They Used Dark Forces (42 page)

At about seven o'clock, to the consternation of the conspirators in the War Office, Goebbels made his broadcast. In the meantime von Stauffenberg had been frantically making long-distance calls to a number of Generals. Hitler's orders to hold every foot of ground were reversed. The Army in Courland was ordered to retreat at once from its dangerous position. Field Marshal von Kluge agreed to prepare to withdraw to the Rhine and gave orders that the bombardment of England with V.I's was to stop. Stuelpnagel in Paris and Falkenhausen in Brussels agreed to arrest all the Nazis in their commands; and soon after Goebbels put over his broadcast von Stauffenberg countered it with another, saying that it was a tissue of lies.

But it was by then too late. Dozens of junior officers not in the plot had arrived at the War Office. They demanded to know what was going on there; then, realising that the
Putsch
now looked like being a failure, they decided to save their own skins by arresting the conspirators.

Fromm was released and took charge. Beck had a pistol and twice tried to blow his brains out, but only mutilated himself horribly, shooting out one eye, and had to be finished off by a sergeant. Von Stauffenberg alone put up a fight, but was overcome and at Fromm's orders, with Olbricht, von Quirnheim and von Haften, was shot at about midnight out in the courtyard.

So ended the ill-fated
Putsch
in Berlin.

On that afternoon of July 20th Mussolini, now reduced to puppet Dictator of Lombardy, was due to arrive on a visit to the
Wolfsschanze
. Hitler, slightly crippled in one arm and down his side, met his guest's train. There followed one of the Führer's two-hour-long tea parties at which the Duce and the senior members of his staff were present. By then all the Nazi leaders had arrived to condole with their master and congratulate him on his miraculous escape.

To the embarrassment of the Italians, the tea party developed into a slanging match. Goering roared insults at Himmler about the inefficiency of his police, Keitel vainly attempted to defend the Army as a whole while reviling the traitor Generals, Goebbels abused Ribbentrop who shouted indignantly, ‘I will not be called Ribbentrop; my name is
von
Ribbentrop.'

During the earlier part of these proceedings Hitler remained silent, apparently in a delayed semi-stupor as the result of the shock he had sustained some hours earlier; but suddenly he came to life. Everyone else fell silent as, frothing at the mouth and with his eyes starting from his head, he began to rave.

While the white-coated footmen continued to move round with the teapots, pouring endless cups of tea, he carried on without ceasing for over an hour about how he, the most brilliant intellect in all German history, was being betrayed by a lot of hide-bound half-witted soldiers who would lose the war the next week if he ceased to tell them what to do; of how he had been spared by Providence to complete his task of purifying the world from the poison of the Jews, and how he would see to it that the traitors died by inches, and their wives
and children and the decadent parents who had begotten such scum.

All this and much more Sabine retailed to Gregory, together with the names of soldiers, Civil Servants, Labour leaders and others who, day after day, were still being arrested by the Gestapo. But so far they continued to show no interest in von Osterberg.

It was on Friday afternoon that Sabine returned from Berlin with exciting news of a different kind. She had run into an old friend of hers who had recently returned to the capital after living for the past year in Munich. This lady's name was Paula von Proffin and before her marriage to a bank president, since dead, she had, like Sabine, been a model. Sabine described her as having a mouth like a letter-box but the most lovely eyes and, according to the report of lovers that they had had in common, she was ‘simply terrific in bed'.

That she had possessed these attributes seemed just as well; for on the bank president's death it had emerged that he had been swindling his bank for years, so ‘poor Paula' had been left to fend for herself as best she could. That best had been a succession of rich industrialists from whom, among other things, she had acquired several thousand pounds' worth of diamonds; and, on the side when the industrialists were out of the way, a variety of boy friends, mostly Cavalry officers, for whom she had a particular liking because she was an accomplished horsewoman. She had returned to the hell of Berlin only because an arms manufacturer, whose work kept him there, had offered to marry her.

Sabine had accompanied Paula back to the suite she was temporarily occupying at the Adlon and there, over the dry martinis, these two beauties had spent a happy hour swopping details about such luck as they had recently had in their favourite occupation. In due course Paula had related a most distressing experience that had befallen her about six weeks before in Munich.

