`Well, I'll take your word for it. There are times when even Ribb doesn't know what the Fьhrer has really decided. He's often told me that so many different versions about our next moves are put out by Bormann and Keitel that he is led to believe one thing and Goering and Himmler others. I suppose in Churchill's headquarters it's much the same. Of course, I couldn't help suspecting you, but I did think you might have been fooled yourself.'
Gregory suppressed a sigh of relief at having got over that nasty fence. But she was going on:
`All the same, you landed me in a pretty mess. As your information tallied with so much else they'd had, the Fьhrer didn't take it out of Ribb; but Ribb did out of me because he had given himself a lot of kudos from having had in me a first class spy who had done better than any of Admiral. Canaris's people or Himmler's. As soon as it emerged that I'd been fooled the fat was in the fire. Himmler came back at Ribb and raked up his man Grauber's, report about you and me in
Budapest. They swore I'd deceived Ribb deliberately and demanded that I should be handed over as a British agent.'
`My dear, I am sorry!' exclaimed Gregory, with genuine feeling.
`And well you may be,' she said, frowning at the memory. `For a few days I was scared stiff. But Ribb saved my bacon. By sheer luck one of his agents had just turned in information that Marshal Weygand was contemplating a break with Petain and planning to make himself Chief of a separate French State in North Africa, then bring it over to the Allies. Ribb said I had got it for him in London. Weygand was arrested before he could leave France and evidence was found that he meant to play traitor. That evened up the score against the black I'd put up and enabled Ribb to claim that I was on the level. But to keep Himmler and Co. quiet I had to keep the pot boiling.'
`How d'you mean?
'The Gestapo were still so suspicious of me that Ribb had o show my Nazi zeal by using me in other ways. He made it obvious in public that he had dropped me as a mistress, so it should appear that I was no longer in favour with the Nazis, hen he arranged for me to get to know various people who were believed to be plotting against the Fьhrer. The first group was a Professor of Philosophy named Kurt Huber and a couple named Scholl. It wasn't difficult to fool the old boy and got hold of some of his papers.'
`Do you mean that you turned them in?' Gregory asked, with difficulty concealing how shocked he felt.
Sabine lit a cigarette and nodded. `Of course. I could only enable Ribb to keep me out of a concentration camp by showing willing, and they were, as near as makes no difference communists. That's the one thing Hitler and I think the same about. All Communists are poison and the sooner they are eliminated the better.'
Gregory knew her views about that from the past too well to argue the matter; and as he considered Communism to be as much a menace to civilization as the Nazis he only asked, What then?'
`Later I was given the Kreisau Circle to tackle. The group takes its name from the Silesian estate if Count Helmuth von
Moitke, because he and Count Peter Yorck and others used to meet and plot there. But they came quite frequently to Berlin. They were intellectuals who started off as Socialists, but they went Communist, too, and were trying to sell us out to the Russians. That little coup put me in the clear. And when Ribb gave Himmler the information I'd obtained about them even that big fat slob had to admit that his suspicions- of me had been unfounded.'
`Well, you've been a busy girl,' Gregory smiled.
`Busy in a way I don't like,' she retorted. `There have been others, too, that I've failed to get anything on. And I prefer to pick the men I go to bed with. Still, it's better than having to eat offal in a concentration camp and being had by three or four Nazi thugs every night.'
`How about von Osterberg?' Gregory enquired. `I'd bet my last cent that he is not a Communist.'
`Oh no. That's quite a different kettle of fish. But the aristocracy and most of the Generals have always been anti Hitler. On and off for years they have been plotting to kill him, and since the Allies landed in France it's been brewing up again. Kurt is in it. I'm certain of that. He has been working for years on these Secret Weapons, and for the past year or more he has been the top boy at an underground laboratory near Potsdam. As that's not far from here Ribb thought it would be a good idea for me to play around with him, then when he was bombed out of his flat suggest that he should come to live here. Reluctantly I obliged. He was terribly flattered, of course, that anyone like myself should take an interest in him, so he fell for me like a ripe plum. I'm really like a mother to him and he gives me very little trouble.'
`Still, that must be pretty dull for you,' Gregory grinned at her. `And what a shocking waste of the very best fissionable material.' Next second he was cursing himself for what he had said. If he remained there she was going to prove a terrible enough temptation without his leading her on.
`Don't worry,' she smiled back. `Kurt is away for a few nights now and then; and there are the afternoons. I'm sure those old Viennese psychologists would approve my methods. The Fuehrer has said that it's our duty to entertain our heroes on ]cave from the front, so I stave off getting any complex about suffering from night starvation by playing fairy godmother to a variety of young men.'
`I hope you haven't become altogether promiscuous,' Gregory remarked.
`No. Hardly that. But you know well enough that I've never been exactly frigid. And I dare not take a regular lover for fear of complications. Even with the bombing there are still parties. In fact, more hectic ones than ever. Now we're all so afraid that every night will be our last, half the women in Berlin have become like alley cats. They're half drunk most of the time and will go with any man who asks them. People aren't even shocked now when they go into their hostess's bedroom and find a couple on the bed. I have only to go to a party to be besieged by a dozen applicants; and if I feel that way I make a date, or see the night out with the man I like best.'
`But, reverting to von Osterberg, how extraordinary that, of all people, you should have had to take on Erika's husband.'
Sabine shrugged. `I don't see anything very strange about that. As far as we know these plotters are quite a small clique, and he just happens to be one of them. You're not jealous, are you? After all, you've been hitting it up with the poor man's wife.'
`Good lord, no. Why should I worry? I've got the best part of the bargain.'
`That's not very complimentary.'
`I meant that as far as this foursome is concerned I'm more fortunate than you are,' he amended hastily.
`Foursome!' Sabine repeated with a sudden laugh. `1n the old days, if only Kurt were younger and more attractive, we might have had one. In Budapest it was quite a thing for two couples to go off to some place in the country for the weekend and for the husbands to swap wives or mistresses, then finish up by all playing games together. When it came to a free-for-all I bet I would have made Erika jealous before I'd finished with you.'
Gregory shook his head. 'My dear, you are incorrigible, and the most lovely piece of wickedness. But such a situation is never likely to arise, and I'd like to talk about the present. As I've told you, I’m on the run. Not actually being hunted at the moment, but I've no papers, no ration card and very little money. I had all these things, of course, but my wallet was stolen while I was sleeping in an air-raid shelter last night; so I'm really up against it. For old times' sake, would you be willing to hide me for a while?'