Traitors' Gate (55 page)

He reported that Sabine had now definitely admitted Nicho
ŭ
lic to be her contact, upon which the Colonel beamed through his bi-focals and said, ‘Well done, you’ve been a great help to us. Now I can tell the Provost-Marshal’s people to go ahead and arrange about her trial. You’ll be wanted as a witness, of course.’

‘I wonder if it wouldn’t be worth while to postpone her trial for a bit,’ Gregory suggested tentatively. ‘It is nothing to do with me, but this morning I got her talking about the top
Nazis. As Ribbentrop’s mistress she knew them all personally, you know. I found the low-down she was giving me fascinating, and I’m sure I could get a lot more out of her. Still, perhaps that sort of thing isn’t of much value?’

It was a critical moment. If his proposal were rejected he would have to fall back on Sabine’s taking more of the temperature raising pills he had given her as a means of postponing her trial and, far worse, he might find it difficult to pay more than another one or two visits to her on the excuse of tying up loose ends. However, he felt on fairly safe ground and almost at once the Colonel gave the sort of answer he had expected.

‘That kind of material is of no value to me, but it would be of great interest to the branch of the firm that operates abroad. I’ll have a word with them and one of their people will get in touch with you at the Cabinet Offices.’

Greatly relieved, Gregory walked across the Park to lunch in the basement mess at the end of the corridor in which the War Room lay, then went on duty. That evening one of the Royal Marine orderlies came in to say that there was an officer outside who wished to see him. Out in the corridor he found a small grey-haired Major who introduced himself and said in a naturally low voice, ‘I’ve come to talk to you about the prisoner in the Tower.’

As there was no waiting-room Gregory took him down a side passage and into one of the emergency bedrooms always kept in readiness for members of the War Cabinet—it happened to be Mr. Attlee’s. It was furnished simply with an iron bed, washstand, small table for use as a desk, scrambler telephone and two hard chairs. They sat on the bed talking for a few minutes then the Major moved to the table and took notes of Sabine’s disclosures. When they had finished, he said:

‘This stuff may come in very handy some time or other. Please get from her all you can; particularly about any of the top Generals she happens to know, but even the names and peculiarities of Hitler’s servants might prove useful. The Chief of my branch is rather against people coming to our office; so I’ll come to see you here again, if you don’t mind. What times suit you best?’

‘My duty hours vary,’ Gregory replied. ‘But I am supplying her with drink, as I find that she is much more forthcoming
when she has had a few; and to take the best advantage of that I mean to arrange my shifts for some days now so that I can see her after dinner in the evening. That means I’ll be here all day, most days; but it would be best if you ring me up just to make certain I am here.’

‘All right. I’ll do that. There is no point in my coming to see you every day. I’ll give you a ring on Monday, and come in to collect all the dope you have managed to get by then.’

After dinner that night Gregory went to see Sir Pellinore. The meeting was not a happy one. Gregory reported the progress he had made to date, then flatly refused the Baronet’s pleas that he should give up his plan. Seeing that nothing would move him, Sir Pellinore, being a man of his word, divulged, albeit with great reluctance and misgiving, the ‘Most Secret’ information that he had secured for him.

On Saturday afternoon good news came through from the Western Desert. For the past week the Eighth Army and the Afrika Corps had been engaged in a tremendous slogging match at El Alamein. Many tanks had been destroyed on both sides and the British had taken a considerable number of prisoners; but so far General Montgomery had failed to dislodge Rommel from his main positions. Now it was reported that another all-out attack had been launched that morning and definite breaches had been made in the German defences.

At six o’clock Gregory went down to the Tower and spent an hour with Sabine, questioning her about Hitler’s principal Military advisers, their habits, vices and personal backgrounds. At seven Mrs. Sutton brought her in her evening meal; so he left her. Out in the hall he said to the wardress:

‘I can’t stay tonight, but tomorrow evening I mean to pay her a late visit. How is the supply of port going?’

The wardress went to the cupboard and showed him that there was one bottle left. He said with a smile, ‘I could do with a drink, although it is hardly the hour for port. Let’s open it and have one. I’ll bring some more down tomorrow. You’ll join me, won’t you?’