She was then being kept in a handsome apartment by a maker of fire extinguishers named Bleicher who, owing to the air-raids, was positively rolling in money. One night at a party she had been introduced to Prince Hugo von Wittelsbach zu
Amberg-Sulzheim. The Prince's lack of chin was equalled only by his lack of money, but he was a physically fine specimen and Paula had felt flattered by the attentions of this connection of the Royal House of Bavaria. As Bleicher's business had taken him away from Munich that week Paula had consented to receive her new admirer the following afternoon in her apartment.

Prince Hugo's visit had terminated in a way that was to be expected and both parties had derived considerable pleasure from it. But the sequel had proved most unexpected and, as far as Paula was concerned, highly alarming. Next day the Prince had arrived with a suitcase and declared his intention of remaining with her permanently.

For three days and nights, between sessions of violent love-making, to which she confessed she had not submitted without enjoyment, she had begged the Prince to go home. But neither prayers, threats nor even the offer of a big sum of money would induce him to leave her; and, as he had taken her keys from her, she could not lock him out.

Moreover she had been extremely frightened for, as everybody knew, there was a strain of madness in the Wittelsbach family; and after twenty-four hours spent with Prince Hugo she felt no doubt at all that he had escaped being put under restraint only on account of his high standing as a Bavarian aristocrat.

On the third day Herr Bleicher had returned from his business trip. When he arrived at the door of Paula's apartment, happily anticipating a joyous reunion with his extremely expensive girl friend, she had pleaded illness and used every other excuse she could think of to persuade him to go away. But he had smelt a rat and forced his way through into her bedroom. There, it being a warm afternoon, he had come upon the receding-chinned but muscular Prince Hugo lying on Paula's bed, wearing only his monocle.

Excusably, perhaps, Bleicher had compared Paula to certain female dogs that exist only by scavenging in gutters. To this the Prince had taken exception; not on Paula's account, but because it implied that he, a scion of the Royal House of Bavaria, could conceivably have lowered himself to the point of frequenting a slum.

Shouting a refutation of the charge, and that to fight a duel with such an obviously low-born person as Bleicher was unthinkable, the Prince leapt naked from the bed, seized a knife from a tray that was on the bedside table and flung himself upon the fire-extinguisher merchant.

Fortunately it was a silver fruit knife, so not very sharp. But it was swiftly clear to Paula that murder would result unless her two lovers could be separated. Running from the apartment she had called on her neighbours for help and they had brought the Police. With difficulty the combatants had been pulled apart. Bleicher was cut and bruised but had suffered no serious injury and, having consigned Paula to the Devil, took himself off for good. But it had needed two policemen with the help of several bystanders to restrain Prince Hugo and get him downstairs into a police van.

This latest demonstration of the Prince's unbalanced mind had led to his becoming an inmate of a discreetly run establishment in which wealthy people with unpredictable mentalities were looked after; and as far as Paula knew he was still there. The following day the Prince's clothes had been collected but, as a souvenir of her brief association with semi-royalty, Paula had retained the Prince's wallet, because it was embossed with the Prince's crest in platinum and small diamonds.

Asked by the quick-minded Sabine if the wallet had had anything in it Paula had shrugged and said, ‘Only fifty marks and the sort of papers everyone has to carry these days.' She had then been persuaded to dig it out of her luggage.

Having concluded her account of this fortunate meeting Sabine opened her handbag and, with a happy laugh, presented Gregory with the Prince's wallet.

Quickly examining its contents, Gregory saw that, although Prince Hugo was ten years younger than himself, the description of him was vague enough to get anyone who used it past a casual inspection, provided he was a little under six feet, of medium build and dark. Few people in Berlin could know about the episode that had taken place in Munich six weeks previously and, even had they done so, since then the Prince might well have been let out of the mental home in which he
had been confined; so, with a little luck, his papers could prove for Gregory a passport to freedom.

