Traitors' Gate (4 page)

‘Well; was General Ismay there last night?’

‘What, Pug?’ Sir Pellinore’s voice was casual. ‘Oh yes, he was in great form. I had a word with him about you. As I supposed, direct Commissions into the Army are absolutely out. Still, steps are being taken to fix you up right away on most favoured nation terms.’

‘What exactly does that mean?’ Gregory asked, a shade suspiciously.

Sir Pellinore’s slightly protuberant bright blue eyes regarded him with faintly cynical amusement. ‘Pug and I decided that, as you had been called up, the sooner you got through doing your stuff on the barrack square the better, so this time next week you’ll be jumpin’ around to the orders of a Sergeant-Major.’

Gregory came slowly to his feet. His brown eyes were hard and the scar on his forehead showed white with anger as he exclaimed, ‘I would never have believed that you, of all people, would have sold me down the river. Surely you could have got me into the Interpreters Corps, or some sort of half-way-house which did not call for me to be shouted at to form fours at my age.’

Sir Pellinore allowed himself a suggestion of a smile. ‘R.A.F. never form fours. They use the old cavalry drill. Of course, if, as an ex-Army Officer, you have any prejudice against taking a commission in the R.A.F.…’

‘You old devil!’ Gregory’s anger had evaporated in an instant. ‘Any man would be honoured to wear that uniform. But how does a commission square with being ordered around by an N.C.O.?’

‘The R.A.F. is the only service which is still granting direct commissions to applicants with certain qualifications—technicians, paymasters, schoolmasters, legal wallahs, and so on. They go in as officers but have to do a fortnight’s Intake Course before being posted. There’s a long waiting list, but if you sign your application this afternoon the Director of Plans, Air, will have it pushed in at the top; then you can start getting through this inescapable spell of square-bashing next week.’

‘And what is to happen to me when I’m through it?’

‘I felt you wouldn’t mind becoming a Staff Officer in the War Room at the Cabinet Offices.’

Gregory’s mouth fell slightly open. ‘You … you’re not fooling?’

‘I never fool,’ replied Sir Pellinore with mock severity. ‘But you must thank General Ismay when you see him, not me. Of course, I’ve told him from time to time of the very valuable services you have rendered; so he knows of you already. After Maudie Castletown’s dinner party I went back to his office with him. We had a word with Ian Jacob. Son of the old Field Marshal. Known him since he was a boy. He’s a bright young man. Colonel now, and in charge of War Cabinet communications.
War Room is a three service show and comes under him. At Pug’s request Jacob agreed to get the D. of Plans, Air, to take you nominally on his staff.’

‘But this is terrific! In my wildest dreams I would never have hoped for anything so thrilling.’

‘Ah, well,’ Sir Pellinore took a good swig of the Roederer, ‘since you have to be in regular employment there are many worse jobs. It is a Wing Commander’s post, but they have some fool regulation now that no one can be put up by more than one rank a month; so you’ll have to go in as a Pilot Officer. Still, your promotion will be automatic and you’ll be a
Colonel de l’Air
before the autumn.’

‘I can’t ever thank you enough.’

‘Never mind that. Be at the Great George Street entrance to the War Cabinet Offices at three o’clock this afternoon and send your name up to Colonel Jacob.’

A few hours later Gregory was sitting on a bench in a dim hallway of the great block which forms the north side of Parliament Square. Seeing the special importance of the offices in this corner of the building, he had been surprised to find that the only obvious security precautions were that the Home Guards checking passes on the door wore revolvers, and that, compared with the constant bustle in great headquarters which he had entered when on the Continent, they seemed almost deserted.

After a wait of a few minutes an elderly messenger took him up in an old-fashioned lift to the second floor, then along a lofty corridor. It was here, well above the noise of the traffic, and with fine views over the lake in St. James’s Park, that the principal offices were situated. Among the names on their doors Gregory noticed that of General Sir Hastings Ismay and Brigadier L. C. Hollis, then he was shown in to a secretary who took him through to Colonel Jacob.

