For a moment it seemed to Gregory that he must be dreaming—or the victim of some nightmare aftermath from the strange drug he had recently taken. Yet the height and the great hulking shoulders of the figure that faced him tallied exactly with his vivid memories of the Chief of Gestapo Department, U.A.-l.
Next moment the voice came again: “Schuster! Kommen Sie her! Schnell!”
That high-pitched voice was Grauber’s without a doubt; and now Gregory’s eyes were more accustomed to the half-light he could just make out the heavy jowl, cruel mouth, and sharp nose of his old antagonist.
The impulse to make a dash for it had seized him at the first sound of Grauber’s voice, but the second he moved he felt the pull of the handcuff that attached him to Kuporovitch, and realised the futility of such an attempt. Shackled together as they were they could neither fight nor run with any hope of succeeding in either. Grauber loomed in front of them with his big automatic at the ready, the man who had released them from the cells had just jumped down behind them from the van, and a third man, Schuster, no doubt, came hurrying round from its front.
Gregory’s eyes fell on the cylindrical attachment that stuck out from the muzzle of Grauber’s pistol. It was a silencer, and it explained the noise as though a bottle of champagne had been opened, that they had heard just after the van door had been unlocked. He now recollected hearing a short succession of similar sounds just after the Black Maria had halted some half-hour before. They must then have been somewhere on the edge of the city. Evidently at some lonely spot Grauber’s two men had held up the van, shot the driver and the N.C.O. carrying its keys, taken their places, and brought the van to this waterside slum. Grauber must have been waiting there and, immediately his man now impersonating the N.C.O. had unlocked the door at the back of the van, shot the remaining guard as he was about to get out.
Somehow the Gestapo Chief had found out that they were prisoners, and were being taken to a certain airfield that night. He had laid his plans accordingly, and with his usual efficiency. In consequence, Voroshilov’s plans had suffered a most appalling miscarriage. Gregory knew that, rather than this should have happened, the Marshal would have shot every prisoner in the Lubianka. His worst fears had been realised; two men who knew all the secrets of Soviet strategy had fallen into the hands of the enemy.
As the driver joined them, Grauber addressed his two men: “Fels! Schuster! You have done well. I am pleased with you. Before we leave we should hide the van—also the body of this brute I shot just now. I do not want the Ogpu nosing about this wharf. Pick him up and throw him in the van. You, Schuster, will drive it to the end of the street. On the left is a warehouse that we have rented. It has nothing in it except a few cases of explosives. There is plenty of room for the van and we will leave it in there. Fels, you will come with me.” After a second he went on, speaking for the first time to his prisoners.
“Mr. Sallust, we meet again. Your companion is, I believe General Kuporovitch. You will both walk down the street in front of me. Any monkey tricks and you know what will happen.”
Apart from Grauber’s party the cul-de-sac was entirely deserted. A wood yard occupied one side of it and some lightless buildings the other. The Russian lying in the gutter was quite dead. Schuster took his feet and Fels his shoulders. They heaved the body into the Black Maria and slammed-to the door. As Gregory watched them he was praying that a patrol of Soviet police or troops might come on the scene. Some unforeseen interruption resulting in a mix-up might still provide a chance for him and Stefan to get away; but it was now nearly eleven o’clock and all the inhabitants of this grim district seemed to have gone home for the night.
Schuster ran round to the front of the van and Fels, drawing an automatic, turned to help Grauber guard the prisoners.
“Quick march!” snapped the Gruppenführer, and they set off down the street.
At an opening through a tumbledown paling he gave the order to halt, and kept them covered with his pistol while Fels left them for a few moments to unlock and drag open the doors of the wharfside warehouse. The Black Maria was driven in, Fels and Schuster closed the doors and rejoined their Chief. The temperature was well below freezing and a crisp carpet of snow covered the ground. Their footfalls made no sound, apart from a faint crunching. A lorry rumbled past the far end of the street, then there was silence again.
“This way,” Grauber muttered, and led them diagonally across the wharf to a place where a flight of wooden stairs led down to the water. Tied up at their bottom a small launch was gently rocking.
“Take care, the steps are slippery,” Grauber warned them. “I don’t want my men to be put to the trouble of fishing you out of this ice-cold water.”
At the sound of his voice two figures emerged from the cabin of the launch; one held it in to the steps with a boat-hook while the other began to untie the painter.
“Ready?” murmured Gregory to Stefan as they reached the bottom of the stairs—since the handcuffs now linked them like Siamese twins—and together they stepped on to the narrow deck of the boat.
“Get in the cabin,” ordered Grauber, following them on board. Then he turned and looked back to the top of the stairs where Fels and Schuster were still standing. “Gute Arbeit, Jungens! Auf Wiedessehen.”
“Danke, Herr Gruppenführer” the men’s voices came back. “Heil Hitler!”
