Codeword Golden Fleece Read online

  As Jan had been through so much and had had no proper sleep since Friday morning, he was almost dropping with fatigue, so after Lucretia had dressed his burns he hobbled off to his room to get a few hours in bed before the journey.

  While Lucretia was dressing and packing de Richleau wrote a note, and when she came downstairs he gave it to her.

  ‘This,’ he said, ‘is a letter of introduction to Sir Reginald Kent, His Majesty’s Minister at Bucharest. If the Poles mean to establish their new seat of government in the south, it is a fair bet that they will choose a place near the Rumanian border. As Hitler’s immediate neighbour, Hungary is more susceptible to intimidation, so should they decide to leave the country it is much less likely that they will seek asylum there. If they do go to Rumania, whatever Jan may think fit to do himself, I am sure it will be his wish as well as mine that you should accompany them to safety. Simon and Rex will almost certainly be in Bucharest by now; and, as we foresaw that they wouldn’t be able to let us know their movements, owing to the chaotic state of Polish communications, I arranged with them that they should keep the Legation informed. You will find Sir Reginald a most charming man. He is a diplomat of the old school; gentle, fastidious, erudite, concealing behind these qualities a great courage and most subtle brain. He will let you know the whereabouts of our friends, and, if it isn’t possible for you to join them immediately, I feel sure Lady Kent will look after you until you can.’

  She slipped a slim arm round his neck. ‘Oh, darling, I hate to leave you like this.’

  ‘I know you do,’ he smiled. ‘But, as things are, I would not have it otherwise. Besides, as you intend to help Britain by placing a part of your great fortune at our disposal, it is important that you should be in Bucharest, anyhow, before long. Rex and Simon are counting on you as the third partner in the great coup we hope to bring off, which will secure the Danube barges for the Allies.’

  For a moment they were silent, then the Duke went on: ‘I think we should let Jan sleep as long as possible, so you might see Borki and arrange for us all to dine late tonight; and be ready yourself to set off immediately afterwards.’

  ‘I shan’t get a moment’s sleep myself till I see you and Marie Lou and Richard all safe again,’ she sighed, and with tears in her grey eyes she left him.

  When Jan appeared for dinner at nine o’clock he had changed his dusty, tattered uniform for a new one, and he looked once more the sturdy, debonair figure they had first known. His left ankle was still paining him, but he maintained that it was not sufficiently bad to interfere with his driving his car, and keeping it under control in an emergency. After the meal he wrote a note for his tutor, Professor Kucharski, recommending de Richleau to him, and gave it to the Duke. At a few minutes before ten the final farewells were said, and the two lovers drove away into the darkness.

  For the inhabitants of Warsaw the early days of the week that followed were filled with ever-increasing anxiety and dread. As Jan had predicted, great masses of troops were now falling back on the capital, and the military authorities no longer had the means of redistributing them, so that a coherent front might be established, linking them with other Polish armies that were still resisting in Central Poland and the south. Many of the units had not even been in action, but others had been sadly cut about in desperate but futile attempts to stem the German panzers.

  The Burgomaster had taken over control of the city, and in a courageous proclamation declared his intention of fighting on with every means in his power. The hugely swollen garrison had ample stocks of munitions, but the problem of feeding it was rapidly making things more difficult for the civil population, and the nightly air raids added to the general chaos. Most of the main streets were now pitted with great jagged heaps of ruins and twisted steel girders. Many roads were blocked by fallen débris or rendered unusable through unexploded bombs. Owing to the destruction of living-quarters and the great influx into the capital, such accommodation as remained was becoming daily more crowded, so the percentage of air-raid casualties was increasing with alarming rapidity. The exceptionally hot weather necessitated swift burial of the dead, and their numbers were becoming so considerable that mass graves had to be dug for them in the parks and squares. In many districts the bombing had disrupted the electric, gas and water supplies, so a great part of the population now presented a dirty and uncared-for appearance. Great numbers of people, who had been driven to take refuge in makeshift accommodation, went about, the men unshaven and the women bedraggled, still gamely sticking to their tasks, but looking haggard and depressed. Laughter and cheerful greetings were now a thing of the almost remote past in the once happy streets of Warsaw.

