The Black Baroness (2 page)

‘We should be in by about three o’clock,’ he murmured.

She nodded. ‘Yes; but they may keep us hanging about for hours before they allow us ashore.’

‘That depends on how soon we can get hold of your friend at the German Legation, and how long it takes him to secure entry permits for us.’

‘Yes, it’s a bore our passports not having Norwegian visas but I’m sure Uli von Einem will soon fix matters up.’

‘I only hope to goodness he doesn’t happen to know that you’re wanted by the Gestapo or that the real Colonel Baron von Lutz was killed while resisting arrest by the Nazis last November.’

Erika shrugged. ‘As I said last night, it’s not easy for any legation to keep track of what has happened to eighty million Germans while a war is going on and, even if they do know, they can’t do anything to us while we’re on a neutral ship. We’ll just have to think up some other method of getting ashore or transfer to a ship that will take us round to a Swedish port and try our luck there.’

‘I can always get in touch with the British Legation,’ Gregory said slowly, ‘and I might be able to wangle some way of getting you into Norway; but if I can continue to pose as a German it will prevent a lot of unwelcome speculation as to why we’re always together while we are in Oslo.’

She turned suddenly and looked him full in the face. ‘For how long is that to be, Gregory?’

‘Not very long, darling—worse luck,’ he replied quietly. ‘You know how things are, so we needn’t go over it all and add to what we’re feeling. As soon as we land I must find out when there’s a plane that will take me home, so we’ve now got only a few days together at the most.’

Erika could have screamed with the frightful injustice of it all. Through his crazy ambition this mountebank, Hitler, had
sown the seeds of misery, poverty and death broadcast throughout half the world. The foul crop was barely visible as yet, but in time it would strangle innumerable beautiful things, and already the shoots of the filthy weed were forcing apart the roots of countless loves and friendships. But she was a splendidly courageous person so she did not seek by a single word to dissuade Gregory from his decision, and her intense distress was shown only by a slight moistening of her very beautiful blue eyes.

An hour later the tramp had berthed and by six o’clock Uli von Einem had joined them with papers enabling them to go ashore. He was a thin, fair man, who in the past had been one of Erika’s innumerable admirers, and he possessed all the tact of a born diplomat. Privately, he thought it a strange business that his lovely friend should arrive, without even a beauty-box for baggage, on a tramp steamer that had come from Leningrad, but the one lesson that
Freiherr
von Einem had learnt since the Nazis had come to power was that the less one knew officially about anything the less likelihood there was of finding oneself carted off, without warning, to a concentration-camp. The passports of both Erika and her friend were in perfect order except that they lacked Norwegian visas, and Erika had intimated that they were both on urgent secret business connected with the prosecution of the war, so von Einem had accepted her statement without comment.

Gregory had thrown overboard the Gestapo uniform that he had stolen from Grauber so he was dressed in a ready-made suit which he had bought off the first Mate of the tramp, but its poor quality was concealed under his rich furs. Erika also was still in her furs, and their only belongings were contained in a single handbag that Gregory had brought out of Russia with him, so they were not long delayed by the Customs. Von Einem drove them to the Grand Hotel in the Karl Johansgt and, having accepted an invitation to lunch with them on the following day, left them there.

On going into the lounge they saw, to their delight, that Kuporovitch had succeeded in evading the Norwegian coastguards. He was sitting with a long-stemmed glass in front of him but as soon as he caught sight of them he disposed of its contents and came hurrying over with a wave of his hand.

The Russian was a clean-shaven man in his early fifties. His grey hair was brushed smoothly back and, strangely contrasting
with it, his eyebrows, which were still black, ran thin and pointed towards the temples of his smooth white forehead. Under them were a pair of rather lazy blue eyes, but their glance was apt to be deceptive as behind them lay an extremely shrewd intelligence. Up to the age of twenty-nine he had been an officer of the Imperial Russian Army, but when the Revolution had broken out a strange set of circumstances had resulted in his joining the Bolsheviks. After the Civil War he had come to loathe and despise his new masters, yet with the laudable desire to keep his head on his shoulders he had concealed his antipathy for many years with superlative skill. For a long time past he had been hoarding foreign currency with the idea of escaping from the dreary, depressing land of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics so that he might spend his old age among civilised people, and his great ambition was to see the Paris of his youth again.

