Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (82 page)

“Ah!” sighed von Moltke. “You
have touched upon the sore point that I have just been discussing with my
officers. I gather from General von Stein that you take a very pessimistic view
of our prospects in East Prussia.”

De Richleau gave the
appearance of hesitating uncomfortably, then he said: “Excellency, how can one
do otherwise with the 8th Army in such poor shape and opposed to more than
double its numbers. When I left General Ludendorff, he seemed confident of
being able to form some sort of front, but should his confidence prove
ill-founded it may result in a major disaster. After all, one cannot forget
that to the south of him the Russian frontier is only 180 miles from Berlin.”

Von Moltke nodded his
bald head. “That is just what we fear. His over-confidence may prove our ruin.
I spoke to him on the telephone late last night and offered to send him two
Army Corps. He said that he would naturally be pleased to receive
reinforcements, but he could quite well do without them.”

The Duke suppressed a
tremor of excitement. Two Army Corps! That meant in the neighbourhood of
100,000 men. And he had been thinking only in terms of Divisions. What a
magnificent relief for hard-pressed France. Quickly, he said:

“If you can spare them
from the West, Excellency, I beg you to send them. That would, in broad effect,
be a satisfactory answer to General von Hötzendorf’s appeal; as, wherever they
were employed in the East, they would take a certain amount of Russian pressure
off him.”

“That is what I had in
mind when I said just now that we might be able to help him indirectly.” Von
Moltke glanced at his deputy, and added: “We talked of sending the two Corps
that were earmarked for the investment of Namur, didn’t we?”

Von Stein inclined his
head. “Yes, Excellency. The unexpected surrender of the fortress has rendered
them redundant.”

Colonel Tappen had been
listening attentively. Prefacing his remark with a deferential cough, he put in
quickly. “As I have already had the honour to point out to your Excellency, it
is bad policy to make two bites at one cherry. If we are to reinforce the
Eastern Front, we should not do so in driblets. Now that the battle in the West
is as good as won, we could quite well afford to detach two Corps from our left
and two Corps from our right. It will take them a few days to disengage, but in
any case even the two Corps held in reserve for Namur could not reach General
Hindenburg in time to participate in his battle for East Prussia. I submit that
our wisest course would be to create a new Army under him on the line of the
Vistula. If he suffers defeat in his approaching engagement, he can then fall
back upon it, and we should at least not have to fear a deep penetration by the
Russians into the Fatherland.

On the other hand if he
succeeds in checking the present Russian advance, he will be able to order up
those six fresh Corps and deploy them on his front. Then, with an army greater
than that opposed to him, he would have the means to eliminate this peril of a
Russian invasion once and for all.”

De Richleau held his
breath.

Von Moltke looked at von
Stein and said: “Tappen is right, you know. I was almost persuaded to adopt
this policy when we discussed the matter yesterday, Our visitor has confirmed
my worst fears about prospects in East Prussia, so I now feel we must. That’s
settled then. Please give orders for the entraining of the two Corps to begin
at once, and for the other four to follow as soon as possible.”

The Duke could hardly
believe his ears.
Six Corps! Six whole
Corps! Three hundred thousand men—and
200,000
of them to be pulled out of the fighting line.
It was beyond his wildest dreams. If the French were capable of going over to
the offensive on Churchill’s 40th day, they would now have the advantage of
numbers. By then, owing to these huge withdrawals, the German Army in the West
would be stretched to breaking point. By an all-out effort it might not only be
stopped, but smashed.

But the French were now
being driven back all along the line. They might not stand, and certainly would
not risk attempting a counter-offensive, unless they learned how greatly the
forces opposed to them had been weakened. If they did not receive intelligence
of the withdrawal of the six Corps they might continue to retreat, and this
God-given opportunity be lost to them for ever. Everything might still be lost
if De Richleau failed to get the stupendous news swiftly to Paris or London.

Keeping the excitement
out of his voice with an effort, he said: “General von Hötzendorf will be
delighted to hear your Excellency’s decision. Have I your leave to convey it to
him?”

“Certainly,” von Moltke
nodded. “I will confirm it in a personal letter for you to take back with you.
But at mid-day I must attend upon His Majesty, so I shall not have time to
write it until to-night. It will be time enough if you leave with it to-morrow
morning.”

That suited the Duke
perfectly. The last thing he wanted was to be put on to a special train at
once, as it might carry him hundreds of miles back into the heart of Germany
before he could get off it. With a bow he said:

“In that case,
Excellency, if you have no objection, I will spend the rest of the day in Aix.
I have some old friends living there, with whom I should like to dine to-night.”

“By all means,” smiled
the Chief of Staff. De Richleau saluted and Colonel Tappen showed him out. The
momentous interview was over.

He knew that he must
abandon most of his kit, but upstairs in his room he crammed as many things as
he could, including Ilona’s photograph, the Austrian decoration he had been
given, his pistol and his field-glasses, into a small attache case.

As he left the building,
he saw a line of powerful cars drawn up in front of its main entrance. On the
bonnet of the leading one fluttered a flag bearing the Imperial Eagle. Standing
aside, he waited there for a few moments then, as he had expected, the Kaiser
appeared. A long grey cloak, dangling to his heels, hid his uniform except for
the shining jack-boots; but with his fiercely upturned moustache and
brass-pointed helmet he looked very martial. As he strutted forward to the car
he was followed at six paces by a brilliant retinue of lesser German kings and
princes and several generals. When within sight of troops everyone was
forbidden to approach nearer to him, because he was so short, and his vanity so
great, that he could not bear his lack of stature to be made obvious by the
proximity of taller men. It was that same awful vanity which had tempted him to
play the War Lord, and made him, after von Hötzendorf and Count Berchtold, more
responsible than any other individual for plunging the civilization of his era
into chaos.

