The Black Baroness Read online

  THE BLACK BARONESS

  Dennis Wheatley

  Edited by Miranda Vaughan Jones

  For

  the earliest Readers of my unpublished work

  CAPTAIN HUBERT STRINGER,

  COLONEL CHARLES BALFOUR-DAVEY, M.C.

  WING-COMMANDER SIR LOUIS GREIG,

  K.B.E., C.V.O., R.A.F.

  WING-COMMANDER L. C. DARVALL, M.C, R.A.F.

  and

  CAPTAIN PEVRIL WILLIAMS-PAWLETT, R.N.

  in order of their appearance on my war horizon.

  Contents

  Introduction

  1 Hitler’s Secret Weapon

  2 Fifth Column at Home

  3 The Rats of Norway

  4 Up Goes the Curtain

  5 Gregory Sallust Makes His Will

  6 Caught Red-handed

  7 ‘Think Fast, Herr Oberst-Baron’

  8 To Catch or Kill the King

  9 When Greek Meets Greek

  10 A Strange Armistice

  11 ‘He Who Fights and Runs Away’

  12 ‘Seek Out and Destroy the Enemy’

  13 The Enemy is Found

  14 The Hurricane Breaks

  15 Prison for the Killer

  16 The ‘Fury’ of Rotterdam

  17 Dark Days in Brussels

  18 The Cryptogram

  19 A Night of Terror

  20 Between Life and Death

  21 The Road to Paris

  22 The Assassin

  23 Poison

  24 Death in the Sunshine

  25 The Black Baroness

  A Note on the Author

  Introduction

  Dennis Wheatley was my grandfather. He only had one child, my father Anthony, from his first marriage to Nancy Robinson. Nancy was the youngest in a large family of ten Robinson children and she had a wonderful zest for life and a gaiety about her that I much admired as a boy brought up in the dull Seventies. Thinking about it now, I suspect that I was drawn to a young Ginny Hewett, a similarly bubbly character, and now my wife of 27 years, because she resembled Nancy in many ways.

  As grandparents, Dennis and Nancy were very different. Nancy’s visits would fill the house with laughter and mischievous gossip, while Dennis and his second wife Joan would descend like minor royalty, all children expected to behave. Each held court in their own way but Dennis was the famous one with the famous friends and the famous stories.

  There is something of the fantasist in every storyteller, and most novelists writing thrillers see themselves in their heroes. However, only a handful can claim to have been involved in actual daring-do. Dennis saw action both at the Front, in the First World War, and behind a desk in the Second. His involvement informed his writing and his stories, even those based on historical events, held a notable veracity that only the life-experienced novelist can obtain. I think it was this element that added the important plausibility to his writing. This appealed to his legions of readers who were in that middle ground of fiction, not looking for pure fantasy nor dry fact, but something exciting, extraordinary, possible and even probable.

  There were three key characters that Dennis created over the years: The Duc de Richleau, Gregory Sallust and Roger Brook. The first de Richleau stories were set in the years between the wars, when Dennis had started writing. Many of the Sallust stories were written in the early days of the Second World War, shortly before Dennis joined the Joint Planning Staff in Whitehall, and Brook was cast in the time of the French Revolution, a period that particularly fascinated him.

  He is probably always going to be associated with Black Magic first and foremost, and it’s true that he plugged it hard because sales were always good for those books. However, it’s important to remember that he only wrote eleven Black Magic novels out of more than sixty bestsellers, and readers were just as keen on his other stories. In fact, invariably when I meet people who ask if there is any connection, they tell me that they read ’all his books’.

  Dennis had a full and eventful life, even by the standards of the era he grew up in. He was expelled from Dulwich College and sent to a floating navel run school, HMS Worcester. The conditions on this extraordinary ship were Dickensian. He survived it, and briefly enjoyed London at the pinnacle of the Empire before war was declared and the fun ended. That sort of fun would never be seen again.

