When they began to discuss the operation the first thing Gregory learned was that he would have to make the flight from Brindisi in Italy. There was not much difference in the actual distance flying east from Suffolk or north from Brindisi to central Poland; but the latter route was preferable because an aircraft taking it ran less risk of encountering flak or enemy night fighters. All operations for dropping arms and supplies to Resistance groups in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, as well as northern Italy which was still held by the enemy, were carried out by special squadrons under the command of Air Marshal Sir William Elliot, C.-in-C. Adriatic, whose headquarters were at Bari.
For there to be any chance at all of this hazardous operation succeeding it would be necessary to undertake it on a night when reasonable weather over Poland could be predicted and during the period of maximum moonlight which, that month, ran from the 23rd to the 29th. So it was agreed that Gregory should leave England on the 21st. Sir Pellinore telephoned Brigadier Jacob and arranged that Gregory should be relieved of his duties in the Cabinet War Room right away, then he telephoned Erika and asked her to come down to London on the afternoon train.
When they left General Gubbins’s office Gregory went straight down to Gloucester Road, told the faithful Rudd that he was off on his travels again, then packed a bag and took a taxi up to Carlton House Terrace. Erika joined him that evening and when he broke the news to her about his new mission she did her best to hide her distress. He endeavoured to reassure her by stressing the fact that aircraft sent on such missions nearly always returned safely; and that, apart from the flight, he would be in danger only for an hour or so while picking up the parts of the V.2, and should be back in England within ten days of setting off. So during the next three days they did their best to forget this new peril he was about to face.
But that was far from easy, as he had to spend long periods endeavouring to secure from Malacou more precise information about the situation of the cottage and make arrangements with him for the landing.
After several such sessions Gregory was as satisfied as he could be in the circumstances. The cottage lay about twelve miles to the north-east of a fair-sized town named Pultusk, and this, together with the conformation of the rivers, should enable him to identify the second-class road from Rózan on which the aircraft was to land, provided there was a fair degree of moonlight. But the arrangements for the pick-up had to be left distinctly vague.
Although the road was hardly ever used at night, owing to the sabotage operations carried out by the Poles, S.D. men on motor-cycles patrolled a main road that was not far distant to the west; so to put out flares to guide the aircraft in would entail much too great a risk. Moreover, as Gregory could not specify the night on which the landing was to be made until shortly before the aircraft took off, at such short notice it would not be possible to muster a number of Polish partisans to help carry the heavy cases containing the rocket mechanism from the cottage to the ‘plane, but between them they should be able to do the job in an hour at most; and on every evening from the 23rd Malacou would keep his mind free to receive a message from Gregory that he was on his way.
On Friday the 21st Gregory said his good-byes to Erika and Sir Pellinore. Both of them had an instinctive distrust of Malacou, so urged Gregory to exercise the greatest caution in his dealings with him and to run no unnecessary risks. To that he replied that in this affair Malacou was acting only as a medium for the Polish engineer, in whom they had every reason to have faith; and that as far as risks were concerned, if there were any signs that the aircraft might be caught while on the ground it would not land.
He left London by train for St. Evill in Cornwall. A Flight Sergeant met him on the platform and drove him to the R.A.F. Station. There he reported to the Station Commander, who took him to the mess for drinks and a meal. An hour and a half later he was on his way. After flying far out into the Atlantic the aircraft turned south-west and, without seeing any signs of enemy activity, landed him at Gibraltar. There he spent a few hours, then went on in another aircraft across the sunny waters of the western Mediterranean to arrive at Brindisi on the Adriatic shortly before midday on the 23rd.
A Group Captain took charge of him and it soon emerged that, like Gregory, as a young man his host had been a subaltern at the end of the First World War; so over drinks in the mess they began swapping reminiscences and got on famously. Later, when they discussed the forthcoming operation, the Group Captain told him that the worst headache to be faced was that it was still high summer. Aircraft dropping supplies for Resistance groups in Yugoslavia, or even Czechoslovakia, could leave after dark and return before dawn; but a trip to central Poland meant a five-hour flight each way and, allowing an hour for the pick-up, that meant that the aircraft could not leave Brindisi much after seven o’clock; so it would still be light enough for it to be spotted by German fighters when it passed over the northern Adriatic.
A Dakota with additional fuel tanks had been laid on for the job, and at a conference next day it was decided to guard against possible interception by sending a Liberator to escort it on the first part of its journey. At the conference Gregory met the crew of the Dakota that was to fly him in. The Captain of the aircraft was Wing Commander Frencombe of No. 267 Squadron, the pilot Flight Lieutenant Culliford, the navigator Flight Lieutenant Williams, the W/T operator Flight Sergeant Appleby, and a Polish Flying Officer, K. Szaajer, from the Polish Flight had been seconded to act as interpreter if necessary.
