Come into my Parlour by Dennis Wheatley Read Free Book Online Page B

people were caught at it there’d be no end of a rumpus.”
    â€œQuite apart from what may happen to me, if I’m pinched by the
Ogpu
there may be quite a spot of bother this end, as I’m to go in on a British passport.”
    â€œI realise that, but the Bolshie counter-espionage system is far too good to chance sending you in any other way. If you are caught, at least they can’t check back on you and link you up with our own organisation. I had in mind that you should go as a journalist with a notional job under our Press Attaché. No good journalist can resist poking his nose in where he’s not wanted, so if you do get in a mess we ought to be able to laugh you off on that score.”
    â€œThat sounds all right. What exactly do you want me to find out?”
    â€œThree things. What proportion of their man-power the Russians can actually put into the field. How much territory they can afford to give away before they would be compelled to throw up the sponge. And the real state of Stalin’s health.”
    Gregory made a grimace and the scar above his left eyebrow suddenly showed white. “That’s a pretty tall order.”
    â€œI know, but only by having that information can we form a sound assessment of how long they can stick it.”
    â€œWhat’s the matter with our Military Intelligence? They are paid to do this sort of thing in peacetime, and they’ve had years to collect the data on which to form a proper appreciation. Can’t they give you what you want?”
    Sir Pellinore’s blue eyes went a little blank, and he shook his head. “I don’t think it would be very profitable to go into that. All I can tell you is what some of our senior Generals have told me. Camberley and the War House have always taken a pretty poor view of theRussians. That may be based on sound information or it may be prejudice. Anyhow, when Russia came in most of these wallahs said she’d be finished in a month. Well, the month is up, and the Bolshies seem to have quite a lot of kick left in them yet. Now, when I lunch with the ‘brutal and licentious’ at the Senior or the Rag, the pessimists say the Russian goose will be cooked by the end of August, while the optimists give her three months at the outside.”
    â€œHave you ever read a book called
Red Eagle?
”
    â€œNo. What about it?”
    â€œIt was a biography of Marshal Voroshilov, published several years before the war, and I remember being particularly interested in what the author had to say about Russia’s future strategy, as gleaned from Voroshilov’s military writings.”
    â€œWhat line did this scribbler feller suggest that he’d take?”
    â€œHe reported Voroshilov as saying that, owing to the tremendous development of air fleets in the Western European countries, frontiers and definitions of front and rear in the countries engaged would no longer have their former significance; and that the Marshal was counting on a great belt of Russian territory, including the cities of Leningrad, Smolensk, Minsk and Kiev, being rendered untenable. In fact, that he was reorganising the whole of Russia’s war potential to enable her to give up great areas of territory and yet put up an unbreakable defence. That he was already moving his arsenals and war factories right back behind the Urals where they would be too distant to be bombed; and that this would enable him to fight on in a position from which it would be practically impossible for any European power to dislodge him.”
    â€œInteresting, that.”
    â€œYes. I thought so, because it was such an entirely different picture to anything that our military pundits ever seem to have visualised; and, after all, if they had only taken the trouble they could easily have checked up those statements by consulting Voroshilov’s writings for themselves.”
    â€œWell, I only hope to God my Generals are wrong and