Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 06 Read online

  CODEWORD—GOLDEN FLEECE

  *

  When the Second World War opened, the Duke de Richleau and his friends Simon Aron, Rex van Ryn and Richard Eaton—the indomitable four—were in Poland. This is the story of how they came to be there, and found themselves even before the outbreak of hostilities involved in a most dangerous conspiracy....

  It can now be revealed that the plot of Codeword —Golden Fleece is based on fact. It was given to Dennis Wheatley, when he was a member of the Joint Planning Staff of the War Cabinet, by a Foreign Office colleague. On behalf of the Allied governments a French nobleman did actually succeed in acquiring a controlling interest in the Danube oil barges and their tugs. The Germans failed with the Vichy government in an action for its return, and half the fleet had been got out to Turkish waters: supplies of fuel for the Luftwaffe were seriously crippled.

  Dennis Wheatley

  Codeword—Golden Fleece

  THE SHERIDAN

  BOOK COMPANY

  This edition published in 1994 by The Sheridan Book Company

  First published by Hutchinson 1946

  Arrow edition 1961 Random House, Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA

  © Brook-Richleau Ltd 1946

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire

  ISBN 1-85501-651-6

  Dedication

  for

  Sir Reginald Hoare, K.C.M.G.

  With my most grateful memories of those days when, as our dear ‘Ambassador’ in a nameless State, he lightened many difficult hours for myself and my colleagues by his imperturbable good humour and most enchanting wit

  CODEWORD—GOLDEN FLEECE

  1 - Storm Clouds on the Horizon

  2 - The Secret Rendezvous

  3 - Coffin for ‘Uncle’

  4 - A Traitor’s Price

  5 - Pistols are Drawn

  6 - The Hold-up

  7 - Night in the Quiet Forest

  8 - Night in the Stricken City

  9 - The Indomitable Four go to War

  10 - The Man-Hunt

  11 - Toujours d’Audace

  12 - Death in the Afternoon

  13 - Midnight Visitors

  14 - The Ambuscade

  15 - Street Battle

  16 - And They Wept Bitterly

  17 - Unequal Combat

  18 - Under Suspicion

  19 - Prison Bars

  20 - Race Against Time

  21 - Old Soldiers Never Die

  1 - Storm Clouds on the Horizon

  The summer night was warm and still. Laughter came faintly on the air from a house at the top end of Curzon Street, Mayfair, where a dance was just beginning. Débutantes, dowagers and their escorts were driving up in a stream of luxury cars; the girls looking their loveliest in gay silks, satins and brocades, the men in their peace-time uniform of pleasure—white tie, buttonhole and tails. The lights of London were still burning.

  Further down the street in one of the first-floor flats at Errol House, a small dinner party was in progress. The Duke de Richleau and his guests had gone in to dinner at eight o’clock, but coffee was not served until after ten.

  This party on the night of Friday, the 28th of July, 1939, was at the same time a reunion and a farewell. Rex Mackintosh van Ryn, the great hulking American with the ugly face and the enormous sense of fun, had, as usual, been in London for the season; but now all his world was about to depart with rod or bathing-suit or gun. He was leaving next morning for Biarritz to take part in the International Tennis Championship, and the frailest of their company, little, stooping, bird-faced Simon Aron, was to accompany him as far as Paris. But there their ways would divide, as in August Simon could never be persuaded to forgo the attractions of his spiritual home—the Casinos, beaches and terraced restaurants of the South of France.

  Richard Eaton and the Princess Marie Lou, that pocket Venus with the heart-shaped face and deep violet eyes, whom he had brought out of Russia to be his wife, were to make a leisurely progress up the Rhine and so on into Austria.

  De Richleau himself was going to Poland, and with him he was taking the remaining member of the party: the beautiful Lucretia José, whose magnificent burnished hair had caused her to become that almost legendary figure in the power politics behind the Spanish Civil War known as ‘The Golden Spaniard’.

