On reaching Wolgast he had found that the marshalling yard there had also been bombed and that part of the town was in flames. Skirting it he had reached the road to Greifswald and after a while got a lift in a lorry that took him through the barrier and to the town. From Greifswald he had somehow managed to walk the seven miles to Sassen, arriving there at seven o'clock in thee morning. Taking great precautions against being seen by anyone, he had gone to the ruined Castle. There he had found Malacou up and, by his own mysterious means, already acquainted with a general outline of the situation.
The doctor had given him a potent draught that had temporarily restored him, and they had consulted on what best to do. Their decision had been that the following night Kuporovitch should accompany Willi von Altern in the lorry back to the coppice near Krцslin and pick up Gregory. Owing to the chaos caused by the raid, the Russian thought it unlikely that the wireless would be discovered during the course of the day. Unless it was, the hunt for them would not start immediately so his pass for going to and fro through the barrier would still be good that night, but he had been quick to see that to the plan there was another danger. Although Willi was half-witted, he might later give away having brought Gregory back to Sassen.
Malacou had got over that hurdle by saying that people whose brains were in such a state were very easy subjects to hypnotize; so he would send for Willi and while talking to him about some farm matter put him under. He could then be made to forget permanently everything that took place during the next twenty-four hours.
There remained the problem of getting Gregory back to Sassen through the barrier, as it would have later proved their undoing if it were recorded at the guard post there that Major Bodenstein, suffering from wounds that made him incapable of escaping from the district, had been brought out in the Sassen lorry. That problem had also been solved by Malacou thinking of the coffin. For a dead body no pass would be required and, well lined, a coffin would serve just as well as a stretcher. He had added that Willi while under hypnosis could be made to knock up a rough one during that evening.
Their plan being settled, Kuporovitch had fallen into a sleep of exhaustion. In the evening the doctor roused him for a hearty meal and gave him morphia and a hypodermic to take with him. After dark he had set off with Willi. At the barrier he had had some anxious moments, but all had gone well. On reaching the coppice he had been terribly afraid that he would find Gregory dead and, on finding him gone from the shallow grave, had feared that he must have been stumbled upon and carried away by the Germans.
But Willi had heard Gregory's cry for help so had been the first to reach him and had foolishly tried to lift him up before Kuporovitch could give him an injection. That its effects had worn off during the latter part of their journey, Malacou said later, must have been due to the acuteness of his pain having pierced his consciousness; but otherwise everything had gone according to plan.
In the early hours of the morning they had cut off his clothes in the room in the ruin now used as a kitchen, and on the table there his terrible wound had been cleaned and bandaged up by he doctor. They had then carried him to an upstairs room, the roof of which' was still sound, and Kuporovitch had remained here with him ever since.
Gregory also learned that the raid on Peenemьnde had proved an outstanding success. Hauff had let it out to Khurrem that the Germans estimated that the better part of six hundred bombers had been employed in the raid. They had come in accompanied by a force of Mosquitoes that had bombed Berlin and the Germans had been deceived into thinking that the whole air fleet had dropped its bombs there. But, a little short of the capital, the Lancaster’s had swung north, passed over Rьgen island, then come in from the sea and swooped on Peenemunde, coming down to eight thousand feet to make certain of their targets. The German night fighters had intercepted them on the way back and had shot down forty aircraft, but the havoc caused by the raid had been terrible. Many hundreds of the labour force in the crowded hutments had been wiped out or burned to death, scores of German technicians had been killed or wounded, the whole Station was a shambles and it would be impossible to resume work there for many months.
About Hauff himself there was also news. On the night of the raid his wife had died. His account of the matter was that the sound of the distant raid had reached him just as he was going to bed. Looking out of a window he had seen the fierce glow in the sky and realized that Peenemьnde was being attacked; so he had gone downstairs, got out his car and driven into Greifswald in case his S.S. unit there should be required to give help in the emergency. When he had got home the following morning he had found his wife at the bottom of the stairs with her neck broken.
Normally, being a chronic invalid, she rarely left her room; but it was assumed that, frightened by the roar overhead of the returning aircraft, and the firing of an anti-aircraft battery stationed not far away, she had thought she would be safer on the ground floor of the farm or, perhaps, had gone down to make herself a cup of coffee, but had tripped at the top of the stairs and fallen to her death.
Recalling what Khurrem had told him about Hauff's designs on herself and the Sassen estate, Gregory thought it by no means improbable that the Sturmbahnfьhrer had suddenly decided that the raid provided a good opportunity for him to rid himself of his unwanted wife. However, Kuporovitch went on to say that but for Hauff they might by now be in the clutches of the Gestapo.
On the third day after the raid the wireless had been found in Gregory's boat, with the anticipated results. A description of them both had been issued and a big reward offered for their capture. Oberfьhrer Langbahn had arrived at the Manor with a carload of his S.D. thugs and everyone there had had to submit to hours of questioning.
The farm people could say only that they had had no reason whatever to suspect that Major Bodenstein was not a genuine Rhinelander or his servant a simple pro-German hilfsfrei williger from some part of Czechoslovakia. Willi stated that owing to his war injuries his memory had become extremely "faulty but he could recall nothing suspicious about the two men. Malacou had sworn that Gregory had shown all the symptoms of a man a afflicted with heart trouble, Khurrem had declared that he must have undoubtedly known her late husband when he was Military Attach in Turkey as otherwise he could not possibly have imposed upon her; and all concerned indignantly repudiated the suggestion that they had knowingly harbored enemies of the Reich.
Nevertheless, the angry Oberfьhrer would have had them carted off to a concentration camp had not Hauff been present end seen his plan for marrying Khurrem about to be ruined. He had swiftly intervened and pleaded with his superior. Knowing Khurrem so well, and of her father's voluntary work at the clinic, he was able to vouch for their patriotism and his offer to be personally accountable for their future activities had been accepted.
No- one on the farm, of course, had the least reason to suspect that Gregory and Kuporovitch had returned to Sassen and were living in the ruin; so they could now consider themselves safe there until Gregory was fit enough to leave.
When he asked Kuporovitch if he had any idea when that might be possible the Russian sadly shook his head. `Alas, my poor friend, it will be many weeks; perhaps months. Every day Malacou comes up here to see you and dress your wounds. He does so always at times when he knows you to be unconscious from the dope he gives you. But his report on you fills