Faked Passports (57 page)

Von Geisenheim had been regarding Gregory with polite attention yet with a reserve which suggested that it was hardly reasonable to expect him to swallow this incredible story in its entirety. But when Erika's name was mentioned he suddenly laughed. “Come, come! This is too much. You can't honestly expect me to believe that you were having a love affair with the famous
Gräfin
von Osterberg—the most beautiful woman in Germany.”

“I am still,” Gregory replied seriously. “I left her only two nights ago up at Kandalaksha; you can check that up. And I'm proud to say that if only we can get out of this alive she has promised to divorce von Osterberg—who has never been anything to her but a friend—and marry me.”

“
Donnerwetter!
You are lucky then, as well as brave. So the
Frau Gräfin
is here in Russia? Go on, now. This becomes much more interesting.”

Gregory then told how he had found Erika in Finland, how his English pilot had run into his ex-fiancée and how the four of them had decided to fly to Sweden on the first day of the Russo-Finnish
War. He refrained from giving any account of their affair with Wuolijoki and Grauber, as to have done so would have necessitated his giving away the part that Goering had played in inducing the Finns to fight, but told how their aeroplane had been commandeered and that rather than remain in Helsinki they had flown with Captain Helijarvi to Petsamo. From that point he told the whole truth, except for suppressing his visit to the British Vice-Consul in Leningrad that morning.

When he had finished the General glanced at the letter again. “But this mentions the other members of your party, and it is addressed to Voroshilov. Why should Marshal Goering have given you such a document when he thought you were going to Finland?”

“Oh—that,” Gregory laughed, “I forged it in a hotel in Leningrad only a few hours ago. The ink of the signature is hardly dry and that worried me rather. Somebody might have noticed that it's colour doesn't tally with the fact that it was supposed to have been written nearly three months ago.”

“Umph! I missed that; but the signature appears to be genuine. How did you manage to fake it?”

“I was able to copy it from a letter Goering gave me to Erika; which she had fortunately kept and passed on to me before I left Kandalaksha.”

“May I see it?”

Gregory shook his head. “I'm sorry; but I destroyed it after having forged the other; I thought it was too dangerous to carry it about any longer.”

“It doesn't matter.” Von Geisenheim shrugged. “The details of your story hang together too well for me to doubt you further. Now, what am I going to do about you?”

“Both of us are neutrals here and both of us have risked our lives to destroy the Nazi régime,” Gregory said slowly, “so I think we should forget for the time being that our countries are at war. And, since you appear to know Erika, I very much hope that you will use all the influence you have to secure me an early interview with Voroshilov, in order that I can prevent her falling once more into the hands of the Gestapo, who are the common enemy of us all.”

The General nodded. “I'll do what I can but don't count on that too much. It's the very devil to get these Russians to do anything. Voroshilov himself is a very able man but, as you doubtless know, they've massacred thousands of their best officers in the last two years and most of the present staff are
hopelessly incompetent. The mess they have been making of their campaign is almost incredible. I and my colleagues were sent here to help them but they hardly ever consult us and generally ignore our advice on the rare occasions that they ask for it.”

“How is the war really going?” Gregory asked. “I have heard little authentic news since it started.”

“They thought it would be a walk-over and that the Finnish workers would greet them with open arms, so they made no proper preparations at all before launching their first attacks. In consequence, their only initial success was in the far north. On January the 1st the 163rd Soviet division was trapped and cut to pieces at Suomussalmi and a week later the 164th division was routed with heavy losses in the same area. On January the 10th the Finns won another major victory down here on the Isthmus, but at the end of January Voroshilov left Moscow to take command himself. The Finns managed to annihilate the Soviet 18th division at Kitella on February the 5th, but by the 7th Voroshilov had brought up some 200,000 fresh troops and nearly all of them were Budenny's famous shock battalions. Since then the attack has been continuous. The Finns have put up a wonderful resistance, but by mid-February they had to abandon Suoma and had been driven from all their positions in the southern half of the Mannerheim Line. They are still holding a line outside Viborg but I have no doubt at all that Voroshilov will go right through now, as he is outflanking them by throwing the left wing of his Army across the ice where there are no prepared positions except for the island forts.”

