`They wouldn't send one.'
`No; that's certain. Poor Count Bernadotte is going to all his trouble for nothing. But, as I said a little while ago, no possible chance to stop this awful slaughter should remain untried.'
`With things going as they are it can't last many months longer.'
`Months!' exclaimed Erika with a shocked expression.
`It could be months if Hitler leaves Berlin and fights a guerilla war from the Bavarian redoubt; and that's what it looks as if he means to do. One thing that inclines me to think he will is a prediction by Malacou, that most of the top Nazis won't be hanged for their crimes until October '46.'
`Malacou!'
`Yes. He turned up in the same prison camp as myself. We got out of it together and he is with me now in Berlin, acting as my servant.' Gregory told Erika then of how he had used the Satanist's occult powers to win Hitler's confidence, and of the plan he had evolved in the hope of inducing him to put a swift, spectacular end to his villainous career.
`Oh, my darling!' Erika cried. `If only you can. Hermann says it's certain that the Russians will be in Berlin within a fortnight. If Hitler does stay and is killed or kills himself that will be the end. By preventing him from going to the Nazi stronghold in Bavaria you will have shortened the war by months. You will have saved countless lives and prevented untold misery.'
Gregory nodded. `That's what I'm striving for. But it's going to be an uphill fight. So many of the people closest to him know that an end to him means death for them. So it's certain they will urge him to go to the Obersalzberg and fight on, just on the chance that some unexpected event might alter the Allies' attitude and enable them to escape being hanged.'
For a moment they were silent, then Erika said, `Apart from this great new plan on which you are working now, you've told me nothing about yourself.'
`Neither have you,' he laughed.
`Oh, I've nothing to tell. Until last month I carried on with my job at Gwaine Meads. Dear old Pellinore is in greater heart than ever these days. Stefan and Madeleine are well and your godson is a poppet. But you? All those months in a concentration camp! And Malacou turning up! And your managing to get on the right side of Hermann. Tell me everything. First, how you succeeded in standing up to such terrible privations. And your leg; how is it? Does it, still give you much pain?
'No. I hardly notice it now, except that it aches when I put too great a strain on it.' Suddenly Gregory began to laugh.
`What is there that's funny about that?' she asked.
He kissed her. `My sweet, it has just come back to me that I used it, or rather the fact that I'd been severely wounded, to excuse myself from having to go to bed with a very lovely girl.'
`Who was she?' Erika asked quickly.
'Sabine Tuzolto.'
`What! That woman again?
'Yes. When I succeeded in reaching Berlin from Poland I had neither papers nor money and in all the vast city she was the only person who, if she were there, might befriend me. So I sought her out and found her living in a villa on the Wannsee.' Gregory then related how Sabine had hidden him for more than a week, so saved him from being arrested as a vagrant and ending up in the hands of the Gestapo.
When he had done Erika smiled and said, `She's younger than I am and terribly good-looking; so you get full marks plus for having resisted her allurements. But in the circumstances, if you had succumbed I wouldn't have blamed you; or, for that matter, her, for trying to seduce you, since she apparently finds you as attractive as I do. Anyway, I bear her no malice. In fact I owe her a great debt. She risked her own life to save you and it is I who am the gainer.'
`I'm glad you feel like that,' Gregory said slowly. `As you know, she saved me in Budapest too; so although I got her out of the Tower she is still one up on me, and at the moment I'm pretty worried about her.' He then went on to tell Erika about Sabine's misfortune and her reluctance to leave for the south.
`Poor girl, how terrible for her,' Erika commented. `But, of course, with everyone in Berlin expecting the next bomb to blow them to pieces all normal standards of conduct must have gone with the wind. And it was really very generous of her to let that beastly boy have his fun before he went off to the front, almost certainly to die or become a prisoner of the Russians. I only hope she has taken your advice and by now left Berlin.
`I must try to find out. The trouble is, though, that now Hitler is actually nibbling at the bait I've offered him I dare not leave the bunker for long enough to go out to her villa. I wouldn't have left this evening had f not been given an imperative order from Goering to come out to Karinhall.'
`But you're glad you did?
'How can you ask!'
They embraced again, then Erika said, `It's many hours since you left the bunker so you must be hungry. Let's eat while you tell me about-the rest of your adventures.'
Gregory had already noticed that a side table against one wall of the sitting room had been converted into a cold buffet. On it were arranged the sort of things that in the final stage of the war very few kitchens in all. Europe, except Goering's, could provide. There were foie-gras and a cold lobster, part of a Westphalian ham, wings of chicken supreme decorated with truffles, a pineapple with a bottle of Kirsch standing beside it, and a magnum of champagne in an ice-bucket.
While they tucked into this magnificent feast Gregory told Erika about his escape from Poland, his months of misery at Sachsenhausen and how, with Malacou's help, he had got away from the camp only to find himself expecting to be shot on the orders of Goering.
When they had done it was getting on for three in the morning. Gregory then helped Erika to undress. He did not sleep in the dressing room.
At seven o'clock they were awakened from a deep sleep by a footman. He brought them breakfast on a tray and as he set it down he said, `His Excellency the Reichsmarschall is already up. He requests that as soon as you have breakfasted and dressed you will join him.'
Sitting up side by side, they ate the newly baked bread spread with real butter and gratefully drank down two large cups of genuine Turkish coffee apiece. For ten minutes they allowed themselves to forget everything for the fun of splashing together in the bath. Then they hurriedly got into their clothes, rang for the footman and accompanied him up to Goering's huge workroom.
The Reichsmarschall was dressed in a pale blue uniform with all the gold trappings appropriate to the Chief of the Luftwaffe in addition to the galaxy of bejewelled orders that scintillated on his broad chest. Beside him on his desk lay his foot-long Marshal's baton of solid ivory encrusted with emblems in gold.
As they approached he stood up, kissed Erika's hand and said, `1 regret having had to disturb your connubial bliss at such an early hour, but shortly we shall be leaving here. The time has come when I must evacuate Karinhall.'