When Sabine had finished the account of her coup it was getting on for six o'clock and, as von Osterberg could shortly be expected back, they had to postpone until the following morning discussing the best means for Gregory to leave Berlin.

By then, as he had been in hiding at the Villa Seeaussicht for ten days, habit had made him immune to temptation when seeing Sabine in her bedroom and since the night of the
Putsch
she had made no further attempt to seduce him; so after giving her a perfunctory kiss he perched himself on the side of her bed and they at once set about making plans.

He had already decided that his best chance of getting out of German-held territory lay in making for the Swiss frontier. He knew the Lake Constance district well, so thought he would have no great difficulty in stealing a boat one night on the German shore and crossing the lake under cover of darkness. But the main line from Berlin to the south ran through Munich, so there was just a chance that if there was an inspection of papers on the train, he might be called on to produce his in front of a fellow traveller who knew Prince Hugo von Wittelsbach zu Amberg-Sulzheim; and that could lead to his being denounced as an impostor.

Remote as this risk was, Gregory's natural caution made him loath to take it. Sabine then produced the idea that he should make the first stage of his journey in her car. Like most people who had cars laid up she had put by a secret store of petrol against an emergency and, after driving the car some distance from Berlin, Gregory could hand it over at a garage with sufficient petrol for a mechanic to drive it back to her. It was therefore agreed that he should drive the forty miles to Wittenberg, where there was a big railway junction, and from there take trains by a circuitous route to the Swiss border. There remained only the matter of money, with which Sabine had not yet provided him; so she got up at once to go into Berlin and cash a cheque for the sort of sum which would keep him going even if it was some weeks before he could get over the frontier.

It was half past twelve before she returned and gave him
the equivalent of about one hundred and fifty pounds in mostly high-denomination RM. notes. Having thanked her and promised to repay her as soon as that became possible, he stowed them away in the Prince's wallet; but, as it was a Saturday, it was by then too late for him to make a start that day. Neither could he do so the next, as von Osterberg would be in the house from lunchtime throughout the weekend, and it would not be possible to get the car out of the garage while he was about.

Resigning himself to another lonely Sunday, Gregory spent it up in his room, for most of the time reading by the open window. Owing to that, he was lucky enough to get a few minutes' warning when out of the blue the blow fell. At ten to four on the Sunday afternoon two cars roared up in front of the house and out of them jumped seven black-clad Gestapo men.

As they hurried up the path Gregory gave a swift glance round. He made his own bed each morning and Trudi had taken away the remains of his lunch; so there was nothing to show that anyone was occupying the room. Having envisaged such an emergency for the past week, he knew that his only chance of escaping capture lay in his getting up on to the roof. Running out on to the landing he shinned up the wooden ladder there, pushed open the trapdoor in the ceiling and emerged on the central gutter.

The trapdoor was nearer the back of the house than the front; so from above it he could see into the garden. It was just such another sunny afternoon as that on which he had come upon Sabine lying in the swing hammock, and she was lying there now. Von Osterberg was lounging nearby in a deckchair with a book on his lap. As Gregory took cover behind a chimney stack he saw them both jump to their feet, then the group of S.D. men hurrying towards them.

Next moment the Count had pulled a pistol from his pocket and put it to his head. There came a sharp report. Sabine screamed, von Osterberg collapsed in a heap with blood running over his face, and the Gestapo men closed round them.

It was obvious that the Count had chosen to take his own life rather than fall into the hands of his enemies; and as his death freed Erika Gregory could not repress a feeling of
satisfaction at the thought that if he could get safely home he would, at last, be able to marry her. But there remained the ‘if'; and should the Gestapo make a thorough search of the villa, as the odds were they would, his own number might well be up.

For a moment he contemplated dashing downstairs and attempting to make a bolt for it. But he felt certain that the drivers who had been left in the two cars would be armed. He was armed himself; but even if he could shoot his way past them, as the shooting would bring another seven gunmen hard on his heels his chances of getting clean away would be anything but rosy. Swiftly he dismissed the idea. The Gestapo had already got the man they had come for and, although it was to be expected that they would rummage through the rooms and cellar hoping to find his papers, they might not bother to look round the roof.