They Used Dark Forces (55 page)

‘Sit down, both of you; and you, Kaindl, listen carefully to what I have to say.'

When they were seated, he went on, ‘As one of my fellow pilots in our fighting days I know that I can trust you, and I am about to confide to you a secret that might land us both in a packet of trouble should it ever get out. We all know that the war is lost, although it is treason to say so. During the past six months scores of people in bars and tram cars have been picked up by the Gestapo and shot for saying no more than that. But we must face facts, and I've thought of a way by which there is just a chance that we may hasten the end of this senseless slaughter.

‘Herr Protze here, and his friend the Turk, claim to have occult powers; so I intend to send them to the Führer, as there is just a possibility that they may be able to influence him into asking for an armistice. But for two criminals on parole to gain the Führer's confidence would be far from easy; so I mean to practise a deception upon him. Herr Protze will become a member of my personal staff with the rank of Major. The Turk will accompany him as his batman.

‘Now, the only danger to my plan is from people who saw the two of them perform for us last night. Have you any idea how many of them know that Herr Protze and the Turk are on parole from Sachsenhausen?'

Kaindl raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘None of them,
Herr Reichsmarschall
. I naturally supposed you would not wish it to be known that they were convicts; so I have told no-one from where they came.'

‘That is excellent. Then you have only to put it about among the household that Herr Protze is one of my staff officers who has been for a long time abroad. You can explain the fact that he was confined to his room with his man for the past week by saying that they had to be for many hours together to carry
out their occult operations, and that they will continue to share a room while here for the same reason. Meanwhile, I'll see that it gets to the ears of all who dined with us last night that Herr Protze is in fact a Major of the Luftwaffe. You, too, can help in that.'

‘
Jawohl, Herr Reichsmarschall.
'

‘The next thing is uniforms. Get a tailor out here from Berlin first thing tomorrow morning and tell him that he must supply everything necessary within forty-eight hours. Finally there is the matter of instruction. You have not been with me very long, but long enough to have met most of the people at the Führer's H.Q. It is important that Herr Protze should be as fully informed about them as possible. He will be attached as an extra adjutant to General Koller. I will, of course, see Koller about that myself. But he will not be in our secret; and I shall not introduce his new adjutant to him until Major Protze has his uniform and you have given him some idea of the duties he will be expected to perform. Is that all clearly understood?'

‘
Jawohl, Herr Reichsmarschall
. You may rely on me to do my utmost to assist
Major
Protze in any way I can.'

Goering nodded. ‘Thank you, Kaindl. I felt sure I could. You may leave us now.'

The Colonel stood up, clicked his heels, bowed sharply from the waist and marched off down the long room.

When the door had closed behind him Gregory smiled and said, ‘My congratulations, Excellency, on the speed with which you have thought of a good way to put me in contact with the Führer in a respectable guise.'

After drawing heavily on a long cigar and exhaling the smoke, Goering replied, ‘It was the best plan I could think of, but I'm not altogether happy about it. We shall be gambling on your ability to act and talk like a staff officer.'

‘Oh, you needn't worry about that,' Gregory laughed. ‘But, unwittingly, you have demoted me. At home I have the rank of Wing Commander which, as you know, is the equivalent of Lieutenant-Colonel.'

‘Indeed!' Goering gave him a sharp glance. ‘How does that come about?'

‘It was simply a matter of convenience; so that I could be
usefully employed during the long spells I have spent in England between my missions.'

‘Where did you work?'

‘Air Ministry Intelligence,' lied Gregory smoothly. ‘There were lots of other fellows in it who, like myself, had no flying experience: lawyers, schoolmasters, journalists and so on.'

‘I see. Yes, that's the case with us, too; and why I can send you in without General Koller—who, by the by, is my Chief Liaison Officer at Führer H.Q.—or any of my other staff officers being surprised to learn that you have never seen active service with the Luftwaffe.'

