She was a short plump girl with dark hair, a fresh complexion and quick, boot-button eyes. Bobbing to him, she smiled and gave him the traditional greeting, `Kiiss die Hand, mein Hen', then set the tray down on the bed.
To establish good relations he talked to her for some minutes about the old days in Budapest, and the unutterable evil that Hitler had recently brought upon that lovely city. Then, having told him the Herr Graf had left and the gnari'ige Frau Baronin would like to see him when he had had his bath, she bustled away.
Greatly refreshed by his long sleep Gregory tucked into the big plate of ham and eggs, ate two fresh peaches and lapped up the coffee, which he guessed must have come via the Black Market from Turkey. By nine o'clock he was having a most welcome bath and soon after, clad in Ribbentrop's dressing gown, he went in to Sabine.
She was sitting up in bed. He thought that she looked absolutely adorable and for a moment cursed himself as a fool for the puritanical scruples that had denied him the delight of getting in beside her and smothering her flower-like face with kisses. With an effort he got a hold on himself, kissed her good morning and perched himself on the side of her big bed.
Smiling, she returned his kiss then sighed and said, `Oh God, how I hate this war. Just to think what a bomb has done to you and robbed us of. And the even worse things that have happened to such thousands of other people. May that filthy little Austrian that brought it on us rot in hell for all eternity.!
'You seem to have changed your views quite a lot since last we met,' Gregory grinned. `Two summers ago when we talked of these things in Budapest you were a hundred per cent pro Nazi.!
'Yes,' she admitted. `But look what the Communists did to Hungary after the First World War. Those gutter bred swine robbed families like mine of everything we had, and did their utmost to degrade everyone to their own filthy level. You British, with your stupid, pale-pink Liberalism, made no effort to stop them. Neither did the French. The only people who had the guts to stand up to them were the Italians and the Germans. Naturally, as German influence was so strong in Hungary I became a Nazi. What sensible person wouldn't have? But I'm not a Nazi now. They've made themselves untouchables. Say that I'm a Fascist, if you like. But I'm not a Nazi.'
Gregory nodded. `There's a lot to be said for the Fascists. Old Mussolini did a great job in cleaning up Italy. If only he'd stayed neutral he'd be on the top of the world today and Italy positively bulging with money made out of both sides during the war. That he got folie de grandeur and thought that with Hitler's help he could become a modern Roman Emperor, ruling the whole Mediterranean, was one of the greatest tragedies of our time. Little Franco, too, has done a great job of work in Spain. What is more he has had the sense to keep his country out of the war, so given it a real chance to recover… Why people should cavil at him for having put the Moscow inspired agitators and saboteurs behind bars I could never see. If he'd run his country on the lines the idiot British and French intellectuals and those crazy Americans would have liked to see, by this time Spain would have had a Communist Government. Quite a useful card for the war against Hitler. But what about afterwards, with Russian bombers based there only two hours' flight from London and Paris? Some people simply can't be dissuaded from trying to cut off their noses to spite their faces. But all this is beside the point. You say you're no longer a Nazi; but you're still working for them.'
`Up to a point,' she agreed thoughtfully. `I'd still turn in these dirty little Marxists -who'd like to see Germany a Soviet Republic, whenever I could get the goods on them. But I've never yet given information about those of our own kind who would like to see Hitler as an ugly corpse.'
`Are there many people who feel that way?' he asked.
`Quite a few. Of course millions of ordinary people must wish him dead simply because they believe it would bring about an end to the war. Although it's amazing how many of them, and, I gather, particularly the troops at the front who don't suffer from the bombing, still believe in him. They get nothing but Goebbels' propaganda, and day after day he plugs away about the Secret Weapons that are yet going to get Germany out of her mess. You may not know it, but London has already been destroyed by the buzz-bombs, the invasion ports soon will be and the long-range rockets are going to send New York up in flames. Only the upper crust know that to be poppy-cock, and the middle classes doubt it but the great majority believe it to be gospel. That's what keeps them going. That and fear of the Russians.'
`What sort of people are the few you mentioned? I mean, those who would take a hand in putting an end to Hitler if they had the chance?
'They are a very mixed bag, most of whom wouldn't see eye to eye in anything else at all. There is every sort o f group ranging from Communists to the old aristocracy who'd like to see a Kaiser on the throne again; the old Trade Union laddies, Social Democrat ex-Deputies, priests of both the Roman Catholic and Lutheran faiths, high-up Civil Servants, exDiplomats, Generals of the Wehrmacht: the lot.'
`Then since leaders in every sphere feel that way and are prepared to sink their differences to achieve this one end they must form a very powerful group of conspirators.'
`They're not. All the civilians showed their colours too clearly before the war. Hitler dismissed them from their posts ages ago, and although they've been left free they are constantly watched by the Gestapo. I'm speaking now of men like the Socialist leaders Julius Leber and Wilhelm Leuschner, Dr. Karl Goerdeler the ex-Mayor of Liepzig, the ex-Ambassadors Ulrich von Hassell and Count Werner von der Schulenburg, the former Prussian Finance Minister, Popitz, and the former President of the Reichsbank, Dr. Schacht. I've good reason to believe that a lot of them are in touch with one another; but if they do meet it is at night in cellars of bombed-out buildings… If one of them so much as raised a finger in any public act he and his whole family would find themselves in a torture chamber.'
`Yes; I realize that there's not much the civilians can do until they are given a lead, but that doesn't apply to the Generals.'
`You think that just because they command great bodies of men, but in reality they hold only the shadow of power. Hitler's always known that the Generals were secretly against him. Although he could not do without them, soon after he came to power himself he set about putting shackles on them. The von Blomberg affair provided him with a lucky break for a first step towards that.'
`You mean when the Field Marshal married his typist and she turned out to have been a prostitute?
'That's right. Before that Hitler was only technically Supreme Chief of the Armed Forces, but when Himmler produced the photographs of Blomberg's wife posing in the nude for dirty pictures, and he was sacked, Hitler took over his job as Minister for War and has kept it ever since. Keitel more or less took over Blomberg's work, but he's really only Hitler's mouthpiece at the War Office, and a vain, weak toady at that. Then there was the scandalous affair of von Fritsch.!
'He was kicked out for being a pansy, wasn't he?
'No; it was because he opposed Hitler. The evidence Himmler produced about him was composed of lies from beginning to end. Although Hitler had it suppressed, it came out afterwards that the evidence concerned a man named Frish. At a Court of Honour even Goering stood up for von Fritsch, but he was sacked all the same. As Commander in Chief of the Wehrmacht, he was succeeded by von Brauchitsch. After the failure of the Russian offensive in i941 he quarreled violently with Hitler about how to retrieve the situation, so that winter he, also, was sacked. Then, instead of appointing another C. in C. to succeed him, Hitler took that job on himself as well. So from 1942 he has had the whole Wehrmacht in his pocket.'