  After the departure of Lucretia and Jan the Duke had lost no time in assuming the undercover rôle he had planned for himself. Professor Kucharski, Jan’s one-time tutor, a mild-mannered little man but a great patriot, readily gave his assistance. Not wishing to leave Marie Lou and Richard during the nightly air raids, the Duke did not actually take up his residence at the Professor’s flat; but by frequent visits he established himself in the eyes of the concierge as virtually an inmate of the block, and so prepared the ground for moving in there at any time on the excuse that he had been bombed out. Every morning he now went to the National Museum and employed himself in writing a thesis on the Teutonic influence in Polish architecture: an occupation which made the elderly savants who still frequented the reading-room regard him with a certain coldness, but one to which the Nazis could not possibly raise any objection if they succeeded in capturing the city.

  Having once assumed this dual personality, de Richleau developed it with all the attention to detail which was so characteristic of him. At Professor Kucharski’s apartment and the museum he appeared as a stooping, short-sighted old man with a slight stutter, who wore thick spectacles and a soft deerstalker hat; but every time he made his way back to Jan’s mansion he slipped into the public lavatory at the Central Railway Station and emerged again ten minutes later to proceed down Jerusalem Boulevard as an upright, bareheaded figure, his hat and his spectacles in his pocket, and having shed with them ten or fifteen years of his apparent age.

  The general war news continued to be scant and uncertain. The French were reported to be attacking in the area of the Saar Basin and had had some initial successes locally. It was announced that an Allied Supreme War Council had met for the first time in Paris and that a British Expeditionary Force had landed safely in France. There were rumours that the Czechs had risen and killed all the Germans in Prague. Hungary had seized the opportunity, now that the unfortunate Poles were no longer in a position to defend themselves, to reopen her claim to Polish lands in the south that she had been compelled to cede after the last World War; but in their dire emergency the Poles regarded this as only a minor misfortune and were now looking over their shoulders in apprehension towards their great eastern neighbour, as, on Thursday the 14th, Moscow had issued an ominous broadcast accusing the Poles of oppressing the Slav minorities that formed the bulk of the population in Poland’s eastern province.

  The following Sunday the blow fell. Soviet troops invaded Eastern Poland, and it was clear that, after only twenty years of freedom, Poland’s new martyrdom was to be crowned by another partition.

  De Richleau was no lover of the Bolsheviks, but he realised at once that this was no mere opportunist move by Russia to revenge herself on the Poles for the defeat they had inflicted on her in 1920, and even less a matter of their playing Hitler’s game. On the contrary, underneath the thinnest veneer of apparent friendship Stalin and Hitler remained the most deadly enemies, and by securing Eastern Poland the cunning Georgian was simply advancing his frontier in order that he might be in a more advantageous position to meet a German attack, whenever Hitler decided that the time had come to attempt the conquest of the rich cornlands of the Ukraine.

  In vain the Duke sought to comfort his Polish friends that morning by his clear-sighted arguments, and even in the hope that when the Ge
rman and Russian forces met in a Central Poland there might be a bloody clash resulting in the Soviet’s becoming a full partner in the anti-Nazi alliance. Most of the Poles hated the Russians, if possible, even more than the Germans. Openly and unashamedly they wept for their country, but, angry and defiant, continued to declare that they would never subscribe to a peace so long as there was a single foreigner of any nationality who arbitrarily remained on Polish soil.

  During the past week de Richleau had always waited for dusk before leaving the University quarter for the northern end of the city, in order that his quick change act at the railway station might be less likely to be observed. But this being Sunday, and the museum closed, after a snack lunch with Professor Kucharski he set out for Jan’s mansion.

