They Used Dark Forces (39 page)

Asked about her plans for the day, she said, ‘There's a woman I know who's just lost her son. He'd been seriously wounded at the front so was given a job in Goebbels' office, but he died from further wounds in an air-raid about a week ago. She may have his papers and be prepared to part with them. Anyway, I'm going to have a snack lunch with her today. But I've nothing after that; so I'll be back about half past three and we'll spend the rest of the afternoon together.'

While she was out Gregory again spent the time in his room and on her return she came up to him. But she had had no luck. Her friend had returned all her son's papers to the Propaganda Bureau. At midday it had clouded over and it was now raining on and off; so the garden being ruled out Sabine said they would be more comfortable sitting in the drawing room.

Down there they talked for a time of the happy days they had spent in Budapest; then Gregory led the conversation back to the conspiracy. ‘Do you think,' he asked, ‘if one of these people managed to assassinate Hitler that the Generals would succeed in getting the better of the other Nazis and take over?'

She shrugged. ‘The question doesn't arise, because no-one will succeed in assassinating Hitler. He knows that there are quite a number of people who would willingly give their lives to kill him, so the precautions he takes to protect himself are quite extraordinary. Surrounding his headquarters at Rastenburg
there are three rings of check points; so no civilian stands a hope in hell of getting through them all. His staff are all hand-picked as one hundred per cent pro-Nazi, and the duty officers who report to him there have all been most carefully vetted.'

‘But he must leave his H.Q. at times.'

‘He does, but only very infrequently. Some time ago he was persuaded with great difficulty to go on a visit to the Eastern Front, and they nearly got him there. Apparently someone asked the pilot of his aircraft to take a parcel said to contain two bottles of brandy back to a friend at the base. Actually, it contained a bomb, but the bomb failed to go off.'

‘Did he find out about that?'

‘No; luckily for the conspirators, because they managed to retrieve the parcel at the other end. Hitler does seem to be gifted with a sort of sixth sense, though. He has flatly refused to leave his H.Q. again.'

‘I take it that Kurt told you about this?'

‘Yes; and lots more. He says Hitler is incredibly suspicious and remarkably difficult to get at. He arranges all functions at which he still has to make a personal appearance for a given day, then cancels them at the very last moment. Sometimes he does that two or three times, then lays the party on at an hour's notice. Deliberately, of course, so that anyone who has planned to have a crack at him has his arrangements thrown out of gear and misses the chance.'

‘Do you turn in to Ribb all you get out of Kurt?' Gregory asked.

She shook her head. ‘Oh no. If he were a pro-Communist trying to arrange a pact with Russia I would. But, as I've told you, I'd be delighted to see Hitler dead; providing the right people do the job and are ready to take over.'

‘Say someone did kill Hitler, what chance do you think von Osterberg and his pals have of establishing the sort of set-up you'd like to see?'

‘Very little. They'd have to get the better of the S.S. troops in Berlin, and that wouldn't be easy for them these days. Before the war, and for some time after it started, Himmler's people couldn't have done much against the Army. For some
reason that I've never understood Hitler would allow him to raise only a few battalions of Nazi troops. Those he took in were most carefully selected. They all had to produce evidence of Aryan descent for three generations on both sides and measure up to the highest physical standards. The original S.S. was quite something: an élite corps of blond young blackguards who believed that Hitler was God and Himmler his Prophet, and would shoot a Jew as soon as look at him. But all that is altered now.'

Gregory nodded. ‘I thought that must be so, from the number of S.S. Divisions now fighting on the battle fronts. So many could not possibly have been put into the field without a serious dilution of the original hand-picked specimens of Nazi frightfulness.'

‘Yes, that's what happened. The more Hitler became convinced that the Army Chiefs were letting him down, the more he turned to “the faithful Heinrich” and allowed him to create a bigger and bigger private Nazi Army. Ever since Himmler got himself in with Hitler he's spent most of his time intriguing to get greater power into his hands; so once he got the green light from his boss nothing could stop him. He started recruiting left, right and centre. Not only Germans, but Frenchmen, Belgians, Dutch, Scandinavians and even Mohammedans from Yugoslavia. Today there are at least a million men under his orders. They wear the uniforms of soldiers but are completely independent of the Wehrmacht. They take orders from the Generals only when they are in the battle line, and their Divisional Commanders have the right even to ignore those if they don't like them.'

