Again, though now definitely conscious of the ‘test’ feeling, Otto replied promptly.
“I am not aware concerning the others,” he said carefully. “Not from a pilot-angle.”
For the first time, the General gave overt evidence that he knew the civilians were in the room. He looked from one to the other.
“Well, gentlemen?” he said.
The bald man answered first. “It seems very good, General. There is an accent—but, strangely, it sounds like a Danish one.”
“Not bad for the purpose,” said the man with the beard, in a curiously high-pitched voice. “An educated Swede talking English laboriously learned. The usual mistakes in syntax. No trace of German accent.”
Otto wanted to look at the men as they spoke. But he thought better of it and kept his eyes fixed upon the cold, regular, emotionless features of the General. The black, polished eyes were downcast now, as if in thought.
There was another silence. It was broken only when the General moved, stretching out a hand for the nearest of the telephones upon his desk. He took off the receiver and pressed a button set in the stand and spoke almost immediately. His fifth word astounded Otto by its implication.
“I have seen Falken, sir,” he said. His voice was different now—still ringingly metallic, but softened by respect. It was a subtle change, but startling.
The telephone cackled harshly.
“Yes, sir,” said the General. Then again, after more cackling: “Yes, sir. Yes, I have. . . . Yes, they are here. They tried him: satisfactory. . . . Yes: very well, sir.”
Otto, though his eyes were fixed still upon the General, was momentarily lost in whirling thought. What was all this to-do? And where did he fit into the picture, whatever it was! The man in the first room had implied that all the questions clamant in his mind would be answered—but so far they had merely increased, both in number and improbability. . . .
He became aware, with a start, that the General was rising. Otto shot to his feet. Rigid at attention, he waited.
The General came out from behind the big desk. He was lean and spare and wonderfully tailored, but he was not so tall as Otto had thought him. He said curtly:
“Captain Falken: I am going to take you to see a man who has been following your career with interest and appreciation. You are honoured by this above your fellows.” He named a name—and Otto so far forgot himself as to let out a strangled exclamation. It was a name even more illustrious than either of the two he had wildly guessed—and it was not the name of a man in any of the fighting services. . . .
“Attention!” The metal voice rang harshly. “He is going to see you, now, and tell you what he requires of you. Neither I, nor anyone outside his own immediate counsel, knows exactly what this is except that it is work for the Fuehrer and the Reich—for Germany. Whatever it is, you will perform it to the limit of your ability—and beyond. You understand?”
Without speaking, Otto saluted—and the General did a curious thing. He brought this strange chapter of these strange proceedings to a stranger end. He looked full into Otto’s eyes with his own eyes of polished black—and he lifted his arm and gave the hail or valediction which is only used upon solemn occasions of ceremony.
“Sieg heil!” he said, and then turned on his heel, beckoning Otto to follow, and walked with ringing spurs towards an inner door. . . .
Three days later, in the smoking-room off the big bar of the Adlon, Major Hans Hegger was glancing, very idly because he was waiting for a girl, through the pages of an official Services gazette. He was skimming over the pages, not really reading, when a name caught his eye. He read:
‘Falken, Otto (Captain): This distinguished young officer, but lately awarded Das Grosse Eiserne Kreuz for his amazingly daring and brilliant exploit in escaping from a Prison Camp in England in a stolen plane from which, over the Channel, he shot down two more enemy planes, was taken seriously ill with pneumonia immediately following the investiture. He has been removed to a Special Hospital. When—as we earnestly hope that he will—he recovers, he will be seconded for special duty, probably in the Mediterranean zone.’
“Too bad, too bad!” Hegger shook his head and muttered. “Can’t afford to lose that sort of lad!”
2 SWEDEN
But Otto Falken was lost—at least for the time being. Not lost, of course, in the way which Hegger had meant in his mutterings, but lost in the Falken identity. Otto Falken was no more; in his place was one Nils Jorgensen, a Swedish boy who had spent most of his twenty-seven years in Norway. . . .
This transmigration of personalities had taken place during the six short hours which had begun as he followed the Generaloberst upstairs in the deceptive suburban house and which had ended when, after the astounding, epic interview which followed, he had put on blue trousers and smock in the hut at the airport and then, donning the coat and comforters lent him by the silent pilot, had climbed into the little tri-motored pursuit plane. . . .
It had transported him, this plane, in more ways than one. It had carried him not only over the swift miles between Berlin and Stockholm—it had carried him from one personality to another; from one conception of his purpose and duty to another; from one way of life to a different way of life. . . .
And now, waking for the tenth morning in his new surroundings, he lay still in his bed and, as was his new, self-imposed discipline, worked over his mind until it began to feel like the mind of Nils Jorgensen and not the mind of Heinrich Maximilian Otto Falken.
This was difficult. It should, he felt every morning, be growing easier—but somehow the facility did not seem to come. Always, instead of being Nils Jorgensen at once, he had to start at the very beginning again, and go over that last incredible day in Berlin, dwelling particularly upon every word of the breath-taking hour he had spent with the Personage to whom the General had taken him. . . .
He, Heinrich Maximilian Otto Falken, born Von Falkenhaus, was to perform, in another and fictitious identity, work of secret and tremendous importance to the Cause of the New Germany. . . . “This is not work, Otto Falken, which will bring you public honour! But it is vital work!” . . . He, Otto Falken, after he had properly become Nils Jorgensen, was to be a doubly secret agent of the Reich, working “in another country, unsupported among enemies”—another country which, his reason told him, must be Britain! . . . “When you reach your final destination, Falken, you will apparently be under the orders of persons who think they are your superiors. You must obey these orders. But, at the same time, you will obey orders which you have received directly from myself Which practically means, Falken, directly from the Fuehrer!” . . . Yet he was not told in so many words where this great work would ultimately lie. . . . “It is not safe to tell you too much, Falken. You will receive orders in proper gradation, as and when they are necessary! . . . The work—or, rather, the first step in the work—was to become Nils Jorgensen. When he was Nils Jorgensen, he would receive the first instalment of his orders. Therefore, the sooner he fully assumed the new personality, the sooner could he begin this vitally important, this tremendously exciting, service to his country. . . . He knew how the orders would come: someone, somewhere, at some time, would show him the pencil. If he were still in doubt after this, he must casually introduce a question as to the time—and then, if he were answered in the form which was burned into his memory, he would know. . . .