Come into my Parlour (2 page)

“
Jawohl, Herr Obergruppenführer,
” Grauber replied quickly, in his high piping voice. “As you know, the Soviet has always been the most difficult of our problems, owing to its strict control of foreigners, and the fact that it has the best counter-espionage system of any country outside the Reich. But I have reliable men in many good places. Owing to distance and the general poorness of communications, there is bound to be some delay in securing sufficient accurate intelligence to form a true picture of what is going on inside Russia as things develop, but we have many means of sending special personnel in to visit our agents and collect the latest material. I shall also go in myself, from time to time, to contact my best men.”

“Any remarks?” asked Himmler, casting a swift, short-sighted glance round the table.

It was met by a general shaking of heads, so he went on to the other items, despatching each after asking a few questions and making a brief comment.

At item thirteen, he read out: “Gregory Sallust”—paused for a moment, frowned, and added: “What is this? I seem to know that name.”

“I had it put on the agenda,
Hen Obergruppenführer
,” said Canaris, quietly.

Himmler squinted at him. “Well,
Herr Admiral?
”

The Admiral looked round, gathering the attention of his audience. “As you are all aware,” he began, “in some respects the British Intelligence Service has deteriorated since the last war. It cannot be denied that they are extremely efficient in securing certain types of information. For example, captured documents prove beyond dispute that their appreciations of our ‘Order of Battle' in various theatres of war are uncannily accurate. On the other hand, they seem to have very little idea as to what is going on inside Germany itself. Generally speaking, our internal security is highly satisfactory; but the British do possess a limited number of ace operators who, from time to time, have succeeded in penetrating some of our most closely guarded secrets, and my people tell me that Sallust is the most dangerous of them all.”

Himmler peered through his pince-nez at Grauber. “What do you know of this man?”

Grauber's pale fleshy face coloured as he replied: “
Herr Obergruppenführer
, I am surprised that the
Herr Admiral
should consider the case
of any individual enemy agent of sufficient importance to occupy the time of such a high-powered meeting as this.”

“I do so,” countered the Admiral, “for a perfectly adequate reason. The progress of our ‘K' series of new secret weapons has now reached a point at which their further development necessitates a much greater number of people having knowledge of them. This will automatically increase the danger of the enemy getting wind of these immensely important devices, by which we hope to bring the war with Britain to a successful conclusion without undertaking the hazards of an invasion. If a leak does occur, the British will obviously put their best men on to the job of securing for them the secrets of Peenemünde. Sallust speaks German as well as if he was born here, so all the odds are that he will be allocated to this task. Prevention being better than cure, I should like to have the
Herr Gruppenführer's
assurance that adequate precautions are being taken against him.”

Himmler looked at Grauber again. “I asked you what you knew of this man?”

Grauber shrugged his great shoulders. “The
Herr Admiral
exaggerates the danger. Sallust is certainly a man to watch. He is resolute and resourceful, and he has pulled off some very clever
coups
. So far he has always managed to elude us; but if he puts his nose inside Germany again, I'll get him.”

“Where is he now?”

“He was last reported to me as in Paris, but there is good reason to suppose that by now he is back in England.”

“He won't stay there long,” the Admiral put in. “He is far too active, and he is extraordinarily audacious. He even had the effrontery to beard
Reichmarshal
Goering at Karinhall, and got away with it; and I have good reason to believe that he completely fooled von Geisenheim, one of our astutest Generals, less than a month ago in Paris. If the English do learn of our ‘K' projects I will stake my reputation that they will send Sallust back into Germany.”

“I hope you are right,” Grauber laughed suddenly; it was a high, unpleasant laugh. “I have a personal score to settle with Mr. Sallust, and the one thing I am waiting for is for him to give me another chance to get my hands on him.”