Everything had been made ready to carry out the operation that night but the Met. report was unfavourable, so with keyed-up nerves they waited to see if the next day would bring an improvement. It did, so on the evening of the 25th they made their final preparations. Soon after seven o’clock they went out on to the airfield. A last check-up was made on the Dakota KG.447 then, clad in windproof clothing and wrapped in rugs to keep them as warm as possible during their long cold journey, at 19.37 hours they took off.
While over the Adriatic they were spotted by German patrol-boats that carried anti-aircraft guns, but were flying sufficiently high to escape the flak that was loosed off at them. By half past eight they were over Yugoslavia and a little before ten o’clock when they were approaching Budapest, darkness having fallen, their escorting Liberator turned back and left them. With a steady hum the Dakota soughed on over Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
For a good part of the flight Gregory slept, then half an hour after midnight Flight Lieutenant Williams roused him to tell him that they were approaching their destination. The aircraft was steadily coming down from the great height at which it had been flying, so he took off his oxygen mask and went forward into the cockpit.
To check the features of the country far below with the map was anything but easy, as there were patches of drifting cloud that now and then obscured the moon for up to two minutes at a time, and when the moonlight did glint on water the whole of the area to the north-east of Warsaw was so intersected by the rivers Liwiec, Bug and Narew, with their many tributaries, that Gregory began to fear that he would not be able to identify the two forks between which lay Malacou’s cottage.
For some fifteen minutes he and Williams peered down, sweeping the landscape with powerful night glasses, then the Flight Lieutenant said, ‘We’ve overshot it. We must have by now,’ and told the pilot to turn back.
The aircraft heeled over as Culliford brought her round. Just as he straightened out a pair of searchlights suddenly came into action away to the west and in wide arcs began to sweep the sky. As the Captain of the aircraft muttered a curse another pair opened up to the south, then a third pair almost immediately below them. It was evident that the German listening posts had picked up the sound of their engines.
The pilot banked the aircraft, then put her into a steep dive. As Gregory righted himself from a lurch Williams shouted to reassure him. ‘Our trips over Poland are so infrequent that there’s a good chance they’ll take us for one of theirs that has got off course. Unless they catch us in a beam and identify us as an enemy they won’t shoot.’
Culliford had brought the aircraft down to five hundred feet, so it was now well below the angle at which the searchlights were sweeping. Two minutes later Gregory heard Malacou’s voice as clearly as though he had been in the ‘plane, calling, ‘Here! Here! Come down! Come down!’
Staring earthward he suddenly recognised the bend in the big river near which the cottage lay, then the road to Rózan some way to the north of it. Putting one hand quickly on the pilot’s shoulder, he pointed downward with the other. Culliford nodded, turned the aircraft in a wide sweep and shut off his engine. Slowly she sank, then, bumping only slightly, taxied to a halt on the long straight road that ran through the marshes.
Gregory, Williams and Szaajer scrambled out and looked quickly about them. A cloud had just obscured the moon again, but next moment they spotted a torch being flashed at intervals some quarter of a mile away. While the three of them ran towards it the others remained in the aircraft so that if need be it could make a quick getaway.
As they approached, the flashes from the torch ceased and they all drew their pistols in case they were walking into a trap. But Gregory went forward confidently, because for several hours past, except during his sleep in the aircraft, he had been concentrating on letting Malacou know that the pick-up was to be that night, and the occultist’s clear call to him, only five minutes earlier, confirmed that his telepathic communication had been received.
The moon suddenly came out again and two figures emerged from a patch of tall reeds at the roadside. Malacou stepped forward and cried joyfully, ‘Mr. Sallust, I knew that I could not be mistaken, and that you were on your way. It is a great relief that you have got here safely.’ He then introduced his companion as the Polish engineer Mr. Kocjan.
When Gregory had introduced the others Kocjan, also speaking German, pointed at the searchlight beams and said quickly, ‘Now that they have lost the sound of your engines they will know that the ’plane must have come down, and may suspect that it is British. It might have landed several miles from here, so there is no cause for panic. But, all the same, we must not lose a moment. Come; follow me.’
Turning, he led them at a loping run along a winding path fringed by tall fields of reeds and occasional patches of water. Ten minutes later they reached the cottage.
