Codeword Golden Fleece (22 page)

‘Stop the barges!’ echoed the Duke, jumping to his feet with—for him—a most unusual display of excitement. ‘By God! Marie Lou has hit it!’

‘No, no,’ Jan laughed kindly. ‘Brave and resourceful as you are, an attempt to blow up the Iron Gates would prove beyond your powers. For that two or three score of skilled miners would be needed, and it would take weeks of drilling before a chain of charges large enough to be effective could be laid. Such extensive preparations could not possibly be concealed from the authorities, and you would be arrested long before you were ready to bring off your coup.’

‘Yes, Jan, that’s true enough,’ de Richleau replied with a smile. ‘But I was still thinking in terms of economic warfare rather than military sabotage. Marie Lou’s “gunpowder plot” is no wild flight of the imagination, although it is more than a handful of us could tackle. It was her suggestion of trying to stop the oil barges coming up the river that gave me another idea. This is a case where stray bits of information gathered all over the place come in useful. I happen to know that the barges are not owned by either the Rumanian State Railway or the combine. They are the property of an independent company controlled by a rich Rumanian named Teleuescu. The Astro-Romano Company may be outside our financial orbit, but I believe we could acquire a majority holding in the barge company for a hundredth part of what it would cost to corner Rumania’s oil.’

Simon’s dark eyes were flickering wildly. ‘That’s it!’ he said. ‘That’s it! How many have they got? Two hundred and fifty perhaps; wouldn’t be more. But they’re big things. Probably cost five thousand pounds apiece to build. It may cost us a million to get control, but we could easily raise that.’

‘Four million bucks would be no more than any of us would give for a shoe-shine, compared with the sums the British Government will have to shell out in this war,’ added Rex. ‘It would be worth fifty times that to them if they could get a stranglehold on Hitler’s supplies of Rumanian oil.’

‘Make a fortune on the deal if we wanted to,’ shrugged Simon, ‘by selling out to them later. But I’m sure none of us wants a penny profit. We’re simply out to make our money fight.’

All of them agreed with him, and, although they considered rubber, copper, tin, sulphur, mercury, jute and numerous other commodities essential for war purposes, they could hit on no
scheme liable to deal Hitler so severe a blow as the Duke’s proposal of attempting to gain control of the Danube barges.

After some discussion it was decided that no time must be lost. Few private individuals possessed the resources to make such an attempt, even if they had the same idea, and if the British Government did for once cut red tape to get in first, so much the better; but similar thoughts might be simmering in some of the ugly, shaven heads poised above desks in the Wilhelmstrasse, and when they once got on to a thing the Germans could be pretty quick movers. There was no necessity for the whole party to remain with Richard and Marie Lou, so it was agreed that Simon and Rex should leave that night for Rumania in order to get in touch with Monsieur Teleuescu as soon as possible.

‘It may take a week or two to fix the finance we’ll need,’ Rex remarked.

‘Um,’ Simon nodded. ‘But, in the meantime, if Teleuescu’s willing to deal, we’ll do our damnedest to persuade him to give us an option; so as to tie things up and stall off any enemy bidders who might come into the market later on with the same idea.’

‘Do try to let us know how things are going,’ said Marie Lou.

Rex grinned. ‘We certainly will if we can, but it may take us several days to get anywhere at all; and the bombing and general upset of war is bound to send the Polish mails a bit haywire, so you mustn’t be surprised if you don’t hear from us for a while.’

‘If you’re going to mention this scheme on paper we must have a codeword for it,’ said the Duke quickly.

‘Sure,’ nodded Rex. ‘What’ll it be? Back home folks sometimes talk of oil as Black Gold. Could we use that any way?’

De Richleau shook his head. ‘The whole object of a codeword is to conceal any idea of an operation, so it should not have even the remotest inference to the thing it is designed to cover. Something like Table, Bumblebee or Old Boot would serve admirably.’

‘But that’s so tame,’ objected Marie Lou, ‘and if Lucretia is to put up part of the money “Gold” is so suitable, since she was known in Spain as “The Golden Spaniard”.’

‘Don’t like “Gold” alone,’ Simon muttered; ‘too near the knuckle, and if we referred to it in a letter some snooper might think we were doing an illegal deal in bullion. I’ve nothing against “Golden Something-or-other”, though, as the inference
would be much too obscure for anyone to tumble to it that oil barges were meant by that.’

