To get it back soon enough to satisfy the von Altern lawyers would have entailed a big risk of the authorities finding out what he had done and such currency offences were punishable by a heavy prison sentence. His efforts to secure time to pay had been unavailing and a fortnight later he had learned by his own mysterious means that a writ had been issued against him, charging him with having defrauded Willi. Knowing the verdict must go against him and that he would be sent to prison, he had decided on flight. With Tarik he had driven by night over the Polish border and, after various subterfuges to avoid being traced, had reached his house at Ostroleka.
As the spring advanced the preparations for `Overlord' increased in tempo. The work to be undertaken was immense. Hundreds of trains had to be earmarked for carrying troops and stores to ports, roads widened, camps built, hards constructed in the estuaries of rivers for embarking into the many types of landing craft, shipping brought from all over the world and concealed, as far as possible, in the northern ports, Mulberry harbours made and camouflaged, thousands of maps printed, innumerable measures taken to deceive the enemy about the date and place of the landings and scores of conferences held. Yet, in spite of everyone concerned working lay and night, D-Day had to be postponed from May to June.
.
While all this was going on the enemy was also extremely active. Although he still had no idea when and where the invasion would come, such vast preparations for it could not altogether be concealed. In consequence, from Norway right town to Biarritz, thousands of forced-labour gangs were at work strengthening the Atlantic Wall.
With grim determination, too, the Germans continued to press on the preparations to launch Hitler's great hope-the secret weapon. Owing to raid after raid by the R.A.F., they had been forced to abandon work on the big launching sites on the French coast first spotted by our reconnaissance aircraft. But hey had since developed a smaller type which was much harder to find. Many of these were also destroyed, but hardly a day passed without new ones being discovered.
It was one night early in May that Sir Pellinore asked Gregory, `If "Overlord" is successful what do you reckon the chances are of the house-painter feller throwin' in the sponge shortly afterwards?
'None,' replied Gregory promptly. `Hitler is a maniac and will fight to the last ditch.'
`That's my bet. But how about the German Army? D'you think that if they get a good lickin' in Normandy they'll rat on him?
'I doubt it. They would probably like to; but it's not in the nature of the Germans to defy a master. I should say the only chance of a sudden collapse is if someone bumps Hitler off.'
`That's my view, too,' Sir Pellinore agreed gloomily. `Then if the war goes on into the autumn, it looks as if we'll have to race up to those bloody great rockets.'
`But I thought that after Peenemьnde they had abandoned work on them.'
`So did we all. But we've recently had it through from the Polish Underground that they didn't. Seems the swine got again' again on 'em as soon as they could up on the Polish Marshes. New place is north-east of Warsaw and out of range of our bombers, so there's damn' all we can do about it.' Soon afterwards Gregory had confirmation of Sir Pellinore's unpleasant news. The new menace and its possible consequences began to be hinted at in uneasy whispers by his colleagues in the War Room. Then a week later, when lunching with an old friend of his who had been a Cadet with him in H.M.S. 'Worcester and, since 1941, had worked in the Deception action of the Joint Planning Staff: he cautiously led up to the subject.
The other Wing Commander made a grimace and said, `As is not a plan, there's no reason I shouldn't tell you what i know about it; although, of course, everything possible will done to keep it from the public, so as to avoid a panic. here's no doubt about it that Jerry is banging off these things in Poland, and that in a few months' time we may get them here. The high-ups are fairly peeing their pants at the thought ' what may happen to London.'
`Has anyone found out yet exactly how much damage they will do?' Gregory asked.
`Yes. There is quite a useful Underground in Poland, and I gather we've received a pretty accurate picture of these things from them. I was representing my little party only yesterday a high power meeting. It was called by the Home Office to discuss re-evacuating London and that sort of thing. Sir Findlater Stewart took the chair. He said that these rockets each weigh seventy tons and have a twenty ton warhead. Just think of what that means.'
Gregory nodded. `I heard that when I was in Switzerland, a long while ago, at the time they had only got them on the drawing board and I could hardly credit it.'
`Well, that's not far off the estimate our people made from photographs taken over Peenemьnde; and now we know For a fact. What is more, the boffins have worked it out that each one that lands on a densely populated area will turn a quarter of a square mile into rubble, kill four thousand people and cause a further ten thousand casualties.'
`God, how awful!,
'Have another Kьlmmel,' said the Deception Planner. `Thanks,' murmured Gregory, `I need it.'
That day Gregory was not due on duty in the War Room until ten o'clock in the evening, so after lunch he went down to his flat in Gloucester Road and slept through the rest of the afternoon. As he gradually came out of his slumber he remained temporarily unconscious of his surroundings, but could see Malacou quite distinctly. The occultist was in a smallish room that had good but old-fashioned furniture. In his subconscious Gregory had seen the room several times before and knew it to be Malacou's study in his old house at Ostroleka.
With him there were two men of the Totenkopf S.S., and it was clear that he was in trouble. But it was not in connection with the money of which he had defrauded the von Alterns, otherwise the men would have been Staatspolizei. These were members of a special organization known as Einsatzgruppen, composed of criminals and fanatics embodied by Himmler for the purpose of exterminating the Jews. One of them held Malacou's passport and was questioning him closely about it. Clearly they believed him to be a Jew and on that account he was in grave danger of being taken off to a concentration camp.
From previous telepathic communications Gregory had received during the past six weeks he already knew the background of the situation. Malacou had proved wrong in his assumption that, owing to the great number of Jews in Poland and the German's need of the crops they grew, the majority of them had been left at liberty. Earlier that had been the case and it was only the Jews in Germany who had been sacrificed to the Nazi ideology. But Beth Hitler and Himmler were so obsessed- with the idea that the Jews were the deadly enemies of the whole human race that in 1943 Hitler had agreed to let Himmler apply his `final Solution of the Problem' to every territory over which the Swastika flew.