The windows were blacked-out, but an oil lamp was burning in the living room and Gregory saw that two men dressed in rough farm clothes were silently waiting there. As they came to their feet, Kocjan said:
‘These are two of my brave fellows. There are many packages to carry to the ’plane so I wish I could have collected more men, but this was the best I could do at such short notice.’
Malacou, still breathing heavily from having had to run, stepped over to the stove and said, ‘I thought that after your long flight you would be half frozen; so I have here some soup for you.’ Pouring the steaming liquid into three bowls, he handed them to Gregory, Williams and Szaajer.
‘It’s very welcome,’ Gregory smiled, and Szaajer broke off a conversation he had started with the two farm workers to bow his thanks. But Kocjan said abruptly, ‘Drink quickly, please. We shall need every hand.’ Then he signed to his helpers and they followed him out of the room.
While Gregory sipped at the scalding soup, Malacou confirmed in words the misfortunes that had befallen him during the past six months, giving a brief version of the thoughts he had conveyed by telepathy. As soon as they had finished he led them outside and round to a woodshed at the back of the cottage. It was lit by another oil lamp and Gregory saw that the two farm workers had already left with a first load. But Kocjan was there and the hunchback Tarik, who was helping him load a packing case on to a low, two-wheeled truck. Beyond them lay a pile of at least a score of roughly made crates and bundles. As Gregory’s glance fell on them, he exclaimed uneasily in German:
‘Good God, what a mass of stuff! If all that pile contains metal parts they must weigh a ton.’
‘No, nothing like it,’ grunted the Pole. ‘It is the awkward shape of many pieces that makes them appear so bulky, and several of the cases contain documents we succeeded in stealing in a raid we made on a German headquarters. They may prove valuable, although not in the class of the rocket. We managed to prise off the tail, so have the whole works and have reason to be proud of our achievement.’
‘You certainly have,’ Gregory agreed. ‘I’m only wondering if the aircraft can take it all. She’s fitted with additional fuel tanks, of course; but she needs every gallon for her fourteen-hundred-mile flight here and back.’ Then he turned to Williams and asked him in English what he thought.
The Flight Lieutenant shrugged. ‘We have room enough for it, but there’s more of it than I expected. If he is right about the pieces not weighing a great deal we’ll make it.’
‘Come now! You waste time talking,’ cut in the Pole angrily. ‘Do you not realise that those S.D. swine are now out hunting for us? Every moment counts. Grab anything you can lift, all of you, and hurry with it to the aircraft.’
The crate was now on the trolley and, at a stumbling run, he set off with it. The other four picked up loads and followed him. As Gregory staggered along with a big box balanced on his shoulder, he saw that the searchlight beams no longer raked the sky. That fact confirmed the Polish leader’s statement that the enemy knew the ’plane must have landed and now had their patrols out searching for it on the ground.
Ten minutes later they reached the aircraft. Culliford had taxied it up as near as he could get to the path between the reeds, then turned it round ready to take off. The farm workers had already stowed their first loads in her and were about to return for others. Altogether they made a party of eight, but they all had to make two more trips before they had cleared the woodshed. By then, as the result of Gregory’s exertions, his bad leg was beginning to pain him; and the aircraft had been on the ground for an hour and ten minutes.
By the time the last package had been stowed clouds had piled up so that the sky was three-quarters overcast, and Wing Commander Frencombe was a little worried that his pilot might not be able to keep to the road during the run-up for the take-off. He then suggested that the two farm hands should be given torches and asked to take up positions on either side of the road some way ahead of the aircraft. Szaajer translated the request and the two men agreed. They then said good-bye to their leader and the Polish Flying Officer went off with them in the direction of Rózan to show them exactly where they should stand.
Seeing that it would be some minutes before Szaajer returned, Gregory walked a little way along a path among the reeds to relieve himself from a pain in the stomach that he had been feeling during the past half-hour. Kocjan meanwhile climbed into the aircraft and Williams followed him. A minute later Gregory caught the sound of voices raised in an altercation. Then Frencombe shouted to him:
‘Sallust, where are you! Your friend wants us to take him and his servant back with us. That wasn’t in the understanding, was it?’
‘No,’ Gregory shouted back. ‘Certainly not. I’ll be with you in a minute.’ Hastily he pulled up his trousers and ran towards the ‘plane. On emerging from the reeds he saw that Malacou was half in and half out of the hatch, and clinging to it, while Tarik stood just below him.
Suddenly there came a shout from Szaajer, who by then was three hundred yards up the road. ‘Take off! Take off! Die Sicherheitspolizei are coming.’
Under the wing of the aircraft Gregory glimpsed distant headlights approaching swiftly from the direction of Rózan and caught the roar of motor-cycle engines. In a mixture of German and French Malacou was pleading desperately with Frencombe, who was barring his way into the aircraft.
