Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (74 page)

General Hoffmann smiled
and stroked the dark stubble on his chin. “My assistants and I worked all
through the night. It is completed.”

Turning back to the map,
he went on quickly, “Now,
Herrschaft
,
for the broader picture. You will see that the Grand Duke has divided his
forces into two Army Groups. His 1st and 2nd Armies, under General Jilinski,
are opposed to us on this front. His 4th, 5th, 3rd and 8th, in that order, are
massed under General Ivanov from opposite Przemysl down to the Rumanian border.
But, observe,
Herrschaft,
in the Polish salient he has nothing but covering troops and the skeleton of a
9th Army which is reported to be forming behind Warsaw. If General von
Hötzendorf strikes east, he will come up against the main forces of General
Ivanov’s southern Army Group. But if he strikes north, he will be opposed only
by the flank of the 4th Army. By adopting the latter course he can be of the
greatest possible assistance to us, and, I hope, by the time he reaches Warsaw,
we to him. For we shall no longer be facing east ourselves, but south; and
immediately we have defeated Samsonov’s army we can march straight on to form a
junction with your forces.”

De Richleau saw at once what this brilliant staff
officer was up to. Such a man would never have disclosed his plans so fully to
his allies unless he thought that by doing so he could get something out of
them. He wanted the Austrians to attack north so that, although distant, their
line of advance would threaten Samsonov’s rear, and possibly cause him to break
off his battle with the re-deployed German 8th Army. What Hoffmann had
deliberately refrained from pointing out was that immediately this 8th Army was
relieved from Samsonov’s pressure in the south, it would have to turn north
again

GENERAL
HOFFMANN’S REDEPLOYMENT OF THE GERMAN EIGHTH ARMY AFTER GUMBINNEN

to face a renewed attack by Rennenkampf. But the Duke
naturally refrained from saying so.

Lanzi only stroked his
beautiful beard with an air of profound wisdom, and remarked: “Then you think,
Herr General
that in a week or so’s time you may
after all be in a position to co-operate with us?”

“Certainly,
Herr Oberste Baron”
replied the German blandly. “I,
therefore, suggest that you should send a signal to your C.-’n-C., urging him
to attack in a northerly direction at once, and follow it yourself as soon as
possible, in order to explain matters to him in detail.”

That suited the Duke, but
did not suit Lanzi. Since the previous evening he had been happily toying with
the idea of once again having a romp with little Mitzi Muller. As a city, he
hated Berlin; but he occasionally had to pass through it on his way to shoot
boar with minor German royalties, and whenever he put in a night with her there
she gave him a very good time. He was now most loath to forgo the salacious
entertainment that this depraved young person provided. But he had sense enough
to realize that even his amiable old crony, the Archduke Frederick, might kick
if he lingered on his journey in such circumstances as the present; so he said:

“We will send the
telegram, and after this talk with you,
Herr General
, I am prepared to make it a very
strong one. But I shall not start back until to-morrow. By then we may have
received a satisfactory reply. If not, we shall at least know for certain whether
General von Fran
ç
ois
has succeeded in disengaging his Corps, and I shall then be in a better
position to advise my
C. in C.
further.”

Concealing his annoyance,
De Richleau told the General about the letter he had to deliver to von Moltke,
and said that he thought: he ought now to proceed at once to Aix-la-Chapelle
with it. But Hoffmann vetoed that by a request that could hardly be refused.

“Since you are going to
Main Headquarters, I should be glad if you would take a dispatch for me. I
shall not have it ready until to-morrow morning, as I must wait for to-night’s
situation reports before I can complete it. But your own letter can be of no
great urgency, or you would have been sent direct to Aix-la-Chapelle; so it won’t
matter in the least if you don’t deliver it for a day or two. Also, it is
certain that, when you get there, they will question you about the situation
here and, if you do not leave until to-morrow morning, you will be able to give
them more up to date information.”

So the matter was decided;
and, unwittingly, the Duke and the Baron had been among the first to be made
aware of one of the most remarkable feats in military history. Overnight.
General Hoffmann had taken the battle out of his
C. in C.
’s hands and, in a few hours,
re-disposed the whole of the 8th Army, directing it on Tannenberg where, one
week later, it was to win immortal glory.

Daring the remainder of
the 21st, nothing of apparent importance happened, but on the morning of the
22nd a piece of news came in that electrified the Headquarters. Von Prittwitz
had been sacked. In his place a combination had been appointed that was to
become world famous. General Hindenburg was to be
C. in C.
, with General Ludendorff as his
Chief of Staff. About both, romantic and spectacular stories were soon running
round.

Old Hindenburg had
specialized in East Prussia. He knew every coppice and every marsh in it, but
he had reached the age limit and been retired three years earlier. On the
outbreak of war, he had immediately offered his services, but there were so
many younger generals available that it had not been thought worth while to use
him, even for training troops. For three weeks he had been sitting daily at his
usual café in Hanover in a civilian suit, eating out his heart. Now, out of the
blue the call had come—not to an administrative job, not to inspect new
formations, or train reservists, but to be Commander-in-Chief Eastern Front and
save his imperilled Fatherland from invasion.

