Codeword Golden Fleece Page 23

  De Richleau nodded. ‘I fear you may be right. But if the worst happens the name in the Polish document I showed you is my real one, and I am not without friends in England. Should you seek refuge there do not hestitate to enquire for me, and we will do everything in our power to make your exile as pleasant as possible.’

  They shook hands once more, and the Duke set out on his long walk back to the northern outskirts of the city.

  He reached his destination just before seven, to find that Madame Wojciechowski had returned and was now busy preparing supper for her unexpected guests. She was almost as thin as her brother Borki was fat and proved to be a silent, uncommunicative woman, who appeared interested in little except the running of her own house. Her husband, a grey-haired, thickset man, joined them soon afterwards, and they all sat down to a good meal which Marie Lou had insisted on supplementing from the baskets that the visitors had brought with them. Richard had had a sleep during the afternoon, but his meal was carried out to him, as it was thought wiser not to move him from his makeshift bed in the brake unless it became absolutely essential to do so.

  At half past eight they all went out to the garage, and, having said their farewells to the excellent Borki, who had proved such a stalwart friend to them, and to his relations, they started on their long and hazardous drive to the Rumanian frontier.

  The Germans had now brought up heavy guns and were beginning their evening ‘hate’ on the doomed city. Although they had not yet completely invested it, large formations of the enemy had established themselves at many points on its circumference, and some of their armoured spearheads were now reported to be as much as a hundred miles to the east. The whole situation was so confused that no one had anything but the vaguest idea of the enemy dispositions, and, although the Duke said nothing about it, he regarded capture by the Germans as a far more potent danger than the possibility of their coming to grief through any endeavours Mack might be making to catch them.

  To minimise the chance of running into detachments of the enemy he drove them out of the capital through its northeastern suburbs, then followed the bank of the Czarna river south-east to the little town of Okunew. During the short run of twenty miles they were challenged no less than eleven times. Any attempt to ignore these challenges in territory where German armoured cars and motor-cycle machine-gunners were known to be operating would have been the height of madness, and, as it was, on three occasions warning shots were fired over their heads.

  Each time they were pulled up they waited in agonised suspense for their papers to be examined; but the production of their British passports and the laisser-passers that Mack had signed to go with each acted like a magic charm; so it was clear that in the widespread confusion it had proved quite impossible for him to circulate a general order for their arrest.

  From Okunew they ran south through the night to Kotbiel, Garwolin and Deblin, all in the centre of Poland, but even then they were rarely out of earshot of artillery fire, and twice during this lap great flights of enemy bombers roared overhead on their way to devastate some unfortunate open town. Several times they saw the glow of burning villages on the horizon, where the Nazis had strafed Polish troops only a few hours earlier, and all the towns they passed through had had a share of the bombing.

  There was not much traffic on the roads, yet throughout the night they were never free of people. Occasionally they met long files of Polish cavalry on the march or a battery of artillery, but the wayfarers were mostly pedestrians, or little groups of country people trudging beside one or two farm wagons. They did not seem to be moving in any particular direction but were just the terrible flotsam of war; city-dwellers who had been bombed out and were trying to reach friends in the country, or poor peasants whose farms had been ravaged, making for the towns in the desperate hope of finding safety there.

  Soon after dawn a flight of Nazi marauders came over and machine-gunned the road from two hundred feet. De Richleau drove the brake in under some trees, and the heroes of the Luftwaffe had roared out of sight in less than a minute, but they left an old cripple, two peasant women, one of whom was carrying a baby at the breast, and a man in a bowler hat, lying mutilated and bleeding in the road.

  Having done what he could for them, the Duke pressed on, and just before eight o’clock they entered the city of Lublin. It had taken them over nine hours to cover less than a hundred miles, but as de Richleau drew the brake up in front of a still undamaged café in the practically ruined main square he was well satisfied. It was more than probable that during the night they had passed within a mile or so of several enemy detachments from which only the darkness had saved them, and by this time he felt confident that they were well out of Mack’s clutches.

  The café was crowded with officers, but after a short wait they managed to get some hot coffee and sausage, which they eked out with their own provisions.

  The eight hours that followed proved less exacting. They were passing through rich farmlands which the Germans were not yet attempting to occupy, and, to keep clear of their forces that were operating against the Polish industrial centres of the southwest, the Duke veered south-east, through Krasnystaw and Hrubieszow towards Brody. On crossing a bridge over the Styr, some ten miles to the north-west of Brody, the tollgate-keeper told them that he had heard from two people that the Russians were already in the city, so the Duke made a wide détour to the west by way of Krasroc with the intention of trying to reach Tarnopol for an early dinner.

  But the distance proved too much for him. He had not yet fully recovered physically from the grievous strain he had been under the previous afternoon. It was now nearly forty hours since he had had any proper sleep, and although Marie Lou had relieved him at the wheel for several long spells during the day, he was now all in. They pulled up on the grass at the side of a small lake a few miles outside Zloczow, and there, three hours later, just as dark was falling, the Russians found them.

