die was cast it was impossible to foretell which side would gain the upper hand. With their Artillery and tanks the Generals might succeed in overcoming the thirty thousand armed Nazis who held Berlin for Hitler and raising the Flag of Freedom there; but what of the rest of the country?

  As Hitler was still alive and at large the air must be quivering with urgent orders to his Gauleiters and Party Chiefs in every corner of the Reich, instructing them to arrest all suspects, to shoot on sight and to exercise the sternest possible repressive measures against all dangerous elements. Those Nazi Party men would act with utter disregard for life or any human sentiment. They had climbed to power by such relentless methods and they would certainly stick at nothing now, knowing that their own lives depended upon the suppression of the rebellion.

  The plane roared on into the blackness of the night. Gregory had no memory of having boarded it at the secret landing-ground some fifteen miles outside Berlin but he knew that the figure silhouetted against the lights of the dash-board was Flight-Lieutenant Freddie Charlton, who had flown him to another secret landing-ground north-west of Cologne just a week after the outbreak of war. Fate had ordained that Charlton should also be the pilot on duty that night outside Berlin, standing by to take any British secret agent who needed his services on the long flight home. With a fresh effort Gregory jerked up his head. The sudden movement caused a stab of pain from the wound in his shoulder and he gave a low moan.

  “So you’ve come round?” said Charlton, turning his head. “Yes,” Gregory muttered. “I suppose I fainted from loss of blood soon after we reached the farm-house.”

  “That’s it; and we didn’t even try to bring you round. The farmer and I wanted to bathe and bandage that wound of yours but the young woman who was with you wouldn’t let us. You were all for taking her back to England with you but she wouldn’t go, so you said that in that case you were damned if you’d go either.”

  “Oh God! Erika—Erika—” Gregory moaned as the airman went on:

  “Apparently she felt that she’d never be able to make you leave her once you came round again and she was desperately anxious to have you safely out of it. She insisted that we should bung you in the plane and that I should get off with you while you were still unconscious.”

  Gregory lurched forward. “Look here, Charlton,” he said thickly, “you’ve got to turn round and take me back. I’m not going home yet—I can’t. You must find that farm again and land me. Understand?”

  “Sorry; can’t be done,” Freddie called back with boyish cheerfulness. “I’m the captain of this bus and you’re only a passenger. If you’ve got any complaints you can make them when we land at Heston early in the morning.”

  “Now, listen.” Gregory laid his good hand on Charlton’s shoulder. “That girl we left is Erika von Epp or, to give her her married name, the Countess von Osterberg. She’s the grandest, bravest thing that ever walked, as well as the loveliest, and I’m not leaving her in the lurch. It’s unthinkable!”

  “She’ll be all right; she said so.”

  “She won’t. You don’t understand. She’s von Pleisen’s niece and she was up to her neck in the conspiracy. If it hadn’t been for her I would never have been able to deliver a letter from the Allied statesmen, guaranteeing Germany an honourable peace and a new deal if the Generals would out Hitler and his thugs. Just think …”

  “I don’t care who she is or what she’s done,” Charlton cut him short. “We’re not going back.”

  “We must! Von Pleisen was a splendid fool. Instead of taking the advice of most of his officers and mowing down the Sons of Siegfried before they had a chance to utter he insisted that they should be given an opportunity to surrender peaceably. Von Pleisen’s chivalry cost him his life and gave the Nazis just the breathing space necessary to draw their guns. A lot of them fought their way out of the trap and were able to rally their men. When I left Berlin the streets were running with blood, but it’s anybody’s battle; and Hitler escaped the bomb in Munich.”

  Gregory’s head was aching dully but his brain was moving now, and he went on speaking slowly but firmly. “If the Gestapo get the upper hand there’ll be a more terrible purge than anything that even Nazi Germany has ever witnessed. Every officer who’s in this thing, and hundreds of others who are only suspected, will be shot; their families will be proscribed and thrown into concentration-camps. Erika will be right at the top of the list and God knows what those swine have in store for her.”

  “Easy, easy,” Charlton murmured, “you’re letting your imagination run away with you.”