  The long Hoyo de Monterrey cigars which were the Duke’s special pride had just been handed round, and as he exhaled the first cloud of fragrant blue smoke Simon’s dark, nervously flickering eyes came to rest affectionately on his host. It flashed through his quick mind how little the older man had aged in appearance since he had first met him, six years before.

  His hair and ‘devil’s’ eyebrows were no greyer; his eyes, which at times could become so piercing, had lost none of their brilliance, and there was still no sign of age or weakness in the fine distinguished face, with its broad forehead and beautifully moulded mouth. He was, as usual on these intimate occasions, wearing a claret-coloured vicuna smoking suit with braided fastenings; and Simon thought—as he had often done before—how the touch of colour emphasised the Duke’s resemblance to the portrait of a Cavalier by Van Dyck, which was one of the four old masters on the panelled walls of the richly furnished dining-room.

  The Duke took up the medium-sized balloon glass which held some of his priceless old brandy, and swivelled it gently for a moment below his aquiline nose to enjoy the rare ethers, before he raised it, saying:

  ‘It’s good to see you all gathered again about my table, but “the best of friends…” eh—you know the rest. Here’s good hunting to us all, and may we yet be spared for many another merry meeting.’

  Simon lifted the glass of golden Yquem with which he was still toying. ‘Wish you were both coming South with me,’ he said jerkily. ‘So much more—er—civilised than Poland.’

  ‘But Poland has its attractions,’ de Richleau murmured with a smile.

  ‘I’ll say it has,’ boomed Rex; ‘the best snipe-shooting in Europe and real hospitable folk to do the honours.’

  Richard ran a hand over the smooth brown hair brushed so neatly back from the ‘widow’s peak’ in the centre of his forehead. ‘But the call of the snipe is only half the story,’ he said quickly. ‘The main reason for the trip is to see again the haunts of his boyhood. Isn’t that so, Greyeyes?’

  The Duke nodded. ‘Yes, my mother was a Plackoff, and in the Czar’s day her family had vast estates in Poland. I recently met Baron Lubieszow, who now owns a small portion of them, and his invitation to visit him was much too tempting for me to think of refusing.’

  ‘All right for you,’ Simon’s full-lipped mouth broke into a wide grin, ‘but how about Lucretia? Not much fun for her.’

  ‘How like you, Simon dear,’ she smiled; ‘always so thoughtful for all of us. I don’t want to go a bit really. I ought to go back to Spain. There are such thousands of our poor people who need someone to look after them.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ laughed the Duke. ‘You came back to us more dead than alive barely two months ago, and, though staying at Cardinal’s Folly with Richard and Marie Lou has already made a different woman of you, you are far from being your old self yet; and I have no intention of letting you return to those scenes of horror for many months to come. The war is over. You played your par
t in it most gallantly, but that chapter of your life is finished.’

  She sadly shook her golden head. ‘You are wrong, dearest. The war is over but there is more misery in Spain than there has ever been before. As the last of the Cordoba y Coralles it is my job to help lead my people towards better times. All of you here helped me save my millions when they were in jeopardy; now is the time when I must use them to the best advantage.’

  ‘But not yet,’ pleaded Marie Lou. ‘A few months can make little difference, and the longer rest will make you so much fitter to tackle your task when you do get back there.’ She was pleading not only for Lucretia herself but also for the Duke, since, although it was never openly admitted, they all knew that the Spaniard was his illegitimate daughter, born of a great romance in the distant days before Spain lost her King, and that her well-being meant far more to him than his own.

  Lucretia shrugged the beautiful shoulders which rose bare above a corsage of white sequined satin. ‘Anyhow, I have agreed to go to Poland for a month or so. After that—we will see.’

  De Richleau waved the slender hand that held his long cigar in a faintly foreign gesture. ‘In a month much may happen. If I am not careful I shall lose you to one of those handsome Poles, who, if my memory serves me, are terrific lovers!’

