As soon as Gregory was round the corner of the landing, out of Tina’s sight, he transferred his small but deadly automatic from his hip pocket to the right-hand pocket of his jacket. Walking on down the long balcony-corridor he did not look ahead but over its open side down towards the restaurant, scrutinising with new intentness the tall trees that grew among the tables in the courtyard.
It had occurred to him that should he have to make a bolt it he would stand a better chance of getting out of the hotel quickly if, instead of dashing for the lift or stairs, he jumped into the branches of the nearest tree and shinned down it to the ground. At the moment there were only a few groups of people drinking aperitifs at widely separated tables, and there was an hour or more to go before the courtyard would become crowded with diners and waiters; so the odds were good against his being tripped or caught by grabbing hands as he ran across it.
Having decided on the branch at which he would take a flying leap, he took out the key to his room and inserted it in the lock with his left hand. His right closed about the butt of the automatic in his jacket pocket, he turned the key and pushed the door open.
Monsieur Cochefert of the French Consulate was sitting in the armchair near the window and a plump red-faced young man in the uniform of the Hungarian State Police was perched on the end of the bed. At a glance Gregory also took in the fact that the lids of both his suitcases were a little raised, evidently owing to their contents having been taken out and thrust back into them without the least care. The two men were smoking and looked bored, but a pistol lay ready to Cochefert’s hand on the broad arm of the chair in which he was sitting.
The sight of the weapon and the contemptuous lack of any attempt to conceal the fact that his suitcases had been searched confirmed Gregory beyond all doubt in his belief that this was not a routine visit. Having already decided that his best hope lay in attempting to bluff his way through any trouble he raised his eyebrows in feigned astonishment at finding people in his room, then demanded sharply of Cochefert:
‘Monsieur! Kindly inform me what you are doing here!’
The Frenchman picked up his gun and came slowly to his feet. His nearly bald head, thin beak of a nose and long scraggy neck protruding from the stiff white collar made Gregory again think of a vulture. With an ironical bow he replied:
‘When we met before I neglected to introduce myself fully. I am Captain Jules Cochefert of the Vichy Deuxième Bureau. My companion, here, is Lieutenant Puttony, of the Hungarian Security Service. He does not speak French, and I understand that you talk quite fluent German with the staff in this hotel; so we will use that language.’
Gregory could feel his heart beating slightly faster, as it always did when he was in a dangerous situation; but his brain swiftly registered the implications of the disclosure. Cochefert was not just a minor Civil Servant but an officer of the French ‘Quisling’ police, who were hand in glove with the Nazis. Evidently something had aroused his suspicions that Commandant Etienne Tavenier might be working against his paymasters. Next moment, with a sardonic grin which displayed two rows of yellowish teeth, he led Gregory to suppose that he was putting the grounds for those suspicions into words by asking:
‘How are you progressing with your arrangements for selling truffles to the foie-gras factories?’
The sigh of relief that Gregory heaved was internal, but none the less heart-felt. So that was it! The Vadászkürt had forwarded on to him at Nagykáta a list of foie-gras firms from the French Commercial Attache’s office. As he knew nothing of the technicalities of truffle growing and foie-gras tinning, he would probably have decided that it was wiser not to expose his ignorance of the subject by calling on any of these people even if he had had the opportunity; but his having been at Nagykáta for the past five days had put the matter outside his jurisdiction. Evidently this Paul Pry had learned of his commercial remissness and had assumed that to be evidence that he was engaged in some nefarious activity.
Since entering the room he had kept his hand on his gun; so that at any moment he could have shot through the cloth of his coat before either of his visitors could level a weapon at him. Now, feeling that he had little to fear, he took his hand out of his pocket and said affably:
‘Oh, I decided that before I got down to work here I’d take …’
He got no further. His hand had hardly left his pocket when Cochefert raised his pistol and snapped:
‘Thank you! Shooting through a pocket is rarely accurate but can be dangerous to others. I have been waiting only to relieve you of the temptation to experiment. Put your hands up! The Herr Leutnant will oblige by securing your weapon.’
Mentally cursing at having allowed himself to be tricked, Gregory obliged. The stolid looking Hungarian police officer stepped forward, fished the little automatic out of Gregory’s pocket, frisked him quickly to make sure that he was not carrying another, then plumped himself back on the edge of the bed.
‘Now!’ said the Frenchman, ‘I have introduced myself to you. Be good enough to reciprocate.’