‘I am against any inference at all, myself,’ smiled the Duke, but if you’re all keen on the picturesque, as you’re going on a quest to Rumania, how about “Golden Fleece”?’

‘Grand!’ ‘Lovely!’ ‘Oh, splendid!’ came a chorus of approval; but Simon added: ‘What’s going on a quest to Rumania to do with the Golden Fleece? Thought that was a Greek legend?’

‘It is,’ agreed de Richleau, ‘but there is good reason to believe that most legends are woven about a kernel of true history. In any case, it is a fact that the Danube and other Rumanian rivers carry a light deposit of alluvial gold down from the mountains. This is still collected in small quantities by the peasants through the unusual process of pegging sheepskins fleece uppermost on to the beds of the rivers. During the course of months, thousands of gallons of water and much silt are washed through the fleece; the heavier particles of gold sinking to the bottom become entangled in the fine mesh of wool, and when the skins are dragged up again the fleece is powdered with gold dust. It may well have been such a skin that the Greek hero, Jason, went in search of and eventually brought back to Greece from some remote Rumanian village.’

‘That’s mighty interesting,’ grinned Rex, ‘and Oil—Gold—River—Barges all tie up pretty neatly together, but I’d eat my hat if anyone could tumble to the meaning we’re proposing to hook on old Jason’s travels.’

And so it was agreed that this great attempt to sabotage Hitler’s oil supply should be referred to between the friends as ‘Operation—Golden Fleece’.

The only bright spot that came to lighten the tension they felt that evening was Richard’s regaining consciousness. He was too weak to speak, but his eyes opened, and it was clear that he recognised Marie Lou. Apart from this, the imminence of their separation and their uncertainty as to what the future might hold weighed upon them all. Simon, going into the library to see if he could find any material on Rumania, inadvertently came upon Jan and Lucretia silently embraced and clinging to each other as if they never meant to let go. They were so absorbed that they did not hear him, and he softly tiptoed out again. Except during brief intervals of general conversation, Marie Lou’s thoughts were entirely given to Richard, and the continued uncertainty as to whether he would recover. The Duke was almost
equally worried about their invalid and depressed in addition by the thought that Rex, Simon and Jan were all leaving them.

They drank champagne again with their dinner, but for once it failed to enliven their spirits. Shortly afterwards Jan said his last farewell to Lucretia, then the others gathered in the hall to wish him luck wherever the war might send him, and a safe return. At ten o’clock the Duke accompanied Simon and Rex to the Praga station, from which the trains run to Rumania. During the past few days most of the foreigners who did not intend to remain in Warsaw had succeeded in getting away, but the station was still packed with people. Many of them were reservists belatedly arriving from country districts and now passing through the capital to join their regiments. Simon had found it quite impossible to secure sleepers that afternoon, so the two travellers had to take their place in the crush and, having scrambled on to the train, were lucky to get a place in the lobby of a restaurant car, where they could sit on their suitcases. When, at last, the long train had slowly pulled out, de Richleau was unable to find a taxi to take him home; so he set out to walk, and, just as he reached the great Alexander Bridge which spans the wide Vistula in the centre of the capital, the sirens sounded.

Temporarily he took cover in a newly erected air-raid shelter and soon dropped into conversation with two Polish Artillery officers, who had also taken refuge there. Already there were rumours in Warsaw that things at the front were not going too well, and the two were so depressed that they now scarcely bothered to hide their gloomy forebodings. They knew nothing of what was happening on sectors other than their own, but they had been stationed at a frontier town in the Corridor at the outbreak of war. The German attack had come without warning towards the end of the short summer night, and had taken everybody by complete surprise. In a few minutes showers of incendiary bombs from the enemy planes had turned the barracks into a roaring hell of flame. Many of the Polish troops had been trapped before they had time even to leave their beds, and hundreds of the horses had been roasted alive, because the flames were so fierce that they could not be got out of the stables. The first treacherous blow had proved so severe that the units concerned had never recovered from it. A German tank attack had caught them still in a state of hopeless chaos; so that, after firing a few sporadic rounds from individual guns that they had managed to salvage from the burning sheds, they had been
forced to beat a retreat. To add to their fury and consternation, there had proved to be many fifth columnists in the town, as its population was mainly of German origin; so that, as they hurried through it, they had been sniped at from scores of windows. Having lost most of their guns and horses, they could do nothing but continue the retreat until by a lucky chance they had come upon a train in a wayside-station, and a party of them had decided to board it in the hope that, on reaching Warsaw, they could be reposted to a regiment which was still in good shape and had adequate weapons.