  “I’m not! You must believe me! Grauber, the Chief of the Gestapo Foreign Department, U.A.-1, bagged her just before the Putsch and it was only by the luck of the devil that she was still alive when I reached and freed her.”

  “Well, since she is free, what are you worrying about?”

  “Damn it, man, Grauber’s aware of the part she played so he’ll put scores of his agents on to hunt her down again. If I can rejoin her there’s a sporting chance that I might get her out of the country. If I can’t, I could at least shoot her myself, and I’d rather do that than have her fall into his hands; if he gets her he’ll kill her by inches. I’ve got to go back—I’ve definitely got to!”

  “Now look here, old chap,” Charlton turned his head again and spoke in a more reasonable tone, “I do understand what you’re feeling. You’re in love with her. That was as plain as a pike-staff although I only saw the two of you together for a few minutes. Naturally it hurts like hell to have to leave her behind in such a sticky spot, but what the devil could you do, wounded as you are, even if you were able to rejoin her?”

  “The wound’s not much. Grauber got me in the fleshy part of the shoulder but fortunately there’s no bone broken and the bullet went out the other side. I only fainted from loss of blood and I wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t had to go on fighting and chasing about all over Berlin for an hour or more after I was hit. It’ll be all right in a day or two.”

  “That’s as maybe, but if you want it to heal quickly you’ll have to lie up, and you can’t do that while searching Berlin for your girl-friend. Another thing: if this Gestapo man you speak of shot you himself he presumably knows who you are.”

  Gregory started to laugh but choked and began to cough violently. When he got his breath back he replied:

  “Know me? By God he does! We’ve been up against each other for the last two months. He darned nearly murdered me in London and I near as dammit laid him by the heels in Paris about a fortnight ago; but he got away to Holland and the authorities there put him in prison for travelling on a forged passport. Thinking that he was safely out of the way I impersonated him when I did my second trip into Germany and went swaggering round the country as Herr Gruppenführer Grauber in the smartest all-black uniform you’ve ever seen. Lord, how they kowtowed to me! ‘Yes, Herr Gruppe
nführer’ ‘No, Herr Gruppenführer.’ ‘May it please Your Excellency.’ ‘Will you honour us by accepting this damned good meal while we sit here and starve?’ The poor saps! But Grauber turned up in Munich to spoil my little game. I had the last laugh, though, when I cornered him in a bedroom at the Adlon this evening. My gun was empty so I hurled it in his face and smashed his left eye to pulp.”

  “Fine!” murmured Charlton. “Fine! But hasn’t it occurred to you that Grauber will be a little peeved about losing that eye of his; and that with the whole of the Gestapo behind him it’s he would have the last laugh instead of you if I landed you again in this accursed country?”

  Gregory straightened himself. His head was clearing with the cool night air and he was feeling distinctly better. “To hell with that! I’m prepared to chance it. If they get me that’s my affair; the one thing that I flatly refuse to do is to go back to England while Erika is left to fend for herself in Berlin.”

  “It’s not a matter of your refusing; you have no option. I’ve made eleven of these secret trips successfully since I set you down outside Cologne two months ago and now I’m well away with this one I’m not going to risk losing one of Britain’s planes and, though I sez it as shouldn’t, one of her ace pilots by coming down again because you’ve fallen in love with a German girl.” Gregory tried to control the urgency in his voice but every minute the plane was taking him three miles further from Erika. “It’s a lot to ask, I know,” he said persuasively, “but there’s too much trouble going on in Berlin tonight for the anti-aircraft look-outs to be active. They’ll all have heard of the Army Putsch by now and will probably be fighting among themselves. Anyhow, they’ll be far too busy swapping rumours and hanging on for the latest news to bother about checking up on a stray plane.”

  “Perhaps; but even if I were willing to take you back I couldn’t. You remember how we landed outside Cologne—just one window of the farm-house was left uncurtained to light me in. The same drill is followed at the secret landing-ground east of Berlin but those windows are left uncurtained only for a short period on certain nights, and at stated times, by arrangement. There won’t be any light showing from the farm-house now—in fact, it won’t be showing again until ten o’clock next Sunday; and this is only Wednesday. So you see, it’s absolutely impossible for me to attempt another landing there tonight.”