“Heil Hitler!” repeated Grauber, and the boat pushed off. He settled himself on the after edge of the cabin well, where he could both keep a watch on his prisoners and a look-out over its low roof. The man in the stern started a motor and the launch nosed her way out to sea. She was showing no lights, the exhaust had been muffled and the falling snow limited visibility, so there seemed little prospect of her being spotted and challenged by a harbour patrol.
After they had been going for a few moments, Gregory said: “I congratulate you, Herr Gruppenführer, on this very remarkable coup.”
“Silence!” piped Grauber, curtly. “We shall have plenty of time for a nice little talk later.”
Gregory had a very good idea what form that “nice little talk” would take, and wondered unhappily just how much the Gestapo Chief knew of his dealings with Marshal Voroshilov. Without inside information of some kind he could not possibly have arranged the hold-up of the Black Maria, and if he was aware that his prisoners had had three long interviews with the Marshal he would use all the ruthless ingenuity of which he was such a master to extract every ounce of information that he could from them. By comparison with the prospect that now lay ahead of them, a prolonged sojourn in Siberia seemed to offer almost boundless joys.
The launch ran on for about half an hour; then there came a low call of warning from the second sailor, who was crouching on the forward deck. The engine was shut off and for a few moments they drifted silently. Kuporovitch, screwing his head round to peer through a porthole behind him made out the black hulk of a slowly moving ship. When it had passed the engine was switched on again and, slewing round to port, they began to follow in the ship’s wake.
In the next quarter of an hour he caught sight of the faint outline of several other vessels; all of them smaller ones riding at anchor and, from his observations, he had now formed a pretty shrewd idea where they were. Leaning his head close to Gregory’s in the darkness, he whispered:
“I think we are now passing Kronstadt. It must have been at Oranienbaum that the prison van set us down. From there a spit of sand runs out for about four miles, nearly to Kronstadt Island, and beyond its tip is the only channel out into the Gulf of Finland. Some time back we turned at the point and——”
Low as his whisper was, Grauber suddenly caught it and, jumping down into the well, snarled:
“Quiet, there, unless you want to feed the fishes,” and gave the Russian a heavy kick on the shin.
For another half-hour they sat in silence. Ice was not yet forming on the Gulf, but once they had passed from under the lee of the island a bitter wind caught them, and the water became choppy. The engine was shut off again and the two sailors consulted together, then the launch was put into a series of sweeps, first in one direction, then in another. This seemed to go on for a long time and, after what Kuporovitch had said, Gregory could guess what was happening. They must have passed through the Kronstadt defence boom in the wake of a ship taking supplies to places further along the north coast of Esthonia, where the Russians were still holding out; and now they were searching for a U-boat that had sneaked into the Gulf to pick Grauber up.
His surmise proved correct. At last the sailor on the fore-deck gave a hail. An answering shout came from a little distance away. There was a brief interchange that seemed meaningless but evidently embodied some code word for recognition purposes. The launch turned again, ran on fifty yards and there was a slight bump.
“Come along,” said Grauber, getting to his feet; and as they climbed out of the cabin they saw that they were alongside the great curved hull of a submarine. A wood-runged rope-ladder had been thrown out over the slope, and some sailors were standing at its top ready to help them aboard.
Evidently Grauber had no intention of giving either of his prisoners a chance to get away by diving over the side, as he did not unlock the handcuffs that secured them together, but, seeing the difficulty they would have in scaling the ladder, he called out to the sailors to throw down a line. One of the men in the boat caught it, and slipping it round Gregory’s middle made fast the free end in a bowline, so that if he missed his footing the loop would catch under his armpits and the sailors above could take his weight until he recovered it. With the launch bobbing up and down and only one free hand apiece to grab at the ladder, the two prisoners found it a tricky business to get aboard, but, partially supported by the line, they managed it without accident.
Keeping a safe distance from Kuporovitch’s heels, Grauber followed them; then the launch cast off and drew away into the darkness. On deck the Kapitänleutnant commanding the U-boat received Grauber with the formal politeness due to a high official of the Nazi government, and led the way down through the conning-tower hatch to the main operations room of the ship.
Gregory had never before been in a submarine and, although this was one of the smaller non-ocean-going type used for operations in shallow waters, he was surprised at its bulk. From the launch it had seemed almost as long as a small destroyer; yet, below decks, on account of its many little compartments and the narrowness of its passages, one had the impression of being in something hardly larger than a fair-sized bomber.
The captain, a youngish man with close-cropped hair, light blue eyes and a straw-coloured beard, took them along to the tiny Officers’ Mess, asked Grauber’s permission to proceed to sea and, on being given it, left them.
After the icy cold outside it was stiflingly hot down there. Grauber peeled off his furs, then unlocked the handcuffs so that his prisoners could take off theirs. Having motioned them to a narrow settee behind a flap-table held rigid by a steel angle-bar, he pressed a bellpush. As they squeezed in behind the table a white-coated steward appeared.
“Food,” said Grauber curtly to the man. “The best you have, and two bottles of my own champagne. This is an occasion to which I have long looked forward.” He grinned malevolently at Gregory.