  Having discarded his hat and spectacles, he was halfway along the once splendid Marshal Boulevard when his attention was attracted by a sudden shout. A large car was nosing its way between a burnt-out bus and a recent bomb crater. An officer of high rank sat in the back, and with him was a lean man in grey. The civilian was shouting to two policemen further up the street where it formed a broad junction with Jerusalem Boulevard.

  It was only after a moment that de Richleau recognised the man in grey as ‘General Mack’, and another ten seconds elapsed before he grasped the fact that he himself was the object of Mack’s excited cries.

  His first indication of his danger was when a nearby pedestrian half-turned and began to run towards him. Next second he saw Mack point at him and shout: ‘Spy! Spy! Don’t let that man get away! Seize him! Seize him!’

  As the casual passerby came at him the Duke side-stepped neatly, put out a foot and sent the man sprawling full length in the gutter; then he took to his heels and began to run in the direction opposite to that in which the car was heading.

  Mack’s shouts and the Duke’s brief encounter had now caught the attention of the two policemen and everyone else at that end of the street. The officers were blowing their whistles, several windows were thrown up over nearby shops, and the quiet of the Sunday afternoon was broken by a dozen voices joining Mack’s with cries of ‘A Nazi! Stop him! Spy! Spy! Don’t let the swine get away! Stone him! Kill him!’

  It was that Sunday-afternoon quiet that gave de Richleau just a temporary sporting start. Had the incident occurred on any other day he must inevitably have been caught before he had covered fifty yards by the surging crowd that habitually frequented that busy part of the city. Yet, as it was, even with their now sadly depleted larders the women of Warsaw had done their best to provide their households with some semblance of the customary, better than average, Sabbath midday meal; and, since the war was still less than three weeks old, their families were instinctively taking a spell from their labours on this sunny Sunday afternoon. In consequence, Marshal Boulevard was as semi-deserted as Regent Street would have been on the same day at such an hour.

  Having dealt with his first attacker, the Duke had a clear hundred yards in front of him. A Polish sailor and his girl were the first obstacles ahead, and the police were a good three hundred yards behind him. Mack was still leaning from the window of his car, now cursing the military chauffeur, as the man endeavoured to back and reverse amid the gaping craters and heaps of rubble, in order to give chase.

  De Richleau had never been a good runner. A bullet through his lung in the second Balkan war, in which he had volunteered as a soldier of fortune, and risen to a post of importance on the Turkish General Staff, had deprived him from then on of the wind necessary to play all fast games. He could still make a good spurt for a few hundred yards, but after that he began to feel a choking sensation and had to ease his pace or risk collapse.

  He knew now that he was running not to avoid capture but for his life. Those shouts of ‘Spy!’ and ‘Kill him!’ had in them all the menace of a blood-lusting pack. Even normally the Poles are an excitable people, and the sufferings the Germans had brought upon them were more than enough to justify the flaming hatred they now displayed. They all believed that Nazi secret agents flashed lights at night to guide the German bombers in, and the idea that one of these fiends had been identified made them see red.

  In little more than a minute the almost empty street began to fill with running figures. Some emerged from side turnings, others dashed downstairs and out of the doors of the big blocks that were still standing. De Richleau knew that his legs could not save him. He must rely on his wits, and if they failed him, he would be lynched, torn, trampled and kicked to death by the infuriated mob, long before Mack or the police could reach him.

  As he came level with the sailor he sprang into the roadway, brushing aside the hands the young man had thrust out to clutch him.

  A small car was passing at that moment, moving in the same direction as himself. The people in it were yelling at him, and, swerving towards the pavement, the driver tried to head him off. Instead of attempting to avoid the car, the Duke jumped on its running-board.

  The driver was a fat, fair Jew, and beside him sat a pretty little women. She screamed something at the man, on which he jerked forward his feet to declutch, jam down the brake and bring the car to a halt.

  De Richleau had a firm grip on the window of the car with his left hand. With his right he pulled out the big automatic without which he now never moved abroad. Jabbing its barrel into the fat man’s neck, he panted: ‘Drive on! Drive on, damn you, or I’ll blow your head off!’

