funds was by robbery. Although he was armed he decided that to attempt a bank hold-up would be too risky, while if he tried burgling a private house it was very unlikely that he would find in it the sort of sum he needed in ready money.
It then occurred to him that the cash desk in a smart restaurant such as Horcher's, or in the dining room of a big hotel, would be certain to contain a fat wad of notes, particularly after dinner; and that he would have a much better chance of getting away with it than by trying to rob a bank. The Adlon was not far off, so he stood up with the intention of paying it a visit and spying out the land.
The buildings on either side of the great luxury hotel had been blitzed, but it appeared to have escaped damage. He felt a little dubious about going into this famous haunt of Germany 's aristocracy and millionaires, dressed in old country clothes; but the war had brought about as great a deterioration in Berlin 's social life as the Allies' bombs had on the appearance of the city. Prostitutes and profiteers now rubbed shoulders with the old hour monde and many people who had been bombed out, having lost their wardrobes, were reduced to wearing any clothes they could pick up on the Black Market. So, as he entered the big foyer, he was pleased to find that among the motley throng moving about its business there he was not at all conspicuous.
By then it was the pre-lunch hour so dozens of people were arriving to join friends for cocktails. Walking through to the entrance to the restaurant he saw that a woman was seated at the cash desk and that it consisted of a wooden box the upper part of which was enclosed by plate-glass screens. That did not look very promising as it would be far from easy to grab the money through the low aperture in the front of the box. However, there were many hours yet to go before nightfall, so plenty of time for him to reconnoitre other places in one of which it seemed certain a snatch and run would prove easier, and it occurred to him that might be the case in the bar.
On entering it he felt that he deserved a drink and that to have it in these pleasant surroundings would be worth the extra cost so, damning the expense, he ordered a large champagne cocktail. Sitting up at the bar, he turned on his stool and ran his eye over the many pretty women and their escorts who were having drinks at the little tables on the other side of the room. Suddenly his heart gave a bound. A slim young woman seated with her back to him had her hair dressed high, with a few delicious little dark curls on the nape of the neck, and he had many times kissed just such curls on thee neck of Sabine Tuzolto.
Could it be? She looked the right height. If so… Quickly,, he picked up his drink and carried it to a place further along the bar. From his new position he could see the girl's face in one of the big gilt-framed mirrors on the opposite wall. At a glance he saw that her features bore no resemblance to Sabine's, and he was conscious of a sharp stab of disappointment. But her having called Sabine to mind gave him an idea.
Although Sabine was Hungarian and her home was in Budapest,- since she had become Ribbentrop's girl friend.: she had spent a great part of her time with him in Berlin. If she was still the Nazi Foreign Minister's mistress it was possible that she was in Berlin now. Yet, even should she be, Gregory was-by no means certain that he could count her a friend.
A he drank his cocktail, his mind shuttled back and forth recalling episodes from the two periods in which they had been lovers, and speculating on what her present feelings towards him might be.
He had first seen her one night in 1936 at the Casino in Deauville,l a supremely beautiful girl just turned twenty. Her companion had been the head of an international smuggling ring and he had been making use of Sabine in his nefarious activities. She would have been arrested and sent to prison with others of the gang had not Gregory later got- her out of England. He had taken her back to Budapest and there, for several joyous weeks, she had willingly rewarded him by becoming his mistress.
His mind moved on to those hectic weeks he had spent in Budapest in the summer of 1942; to' how Sabine had saved him from his enemies and returned with him to England; to the way she had fooled him and, when in London, spied for the Nazis, got caught and been arrested.
1. See Contraband.
When she was a prisoner in the Tower of London it had seemed near impossible to get her out. But by an intrigue with the Moldavian Military Attachй, Colonel Kasdar, Gregory had enabled her to escape and return to Germany. And he had done so without laying himself open to any charge for he, in his turn, had fooled and made use of her.
The convoys carrying the Allied troops for `Torch' were already on their way to North Africa. With the connivance of the Deception Planners he had sent her back to Ribbentrop with false information about the objective of the expedition. Later it had been learned through secret channels that the information she took back had duly reached Hitler, and had so fully corroborated all the other measures already taken to fool the Germans that the deception plan had proved a complete success.
Believing that the `Torch' convoys ware making for the east coast of Sicily, so would have to pass through the narrow Straits of Bonn on the afternoon of Sunday November 9th, Kesselring had grounded his air force the previous day, when the convoys were within range,, intending to blitz them with maximum effect on the Sunday. But at midnight the convoys had turned back and at dawn on the 8th landed their troops in Oran and Algiers without the loss of a single ship.
As Gregory toyed with his champagne cocktail and thought of all this, he wondered what Sabine's reactions would be if she were in Berlin and he could find her.
Since the Nazis had shot so many W.A.A.F.s and other courageous women who had parachuted into German-occupied territory the British authorities had decided to put chivalrous scruples behind them and have Sabine shot. As he had got her out of the Tower she owed her life to him; while by having enabled him to escape from Budapest he owed his life to her. That cancelled out. But in order to save her he had had to deceive her so that she in turn would deceive Hitler; and how she had come out of that he had no idea.
It was quite probable that on discovering that he had been fooled Hitler had been furious with Ribbentrop and Ribbentrop furious with her for having led him to communicate false information to his Fuehrer. The odds were, therefore, that she had been through a very sticky time and if she realized that Gregory had deliberately lied to her there was a risk that her resentment might be so intense that she would hand him over to the Gestapo. As against that, in this great city filled with enemies she was the only person who might, for old times' sake, be persuaded to befriend him; so he decided to try to seek her out.
Finishing his drink, he went to the row of telephone booths and looked in a directory for the name Tuzolto. As he had feared, it was not in the book. The only other way of tracing her, if she was in Berlin, was through Ribbentrop; but to ring up the Minister was out of the question. All the same, Gregory looked up Ribbentrop's private number, found that he still lived in the suburb of Dahlem, and made a note of the address.
Leaving the Adlon he went back to the Tiergarten, sat down on a bench and made a scratch meal off some of the now mangled Brotchen and crumbled biscuits that he had hastily pushed into his pockets early that morning.