Dennis Wheatley - Traitors' Gate

Dennis Wheatley

Traitor’s Gate

A Small Buff Form for Gregory

Chapter 1

Late on the night of July 25th 1942 a little group of senior staff officers stood talking together in a small underground room. They all looked tired and a little pasty. That was hardly to be wondered at as they worked, on average, sixteen hours a day and seldom emerged from the fortress basement in which, as members of the Joint Planning Staff of the War Cabinet, they had their quarters.

The semi circular cellar in which they stood had been converted into a mess only as an emergency convenience during the worst air raids of 1940. In its centre two card tables put together enabled six officers to sit down to a meal. One angle was curtained off and behind it a Royal Marine heated soup or knocked up an egg dish as required; against the wall in the other stood a steel filing cabinet; but, instead of papers, its shelves carried an assortment of bottles and glasses. Crowded into the small space in front of it, the Planners were imbibing stiff whiskies and sodas before betaking themselves to their bunks in a still lower basement.

Usually their off duty chatter was as light as that of other men, but they had just come from a midnight conference at which a momentous decision had been announced and instructions for intensive detailed planning given to them by their masters, the Chiefs of Staff.

'Well, Mr. Marlborough has got his way,' remarked a tall Air Commodore, 'but God alone knows how it will pan out.'

A Captain, R.N., nodded. 'Pity we couldn't have postponed the issue till 1943. Having to go over to the offensive so early means risking everything we've got.'

'Roosevelt's insistence that American troops should be employed against the Germans in 1942 left us no option,' shrugged a Gunner Colonel. 'Since the Washington Conference it has only been a question of whether we did Sledgehammer or Gymnast.'

'The Cherbourg job would have been murder,' declared a Brigadier of Royal Marines. 'And, even if we could have established ourselves on the peninsula, we haven't got the weight of trained troops to break out. It would have become a wasting sore.'

The sailor nodded. 'At least we can console ourselves with the thought that we stopped Marshall and Harry Hopkins forcing that one on us, and have all along backed the P.M.'s preference for North Africa.'

'If it comes off it will pay tremendous dividends,' put in a Group Captain who always appeared to be a little sleepy, but was never quite as sleepy as he looked. 'With the whole of the south side of the Med. in our hands convoys will be able to go through again; and Malta, instead of being a drain on us, will become a dagger aimed at what the old man calls "the soft underbelly of the Axchis".'

The tall Air Commodore took him up quickly. 'Now that Rommel has given the Auk such a bloody nose there can be no hope of the Eighth Army doing Acrobat this year; and it will be months before we can achieve a big enough build-up in Algeria to attempt an advance into Tripolitania. Any idea of a linkup in 1942 is now only wishful thinking.'

'We can't expect the Germans to take this show lying down either,' said the Colonel. 'I'd give pretty well any odds that the moment they learn that the Americans and ourselves have gone into Morocco and Algeria they'll scrap their agreement with the Vichy French and pour troops into Tunisia.'

'And put every aircraft they can spare into Sicily and Sardinia,' added the Air Commodore.

'It could be worse than that,' the Brigadier declared grimly. 'If there's a leak they'll take measures beforehand. Then our convoys will sail straight into a trap. Just think of it. Scores of transports crammed with troops coming through the Straits of Gib. with a submarine pack lying in wait for them, And Kesselring's dive-bomber thick as locusts coming in for the kill. It could be a massacre before we even had a chance to get ashore at all.'

At the awful picture he conjured up the others fell silent for a moment. All of them knew that shipping tonnage we could not possibly afford to lose, hundreds of escort vessels manned by the cream of the Navy, and many thousands of our best troops in fact everything that Britain could scrape together short of sufficient squadrons of the R.A.F. to protect her from invasion must be gambled in this great operation.

While they still stood silent a Lt. Colonel, his fair hair slightly ruffled and his blue eyes a little blurred from having sat up till one in the morning reading staff papers, joined them, Smiling round, he said, 'Well, chaps; what's cooking?'

The Brigadier gave him a twisted smile. 'We've headed the Yanks off from getting themselves and us slaughtered on the French beaches; but Gymnast is on. That's definite. The P.M. has given it a new code name, though. In future it is to be known as "Operation Torch". At best, in about a year from now, we'll have the whole of North Africa. At worst, the chaps we got off from Dunkirk, and God knows how many thousands more, will be in Davy Jones's locker. Everything depends on the Germans being kept in the dark up till the very last moment. Even when our convoys are reported going through the Straits of Gib. the Boche must be led to believe that we intend to land the troops anywhere other than in Algeria. Thank God that's not my headache. It's yours, Johnny; so here's good luck to you!'

The Brigadier finished his whisky and added, 'You'll need it., This is about the toughest assignment any man has ever had.'

At the time of the above conversation no one could possibly have foreseen that Fate had designated Gregory Sallust to play a key role in this tough assignment, and even less that his uninvited participation would make him liable to court-martial, imprisonment and disgrace.

To explain how this came about it is necessary to go back four months. To be precise, to the morning of Monday, March 30th, when at the breakfast table Gregory opened a buff envelope.

After one glance at the flimsy it contained, he sat back and roared with laughter. It was a 'call-up' paper, notifying him that he must report for a medical examination within fourteen days or become liable to grievous penalties.

His mirth was understandable seeing that for the past two and a half years he had been in closer and more constant conflict with the Nazis than had any member of our Fighting Services. As a secret agent he had been parachuted into Germany in September 1939. Since then he had pitted his wits against Herr Gruppenführer Grauber the dreaded chief of the Gestapo's Foreign Department in Finland, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France and Russia.

On the other side of the breakfast table the Countess von Osterberg raised her tapering eyebrows. It was largely those eyebrows and her high cheekbones that gave her such a startling resemblance to Marlene Dietrich, and caused her still to be spoken of by those who had known her before her marriage as 'the beautiful Erika von Epp'.

In response to her look of interrogation, Gregory flicked the paper over to her and said, 'Early this month the Government extended the call-up to include men aged 41 to 45. It never crossed my mind that the measure would apply to me but, of course, it does.'

Having glanced at the paper, Erika smiled. 'But surely, darling, your name is on some special list; and all you need do is to let the people who sent this know that?'

'No. I'm privately employed by Sir Pellinore. For many years past the old boy has used a part of his millions to throw spanners in the works of the enemies of Britain, and on several occasions I have been the spanner. It was natural enough that when the war came he should ask me to carry on with the good work, and I've always preferred to play the part of a lone wolf. If one gets caught then it can only be through one's own ill luck or stupidity.'