Codeword Golden Fleece (21 page)

The earlier part of the following morning was occupied by the comings and goings of doctors to see Richard. Jan’s man had
called in two specialists. Their preliminary reports were encouraging. Richard’s heart and lungs were sound, his early treatment by the prison doctors had been efficient, and there was no indication of gangrene in his wounds. It would be a long time before he was a fit man again, but they hoped to pull him through.

Soon after breakfast the news had come in that the British Prime Minister was to broadcast at eleven o’clock, and shortly before that hour they all gathered round the wireless in Jan’s study. The transmission was not good, but by listening intently they could hear enough of Mr. Neville Chamberlain’s thin, distant voice to gather that Britain was now at war with Germany.

Jan told Borki to bring up some magnums of champagne, and the Duke was called on to propose the toast of ‘Victory’.

‘Let us drink,’ he said, ‘not only to a speedy victory over our enemies but to the hope that those that we love may come safely through this struggle, however long and desperate it may prove; and that Poland and Britain, with all the other nations who may share with them in the fight against tyranny, may emerge more closely wed than ever to the principles of justice, liberty and toleration, having destroyed for ever the power of the beast of Europe—as from its long history of treachery and aggression we may well term the German nation—to bring the curse of war upon innocent and peace-loving people.’

‘And to hell with Hitler!’ added Rex laconically, upon which they all drank deep of the good wine.

Shortly afterwards, another doctor arrived with X-ray apparatus from the hospital, so Jan accompanied Marie Lou up to the sick-room to act as interpreter, and the whole party did not have any opportunity of discussing the war together until after lunch.

When coffee and liqueurs had been served in the small sitting-room Jan opened the ball by saying: ‘I don’t think our late, reluctant guest is likely to go back on the papers he has signed, so I’m sure you’ll all understand if I leave here tonight to report back to my squadron. Needless to say, the house and all that is in it are entirely at your disposal for as long as you care to stay.’

Lucretia’s knuckles showed white as she clenched her slender hands, but she said nothing, as Jan had already told her that morning that now he could consider himself reasonably immune from arrest he must return to his duty as soon as possible.

There was a general murmur of thanks, then the Duke asked: ‘Do you know where the squadron is? If it has been moved to
the front we shall naturally follow the fighting in your sector with special interest.’

Jan shook his round head. ‘No. During the past few days it may have been moved from Eastern Poland, but I shall go to the Ministry first to find out, and it’s quite possible that they may send me as a casualty replacement to a squadron at the front.’

Rex lifted his glass of Souverain. ‘Well, here’s to our meeting before very long in the skies over Berlin.’

‘This isn’t your show yet,’ laughed Jan.

‘Shucks to that! My second name’s Mackintosh, and I’m in this thing as much as any of you. A lot of the boys back home’ll just be killing themselves to get into it as well, so maybe they’ll give us permission to form a special squadron. If not, the moment I can get back to England I shall volunteer for the Royal Air Force—if they’ll have me.’

Marie Lou smiled for the first time in hours. ‘I’m sure they’d be glad to have an air pilot like you, Rex; and, although Richard is not in your class, I’m certain he would have volunteered also, if it hadn’t been for this terrible accident.’

‘I want to join a first-aid squad, here in Warsaw,’ Lucretia said suddenly. ‘I saw so many terrible things in Spain that I’m no longer afraid of losing my nerve at the sight of even the most ghastly wounds; and I’m a trained nurse.’

De Richleau sighed. ‘This is going to be a young people’s war, and I fear my grey hairs will rule me out for anything except some dreary office job when I get back to London. Still, as long as we are here I can go out with Lucretia as a stretcher-bearer.’

‘Nonsense!’ interjected Simon abruptly. ‘All talking through your hats. The younger people will have to fight the war, poor devils, but it’s the brains of the older generations that will be needed to win it. We’re cleverer than the Nazis—much cleverer. We’ll think of ways to even up the odds against us. Ways to gain time. Ways to economise man-power and prevent wasteful slaughter. Ways to develop an economic stranglehold on Germany and deliver thrusts at Hitler where it’s likely to hurt him most. Rex’s father is one of the richest men in America, and we know he’ll be behind us. Lucretia is a millionairess in her own right. My firm is not exactly the poorest in the City of London. None of us is lacking in grey matter, either. I’m willing enough to carry a stretcher with the rest of you. But that’s not our real job. We’ve got to make our money fight, use our brains to think up some way in which it can be employed to give a real headache to Hitler.’