Gregory nodded. “That looks bad for the Finns, then.”

“Yes. The punishment they are receiving now is terrific; as you will probably see for yourself if you're here for any length of time. They generally let us go up to see a big attack every few days and I propose to consider you as a member of our Mission, on one condition.”

“What is it?”

“There are about twenty of us here and we have our own Mess. If you are to continue as von Lutz you will naturally be made a member of it. I want your word that you will not use anything which you may learn in conversing with my brother-officers to the detriment of Germany should you succeed in getting back to England.”

Gregory readily gave the undertaking. He felt that the request was only reasonable and, in any case, it was most unlikely
that he would learn anything of real importance about projected operations in the West from casual talk of the officers in the German Mission, whose sphere of interest was at present so far removed from their own war with Britain and France.

“Good, then,” von Geisenheim went on. “There's one other point. How d'you propose to account for your arrival here and the fact that you are not in uniform?”

“I shall say that I left Germany by plane, that my pilot lost his way and was forced down in desolate country by engine trouble and that I've been snowbound there until I managed to get away a few days ago. As I was leaving Germany on a foreign mission there is nothing very extraordinary about my having departed in civilian clothes and my uniform could have been destroyed with my baggage when the plane crashed.”

“That's quite sound. But where will you be if some of the others knew von Lutz and expose you?”

“It's extraordinary long odds against even one out of twenty officers having known the Baron and the fact that you did so makes the odds twenty times longer. Would any of them have known that he was a friend of yours?”

“I don't think so. I only knew him in a social way; we were never in the same regiment or command.”

“Then if I am found out you can always say that you didn't know him and so had no idea that I was an impostor.”

“All right, we'll risk it. I'll take you to the Mess and arrange for a room and a servant to be given to you.”

The Mess consisted of a big ante-room and dining-room, in a neighbouring hut. In the ante-room half a dozen German officers were talking or reading and the General introduced Gregory to them, placing him in charge of a Major Woltat, who gave him a drink and led him to another hutment which contained a long corridor and about a dozen rooms. A German soldier-servant was sent to the Quartermaster for bedding, etc., as Gregory had no equipment of his own, and one of the rooms was made over to him.

He dined in the Mess and would have thoroughly enjoyed the experience if he had not been so worried about the apparent difficulty in securing an interview with the Russian Generalissimo. The Germans were nearly all officers of senior rank and although they were very careful to make no reference to the Nazi Government, on account of the three black-uniformed Gestapo men who were present, they discussed the war with considerable intelligence.

Gregory learned that a few days before R.A.F. planes had made successful leaflet raids over Vienna and Prague. This seemed an extraordinarily fine performance, owing to the great distance over enemy territory that had to be covered, and it perturbed the Germans considerably because Goering had transferred some of his largest aeroplane factories to the neighbourhood of Vienna; believing that they would be out of bombing range there and so not only safe but able to work three shifts a day unhindered by the necessity of black-outs.

That Monday night Gregory went to bed thanking his stars that he had happened to see General von Geisenheim among the conspirators at the Adlon, but extremely worried about his prospects of being able to secure the release of his friends.

He spent most of Tuesday morning sitting about in the Mess, for he had no duties to perform, but the Germans also appeared to have very little to do, so he was never without company. However, in the evening Major Woltat informed him that on the following day the Military Mission was to make one of its periodical visits to the front, as part of Marshal Voroshilov's
entourage
, so Gregory retired to bed hoping that luck might serve him and that he would be able to get a word with the Marshal.