“Thanks, Herr Gruppenführer,” Gregory replied. “I hope to return the compliment one day.”
“You would be more sensible to wish that this meal was to be your last, my friend. Even your imagination is incapable of conceiving all that I mean to do to you when I get you back to Germany.”
“There is many a slip,” said Kuporovitch belligerently. “These waters are as shallow as the palm of my hand, and there are many sandbanks in them. If this underwater coffin gets stuck on one, Soviet aircraft will spot and bomb it, and you will never get back to Germany yourself.”
The U-boat’s engines were now humming rhythmically, but it was only moving very slowly and Kuporovitch’s shot had evidently found its mark, as Grauber blanched perceptibly and hesitated a second before he said:
“Nonsense! Kapitänleutnant Bötticher is an officer of great experience and has operated many times in the approaches to Leningrad. We shall have reached deep water long before dawn.”
But the Russian’s shrewd attempt to get under Grauber’s skin had also badly shaken Gregory. He could already feel his claustrophobia coming on and the terrifying suggestion that the U-boat might get stuck on the bottom made the perspiration break out on his hands and forehead. To take his mind off his nerve-shattering thoughts he asked:
“How did you manage to pull of this extraordinary coup? I’ve always known that the Gestapo were pretty good, but I hadn’t imagined that they were quite up to putting such a fast one over the Ogpu.”
Grauber’s smile suddenly became quite amiable and he was obviously extremely pleased with himself, as he said: “Since you will never go back to Russia, or have an opportunity of communicating with any of your friends there, I don’t mind telling you. It was, of course, entirely luck that I happened to be in Leningrad myself, but, as you are aware, it is part of my work to supervise all Fifth Column arrangements in cities that are scheduled——”
“There is no Fifth Column in Leningrad,’ growled Kuporovitch.
“Isn’t there?” Grauber raised his eyebrows with a sardonically humorous glance. “That is all you know. It is not, I regret to have to admit, as large or as well organised as those I handled in Oslo, Rotterdam, Brussels or Paris, but it is there all right. Anyhow, as I was saying, since Leningrad is scheduled to fall within the next few weeks——”
“It won’t fall,” said Kuporovitch doggedly. “Not while Clim Voroshilov is commanding there.”
“He is an old friend of yours, isn’t he?” remarked Grauber with smoothness that filled Gregory with quick apprehension.
“What makes you think so?” countered the Russian.
“Oh, my dear General! Because we have never met before, you must not think that I don’t know anything about you. It is my business to find out things about people like you. Officers of high rank whose loyalty to their own country is dubious have often proved most useful to us.”
“What the hell d’you mean!” roared Kuporovitch, struggling to get to his feet, but unable to do so immediately owing to the fact that Gregory was sitting between him and the passage between the tables, and the table in front of them prevented him from springing forward.
As Gregory grabbed his friend’s shoulder, Grauber, who was sitting in the opposite corner of the little room behind its other small table, picked up his automatic and snarled:
“Sit down, or I’ll put a bullet through each of your arms. You will find that painful, but it will not prevent me from getting what I want out of you.”
Kuporovitch subsided with a muttered curse and the Gestapo Chief went on more quietly: “As I was just going to remark, I have quite a nice fat dossier about your past in my office in Berlin. However, we were speaking of Leningrad. The Führer has issued an order to Feldmarschall Ritter von Leeb that the city is to be captured before the winter sets in. Therefore it followed as a matter of course that I should make a short visit there to ensure that all my arrangements for the final phase are in order. I had completed my work and was just about to leave, when I happened to glance through some gapers at my secret headquarters, and on one of them I caught sight of the name Sallust. It was on the list of the people who had been committed to the Lubianka during the past twenty-four hours.”
“How on earth did you get hold of that?” Gregory asked, his claustrophobia temporarily forgotten.
“It was quite simple, my dear Watson,” grinned Grauber, evidently pleased at his ability to quote from an English author. “There is in Leningrad an old woman whose mother was a German, and who was herself once married to a German commercial traveller. She is now a charwoman at the Lubianka. It is not difficult for her, each morning when she cleans out the hall, to get a glance at the register and make a mental note of the names of those who have been brought in during the previous day and night. In that way we often obtain early information about agents of ours who have had the misfortune to be caught. We then have a chance of isolating others working in the same cell before the Ogpu can get on to them and pull them in.”
“Most interesting,” murmured Gregory. “Do go on.”
“For such a very fat fish—or perhaps I should say a lean-jawed dangerous pike—like yourself, I felt that it would be well worth staying on for a few days to see if I could find out a little more about what you had been up to. Naturally I put through a priority call to all my agents in the city. English visitors to Leningrad are few in these days, so your activities there must have registered with quite a number of Russians; and soon little bits and pieces began to come in. I learned that you had arrived from Moscow by aircraft in the early hours of Sunday the twentieth and that you had spent the day at the Astoria Officers’ Club. Then, that in the middle of the night a certain Colonel Gudarniev had arrived and carried you off somewhere. It was he, too, who a few hours later handed you over at the Lubianka for incarceration.”