‘Please! Please! You must take us! You must! This country is accursed. You cannot deny me the chance to leave it.’
‘I can’t,’ Frencombe shouted at him. ‘It was agreed that we should pick up Mr. Kocjan, because he’s found out all about the rocket’s mechanism. But no-one else. We’ve all the weight we can carry as it is. Let go, damn’ you, so that Sallust can come aboard.’
The duty of the Captain of the aircraft was to save it at any cost from falling into the hands of the enemy. Its engine was already ticking over and next moment he snapped an order to his pilot. The engines burst into a roar and the Dakota began to quiver. Thrusting Tarik aside Gregory seized Malacou by the legs and dragged him from the hatch. They fell together in a heap.
As Gregory staggered to his feet, Frencombe cried, ‘Come on! Come on! Quick!’, then leant from the hatch and stretched out a hand to help him up. But Tarik, seeing his master attacked, gave an angry grunt, charged Gregory and grappled with him. It was no time for half-measures and, knowing the Turk’s strength, Gregory kneed him hard in the groin. With another grunt, Tarik released his hold and doubled up.
By then the aircraft had begun to move. Swinging round, Gregory ran beside it. His bad leg began to give him gyp, but he was only a few feet behind the still-open hatch and Frencombe was yelling encouragement to him. As the Dakota bumped along the road its pace increased, but Gregory put on a desperate spurt and succeeded in clutching the lower rim of the hatch. For one wild minute he was dragged along while Frencombe knelt down to grasp his wrist. But just as their hands met the aircraft lifted. The force of the slipstream against which Gregory had been battling proved too great. His aching fingers lost their precarious hold. He fell to the road and rolled over and over into the reeds.
The roar of the aircraft’s engines had drowned that of the approaching motor-cycles, but as it soared away he heard a burst of Sten-gun fire. Half stunned, he lay where he had rolled, partly submerged in shallow muddy water, wondering if the S.D. men had seen him. Excited shouts in German came from some fifty yards away, then the sounds of the motor-cycle engines and more shots, but they seemed further off, and gradually the purring receded into the distance. Crawling out of the marsh he looked about him.
The moon had come out again, but the aircraft had disappeared and the road was empty. He realised that after shooting at the Dakota as she took off the S.D. men must have turned their machines about, pursued her as far as they could, still firing, and by now were searching for Szaajer and the two farm hands, whom they must have seen in their headlights. For the wretched position in which he found himself his only consolation was that there was now a good hope that the Dakota with its precious cargo would get home safely.
Walking back to the place where he had left Malacou, he called to him at first softly then louder. He received no reply so it was evident that while he was still hiding among the reeds Malacou, Tarik, Szaajer and the two farm hands had all made off into the marshes and were now well away from the road.
Crossing it, he made his way some distance along the path that led to the cottage then, in a well-sheltered spot, sat down to consider his position.
It could hardly have been worse. He had had no chance to ask Frencombe to return and pick him up the following night, or on the next when conditions were suitable. Yet, as he thought of that, he decided that even if he had it was unlikely that the Wing Commander would have agreed. Now that the Germans in that area had been alerted it was certain that they would keep a sharp look-out for further landings; so for Frencombe to return would have meant the crew running their heads into a noose. Grimly, Gregory faced the fact that he was stuck there and would have to make his way home by whatever way he could.
Suddenly it crossed his mind that it was now early morning on the 26th, a derivative of the fatal 8 which Malacou had declared to be so unlucky for him. It was on the 17th, another 8, eleven months before, that he had been overtaken by disaster at Peenemünde. His evil number had caught up with him again, but he strove to ignore this unlucky omen and again to regard his situation objectively.
When he had set out he had known there was a risk that the aircraft might be shot down or that they might be surprised while loading the parts of the rocket into it, but he had never visualised himself being left stranded in Poland, and although he could pass anywhere as a German he could not do so as a Pole. He had not even a smattering of the language; so his only asset was that, under the roomy flying kit that he had left in the aircraft, he had been wearing old but good-quality country clothes in which he would be inconspicuous.
Two things caused him special anxiety. The first was that the Germans would be scouring the district for anyone who might have landed from the aircraft and, if challenged, he had no papers to show; neither was there any means of transport by which he could get out of the danger area while it was still dark. The second was even more serious. As it had not even crossed his mind that he might be left behind he had not brought any Polish money with him. For that omission he cursed himself roundly, as he felt that he should at least have foreseen that the aircraft might be shot down and, if he survived, find himself in more or less his present situation.