Pretending a lack of concern about his situation that he was far from feeling, Gregory replied, ‘M. le Capitaine, I fail to understand the reason for all this drama. I come into my room, upon which you jump up grasping a pistol. As I carry one myself I naturally put my hand on it. There is nothing strange in that. Regarding the truffle business, I was about to tell you that I decided to take a few days holiday before calling on any of the foie-gras merchants. As for introducing myself, you know already that I am Commandant Etienne Tavenier.’
That is a lie!’ snapped Cochefert with sudden venom.
‘What causes you to think so? You have seen my passport.’
‘It is a stolen one.’
‘Nonsense! The photograph in it could be of no one but myself.’
‘Of course. I meant stolen, then tampered with; or perhaps a complete fake made by the British.’
This was really dangerous ground. Gregory could only pray that they had no proof that he had come from London. He launched a violent protest:
‘Your suspicions are absurd! There is nothing whatever wrong with the passport. Besides, I can prove my identity in other ways. I have letters, bills …’
Cochefert made an impatient gesture. ‘They too will be fakes. It is useless to go on like this. I know beyond all doubt that you are not Commandant Tavenier.’
‘What makes you so certain?’
‘The fact that for the last two months the Commandant has been living at his own home, at Razac in Périgord.’
These words, spoken with conviction, struck Gregory like a bolt from the blue. It was the very last thing he had expected, and at one stroke destroyed the whole foundation upon which his false identity had been built. Yet, after a moment, he managed to think up a forlorn hope which might save him until further enquiries had been made. With an angry shake of the head, he exclaimed:
‘This man must be an impostor! Someone who resembles me, perhaps. But no! I have it! He is a rascally cousin of mine who was also christened Etienne. I have no wife or children to protect my property. The swine would know that I have been missing since May 1940, and after two years he must have decided to go and live at Razac’
Lowering the hooded lids of his dark eyes a little, Cochefert appeared to consider this. Gregory continued to look indignant; and he had ample cause as he thought of how he had been let down by someone in London. He might have to pay with his life for their blunder in stating that Tavenier was dead when he was not only very much alive but living at his old home, and so could be traced without the least difficulty by the Vichy police. After a moment the Frenchman said:
‘But you have not been missing since May 1940. At least, the story you told me was that you got back to France by coming with the British on the St. Nazaire raid; that was towards the end of March this year.’
‘True. And that is how I got back.’
‘You said, too, that you arrived at Razac early in April. If so your cousin must have known that you were alive and free. How then do you account for his having illegally occupied your property only a few weeks later?’
Gregory saw now that his ‘cousin’ theory was not going to provide even a temporary loophole. Swiftly changing his ground, he said:
‘All right. Since that does not seem to make sense there must be some other explanation. Perhaps you have been misinformed. Yes; that must be it. Police forces are not infallible. I suggest that we postpone this discussion for twenty-four hours while you have fresh enquiries made. I’ll bet you a hundred pengos the result will be that there is no one calling himself Etienne Tavenier living at Razac after all.’
‘Then you would lose your bet.’ Cochefert’s vulture head nodded and his yellowish teeth showed in a cynical smile. ‘I will tell you now how we know the truth. My first enquiry was only our normal check up with Vichy on all Frenchmen arriving in this country. Vichy reported back that the name Etienne Tavenier was not on the list of those to whom passports had been issued this year, but that there was a retired Commandant of that name. The real Commandant Tavenier was sought out and interviewed. It is true that he returned to France last March with the British when they made their raid on St. Nazaire. He was not only shot and severely wounded but afterwards thrown into the dock by a German corporal; so it is not at all surprising that anyone who witnessed the incident should have reported him as among the killed. But he was hauled out while still alive and put into hospital where he remained for two months. When discharged he was crippled for life; so, although a de Gaullist, instead of being interned he was allowed, on compassionate grounds, to go to his home.’
After pausing for a moment, Cochefert went on. ‘So, you see, I was only amusing myself when I let you produce that poor hare about a cousin of the same name. It is useless for you to flounder like a fish in a net any more. Whatever game you have been playing it is finished now; and, no doubt, after a little persuasion you will tell us all about it.’
The game of bluff was so clearly up that Gregory only shrugged and asked, ‘What do you intend to do with me?’