Gregory breathed again. It seemed that Grauber did not, after all, know of their interviews with Marshal Voroshilov.
The steward came in at that moment and began to lay the two narrow tables for dinner. Grauber took from him one of the bottles of champagne and, opening it, filled the three glasses. Raising his, he said, “Well, here’s to a safe voyage!”
“Yes, here’s to it,” agreed Gregory, whose dominating thought now was to get safely out of these close, oppressive surroundings which seemed to him to be pregnant with a subtle menace.
“May you die gasping for breath,” said Kuporovitch, his blue eyes fixed malevolently on Grauber. Then he took a long pull at his champagne.
“May you die praying for death,” replied Grauber, taking another swig at his.
The steward produced in turn caviare rolled in slices of smoked salmon, mushroom soup, salmi of duck, an omelette au kirsch and chicken livers in bacon on toast. Having for the past three days existed on the meagre prisoners’ fare of the Lubianka, Gregory and Stefan did ample justice to this feast. During it Grauber made no further mention of his activities in Leningrad and his guests tactfully forbore to question him. Having cleared away, the steward set one of the many thousands of bottles of Martell’s “Cordon Bleu” that the Germans had looted out of France on the table, and discreetly withdrew.
While they were eating, the submarine’s engines had stopped and started for varying periods as she cautiously nosed her way along. The good food and wine had fortified Gregory sufficiently for him to put the idea of their running on to a shoal temporarily out of his mind, and as the Gruppenführer poured out three large portions of the excellent old brandy, he said:
“You were telling us about the achievement of your organisation in Leningrad; do please continue.”
Grauber wiped his little pursed-up mouth on a napkin and resumed, in his high-pitched voice:
“One of my people is a mechanic in the garage at which the police cars of the Lubianka are serviced. It is not difficult for him to get the times and jobs on which the Black Marias are booked out. An order to pick up at the Lubianka and drive to an airfield is an unusual assignment. From a man on the airfield I learnt that a ‘plane was to leave tonight for Irkutsk, the capital of Siberia. That, too, is most unusual. I recalled that you, Mr. Sallust, are an Englishman, and that the General here had been consigned to the Lubianka under an English name. Britain is now an ally of the Soviet Union. It seemed to me that if two Englishmen had been caught poking their noses in where they were not wanted it might occur to the Russians to send them to Siberia. They would be out of the way there and incapable of doing any harm; but if the British created trouble about them they could easily be produced with appropriate apologies later. I put a few of my best men on to hold up the Black Maria at a quiet spot just outside the city, and there you are!”
“It was a peach of a job,” murmured Gregory. “And your analysis was one hundred per cent correct. We were trying to get details of the latest Soviet tanks and they caught us at it. The situation was tricky for them as we had been sponsored by the British Embassy. Very unorthodox, and all that, but I don’t need to tell you how such things are done. Anyway, we were rumbled almost immediately we arrived and that produced rather a delicate situation. Naturally the Russians thought twice about shooting us, from fear of a political come-back, so they decided to put us in cold storage in Siberia until they found out if the British meant to make a fuss or thought it more discreet to let sleeping dogs lie. Anyhow, I do congratulate you on having got into the minds of the Russians so extraordinarily well.”
“Thank you, Mr. Sallust.” Grauber bowed ironically. “However, I must confess that I find it a little difficult to commiserate with you on your demotion.”
“I don’t quite get you,” said Gregory.
“Do you not?” The Gruppenführer leaned forward and his voice came like a lash. “You have the impudence to tell me that you came to Russia to ascertain the details of the latest Soviet tanks. Since when has Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust sent you abroad on such smalltime stuff? You, an ace operative working outside the British Secret Service and reporting direct to a man who has immediate access to the War Cabinet! No, no, you were sent to Russia to bag far higher game; and I can tell you what it was.”
“If you think that, do.” Gregory laughed, feeling confident that his enemy could not possibly know, and was about to try a clever bluff on him.
“All right, I’ll tell you.” Grauber took a gulp of his brandy and sat back. “Your War Office, whose intelligence regarding Russia is about as useful as a sun-helmet in the Alps, believes that the Soviet Armies are already exhausted and due to disintegrate any day now. Sir Pellinore, who has a better grasp of geopolitik than a dozen of your Generals, has his doubts about that. He sent you to Russia in order that you might produce for him an unbiassed appreciation of the Soviets’ powers of resistance. Am I not right?”
Gregory had now become intensely alert. After many weeks during which he had drunk only very limited quantities of alcohol, the champagne that he had had with his meal had affected him much more than it would normally have done, yet no more than enough to put his claustrophobia out of his mind and make him feel on the top of his form. He thought that Grauber’s guess had been a mighty shrewd one, but not outstandingly remarkable in view of the able brain that he knew lay behind the smooth forehead of the sharp-nosed pasty-faced man opposite to him. The tank story was clearly too thin to hold water, so he decided to give his opponent the point, and murmured with a shrug:
“Oh well, I don’t mind admitting that I was asked to keep my eyes open and have a general look round.”