His mind naturally turned to Malacou. Placing himself in the occultist’s shoes, he tried to divine how the middle-aged Jew would react to his near escape from capture. It seemed probable that he was still hiding somewhere not far off in the marshes. But he could not remain there indefinitely. He would have either to resume his unhappy search for a new refuge or return to his cottage and, when the S.D. men paid it a visit, as they certainly would, trust in his ability to persuade them that he knew nothing about the Polish Resistance group or the landing of the aircraft.
Even if he made use of the rest of the night to put as great a distance as possible between himself and his cottage he could not get far on foot; so there was still a chance that he would be picked up next day. And if he were the very fact of his flight would be taken as proof of his guilt. Therefore it seemed he would stand a better chance if he stayed put and gambled on being able to bluff things out. If he had decided to take that line it followed that the sooner he got back to his cottage the better, so that he would be in bed and, apparently, asleep when the S.D. men arrived.
It then occurred to Gregory that somewhere in the cottage Malacou would almost certainly have hidden a considerable sum of money against an emergency and it was money, above all else, that he himself needed at the moment. If Malacou was there he could be persuaded to part with some of it; if not, the place could be ransacked until it was found. As against that, going to the cottage would entail a certain degree of danger, as the S.D. men might already be there or come on the scene while the money was being searched for. But after weighing the pros and cons for a few moments Gregory decided to risk that.
Getting to his feet, he set off along the path. At intervals other paths led off from it, and for a while he feared he would lose his way. But he had made the trip three times that night, so only once got off the right track. Shortly after having got back on to it, he caught sight of the roof of the cottage silhouetted against the night sky.
Cautiously he approached it. The door stood open and a faint light from it dimly lessened the surrounding gloom. It seemed unlikely that Malacou would have left the door open, so the inference was that the S.D. men had already visited the place and either found it empty or carried him off. Still treading with great care, although he now believed the cottage to be deserted, Gregory continued to advance and stepped into the small, square hall. The light was coming from an inch-wide crack down the edge of the living-room door, which had been left ajar. Just as he was about to push it open he heard a gruff voice say in German:
‘Talk, you Jewish pig, or it will be the worse for you.’
For an instant Gregory remained standing with his hand raised, as if frozen. Only by the man speaking at that moment had he been saved from blundering in and almost certainly being shot down. The scene being enacted in the room leapt to his mind as clearly as if he could see it through the door. The S.D. men had caught Malacou there and were questioning him. Next minute the occultist’s voice came in a tremulous whine:
‘I tell you I know nothing. I was about to go go bed. I swear it!’
‘At three o’clock in the morning?’ sneered the German. ‘You lie! You had just …’
Gregory lost the rest of the sentence. With infinite caution he had stepped back. Turning, he stole away in the direction from which he had come. The snatch of conversation he had overheard made it clear that the S.D. men had arrived before Malacou had had time to get his clothes off. The irony of it was that he often stayed up until the small hours making involved calculations from his astral charts and pondering over occult operations. But the Nazis would never believe that. And they would now treat his Turkish passport as waste paper. They would haul him off to a concentration camp and beat the truth out of him with steel rods. He would be lucky if he escaped the gas chamber. Gregory could only pity him, for he was far from owing him anything; and any attempt to rescue him would have meant a more than fifty-fifty chance of being killed himself.
Next moment, struck by a sudden thought, he pulled up. The S.D. men’s motor-cycles must be somewhere nearby. Turning about, he padded softly round to the back of the building. There, propped up on their stands and with lights out, at the entrance to a dirt track road that presumably led to Rózan, stood the two machines. His heart suddenly lifted. One, at least, of his urgent problems had been solved. He had only to sabotage one of the machines, then ride off on the other, to be well clear of the district before dawn.
As he took another step forward a terrified shout came from the cottage. At the sound he halted again. He was standing within two feet of a clapboard wall that formed the far side of the living room and could well imagine what must now be happening in there.
Setting his mouth grimly, he advanced towards the nearer motor-cycle, thinking as he did so that it might just as easily have been himself who was being beaten up. Had it been, Malacou, with his dread of physical violence, would certainly not have attempted to rescue him. No; it was bad enough that his contact with the occultist had led to his becoming stranded and penniless many hundreds of miles from any escape route to a neutral country. He would need all the resource and stamina he possessed to keep clear of trouble himself.
When he was within six feet of the machine, a piercing scream rang out. Again he halted in his tracks. That hideous sound could mean only one thing. Those swinish Germans were not merely beating up the unfortunate Jew; they had started in to wring a confession from him. Gregory’s stomach seemed to turn over. Yet, horrible as was the mental picture of Malacou being tortured, he steeled himself to ignore it.