Ludendorff was known to
be one of the most brilliant officers of that talented and exclusive
organization, the
Stabs Corps.
So dynamic was he, that his superiors had sent him the previous year to cool
his heels for a while as a Commander of an Infantry brigade. But he had been
re-posted as Deputy Quartermaster-General to the German spearhead which, after
invading Belgium, had on the night of the 6th of August been given the task of
capturing Liege. In the darkness the advancing columns had lost their way among
the enemy forts, become mixed up, and finally halted in hopeless confusion. Out
of the night, Ludendorff had appeared upon the scene, taken command of all the
forces he could collect, found the right road, led the troops personally into
the city and, at dawn, demanded and received the surrender of the citadel with
its entire garrison.

These two were now on the
way east as fast as a special train could bring them. A telegram had already
been received from Ludendorff. It suspended von Prittwitz, ordered the Corps
Commanders to act independently until further instructions, and required all
the principal staff officers with 8th Army Headquarters to meet him and the new
C. in C.
back at Marienburg on
the eastern arm of the Vistula.

It was now six days since
the Duke had left Vienna and, fearing that sooner or later his presence at
Przemysl must come to the ears of Major Ronge, he was extremely anxious to
proceed with his plan for disappearing; so, on hearing the news, he at once
went to General Hoffmann and asked for the dispatch.

The General replied that,
in view of the change in command, he no longer intended to send his dispatch as
it stood. He added that he felt confident that the new
C. in C.
would move up to Wartenburg as soon
as he was informed of the situation, and that as De Richleau would certainly be
asked about East Prussia when he reached Main Headquarters, it was essential
that he should remain until he had heard General Hindenburg’s views.

That left De Richleau no
alternative but to make a moonlight flitting; so, reluctant as he was to remain
there a moment longer than he positively had to, he decided that, rather than
take such a drastic step after all had gone so well, it would be better to stay
on for another day, in the hope that doing so would enable him to leave openly.

Having secured the
agreement of the Corps Commanders to continue the movements he had prescribed,
General Hoffmann and a number of others hurriedly set off in the train that was
kept in the siding near the house, leaving only the junior officers behind to
function now as an advance headquarters. But that evening a new visitor
arrived, and no secret was made of the fact that he was Chief of the German
Secret Intelligence Corps.

He was a tall dark man,
wore Colonel’s uniform and was named Walter Nicolai. He announced that all his
Intelligence arrangements were working admirably in the west, so he had thought
the time ripe to check up on those for the Eastern Front. During dinner he gave
a glowing account of the German wheel into Belgium, and the news that the
serious fighting which had been reported along the Western Front from the
morning of the 20th on, had now developed into the first great battle between
the French and German armies. He had innumerable figures on the tip of his
tongue and said that 2,000,000 Germans were now engaged against 1,300,000
Frenchmen, so there could be no possible doubt that within a few weeks the
Fatherland would destroy the French army and force its remnants to surrender.

As had been the case at
Przemysl, De Richleau was known as Colonel Count Königstein, and everybody
referred to him by that name, with the one exception of old Lanzi, who
persisted in calling him ‘Duke’. When they were sitting in the ante-room after
dinner this anomaly aroused the curiosity of Colonel Nicolai, and Lanzi
smilingly explained the matter. Thereupon, the Intelligence Chief gave the Duke
a rather queer look, and said:

“How strange. I had an
idea that the Duc de Richleau was a Frenchman who had taken British
nationality. I feel sure I remember reading a report about his having been in
London last spring, and our people got the idea that he was mixed up in some
way with the Committee of Imperial Defence.”

It was a horrid moment
for the Duke, but he managed to keep his glance, and the hand that held his
cigar, quite steady, as a glib lie came without effort to his lips:

“That must have been my
rascally cousin, up to his tricks again. When he thinks he can get away with
it, he has the impudence to use my title. For some years he has been living in
the United States, and as I have never been there I have had no opportunity of
showing him up as an impostor. From what you say, I suppose he must have been
on a visit to London.”

Colonel Nicolai seemed
quite satisfied with the explanation, but De Richleau was badly shaken. He
decided that night that, whatever happened, he must get away from Wartenburg
the following day. But first thing next morning he learned that Hindenburg and
Ludendorff were on their way up from Marienburg, so he decided not to burn his
boats until the evening; by which time he hoped to have secured the sanction of
one of them to his leaving.

They arrived that
afternoon; Hindenburg big, square-headed, impressive; Ludendorff, plump,
double-chinned and, as the Kaiser said of him, ‘with a face like a sergeant’.
General Hoffmann looked tired, but happy. He had feared to be made the whipping
boy for von Prittwitz’s blunders, and replaced. But his tremendous
tour de force
on the night of the 20th had earned
him high praise from his new Chiefs. Not only were he and his staff confirmed in
their appointments, but Ludendorff had not altered a single one of his
brilliant re-dispositions for the coming battle of Tannenberg.