Dennis Wheatley: The Black Baroness

THE BLACK BARONESS

by

DENNIS WHEATLEY

Copyright: 1940

Author's Note

The sequence of the seven books which recount the war adventures of Gregory Sallust is as follows: The Scarlet Impostor, Faked Passports, The Black Baroness, V for Vengeance, Come Into My Parlour, Traitors' Gate and They Used Dark Forces. Each volume is a complete story in itself, but the series covers Gregory's activities from September, 1939, to May, 1945, against an unbroken background incorporating all the principal events of the Second World War.

Gregory Sallust also appears in three other books: Black August, a story set in an undated future; Contraband, an international smuggling story of 1937; and The Island Where Time Stands Still, an adventure set in the South Seas and Communist China during the year 1954.

CHAPTER 1

Hitler's Secret Weapon

Although it was mid-March snow still capped the tops of the Norwegian mountains which stood out white and clear against a pale, frosty sky. But the sun shone in the valleys and dappled the wavelets of the greenish sea as the little Baltic tramp steamer puffed its way into Oslo Fjord.

On the tramp's foredeck a man and a woman sat in a pair of rickety old basket chairs that they had carried out from the tiny saloon. The woman was golden-haired and very beautiful. Her proud profile and the lazy grace with which she half-reclined in the easy chair marked her at once as an aristocrat. The man was a loose-limbed fellow in the late thirties; dark, lean-faced, and sinewy by nature, a recent bout of fever had given him an almost wolfish look, but it was relieved by a pair of smiling eyes and a cynical twist to his firm, strong mouth.

The woman was the Countess von Osterberg or, since she preferred to be known by her maiden name, Erika von Epp. The man was Gregory Sallust or, as he preferred to be known by the name under which he was travelling, the Colonel-Baron von Lutz. It was March the 19th—six days since the Russo-Finnish War had ended and five days since they had escaped across the ice, which was beginning to break up in theGulf of Finland , to the little tramp that was now just completing the first journey of the year south to her home port.

For the first two days of the voyage they had lain in their narrow quarters almost comatose, gradually recovering from utter nervous and physical exhaustion; the result of the ten days' ordeal through which they had passed before escaping from Herr Gruppenfuhrer Grauber, the chief of the Gestapo Foreign Department, U.A.—I.

From the third day they had staggered out on deck to continue their convalescence in the fresh air and wintry sunshine. Gradually they were getting back to normal, but they still spoke little and slept from dusk to dawn each night, just content to be in each other's company.

Had it not been for their third companion, the Bolshevik General, Stefan Kuporovitch, who had decided to shake the dust of theSoviet Union off his feet with them, they would have talked even less, but the Russian was a talkative person and he had passed through no such ordeal as theirs.

It was he who had made arrangements for the three of them with the captain of the little tramp, but as they had approached the coast ofNorway they had realised that he could not enter another country without a passport. In consequence, he had been landed from the ship's boat, in the early hours of that morning, on a desolate stretch of the Norwegian shore, with the understanding that if he could evade the police he was to meet the others inOslo . So Erika and Gregory were at last alone.

While the tramp chopped its way down the Baltic, they had avoided any discussion about the future. The war had reached a stalemate; for many months the British had appeared satisfied to blockade Germany, while the French accepted the Siegfried Line as impregnable and did not even attempt to test it by attacks in force, and Hitler seemed content to remain blockaded indefinitely, only playing upon the nerves of his opponents and neighbours by threatening a Blitzkrieg on the Balkans, the Low Countries and Scandinavia from week to week in rotation. It looked as though things might go on in that way for years; which was not a happy prospect for the two lovers in view of the fact that she was a German girl and he an Englishman,

If Erika returned to Germany the Nazis would promptly execute her, but she refused to seek sanctuary inBritain orFrance , so her only course was to live in a neutral country where she might still work for Hitler's overthrow. Gregory, on the other hand, was perfectly free to return toEngland although, as a lone wolf, working entirely outside the Secret Service, there was no compulsion for him to do so. But Erika knew her man; he would never be content to settle down with her inNorway orSweden while his country was still lighting for its existence.

With every mile that the tramp came nearer to its destination that thought had troubled them both more and more. They had been in love for over six months and when Erika could get a divorce from her husband they intended to get married. It seemed utterly tragic that now that they were free and together again they must part so soon.

He had tried desperately hard to persuade himself that he was entitled to remain inNorway with her for a few weeks at least. Old Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust, who had sent him out on his strange mission, already knew the results of his wanderings, so there was no one to whom he felt bound to report. Even when he got home he might be kept kicking his heels for months before he was offered another job which really suited his unusual capabilities. Yet he knew that it was no good.Britain was at war and it was up to him to find a way of taking a new hand in the game without an hour's unnecessary delay.

'We should be in by about three o'clock,' he murmured.

She nodded. 'Yes; but they may keep us hanging about for hours before they allow us ashore.'

'That depends on how soon we can get hold of your friend at the German Legation, and how long it takes him to secure entry permits for us.'

'Yes, it's a bore our passports not having Norwegian visas but I'm sure Uli von Einem will soon fix matters up.'

'I only hope to goodness he doesn't happen to know that you're wanted by the Gestapo or that the real Colonel Baron von Lutz was killed while resisting arrest by the Nazis last November.'

Erika shrugged. 'As I said last night, it's not easy for any legation to keep track of what has happened to eighty million Germans while a war is going on and, even if they do know, they can't do anything to us while we're on a neutral ship. We'll just have to think up some other method of getting ashore or transfer to a ship that will take us round to a Swedish port and try our luck there.'

'I can always get in touch with the British Legation,' Gregory said slowly, 'and I might be able to wangle some way of getting you into Norway; but if I can continue to pose as a German it will prevent a lot of unwelcome speculation as to why we're always together while we are in Oslo.'

She turned suddenly and looked him full in the face. 'For how long is that to be, Gregory?'

'Not very long, darling—worse luck,' he replied quietly. 'You know how things are, so we needn't go over it all and add to what we're feeling. As soon as we land I must find out when there's a plane that will take me home, so we've now got only a few days together at the most.'

Erika could have screamed with the frightful injustice of it all. Through his crazy ambition this mountebank, Hitler, had sown the seeds of misery, poverty and death broadcast throughout half the world. The foul crop was barely visible as yet, but in time it would strangle innumerable beautiful things, and already the shoots of the filthy weed were forcing apart the roots of countless loves and friendships.