  For a moment there was silence round the highly polished table, the rich surface of which set off so splendidly the Georgian silver, big bowls of fruit and fine glass. They all knew that Lucretia had never fully recovered from the tragic ending of her love affair with Cristoval Ventura, but they also knew that Monseigneur le Duc de Richleau was as wily an old fox as any that had ever stalked a chicken-run, and that he would never have made such an apparent gaffe had he not deliberately intended to plant the idea in Lucretia’s mind with that half-humorous lightness which can only be achieved when other people are present.

  Simon, the quick-brained, was as ever first into the breach. With a little nervous gesture that he often affected, he stooped his bird-like head and tittered into his hand, as he uttered the curious negative which was habitual to him.

  ‘Ner, it’s much more likely we’ll lose you to some Polish beauty.’

  Almost simultaneously Marie Lou had caught Lucretia’s eye, and as they stood up the men rose with them.

  ‘Five minutes—no more,’ Marie Lou smiled. ‘Then you can bring your drinks into the other room, as I’m certain you won’t have finished them.’

  ‘Never a truer word spoken in jest,’ grinned Rex, as he held open the door.

  When the men were seated again, Simon’s dark eyes flickered towards the Duke. ‘Happy about going to Poland at the present time?’ he enquired.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Oh, just wondered, that’s all.’

  ‘Simon, what do you know?’ de Richleau asked quietly.

  ‘Nothing much. Money market’s in a queer state these days and er—well, it might be difficult to get home.’

  ‘You think Hitler is really out for trouble?’

  ‘Hitler my foot!’ Rex cut in. ‘He may have the guns, but he’s got no butter. It was the blockade that brought Germany to her knees last time, and now she couldn’t hold out against it for three months.’

  ‘You don’t believe in the theory of the Blitzkrieg then?’ Richard smiled.

  ‘No.’ The big American shook his dark, curly head. ‘I lay four to one that if it ever comes to a showdown and Britain antes up to see Hitler’s hand it’ll be found that he’s been bluffing.’

  ‘Taken in hundreds, if that suits you!’ said the Duke quietly.

  ‘O.K.!’ laughed Rex. ‘And make it pounds, not dollars, if you like.’

  Richard sat forward quickly, his brown eyes suddenly alert as he addressed the Duke. ‘You really think we’re in for another war, then?’

  ‘Yes, sooner or later we’ve got to face up to this thing and kill it. Chamberlain got us a year to prepare at Munich, but the sands are running out. Hitler is well served by his intelligence. He knows that behind the scenes our Government is now straining every nerve to make up for these years of ostrich-like complacency, and that if he leaves his bid for world power much longer he will find a Britain, at least partially rearmed, barring his path. He cannot afford to risk that, so unless he is prepared to throw all his most cherished ambitions overboard he must strike soon.’

  Simon nodded his head up and down like a china mandarin, then shot out: ‘Why’re you going to Poland, in that case?’

  De Richleau shrugged. ‘Because my appreciation of the situation is that we have at least another month, and I should like to travel in Europe again before all that remains of the cultured and leisured ease which was customary among the upper classes in my youth is blotted out, perhaps for ever.’

  The five minutes that Marie Lou had given them had already lengthened into ten, and she was a martinet in such matters. Max, the Duke’s man, appeared soft-footed behind his master and murmured: ‘Excellency, the ladies request the pleasure of your company.’

  Still a little awed by de Richleau’s last words, they rose silently from the table and, carrying their glasses, moved into the big library.

  It was not so much its size or decoration which made this room in the Curzon Street flat so memorable to those who had visited it as the unique collection of rare and beautiful objects that it contained: a Tibetan Buddha seated on the Lotus; bronze figurines from ancient Greece; beautifully chased rapiers of Toledo steel and Moorish pistols inlaid with turquoise and gold; ikons from Holy Russia set with semi-precious stones; and curiously carved ivories from the East. And these were not merely the properties of a wealthy collector, purchased in auction rooms and shops. Every one had a story behind it connected with some exploit in de Richleau’s long career as soldier, traveller and adventurer. The walls were lined shoulder-high with books, but above them hung fine old colour prints and maps.