  He went into business after the First World War, succeeded and failed, and stumbled into writing. It proved to be his calling. Immediate success opened up the opportunity to read and travel, fueling yet more stories and thrilling his growing band of followers.

  He had an extraordinary World War II, being one of the first people to be recruited into the select team which dreamed up the deception plans to cover some of the major events of the war such as Operation Torch, Operation Mincemeat and the D-Day landings. Here he became familiar with not only the people at the very top of the war effort, but also a young Commander Ian Fleming, who was later to write the James Bond novels. There are indeed those who have suggested that Gregory Sallust was one of James Bond’s precursors.

  The aftermath of the war saw Dennis grow in stature and fame. He settled in his beautiful Georgian house in Lymington surrounded by beautiful things. He knew how to live well, perhaps without regard for his health. He hated exercise, smoked, drank and wrote. Today he would have been bullied by wife and children and friends into giving up these habits and changing his lifestyle, but I’m not sure he would have given in. Maybe like me, he would simply find a quiet place.

  Dominic Wheatley, 2013

  1

  Hitler’s Secret Weapon

  Although it was mid-March snow still capped the tops of the Norwegian mountains which stood out white and clear against a pale, frosty sky. But the sun shone in the valleys and dappled the wavelets of the greenish sea as the little Baltic tramp steamer puffed its way into Oslo Fjord.

  On the tramp’s foredeck a man and a woman sat in a pair of rickety old basket chairs that they had carried out from the tiny saloon. The woman was golden-haired and very beautiful. Her proud profile and the lazy grace with which she half-reclined in the easy chair marked her at once as an aristocrat. The man was a loose-limbed fellow in the late thirties; dark, lean-faced, and sinewy by nature, a recent bout of fever had given him an almost wolfish look, but it was relieved by a pair of smiling eyes and a cynical twist to his firm, strong mouth.

  The woman was the Countess von Osterberg or, since she preferred to be known by her maiden name, Erika von Epp. The man was Gregory Sallust or, as he preferred to be known by the name under which he was travelling, the Colonel-Baron von Lutz. It was March the 19th—six days since the Russo-Finnish War had ended and five days since they had escaped across the ice, which was beginning to break up in the Gulf of Finland, to the little tramp that was now just completing the first journey of the year south to her home port.

  For the first two days of the voyage they had lain in their narrow quarters almost comatose, gradually recovering from utter nervous and physical exhaustion; the result of the ten days’ ordeal through which they had passed before escaping from Herr Gruppenführer Grauber, the chief of the Gestapo Foreign Department, U.A.—I.

  From the third day they had staggered out on deck to continue their convalescence in the fresh air and wintry sunshine. Gradually they were getting back to normal, but they still spoke little and slept from dusk to dawn each night, just content to be in each other’s company.

  Had it not been for their third companion, the Bolshevik General, Stefan Kuporovitch, who had decided to shake the dust of the Soviet Union off his feet with them, they would have talked even less, but the Russian was a talkative person and he had passed through no such ordeal as theirs.

  It was he who had made arran
gements for the three of them with the captain of the little tramp, but as they had approached the coast of Norway they had realised that he could not enter another country without a passport. In consequence, he had been landed from the ship’s boat, in the early hours of that morning, on a desolate stretch of the Norwegian shore, with the understanding that if he could evade the police he was to meet the others in Oslo. So Erika and Gregory were at last alone.

  While the tramp chopped its way down the Baltic, they had avoided any discussion about the future. The war had reached a stalemate; for many months the British had appeared satisfied to blockade Germany, while the French accepted the Siegfried Line as impregnable and did not even attempt to test it by attacks in force, and Hitler seemed content to remain blockaded indefinitely, only playing upon the nerves of his opponents and neighbours by threatening a Blitzkrieg on the Balkans, the Low Countries and Scandinavia from week to week in rotation. It looked as though things might go on in that way for years; which was not a happy prospect for the two lovers in view of the fact that she was a German girl and he an Englishman.

