Free Traitors' Gate by Dennis Wheatley Page A

Set
    Gregory arrived in Budapest on Thursday, August 13th. On the previous Friday, after flying at a great height over France, the weekly diplomatic plane had landed him safely at Berne. Next morning he had presented his special letter of introduction at the bank and been shown into a private office. There he had made his arrangements about money and handed over both his British and French passports—the former for safe keeping until he reclaimed it, the latter so that the bank could get him a visa for Hungary, which they promised to have done for him by Monday, or Tuesday morning at the latest. He had then bought his tickets for the journey, a second-hand suitcase with several French labels on it, and some clothes of decidedly French cut.
    On the Tuesday he had left Berne as Mr. Sallust and arrived in Lausanne as Commandant Tavenier. From there he had caught the Simplon-Orient Express down to Zagreb, where he changed trains and did the last lap north to the Hungarian capital.
    He could have gone by air, but dismissed the idea because he knew that passengers who arrived in planes from foreign countries during wartime were much more closely scrutinised than the far greater numbers who crossed frontiers in trains; and he naturally wished to keep himself as inconspicuous as possible. Again he could have taken the quicker, direct route via Innsbruck and Vienna, but those cities now lay within Hitler’s Greater Germany. The odds against his coming face to face during the short space of half a day’s train journey with a Gestapo man who might recognise him were extremely long, but they were infinitely longer against his doing so on the stretch of railway which ran through Italy and Yugoslavia; and it was because he never took the smallest unnecessary risk that he had survived so many dangerous missions.
    The same caution had decided his choice of an hotel. The Donau Palota was the most frequented by rich and influential Hungarians; so to stay at it would have given him his best chance of scraping acquaintance with the sort of people whoseviews on the future of Hungary he wished to find out. But it was there that in 1936 he had occupied a suite while having his affaire with the beautiful Sabine, and hotel servants have long memories. In consequence, on his arrival in Berne he had sent a telegram to the Vadászkürt, hoping that with five days’ notice they would have a room for him. In that he was lucky, as when he was booking-in the clerk told him that, like those in most other capitals during wartime, the hotels in Budapest were now packed to capacity in season and out.
    Having surrendered his passport for registration by the police he was shown up to a room on the third floor. Instead of opening into a passageway it was entered from a broad balcony that overlooked a huge oblong courtyard formed by the interior walls of the four sides of the hotel. Large trees were growing in the courtyard and beneath their leafy branches were several score of tables, as during the summer months it was used as the hotel’s restaurant.
    That night Gregory dined down there, and one glance at the menu showed him that Budapest was very far from being reduced to the scant choice of indifferent food which was all that could be offered by restaurants in London. Hungary, as he knew, had few industries, and from her vast farmlands had for centuries fed a great part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; but he had expected to find at least fairly strict rationing owing to the voracious demands of a Germany that had now been at war for nearly three years. This first evidence that the Hungarians were by no means altogether under the thumb of their mighty ally was encouraging. He cheerfully ordered trout with melted butter, roast goose and green peas; then lingered over a fresh peach and a bottle of Tokay while listening to one of those gypsy orchestras for which Hungary is famous.
    Next morning he did not go at once to seek out Leon Levianski or any of Sir