‘To enter any country on a false passport is an offence. Under Hungarian law you are liable to a term of imprisonment, then to deportation. But for the duration of the war we have somewhat different arrangements. The Hungarian State Police have the right to detain you indefinitely but should they have no particular grounds for doing so they will, on an application for your extradition, hand you over to me. I shall then send you under escort to France, and my colleagues there will extract from you any information you may possess which would help us to defeat those who, by continuing to oppose Herr Hitler, are preventing the restoration of World Peace.’
Gregory knew that there was little to choose between the uniformed thugs whose reign of terror kept the Pétain government in power and the Gestapo. They had no more scruples than the Nazis about torturing the leaders of resistance groups, or agents of the Allies parachuted into France—including women—who had the ill-luck to fall into their hands. He was terribly tempted to tell Cochefert just what he thought of the senile old Marshal and the gang of unscrupulous politicians with which he surrounded himself.
But this was no time to air his true feelings. Russia was being hammered to pieces. If she broke it might take twenty years of war before Europe could be liberated—just as it had in Napoleon’s day. And he, Gregory, held the threads of a move that would hamstring the German advance into the Caucasus, put Hitler in the devil’s own mess, and bring his defeat very much nearer. The fact that the real Commandant Tavenier had had the good luck to survive the St. Nazaire raid now threatened to render any chance of that move abortive. For Gregory to pretend any longer that he was the Commandant was obviously futile; yet an issue of enormous consequence hung upon his keeping his freedom.
Even had he still had his gun and succeeded in shooting his way out that, as he realised more fully now, would have been no real solution; for, as a fugitive, it would be next to impossible for him to complete his mission.
There was only one chance left to him. He still had a last card up his sleeve, and he must play it. It could prove an ace, but might well be regarded as just as phony as his passport was now known to be. If so, there could be no escape from being marched off to prison and turned over as a de Gaullist agent to the tender mercies of the Vichy secret police. In any case, he was most reluctant to produce this fraudulent trump because it would tie him up with the Gestapo and, even should Cochefert accept it at its face value, unless he could get out of Hungary quickly it might have most disastrous repercussions. But there it was. It was that or the absolute certainty of being marched off to prison there and then.
He took the plunge artistically. No one hearing him could have suspected for one moment that he regarded the men of Vichy as a bunch of treacherous self-seeking swine. Drawing himself erect he clicked his heels together, bowed sharply from the waist and said to Cochefert with a genial smile:
‘My congratulations, Kerr Hauptmann. I have done my utmost to preserve my incognito; but you have got me in a corner from which I see no escape. Since you supposed me to be an enemy agent, such work is most commendable, and I shall not fail to see that you get a good mark for it in the right quarter.’
Staring at him with a puzzled frown, Cochefert muttered, ‘What the devil are you talking about?’
Gregory had been fingering the left lapel of his jacket. With the one word, ‘This,’ he drew from a secret pocket he had had made under it a small square of cardboard, and laid it on the dressing-table. On a dark night in the previous December he had taken it from a man whom he had first shot twice in the stomach. He had then, for his own good reasons, hacked off with a chopper the man’s right hand and thrown his body into Lake Geneva. It was the card issued by the Geheime Staatspolizei to Obersturmbannführer Fritz Einholtz, and signed Reinhard Heydrich.
For a minute that seemed an age Gregory’s eyes were riveted on Cochefert’s carrion-crow features, striving to assess the movement of every tiny muscle and judge whether he would accept it or declare it, too, to be a fake.
As the Frenchman read the card his eyes widened. When he spoke his voice had lost its cocksure sneering tone. It was lower and held an unmistakably servile note:
‘I had no idea…. The last thing I would wish is to interfere with the operations of the Gestapo.’
Taking the tide of fortune at the flood, Gregory instantly reacted. As though set in motion by the sudden pressing of an electric switch, he stamped hard with his right foot on the wooden floor, jerked his body erect, threw back his head, shot out his right arm at a steep angle and cried:
‘Heil Hitler!’
Taken by surprise, his two visitors hesitated only a second. The Hungarian got swiftly to his feet, then both in chorus responded with the Nazi salute.
‘Now,’ said Gregory, ‘you, Herr Hauptmann, are clearly a man to be trusted; so I propose to take you into my confidence.’ His whole manner had undergone a complete change. He spoke in a sharp official voice, and as a superior who was about to do an inferior a favour. Giving a quick glance towards the Lieutenant, he added in French, ‘But what of our friend here. Can he be relied upon to keep his mouth shut?’