  The fat man gave a gasp of fear and took his foot off the brake. The car bounded forward, nearly jerking the Duke off the running-board, and they sped past two blocks with the cries of their infuriated pursuers fading in the distance behind them.

  But the advantage gained was only a temporary one. The thoroughfare ahead was half-blocked by the débris of a fallen building, and opposite it a large section of the road had given way, owing to a bomb that tore up twenty yards of pavement.

  Too late de Richleau ordered his commandeered Jehu to wheel left down a side turning. The car was already heading for the narrow gap between the heap of rubble and the crater. A careful driver could have made the passage easily, even with a much larger vehicle, but the Jew, either through fright or with a deliberate courage which might easily have cost him his life—the Duke never learned which—swerved too far to the left; his front off-wheel went over the lip of the crater, the car lurched heavily and stopped with a violent jerk that hurled de Richleau from his precarious perch into the middle of the roadway.

  His gun was jolted from his hand, but did not go off because the safety-catch was still on. With bruised knees and badly scraped hands, from which the blood immediately began to ooze, he picked himself up. One glance at the car showed him that it could serve him no further. Waiting only to grab up his pistol, he dashed round the edge of the crater which had proved his undoing and down the side street.

  Short as it was, the lift on the car had enabled him to regain his breath; but now the fat Jew and his girlfriends were yelling ‘Murder!’ and raising a new hue-and-cry; and, as the Duke shot round the corner, he caught a glimpse of his original pursuers, their numbers augmented by scores of people, racing up the street.

  As he ran on he was now in a mood to shoot anyone who attempted to bar his path. Shortage of breath was the one and only thing calculated to make de Richleau really lose his temper. It affected him even when he had to walk upstairs. Two flights were his limit, and if it ever proved necessary for him to pant up a third he was in no mood to be argued with.

  Ahead of him were two colourfully dressed and well-rouged ladies; evidently out, war or no war, to find gentlemen friends with whom to pass a quiet but lucrative Sunday afternoon. The cry of ‘Spy! Stop the spy!’ had been taken up behind him. As the ladies caught it the clicking of their high heels ceased upon the pavement, and they turned about.

  He charged straight at them, waving his gun threateningly as he came on. One of them gave a shrill scream and jumped for a nearby doorway, but the other stood her ground. As he swerved to pass her, sh
e lifted her heavy handbag and, swinging it with all her force, caught him a terrific clout on the side of the head.

  The blow took him off his balance and all but sent him flying. With one foot across the other he lurched out into the roadway, lipsticks, powder-compact, cigarettes and zloyties cascading down his shouders. By a miracle he righted himself and fled on down the street.

  Swerving round another corner, he momentarily shook off his pursuers. Still the three o’clock quiet of the Sunday afternoon continued to be his salvation. Every new street he entered was warm, somnolent and almost deserted, its stillness scarcely broken except for the hum of a Nazi reconnaissance aircraft that glinted silvery in the sun, high in the blue skies overhead. Yet, in each, after only a moment the drone of the plane was drowned by the angry shouts of the pursuing mob, more windows were thrown open, more people appeared from doorways, alleys and side turnings to sprinkle the vista ahead as though called up by some magical conjuration.

  As he turned the corner the street seemed free of traffic, yet before he had covered twenty yards a single-decker bus rolled past him. It was almost empty and moving only at a moderate pace in order to avoid the bomb-holes and litter which here and there partially blocked the road. Transferring his pistol from his right hand to his left, the Duke put on a sudden spurt, grabbed the rear rail of the bus and swung himself on to it.

  The conductor was standing on the platform. As the bus had passed the turning out of which the Duke had come he had had his back to it, so he had not seen the running crowd that was just about to debouch from its end. But the Duke’s now apoplectic face and the gun that he was clutching in his hand showed clearly enough that he was on the run, and the conductor jumped to the reasonable conclusion that the police were after him. Before the fugitive had time to cover him he had seized the bell-pull and jerked it four times, for the driver to stop.