Next morning he was called early with the rest and long before the late dawn they piled into a fleet of cars which left the wood, moving in a westerly direction until they struck a main road running north that led them to the shore of the great bay south of Viborg. There, in a totally ruined village, they left the cars and changing into sleighs drove out for several miles across the ice until the higher ground of the opposite shore of the bay could be seen in the distance.

The sleighs drew up at a small island which rose out of the ice. It had been a Finnish strongpoint until the day before, but its concrete forts had been reduced to rubble and its abandoned guns lay broken and twisted from the Russian shells. The party numbered about fifty people in all and Major Woltat pointed out to Gregory the Russian Generalissimo as he led the way in the short climb to the island's top. He was a square-built man of middle height, with a rather plumpish face but good, open features. Beside him his trusted second-in-command, the old ex-Sergeant of Dragoons, Marshal Budenny, was easily recognisable from his huge moustache.

Having taken up their positions they began to scan the bay through their field-glasses and to study the maps which some
of the officers were holding. To the north, which was now on their immediate right, they could just make out the square tower of the old castle which rose above the shattered roofs of Viborg; but it was directly in front of them and to their left front that the main Russian attack was being launched; its objective being the ten miles of coast-line running south-westward from the city and behind the last positions in the southern flank of the Mannerheim Line.

Major Woltat explained to Gregory that while the weather had favoured the Finns at the outbreak of the campaign by heavy snow-storms which hampered the Russian advance, the severe winter had now reacted in the Russians' favour. Normally the bay would have frozen over but the ice would not have been thick enough to send anything but infantry across it; whereas, owing to the extraordinary degree of cold which had continued for so long, the ice had frozen to such a thickness that the Russians were able to send tanks and guns over it without any fear of these falling through.

Individual men could not be seen at any distance as the crack Russian regiments which were now being flung into the battle were all equipped with snow-shirts; but as wave after wave of them came past the island towards the firing-line the great, flat ice-field seemed to undulate with their perpetual motion. From what Gregory could gather, their morale was good, as they pressed forward in spite of the shells from the Finnish batteries which were exploding among them, and all those who passed near enough to the island to recognise Voroshilov raised a cheer for him, which he acknowledged from time to time with a wave of his hand.

Gregory had seen the bombardment which the Germans had put over on March the 21st, 1918, when they launched their last offensive in the first Great War and broke through between the British and French Armies. That was said to be the most devastating that had ever taken place in the history of the world, but from what he could judge the one that he was now witnessing was even greater.

Major Woltat told him that the Soviet artillery was putting over 300,000 shells a day and, from the sector that Gregory could see, he had little reason to doubt this estimate. The whole Finnish line from Viborg in the north to a point far away in the south-west was one continuous ripple of light from the shell-bursts. The hundreds of explosions per minute merged into one unceasing roar that made the air quiver and rocked the senses.
The island on which they stood was in a constant state of vibration as though an earthquake threatened or a concealed volcano was rumbling beneath it, and the Finnish coast, now obscured by a dense pall of smoke which sparkled like a black sequin dress with innumerable shifting flashes, appeared such a veritable hell that it seemed utterly impossible for anything to remain living upon it.

By comparison the Finnish artillery retaliation seemed only like a few batteries doing a practice shoot with all the economy which they would have had to exercise in peace-time; yet it was miraculous that they continued to fire at all, and the Russians were so massed that every Finnish shell did deadly execution. Here and there the Finnish heavies blew holes right through the ice causing men and horses to plunge to their death in the freezing water and scattering a great hail of ice-splinters, as deadly as the steel fragments of the shell itself, to whizz through the air killing and wounding scores of Russians.

They remained on the island watching this incredibly terrible spectacle for just over an hour. Then Voroshilov said something to Budenny, which made the old Dragoon laugh, and, turning, led the way back to the sleighs; the whole party following. This looked to Gregory just the opportunity for which he had been waiting, so hurrying up to von Geisenheim, he asked the German if he could possibly request the Marshal to give him a moment; but von Geisenheim shook his head.