“You are going to admit a lot more than that, my friend, before you’re very much older. We shall save time if I prompt you a little. Sir Pellinore propounded three questions and asked you to try to provide the answers to them.”
At this smooth announcement Gregory felt as though a bucket of ice-cold water had suddenly been poured without warning down his spine. His eyes never flickered but his hands clenched spasmodically under the table as Grauber went on:
“Those questions were, One: Can the Soviets train their reserves of man-power quickly enough for them to be of any value to them? Two: What is the real state of Stalin’s health? Three: How much territory can they afford to give up before their resources become inadequate to support their armies in the field?”
Gregory’s brain was racing. He could understand perfectly well how, with the details garnered from a score of different sources, the Gestapo Chief had succeeded in catching them, but he did not see how he could possibly have become aware of these private instructions issued in London. Making a great effort to conceal the agitation he was now feeling, he answered lightly:
“My dear Herr Gruppenführer, those are things that lots of us would like to know.”
“I have formed my own impressions and it will be interesting to see if yours tally with them.”
“I’m afraid mine aren’t worth very much. You see, I had hardly had a chance to form any before I was caught out, and bunged into the Lubianka.”
“One can form extremely valuable impressions in a very short time, if only one has the good fortune to contact the right person.”
“So that was it,” thought Gregory. “Thank God, anyhow, that he did not get his information through a leak in London. He knows that we saw Voroshilov and it is from the same source that he learned what we were after.” Next moment Grauber confirmed his idea, by saying:
“While you were in the Lubianka, Marshal Voroshilov visited the prison on two consecutive nights. On both occasions you had interviews with him lasting well over an hour. During those conversations you must have picked up quite a lot of interesting material, and I want it.”
Gregory breathed again. Evidently Grauber did not know that while still free men they had visited the Marshal at his flat. He took a sip of his brandy, and shrugged.
“You should know better than I do that interviewing officers do not give away things to prisoners. We were simply being grilled by the Marshal and we did not learn a single thing.”
“Ah, but what of the things you learnt before you were arrested? You see, I know the charge upon which you were confined. Special precautious were taken to guard you, and to prevent your talking even to your warders, because it was known that you had gained possession of Soviet military secrets of the greatest importance.”
“What nonsense! We’d had no chance to find out anything. We had been in Leningrad less than twenty-four hours when we were arrested, and during the whole of that time we were confined to the Astoria Officers’ Club. We were only pulled in because they got some stupid idea that I was a German. But you know how suspicious the Russians are of all foreigners, and if they did take any special precautions to guard us, no doubt that was the reason.”
Grauber leaned forward and the steely note of menace again crept into his voice. “Do not insult my intelligence by suggesting that Marshal Voroshilov would devote his precious time to interrogating personally a prisoner who was merely suspected of being a German. You are going to tell me what you discovered, and the sooner you decide to do so the better.”
Gregory was puzzled as to how Grauber could have found out about the questions when he did not appear to know anything about the answers to them. If the one piece of information had been secured from somebody close to the Marshal the rest should have followed. But, however that might be, it seemed that he knew nothing of the all-important private interview and was now reduced to guessing; so Gregory decided that the time had come to dig his toes in.
“I’m afraid you’re in on a poor wicket,” he said slowly. “If we had had a little more time to get going before they pulled us in we might have something that it would be worth your while to screw out of us, but as it is——”
“I want the truth about their reason for pulling you in,” snarled Grauber. “And by God I’m going to have it. If not now, when we get back to Germany.”
His threat conjured up in both Gregory and Stefan’s minds vague but terrible pictures of the ordeals to which they might be subjected in some Gestapo torture chamber; but, as if in answer to their thoughts, Grauber went on, with a malevolent chuckle:
“I can do better than to get the half-crazy gibberings of a pain-maddened brain out of you, too. I am convinced that you found out the answers to those three questions. Their value to Germany is immense, and I mean to have a clear, coherent statement from you, unbefogged by false confessions and a confused welter of details extracted piecemeal under torture.”
They stared at him in surprise and the same idea occurred to them simultaneously. After a second, Gregory decided that, in order to learn the worst, it would be worth voicing it, and said as casually as he could: “So you’ve improved on your old methods, eh? And now use the Russian Truth drug.”
“The Truth drug!” Grauber hunched his great shoulders with a high-pitched laugh. “It has never been proved that the Russians have it themselves yet. They often dope their prisoners before a trial; but in my opinion it is just a clever Bolshevik lie put out for its mental effect on the prisoner. They give him a shot of something that makes him groggy and the poor fool is hypnotised into thinking that it is useless to conceal the truth. No, when we get back to Germany I can produce a far more certain method of ensuring that you tell me the whole story without any frills, while in full possession of your right mind.”