  If Erika returned to Germany the Nazis would promptly execute her, but she refused to seek sanctuary in Britain or France, so her only course was to live in a neutral country where she might still work for Hitler’s overthrow. Gregory, on the other hand, was perfectly free to return to England although, as a lone wolf, working entirely outside the Secret Service, there was no compulsion for him to do so. But Erika knew her man; he would never be content to settle down with her in Norway or Sweden while his country was still fighting for its existence.

  With every mile that the tramp came nearer to its destination that thought had troubled them both more and more. They had been in love for over six months and when Erika could get a divorce from her husband they intended to get married. It seemed utterly tragic that now that they were free and together again they must part so soon.

  He had tried desperately hard to persuade himself that he was entitled to remain in Norway with her for a few weeks at least. Old Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust, who had sent him out on his strange mission, already knew the results of his wanderings, so there was no one to whom he felt bound to report. Even when he got home he might be kept kicking his heels for months before he was offered another job which really suited his unusual capabilities. Yet he knew that it was no good. Britain was at war and it was up to him to find a way of taking a new hand in the game without an hour’s unnecessary delay.

  ‘We should be in by about three o’clock,’ he murmured.

  She nodded. ‘Yes; but they may keep us hanging about for hours before they allow us ashore.’

  ‘That depends on how soon we can get hold of your friend at the German Legation, and how long it takes him to secure entry permits for us.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a bore our passports not having Norwegian visas but I’m sure Uli von Einem will soon fix matters up.’

  ‘I only hope to goodness he doesn’t happen to know that you’re wanted by the Gestapo or that the real Colonel Baron von Lutz was killed while resisting arrest by the Nazis last November.’

  Erika shrugged. ‘As I said last night, it’s not easy for any legation to keep track of what has happened to eighty million Germans while a war is going on and, even if they do know, they can’t do anything to us while we’re on a neutral ship. We’ll just have to think up some other method of getting ashore or transfer to a ship that will take us round to a Swedish port and try our luck there.’

  ‘I can always get in touch with the British Legation,’ Gregory said slowly, ‘and I might be able to wangle some way of getting you into Norway; but if I can continue to pose as a German it will prevent a lot of unwelcome speculation as to why we’re always together while we are in Oslo.’

  She turned suddenly and looked him full in the face. ‘For how long is that to be, Gregory?’

  ‘Not very long, darling—worse luck,’ he replied quietly. ‘You know how things are, so we needn’t go over it all and add to what we’re feeling. As soon as we land I must find out when there’s a plane that will take me home, so we’ve now got only a few days together at the most.’

  Erika could have screamed with the frightful injustice of it all. Through his crazy ambition this mountebank, Hitler, had sown the seeds of misery, poverty and death broadcast throughout half the world. The foul crop was barely visible as yet, but in time it would strangle innumerable beautiful things, and already the shoots of the filthy weed were forcing apart the roots of countless loves and friendships. But she was a splendidly courageous person so she did not seek by a single word to dissuade Gregory from his decision, and her intense distress was shown only by a slight moistening of her very beautiful blue eyes.

  An hour later the tramp had berthed and by six o’clock Uli von Einem had joined them with papers enabling them to go ashore. He was a thin, fair man, who in the past had been one of Erika’s innumerable admirers, and he possessed all the tact of a born diplomat. Privately, he thought it a strange business that his lovely friend should arrive, without even a beauty-box for baggage, on a tramp steamer that had come from Leningrad, but the one lesson that Freiherr von Einem had learnt since the Nazis had come to power was that the less one knew officially about anything the less likelihood there was of finding oneself carted off, without warning, to a concentration-camp. The passports of both Erika and her friend were in perfect order except that they lacked Norwegian visas, and Erika had intimated that they were both on urgent secret business connected with the prosecution of the war, so von Einem had accepted her statement without comment.

