Traitors' Gate Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 hadreached 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,