Dennis Wheatley - Traitors' Gate

A party of six people was being obsequiously bowed by the maitre d'hotel to a reserved table on the edge of the dance floor. The leading couple v/ere a tall man with a high bald forehead and a strikingly beautiful dark-haired girl.

'There's Ribbentrop,' remarked Count Laszio, 'and his pretty Baroness.'

Gregory turned to look, then caught his breath in surprise and consternation. The girl was his old flame Sabine.

Next moment she glanced in his direction. Their eyes met. Her arched eyebrows went up and her scarlet lips opened a trifle. He knew then that she had recognized him. It was too late to slip away. The danger he had foreseen from an unexpected meeting, when he had thought about her after his bathe on his first afternoon in Budapest, re-entered his mind like the shrilling of an alarm bell.

Playing With Fire

Chapter 9

Gregory had hoped that if he did run into Sabine she would be alone and that, by hinting at the reason for his being in Budapest, he might ensure her sympathetic silence. Anyway he had felt confident that he would be able to overcome any feeling she might have that it was her duty to hand him over to the police.

Even had she had friends with her of her own nationality, and from surprise at seeing him had greeted him with an exclamation in English, dangerous as such a situation would have been he might, with luck, have put up a bluff of some kind which would have stalled off any immediate action.

But to come across her in the company of a Nazi, let alone Hitler's Foreign Minister, was a thing that he had never remotely contemplated. Still worse, from what he had heard she made no concealment of the fact that she was Ribbentrop's mistress, and a convinced Nazi herself.

As they stared at one another from fifteen paces' distance he, kept his face completely immobile. For her English lover to turn up in Budapest during the war was so unlikely that, if he showed no signs of recognition, he thought there was just a chance she might decide that she had been misled by a resemblance. But instead of looking away, while Ribbentrop was motioning the rest of his party to the places at the table where he wished them to sit she touched the maitre d'hotel on the arm and pointed at Gregory.

His heart missed a beat. For a second he thought she was telling the man to have him watched, so that he did not slip away, while sending for the police. But the maitre d'hotel only shook his head, showing that she had simply asked if he knew who Gregory was.

Count Laszlo turned to him with a smile. 'The Baroness seems to be interested in you.'

'Unfortunately, yes,' Gregory replied in a low voice. 'It is several years since I've seen her; so her present name conveyed nothing to me. But she turns out to be an old friend of mine; and as she is now a friend of Nazi No. 4, that may have extremely unpleasant results for me before I am much older.'

The laughter died in the hunchback's merry brown eyes. 'You mean she knows you to be an Englishman?'

'That's it. And the moment she looked in this direction she recognized me. By keeping a poker face I hope I've sown doubt in her mind; but if she tells her new boyfriend her suspicions my goose will be properly cooked. For me to make a hurried exit might precipitate catastrophe; but I want to get out of here as soon as I can without appearing to be making a bolt for it. Would you send for the bill, so that the waiter won't come running after us if we get up to go in about fifteen minutes.'

Ribbentrop's table was now empty. After a thickset man in the uniform of the Arrow Cross Party, who was apparently playing host, bad ordered wine, all three couples moved out on to the dance floor. But each time the dancing brought Sabine in view of Gregory her wide dark eyes became riveted, over Ribbentrop's shoulder, on him. He gave the impression that he was unconscious of her glance, keeping his own in another direction; but he was watching her out of the corner of his eye, and wondering with acute anxiety at what precise moment she might decide to tell her partner that she thought she had recognized a man who must be a British spy.

Under his breath Gregory murmured to Count Laszlo, 'For, God's sake tell me some funny stories to make me laugh. The only hope I have of foxing this woman is to sit on here for a bit appearing unconcerned and natural.' Then he began quite openly to ogle a pretty blonde who was sitting at a nearby table. She looked a little surprised by these sudden attentions, but having taken stock of Gregory's lean good looks she responded, at intervals when her companion was not looking at her, with sly half smiles.

Getting up, Gregory went over to her table, made a formal bow to the man who was with her, and asked if he might ask her for a dance. Her companion looked far from pleased but, taken by surprise and seeing the smile with which she greeted the invitation, he mumbled his consent. Gregory led the blonde on to the floor, grasped her firmly and began to tell her how, as a visitor to Budapest, he found the city enchanting and her the loveliest thing in it. Her name was Terezia and she was a model in a smart dress shop. He secured her address and telephone number, and said he would ring her up next day; a promise that he had no intention of keeping. Then he took her back to her table and returned to his own hoping that Sabine, who must have observed the incident, would conclude from it that no spy who had been detected would have the nerve to remain within call acting the role of a playboy.

Ribbentrop's party had now resorted themselves. He was dancing with a statuesque redheaded woman and Sabine, who had evidently declined further dancing for the moment, was back at the table with the Arrow Cross man. As Gregory gave her an anxious sidelong glance, he saw that her dark head was bent over the table. Count Laszlo had paid the bill, and ogling the blonde then dancing with her had occupied a good quarter of a hour; so he murmured to the Count, 'I think we might go now.'

As they stood up, he saw that Sabine was bending over the table because she was writing a note. At that moment she lifted her head, saw that he was about to leave, and made a gesture with her hand that he should stay where he was. He responded with a look of blank surprise appropriate to receiving a signal from a complete stranger; but she beckoned up a waiter, folded her note and pointing out Gregory sent the man over with it.

It was impossible for him to ignore the approaching waiter. Another few moments and he might have been out of the place, but now he had been caught. Cursing under his breath, he sat down, then took the note from the plate the waiter held out to him. Unfolding it he read the single line in her well remembered spidery writing:

You can't fool me. What are you doing in Budapest?

So much for his bluff that he was not who she thought him. It was clearly futile to attempt to maintain it any longer. And there was now no escape from giving her some explanation. All he could hope to do was temporarily to stall her off from telling her friends that he was English by inducing her to play up to one of his cover stories until they could talk together alone.

For him to pretend to be Fritz Einholtz with Ribbentrop in the offing would be a suicidal risk, as the Foreign Minister might have known the Gestapo Colonel. On the other hand, if he posed as Tavenier there was just a chance that the Arrow Cross man might be Puttony's chief, and that the Lieutenant had confided to him that Tavenier was really only a cover name for Obersturmbannführer Einholtz.

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Ribbentrop was just returning to the table, so would see Sabine receive the reply to her note. It was certain that he would question her about it, and if she said Gregory was a Frenchman of her acquaintance the Arrow Cross man might try to show how well-informed he was by telling her that she was mistaken and revealing what he believed to be the truth. For a moment Gregory contemplated fabricating an entirely new identity for himself. But that would not do either, as scores of people in Budapest now knew him as Commandant Tavenier and it was quite possible that one of the other women at the table had been at some party he had attended and heard him addressed by that name.