“Why wait?” said Himmler sharply. “As the
Herr Admiral
says, prevention is better than cure. If this man is so dangerous he must be eliminated before he has a chance to do us any further mischief. Lure him here. Set a trap for him and kill him. See to that, Grauber, or I will make you answer for it personally. Within three months, I require a certificate of Sallust's death from you.”

When, just after midday, the meeting broke up, Grauber went up to Canaris and said:

“Would the
Herr Admiral
be so gracious as to spare me a few moments to discuss the matter in which he has displayed such interest? I refer to the trapping of Gregory Sallust.”

“But certainly, my dear
Herr Gruppenführer,
” the Admiral purred. “And now, if you like. You Gestapo men are so active that you leave us poor old fogies of the original Service little to do in these days. That, of course, is our excuse for having concerned ourselves in a matter which is really your affair; but to which you have obviously been too busy to attend, owing to the pressure of more important business.”

Grauber showed his uneven teeth in a false smile. “As things are, a certain amount of overlapping between our Departments is inevitable; but that will be rectified when the two services are brought under one head—as they are bound to be in due course. In the meantime, we always find your co-operation invaluable. May I show you the way to my office?”

“As I was instrumental in having a bomb removed from it last month, I have the good fortune to know it,” replied the Admiral imperturbably, “but I shall be delighted to accompany you there.”

Having exchanged these honeyed thrusts, the hulking Gestapo Chief and the delicate looking elderly sailor left the room side by side and walked down the long echoing corridor.

They were old enemies, and the rivalry between them was bitter in the extreme. Grauber, with Himmler's backing, had many times endeavoured to bring about the disbandment of the Admiral's department and the absorption of its best men into his own espionage machine, but the O.K.W. had always successfully resisted his attempts, and Canaris was confident that they would continue to do so.

He disliked Grauber personally, regarding him as a gutter-bred thug, typical of the worst elements that had lifted Hitler to power, and despised his brutal heavy-handed methods. He was not the least afraid of the Gestapo Chief, because he knew his own position was secure as long as von Rundstedt, von Räder, von Bock, von Geisenheim,
and half a dozen others like them remained at the head of the
Wehrmacht
, and he did not believe that Hitler could wage a successful war without them. In consequence, he took an impish delight in treading on Grauber's corns whenever the opportunity offered; and he had raised the question of Gregory Sallust that morning almost as much for the pleasure of making Grauber appear negligent in front of Himmler as because he honestly considered the matter was important.

Grauber not only hated but also secretly feared the little Admiral. He was shrewd enough to know that most of these top men of the High Command had something that the great majority of the Nazi leaders lacked, and could now never obtain.

Few of the Party chiefs had ever been outside Germany before their rise to power; they knew little of the customs and mentality of other races, and the bulk of their followers, young men brought up as fanatics in the Nazi tradition and not even allowed to read the true histories of the countries with which Germany had gone to war, were abysmally ignorant of every type of thought that animated human endeavour outside their own political creed.

The Generals and the Admirals, on the other hand, had, as young men, travelled freely before the First World War, and, as they were drawn from Germany's upper classes, had competed at horse shows, sailed their yachts, hunted, gambled and shot on the most friendly terms with their opposite numbers in Britain, France and the United States. They were, moreover, infinitely better educated, as they had been free of all the world's literature in the days before the Nazis had banned a great part of the human race's most important contributions to religion, history, philosophy and ethics.

In consequence, the wisened little Admiral and his middle-aged cronies were far better qualified to understand the enemy's mentality, and invariably made much shrewder appreciations of their future intentions than Grauber's young thugs were able to furnish for him, despite his constant urging of them to apply ice-baths, hot irons and thumbscrews to anyone even remotely suspected of possessing useful information. And Grauber always had an uneasy feeling that one day the Admiral would show up the shortcomings of the Gestapo Foreign Department U.A.–I so blatantly that in a fit of cold unforgiving rage Himmler would consign its Chief to Dachau.