‘I thought as much; but there remains one nasty snag. What am I supposed to have been doing all the five years the war has been on? It is going to be thought very strange that I won't have a single acquaintance in common with any of your other people. And I dare not lie by stating that I was in this or that department as it might easily emerge that I was not.'

For a moment Goering remained deep in thought, then he asked, ‘Do you know anything about pictures or
objets d'art
?'

‘As much as the average educated man, but not enough to discuss such matters with an expert.'

‘But you have travelled, I take it, and at one time or another visited most of the famous galleries?'

‘Oh yes. Florence, Madrid, Vienna, Munich, Brussels and the rest. I've been to nearly all of them more than once.'

‘Good. That's quite enough. Ever since 1940 I've had eight or ten men going round Europe for me, picking up these sort of things.' The Reichsmarschall waved a hand vaguely round, indicating the Gobelin tapestries on the walls and the Buhl cabinets filled with priceless Meissen. ‘You can have been one of them and spent most of the time in some of the remoter places, say Bulgaria and the Crimea. I've a splendid collection of jewelled ikons. You could have found a lot of those for me. But don't be too specific; give the idea that you were also on the lookout for Byzantine armour, silk Persian rugs and golden trinkets found in the tombs of ancient Greece. I've masses of all these things and you can spend a day or two examining and memorising some of them before you go to Berlin. If you had
been one of my collectors and I'd a personal regard for you, now we've been pushed out of all those countries from which I used to extract these little presents there would be nothing at all unnatural about my taking you on as an extra adjutant.'

Gregory nodded. ‘That will provide an excellent cover,
Herr Reichsmarschall
. It's quite certain that no-one at Führer H.Q. is going to ask me to give an expert's opinion on such things at a time like this. But it is going to be more than a few days before Malacou and I will be ready to go into action.'

‘Why?'

‘Because, having Kaindl, and later General Koller, brief me on the men we'll meet there is not enough. If we are to stand any chance at all of putting this over, we'll need the birth dates of as many as possible of them and all the particulars that can be raked up about their pasts. Malacou will draw their horoscopes while I digest all the down-to-earth stuff; but that will take time.'

‘How long?'

‘A fortnight at least. Let's say till the end of the month.'

‘Very well. My Intelligence Bureau has dossiers on all these people. I'll have them sent to you. And from now on, of course, you are free of the house. The Turk had better continue to have his meals in your room; but as soon as you have your uniform you can have yours in the mess, then you'll get to know my officers. When I'm dining at home I'll ask you to my parties, as the greater number of important people you meet and talk with the better. Now; is there anything else?'

‘No, Excellency.' Gregory stood up. ‘You seem to have thought of everything. First thing tomorrow, or today rather, I'll get down to work.'

In the morning Kaindl produced a tailor, who measured Gregory for his uniforms; then he spent the best part of the rest of the day going round the house. By blackmail, bribery and outright theft Goering's agents had filled it with treasures the value of which it was impossible to estimate, but they would certainly have fetched many millions of pounds. Museums and palaces all over Europe, and some even in Germany, had on one pretext or another been looted of old masters, statuary, gold altar pieces, gem-encrusted crucifixes, jade carvings,
precious porcelain, jewelled snuff-boxes and thousands of rare books that were housed in a great, domed library, making it the most magnificent art collection in the world ever assembled by any private individual. In five or six hours Gregory had time to examine only a tithe of it, but he promised himself many more hours of similar enjoyment before leaving Karinhall to again risk his life.

That evening the dossiers arrived and the following morning, with Kaindl's help, he started to study them, while Malacou took notes of birth days and important dates in the lives of those people who, since January 16th when Hitler had made his H.Q. in the bunkers under the Reich Chancellery, had been his most frequent companions.