It was a pathetic story of gallant men sacrificed in vain by the lack of alertness in an ancient and creaking Military High Command. As the Duke had supposed, the Polish Generals had not the faintest conception of what they were up against. While even the more intelligent civilians had realised that war was imminent, these old-fashioned warriors had not so much as bothered to order adequate precautions to be taken against surprise attacks on their frontiers. He thought it certain that they still had little idea of the terrible urgency of modern war and were probably at the moment engaged in planning some vast cavalry manœuvre, with forces which were rapidly ceasing to exist under the relentless pressure of the Nazi armour. When the raid had ceased he sadly made his way back to the Lubieszow mansion.

The news that trickled through during the next few days was far from reassuring. Even by giving credence only to the least wild rumours and considering them both in relation to one another and the light of general probability, the Duke became aware that three great German armies had broken through the hopelessly vulnerable Polish frontier line to a depth that now made it irreparable. By the 5th of September the enemy had captured the two important towns of Grudziacz and Bydgoszcz, and had succeeded in severing the Polish Corridor, thus linking their main forces with those operating from East Prussia and cutting off an entire Polish army in the north. It seemed that the best hope of the Polish General Staff now lay in withdrawing their forces to Poland’s only practical defence line, which ran from Grodno in the north, along the River Narew to Warsaw, and then south through Kielce and Cracow. This would mean the sacrifice of nearly a third of Poland, but it would bring about the enormous reduction in their front from 1,200 to 400 miles and give them both a secure flank in the south, based on the Carpathians, and a river line in the north on which to fight. De Richleau could only
hope that sense would prevail over sentiment and that the Poles would pull out while there was still time to save the bulk of their army from annihilation.

Meanwhile, the wider situation had begun to clarify. After an agonising wait of twenty-four hours France had followed Britain in declaring war on Germany. The Dominions had all pledged their unlimited support to Britain. All too belatedly, that grand old warrior, Winston Churchill, having warned his country of its impending peril for so long in vain, was taken into the Cabinet to fill his old post of First Lord of the Admiralty and Mr. Anthony Eden was rehabilitated by being given the Dominions Office. Italy, Turkey, Eire, Russia, Japan, Rumania and the United States had all in turn affirmed their neutrality; so, for the moment, the configuration was confined to the Polish and Franco-German fronts on land; but by the middle of the week the Royal Air Force had undertaken a spectacular raid against the German Fleet in its North Sea ports, and the Nazi U-boats had scored first blood in an unrestricted ‘sink at sight’ campaign by sending the great liner
Athenia
to the bottom with many hundred souls.

Richard had passed his crisis and was now making good progress in the circumstances. Marie Lou remained almost constantly at his bedside, and Lucretia, in an endeavour to smother her anxiety about Jan, had thrown herself heart and soul into local A.R.P. work; so the Duke was perforce much alone.

To everyone’s dismay the weather remained fine, and Warsaw woke each morning from its fitful sleep to skies of cloudless blue. The Polish roads were notoriously bad, and at this season the first autumn rains were due. Had they come as expected the armoured spearheads of the Nazis, which were penetrating ever deeper into the country and now appearing at most unexpected places many miles behind the theoretical front line, would have been halted, or at least materially slowed down; but all the masses said in the Polish churches for a change of weather proved unavailing, and the Nazis took full advantage of the cloudless nights to hurl down fire and ruin on the virtually undefended capital.

The inhabitants stood up to it well, continuing to dig frantically during the daytime at the earthworks which were now being thrown up round the city, and spending half their nights rescuing air-raid casualties from the rapidly increasing areas of devastation. De Richleau and Borki went out after every raid with Lucretia,
and it seemed that half the population was also in the streets; even old men like Jan’s butler and groom insisted on coming out to lend a hand with the casulaties whenever a nearby building was hit.