Dennis Wheatley - Traitors' Gate

Gregory was greatly tempted to step out from behind the armour, lean over the gallery and call softly to Sabine, 'Quick! Get the glass I used out of the way.' But he decided that the risk of Ribbentrop's returning before he could regain his cover was too great. It was just as well, for the Minister was out of sight for barely a minute and, as he re-entered the room, there came the faint sounds of a car driving into the courtyard. Turning, he walked back to the door of the vestibule, returned a loud greeting of 'Heil Hitler,' and led in the visitors. To Gregory's dismay, he saw that Grauber had with him Cochefert, Major Szalasi and Lieutenant Puttony.

Szalasi bowed over Sabine's hand. Grauber and Cochefert were presented to her. The whole middle section of the Frenchman's face was swathed in a great bandage. Only his hooded eyes showed above, and his chin below it. Evidently his nose had been plugged as, when he spoke, it was in a voice so distorted that it sounded as though he had a split palate or acute adenoids. He was so shaky from loss of blood that he was given a chair, but Grauber was not invited to sit, and the pink cheeked Puttony remained modestly in the background. After these greetings, Ribbentrop said in a cold haughty tone:

'Herr Gruppenführer, the Gnadige Frau Baronin has consented to answer any questions you care to put to her. Please be as brief as possible.'

Having bowed his respectful thanks, Grauber asked Sabine to tell them where she had first met the man calling himself Commandant Tavenier, and all that she knew about him.

In a quiet, detached voice, Sabine repeated with a few minor embellishments what she had already told Ribbentrop: such as the address of the apartment at which she had stayed as his aunt's guest in Paris and approximately the date of her stay there. She gave as her reason for the visit that his aunt was a partner in a big French fashion house, and that she had been commissioned by a Hungarian shop to buy models from the firm all of which was quite plausible as, in her poorer days, she had been for a while a professional model.

As Ribbentrop and Szalasi had both been present when she had again met Gregory the previous evening, they had no reason whatever to doubt her veracity, and both nodded confirmation as she went on to give Grauber an outline of what had happened. In the same rather bored manner, she continued with the rest of her story, ending with a positive assertion that, however much Tavenier might resemble the Englishman the Gestapo wanted to catch, he could not possibly be their man.

Having heard her out, Grauber gave her a queer little smile, and said in his high falsetto, 'It is the Gnadige Frau Baronin who is mistaken.' Then he turned to Ribbentrop, and added: 'Herr Reichsaussenminister, we have proof incontrovertible proof. Listen, please, to what M. le Capitaine Cochefert of the Deuxième Bureau has to say.'

From the moment the Frenchman had entered the hall, Gregory had realized that Grauber must have gone to the hospital where Cochefert v/as being treated and, on hearing his revelations have insisted that he should leave his bed to repeat them to Ribbentrop. While arguing with Sabine in her car he had failed to take into account that his two enemies might get together again so quickly, and it was only in the past few minutes that it had struck him how disastrous their collaborations must prove. His instinctive feeling that Sabine's story was not entirely watertight was now to prove only too well-founded and, for both their sakes, he cursed his folly in having allowed her to persuade him into coming back with her.

Snuffling his words, and obviously speaking only with considerable pain, Cochefert gave particulars of Vichy's reply to his routine enquiry and recounted how, when cornered, Gregory had admitted that he was not Tavenier.

Sabine rose splendidly to the occasion. She shrugged and said with a slightly malicious smile, 'In view of the damage that Commandant Tavenier has done to M. le Capitain's face, I can understand his desire to be revenged; but I do not believe one word of his story. It is typical of what one hears of the low morality of the Vichy police, and their servile anxiety to curry favour at any price with the Germans.'

Ribbentrop grinned openly, and Gregory mentally took off his hat to her. But he knew that her broadside had been fired in vain. There was the stocky, wooden faced Puttony standing at attention in the background, and at any moment Grauber could bring him into play.

Cochefert began to splutter with rage, but choked on his own blood, and had to turn away, coughing agonizingly into a big silk handkerchief. Ignoring him, Grauber kept his single eye on Sabine, pursed up his small cruel mouth, and said:

'The Gnadige Frau Baronin's attack upon this officer is entirely unwarranted. Fortunately, we have a witness to his integrity. The Lieutenant of Police whom we have brought with us was present at the interview. He will confirm that your… er, friend confessed to being an impostor.'

'How much are you paying him to do that?' Sabine rapped back. 'Everyone knows that you Gestapo people will stick at nothing to get into your hands any person you suspect.'

'Whatever we do is done in the best interests of the Reich,' Grauber retorted sharply. 'But let me tell you something else. When this "suspect", as you call him, was arrested he secured a new lease of freedom by producing a Gestapo pass, and declaring himself to be Obersturmbannführer Einholtz. To my personal knowledge he murdered the Obersturmbannführer last December. And it is our word and the word of all three of us against yours, Gnadige Frau Baronin.'

It was useless for Gregory to reproach himself for not having foreseen that, should Grauber and Cochefert compare notes, Sabine's story would be blown wide open. He could only strain his ears and eyes to learn how she would face the fatal breach in her defences.

Ribbentrop's swift brain had already summed up the implications. Swinging round on her, he said, 'One can no longer doubt that the Herr Gruppenführer is right. The man who has been passing here as Tavenier is the Englishman Sallust; and that makes nonsense of your assertions that he is a Frenchman with whose aunt you stayed in Paris. There must be some explanation. I can only assume that you knew him to be Sallust all the time, and have been playing some deep game. If this was so, please tell us?'

Sabine took the cue, smiled at him and said, 'How clever of you, Joachim. Of course I knew; but I kept his secret with the idea of finding out what he was up to here. If these fools had not butted in, I was hoping that he might return here, and that before you left tomorrow I would be able to report to you a really valuable piece of counterespionage.'

Gregory heaved an inaudible sigh of relief, and the Minister, having his hopes that his mistress would be able to exonerate herself so swiftly confirmed, exclaimed to Grauber with a laugh, 'There you are, Herr Gruppenführer! And that, I think, puts an end to this annoying affair.'

But Grauber was not the man to be sent about his business so peremptorily. With no trace of sarcasm, but what sounded like genuine humility, he piped, 'I am abashed that I should have forced this disclosure from the Gnadige Frau Baronin. My zeal for the Fuhrer's service must be my excuse; and on that account I feel confident that she will not deny us the results of her endeavours?'

'On the contrary, you are welcome to them,' Sabine replied graciously. 'He came here to investigate the possibility of Hungary's being induced to make a separate peace with the Allies.'

'There!' Ribbentrop exclaimed again. 'That ties up with what you told me of your own mission.'