The Duke looked at him with an affectionate smile. ‘You are absolutely right, my Simon. The gallantry of youth at the prow, but age and experience at the helm. That’s the way to win wars.’

‘But we’re not the Allied Governments,’ objected Rex, ‘and I reckon it’s they who’ll be doing most of the planning.’

‘Um,’ Simon nodded. ‘Of course. But the machinery of all governments is slow and cumbersome—particularly those of the democracies. While the bureaucrats at home are pigeonholing most of the best schemes put up to them for further consideration in 1941, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t get down to it and start a side-show on our own.’

‘Had you any particular thing in mind?’ asked the Duke.

‘Nickel,’ replied Simon promptly. ‘Means some of us going to Finland to buy up the nickel mines there, but the Germans have practically none of their own, so it’s bound to be one of their worst shortages.’

‘Have you any idea of their present stocks?’

‘Ner. But Krupps will need nickel for every fuse they make.’

‘True. All the same, we should be gambling with an unknown factor if we have no idea how many millions of shells they have already made and put away.’

‘Big guns take much longer to make than shells,’ said Lucretia, ‘so the Nazis are much more likely to be understocked with them. I think it would be sounder for us to try to corner some essential element for hardening the special steel used for gun barrels: Spanish wolfram, for instance. I own large holdings in the Rio Tinto mines, and many of the other big Spanish mine-owners are personal friends of mine; so I could help you there.’

‘Or chrome, for that matter,’ put in Rex. ‘My old man has quite a pull in Turkey.’

De Richleau shook his head. ‘Much the same snag as applies to nickel also applies to these other metals, and tungsten, molybdenum and bauxite, too. Even if the Nazis have not yet had time to manufacture all the bigger weapons of war they would like to have, we can be certain they have laid in considerable stores of these raw materials. If the war is a comparatively short one, they may not even require to import another ton. I fear we should be dissipating our efforts against too elusive a target.’

‘The Germans are awfully clever, too,’ added Marie Lou. ‘I mean their scientists. They seem to be able to find a substitute for everything.’

‘The Princess is right,’ declared the Duke. ‘Even if their stocks of such metals are limited, they will manage to evolve substitutes for them. I think we should set ourselves a bigger objective. Let us at least consider the basic requirements for waging war: the things of which vast quantities are used every day, and for which no
ersatz
product can be substituted, because the basis of the substitute is too expensive or in even shorter supply than the genuine article.’

‘Coal, iron, corn, oil and cotton,’ said Simon at once. ‘They are the five essentials of fighting a modern war.’

‘Might as well add whisky and lipstick for all the hope we’ve got of cornering any of those,’ laughed Rex. ‘Tell you what, though, we could buy up all the asafoetida grass in South America. That would put all the belligerents out of business in a month.’

Simon and the Duke smiled, as Marie Lou asked innocently: ‘What is asafoetida grass and why would the lack of it stop the war?’

Rex grinned. ‘I was only kidding, honey. It’s used to make paper, and I was insinuating that if we could cut off supplies from all the thousands of people who’ll soon be mushrooming the Government departments in the belligerents’ capitals they’d have to quit work and go home. Old Simon is just doing a big act about his coal and iron. It’s by filling up forms to eat, sleep and breathe that modern wars are really won.’

‘Seriously, though,’ said the Duke, ‘coal is no good because the Germans have ample supplies of their own, particularly now that they are able to process their lignite. About iron I’m not so certain. They get the bulk of their ore from Sweden. Could we do anything to check that?’

‘Perhaps,’ muttered Simon doubtfully. ‘But they’ve got big deposits of their own in the Saar basin. If they capture Silesia, they’ll have the Polish mines at Czestochowa as well. Should think they’ll be able to carry on for quite a time with those, even if we were powerful enough to divert the Swedish traffic. Corn’s no good either. Hungarian granary’s right in their backyard; and they’ll be getting supplies from the Ukraine, too, now that they’ve palled up with the Russians.’

‘Oil’s about the most hopeless of the lot,’ commented Rex. ‘Even old Channock with the Chesapeake Banking and Trust Corporation to draw on couldn’t make a dent in Rockefeller and the Anglo-Dutch, so that’s right out of the picture.’