“If we get back to Germany, you mean,” Kuporovitch put in acidly. “Your captain hasn’t even dared to dive yet, because he knows that the water is so shallow. We may be spotted at any time by a Soviet aircraft.”
“Not in this weather,” hastily replied Grauber, in an effort to reassure himself. “With snow falling, visibility from aircraft is absolutely nil.”
“All the same, the Gulf of Finland is stiff with Soviet warships.”
“The chances of our running into one are very small; and again, if we did, the low visibility would help us. The Kapitänleutnant got me safely into Leningrad ten days ago during the first snow; there is no reason why he should not get me out.”
Gregory was torn between two emotions. Grauber’s fear that the U-boat might meet with some mishap was so obvious that it was fun to see him baited. On the other hand, he himself felt a horrible paralysis grip at his heart each time the possibility of his being caught like a rat in a trap down there was mentioned.
Since the water was so shallow he wondered how the U-boat had managed to conceal herself during the daytime while she had lain off Kronstadt. Snow could not have been falling all the time, but probably her captain knew of a deep pocket somewhere along the north coast of the island where she could lay on the bottom and her outline would be concealed by the shadow of the cliffs. The knowledge that the U-boat was still cruising slowly on the surface with only a few fathoms of water below her was some comfort, but that would not be much help if a Russian destroyer found her and blew a hole in her side.
Kuporovitch appeared to suffer from none of these fears and was deriving so much enjoyment from seeing Grauber show funk that he would not let the matter drop. With a malicious grin he went on: “No amount of snow will protect you from mines, and we might easily run into one. There must be hundreds of them floating about here outside the lane that is kept clear for shipping.”
He had hardly finished speaking when an electric gong rang through the ship. There came the sound of running feet on the bare steel plates that floored the passage outside. Someone was shouting staccato orders in the distance. The cabin tilted on a forward angle and they felt the submarine going down in a smooth shallow dive.
Suddenly there came a dull, heavy thud. A second later the whole ship shuddered, heeled over a little and seemed to slide sideways to starboard.
Grauber had grabbed the edge of the table. His face was white as a sheet and his solitary human eye glared from it in unseeing panic. Gregory felt his own heart hammering wildly below his ribs, and for the first time in his life without having something disagree with his stomach, felt that he wanted to be sick
Kuporovitch had struggled to his feet. Reaching right out over Gregory, as far as he could stretch, he struck Grauber a resounding slap across the face, and shouted:
“That’s for suggesting that I might be disloyal to my country! Now do what the hell you like!”
Grauber let go the table and grabbed up his gun. But at that instant there came a second terrific thump; this time much nearer. The U-boat had just flattened out, but as the concussion took her she seemed to heave right up in the water then almost turn over.
Kuporovitch was thrown violently back into his seat; Grauber was flung sprawling across the table; the brandy bottle and glasses flew up in the air then crashed to the floor.
For a few minutes the U-boat rocked wildly from side to side, but gradually she settled down on to an even keel. The engines, which had stopped, started again and, at increased speed, she pushed forward through the water. Back in their seats the three men waited with every muscle tensed for the next explosion.
The breath of both Gregory and Grauber was coming in gasps and the sweat was rolling down their faces. Kuporovitch, seated as he was beside Gregory, had not noticed his friend’s distress, but he kept his eyes fixed on the Gruppenführer with demoniacal satisfaction. When the tension had eased a little and they were beginning to hope that, after all, a third detonation would not burst the vessel open, he said:
“Don’t think you’re going to get away with it now. That was only the beginning. Those weren’t mines. They were depth charges or bombs. We’ve been spotted by an aircraft or a ship. Whichever it was will have radioed Kronstadt by this time, and the whole antisubmarine flotilla will be turning out to hunt this U-boat down.”
“Shut up, damn you!” croaked Grauber. But Kuporovitch ignored him and went on:
“At the slow speed we’ve been going we can’t have covered much more than ten miles since we came on board. Aircraft from Kronstadt will do that in about ten minutes, so you haven’t got a dog’s chance. They’ll smash in the hull of this thing as though it were made of tissue paper and the ice-cold water will come pouring in. You’re going to die here, choking out your life like the rat you are.”
Gregory closed his eyes and swayed slightly. Grauber began to curse feebly; then, with sudden resolution, he stretched out his hand and pressed the bell.
When the steward appeared he said: “Tell the Kapitänleutnant that I wish to see him. Now! At once!”
“Have you ever experienced what it is like to be choked?” Kuporovitch enquired in a conversational tone. “One feels as if one’s head is going to burst and there is a drumming in one’s ears. It goes on for a long time, and one also suffers from most appalling cramps. All that business about drowning being a pleasant form of death is sheer nonsense.”
“Silence!” Grauber roared, bringing his fist down with a crash on the table.
The fair-bearded Kapitänleutnant came through the narrow door. “You sent for me, Herr Gruppenführer?”
“Yes.” Grauber mopped his face with his handkerchief, and a whiff of the perfume he always used came strongly to them. “What happened just now?”