Another scream echoed through the silent night. A cold sweat broke out on Gregory’s forehead. He was seized by a fit of nausea and closed his eyes. A moment later he told himself that the ghastly treatment now being meted out to Malacou could be no worse than that inflicted on hundreds of other people in the countries over which the beast named Hitler ruled. After a few seconds he opened his eyes and had got hold of himself again. With renewed resolution he advanced to the motor-cycle and knelt down beside it with the intention of removing the sparking plug. As he reached out for the leather toolbag behind the saddle he realised that his hands were slimy with sweat and trembling so much that he could not undo its buckle.
Scream after scream came from the cottage. Gregory was shaken by a shudder. In a hoarse voice he let out an unprintable Italian oath that he used only at times of extreme distress. Then he began to curse Malacou. The occultist had been no more to him than a chance acquaintance met with in the course of a secret mission. He was a practitioner of bestial rites, had forced his daughter to commit incest with him and had driven her to suicide. He had robbed the von Alterns and by his evil machinations brought about Herman Hauff’s death. He had held Gregory at Sassen against his will and to protect himself had even been prepared to murder him rather than let him fall alive into the hands of the Nazis. Lastly, that very night it had been his attempt to get away from Poland that had landed Gregory in this wretched situation. Few people could have less claim to Gregory’s pity, let alone by his misfortune saddle him with the moral responsibility of attempting his rescue at the peril of his own life.
Frantic to get away and be done with this nightmare episode, Gregory continued to fumble with the tool satchel. He got the buckle undone but his sweaty fingers could not find the spanner needed to unscrew the sparking plug. Yet to ride off on one machine and leave the other still capable of functioning would, he knew, immensely reduce his chances of evading capture.
As he knelt there Malacou’s whimpering cries continued to come clearly to him. Punctuated by brief intervals during which even his choking gasps for breath could be faintly heard, he gave tongue to imprecations, long-drawn-out groans and gabbled pleading. Gregory’s hands dropped to his sides and he stood up. However evil and worthless the man who was being tortured, he could stand it no longer.
Yet his sudden decision to intervene, whatever the cost to himself, did not prevent him from exercising his habitual caution. Planting each foot carefully, so that its crunch was barely audible, he walked round the house. When he reached the front door he got out and cocked his automatic. Stepping softly into the hall, he peered through the inch-wide crack between the door-jamb and the living-room door. The sight that he glimpsed through it did not surprise him. It served only to harden his cold rage against those thousands of Germans whom Hitler had turned into beasts more ferocious and pitiless than any to be met with in the wildest jungle.
Although to him it had seemed an age, probably less than two minutes had elapsed since he had heard Malacou’s first screams; so the wretched man had not yet fainted from the agony to which he was being subjected. One square-faced blond young brute was holding the Jew’s arms pinioned behind his back, while the other, who had his back to Gregory, was holding a cigarette lighter under Malacou’s chin.
With his left hand Gregory thrust the door wide open. Lifting his right, he shot the nearer Nazi through the back of the head. In a second the tableau dissolved into a mass of whirling arms and legs. The head of the shot man jerked forward and spurted blood. Then he crashed to the floor. The other thug released Malacou and grabbed for his gun. Malacou, maddened by pain, his eyes starting from his head, heaved himself forward, tripped on the fallen Nazi then cannoned into Gregory. At the moment they collided Gregory fired his second shot. The man who had been holding Malacou had his pistol out but had not had time to take aim. To escape Gregory’s shot he flung himself sideways, crashed heavily into a dresser at that side of the room, failed to recover his balance and fell sprawling on top of his dead comrade.
For a moment Gregory had been in complete command of the situation. But only for a moment. Malacou’s blind charge to get through the door and escape had thrown him, too, off balance. Just as he fired, Malacou, with arms flung wide, had come hurtling at him. His pistol hand was knocked up and sideways. With a sickening thud it hit the door-jamb, breaking the skin of his knuckles. He gave a gasp of pain and the pistol dropped from his nerveless fingers.
Malacou, bellowing with fear and pain, ducked beneath his outstretched arm, brushed past him and, still howling, dashed through the front door out into the darkness. Even as Gregory cursed the Jew his eyes remained fixed on the surviving Nazi. He had scrambled to his knees and still held his gun. Before he could lift it Gregory leapt forward and kicked him in the face.
