Dennis Wheatley - They Used Dark Forces

That day, for some unaccountable reason, Hitler was in high spirits, and such was still his extraordinary dominance over those about him that everyone else was too. Old Koller, Gregory learned, had been released from arrest at Berchtesgaden and, horrified at what had resulted from his repeating to Goering the Fьhrer’s remark to Jodl, had attempted to fly to Berlin in order to exonerate his Chief. But he could get no further than the OKW headquarters. From there he telephoned von Greim who, lying in bed on account of his wounded foot, simply said that Goering was a good riddance anyway; and that he was not to worry. `Don't despair!' he cried. `Everything will be well. The presence of the Fьhrer and his confidence have completely inspired me and victory is assured.' In the evening Bormann got drunk and danced a two-step with Burgdorf.

Utterly sickened by the sight of this mass insanity, Gregory left the bunker soon after midnight. Outside in the street the crashing of shells, the explosion of bombs and the roar from burning buildings was deafening. He had covered not much more than a hundred yards when he was hit a terrific blow on the back of his head. Stars and circles wheeled before his eyes then, his mind engulfed in blackness, he crashed forward on to the pavement.

He was brought to by cold water being sloshed into his face. His bleary eyes took in the fact that he was in a low ceilinged room and that opposite him, with an empty glass in his hand, stood a big man dressed in a grey lounge suit. As he made to move it suddenly came home to him that he was trussed like a chicken to the chair in which he was sitting. His bemused brain sought an explanation and found one.

For weeks past, owing to terror of death and acute privation, Berlin had become completely lawless. The Police could not possibly control the thousands of deserters and desperate foreign workers who hid by day in the vast acreage of ruins. By night they came out in gangs, broke into the food, shops and held people up in the streets for their ration cards and money. Unheard by him owing to the deafening din, one of these thugs had come up behind and coshed him.

But why had the man not just taken his wallet and left him lying on the pavement? Why had he been brought here and tied up?

His sight cleared a little and he had the answer. The man in the grey lounge suit was Hen Obergruppenfьhrer’s Grauber.

28

In the Hands of a Fiend

SLOWLY the water dripped from Gregory's eyebrows, nose, lips and chin. His sight was still blurred and the back of his head was throbbing violently. Instinctively he looked from side to side for any possibility of help or escape. As he made the movement his brain seemed to roll inside his skull, causing him exquisite agony.

The room was about fifteen feet square and it had no window. That suggested that it was in a basement; but it was obviously not one of the cells or torture chambers below the Gestapo headquarters in the Albrecht Strasse, because it was comfortably furnished. The only evidence of pain-infliction in it was a collection of whips hanging from a rack above a backless leather couch on which there was an open suitcase crammed full of clothes. But those slim, springy, silver-mounted strips of birch, hide and whalebone were not, Gregory knew, for flicking thee skin from the backs of prisoners. Grauber was not only a homosexual but also a sadist. In the old days he had always travelled with a specially selected S.S. bodyguard of blond young giants who painted their faces and addressed one another with. endearments. Those whips had been used on them and, probably, by them on Grauber himself.

Suddenly Grauber spoke. `Our last round, Mr. Sallust. And I win it hands down. You are a slippery customer, if ever there was one. But your extraordinary feat of getting yourself into the Fьhrer’s bunker gave you a swollen head. At last you have made the fatal mistake of underrating your opponent.'

It was true. Had Gregory been less preoccupied with his endeavours to keep Hitler in Berlin and his anxieties about Erika and Sabine, he would have given more serious thought to Grauber and the possibility that his old enemy would devise some subtle way of bringing him to grief. But the terror Hitler inspired among his followers was so universal that, once under his protection, Gregory had thought the risk of Grauber taking any action against him to be negligible.

He had been further lulled into a false sense of security during the past five days by Grauber's attitude. Their respective duties had entailed being at the same time for long spells in the passage outside the conference room and taking meals together in the mess passage. Naturally, neither of them had been more. than barely civil to the other, but Grauber had treated Gregory with a certain deference, which Gregory had put down to his having become one of the Fьhrer’s intimates, and that had strengthened his conviction that his old enemy fully- accepted the situation.

Too late, he realized that, outside the bunker, Grauber still possessed almost limitless powers and could on any night have him kidnapped by Gestapo men while making his way home through the blackout.

Pain made it difficult for him to work his jaw, but now that his wits were coming back to him he managed to croak out, `Yes, you've got me… but you'd better watch your step. You seem to have forgotten that… the Fьhrer is my friend. He… he warned you not to lay a finger on me at the peril of your life. At any time he may ask for me… to talk about the future. If I'm not to be found he'll guess that you are at… at the bottom of my disappearance… Then you'll be for the high jump.'

`That maniac!' Grauber suddenly spat. `Do you think I any longer give a damn for him? He has brought Germany to ruin, and himself. He is now through. Finished!'

`Not yet. You and the others still quail every time he opens his mouth… And he has a memory like an… encyclopedia. He won't have forgotten that we are enemies. Just wait until you get back to the bunker. The moment he sees you he… he'll hand you over to his private police. He'll have them take you to pieces on… on the assumption that you'll be able to tell him what has become of me.'

Grauber gave a high-pitched laugh. `You poor fool. What do you think I am doing out of uniform and in these clothes? I'm not going back to the bunker. I'm leaving Berlin tonight. Tomorrow it may be too late.'

That contemptuous statement hit Gregory as though it were the last nail being hammered into his coffin. The moment he had grasped the situation he was in he had realized that his chances of getting out of that room a free man were about as good as those of a man surviving who puts the barrel of a loaded pistol to the roof of his mouth and pulls the trigger. But there had been just the slender hope that he might use Hitler's knowledge of his feud with Grauber to frighten him.

Now that, too, was gone. But he felt sure that his end would be no more horrible if he twisted Grauber's tail a little; and, his words coming more easily, he said, `I see. Another rat leaving the sinking ship. You're off to join the king rat, eh? But don't flatter yourself that Himmler will succeed in making a deal with the Allies. He'll not be able to save your skin, or his own. Count Bernadotte's intentions are of the best, but Leaning forward, Grauber snapped, `What do you know of that?

'Enough to be certain that if we were way back in 1940 and Britain had really been at her last gasp Churchill would still not have negotiated with a swine like Himmler. As things are, it's already been announced that he and his kind are to be tried as war criminals. That goes for you and it won't be long before you are dangling from a beam by a rope round the neck.'

`Others may, but not I' Grauber shook his massive head. `Again you underrate me. About Himmler you are right. He is a brilliant organizer but in all other respects a fool, and he has always gone about with his head in the clouds. Now he has become almost as mad as Hitler. His acceptance of Schellenberg's belief that the Allies would treat with him through Count Bernadotte is the proof of it. I've no intention of mixing myself up with such a pack of dreamers.'