Dennis Wheatley - The Black Baroness

Having smiled 'Goodnight' Gregory and Erika walked in silence towards the lift, and it was only as they were going down their corridor upstairs that she said bitterly: 'I never knew Paula intimately, but she comes of a decent family, and it makes me almost physically sick to think that a girl who is really one of us should have sold out to the Nazis.'

Gregory shrugged. 'Don't be too hard on her, darling. It isn't everyone who has your strength of character; and remember, those devils have got her brother. From what she said, it's clear that they gave her the choice of death for him and ten years—the best ten years of her life—in some God-awful concentration-camp, or to come here as one of their agents. One can hardly blame her, and from that

"come hither" eye of hers I shouldn't think she finds the job they've put her on by any means distasteful.

Naturally, on seeing you she jumped to the conclusion that you had bought your liberty on the same terms.'

At their respective doors they parted, but a quarter of an hour later Gregory entered Erika's room through the bathroom they were sharing. He was wearing a brightly-hued silk dressing-gown which he had bought two days before; in one hand he was carrying a fat Turkish cigarette and in the other a magnum of champagne.

She looked across at him from her bed as he set the magnum down and walked over to a side-table to collect some glasses that were standing with a half-empty bottle of Madeira which they had opened that morning.

'Darling,' she murmured a little hesitantly, 'would you mind very much if we didn't make a night of it?—I mean—not a magnum-of-champagne sort of night—because all I want now is to hold you very close to me for every moment that's left to us, and we've got so little time—so desperately little time.'

'Have we?' he said, turning suddenly, and she saw that his whole face had altered. 'Don't you believe it, sweetheart!'

'Oh, Gregory! You mean . ..' Her face suddenly lit up but the rest of her sentence was never uttered.

With one great, panther-like spring he landed right on her bed and seizing her face between his hands he forced it back on the pillow, pressing his mouth to hers.

When he released her he was laughing like a genial devil as he cried: 'I mean, my angel, why should I go home now there's work to be done here in Norway? Tomorrow we are lunching with Hitler's secret weapon.'

CHAPTER 2

Fifth Column at Home

Before they had been in Paula von Steinmetz's flat for ten minutes, Gregory knew that his decision to stay in Norway had been thoroughly justified. Either she already had a luncheon party arranged for that day or else she had quickly got a number of people together after Erika had telephoned to her that morning. Her guests and their attitude were both a shock and a revelation.

The men consisted of a high Balkan diplomat and four Norwegians, one of whom was a member of the Storting and one the editor of a leading paper; the two others were the Major with whom Paula had been the night before and another Army officer. All the women were German born, although one of them was the diplomat's wife and so nominally of his nationality, and another had married the Norwegian M.P. only a fortnight before. The women accepted Erika as one of themselves, and paid a special deference to Gregory in his role of a Prussian aristocrat who had served with distinction upon their own General Staff.

They talked with complete freedom about the hopeless plight of the Democracies under their aged and effete leaders and with supreme confidence about everything going according to plan and Hitler's becoming the first World Fuehrer in 1944. The Norwegians and the diplomat obviously accepted this forecast as quite inevitable and, far from showing any distress at the thought of their own countries becoming vassal states to a foreign power, appeared to consider themselves as the chosen vessels for carrying the Light of the new world order to their countrymen. In fact, Gregory had to keep on reminding himself that he really was in Norway and not attending a luncheon with a number of Nazi Party chiefs and their women in Berlin.

He had always realised that the Scandinavian countries were strongly pro-German, however greatly the majority of English people liked to believe the contrary. During the last world-war they had seriously hampered the Allied blockade not only by selling most of their own produce to Germany but also by reselling to her a very large proportion of the raw materials which the Allies had allowed through for neutral consumption. Moreover, when the Allies had at last had the sense to tighten up their blockade, and Germany was beginning to feel the pinch, the Scandinavians had done their utmost to relieve the pressure by taking enormous numbers of German women and children as refugees for the remainder of the war. That was a work of humanity, but Gregory believed in facing facts. The Germans were waging unrestricted submarine warfare at that time; they were also bombing Paris and London on every possible opportunity, thus sending considerable numbers of our women and children to their deaths. As Germany was eventually brought to her knees through the pressure of the blockade, the fact that the Scandinavians were feeding a considerable section of her population during the latter part of the war simply meant that the war had gone on several months longer than it need have done, during which many thousands of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians owed their deaths entirely to this humanitarian gesture which had been made by the pro-German neutrals.

Knowing all that, and having no reason to suppose that the attitude of the Scandinavians had materially altered in the past twenty years, Gregory had not expected to find the bulk of the people in Norway waving Union Jacks, but he had supposed that they at least had every intention of preserving their tradition of independence and he was utterly horrified at this revelation that such prominent and influential Norwegians as those at Paula's luncheon-party had obviously sold out to Hitler.

At luncheon he was given the place of honour on Paula's right and she lost no opportunity of seeking to attract him. With her young, dark beauty and full-lipped smile she was a fascinating person but she got little chance to talk to him alone until the end of the meal, when the others all became involved in a general discussion on the eternal question as to where the Fuehrer would really strike first now that spring was here. She then inquired about the reason for his visit to Norway, upon which he became intriguingly mysterious, but she only laughed at him and began to pull his leg.

'Of course you mustn't tell me,' she mocked him. 'Still it's obvious that arrangements have to be made for the troops to land when the country is actually taken over and all the details must be seen to with the thoroughness for which our General Staff is so justly famous. But really you are to be congratulated upon having a delightfully "cushy" job, because there won't be any fighting—or hardly any. With Hitler's new technique you Army men will have to take a back seat for a change, and it's girls like Erika and myself who will reap the real honours of the new war.'

'You certainly seem to be getting a great deal of fun out of your baptism of fire,' Gregory smiled.

As the others were not listening she shrugged and went on in a low voice: 'It's quite true that most of us acted from compulsion to begin with, but once one gets into the game it becomes frightfully thrilling. After all, whatever we may have said about the Nazis in the past, Hitler himself is an amazing man, you know.

One must confess that. And although we may not agree with all his methods he is showing us Germans how to conquer the world. One must admire him for that. So, quite honestly, I'm all for him now and I'm not a bit shamefaced about this business any more.'