‘Yes, Colonel,’ Cochefert replied in the same language. ‘He is an Arrow-Cross Party member.’
‘Good!’ Gregory reverted to German, and turned to Puttony. ‘Herr Leutnant, I shall also confide in you. All that I say must be regarded as of the highest secrecy. You will report to your superiors that you are fully satisfied about the bona fides of Commandant Tavenier, and not even hint at the work I have been sent to Budapest to do. Is that understood?’
The plump, lethargic looking Lieutenant, who had so far been a silent spectator of the scene, was now standing stiffly to attention and regarding Gregory with the veneration of an athletic-minded schoolboy for a Rugby Blue. Tensing his muscles, he snapped out, ‘Ja, Herr Oberst?
‘Very well, then.’ Gregory took out his cigarette case and, without offering it to either of the others, lit a cigarette. He then perched himself on the arm of the easy chair that Cochefert had been occupying and went on:
‘Reports have reached the Führer that certain elements in Hungary are not putting their full weight behind the war effort. This applies particularly to the magnates. Many are still leading lives of luxury and pleasure highly discreditable to them at a time when the whole German people are making the utmost sacrifices to achieve victory. Allies should share their burdens. In Germany thousands are being rendered homeless by the bombing of our cities and the people submit cheerfully to strict rationing, while here, in Hungary, it is as though a state of war hardly existed. That is very wrong. But I should make it clear that we do not blame the Hungarian people. It is only natural that they should continue to enjoy the good things of life as long as they are encouraged to do so by the example of the nobility. It is those who set this example who must be disciplined; and I have been instructed to list the worst offenders so that the Führer can insist that the Regent should take action against them.’
Gregory paused for a moment, then went on. ‘But there is a still more serious matter. It is reported that some of the senior officers in the Hungarian Army are adopting a most reprehensible attitude. One cannot say they are defeatist. To do so would be absurd when it has been obvious to everybody from the beginning that the Führer will triumph over all his enemies. But they are putting obstacles in the way of sending further divisions to the Russian front. They are deliberately conserving Hungarian man-power at the expense of Germany. They do their best to arrange that the spoils Hungary will claim after our victory shall have been paid for in German blood. Worse, much worse, it is even said that some of them question the wisdom of Germany having gone to war with the Soviets, and speak slightingly of our glorious Führer.’
Cochefert and Puttony both shook their heads and made murmurs which could be taken as expressing amazement and horror at such blasphemy. Having given time for this little demonstration of loyalty, Gregory continued.
‘Such men are traitors. They must be identified and routed out. I have come here for that purpose. Naturally they would not be quite such fools as to air their subversive views in front of a German; but it was thought that they might do so before a Frenchman, particularly if that Frenchman pretended to get drunk at some of their parties and showed himself to be at heart a de Gaullist.
‘A fortnight ago I was summoned by Herr Himmler to his Headquarters in the Albrecht Strasse and charged with this mission. The appropriate department then provided me with the identity of Commandant Tavenier. They thought it important that I should be able to talk as though I had been evacuated from Dunkirk and had imbibed the British point of view while in London. We have good contacts in the Free French Headquarters there, who had reported Tavenier as having been killed at St. Nazaire; so his identity seemed very suitable. In failing to check with Vichy, which would have disclosed the fact that Tavenier was still alive, the Albrecht Strasse slipped up badly. Had I been in an enemy country it could have cost me my life. I am fortunate to have been found out only by collaborators. No harm is done; but you will both appreciate my reluctance to admit that I was not Tavenier. If that got out it would completely ruin my mission.’
‘Of course, Colonel. You may rely on us.’ Cochefert gave a quick bow. ‘It may even prove that we can be of some assistance to you.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Puttony added quickly. ‘If you want a watch kept on certain people, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Apart from being an officer in the Security Police I am also the commander of an Arrow-Cross Youth Section; and my lads will do just as I tell them without asking questions.’
Standing up, Gregory replied, ‘I thank you both. Should an occasion arise when I need the help of either of you, I will certainly avail myself of it. Now, let us go downstairs and, without ostentation, drink a baratsch to the health of our glorious Führer.’
Taking their agreement for granted, he strode towards the door. But just inside it he turned suddenly and said to Puttony, ‘By the by, you still have my pistol.’ With a murmured apology, the Lieutenant handed it over. Hiding a smile, Gregory pocketed it and, with the arrogance in keeping with his new rôle, marched on, leaving his ‘collaborators’ to tag along behind him.