“We were spotted by a Soviet aircraft, and she let go the two bombs she was carrying at us.”
“But how could she spot us through the snow?”
“The snow ceased falling shortly after you came aboard, Herr Gruppenführer.”
“But in the darkness?”
“The moon is now up. You will remember that I sent ashore to warn you that you should not delay longer, when you postponed your departure two days ago.”
“Two days can hardly make all that difference.”
“They make a lot to the time of the rising of the moon, Herr Gruppenführer; and up above it is now almost as bright as day.”
“Teufel nochmal!” Grauber exclaimed, now white with fright “Then, if they send other aircraft it is certain that we shall be spotted and bombed again.”
“The Gruppenführer does not like bombs,” announced Gregory, the sight of Grauber almost dithering with fear having temporarily restored his own nerve. “I was with him once in London when an air-raid siren went off by accident, and even that false alarm scared him out of his wits.”
The Kapitänleutnant gave him a swift sideglance, then replied to Grauber: “It will be more difficult to spot us than it was before, because we are now submerged; but there are only ten or twelve fathoms of water here so our chances of escaping detection are not very good. Also, I fear that they may send submarine chasers to co-operate with the aircraft.”
“How far are we from the shore?” asked Grauber.
“About a mile: not much more. I dare not go much further out from the coast or I may run into their minefield.”
“Get out the boat, then. I am going ashore.”
“But—but,” stammered the Kapitänleutnant, “the Herr Gruppenführer does not understand. To get out the boat I should have to surface—to lie still for ten minutes at the least. Other aircraft may arrive in the vicinity at any moment. What you ask would greatly increase the danger of our being spotted.”
Grauber shrugged. “I can’t help that. I must get ashore.”
“Nein!” cried the bearded sailor with sudden anger. “Das kann ich nicht machen! I refuse to unnecessarily endanger my ship and the lives of my crew.”
Quite slowly Grauber stood up. He was terrified of bombs but he was not afraid of any man living, and there had been times when he had even faced up to Himmler. Huge, gorilla-like and menacing, his effeminate streak lending him an added, unnatural sinisterness, he now stepped up to the U-boat commander. Shooting out a great hand he seized him by the lapel of his uniform and shook him.
“You!” he sneered, his falsetto rising to a squeak in his anger. “How dare you tell me what you will or will not do! I am of more value to the Führer than ten U-boats, and if your ship is sunk through putting me ashore it will have been lost while employed on an important duty. If you refuse to obey me and I survive I will have you flogged in front of your crew for mutiny and I will send every single member of your family to a concentration camp. Now, surface your ship and get out that boat.”
The Kapitänleutnant’s resistance collapsed like a pricked balloon. “Jawohl, Herr Gruppenführer,” he muttered. “I apologise for my outburst. I am not accustomed to having distinguished passengers, like yourself, on board. I realise now, of course, that your life is more important than the safety of the ship. But the Esthonian coast, here, is in the hands of the Russians. Will you not almost certainly be captured if you land?”
“No,” snapped Grauber. “I speak Russian fluently, and it would need much more than a lot of muzhiks playing at soldiers to capture me.”
“The prisoners? Do you wish to take them with you?”
Grauber cast a malevolent glance at Gregory and Stefan. “No,” he answered, with marked reluctance. “I couldn’t manage those two in a country infested with enemy soldiers. I must chance your being able to get them through for me. Confine them in your cells, and if you are forced to abandon ship on no account are you to release them. On the other hand, if you can bring them to a German controlled port, hand them over to the Gestapo, and I’ll see that you get a Knight’s Cross for it. Quick now; go and give your orders about that boat.”
“Jawohl, Herr Gruppenführer!”
As the Kapitänleutnant clicked his heels, Grauber added, “And send somebody to take charge of these two men.”
“Sofort!” rapped out the sailor, now endeavouring to live down his rash show of spirit by becoming once more an efficient automaton; and, turning, he hurried from the mess room.
Grauber hastily pulled on his furs, then glared again at the prisoners. “Having caught you at last, there are few things that I have ever hated to have to do so much as to leave you here.”
“Then take us with you,” urged Gregory, with a sudden wild hope that he might yet escape from these surroundings that caused such havoc to his nerves.
“Himmel! Is it likely? I have to make my way through the Russian lines, and before I could do that the two of you would find some way to murder me.”
Gregory felt prepared to agree to almost any terms if only it would enable him to get out once more into the open air.
“Let’s do a deal,” he cried. “You’re armed and we’re not. We’ll give you our parole not to harm you or attempt to escape until we sight the first German picket. With your pistol you’d still have the advantage of us and a good chance to bring us in.”
“Morte Dieu! you’ll go alone then,” said Kuporovitch gruffly. ‘I’ll be damned if I give him my parole.”
“You must, Stefan, you must! For God’s sake don’t refuse! I can’t leave you behind. You know I wouldn’t do that.”