With a yelp he went over backwards. His pistol exploded and the bullet brought some of the china crashing down from the dresser. Losing not a second Gregory stepped over the body of the man he had shot and, as the other Nazi came up on his knees, kicked him in the crotch. From his bleeding mouth there issued an agonised wail, his eyes seemed about to start from his head, he dropped his gun, clutched at his testicles and bent right forward. Gregory kicked the man’s head with his heavy shoe then, after he had slid to the floor, kicked it again and again until it was a mass of blood with the temple stove in and he was undoubtedly dead.
When Gregory at last ceased kicking a sudden silence descended on the cottage. Breathing hard from his exertions he stood there surveying the shambles about him. Gradually, as he sucked the bleeding knuckles of his right hand, his frenzy subsided. He felt no compunction for what he had done; only a sense of relief that he had emerged victorious and without serious injury from such a violent and uneven conflict. Walking to the door he shouted for Malacou, but there came no reply. Evidently the pain-crazed Jew had made off in the darkness and was hiding somewhere in the marshes. In view of what had taken place in the cottage it now seemed unlikely that he would again risk returning to it.
As Gregory stood there in the open doorway he suddenly recalled the foreknowledge about which the occultist had been so greatly concerned when at Sassen. His stars had foretold that at about this time in 1944 he would be in grave danger of death, but would be saved by Gregory. At the thought Gregory grinned wryly. The prophecy had come true. All against his better judgement he had found himself compelled to rescue Malacou. But whether, now that he was again on the run, he would succeed in evading capture was quite another matter. Whether he did or not meant nothing to Gregory. Brushing the Jew from his mind, he turned back into the cottage to deal with matters there.
He thought it unlikely that the two dead S.D. men would be missed until early in the morning, when they would be due to report before going off duty. Soon afterwards the country would be scoured for them and all lonely buildings in the area searched. But the longer the time that elapsed before their bodies were discovered the longer it would be before they were known to be dead, and a general call sent out giving the numbers of their motor-cycles with urgent orders to arrest anyone found using one of them. Therefore, Gregory reasoned, if he put in an hour’s hard work now, removing all signs of the struggle from the cottage and hiding the bodies in the marshes, he might delay for several hours the whole countryside becoming alive with police and troops on the look-out for him.
He stood for a moment looking down on the two dead men, then ran quickly through their pockets, taking their wallets and loose change. They were much of a size and he judged both to be an inch or two taller than himself. The man whom he had shot through the back of the head had blood all over his tunic; the other, although badly battered about the face and head, had bled comparatively little. Choosing the latter, Gregory set about the grim task of stripping him of his uniform. When he had got it off he dragged the body in a fireman’s lift up across his shoulders. Bent nearly double under the weight, he carried it about fifty yards along the path by which he had come to the cottage, then for a further fifteen along a side turning on one side of which water glistened faintly between tall patches of reeds. After pausing for a minute to regain his breath, he exerted all his strength and heaved the body as far into the reeds as he could.
Returning, he collected a torch that had been part of the man’s equipment and a big jug from the living-room dresser, then went round to examine the two motor-cycles. The tanks of both were well over half full, so he drew off enough from one to fill the other, then wheeled the partly empty one round to the front of the cottage. Leaving it there on its stand, he carried out the second body and sprawled it across the machine. Having satisfied himself that it would not fall off, he wheeled the motor-cycle with its gruesome load down to the place where he had thrown the first body into the water. Another heave and the second body followed the first. Upending the motor-cycle so that only the back wheel touched the ground he ran that into the water as far as he dared then let it crash down on top of the two bodies.
As the splash resounded he stood back gasping to survey his handiwork. The mudguard and part of the rear wheel of the machine still showed above the water, but there was nothing he could do about that. Anyone passing there in daylight could hardly fail to notice the partially submerged motor-cycle but only a small patch of reeds had been broken down and the marshes covered a wide area, so it might be several days before the bodies were found; and Gregory’s purpose would be served if the S.D. men’s fate remained uncertain for twenty-four hours.
His exertions had tired him terribly and his leg was paining him badly again, but he had now completed the most laborious part of the task he had set himself. Mopping the sweat from his forehead, he returned to the cottage at a slow walk. In a corner cupboard of the living room he found a bottle of Polish Cherry Liqueur and poured himself a good tot. It was poor stuff, made from potato spirit, and he needed no warming up, but it lent him new vigour for his further activities.
Lighting the oil stove he put a saucepan of water on to boil. While it was heating up he collected the pieces of broken china and hid them above the eyeline on the top of the dresser, then changed into the uniform of the S.D. man whom he had stripped. Under one of the beds in the bedroom he found a suitcase and a hold-all. The latter being better suited to his purpose, he packed his own clothes in it, adding to them shaving and washing things that had belonged to either the Pole or Malacou, a soft Tyrolese hat with a feather in the band and such oddments of food as he found in the larder.
