Faked Passports (15 page)

A hundred yards away on the steps of the portico a small group of the grey-clad guards had already noticed them and were eyeing them casually; and Freddie's first swift glance round the grounds had shown him that other guards were posted here and there in positions where they could keep a look-out over the gardens, so it was out of the question to try to run for it; they would be shot before they had covered twenty yards. They could not go back and must go on, but he was grimly anticipating the moment when they got into the house and were questioned by somebody in authority. Gregory's story about Goering's wishing to see his prisoner would soon be found to be quite untrue and wherever he said that he came from a longdistance telephone call would be quite sufficient to disclose the fact that he was not whom he said he was at all. The fat would then be in the fire with a vengeance.

He glanced anxiously at Gregory, who had lit a cigarette and was walking forward apparently quite unperturbed.

“Well,” he asked in an undertone, “what the hell do we do now”

Gregory suddenly turned and grinned at him. “Why, since the Nazis have already provided us with two breakfasts this morning I think it would be a good day to take lunch off Goering.”

“Oh, stop fooling!” Freddie muttered angrily. “With all these damned guards about we daren't run for it, and once we're inside this place even your plausible tongue will never get us out.”

“It is rather tricky, isn't it,” Gregory admitted. “Just the toss of a coin as to whether we come out on our own feet or are carried out feet first. Of course, I could easily have held up old Putzleiger with my gun while you tackled the chauffeur on the way here. On a lonely stretch of road we could have tied them up, rolled them in the ditch and got away with their car.”

“Then why in the name of thunder didn't you?”

“Because that wouldn't have enabled me to find out about
Erika or to get out of Germany. We'd only have been on the run again and risking our necks every moment of the day to no particularly good purpose; and it occurred to me that old Putzleiger might be Fate playing into our hands. I think this is the biggest gamble that I've ever taken, but now I'm here, by hook or by crook I mean to see Goering; after that our lives will probably depend upon the quality of the butter that he ate with his breakfast.”

As Gregory and Charlton had been talking they had crossed the open space and were now at the foot of the steps leading up to the great pillared portico. The grey-clad guards did not move forward to question them but the nearest gave the two visitors a long, searching look. It was the quiet, intent gaze that Gregory had noticed at times on the faces of good detectives when for the first time they saw a criminal who had just been arrested. He felt quite certain that the man was specially trained in remembering faces and that if he ever happened to run into Freddie or himself again he would know them instantly.

A uniformed porter was standing just inside the door and an officer of the guard was slowly walking up and down the great marble-tiled hall. Gregory produced his pass and showed it to the porter. The officer turned in his stride, came over, glanced at it and motioned with his hand to a doorway on the right. They walked through it and entered a small office.

A shaven-headed clerk with thick-lensed spectacles was seated there behind a desk and taking Gregory's pass he gave him in exchange a yellow form. Gregory glanced down it and read: “Interview desired with … … By appointment—or not … … Name of applicant, rank, etc … … Business upon which interview is requested.”

He took up a pen from the desk and instead of filling up the form simply wrote across it in German:

“
If Your Excellency would examine the inscription on the back of the enclosed you will realise that the sender is in possession of information which is of importance to you.
”

Opening his greatcoat he then unpinned the Iron Cross which General Count von Pleisen had given him and, asking
the clerk for an envelope, placed both the decoration and the form inside it. Having sealed the envelope he handed it back and said:

“I shall be grateful if you will have that conveyed to the Field-Marshall.”

“The Field-Marshall is extremely busy,” replied the clerk officiously; “much too busy to deal personally with officers' grievances; so sending up your decoration won't do you any good.”

Gregory suddenly became the autocratic Prussian officer in a manner that positively startled Freddie. He froze the clerk with an icy stare as he snapped: “How dare you assume that I am an officer with a grievance! Obey my order instantly or the Field-Marshal shall hear of this.”

The little Jack-in-office wilted visibly, banged a bell-push on his desk and stuttered: “If the
Herr Oberst
will be pleased to wait in the next room an orderly shall take this up at once.”

The adjoining room proved to be a very much larger apartment. Its colour scheme was blue and gold; its furnishings were rich and elegant. Wood-fires on open grates—a rarity in Germany—were burning in two big fireplaces; papers, magazines and periodicals were scattered over a number of tables and the room contained between thirty and forty arm-chairs and sofas. There were between a dozen and twenty people already in it, sitting about reading and smoking, so it would have resembled a rich man's club-room had not the company been an extremely mixed one. There were several officers of the
Reichswehr,
Air Force and Black Guards, also a couple of well-dressed civilians; but the presence of three women and a peasant in a leather jacket, together with the way in which they all refrained from speaking to one another and kept a watchful eye upon the door as though expecting to be called at any moment, gave it the atmosphere of a dentist's waiting-room.

Gregory and Charlton selected an unoccupied sofa and sat down. How long they would have to wait they had no idea but it seemed probable that it would be a long time if all the people already gathered there had appointments with the Field-Marshal. For ten minutes Gregory flicked over the pages of “Simplissimus”, smiling at the caricatures of Chamberlain, Churchill and John Bull, which were the most prominent feature of Germany's leading comic; then he yawned, moved over to an arm-chair and, stretching out his feet, remarked:

“We may be here for hours yet so I think I'll get some sleep.”

“Sleep?” echoed Freddie. “In this state of uncertainty! How
can
you?”

“Why not?” muttered Gregory. “We may be up again all tonight.”

“I only hope to God we are!”

“So do I, since if we sleep at all tonight it may be for good. D'you know that little rhyme?

