Dennis Wheatley
Evil in a Mask
ARROW BOOKS
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First published by Hutchinson & Co (Publishers) Ltd 1969 Arrow edition 1971
© Dennis Wheatley Limited 1969
Made and printed in Great Britain
by The Anchor Press Ltd, Tiptree
Essex
ISBN o 09 004640 4
For
Wing-Commander Anthony Wellington, DSO, DFC, to whom I owe my knowledge of Brazil in that country's early days; and to his dear wife, with most grateful thanks for their many hospitalities during my visits to Rio.
D.W.
The Field of Eylau
Roger Brook had been lucky, very lucky.
On this night he was in his late thirties and, from the age of nineteen, he had spent at least half the intervening years on the Continent, acting as a secret agent for Britain's great Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger. Yet only once had he been caught out, and then by a friend who shared his views on the future of Europe, so had refrained from having him shot as a spy. He had passed unscathed through the hell of the French Revolution, been present at the siege of Acre, at the Battles of the Nile and Jena and numerous other bloody conflicts. Yet only once, at Marengo, had he been wounded.
But now, at last, his luck had run out.
Meeting Roger in a salon or ballroom, the sight of him would have made most women's hearts beat a little faster. He was just over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and slim hips. His brown hair swept back in a wave from his high forehead. Below it a straight, aggressive nose stood out between a pair of bright blue eyes. From years of living dangerously his mouth had become thin and a link hard, but the slight furrows on either side of it were evidence of his tendency to frequent laughter. His strong chin and jaw showed great determination; his long-fingered hands were beautifully modelled; and his calves, when displayed in silk stockings, gave his tall figure the last touch of elegance.
Even on that February morning of 1807 as he sat his fine charger, booted and spurred, his long, fur-lined cloak wrapped tightly round him against the bitter cold, a woman's eye would have singled him out from among the score or more of gallant figures that formed a group a little in the rear of the Emperor
Napoleon. But his state was very different now, and he had little hope of living through the night.
Fifteen months earlier, two great turning points had occurred in the war that Britain and France had been waging— with only one short interval of uneasy peace in 1803—for the past fourteen years. In October 1805, Nelson's victory at Trafalgar had, at last, freed England from the threat of invasion. But in the same month Napoleon had dealt a shattering blow at the Third Coalition which Pin, with dogged determination, had built up against him. At Ulm the Emperor had smashed the main Austrian army; and, in November, entered Vienna in triumph. A month later, at Austerlitz, he had inflicted another terrible defeat on both the Austrians and their Russian allies. Utterly crushed, the Austrians had sued for peace. By the Treaty of Pressburg he gave it to them. But it cost the Emperor Francis nearly three million subjects and one-sixth of his revenue. This loss of sovereignty over numerous territories led, in the following August, to Francis' resigning the greater Imperial dignity and becoming only Emperor of Austria. Thus ended the Holy Roman Empire after an existence of over one thousand years.
Meanwhile Napoleon, anxious to keep Prussia quiet while he dealt with Russia, entered into negotiations with King Frederick William III. As French troops were occupying the British territory of Hanover, the Emperor was able to offer it as a bribe; and the shifty, weak-willed King agreed to accept it as the price of an alliance signed at Schonbrunn. -
But neither party was being honest with the other. Napoleon was secretly putting out peace feelers to the British Government, which included an offer to return Hanover to Britain, while Frederick William was in secret negotiation with the Czar Alexander to double-cross the French. When the Emperor and the King became aware of each other's treachery, both realised that war between them was inevitable. In September the King, gambling on the traditional invincibility of the Prussian Army, had sent Napoleon an ultimatum. It proved a futile gesture, since the dynamic Emperor was already on the march, and he advanced with such speed that by mid-October the two armies clashed.
Prussia had for so long sat timidly on the fence that her army had lost all resemblance to the magnificent war machine created by Frederick the Great; whereas that of France was inspired by an unbroken succession of victories, and was superbly led. At Jena, by a swift concentration of the corps of Lannes, Soult, Augereau, Ney and the Guard, Napoleon overwhelmed one-half of Frederick William's army. At Auerstadt, Davoust, although outnumbered by two to one, destroyed the other.
Relentlessly pursued by Murat's cavalry, the surviving Prussians retreated to the east. At Erfurt sixteen thousand of them surrendered to him. Fortress after fortress fell, and on the 25th of the month, Davoust captured Berlin.
It was in November, while in the Prussian capital, that the Emperor had initiated his new policy designed to bring Britain to her knees. Known as the Continental System, it decreed that every port under the control of France and her Allies should be closed to British shipping. At that date England was the only country that had undergone the Industrial Revolution. It was through her trade that she earned the great wealth which enabled her to subsidise the armies of her Allies on the Continent. So Napoleon hoped that by depriving her of her European markets he would not only render her incapable of supplying such subsidies in future, but also bring about her financial ruin.
Meanwhile, his armies were pressing on into Prussian Poland and, on December 19th, he established his headquarters in Warsaw. Soon after Jena, Frederick William had tentatively asked for peace terms, but Napoleon refused to negotiate unless his enemy would retire behind the Vistula, cede to him the whole of Western Prussia and become his ally in the war against Russia.
It was not until Christmas that the French went into winter quarters, and the respite the Emperor gave his troops was all too short. His restless mind had conceived a new plan for getting the better of the Czar. Until Poland had been eliminated as a sovereign State in the latter half of the last century, by the three partitions of her territories between Russia, Prussia and Austria, she had been a great Power; and her people were noted for their bravery. He would incite them to rebel against their Russian master, by offering to re-create an independent Poland under his protection. But Frederick William was getting together another army in East Prussia; and, if it were allowed to join up with the Russians, the French might be outnumbered; so Napoleon decided that he must move fast.
Even so, it was the Russians, being acclimatised to fighting in ice and snow, who moved first. The Czar's principal Commander, General Bagration, made a daring move westwards, in the hope of saving Danzig from the French. By ill luck he ran into Bernadotte's corps. Immediately Napoleon was informed of this, he directed his main army northward with the object of driving the Russians into the sea. Through a captured despatch, Bagration learned of the Emperor's intention. Swiftly he retreated towards Konigsberg, but at Eylau he turned on his pursuers, and there ensued the bloodiest battle that had been fought in the past hundred years.