By that time the water was boiling. With a bucket and sponge he got down on his knees and, blessing the fact that the floorboards were covered with cheap linoleum, cleaned up the spilt blood. That done, he set about hunting for the reserve of money that he felt sure Malacou would have hidden somewhere about the cottage. Taking care to disturb things as little as possible, he searched every drawer and cupboard, looked behind the books in a small bookcase and for a loose brick in the hearth, then with a smooth skewer from the kitchen he prodded the pillows and mattresses, hoping to hear the rustle of bank notes. He had no luck, except in finding a map of Poland that would prove useful.
As a last resort he went through to a small slip room which he guessed had been occupied by Tarik. While hurriedly running through the hunchback’s few poor belongings he wondered what had become of him; but could only assume that after they had all been surprised on the road either he had not returned to the cottage or, if he had, on the arrival of the S.D. men he had panicked and fled. Either way, it seemed a fair bet that, like Malacou, he was somewhere out on the marshes. Owing to the strong psychic bond that linked them, it seemed probable that by this time he had found his master and was striving to comfort him after the ordeal through which he had passed.
Gregory’s search of Tarik’s room did not yield even a few Polish kopecs or German Pfennige and a glance at his watch showed him that it was now nearly half past three; so he decided that he must abandon his hunt for any hoard that Malacou might have concealed in the cottage. That there was a round sum of money hidden there somewhere he would have bet his last shilling; but it now seemed certain that it had been secreted under the floorboards or somewhere in the thatch of the roof, and he could not possibly give the time to such thorough explorations.
Swiftly checking through the money he had taken from the two Nazis he found it amounted to eighty-four Reichsmarks and seven Pfennige, together with a few small-denomination Polish notes for which he had no use. That was the equivalent of about £7 10s. in English money; so would keep him only for a few days and was hopelessly inadequate for any attempt to get out of German-held territory. But it was better than nothing.
Still furious that his prospects of eluding his enemies should be so heavily handicapped by his failure to find Malacou’s hoard, he quickly set the living-room furniture to rights so that no-one entering it would now have grounds for suspecting that a fight to the death had recently taken place there. Then he put out the oil lamp and, closing the front door behind him, went round to the back of the building.
At intervals, between his most strenuous exertions during the past hour, he had been trying to make up his mind on the best course to pursue. Lacking a solid sum to offer as a bribe, he felt certain that he had very little chance of persuading a skipper in one of the Baltic ports to run him over to Sweden. For a while he had contemplated the route Kuporovitch had taken, from Kiel up the Little Belt and across Denmark; but Kiel was over five hundred miles away and lack of money would again prove an obstacle almost impossible to overcome. The frontier of Switzerland was still more distant, and that of Spain obviously out of the question.
The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that money was the key to his problem. Without ready cash to distribute as need be he was like a boxer who has been handcuffed. Somehow he had to have funds, and considerable funds at that. But how could he possibly secure them? Not by remaining in the countryside. That was evident. Trees that grow golden apples flourish only in towns. They were banks, prosperous businesses and rich people who had big money and could be persuaded or tricked into parting with a wad of it.
He must, then, make for a city. And there was another advantage in that. Once the hunt was up the roads would all be scanned for him and the stolen motor-cycle, whereas in a city he would be able to lose himself in the crowds. But to go to Warsaw was no good, or to any other Polish city, since he could not speak Polish and he must get out of Poland as soon as possible. Czechoslovakia was no good either. To establish a new identity that would hold water he must get into Germany.
His mind ranged over the map which from long study he was able to visualise easily. In the north one city stood out beyond all others. It was the German capital.
For a moment Gregory shied away from the idea of endeavouring to seek safety in the heart of the Nazi Reich, for in it were concentrated the headquarters of every police organisation that played a part in controlling Hitler’s empire. Then an episode in a story he had read many years before recurred to him. It was by that great short-story writer C. E. Montague, and opened with the small son of a British Ambassador playing in an Embassy garden. He had been given a tortoise and his nurse said that beyond all things to eat tortoises loved cockroaches. A cockroach was procured, presumably from the Embassy kitchen, and set down in front of the tortoise like an early Christian before a lion. Realising its peril, the cockroach lost not a second but leapt into the armpit of the tortoise, thus making it impossible for the tortoise to snap it up.
Having strapped the hold-all containing his clothes on to the motor-cycle behind the saddle, Gregory kicked the starter, mounted the machine and set off for Berlin.