Greeting his friends in French—which was their common language—he said with a smile: ‘I’ve booked rooms for you—two bedrooms with a bathroom in between, so that you can preserve the proprieties of this charming old world into which I am so delighted to have returned. Come upstairs and I will show you.’

Upstairs, perched on Erika’s bed and smoking a long cheroot, he told them, with many chuckles, of his adventures that day. It had all been too easy. He had walked to the nearest village, found its school and routed out the village schoolmaster, to whom he had said: ‘I am a member of the French Legation in Oslo and was returning there after a visit to Kristiansand. When the train halted in the station here I got out to get some hot coffee in the buffet and the train went on without me. Unfortunately, too, it carried on my baggage and a small attaché-case in which I had some papers and my ticket. Would you oblige me by acting as interpreter at the station so that I can buy another ticket and take the next train on?’ The Norwegian had been most polite and helpful, so Kuporovitch had arrived in Oslo without the least difficulty.

Having washed and tidied themselves they went down to the grill-room. The head waiter was nearly guilty of raising an eyebrow when he saw them approaching, for Kuporovitch was in shoddy ‘ready-mades’ that he had bought at an old-clothes shop in Leningrad, Gregory was in the first Mate’s second-best suit and Erika’s tweeds showed obvious signs of the hard wear they
had sustained; but as the man’s glance swept across their faces he noted Erika’s regal beauty and that in spite of their shabby clothes both her escorts had the air of men who were used to being obeyed. With a swift bow he led them to a sofa-table.

The under-waiter who took their order brought the
maître d’hôtel
scurrying back again, his face now wreathed in smiles. The strangely-dressed trio had ordered a superb meal and some of the best wines that his cellar boasted. He did not know that the broad-shouldered, middle-aged man with the black, pointed eyebrows had been cooped up in Russia for nearly a quarter of a century and that it was many months since the others had had a meal in a good restaurant. They were speaking French but he put them down as rich Germans who had been suffering from the Nazis’ impoverished larder and had somehow managed to get away to Norway.

Although they had spared no pains or expense in ordering their favourite dishes, the meal was not the success that it should have been, because the black cloud of war and the coming separation weighed heavily upon the spirits of the little party. The tables were widely spaced so they were able to talk freely without risk of being overheard, and when they had reached the coffee and brandy stage Gregory turned to the Russian.

‘The time has come, Stefan, when we must discuss plans. I shall have to leave here in a day or two—as soon as I can get a plane—for England. What do you intend to do?’

Kuporovitch smiled. ‘Now that I am a free man once more I can hardly wait until I get to Paris; but the devil of it is that I have no passport. What are the intentions of
Madame la Comtesse
?’

‘It would be unwise for her to remain here long. The Germans are so thorough that solely as a matter of routine von Einem will have reported our arrival in Oslo. It may take a week or two passing through the files of petty officials, but sooner or later the Gestapo will learn where she’s got to.’

‘Does that matter now that she is in a neutral country?’

Gregory grinned. ‘You don’t know the Gestapo, my friend. They’re quite capable of kidnapping Erika or arranging one of their jolly little motor-car accidents in which she would be knocked down and killed. Besides, as we told you on the tramp, by the merest fluke we happened to come into possession of the German war plan. They’ve followed it step by step so far, and
Norway is the next on their list. Her life would not be worth a moment’s purchase if she were still here when they staged an invasion.’

Erika drew slowly on her cigarette. ‘What d’you suggest then?’

‘Stage 7 of the plan lays it down that Sweden is strong enough to require a separate operation, so she should be left for the time being, but that Norway and Denmark can be taken over together. Sweden would then be entirely isolated and so in no position to resist whenever the Germans consider it convenient to take control there. The plan then passes to Stage 8, which concerns Holland and Belgium, and no further mention of Sweden is made at all. As it’s quite on the cards that the Germans will be content to absorb Sweden’s entire exports without actually walking into the place for some considerable time, I suggest that Erika should move there.’

The Russian raised his dark eyebrows. ‘But surely she will be just as liable to secret attacks from the Gestapo in Sweden as she would be here?’