Nothing loath, she fetched a corkscrew and glasses. They had two goes apiece; then he went out into the chill raw misty night, and took the Underground down to Gloucester Road.

After Rudd had served him with a meal he spent a worrying half-hour, obsessed with the fear that Kasdar might have
got cold feet and not turn up after all. He had by now thoroughly examined every possibility for getting Sabine out of the Tower and made up his mind how he meant to attempt it; but if the Moldavian let him down his own plan would have been made for nothing.

His fears proved groundless. Soon after nine, with a sigh of thankfulness, he heard the heavy footfalls outside on the landing and Rudd showed in the big black-moustached Colonel.

The Moldavian was in an excellent humour and, as soon as Gregory had mixed him a drink, opened up their business. One of the tugs was at sea and the other two at Newcastle, so he had gone up there to see their Captains; and he had been lucky. The father of one of them had recently died and he had inherited a very pleasant property in Moldavia, so he was anxious to get home to enjoy it. He had sounded his crew and found that for the chance of getting back to their own country all but one of them were also willing to accept some risk of being caught by the British while making a break across the North Sea. His tug with its tow of barges should be off Harwich, on the way down to London, on November the 2nd, and he could fake engine trouble which would enable him to lie up at Burnham-on-Crouch for, anyhow, two or three days.

Kasdar had then taken the tug Captain down to Burnham and they had hired a car to explore the neighbourhood. A lonely inlet a few miles away, which could easily be identified, had been settled upon as the point of embarkation. The wording of an innocent sounding telegram had been agreed, which Kasdar was to send to the Captain at Burnham on the afternoon preceding the escape. That night he would have his tug lying off the inlet, and should he be challenged by naval craft he would say that, having taken her out for a trial that evening, she had broken down again. From two o’clock in the morning he would have a boat inshore ready to pick up his passenger.

Gregory was delighted. He felt that had he handled the job himself he could not have done it more efficiently; but now he was faced with the awful moment when he must make payment in advance or Kadar would call the whole thing off.

Already the Colonel was saying eagerly, ‘And now, my friend, don’t keep me in suspense. When is D-Day and where is this great seaborne expedition to make its landing?’

On the previous night Gregory had secured both those major secrets; and numerous others, from Sir Pellinore, but he did not mean to pass on much of his material yet. He shook his head. ‘Only the very top boys and the Joint Planning Staff know that as yet, and they are being as tight as clams. But in the meantime …’

‘Come!’ Kasdar broke in angrily. ‘I will not be trifled with. Either you …’

In turn, Gregory cut him short. ‘Don’t be so damned impatient! I am working on three separate people, all of whom could tell us what we want to know; but I dare not ask any of them outright. You have got to give me another day or two to get the high-spots. In the meantime here is something pretty good. The code-word for the operation is
Torch
, the naval commander of the expedition is Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey—the chap who organised the evacuation from Dunkirk—and the convoys sail tonight.’

‘Tonight!’ Kasdar came swiftly to his feet. ‘That is certainly something worth knowing. But, if so, D-Day cannot be far off. Only three or four days, perhaps.’

‘Longer, I think. Don’t count on this. It is only an idea I got from something I overheard, and I may be wrong. But I gained the impression that this is a second and much more powerful expedition to take Dakar. If so, D-Day is still ten days off, at least.’

The Moldavian swallowed the rest of his drink, and said hurriedly, ‘I must go and get this in code for the other side. But it is not enough, you know, to induce me to handle the Sabine business. I want the date and place before I will do that. When is the earliest you can hope to get them?’

‘I may do so any time. As soon as I have anything worthwhile I’ll telephone you to fix another meeting.’

