For many months past a systematic round-up of the Jews gad been operating, not only in Poland but in France, Belgium, Holland and even countries as distant as Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. As they were too numerous in Central Europe to be 'dealt with at once individually they had, at first, simply been Herded into ghettos in the larger cities. Then concentration camps with gas chambers had been constructed and staffed with Himmler's Einsatzgruppen. To these the Jews were now Being moved in batches and tens of thousands of them had already been liquidated.
In consequence, when Malacou arrived in Ostroleka he had found that all his relatives were either dead or confined to the Warsaw ghetto. Extremely uneasy in mind, but not knowing there else to go and protected by his Turkish passport, he had settled down there and had been living very quietly. But evidently someone who knew he had been born there a Jew, had had a grudge against him, had given him away. Although Gregory had no cause at all to love Malacou, he could not now help feeling sorry for him and was very relieved then the Nazis, having found that his passport was in order, decided not to arrest him until further enquiries had been made into his past.
In the Cabinet War Room on nights when there was no special activity it was customary at about two o'clock in the morning for the four duty officers to lower the lights and doze beside their telephones. That night, soon after Gregory had settled down, he seemed to be watching Malacou. The occultist was now outside his tall, narrow-gabled house in the small town street. With Tarik's help he was loading food into an old fashioned pony trap; and soon after, with Malacou loudly Lamenting as he drove off, it clattered away into the night. 'from this it was evident that he thought it too dangerous to wait the results of the threatened investigation and had decided to leave Ostroleka while he still had the chance. During the fortnight that followed Gregory caught several glimpses of the fugitives. For a week they hid in the depths of a wood, then when he next saw them they were following a narrow track that wound between tall forests of reeds in a desolate area of marsh. Both of them were bowed under
huge bundles strapped to their shoulders, so evidently they had had to abandon the pony and trap. Two days later he saw them again, now installed in a cottage in the middle of the marshes. It was sparsely furnished but had obviously been abandoned for some time, as they were patching a hole in the roof, through which water had seeped leaving stains on a dresser in the living room. He gained the impression that it was a shooting lodge which in happier times had been used for duck shoots by thee owner of some manor house in the vicinity and, owing to its isolated situation; it looked as if Malacou could hope to remain there in safety.
On May 11th a new offensive was launched against the Gustav Line and for the following week the battle in southern Italy again raged with maximum intensity. Then, on the 23rd, the Allies at last succeeded in breaking out of the Anzio bridgehead; but D-Day was just approaching and all thought in the Cabinet Offices was concentrated on the final preparations for it. Quite unexpectedly, Gregory became involved in them when Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Peck rang him up and asked him to come up to his office in the Air Ministry.
Richard Peck had for some time past held the post of Assistant Chief of Air Staff (G). This entailed handling all the problems that the other Air Chiefs had neither the time nor the inclination to tackle. One job he had taken on of his own initiative was to make himself the Overlord of Air Ministry Press Relations and, one day when lunching with him at a corner table that was always reserved for him at Quaglino's, Gregory had happened to mention that for several years he had earned his living as a foreign correspondent. It was on that account that the Air Chief Marshal had sent for him. Having given Gregory a cigarette, he said:
`Our American friends are extremely generous with their money but by no means so generous about their tributes to the part we are playing in the war. Reading their papers every day, as I do, one would get the impression that Britain has become no more than a base for Uncle Sam's gallant boys to pitch into the Germans. Later, of course, there will be many more American troops fighting on the Continent than there will be British, because their reserves of manpower are much realer than ours. But for Operation " Neptune " the actual landings will be about fifty-fifty. What is more the success or failure of the operation depends entirely on us, because it's the British Navy that's got to put the troops ashore. Even so, you can take it from me that our chaps won't get more than a tiny paragraph in the American dailies. And then it will be on the lines, "poor old Britain is pretty exhausted after the tough time she's been through but she helped us all she could". `Now I want the American people to know the truth and there is one way I can do it: We don't stand a hope with the allies, but we can get signed articles by writers of repute into the weeklies and glossy magazines. To do that I've combed the R.A.F. for well-known authors and others and had them seconded to me for the few days that count to act as temporary war correspondents who will cover the landings. I've got Terence Rattigan, Dennis Wheatley, Christopher Hollis, Hugh Clevely and a score of others and I'm sure you would write a really lively report, so I'd like to have you, too. Are you willing to play?
'Certainly,' Gregory agreed at once. `If Brigadier Jacob will release me from the War Room there's nothing I'd like better than to fly over the beaches.'
The Air Chief Marshal shook his head. `No. In your case let's not on. The same applies to Wheatley. General Ismay as already ruled that no-one employed in the Cabinet Offices must be exposed to the risk of being shot down. They know to much. If they fell into the hands of the enemy and had their thumbs screwed off they might give things away. But don't let that worry you. There will be so much smoke going up from shells and bombs that you wouldn't be able to see the coast of Normandy anyhow. I have a much more interesting assignment for you. I want you to go down to Harwell and see General Gale take off with the 6th Airborne Division. That will be the spearhead of the invasion.'
13
Portrait of a Born General
As A result of his conversation with Sir Richard Peck, on the sunny morning of June 3rd Gregory left London in an Air Ministry car. Owing to the rationing of petrol the Great West Road was almost empty, so the car soon reached Maidenhead. In peacetime the river there would have been gay with picnic parties in punts and launches, but it was now still and deserted. The car sped on past the even lovelier reaches of the upper Thames, then across downlands until over the horizon there appeared the widely spaced hangars of Harwell Aerodrome.
It was a peacetime R.A.F. station with well-designed buildings and commodious quarters, but as it was now also the headquarters of the 6th Airborne Division it was crowded with soldiers as well as airmen. Gregory reported to the Adjutant who took him- to the mess, where within half an hour he had made a dozen new friends.
Among them was Wing Commander Macnamara, whose aircraft was to tow the glider that would take General Richard Gale to France, and the Station Commander, Group Captain Surplice, who his officers united in saying was the finest C.O. under whom they had ever served. Squadron Leader Pound, a veteran of the First World War and Principal Administrative Officer, then took Gregory to the Briefing Room.
There, behind a locked door with an armed sentry on guard and blacked-out windows, another beribboned veteran was preparing the maps from which the air crews would be briefed when the signal came through that the `party' was definitely on. Then at six o'clock the visitor was taken on a tour of the great airfield with its broad runways and scores of parked