  The encounter proved far from a happy one, as the sergeant in charge of the Soviet tank, which had pulled up at the lake to renew its water supply, was both surly and illiterate. The Corps Diplomatique plates meant nothing to him, and he and his men were living on the land, so they promptly confiscated all the remaining provisions.

  The Duke, who spoke Russian much better than he spoke Polish, argued and pleaded for some of the supplies to be left for his sick friend, in vain. Fortunately, however, another tank with an officer in it soon appeared on the scene. He was a small, bright-eyed man and looked as tough as they make them, but he was good-humoured and intelligent.

  Having examined the Esthonian passports, he ordered the food to be given back, but his grin had a shade of cynicism in it as he returned the passports to the Duke, saying: ‘You won’t need these soon. You’ll have Soviet ones, and so will most of the other people in Europe.’

  Having been roused from their sleep, they had an early supper as soon as the Russians had left them, then pushed on again. They were pulled up twice more on the road to Tarnopol, but in the city itself they were not interfered with, although they found it in full Russian occupation. It was still only a little after nine when they passed through the town, so, refreshed by his sleep, the Duke determined to do the remaining seventy odd miles to the frontier and endeavour to get across it that night. They were only halted once more and, as on the two previous occasions, directly the Russians had examined their papers they proved not unfriendly and extremely punctilious.

  As they neared the little frontier town of Zaleszezyki on the Dniester the road became more congested, and it was clear that a great number of people from all parts of Poland were also attempting to seek safety in Rumania. The dusty and dishevelled state of many of them showed that they had been on the road for several days, but these refugees were not sufficiently numerous to impede the progress of the car seriously, and they reached the town with half an hour still to go to midnight.

  In spite of the late hour the narrow streets and small square were crowded with both p
edestrians and vehicles, so the Duke began to take a pessimistic view of their prospects of getting over the frontier until the following day. But his Corps Diplomatique plates now proved of unexpected value to them. A stalwart Russian military police girl in a smart uniform, who was controlling the traffic in the square, spotted the plates immediately, held up the other traffic and smilingly directed him to the frontier post. For the girl the war had been on for less than thirty-six hours, and she was thoroughly enjoying this picnic campaign.

  At the frontier post they met with equal politeness. Despite the number of people trying to get through and the fact that the Russian officials had only taken over that morning, they were handling the situation with efficiency and despatch.

  Although de Richleau did not know it, many foreign diplomats accredited to the Polish Government had gone through during the past few hours, and, at present, the Russians had no quarrel with the smaller powers. He was directed to a special enclosure; only a cursory examination was made of the contents of the brake, and a smiling Russian waved them on without their having had to wait in the mile-long queue.

  The Rumanian frontier guards were equally accommodating, as they, too, had passed many foreign diplomats through that day. To his amazement, soon after one in the morning de Richleau found himself twenty miles inside Rumania and just entering Cernauti, the capital of the Bukovina. Never did he remember having crossed a frontier so easily and so quickly.

  But that they were now safe was their sole, if considerable, cause for congratulation. Czernowitz, as it used to be called, was crammed to capacity, and neither for love nor money could either food or a bed be found there. After half an hour of fruitless questing they decided that they had better make the best of things and both sup and sleep in the brake.

  They were tired again from accumulated fatigue, but they still had ample provisions, and they opened the best bottle of wine that Borki had given them from Jan’s cellar. With it they celebrated their arrival in a still free country, which was so largely due to the Duke’s planning, and drank to the success of Operation—Golden Fleece’. Then, thoroughly tired out, in spite of their makeshift accommodation, they fell sound asleep.

  The following morning they woke at a little after seven. They had parked the brake in a crescent of middle-class houses, but from their exploration late the night before they knew that every spare foot of floor space in them was occupied by Polish refugees. The possibility of securing a bath or breakfast in any of these houses was zero, so they decided to eat their last sardines and remaining bread, then take the road for Bucharest.

  They had accomplished their four-hundred-mile journey from Warsaw to Cernauti in just under twenty-nine hours, thus averaging fifteen and a half miles an hour exclusive of their three-hour halt. Considering the many hold-ups they had met with in the first part of their journey and the notoriously bad state of the Polish roads further south, it was by no means a bad performance; but in Rumania the trunk roads were far better, and they had every reason to believe that they would now be able to proceed unmolested, so they expected to achieve a much higher average. If all went well they had every hope of covering the three hundred miles to Bucharest before nightfall.

  As they drove out of the city the congestion on the road soon lessened. Rumanian aircraft were patrolling the frontier, but their drone soon faded, and the brake sped smoothly through the peaceful farmlands of the Bukovina, still mercifully free of any signs of war. Their only worry now was the comparatively minor one that great clouds of dust made driving uncomfortable and delayed their progress when they had to pass other vehicles.

  After covering forty miles they entered the valley of the Sereth, and the road rose steeply to wind its way through the mountains of Moldavia, which constitute the southern end of the great Carpathian range. All the lower levels were covered with vast forests, above which great rocky peaks reared their summits to the blue skies. It was a sparsely populated country of smiling peasant folk who waved to them in the pleasant villages through which they passed. Here and there in some charming but lonely bend of the valley stood an ancient monastery, but they did not house the cloistered communities such as usually inhabit them in more western lands. From time immemorial they had served as both centres of peasant industry and wayside inns for travellers passing through this lovely land, as yet almost unknown to globe-trotting tourists.