Down in the courtyard, at a small table across which the leafy branches above now cast long shadows, he became genial and talkative, while maintaining the sort of condescending charm suited to a lordly representative of the Herrenvolk who wished to make himself pleasant.
Over the drinks he learnt that he had got nearer to the mark than he knew when inventing a mission for Himmler to give him. Puttony disclosed that the Hungarian Nazis were worried and angry because their country was not pulling its weight in the war. They had already made representations to the Führer about it, with the recommendation that he should summon Regent Horthy to Berchtesgaden and insist on his purging both his Cabinet and Government offices of their lukewarm elements.
Gregory guessed that the move was an attempt by the Arrow-Cross leaders to secure a number of the key jobs for themselves, with the hope that this would later enable them to get control of the country. But he thought it unlikely that it would come off. Whatever the Regent might be bullied into promising, the magnates were too firmly entrenched and the Hungarian Nazis still too few and lacking in influence for it to come to anything in practice. Nevertheless he regarded the information as a windfall, since it would make an excellent lever for exerting pressure on the Committee appointed to discuss terms with the Allies.
As soon as his visitors had gone he took stock of his situation. Upstairs in his room he had had to skate on the thinnest possible ice, and there had been several nasty moments when he had thought that nothing could save him from going through it. Even Einholtz’s Gestapo card had been a doubtful asset as, although it was genuine after all that had gone before, and the fact that Heydrich had now been dead for three months, he had half expected it to be declared a forgery, or Cochefert to accuse him of stealing it. That it had instantly been accepted at its face value had saved his bacon. But, all the same, he was far from happy at having had to produce it.
On the credit side, doing so had completely cleared him in Cochefert’s eyes, and Puttony could now be counted on to stall off tactfully any unwelcome interest that the State Security Police might begin to take in his activities. In addition, with the subtlety and swiftness which made him such a brilliant secret agent, he had improvised a reason for his imaginary orders from Himmler which would give him better cover for his own mission. Not only was he now free of any necessity to implement his old cover by calling on several foie-gras merchants, but he could hob-nob with the Hungarian aristocracy as often as he pleased without it being thought strange that a truffle farmer should do so.
But on the debit side Cochefert and Puttony now both believed him to be a fairly senior official of the Gestapo and that might prove his complete undoing. It was a sure thing that the Gestapo would have Liaison Officers in Budapest with their own headquarters, and that the normal drill would have been for him to report there on his arrival. Should Puttony, after all, prove indiscreet and a mention of ‘Commandant Tavenier’s’ mission reach the ears of one of those Liaison Officers, the fat would be in the fire with a vengeance. The thought of such a possibility quite spoilt Gregory’s dinner.
He was uncomfortably aware that his only really safe course was to leave Budapest next morning but, now that his mission showed such promise of developing from a tentative reconnaissance into a concrete hope of bringing Hungary over to the Allies in the comparatively near future, he felt that he could not possibly throw his hand in prematurely. He knew that opportunity did not often knock twice on the same door, and that some hazard of war might soon change the outlook of the Hungarian nobles. He had them well warmed up now, so must remain in Budapest until they had completed their ‘Heads of Agreement’ for him to take back to London. Then the Foreign Office would have the chance to strike while the iron was hot.
He endeavoured to comfort himself with the thought that Puttony must have had security training; so it was really very long odds against his gossiping. Anyhow, it was a risk that must be taken, and the only way to minimise it was to urge the Committee to complete their deliberations as swiftly as possible.
The Committee met the following afternoon in a small private room at the Nobles Club. Count Zsigmond Szegényház, a tall thin man with the delicate features of a dilettante intellectual, was the second oldest member of it. He was also the head of a department in the Hungarian Foreign Office; so obviously the best choice for Chairman, and he was duly elected. After the preliminary of drafting their own ‘Terms of Reference’ had been completed, Gregory asked leave to speak and addressed the Committee at some length on the question of Security.
He pointed out that while the work the Committee was engaged upon was inspired by the highest patriotism it could be classed as treason, and that if its activities came to the ears of pro-Germans in the State Security Police the Government would be compelled to take notice of it. Should that happen, however anxious the Regent might be to protect friends and relations of his who were involved, Hitler would be certain to demand that drastic steps should be taken against them. Therefore, if for no other reason than to save the Regent from grave embarrassment, it was only right that they should take all possible precautions to keep their proceedings secret.
