'I know,' he smiled back. I saw the whole party. I had hidden myself between the curtains and one of the suits of armour in the gallery. You certainly…'
'What!' She halted in her tracks, and her eyes grew round as saucers. 'D'you… d'you mean that you heard everything we said.'
'Not quite. Some dust got up my nose, and I had to creep away for about six or seven minutes to have a sneezing fit.'
'When…what was happening when you did that?'
'The smaller fry had gone. Ribb had been having one hell of a row with Grauber, but was just about to put some proposition to him.'
'You didn't hear then…what it was?'
'No, what was it?'
'Oh, simply an attempt to bribe him. But all those top Gestapo men have already made fortunes by threats and blackmail; so it didn't come off. What were we doing when you got back from your sneezing fit?'
'You and Ribb were alone. He was persuading you to leave the country for his sake and your own. That is damned hard on you. I'm more sorry than I can say to have been the cause of letting you in for this.'
She gave a heavy sigh. 'It is my own fault for having persuaded you to come back here with me.'
'Anyhow, you put up a marvellous fight. It was the most accursed luck that that fellow Puttony should have run into us just as we were leaving the police station. What else happened while I was not there to listen?'
'Oh nothing… nothing much. Ribb and Grauber went on wrangling. You must have heard everything that mattered; so there is no point in my repeating it all to you.'
'No. The thing I am anxious to hear is what do you propose I should do now?'
Taking a cigarette from the box beside his bed, she went over to him for a light, and said, 'I swore to Ribb that you really did leave the house soon after we got here, and said that you must have slipped past the Lieutenant while he was telephoning to Szalasi. Ribb believes that. At least I think he does. He wouldn't want you to be captured anyway, because, if you were, my name would be dragged into it and involve him in the scandal he is so anxious to avoid. Anyway he is going to give a cooked up version of the affair to the Regent, get him to issue an order to the Hungarian Security Police not to pursue the matter for the moment, and will get from him special passes ordering them not to prevent myself and my chauffeur leaving the country. But he told me that I can count only on temporary protection; so I must get out while the going is good. That means leaving tonight; and you, of course, will be my chauffeur.'
Gregory nodded. 'That looks like an easy get out for me, then.'
She shook her head. 'I'm afraid it may not prove as easy as it sounds. Grauber proved irreconcilable. He will be telephoning to Himmler to exert pressure on the Regent. That is why we must get across the frontier before a new order goes out for our arrest. In the meantime Grauber can raise quite a big bunch of Gestapo men from the Villa Petoefer, and he has a lot of pull with the Arrow Cross people. The last thing he said before he left was that he was convinced that you were still here, and that, dead or alive, he meant to get you; so he may try to intercept us.'
Anxious Hours
Chapter 15
Nothing could have given Gregory greater cause for alarm than the news that Grauber intended to take the law into his own hands. Swiftly he urged that they should start for the frontier at the earliest possible moment, so as to give the enemy the minimum of time in which to take measures that might prevent their leaving the city.
Sabine agreed in theory but was not very helpful in practice. She said that she could not leave without seeing her banker, her solicitor and her jeweller; moreover, as she was not returning to Berlin where she kept a separate wardrobe, but meant to pretend in front of the servants that she was, she must herself pack such clothes as she could take with her.
Gregory deplored the delay but was forced to submit to it; for Sabine pointed out that it would be madness to leave without the papers promised by Ribbentrop, and in order to collect them she had to lunch with him. That meant they would be unable, anyway, to start before mid afternoon; so after some, discussion they decided to put off their departure until early evening, as they would then gain the benefit of twilight, and there would be less likelihood of Grauber's people spotting that the driver of Sabine's car was Gregory dressed up in her chauffeur's uniform.
Again Gregory told her how distressed he was about bringing such trouble upon her and having disrupted her whole life, but she seemed to take the matter with commendable philosophy. Smiling a little wryly, she said that it could not be helped and that, if only they could keep clear of Grauber, she felt sure she would find compensations abroad for all she was being forced to give up. Then she promised to send Gregory something to read, and left him.
Pipi arrived ten minutes later with half a dozen English novels published in the '30s and a German paper printed in Vienna. While he made the bed and tidied the room, Gregory glanced through the paper.
During the past few days a great naval and air battle had been raging in the Solomons between the Americans and the Japanese, and it was now admitted that the Americans had had the best of it.
There were further details about the death of the Duke of Kent, which had occurred on the previous Tuesday. His Royal Highness had been flying in a Sunderland to Iceland on R.A.F. duty when the aircraft had crashed with the loss of all but one of the fifteen men aboard her. Gregory had met the Duke on one occasion and found him charming; so he was able to form an idea of how greatly his loss would be felt by the Royal family.
Colossal battles involving millions of men were still raging in Russia. The Germans admitted withdrawals on the central front, and from the place names mentioned it was clear that General Zhukov's recent counteroffensive had forced them back to positions 320 miles west of Moscow. But Von Bock's offensive across the Don was still making progress, the Germans claimed that their shock troops had broken through the outer defences of Stalingrad, and the threat to the city was now extremely grave.
As Gregory knew only too well, it was Stalingrad that mattered. No successes elsewhere could possibly compensate for its loss. Without it Russia's war economy must collapse, and that could lead to the loss of the war by the Allies or, at' best, a slogging match with no foreseeable end until half the cities in the world were destroyed and the whole of its population starving.
But he wondered now whether, even if he could get back to England safely and quickly, there would still be the time and the means to put his successful negotiations in Budapest to practical use. He had no doubt whatever about the soundness of his plan. If only the Hungarians could be induced to repudiate the Nazis and withdraw their army from the Russian front the Germans, in order to fill the gap, would within a week be compelled to raise the siege of Stalingrad.. First, though, the Hungarians quite reasonably required their guarantees. To secure them meant selling the plan, with all its post-war commitments, to both the Foreign Office and the State Department, then the British and American Chiefs of Staff Committees would have to be consulted on its military implications and, finally, the consent obtained of the War Cabinet and the President. It would mean every person involved in the High Direction of the War on both sides of the
Atlantic being given a chance to have his say at one or more of innumerable committee meetings and the exchange of hundreds of 'Most Secret' cypher telegrams between Washington and London. With the best will in the world on the part of all concerned, a decision could not possibly be hoped for in less than a month.