Come into my Parlour (39 page)

“How on earth did you get hold of that?” Gregory asked, his claustrophobia temporarily forgotten.

“It was quite simple, my dear Watson,” grinned Grauber, evidently pleased at his ability to quote from an English author. “There is in Leningrad an old woman whose mother was a German, and who was herself once married to a German commercial traveller. She is now a charwoman at the Lubianka. It is not difficult for her, each morning when she cleans out the hall, to get a glance at the register and make a mental note of the names of those who have been brought in during the previous day and night. In that way we often obtain early information about agents of ours who have had the misfortune to be caught. We then have a chance of isolating others working in the same cell before the
Ogpu
can get on to them and pull them in.”

“Most interesting,” murmured Gregory. “Do go on.”

“For such a very fat fish—or perhaps I should say a lean-jawed dangerous pike—like yourself, I felt that it would be well worth staying on for a few days to see if I could find out a little more about what you had been up to. Naturally I put through a priority call to all my agents in the city. English visitors to Leningrad are few in these days, so your activities there must have registered with quite a number of Russians; and soon little bits and pieces began to come in. I learned that you had arrived from Moscow by aircraft in the early hours of Sunday the twentieth and that you had spent the day at the Astoria Officers' Club. Then, that in the middle of the night a certain Colonel Gudarniev had arrived and carried you off somewhere. It was he, too, who a few hours later handed you over at the Lubianka for incarceration.”

Gregory breathed again. It seemed that Grauber did not, after all, know of their interviews with Marshal Voroshilov.

The steward came in at that moment and began to lay the two narrow tables for dinner. Grauber took from him one of the bottles of champagne and, opening it, filled the three glasses. Raising his, he said, “Well, here's to a safe voyage!”

“Yes, here's to it,” agreed Gregory, whose dominating thought now was to get safely out of these close, oppressive surroundings which seemed to him to be pregnant with a subtle menace.

“May you die gasping for breath,” said Kuporovitch, his blue eyes fixed malevolently on Grauber. Then he took a long pull at his champagne.

“May you die praying for death,” replied Grauber, taking another swig at his.

The steward produced in turn caviare rolled in slices of smoked salmon, mushroom soup, salmi of duck, an
omelette au kirsch
and chicken livers in bacon on toast. Having for the past three days existed on the meagre prisoners' fare of the Lubianka, Gregory and Stefan did ample justice to this feast. During it Grauber made no further mention of his activities in Leningrad and his guests tactfully forbore to question him. Having cleared away, the steward set one of the many thousands of bottles of Martell's “Cordon Bleu” that the Germans had looted out of France on the table, and discreetly withdrew.

While they were eating, the submarine's engines had stopped and started for varying periods as she cautiously nosed her way along. The good food and wine had fortified Gregory sufficiently for him to put the idea of their running on to a shoal temporarily out of his mind, and as the
Gruppenführer
poured out three large portions of the excellent old brandy, he said:

“You were telling us about the achievement of your organisation in Leningrad; do please continue.”

Grauber wiped his little pursed-up mouth on a napkin and resumed, in his high-pitched voice:

“One of my people is a mechanic in the garage at which the police cars of the Lubianka are serviced. It is not difficult for him to get the times and jobs on which the Black Marias are booked out. An order to pick up at the Lubianka and drive to an airfield is an unusual assignment. From a man on the airfield I learnt that a ‘plane was to leave tonight for Irkutsk, the capital of Siberia. That, too, is most unusual. I recalled that you, Mr. Sallust, are an Englishman, and that the General here had been consigned to the Lubianka under an English name. Britain is now an ally of the Soviet Union. It seemed to me that if two Englishmen had been caught poking their noses in where they were not wanted it might occur to the Russians to send them to Siberia. They would be out of the way there and incapable of doing any harm; but if the British created trouble about them they could easily be produced with appropriate apologies later. I put a few of my best men on to hold up the Black Maria at a quiet spot just outside the city, and there you are!”