The sound sense of this was admitted and as a move in the right direction it was agreed that, instead of future meetings being held at the Club, they should take place at the home of each member in turn.
Gregory then went on to give an account of his narrow escape from arrest the preceding evening, and ended by repeating Lieutenant Puttony’s statement to the effect that the leaders of the Arrow-Cross Party had recently made representations to Hitler that he should summon the Regent to Berchtesgaden and insist that Hungarian affairs should be brought more into line with Nazi interests.
Count Zsigmond nodded. ‘What he said is true. But the Regent has consistently refused to kowtow to Hitler, and I am glad to say that he has refused to go to Berchtesgaden. However, the Germans’ case for Hungary’s bearing a greater share of the war-burden could not be ignored; so it has been agreed that Ribbentrop should come here for discussions. He is due to arrive early next week.’
‘Do you know the form his demands will take?’ enquired the Bishop.
‘Only in general. It is certain that he will ask for further reinforcements for the Russian front, and for much greater supplies of food than we are sending to Germany at present. He will probably also ask us to receive considerable numbers of refugees from the bombed cities. They would be useless mouths, of course: old people and young children who cannot be employed in the German factories.’
‘That,’ said the Bishop, ‘is a burden we should accept on humanitarian grounds. What else?’
‘He may ask us to issue another loan, or even suggest a capital levy to be devoted to a common war chest.’
A grin spread over the handsome face of the one-armed Colonel János Orczy. ‘We can rely on the Baroness to get us out of that one.’
Gregory gave him an enquiring look, but it was Count Lászlo who satisfied his curiosity. ‘Ribbentrop’s mistress, the Baroness Tuzolto. She is a Hungarian, and a very beautiful one. Of course she is a Nazi, but she naturally protects the interests of her country as far as she can. On more than one occasion already she has acted as the secret intermediary between him and our magnates. He is completely venal and if the bribe is big enough will agree to anything provided that he can see his course clear to explain it away to his master. No doubt we’ll have to find more men and food, and perhaps float a new loan. But she always travels with him and, if there is any suggestion of a levy affecting the great estates, she will buy him off for us.’
They then began to discuss the Heads of Agreement, but their views were so divergent that although they talked for another hour-and-a-half they did not get very far. When it came to fixing their next meeting, it transpired that all of them except Colonel Orczy had arranged to spend the weekend in the country; so Monday was the earliest day they would all be available. Gregory pleaded the urgency of getting matters settled, but in vain. The Bishop said that he could not neglect his spiritual duties in his diocese, old General Baron Alacy had his annual tenants’ party on his estate, and the others said it would be pointless to continue the discussions without them.
The casual postponement of deliberations on which so much hung, and the additional danger to himself of remaining in Budapest even two days longer than was strictly necessary, filled Gregory with annoyance and frustration, and he made no great effort to conceal his feelings. Seeing his long face, János Orczy slapped him on the shoulder and cried cheerfully:
‘Don’t look so glum, my friend. Even should that Police Lieutenant speak of you to the Germans, we will find some way to get you safely out of the country. And there are worse places than Budapest for a little relaxation. Come out to dinner with me tonight and we will forget this wretched war for—a while.’ Then Count Lászlo added, ‘I am returning to Nagykáta for Saturday and Sunday nights. Why not come with me? Mihály Zapolya would, I know, be delighted to see you. I’ll call for you at your hotel tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock.’
Gregory gratefully accepted both invitations, and a few hours later the young Colonel took him to a restaurant in a back street of Buda. It had low vaulted ceilings, all the furniture was bright red painted with Hungarian flowers, and the waitresses were dressed in gaily embroidered national costume.
For their main course they had goose. The whole bird was cut into joints and served on a low revolving wooden dish placed in the centre of the table, so that by swivelling it round they could help themselves to any joint that took their fancy. A feature of the place was its famous Tzigane band which played alternately gay and soulful music. The gypsies too wore brilliant costumes embellished with bunches of many-coloured ribbons. A bald old man with a face like a wrinkled walnut performed prodigies on the Tzimberlum, and the leader, walking among the tables, drew marvellous melodies from his fiddle. Later in the evening their music grew wild and passionate, and gypsy girls with flashing eyes, their dark hair streaming out behind them, whirled madly in ancient dances.
