Gregory ordered a cup, made half from sparkling and half from still wine with pricked fresh peaches in it, and they ate cold Fogas, the most delicious of the Lake Balaton fish, garnished with freshwater prawns. But while the waiter took their order and served them they kept off the subject they had come there to talk about.
He asked her if she had again run across Lord Gavin Fortescue the dwarf with the distorted body and mind who had very nearly had both of them murdered and she replied that she thanked all her gods that she had not. He told her then that he had heard rumours that for some years past Lord Gavin had been living in South America.
She enquired affectionately after Sir Pellinore who had been very kind to her during the difficult time she had spent in England and he was able to tell her that the elderly Baronet was as hale and hearty as ever. Then, for a good part of the meal, they talked about the extraordinary adventure that had first brought them together.
With their wood strawberries they drank Tokay. It was not Imperial, as that had left the Imperial cellars only as a personal gift of the Emperor to other crowned heads on their birthdays, or to Ambassadors on their departure after many years en post in Vienna. But the wine waiter dug out for them a little bottle of 1874 from the vineyards of the Duke of Windezgratz. Its grade of Five Puttanos indicated that five small barrels the maximum number of grapes that had been left on the vines until they were almost raisins had gone into the big cask of earlier vintaged wine; and age had taken off its original cloying sweetness. This nearest thing to bottled sunshine had the flavour of honey diluted with fine dry sherry, and it provided the perfect complement to their two heaped plates of little red, highly perfumed Fraises des Bois.
When they were halfway through them Gregory said, 'Now for the awful truth about my nefarious activities.' Then he told her the object of his mission, but he made no mention of how he had progressed with it.
She listened to him with grave wide eyes, and When he had done asked:
'What conclusion have you come to as a result of your enquiries?'
'That I have been wasting my time,' he lied, returning her gaze without the tremor of an eyelid. 'Of course, there are a certain number of people in every country who would like peace at any price; but from those I've talked to there doesn't seem to be much hope of getting Hungary out of the war.'
'Whom have you talked to?'
'A number of chaps that I've picked up in bars. Count Laszlo was one, of course; but naturally I dared do no more than sound them while playing my role of a Frenchman who is inclined to be a bit pro de Gaulle. There was only one exception. After three years of war London is hopelessly out of ( touch with what goes on here, as we have no permanent agents stationed in Hungary at all. But they gave me the name of one man to whom I could come clean with safety. He is a Jewish merchant and he gave me a far from encouraging general idea of what I should hear from other people later, although naturally he and all his race would like to see Hungary go over to the Allies.'
'Naturally. And no one can blame these wretched Jews for hating the Nazis.'
'Well!' he smiled. 'That's all there is to it, and I hope I've convinced you now that I am not a spy.'
'No.' She drew hard on her cigarette. 'You are not a spy but, by God, you are a saboteur. Blowing up all the bridges on the Danube and the Arsenal would be just nothing to what you are attempting to do.'
'That depends on how you look at it,' he replied quietly.
'There is only way I can look at it. You came here with the idea of trying to get Hungary to desert her allies. If she did Germany might lose the war.'
He nodded. 'She will lose it anyway. It's only a matter of time.'
'I don't agree. Hitler now has a firm grip on Europe from Northern Norway to the Pyrenees, and from Crete to the Gulf of Finland. He can do what he likes with Vichy France, which gives him North Africa from Casablanca to the Egyptian frontier, and the few remaining neutrals Sweden, Spain, Portugal dare not lift a finger against him. He has only to finish off Russia and, to use your own phrase, it will then "be only a matter of time" before the British and Americans have to agree a peace on such terms as he cares to give them.'
'My dear, you are making the same mistake of underestimating the British as your friend Ribb did when he was Ambassador and told his master that we hadn't got the guts to fight. Nothing short of invasion and conquest could enable Hitler to impose a peace on Britain; and he missed his chance of that in 1940.'
'It will come again. Once he has put Russia out of the war, he will be able to send two hundred divisions to do the job.'
'That won't help him. They would still have to cross the Channel, and the RA.F. is now infinitely stronger than it was in the Battle of Britain. An attempt to invade now could lead only to a massacre in which hundreds of thousands of Germans would be drowned.'
After a moment she said, 'You may be right about that; but one thing is certain. Even with their air superiority the British could not invade the Continent. And if they did refuse Hitler's terms that would not just lead to a stalemate. He would send armies down through Turkey and Egypt into Asia and Africa. Within a year he would have conquered India and all Africa down to the Cape, while bigger than ever U-boat fleets got a stranglehold on Britain and starved her into surrender.'
'You are forgetting the United States.'
She shrugged. 'And you are forgetting the big German and Italian populations over there. America's heart is not in the war in Europe. It is the Japs she is so mad against; and they are going to take a lot of beating. They will keep the U.S. busy for two years at least, and that will be quite long enough for Hitler to have forced Britain to her knees.'
Gregory naturally refrained from telling her that America was already pouring men and aircraft into Britain with the intention of attempting the liberation of the Continent as soon as the build up was big enough. Instead he said:
'I quite understand your point of view, but you must admit that you are counting your chickens before they are hatched. All this depends on Russia's being defeated, and she is very far from that yet.'
'On the contrary. Russia is on her last legs. She can't carry on without oil.'
'I know that, but the Germans will find the Caucasus a hard nut to crack. It is much easier to defend than the great open steppes further north. They will be held up in the mountains and get bogged down there for another winter.'
Sabine gave a superior little smile. 'The German General Staff aren't fools; they know that, and they'll do no more than pin large Russian forces down there. Stalingrad is the key to the situation, and that is why the Russians are fighting so hard to hang on to it. Once Stalingrad falls the Volga will be cut. The supplies of oil which are sent up it will cease and the whole of the Russian front north of Stalingrad must collapse.'
With a rather gloomy nod Gregory admitted, 'I suppose you are right about that.' But inwardly he was smiling. The friend of his who had been with him in the Worcester had said to him a few weeks previously over lunch, 'The one snag about being on the Joint Planning Staff is that one simply dare not discuss the war with people outside the setup; and for that reason I've had to give up seeing nearly all my old friends. You see, however careful one is, it is practically impossible to talk about what is going on without the risk of giving something away not actual plans, of course, but while making some general statement.'