  Gregory had thrown overboard the Gestapo uniform that he had stolen from Grauber so he was dressed in a ready-made suit which he had bought off the first Mate of the tramp, but its poor quality was concealed under his rich furs. Erika also was still in her furs, and their only belongings were contained in a single handbag that Gregory had brought out of Russia with him, so they were not long delayed by the Customs. Von Einem drove them to the Grand Hotel in the Karl Johansgt and, having accepted an invitation to lunch with them on the following day, left them there.

  On going into the lounge they saw, to their delight, that Kuporovitch had succeeded in evading the Norwegian coastguards. He was sitting with a long-stemmed glass in front of him but as soon as he caught sight of them he disposed of its contents and came hurrying over with a wave of his hand.

  The Russian was a clean-shaven man in his early fifties. His grey hair was brushed smoothly back and, strangely contrasting with it, his eyebrows, which were still black, ran thin and pointed towards the temples of his smooth white forehead. Under them were a pair of rather lazy blue eyes, but their glance was apt to be deceptive as behind them lay an extremely shrewd intelligence. Up to the age of twenty-nine he had been an officer of the Imperial Russian Army, but when the Revolution had broken out a strange set of circumstances had resulted in his joining the Bolsheviks. After the Civil War he had come to loathe and despise his new masters, yet with the laudable desire to keep his head on his shoulders he had concealed his antipathy for many years with superlative skill. For a long time past he had been hoarding foreign currency with the idea of escaping from the dreary, depressing land of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics so that he might spend his old age among civilised people, and his great ambition was to see the Paris of his youth again.

  Greeting his friends in French—which was their common language—he said with a smile: ‘I’ve booked rooms for you—two bedrooms with a bathroom in between, so that you can preserve the proprieties of this charming old world into which I am so delighted to have returned. Come upstairs and I will show you.’

  Upstairs, perched on Erika’s bed and smoking a long cheroot, he told them, with many chuckles, of his adventures that day. It had all been too easy. He had walked to the nearest village, found its school and routed out the village schoolmaster, to whom he had said: ‘I am a member of the French Legation in Oslo and was returning there after a visit to Kristiansand.
When the train halted in the station here I got out to get some hot coffee in the buffet and the train went on without me. Unfortunately, too, it carried on my baggage and a small attaché-case in which I had some papers and my ticket. Would you oblige me by acting as interpreter at the station so that I can buy another ticket and take the next train on?’ The Norwegian had been most polite and helpful, so Kuporovitch had arrived in Oslo without the least difficulty.

  Having washed and tidied themselves they went down to the grill-room. The head waiter was nearly guilty of raising an eyebrow when he saw them approaching, for Kuporovitch was in shoddy ‘ready-mades’ that he had bought at an old-clothes shop in Leningrad, Gregory was in the first Mate’s second-best suit and Erika’s tweeds showed obvious signs of the hard wear they had sustained; but as the man’s glance swept across their faces he noted Erika’s regal beauty and that in spite of their shabby clothes both her escorts had the air of men who were used to being obeyed. With a swift bow he led them to a sofa-table.

  The under-waiter who took their order brought the maître d’hôtel scurrying back again, his face now wreathed in smiles. The strangely-dressed trio had ordered a superb meal and some of the best wines that his cellar boasted. He did not know that the broad-shouldered, middle-aged man with the black, pointed eyebrows had been cooped up in Russia for nearly a quarter of a century and that it was many months since the others had had a meal in a good restaurant. They were speaking French but he put them down as rich Germans who had been suffering from the Nazis’ impoverished larder and had somehow managed to get away to Norway.

  Although they had spared no pains or expense in ordering their favourite dishes, the meal was not the success that it should have been, because the black cloud of war and the coming separation weighed heavily upon the spirits of the little party. The tables were widely spaced so they were able to talk freely without risk of being overheard, and when they had reached the coffee and brandy stage Gregory turned to the Russian.