The sight and sound of so much revelry made Gregory feel that the war and its cares were more remote than ever, and when, after a session in a night-club that did not end until five in the morning, he got back to his hotel, he was in fuller agreement than ever with his charming host that there were worse places than Budapest for a little relaxation.
Six hours later Count Lászlo called for him as arranged and he spent a pleasant but uneventful weekend at Nagykáta. On the Monday they received bad news which plunged the household into gloom. The Regent’s eldest son, Stephen Horthy, had been killed in an aircraft disaster. As he had been nominated heir-apparent this was a sad blow; for it once more put Hungary’s future in the melting pot, and raised the not altogether welcome possibility of an Italian Prince being invited to mount the throne.
In the afternoon Gregory and Count Lászlo returned to the capital to find black streamers hanging from the windows of most of the houses and a general air of depression; but they did not feel called upon to postpone the next meeting of the Committee and drove straight to an apartment owned by the Count in which it was to be held.
This was situated in a suburb of Buda, and with a twinkle in his merry dark eyes the hunchback took Gregory from a sitting room that had a dining alcove through into a bedroom almost entirely filled by an enormous low bed. He then opened a wardrobe and displayed to him a collection of some twenty women’s dressing-gowns of varying colours and rich materials.
On Gregory’s raising an enquiring eyebrow, the Count laughed and said: ‘You did not think I lived here, did you? Nearly everybody who is anybody in Budapest has a little place like this in which to receive his girl-friends discreetly. You might perhaps suppose that my unfortunate deformity makes success in that direction difficult for me, but I can assure you it is quite the contrary. Women are my passion and their greatest weakness is their curiosity. Few of them can resist the temptation to find out if I am as good a lover as other men, and God has kindly compensated me by giving me quite unusual virility. There is hardly a pretty Countess in Budapest who has not been tumbled on that bed, and then come back to be tumbled again.’
Recalling what Levianski had said about the morals of the Hungarian aristocracy, Gregory thought it unlikely that the Count was boasting. Moreover he was not altogether without evidence of their lighthearted ways himself. While at Nagykáta the charming bronze-haired Countess Elizabeth had made it unmistakably plain that she would have liked to enter on an affaire with him, and had even gone to the lengths late one night of coming along to his bedroom with a book which she said she thought he might like to read.
The meeting went quite well until it came to the question of the territories lost by Hungary under the Treaty of Trianon being retained or restored to her. At first the Committee were set on demanding every square inch of land that had ever been Hungarian soil; but Gregory said they must be reasonable, as the Allies could not be expected to penalise all Hungary’s neighbours on her account. Then, each member stood out for the permanent absorption of lands in which his own family had once owned estates.
After a long wrangle to which Gregory listened in silence, he put it to them that he thought they would be well advised to confine their terms to the retention of Transylvania and the granting of a port on the Adriatic, as those were reasonable requests, whereas it was unlikely that the Allied Governments would consent to any alteration of the frontiers of pre-1939 Czechoslovakia.
On the question of Austria, the old General proved the nigger in the wood pile as up till 1919 an uncle of his had owned a local railway in a strip of country that had been given to the Austrians, and its loss had considerably reduced the fortune of that side of his family. At their meetings he had so far done little but mumble through his walrus moustache, but on this matter he became angrily loquacious and the meeting broke up without having got any further.
Next day they met again at the Bishop’s quarters, which were a sumptuous private suite looking on to a charming cloister garden in a monastery situated in the oldest part of Pest. Gregory’s opinion of the prelate as a man of God was not a high one. He was only in his early thirties but very fat and very lazy. At Nagykáta Mass had been celebrated every morning by Count Zapolya’s private chaplain in the ornate chapel of the house. The servants all attended as part of their daily routine and a good sprinkling of the family; but, according to the Countess Elizabeth, the Bishop never did so. When telling Gregory this, she had added with a smile that he said that he preferred to perform his devotions in the private oratory adjacent to his bedroom, but she was sure that was only an excuse for him to lie abed.
Nevertheless, he was an intelligent man and a fluent talker; and he succeeded in arguing the General round about Austria. But when they went on to discuss Czechoslovakia all five of them united to declare that not only would they retain Ruthenia but they must have back the far larger Slovakia.