‘Is it!’ De Richleau raised his ‘devil’s’ eyebrows. ‘It’s one
major essential which Germany is incapable of producing for herself.’

‘Ner,’ Simon interpolated quickly. ‘They’ve now got a synthetic process. Oil can be made from lignite as well as gas. Plant’s at a place called Leuna, I believe. Anyhow, the process is reported to be quite successful.’

The Duke waved the interruption aside. ‘I was wrong when I said “incapable of producing for herself”, and I knew about the synthetic oil factories. According to what I have heard, there are three of them. What I meant was that there is no oil-producing territory in the Reich or in any country adjacent to it.’

‘Hungary has oilfields which she has been developing in recent years,’ remarked Jan, ‘and we are now producing a certain amount of oil near Borislaw and Drohobzcz in South-eastern Poland.’

Again de Richleau shrugged impatiently. ‘I know that, too, but we are talking of requirements for waging a modern war effectively. Germany will need millions of gallons if she is to make full use of her great mechanised army and her air fleets. Anything she could get from Hungary or Poland would be a mere drop in the ocean. As for her synthetic production, naturally she will develop that now as one of her highest priorities; but, as the industry is still in its infancy, it is bound to be a considerable time before she is turning out sufficient of this new product to affect her strategic oil position materially.’

Simon nodded his narrow head up and down and the Duke went on: ‘Against the might of Spain, against Louis XIV, in Napoleonic times, and in the last Great War Britain’s strongest weapon has always proved to be a blockade of her Continental enemy, so there is no doubt at all that she will use it again this time. As a matter of fact, it is rather a thrilling thought that, as we sit here on the very first night of what may prove the final struggle between Britain and Germany, the Navy must already be at its war stations, and has thus become overnight the supreme authority in all European waters except a narrow strip along the Continental coastline. Anyhow, the effect of our sea-power will be the virtual cutting off of Germany from three out of five of the world’s largest oil-producing centres. For all practical purposes the United States, Mexican and Persian fields no longer exist for her. There remains Russia and Rumania.’

‘She won’t get much out of Russia,’ interrupted Simon. ‘Transport’s the bottleneck there. Different gauge railways and shortage
of trucks. Now that the Russians have mechanised their agriculture, too, they need all their own oil for their thousands of farm tractors.’

‘Yes. And if I read Uncle Joe Stalin aright I don’t think it is his intention to help the Nazis more than he has to in order to keep up this fantastic fiction that he no longer hates Hitler more than he ever did the Czar. He knows perfectly well that, if the Germans succeeded in defeating the Western Democracies, they would endeavour to grab the Ukraine and Caucasus from him without even bothering to send him an ultimatum, and he is not such a fool as to make the first round any easier for his potential enemies.’

Lucretia smiled. ‘I know quite a lot about the Russians. The Germans may succeed in getting small quantities of high-priority goods out of them after weeks of argument, but even then all they do get will come out on a string of hay-carts. I feel sure you can rule Russia out as far as bulk supplies of oil are concerned.’

‘That leaves them only Rumania,’ murmured the Duke. ‘If we could find a method of preventing them from getting even half their normal supplies from Rumania we should have achieved something really worthwhile.’

Rex suddenly sat forward, really intrigued at last. ‘The Astro-Romano Company controls the bulk of the Rumanian output. We could have a crack at that, but I doubt if they’d be willing to part with a majority holding of their shares.’

‘They are too big,’ said Lucretia. ‘Far too big. Even if Rex’s father could find half the money and Simon’s firm came into the deal as well, the Banco Coralles could not even look at such a proposition.’

Simon nodded his corroboration, and for a moment there was silence, until little Marie Lou asked: ‘How does the Rumanian oil reach Germany?’

‘By barges up the Danube, except for the few months in the winter when the river’s frozen over,’ supplied Simon. ‘Some comes by rail, but only a small proportion.’

‘Then couldn’t we find some way of cutting off the traffic?’ she suggested. ‘If most of it comes up the Danube it must pass through that great rocky gorge near the Hungarian frontier: the place they call the Iron Gates. I may be talking nonsense, but I should have thought it would be possible to dynamite them, so that the great chunks of rock falling into the river would stop the barges coming up.’