‘You feel then that these Nazi troops are numerous enough to defeat the units of a regular army if one of the Generals launched a
Putsch
against Hitler?'

‘In Berlin they are. One evening Kurt told me quite a lot about that. In the city the Army has nothing but a Guard Battalion and a few details at the War Office. Of course, they could call on the troops and cadets in the Training Centres outside the capital. But it would take them several hours to get there. Meanwhile, unless they lost their heads, the Commanders of Himmler's S.S. troops would not just sit
about waiting to be mopped up. And there are plenty of them in the S.S. barracks. Many more than enough to put down a revolt by the Army before the Generals could bring in other units.'

‘Then it seems that no General in the War Office would risk starting anything, even if he learned that some pal of his had succeeded in bumping off Hitler?'

Sabine shook her head again. ‘No, and any hope of Hitler being bumped off is only wishful thinking. He is far too careful of himself. What is more, it's my belief that he's under the protection of the Devil. Until the Russians or the Allies reach Berlin I'd bet any money that no-one will ever get him.'

At that moment they heard the front gate slam. Glancing swiftly out of the bay window they saw von Osterberg propping his bicycle up against the fence.

‘It's Kurt!' Sabine exclaimed in alarm. ‘What can have brought him home so early? Quick! For God's sake, hide yourself.'

Von Osterberg was already running up the garden path. Had Gregory crossed the room he would have been bound to be seen by the Count through the window, or have run into him in the hall. There was only one thing for it. He dived through the velvet curtains at the entrance to the little writing room and pulled them to behind him.

For a moment he stood there, wondering if he could get out through one of the windows without being heard. Then through the curtains behind him he heard von Osterberg burst into the drawing room and cry:

‘We are free! Free! Hitler is dead! Hitler is dead!'

Gregory had his hand stretched out towards one of the windows in the little room. But at the Count's cry he remained transfixed.

Sabine's voice came through the velvet curtains, ‘Hitler dead! No! How? Surely no-one could have got into his headquarters and shot him. A stroke?'

‘No. It was a bomb. At least I think so. No details are known yet. But he's dead. He must be. The codeword
Walküre
has been sent out. That makes it certain. I received it in my office twenty minutes ago, and I left at once to let you know.'

‘You were in the plot, then?'

‘Yes. Several times recently arrangements have been made to assassinate the swine, but they couldn't be carried through because of his habit of altering his day's schedule at the last moment. There were difficulties about the bomb, too. Our German fuses hiss when they are started, so a package containing one would attract attention. But British fuses are worked by acid. They are started by breaking a glass capsule containing the acid and in a given time it eats through a wire. That's how I was brought into it. In my laboratory I have captured explosives as well as our own with which to experiment. I supplied the fuses. But they meant to get him this time, anyhow. If the bomb didn't go off it was intended to shoot him.'

‘Kurt, I think you might have told me about this.' Sabine's voice sounded a trifle peevish.

‘My dear, I couldn't,' he replied apologetically. ‘All of us took an oath of secrecy. And I was never in the inner ring; so
I didn't know that another attempt was to be made today or who the gallant fellow is that did this splendid deed. But what's that matter? We're free! Free from that gutter-bred monster at last!'

‘How about the others, though?' Sabine asked. ‘Himmler? Goebbels? Goering? They won't give in without making a fight for it.'

‘Don't worry. They'll be taken care of. That was the object of sending out the codeword
Walküre
. By now the Generals who are in this will have taken over at the War Office. The Guard Battalion will be in possession of key points like the Broadcasting Station, and troops from the Tank and Artillery Schools will be marching on Berlin.'

‘Who is responsible for the
Putsch
?'