“It was a peach of a job,” murmured Gregory. “And your analysis was one hundred per cent correct. We were trying to get details of the latest Soviet tanks and they caught us at it. The situation was tricky for them as we had been sponsored by the British Embassy. Very unorthodox, and all that, but I don't need to tell you how such things are done. Anyway, we were rumbled almost immediately we arrived and that produced rather a delicate situation. Naturally the Russians thought twice about shooting us, from fear of a political come-back, so they decided to put us in cold storage in Siberia until they found out if the British meant to make a fuss or thought it more discreet to let sleeping dogs lie. Anyhow, I do congratulate you on having got into the minds of the Russians so extraordinarily well.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sallust.” Grauber bowed ironically. “However, I must confess that I find it a little difficult to commiserate with you on your demotion.”

“I don't quite get you,” said Gregory.

“Do you not?” The
Gruppenführer
leaned forward and his voice came like a lash. “You have the impudence to tell me that you came to Russia to ascertain the details of the latest Soviet tanks. Since when has Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust sent you abroad on such smalltime stuff? You, an ace operative working outside the British Secret Service and reporting direct to a man who has immediate access to the War Cabinet! No, no, you were sent to Russia to bag far higher game; and I can tell you what it was.”

“If you think that, do.” Gregory laughed, feeling confident that his enemy could not possibly know, and was about to try a clever bluff on him.

“All right, I'll tell you.” Grauber took a gulp of his brandy and sat back. “Your War Office, whose intelligence regarding Russia is about as useful as a sun-helmet in the Alps, believes that the Soviet Armies are already exhausted and due to disintegrate any day now. Sir Pellinore, who has a better grasp of
geopolitik
than a dozen of your Generals, has his doubts about that. He sent you to Russia in order that you might produce for him an unbiassed appreciation of the Soviets' powers of resistance. Am I not right?”

Gregory had now become intensely alert. After many weeks during which he had drunk only very limited quantities of alcohol, the champagne that he had had with his meal had affected him much more than it would normally have done, yet no more than enough to put his claustrophobia out of his mind and make him feel on the top of his form. He thought that Grauber's guess had been a mighty shrewd one, but not outstandingly remarkable in view of the able brain that he knew lay behind the smooth forehead of the sharp-nosed pasty-faced man
opposite to him. The tank story was clearly too thin to hold water, so he decided to give his opponent the point, and murmured with a shrug:

“Oh well, I don't mind admitting that I was asked to keep my eyes open and have a general look round.”

“You are going to admit a lot more than that, my friend, before you're very much older. We shall save time if I prompt you a little. Sir Pellinore propounded three questions and asked you to try to provide the answers to them.”

At this smooth announcement Gregory felt as though a bucket of ice-cold water had suddenly been poured without warning down his spine. His eyes never flickered but his hands clenched spasmodically under the table as Grauber went on:

“Those questions were, One: Can the Soviets train their reserves of man-power quickly enough for them to be of any value to them? Two: What is the real state of Stalin's health? Three: How much territory can they afford to give up before their resources become inadequate to support their armies in the field?”

Gregory's brain was racing. He could understand perfectly well how, with the details garnered from a score of different sources, the Gestapo Chief had succeeded in catching them, but he did not see how he could possibly have become aware of these private instructions issued in London. Making a great effort to conceal the agitation he was now feeling, he answered lightly:

“My dear
Herr Gruppenführer
, those are things that lots of us would like to know.”

“I have formed my own impressions and it will be interesting to see if yours tally with them.”

“I'm afraid mine aren't worth very much. You see, I had hardly had a chance to form any before I was caught out, and bunged into the Lubianka.”

“One can form extremely valuable impressions in a very short time, if only one has the good fortune to contact the right person.”