The Colonel—dark, round-faced, young-looking—gave him a cigarette and at once disclosed that he knew all about his mission to Russia in the previous summer. After they had talked for a few minutes, he said with a smile:

‘In view of your previous activities, I’m afraid you may find life here rather dull. Are you quite sure that you wouldn’t prefer me to give you a chit passing you on to the chief of our Secret Operations Executive?’

‘No, thank you,’ Gregory replied promptly. ‘I’ve had enough
excitement to last me for quite a time.’

‘Very well, then.’ The Colonel stood up. ‘I had a word with the D. of Plans, Air, about you this morning, and he is expecting us; so we’ll go over and see him.’

The Operational Departments of the Air Ministry were in the same vast building, on its far side overlooking King Charles Street. After walking through seemingly interminable and almost deserted corridors they reached the Director of Plans’ office. There the Colonel introduced Gregory to a short, broad-shouldered Air Commodore who received them with cheerful briskness.

‘I’m sorry we have to send you to Uxbridge,’ he said. ‘As you had a commission in the last war it’s an absurd waste of time to lecture you on the elementary stuff that every subaltern picks up in a couple of months; but it’s a hard and fast regulation that there is now no escaping. Just sign these papers I have had prepared and they will attend to the rest of the formalities at Adastral House.’

Half-an-hour later Gregory arrived at the big corner building in Kingsway which housed the Administrative Departments of the Air Ministry. He had a brief interview with a Group Captain, signed some more papers, was medically examined and passed fit. A little before five o’clock he was out in the Strand again and, short of being officially gazetted, was now Pilot Officer Sallust, R.A.F.V.R., under orders to report at the R.A.F. Intake Depot at Uxbridge on the coming Saturday afternoon.

When he reflected that at eleven o’clock that morning he had not even remotely contemplated such a step, it was borne in on him how swiftly the people at the top could get things done if they had a mind to it.

He was just in time to reach his tailor’s before they closed and they promised, by hook or by crook, to get two sets of uniform and a greatcoat made for him by Saturday morning. Then he telephoned to Erika to tell her what had happened to him and asked her to take a few days off, so that they could hit it up in London for the last half of the week before he went into uniform.

She arrived next day and for once was able to enjoy a hectic time with him unmarred by secret nagging thoughts that this was the prelude to his going on another mission and these might be the last nights they would ever spend together.

On the Saturday afternoon she drove out with him to Uxbridge and was much amused to find that he showed a nervousness he would never have displayed had he been going to make a parachute drop into Hitler’s Europe. The fact was that, although he rather liked himself in his smart new uniform, he was uncomfortably aware that, when putting it on, he had said good-bye to his independence. For the next fortnight, anyhow, his actions would be governed by bugle calls; he would, too, be given orders by numerous masters, some of whom might be fools or malicious, yet he would have to suppress the desire to tell them to go to the devil.

At the gate of the camp Erika had a twinge of conscience at her mirth, for his long face suddenly made her feel like a mother seeing her small boy off for his first term at a prep. school. But her belated display of sympathy did little to lighten his gloom and, his mind filled with pessimistic thoughts, he followed the airman who took his baggage through into the wired enclosure.

Uxbridge proved in some respects far worse, and in others much better, than he had expected. The accommodation left much to be desired. It consisted of old dormitories built to hold forty airmen, but with only eight basins and two bathrooms to each, and an antiquated hot-water system the vagaries of which were unpredictable. However, the food served in the big mess was hot, varied and of an excellence far beyond anything that Gregory had hoped for. On the other hand, it was announced by an Instructor on the first night that officers were strictly forbidden to keep any form of alcoholic liquor in the barrack rooms.

As drink had already become far from easy to obtain, Gregory had brought a suitcase full with him. He was quite prepared to share his drink with others, but not to forgo it. Greatly as he respected and admired King George VI he would even have defied the Monarch on this issue, as he considered the order a most unwarrantable infringement of the liberty of a Briton. No sooner had the Instructor left the room than, producing a bottle of brandy, Gregory invited his neighbours to join him in a night-cap.