When Kasdar had gone, Gregory found that he was sweating. He strove to reassure himself by reasoning that the code-word
Torch
had now served its purpose. For months past, in an ever-increasing circle, more and more people in the Ministries and Service formations had had to be appraised of its meaning, so that thousands of officers, civil servants, typists and clerks, Captains of merchant ships, dock and railway officials, all now knew it to apply to the great offensive operation planned by the Allies for 1942; and therefore from some
few of those thousands it must have already leaked to Eire and so through to the Germans. He knew too that the slowest vessels had started as early as October the 22nd and that the bulk of the troops had sailed on the 26th. It was only the last flotillas of the great armada that were to sail that night; so he was able to argue that the expedition’s departure could not have been concealed from men like Kasdar for more than another twelve hours. In the morning Glasgow and Liverpool would wake to learn that Clydeside and Merseyside had overnight become empty of shipping. Neutrals resident in those cities would unquestionably telephone that news to their Embassies in London.

Yet he hardly slept from worry and a succession of nightmares about appalling catastrophes which just might result from his personal action. The worst was the convoys being torpedoed; although once they had sailed they stood that risk anyhow, and if they had been going to Dakar they would have passed hundreds of miles outside the Straits of Gibraltar, which was the worst danger spot; so the red herring he had thrown out might help to minimise the risk they ran.

On Sunday morning there was again good news from El Alamein. A British thrust to the north had cut off a large pocket of Germans on the coast; but knowing that the
Torch
convoys had sailed everybody in the War Cabinet Offices was now anxious and restless.

Instead of supping with Sir Pellinore, at nine o’clock that night Gregory arrived at the Tower. The red-headed Mrs. Wright was on duty and, taking three bottles of port from his attaché case, he suggested that she might like to have a drink with him before he went in to start his interrogation. Like her colleague, she displayed no reluctance, and while they were having it she remarked:

‘You won’t have long with her tonight, sir, unless you’ve got the countersign. The gates are shut at ten, and no one’s allowed in or out after that, unless they have.’

Having thanked her for the information, he went across to the Governor’s office, explained that he wished to spend at least an hour with the prisoner, and was given the countersign for the night, which would allow him to pass out of the wicket gate up till twelve o’clock. But he was warned that unless he was out by that hour he would be locked in till morning.

On returning to St. Thomas’s Tower he found that Mrs. Sutton had just come in from an evening off. It was about twenty to ten and she asked him if he had ever seen the Ceremony of the Keys. As he had not, and it was due to take place in only a little over ten minutes’ time down in Water Lane, just below the front door, she suggested that he should wait to see it before going in to the prisoner.

They had another drink all round, then went out on to the stone gallery above the pit in which lay Traitors’ Gate. At 9.53 the Chief Warder, an ancient lantern in hand, joined the Escort of Troops awaiting him in the archway under the Bloody Tower, upon which Gregory and the two wardresses were looking down. Carrying the Keys, the Chief Warder proceeded in turn to the West Gate, the Middle and the Byward Towers. At each, as he locked the gates, the escort presented arms. The party then returned to the archway of the Bloody Tower where it was halted by the sentry with the challenge, ‘Who goes there?’ The Chief Warder replied, The Keys.’ The sentry demanded, ‘Whose Keys?’ The Chief Warder replied, ‘King George’s Keys.’ Upon which the sentry cried, ‘Advance King George’s Keys. All’s well!’ And so concluded the ceremony.

‘Really romantic, isn’t it?’ commented Mrs. Wright. ‘And just to think it’s been done the same night after night for nearly seven hundred years.’

Gregory spent his hour with Sabine, extracting more information from her about Hitler’s habits and those of his favourites. He was out of the tower by eleven-twenty and spent a somewhat better night owing to the comforting thought that the build-up for Sabine’s escape was proceeding well.

Next morning, at the Cabinet Offices, the little grey-haired Major telephoned, then came to see him about midday; and he was able to assuage his troubled conscience a little with the thought that he was, at least, the means of providing a mass of high level intelligence data which it would otherwise have been extremely difficult to obtain.

But Kasdar again loomed dark and sinister in his thoughts. He dared not hold out too long on the Moldavian, otherwise all that he had yet done would go for nothing. Steeling himself to it he rang up from a call-box outside on Clive Steps,
and asked the Colonel to come down to Gloucester Road that night at eight o’clock.

Kasdar was punctual to the minute. Striving to make his voice sound natural, Gregory said to him, ‘I’ve got it for you, as I promised. D-Day is Monday, November the 9th.’