“I wouldn’t accept it, anyhow,” Grauber said, after a second. “Once ashore you’d find a way to twist me somehow. Then I’d lose both you and the information you can give me. For me, to leave you here is a far better bet. Kapitänleutnant Bötticher is a skilful navigator. If his ship survives the next hour she will reach deep water, you will be delivered to me from a German port and I shall have lost nothing. If the submarine is sunk, well, you heard the order I gave him. You will go down with it, and at least be out of my way for good.”
As he had been speaking, the U-boat had tilted nose upwards. They heard the rush of waters cascading from her sides and knew that she had surfaced. A petty officer came hurrying in, saluted Grauber, and said:
“The Hen Kapitänleutnant says please to come at once, Herr Gruppenführer. The boat is now being got out.”
Without another glance at his prisoners, Grauber grabbed a small handbag from a rack, pushed past the P.O. and ran heavily down the passage.
“Kommen Sie mit!” said the petty officer, putting a hand on the pistol at his waist, and signing to the others to precede him.
Gregory and Kuporovitch picked up their furs and followed Grauber down the narrow corridor. As they reached the main operations room, in the middle of the ship, they saw that the conning-tower hatch was open. The lights had been switched off, in order that no beam should strike upwards through the hatch towards the sky. Instead, a shaft of moonlight filtered down, silvering the tubes and crosspiece at the observation end of the periscope.
The P.O. hurried them along to the extreme after-part of the ship. Right in the stern he called to a rating and, at his order, the man pulled up a trapdoor in the steel flooring from which a foot wide iron ladder led down into the bowels of the vessel.
“No!” gasped Gregory, “No!” now almost overcome with terror at the thought of being shut up in that dark abyss.
As he drew back the petty officer kicked him from behind. This act of physical violence provoked his normal courage for an instant, and he swung round to strike the man.
Kuporovitch grabbed his arm, and muttered tersely: “Don’t be a fool. He’d only shoot you. While we have our lives we can always hope; and if it is ordained that we should die, what does it matter where we do so?”
“Thanks, Stefan,” Gregory breathed. The sweat was streaming down his face, but he had used that dictum so often himself that he could not now reject it. “All right, lead on then.”
At the bottom of the miniature companion-way there was another corridor even narrower than the one above, and so low that they could not stand upright in it. On one side of it stood a row of six cupboard-like steel doors, each having a row of slits for ventilation in the upper part of their panels. They were the cells in which refractory members of the U-boat’s crew were confined when necessary. The P.O. unlocked the two sternmost, pushed one of the prisoners into each, re-locked them and clattered away up the ladder.
The cells, like the passage, were too low to stand straight up in, and hardly more than upright coffins in which a man could only just turn round, but opposite the door in each there was a bench-like seat and on these the prisoners at once sat down.
Gregory sank his face into his hands and groaned. After a moment, Kuporovitch’s voice came to him, thin but clear, through the ventilators in the two doors. “Gregory, can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Gregory replied, starting up. “Let’s talk. Anything to take our minds off these ghastly surroundings.”
“They are pretty grim, aren’t they? No place to wash or lie down, and right next to the vessel’s screws. There! The engines have just started up again and these steel cells will now vibrate like this all night. Well, I suppose it’s a good deterrent for the submarine crews if insubordination means being confined in places like this.”
As the U-boat began to submerge, Gregory said: “That brute Grauber’s got off all right. I wish to God he’d taken us with him.”
“The dirty rat! Exposing the ship and crew to additional danger in order to get out himself. We wouldn’t have stood much chance if we’d gone with him, though. At least two sailors will have manned the boat that took him ashore and the Kapitänleutnant is not fool enough to have waited for them to get back. So we’d have been a party of five or more. They would have shot us for certain before they would have allowed us to fall into Soviet hands again, and when we reached the German lines we wouldn’t have been any better off than we were before.”
“I don’t agree. My brain simply refuses to function properly when I’m cooped up like this, but once I was on dry land I would have thought up some way of getting out of Grauber’s clutches. As it is, we don’t stand any chance at all.”
“I think you’re wrong there. You heard what Grauber said about the captain of this craft. He knows these waters well, and he must have had plenty of experience in evading aircraft and destroyers. I think the odds are that he’ll get us through. If he does we’ll have a much better chance of escape when we reach a port than if we’d gone ashore with Grauber and had the muzzle of his gun in our backs all the time.”
“Yes. If he gets us through. But we’re not much more than a dozen miles from Kronstadt yet, and he didn’t seem at all cheerful about his prospects himself.”
“You’re being too pessimistic,” Kuporovitch insisted. “The worst danger was when we surfaced to put Grauber off. As you say yourself, we’re still only about a dozen miles from Kronstadt, so other aircraft must have been up and searching for us by the time they got out that boat. Since they didn’t spot us then, the chances are now all in favour of our getting clean away.”
At that second, in flat contradiction of his optimism, the dull thump of another bomb shook the ship from stem to stern.
“Oh, God, they’ve found us!” gasped Gregory, springing up. “Now we’ll never get out of here alive.”