‘
A man's not old when his hair turns grey
,

A man's not old when his teeth decay,

But it's time he prepared for his last long sleep

When his mind makes appointments that his body can't keep.
'

Well, thank God, I'm a long way from having got to that stage yet, so when the time comes you can trust me to put up a show all right, but while we're waiting a spot of shut-eye won't do either of us any harm. We'll be all the fresher for it when we lunch with the Field-Marshal.”

A major who was seated near-by eyed them curiously, as they were speaking in English, but no-one else took the least notice of them and while Freddie endeavoured to distract his racing thoughts by trying to puzzle out the captions beneath the pictures in a German illustrated-paper Gregory drifted off to sleep.

They did not lunch with Goering. At intervals during the morning many occupants of the room were quietly summoned from the door and had disappeared not to return again, but new arrivals had taken their places and it remained just about as full as when Gregory and Charlton had first entered it. Then, shortly after midday, a portly servant arrived and announced in unctuous tones:

“
Damen und Herren Schaft,
it is His Excellency's pleasure that you should receive his hospitality while you are waiting to be received; but I am asked to remind you that discretion regarding business matters should be observed while you are at table. Please to follow me.”

Freddie roused Gregory and with the rest of the waiting company they followed the portly man down a corridor into a large dining-room. Gregory's eye lit with appreciation as it fell upon a long sideboard on which was spread a fine, cold collation and, nudging his friend, he whispered:

“There! What did I tell you? Even if we are not lunching
with
the Field-Marshal we are taking lunch off him.”

“I wish I could be as certain about dinner,” Freddie muttered.

“Oh, we'll probably dine with him personally. You must remember that I haven't had the chance to talk to him yet.”

“You lunatic.” Freddie suddenly laughed. “I can hardly believe that all this is real, you know. It'd be just like acting in a pantomime except for the kind of nightmare possibilities that lie behind it all.”

Gregory grinned. “That's better. Just go on thinking of it that way. In any case, you've got nothing to fear so long as you're inside that uniform. They can only intern you.”

“That's all very well, but I'm worried about you.”

“Oh, I'm an old soldier. My motto always has been ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die', and those bottles over there look to me like excellent hock. Goering always does his friends well.”

Freddie squeezed Gregory's arm. “Well, whatever happens, I'd like to tell you that I'm proud to have known you.”

They had been standing a little apart but now they sat down at the long table and proceeded to enjoy the luncheon provided for them. There was very little general conversation, as the butler's reminder that the reasons for this strange company's having been brought together should not be discussed served to make everyone present extremely cautious. Remarks were confined to the barest civilities and as soon as the meal was over they were all shepherded back into the other room.

In spite of his anxiety Freddie was drowsy now; which, quite apart from the fact that he had been up all night, was not to be wondered at, seeing that during luncheon Gregory had deliberately filled him up with Liebfraumilch Kirkenstuck. By half past two quite a number of people who had arrived much later than themselves had been summoned to the presence, so it seemed as though Goering had his day mapped out and might not receive them for some time to come. In consequence, Freddie decided to follow Gregory's example and they both stretched themselves out in arm-chairs, side by side, to get what rest they could.

Coffee and cakes were brought at four o'clock but both Gregory and Charlton refused them and dozed on until after five. People had been coming and going nearly all the afternoon but now the room was almost empty and by six they found themselves alone, which gave Freddie his first chance to speak freely
and to ask a question that had been bothering him ever since the morning.

“Why should you be so certain that Goering will see you because you sent up your Iron Cross? He'll probably imagine, as the little clerk said, that you're just an old soldier with a grouse.”

“Oh, no, he won't,” Gregory smiled. “That Cross is a super visiting-card. You see, every decoration has engraved on its back the name of the man upon whom it is conferred. My Iron Cross has von Pleisen's name on it, and von Pleisen was the head of the anti-Nazi conspiracy that darned nearly put paid to little old 'Itler and all his works, just on three weeks ago. The second Goering sees that name he'll know that whoever has brought the Cross is well worth talking to.”

“I get you. Darned good idea, that. “You see, aircraft has been my passion ever since I was old enough to collect toy aeroplanes and to read the simplest books about flying. In the last war the German pilots put up a magnificent show and, after von Richthofen, Goering was the best man they had, so he's always been one of my heroes. I never have been able to understand how such a brave sportsman got himself mixed up with these dirty, double-crossing Nazis.”

“It was through his intense patriotism,” Gregory replied quickly. “He absolutely refused to believe that Germany was defeated in the field and still declares that the Army was let down by the home front. After the Armistice he was ordered to surrender the planes of his famous air-circus to the Americans; instead, he gave a farewell party to all his officers at which they burnt their planes and solemnly pledged themselves to devote
the rest of their lives to lifting Germany from humiliation to greatness again.”

“Yes, I know all that. But why should such people have allied themselves with blackguards like Hitler and Goebbels and Himmler?”

“Goering has never really been in sympathy with Goebbels and Himmler—in fact, they're poison to him—but Hitler is another matter. Say what you like, Hitler has extraordinary personal magnetism. In 1922, after having failed to make any headway on his own, Goering heard Hitler speak at Munich. He realised at once that here was a fanatic with all a fanatic's power to influence the masses—a man who was preaching the same doctrine as himself and one whose wild flights of oratory people would listen to, while they only shrugged their shoulders at his reasoned arguments. From that day they joined forces. Hitler did the talking while Goering secured for him his first really influential audiences and spent his own wife's fortune on entertaining for the Party, thereby giving Hitler a background that he had never had before. He is a brilliant organiser and it was he who planned, step by step, Hitler's rise to power. The very fact that the two men are utterly unlike in character makes them a perfect combination and Hitler owes every bit as much to Goering as Goering does to Hitler.”

“Is that really so?” Freddie raised an eyebrow. “I thought Goering was just an honest, bluff fellow who had been a bit misled, and, having been the head of Hitlers' personal bodyguard in the early days, had risen with him.”