When the cars had driven
off, De Richleau soon secured a lift in another that was going into Aix. There,
he booked a room at the
H
ô
tel
de la Poste
and lunched in its restaurant. Then
he went out shopping, his procedure being similar to that which he had adopted
nearly two months before in Belgrade. At a leather merchant’s he bought a
portmanteau, then took it to an outfitter’s, where he said that he wanted a
good ready-made suit as a present for his manservant who was getting married,
and about the same build as himself. Taking it away with him he bought a
Homburg hat, six collars and two neckties at other shops. About boots he did
not bother, as those he was wearing were very comfortable, and the civilian
trousers would come down well, concealing their tops. He then bought ham,
hard-boiled eggs, cheese, butter and rolls, enough for a good meal.

Making his purchases
presented no difficulty, as in those distant days of plenty no one had even
conceived the idea that the word ‘ration’ would ever be applied to anything
except the issue of food to the fighting forces, or shared out by parties of
explorers in the most distant and desolate parts of the earth.

At a garage, he hired a
car, and drove it back to the hotel. Foreign currencies were still readily
exchanged in every country and, Aix being so near to Holland, the cashier was
able to provide him with Dutch
florins
in exchange for some of his German
marks.
Going upstairs, he changed into the civilian clothes,
packed his uniform into the portmanteau and, having left enough money on the
dressing-table to pay his bill, carried it, with his little attache case, down
the back stairs to the yard where he had parked the car. At a quarter to four,
he was driving out of Aix.

Ahead of him to the west,
lay that curious tag of Dutch territory between Germany and Belgium known as
the Maastricht Appendix. The frontier was less that three miles distant, and he
had only to cross it to be safe. He had received official permission to leave
Headquarters and, unless something quite unforeseen connected his appearance
there with his disappearance from Wartenburg, his absence would not be noticed
until the following morning. And even if a telegram requiring his arrest did
now come in. it would be hours before he could be traced.

But, as a result of the
war, people could no longer pass freely from one country to another without
official papers, and he knew that the frontier would be guarded. In every
country there were still many men with strongly pacifist views. Such people saw
no glamour in the war and bitterly resented the loss of their freedom when
called up for it. In consequence, all the conscript armies were losing quite a
considerable number of men as deserters. That was one of the main reasons why
Germany had closed her frontiers. She had, moreover, insisted that the Dutch
should police their frontiers as well, and return to her any deserters who were
caught after managing to get across it. The Dutch were still highly nervous
that if they gave offence to Germany they might suffer the same fate that had
overtaken Belgium, so they had promptly agreed; which meant that there would be
a double line of patrols to get through.

Two miles outside Aix,
the Duke drove the car into a wood, abandoned it there, and, taking only his
attache case and the food he had bought, went forward on foot to reconnoitre.

From a piece of high
ground, he saw that, extending from the frontier post, on both sides of the
road a barbed wire fence had been erected. But about a mile to the south it had
not yet been completed. Gangs of men were still working on it, and there was a
gap of another mile or more to a distant hillside, on which tiny figures were
erecting another section of the fence.

By a circuitous route, he
made his way to a coppice opposite the gap and sat down there to wait for nightfall.
While the light was still good, he made a prolonged study of the country in
front of him through his field glasses, endeavouring to memorize every hedge
and ditch within sight. At eight o’clock he ate his picnic meal, but the August
evening seemed interminable, and it was not until a little before ten o’clock
that he decided to make his bid for freedom.

He had a nasty open space
of over a mile to cover, but the night was fairly dark and his long experience
as a hunter now stood him in good stead. Once a patrol passed within twenty
feet of him as he lay, holding his breath, in the long grass. When it was out
of earshot he stealthily went forward again, and wriggled over the low ditch
that marked the boundary. For another half-mile he squirmed along, still
fearful that if he got to his hands and knees his silhouette might be seen.
Then he reached a hedge and was able to move at a crouching run along it. Ten
minutes later he got to a wood, so could stand up and proceed at a cautious
walk without danger. A hundred yards inside the wood he sat down among some
bushes and, carefully shading the spark of his lighter, lit a cigarette. While
inside Germany he had striven to keep out of his mind the constant peril in
which he stood. But it had never been far from his thoughts, and the knowledge
that he had come safely through now filled him with ineffable relief. As soon
as he had finished his cigarette he went on again.

Having studied the
country so thoroughly through his field glasses in the late afternoon, he had
no difficulty in finding his way back to the road about a mile and a half
beyond the frontier post. The road was empty, so he advanced along it, keeping
a sharp look-out. Ten minutes later he heard a motor-cycle approaching, and hid
himself in a ditch until it had passed; but he met nothing further and after a
two-mile tramp entered a little village that he knew to be called Gulpham.

It was not on the
railway, and even if it had been he would not have attempted to take a train
from a small place so near the frontier. As he could not speak Dutch it would
have been too great a risk. He was heading for Maastricht, which was only ten
miles farther on, knowing that in a city of its size he could ask in French or
English for a ticket without arousing suspicion. It was now nearly midnight, so
all the houses in the village were in darkness, save one in which a light
showed through thin curtains in a pair of downstairs windows. Against its porch
a bicycle was leaning. Transferring his attaché case to his left hand, he
mounted the bike and rode off on it.