Martin Bormann, it emerged, was now forty-five. He had been an assistant to Rudolf Hess and first came into prominence as the head of the Party Chancery; but he had won a high position in Hitler's favour by becoming his successful financial adviser. Subservient, self-effacing, but extraordinarily watchful and competent, he had gradually made himself indispensable and assumed the role of confidential secretary. As Hitler took special pride in his abilities as an architect, Bormann had won further favour by supervising for him the building of his mountain palace, the
Berghof
, at Obersalzberg. Then, after Hess's flight to Scotland, Bormann had succeeded in slipping into his old chief's shoes as Controller of the
Partei
, a post which, while not making him as conspicuous as the other Nazi leaders, gave him immense hidden power. He was loathed by the others, who realised his insatiable ambition, but he had now achieved a position in which they could not harm him and had to discuss their business with him before he would even arrange for them an interview with his master.

Dr. Josef Goebbels was the only one of the Nazi satraps who had even a working agreement with Bormann, and that only because both were intelligent and respected one another's capabilities to the extent of feeling it wiser not to quarrel openly. The little club-footed doctor was now forty-eight. He had been a star pupil at a Jesuit seminary, and had acquired an extraordinary ability to argue a case convincingly however dubious the facts on which it was based. Even after
the tide of Germany's defeat had clearly set in he had continued to persuade the greater part of the people that victory was still assured by the simple device of putting out in his broadcasts the same flagrant lies repeated again and again with conviction and vigour. Politically, he led the extreme Left of the Nazi Party. Privately, he led an unusual dual existence; for on the one hand he was a devoted family man with several children, while on the other it was well known that as Films came under his Ministry, no good-looking woman could get a leading part in a film unless she first agreed to sleep with him. He was unquestionably devoted to Hitler and was one of the few people still completely trusted by him.

Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz was another of those few and, now being close on seventy, was by some years the oldest of Hitler's courtiers. He had reached the top of his Service through a combination of being both a highly competent officer and a convinced Nazi. Wisely, he had refrained from mixing himself up in the political intrigues of the others and, as a hard, cold man, he had carried out without argument Hitler's wish that the war at sea should be waged with complete ruthlessness. The Army, Hitler had always distrusted and now hated; the Luftwaffe had failed so lamentably that he had come to despise its officers; the Navy alone, in his opinion, had never let him down; so Doenitz had become his favourite of all his Service Chiefs.

Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, aged sixty-three, had, from 1938 when Hitler had taken over as War Minister, deputised for him as Chief of the Armed Forces and was still his principal military adviser. Tall, distinguished-looking, correct, he was the lick-spittle to outlick all lick-spittles, and lacked even the courage to say a word in defence of his brother Generals when their troops were forced to abandon their positions on being attacked by overwhelming odds. In his dossier Gregory was amused to read that when, at last, Montgomery had broken out from the Normandy beachhead and von Rundstedt had reported what had happened, Keitel had wailed over the telephone, ‘Oh, what shall we do? What shall we do?' to which von Rundstedt had replied tersely, ‘Sue for peace, you bloody fools. Sue for peace. It is the only thing you can do.' And for
that, within the hour, on Keitel's reporting it to Hitler, Germany's greatest General had been sacked as G.O.C. West; although Hitler had seen no alternative to asking him to come back a few months later to launch the Ardennes offensive.

Under Keitel, Colonel-General Alfred Jodl, recovered from the wounds he had received when the bomb went off at Rastenburg, was again filling the role of expert on land strategy, and doubling up with him was the Panzer General, Guderian, whom Hitler had chosen as his latest Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht, not because of his undoubted ability but because he was hated and distrusted by all the other Generals.

On a lower strata, but wielding more influence because he was hand in glove with Bormann and Goebbels, was General Burgdorf—another toady. He was both Hitler's personal Wehrmacht adjutant and Chief of its Personnel Bureau.

The principal representatives of the Luftwaffe were Generals Karl Koller and Eckard Christian; the former an elderly, much harassed, long-suffering man; the latter a youngish, ambitious Nazi who had married one of Hitler's two women secretaries. But, as Hitler blamed the failure of the Luftwaffe on Goering, he regarded its officers with less rancour than those of the Army, and for his personal Luftwaffe adjutant, Colonel Nicolaus von Below, he had a high regard.