“So that was it,” thought Gregory. “Thank God, anyhow, that he did not get his information through a leak in London. He knows that we saw Voroshilov and it is from the same source that he learned what we were after.” Next moment Grauber confirmed his idea, by saying:

“While you were in the Lubianka, Marshal Voroshilov visited the prison on two consecutive nights. On both occasions you had interviews with him lasting well over an hour. During those conversations you must have picked up quite a lot of interesting material, and I want it.”

Gregory breathed again. Evidently Grauber did not know that
while still free men they had visited the Marshal at his flat. He took a sip of his brandy, and shrugged.

“You should know better than I do that interviewing officers do not give away things to prisoners. We were simply being grilled by the Marshal and we did not learn a single thing.”

“Ah, but what of the things you learnt before you were arrested? You see, I know the charge upon which you were confined. Special precautious were taken to guard you, and to prevent your talking even to your warders, because it was known that you had gained possession of Soviet military secrets of the greatest importance.”

“What nonsense! We'd had no chance to find out anything. We had been in Leningrad less than twenty-four hours when we were arrested, and during the whole of that time we were confined to the Astoria Officers' Club. We were only pulled in because they got some stupid idea that I was a German. But you know how suspicious the Russians are of all foreigners, and if they did take any special precautions to guard us, no doubt that was the reason.”

Grauber leaned forward and the steely note of menace again crept into his voice. “Do not insult my intelligence by suggesting that Marshal Voroshilov would devote his precious time to interrogating personally a prisoner who was merely suspected of being a German. You are going to tell me what you discovered, and the sooner you decide to do so the better.”

Gregory was puzzled as to how Grauber could have found out about the questions when he did not appear to know anything about the answers to them. If the one piece of information had been secured from somebody close to the Marshal the rest should have followed. But, however that might be, it seemed that he knew nothing of the all-important private interview and was now reduced to guessing; so Gregory decided that the time had come to dig his toes in.

“I'm afraid you're in on a poor wicket,” he said slowly. “If we had had a little more time to get going before they pulled us in we might have something that it would be worth your while to screw out of us, but as it is——”

“I want the truth about their reason for pulling you in,” snarled Grauber. “And by God I'm going to have it. If not now, when we get back to Germany.”

His threat conjured up in both Gregory and Stefan's minds vague but terrible pictures of the ordeals to which they might be subjected in some Gestapo torture chamber; but, as if in answer to their thoughts, Grauber went on, with a malevolent chuckle:

“I can do better than to get the half-crazy gibberings of a pain-maddened brain out of you, too. I am convinced that you found out
the answers to those three questions. Their value to Germany is immense, and I mean to have a clear, coherent statement from you, unbefogged by false confessions and a confused welter of details extracted piecemeal under torture.”

They stared at him in surprise and the same idea occurred to them simultaneously. After a second, Gregory decided that, in order to learn the worst, it would be worth voicing it, and said as casually as he could: “So you've improved on your old methods, eh? And now use the Russian Truth drug.”

“The Truth drug!” Grauber hunched his great shoulders with a high-pitched laugh. “It has never been proved that the Russians have it themselves yet. They often dope their prisoners before a trial; but in my opinion it is just a clever Bolshevik lie put out for its mental effect on the prisoner. They give him a shot of something that makes him groggy and the poor fool is hypnotised into thinking that it is useless to conceal the truth. No, when we get back to Germany I can produce a far more certain method of ensuring that you tell me the whole story without any frills, while in full possession of your right mind.”

“
If
we get back to Germany, you mean,” Kuporovitch put in acidly. “Your captain hasn't even dared to dive yet, because he knows that the water is so shallow. We may be spotted at any time by a Soviet aircraft.”

“Not in this weather,” hastily replied Grauber, in an effort to reassure himself. “With snow falling, visibility from aircraft is absolutely nil.”

“All the same, the Gulf of Finland is stiff with Soviet warships.”

“The chances of our running into one are very small; and again, if we did, the low visibility would help us. The
Kapitänleutnant
got me safely into Leningrad ten days ago during the first snow; there is no reason why he should not get me out.”