This, and the fact that he was one of only six, out of the several hundred who formed the intake, wearing First War medal ribbons, led to his new companions regarding him with mingled awe and respect. By far the greater part of them had
never worn a uniform of any kind before, so they crowded round him asking questions and automatically giving him the unofficial status which might have been accorded to a prefect. Knowing, too, the manner in which N.C.O.s expected to be treated by an officer, and being capable himself of drilling a squad at a distance of a quarter of a mile, he soon also had the drill-sergeants exactly where he wanted them.

His flagrant disregard of the regulation about drink apart, he considered that, as an ex-officer, it was his duty to set an exampled to the mostly younger men in whose company he marched, slept, fed and listened to lectures; so, in spite of his natural inclination to laziness, he performed his drill and kept his notes conscientiously.

After hours of marching up and down, and listening to talks, many of which he could have given better himself, he was by turns stiff, bored, relaxed, amused and resigned. The fact that his habitual stoop disappeared overnight meant nothing, as his life had more than once depended on its doing so when he had disguised himself in a black Gestapo uniform or that of a German Army Officer. All the same, he had to admit to himself that he felt considerably fitter when at the end of the fortnight he left Uxbridge for a little world as remote from it as Mars.

There, his companions had on average been ten years younger than himself and a good cross-section of the middle classes; some, coming from quite poor homes, had done well in their trades, others came from the rank and file of the professions, After the first night or two they had mentally shed their years; so that the atmosphere had become the friendly, somewhat boisterous, one of boys doing a last term at school.

Now, overnight, he exchanged four hours a day of vigorous exercise for a chair in a large basement room shored up with great beams, between which the walls were covered with maps made brilliant by neon lighting; for, although he had not realised it, the War Room in the Cabinet Offices was actually its Map Room. Here, there was no ragging or inconsequent chatter of girls, movies and binges, but quiet war talk occasionally spiced with sophisticated wit, and plans for fishing or shooting when a next leave came along.

The dozen or so men who ran it were Lt-Colonels or of equivalent rank in the other two services, and most of them were considerably older than Gregory. The majority had
reached their present rank in the First World War and, anxious to serve again, had been put in to carry on this most secret work on the recommendation of some old friend now high up in their own service.

They were much too discreet to question the sudden addition to their number of a Pilot Officer and, having accepted Gregory in a most friendly way, soon initiated him into his duties. These consisted of receiving reports from all the Intelligence centres, either in locked boxes or over an array of scrambler telephones ranged on a long table in the middle of the room, and making the adjustments necessary to the maps, or recording the information for inclusion in the daily ‘Most Secret’ War report which went to the King, the War Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff Organisation.

As Gregory soon learned, the latter consisted in the main of some twenty officers who formed the Joint Planning Staff. The majority of them were also of Lt.-Colonel’s rank, but they were a generation younger than those in the War Room and, with one curious exception, had all been hand-picked from among the most promising graduates of the three Staff Colleges. The exception, as it so happened, had been a Cadet in H.M.S.
Worcester
with Gregory when they were in their teens and, from time to time since, they had seen one another. He had been brought in some months earlier, like Gregory, by way of Uxbridge, but to do some special planning with a one-legged Colonel who had previously been Chief Instructor at the Intelligence College at Matlock.

Although the Planners and the War Room Staff worked in the same basement and shared a small mess, the former never discussed future operations in the presence of the latter, as it was an accepted rule that no one should ever be given information which his work did not make it necessary for him to have. But, all the same, Gregory and his colleagues usually had a pretty shrewd idea what was in the wind from the movements of forces and other indications that inevitably came their way.

The basement was a honeycomb of corridors and rooms of varying sizes. In addition to the ones where the routine work was carried on there were those in which the War Cabinet and Chiefs of Staff Committee held their meetings on nights when air raids were taking place, others allocated to individual Ministers who at times slept there, and others again which were slept in regularly by the senior War Cabinet personnel and
members of the Prime Minister’s Staff. There was, too, a complete suite for him in case an emergency should necessitate a retreat below stairs from the flat immediately above, known as 10 Downing Street annexe, which was his permanent wartime quarters.