However, Grauber was far too clever to allow his personal feelings about his rival to prevent his making use of him whenever he felt that he could do so without unfortunate repercussions; and now, having reached his own handsome office, which was only a few doors away from Himmler's, he seated the Admiral in a comfortable armchair, gave him one of his own genuine Havana cigars, lit it, and said:

“It is our mutual misfortune,
Herr Admiral
, that there are times when our interests are not altogether identical, but this is happily not one of them. No one could be more anxious to put Sallust out of the way for good and all than I am myself, but it is you who have taken the initiative in this matter, so I do hope that I may count on your assistance.”

“Assuredly, my dear
Herr Gruppenführer
, assuredly,” agreed the Admiral, puffing contentedly at the long cigar. “Although, of course, my little organisation has nothing like the ramifications of your own, and I don't suppose for one moment that there is any really worthwhile help that I can give you.”

“You can tell me what you know of Sallust?”

“That would, I am sure, be no more than a repetition of the data that is already in your own files and, unlike yourself, I have never had the questionable advantage of making personal contact with the fellow.” Canaris shifted his glance maliciously to Grauber's pebble-filled left eye-socket, knowing perfectly well that the original eye had been bashed out by Gregory Sallust with the blunt end of an automatic.

Grauber flushed, but went on persistently: “Nevertheless, you may have picked up something about him that I have not, so I would like to hear your version of his activities.”

“Very well then. It fills many pages, so I will give only a résumé and you can stop me at any point on which you require further information. Sallust comes of good middle-class stock, but his parents were only moderately well off and both of them died when he was quite young. He was an imaginative and therefore troublesome boy and after only two and a half terms was expelled for innumerable breaches of discipline from his public school, Dulwich College. With the idea of taming him, his uncle sent him as a cadet to H.M.S.
Worcester
. The freer life seems to have suited him, but again, owing to his refractory nature, he was never made a Petty Officer, as they term their Prefects. On leaving he did not go to sea, because he did not consider that such a career offered a sufficiently remunerative future. Instead he used a portion of his patrimony to give himself a year on the Continent. He has a quite exceptional flair for languages so he could soon speak German and French like a native. He was still at an age when he ought to have been at school, but he was already his own master and a handsome, precocious young blackguard. The women adored him and he had an insatiable curiosity about the night life, both high and low, of all the cities he visited, so there wasn't much he hadn't done by the time the war broke out and he returned to England.”

Canaris paused for a moment, then went on: “He got a commission at once in a Territorial Field Artillery Regiment, and in due course was
sent to France. At the age of twenty-one he was serving on the staff of the Third Army. At the battle of Cambrai he was wounded and carries the scar to this day; it lifts the outer corner of his left eyebrow, giving him a slightly satanic appearance. He showed great gallantry at the time he was wounded and was given the M.C.

“After the war he took up journalism; not regular work, but unusual assignments that took him abroad again. As a special correspondent he saw the high spots of the Graeco-Turkish war of nineteen nineteen, and the Russo-Polish war of nineteen twenty. Then he spent a lot of time in Central Europe, studying the development of the new states that emerged from the Versailles and Trianon Treaties—Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and so on. It was through his articles on such subjects, I believe, that he came into touch with that formidable old rascal Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust.”

Grauber's solitary eye flickered slightly and he suddenly sat forward. “So you know about him, do you? My compliments,
Herr Admiral;
he keeps himself so much in the background that I thought hardly anyone here had the least idea of the power he wields behind the scenes on every major problem concerning the British Empire.”

“Oh, yes, I know about him.” The Admiral's thin mouth twisted into a cynical smile. “He took seven thousand marks off me at baccarat one night at Deauville in nineteen twenty-four, drank me under the table afterwards and sent the money back next morning with a charming little note to the effect that, seeing the poor state of Germany's post-war finances, he did not feel it fair to take such a sum off one of her secret agents at a single sitting. You can repeat that story if you like. I have often related it as a lesson in good manners, to my subordinates.”