  At midday they pulled up at one of these and after a meal rested for a while in its great sunny courtyard. Richard had so far sustained the journey well, as he had not been compelled to move from his mattress, but the Duke and Marie Lou were very tired. Nevertheless, anxiety to know what had happened to their friends, and particularly whether Lucretia had reached Bucharest or was still with Jan somewhere in Poland, drove them on.

  At Focsani the country to their left began to open out and fall away towards the great marshy area of the Dobruja, in which lies the Danube delta, but the road steadily curved south-westward, hugging the foothills of the mountainous country on their right until they had passed through Rimnik and reached Ruzan. Here they left the mountains behind and entered the great Wallachian plain, driving across it to Ursitzem, which they entered at seven o’clock.’

  They had hoped to reach Bucharest in time for dinner, but the dust and hairpin bends skirting terrifying and unprotected precipices in the mountainous region through which they had passed had kept down their speed, and the fact that they had not slept in beds for the past two nights was now telling on them heavily; so they decided to feed in the town and do the last lap of forty odd miles after dinner.

  The only inn they could find was a quiet, unpretentious place, but the landlord served them himself and produced a plain but excellent meal which they helped down with the strong resinous wine of the locality.

  At nine o’clock the Duke and Marie Lou forced themselves wearily out of their comfortable chairs and went out to the brake to find that after his meal Richard had fallen asleep. He did not even turn over when the engine was started up, and he was still sleeping soundly when an hour later they entered the suburbs of Bucharest.

  The Rumanian capital is one of the most delightful in the world, and it owes this largely to the fact that the great majority of its houses stand in their own gardens. In consequence, the city covers a great area; but in shape it is long and narrow. It is, in fact, mainly built about one immensely long street, the inner section of which, called the Calea Victoriei, is lined by nearly all the big blocks of office buildings, hotels and shops, and the Chaussée Kisseleff, a great boulevard on which stand most of the finest private residences, leading into it.

  Some way down the Chaussée Kisseleff the Duke pulled up to ask a policeman the way to the British Legation.

  De Richleau did not speak Rumanian, but nearly all well-educated people in the Balkans are able to talk a second language, which is usually German or French. The policeman called over a passerby, and between them they managed to supply the required directions.

  At the Legation, which proved to be just off the Chaussée in the Strada Jules Michelet, the porter spoke enough English to tell them that Sir Reginald and Lady Kent were dining out, but he showed the Duke into a waiting-room and shortly brought one of the junior secretaries to him.

  It transpired that during the past three weeks, owing to the war, they had had an exceptional number of callers, so at first the young man could not remember having seen Rex and Simon, but on the Duke’s giving a closer description of them he exclaimed:

  ‘Of course! I know the two you mean. They have been to see Sir Reginald several times and are, I feel sure, staying at the Athenée Palace.’

  ‘Has another friend of mine yet turned up here by any chance?’ asked the Duke. ‘A young lady, the Condesa Cordobay Coralles.’

  ‘Why, yes, poor girl.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ De Richleau strove to hide his sudden alarm.

  ‘Well, she is such a lovely person, and it’s so sad that she should have been overtaken by such a te
rrible tragedy. She arrived here two days ago with her fiancé—a Polish airman. They hadn’t been in Bucharest for more than two hours when he was knocked down and killed by a passing car.’

  12

  Death in the Afternoon

  ‘Are you certain?’ asked the Duke aghast.

  ‘I didn’t actually see it myself,’ replied the young secretary, ‘although it happened right outside the Legation. The two of them were leaving just after having made their number with Sir Reginald; and, naturally, all of us here heard about it. His name was Lubitski, or something like that.’

  ‘Lubieszow,’ prompted the Duke.

  ‘That’s it. He wasn’t killed instantly, but he was pretty badly knocked about the head, and he died soon after they got him to the hospital. The poor girl fainted, and some of our people brought her inside. Lady Kent took charge of her and kept her here for the night. Then Sir Reginald got into touch with her friends, and they came to collect her the following morning.’

  ‘She is at the Athenée Palace, too, then?’

  ‘Yes. I suppose so.’

  ‘Thank you. Thanks very much,’ murmured de Richleau, still half-stunned by this terrible news. ‘I’ll go there at once. When Sir Reginald comes in you might be good enough to tell him that the Duc de Richleau called, and say that I should consider it a great kindness if he would spare me half an hour tomorrow morning. Any message about time can be telephoned to me at the Athenée Palace.’

  His tiredness forgotten, but with slow steps, he rejoined the others in the brake and broke the sad tidings to them. Ten minutes later, Richard, now fully awake, was being moved from his bed to an invalid chair by the porters at the hotel. At the desk de Richleau learned that Lucretia was up in her room, but the others had gone out, and it was not known at what time they would be back.