‘No. Here she had to disclose her true identity to get into the country. My suggestion is that she should quietly slip away from Oslo and cross the border at some place up-country; then she could settle in Sweden, under an assumed name, until I can make arrangements for her to sail to America.’

‘America!’ Erika exclaimed. ‘But, darling, once there I may not be able to get back, and I just can’t live unless I’m to have some hope of seeing you again before many months are past.’

Gregory sighed. ‘We’ll talk of that later, my sweet. Your immediate safety is the most important thing. It shouldn’t be difficult for you to keep out of trouble in some small Swedish town, even without a passport, for the next few weeks, and my idea was that Stefan could go with you.’

‘But I have no wish at all to go to Sweden,’ the Russian protested. ‘It is to see Paris again …’

‘I know.’ Gregory interrupted swiftly; ‘but you didn’t let me finish. Without a passport you haven’t got a hope in hell of getting to France, but the British Government owes me a bit for services rendered so I mean to try to get you a passport and entry permit to France at the same time as I get them for Erika to the United States. In the meantime you can take care of each other.’

‘Ah, in that case’—Kuporovitch waved his cigar—‘I shall
be delighted to place myself at the disposal of
Madame la Comtesse
.’

‘That’s settled, then,’ said Gregory. ‘Let’s pay the bill and go up to bed.’

Kuporovitch accompanied them only as far as the lift, since now that he was back in civilisation he had other ideas as to how he meant to spend his evening.

Very reluctantly the following morning Gregory and Erika got up at eleven o’clock and went out into the clear, frosty air of the Norwegian capital. Since he was staying at the hotel as a German, they went to Cook’s, where he was able to produce his British passport, and he managed to secure a seat on the air liner which would be leaving for London two days later—Friday the 22nd; after which they bought a number of things that would add to their comfort and some new clothes to make themselves more presentable.

Uli von Einem lunched with them and, preserving the same discretion as on the day before, forbore to inquire into their private concerns but gave them the latest war news that had come through the German Legation. The Finns were submitting peaceably to the terms which the Russians had imposed upon them. The uncaptured portion of the Mannerheim Line was being rapidly evacuated and Soviet troops had already taken over Finland’s ‘Gibraltar’ on the island of Hangoe, so Russia was now the unchallenged mistress of the Northern Baltic. That was the price that Germany had had to pay to keep her eastern neighbour quiet while she dealt with her enemies in the West. On the other hand, Hitler and Mussolini had met on the Brenner Pass the previous Sunday. No details had been allowed to leak out about the matters discussed there, but it was understood that the meeting had proved highly satisfactory. One presumable result had been the withdrawal of Italy’s support from Rumania so that King Carol had been compelled to lift the ban on the Rumanian Iron Guard, which was definitely a victory for the Nazis. Gregory took it all in with the glib appreciation which might have been expected from a German officer, and it did not add to his satisfaction about the way in which the war was going.

He had already scanned the latest English papers to reach Oslo so was more or less
au fait
with the situation. The big news item was that an Indian fanatic had assassinated Sir Michael O’Dwyer and succeeded in wounding Lord Zetland, Sir Louis
Dane and Lord Lamington before he was overpowered, but otherwise old England seemed to be jogging along as though the war were just a rather remote and tiresome business. The British Union, the Nordic League, the Peace Pledge people, and all sorts of other dangerous bodies composed of rogues, cranks, half-wits and actual traitors were still allowed complete liberty to publish as much subversive literature as they liked and to advise cowards how to evade military service on the plea that they were conscientious objectors.

One had only to glance at the small news items in the National Press to see how a weak-kneed government was being intimidated by a handful of irresponsible M.P.s into permitting Hitler’s Fifth Column in England absolute freedom to contaminate thousands of misguided idealists and so immensely weaken Britain’s war effort. Gregory would have liked to have been given Gestapo powers in the Home Office for half a day. He would have signed the death warrant of every spy caught red-handed since the beginning of the war, had them shot in the courtyard and published photographs of their bodies to intimidate the others. He would then have made both the Fascist and Communist Parties illegal, locked the Home Secretary up in one of his own asylums, retired every permanent Civil Servant over the age of fifty and departed with reasonable confidence that the younger men who remained would have got their bearings in a week and settled down to the job of making Britain safe from her internal enemies.