The Czechs were to the Hungarians as a red rag to a bull; and Gregory knew enough of European history to be aware of the reason. For many centuries the two great Kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia had been deadly rivals, until Austria absorbed them both. Bohemia had fared worst as, after a crushing defeat in the seventeenth century, nearly the whole of her nobility had been barbarously executed and every vestige of independent power taken from her. Hungary, on the other hand, had remained a Kingdom, and her magnates had been strong enough to exact terms from the Austrians by which they preserved their ancient rights and their own Diet and refused to acknowledge the Emperor except by the title of King of Hungary. Yet the destruction of the Czech nobility had resulted in the rise of a powerful middle class which had developed trade and industry in a way that left Hungary far behind. In consequence, to the ancient hatred of the Hungarians for their neighbours in the north had been added a sour jealousy, coupled with contempt for them as a nation of bourgeois. To have had to surrender Slovakia and Ruthenia to them in 1920 had therefore been the bitterest pill of all and having got these back in 1940 they were determined to keep them.
When it became clear that the Committee would not budge without many hours of further persuasion, the exasperated Gregory suggested that this one question should be left open for the time being, so that he need no longer delay his departure. It then transpired that Colonel Orczy had sent a message to General Lakatos, one of the principal commanders of the Hungarian forces on the Russian front, asking him to return to Budapest for consultation on an urgent matter. The General was known to be violently anti-Nazi, so was entirely to be trusted, and they wanted his professional opinion upon the number of Anglo-American divisions it would be necessary to land on the Continent in order to hold the German armour in the West. But the General was not arriving until Friday and Gregory had to agree with the Committee that his report would be of little practical value if he left before he could include in it their stipulations on this highly important point; so it was now obvious that he would not be able to get away until the weekend.
Had he been left to himself except for these meetings he would have been driven nearly mad by frustration, but the members of the Committee made up for their dilatoriness in business by lavish hospitality; for they were all intensely proud of their beautiful city and delighted to do the honours of it.
He had, of course, known that Buda had once been the most important bastion of the Roman world against the savage hordes that inhabited the lands north of the Danube; but he had not realised, until Count Szegényház told him, that the Romans had brought civilisation to Hungary long before they had to Britain, and five hundred years before the Germans were slowly emerging from a state of barbarism. The Count, who was a learned antiquarian, had a fine collection of ancient pottery and weapons and, as Gregory showed much interest in them, took him on a fascinating tour of the National Museum. They also visited the Roman baths at Aquincum, and the thermal establishment at which for close on two thousand years countless sufferers had received relief by being packed in radio-active mud.
The Bishop took him to the Matthias Church to see the sacred relics and to the Bergberg where he had the Coronation regalia in the treasury specially brought out for Gregory to examine. Colonel Orczy motored him up to the Fortress of Ofen and the heights of the Bocksberg, then took him to dine with the Officers of the Guard at the Royal Palace. The old General invited him to lunch at the Houses of Parliament and afterwards to witness a session in the Hall of the Magnates, as the Upper Chamber was called.
On Wednesday 27th the Committee did not meet, as on that day the funeral of Stephen Horthy took place. He had been in his middle forties and neither brilliant nor particularly popular, but as the Regent’s heir he was given a State funeral. Although the soldiers lining the streets were in their drab wartime uniforms the magnates gave the procession a touch of semi-oriental splendour, and Ribbentrop and Count Ciano walked side by side at the head of the group of notables representing Axis and neutral countries. Out of sympathy for the mother and father every shop in Budapest was closed and all acitivities for either pleasure or profit suspended; but on the following day the black streamers had disappeared from the windows and the city returned to normal.
That night Count Lászlo gave Gregory dinner and afterwards they went to the Piccadilly, which had the most glamorous cabaret of the luxury night-clubs on the Margareten-Insel. They had been there for about an hour, drinking champagne and watching the lively singing and dancing of a bevy of near naked beauties, when there was a sudden hush and many heads were turned towards one of the entrances.
A party of six people was being obsequiously bowed by the maître d’hôtel to a reserved table on the edge of the dance floor. The leading couple were a tall man with a high bald forehead and a strikingly beautiful dark-haired girl.
‘There’s Ribbentrop,’ remarked Count Lászlo, ‘and his pretty Baroness.’
Gregory turned to look, then caught his breath in surprise and consternation. The girl was his old flame Sabine.
Next moment she glanced in his direction. Their eyes met. Her arched eyebrows went up and her scarlet lips opened a trifle. He knew then that she had recognised him. It was too late to slip away. The danger he had foreseen from an unexpected meeting, when he had thought about her after his bathe on his first afternoon in Budapest, re-entered his mind like the shrilling of an alarm bell.