  Lucretia was looking very regal as she sat in a straight Jacobean elbow chair, but the diminutive Marie Lou had curled herself up like a Persian kitten in a corner of the big sofa.

  As the men came into the room she stiffened slightly, her quick instinct telling her at once that something was amiss.

  ‘What have you four been plotting?’ she asked, striving to conceal the agitation she already felt.

  De Richleau took her small hand and, stooping, kissed it, as he murmured with a smile: ‘Nothing, Princess, perish the thought in your bewitching head.’

  ‘You haven’t got yourselves mixed up in some crazy business in which you’ll all have to risk your lives again?’

  ‘No, no. We haven’t as much as a fragment of a map of a “Forbidden Territory” between us, or a sniff of the Devil’s brimstone.’

  ‘You swear that, Greyeyes?’

  ‘I do indeed. We are all, as ever, the playthings of the Gods, and none of us can say what our tomorrows may bring; but tonight there’s not a thing to prevent us from giving our thoughts to how best we can enjoy our holidays.’

  Richard had come up behind his wife, and gazing down fondly on her chestnut curls he placed his two hands on her bare shoulders, as he said: ‘Just think of it, my sweet. In three weeks’ time we’ll be in Vienna again. Vienna—where I first showed you what luxury and gaiety and love could mean.’

  ‘Richard, my love!’ She quickly clasped one of his hands and turned her face up to him. ‘Of course, it was stupid of me. Just a silly feeling like someone walking over my grave. Forget it, please.’

  Rex had turned on the radio and twiddled the knob until he got a band. Then he pulled Lucretia up out of her chair and made her dance a few turns with him in the middle of the big room.

  Soon they were all laughing again as gaily as they had during dinner. De Richleau ordered up two magnums of champagne. They were all connoisseurs enough to know that the wine was exceptionally mature and fine, but only Simon noticed that it was Veuve Cliquot, Dry England, 1906, a wine that would almost certainly have been dead from its great age had it been in bottle
s; and he knew it to be the Duke’s very finest, of which he had only half a dozen magnums left.

  It was one o’clock before they broke up, Rex and Simon leaving together, and Richard, Marie Lou and Lucretia, who were staying with the Duke, going to their rooms.

  When they had left him de Richleau drew wide the curtains of one of the windows, opened it and stepped out on to the shallow balcony. The dance was still in progress further up the street. The music of the band came faintly to him. The street lamps shone with a warm friendly glow on the pavements, where a few young couples, who had left the ballroom for a breath of air, were strolling up and down.

  For a few moments he remained there, looking down upon those young, carefree people, yet with unseeing eyes. He had laughed as gaily as any of his guests all the evening, but now he was a sober and sadly troubled man. He was wondering desperately if all six of them would ever meet again. For a second he had an absurd impulse to rush downstairs, and out into the street after Rex and Simon; to call them back so that he might at least make certain of looking upon their well-loved faces just once more. But it was too late now, even for that.

  With a little sigh he turned back into the room and put out the lights, still heavy with the grim foreboding that, if they ever did come together again, it could only be in a world gone mad. In what circumstances of distress, and perhaps terror and despair, they might meet, he knew that time alone could show.

  2 - The Secret Rendezvous

  Lubieszow was a long, low house set in a clearing of the forest. It had no garden as the English think of gardens, but shady walks wound among the trees and flowering shrubs bordered its drive, while, at the back, a wide terrace with a pleasant view looked out over the meadows to a great lake into which ran the river Stachod.

  It was very peaceful there as the countryside of Russian Poland is sparsely populated, and Pinsk, the only town of any size, lay a good thirty-five miles away to the north-eastward across the desolate Pripet Marshes.