‘Colonel-General Ludwig Beck; and he has the support of many others who refused to kowtow to Hitler: Field Marshal von Witzleben, who is to become Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces; Halder, who'll probably be chosen as Chief of the General Staff; Hoeppner, Olbricht, Fellgiebel, Oster, Hase, Wagner and Admiral Canaris. A number of our ablest younger officers are in it too: Merz von Quirnheim, Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, Fabian von Schlabrendorff and Henning von Tresckow. It was he who put the bomb in Hitler's 'plane when he went to the Eastern front, though, of course, I couldn't tell you so at the time. Both the Police Chiefs, Count Helldorf and Artur Nebe, are with us; and several of the Army Commanders at the fronts, Von Kluge and Rommel among them. As Military Governors in France and Belgium, Stuelpnagel and Falkenhausen have promised to arrest all the Nazis in Paris and Brussels. Everything has been thought of. We have nothing to fear.'

Gregory had turned and taken a silent step back towards the curtains. Peering through the narrow gap between them while von Osterberg reeled off this impressive list of names, he took stock of the aristocrat-scientist who was still Erika's husband. It was two and a half years since he had seen the Count and in that time von Osterberg had aged considerably. He was of medium height, thin and his hair had turned nearly white. He looked a good sixty, but he was still a handsome
man, apart from a scar that seamed the left side of his face from eyebrow to chin. Gregory had given him that for his cowardice in succumbing to pressure from the Gestapo and luring Erika back into Germany so that she might be held as a hostage for her English lover.

Hurriedly von Osterberg was going on, ‘Beck is to be the new German Head of State; but only temporarily till we have the situation well in hand and have come to terms with the Anglo-Americans to help us stave off a Russian invasion. In spite of that fool Roosevelt having made it so difficult for us to negotiate by his announcement at Casablanca about insisting on “unconditional surrender”, they can't refuse to treat us reasonably now we've got rid of the Nazis. And the last thing they want is to have Germany, Austria and Hungary fall into the hands of the Communists. But we're all against a permanent military dictatorship. As soon as we have cleared up the mess Karl Goerdeler will take over from Beck and form a coalition government, including the Socialist leaders as well as Popitz, Schacht, Donhanyi, von Hassell and our other friends. Then there will be free elections again. But I'll be able to tell you more late tonight or tomorrow morning. I only looked in just to give you the great news. I'm on my way into Berlin to find out how things are going.'

Giving Sabine a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, her elderly lover hurried out into the hall. Caution demanded that Gregory should remain where he was until the Count was well clear of the house. But no sooner had his footsteps sounded running down the garden path than Sabine stepped swiftly across the room and took down a gilt-framed oil-painting from the wall. It had concealed a small cupboard. Opening it, she grabbed up a telephone receiver and after a moment said into it:

‘I want Herr von Weizsaecker. Urgently! Urgently! Highest priority. This is number forty-three speaking.'

The garden gate had slammed so Gregory came back into the room and said, ‘This is tremendous news. But what are you up to?'

Impatiently she waved to him to be silent, then spoke into the telephone again. ‘Is that you, Ernst? Put me through to the
Reichsaussenminister. At once! At once! It's desperately important!'

‘Hey!' Gregory cried. ‘Are you trying to sabotage the plot?'

Her dark eyes flashing, she covered the receiver with her hand and almost snarled at him, ‘Of course not. I couldn't now, even if I would. This is a private matter.'

Speaking again into the telephone, she said, ‘What! He is at his headquarters in East Prussia: Schloss Steinort? Then get on to him at once. Don't lose a moment. Tell him I've just learned that the Führer is dead. Blown up by a bomb or something; and that the Generals have seized control in Berlin. Tell him to look out for himself.'

Panting slightly she hung up, shut the door of the secret cupboard, shook back her dark hair and said to Gregory, ‘That's the private line to the Foreign Office that Ribb had installed for his use when he was staying here. I haven't used it for ages. Thank God it hadn't been cut in an air-raid. As far as I'm concerned Hitler can rot in hell. So can most of the other Nazis. But I had to give Ribb a chance to get away. After all, he's an old friend and has always treated me very decently.'