Churchill's Triumph (23 page)

A silence hung above the streets. The rolling thunder of battle had already moved on, further west, and there were few signs of the people of Piorun, his friends and neighbors who would normally fill these spaces and bring them to life. Those he did see made him feel all the more helpless: an elderly woman, her back stooped by her many years, bending to pick up the fragments of glass that littered her doorway, another weeping as she sat on a doorstep that had no door. He glimpsed empty faces at empty windows, exhausted eyes peering from the shadows, a young woman drawing back in terror at the sight of a man. Even the dogs slunk away as he approached, his feet crunching on shards of glass as though he was walking through crisp snow.

He turned the corner into the town’s square. He found two trucks parked opposite the church and a military guard posted at all four corners. The trucks, he noticed, were American, manufactured by Dodge. He tried to avert his eyes from the bodies that were still hanging from the lamppost. His lamppost.

As Nowak stepped forward he was stopped by the guards, who demanded to see his papers. Their voices were harsh, their eyes flooded with suspicion. Their hands hovered near the triggers of their guns, the muzzles pointed directly at him. Yet eventually they were satisfied and he was allowed to pass. He made no objection to their behavior: he had grown accustomed to such indignities in the past few years, and he walked slowly on towards the doorway that led to his office. Outside he found yet another set of guards. More suspicion, more interrogation. He stood patiently as they rifled through his papers, telling himself that such things did not matter. As he waited in the shadows behind their shoulders, he saw something he couldn’t at first understand. On the broad stairway that led up to the mayor’s office, a Russian soldier was squatting, his pants down. Then the man started to relieve himself. It was clear he was far from being the first to do so. The stench in the stairwell was appalling. Then the guards allowed him through. As he climbed the creaking, urine-soaked wooden steps, he put his sleeve to his nostrils and wiped his eye.

At the top of the stairs, he was surprised to hear sounds of activity coming from his room. He found a soldier in his chair with his boots propped on the desk, smoking an American cigarette. He was wearing the uniform of a Russian major. A bottle of vodka stood on the table, on the spot where Nowak had kept a miniature red-and-white flag of Poland.

Reluctantly, Nowak knocked. “I am the mayor,” he said.

Slowly, the soldier rose to his feet. “And I am Major Morozov. I am the Political Officer here. Welcome, comrade.” His Polish was excellent. He came round the table to shake Nowak’s hand. “Please. Be seated. Would you like a drink? A cigarette, perhaps? It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Mayor.”

Nowak, disoriented by the warmth of the greeting, declined the drink. He hadn’t eaten for more than a day and a slice of bread would have served him better, but he accepted the cigarette, hungrily drawing down its smoke to quell the anxieties that were churning inside him.

The Russian sat down once more. “I am delighted that you have come. I was in any event going to make contact with you. I would be most grateful for your help.”

Nowak nodded.

“But first—if I may?—your identity papers.”

Wearily, Nowak handed them across once again. The Russian examined them, then produced a sheet of paper on which appeared to be typed a list of names. “Ah, yes,” he muttered, “Nowak. It seems you are a most important family in these parts.”

“We are not important people. I am the mayor. That is all.”

“But you have a brother who is a priest, and another. . . ” His finger ran down the list of names, but he didn’t finish the thought. “You see, Mayor Nowak, we have many friends in the Polish community, and we have asked for their help in identifying those who will be useful to our task.”

“Your task?”

“I am only here to help. Until such time as I can hand over to Polish authorities. Let me assure you, we have no intention of trying to impose ourselves upon Poland for any longer than it takes to defeat the enemy.”

“I am glad we were able to expel the German garrison before the Red Army arrived.”

“Ah, yes. Most interesting. It seems you have some very capable people here.” Once more the eyes ran over the list. “But you will understand the need for all weapons to be handed over immediately. I’m afraid to say that in some parts of Poland there have been outrages, bandits who have attacked the Red Army from behind our lines. That must be stopped, of course. But soon there will be a new Polish government, and we shall be gone. You will soon be mayor once more, Mr. Nowak!”

From somewhere near at hand came the sound of a burst of gunfire, but it didn’t last for long.

“May I be frank with you, Mayor Nowak?” the Russian continued. “We wish to help in the rebuilding of Poland, but in turn I hope you will help us. You know, most Poles are like you—loyal, decent, democratic, and I salute them.
Pobeda!”
He downed his glass of vodka and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “They will be the ones who will run the new Poland. But there are a few who are Fascists, who collaborated, betrayed Poland to the Germans. And partisans, too, who intend to betray Poland to other enemies.”

“What other enemies?”

But the major ignored the question. “I would like your help in identifying these traitors before they can do more harm.”

Nowak sucked deep on his cigarette. Now he regretted having turned down the vodka. Behind the major’s head on the bare wooden wall hung framed photographs of all the mayors of Piorun during the twenty short years of Polish independence before the war. Piorun didn’t much like change: there had been only three. He wondered whether there would ever be a fourth.

“I need your help in making a register of all those who live in Piorun,” Morozov continued. “Every household, every family. That will be easy for you.”

“Why do you need such lists?”

“Because after liberation comes organization. But we rush ahead, perhaps too fast. First, we must celebrate. This evening. Celebrate liberation!” He slapped his hand upon the table, causing his glass to jiggle. “You will summon all those in the town of importance—the doctor, the policemen, the schoolteachers, all those types of people. Anyone who has standing in the community. We want the best people in the town to come to the inn. You will arrange it. How does that sound, Mayor Nowak? At eight o’clock. Before curfew.”

“Curfew?”

“Just for the time being. Until things are settled.” The major was standing: the interview was over. “I’m sure I can rely on you, Mayor Nowak.”

The mayor rose wearily from his chair, trying to figure out the meaning of these people who shat on his doorstep then invited him to a feast. The world was moving too fast for Stanislaw Nowak. He gazed out of the window of his office. The young alders were coming into bud, but he could still see clearly across the square to the church. So much had happened here, so much suffering endured, so many tears had washed their way through this little town. Yet perhaps the worst was past and they could begin to paste the fragments of their lives back together again. He would help: it was his duty. Yet suddenly the mayor stiffened in surprise. Bodies still hung from the lamppost, but he had been mistaken: they were different bodies, just two of them. Men he knew. Poles. They had signs around their necks. One said
“Faszista,”
the other
“Partizan.”
They were hanging side by side.

The new regime had begun its celebrations early.

❖ ❖ ❖

Poor, dear Franklin.

Churchill really did love the man,
loved
him, for his warmth, his generosity of spirit, for the ships and food and planes he had sent in those darkest hours, for being there when he was most needed. He was an exceptional man, and Churchill felt extraordinary pain as he watched his friend struggle and suffer, protected on every flank by his ever-present advisers. It was like watching a once magnificent cathedral whose walls had begun to crack and crumble, propped up by flying buttresses.

Churchill gazed in sadness as his friend struggled with a cigarette. His fingers were trembling like the wings of a butterfly. And his mind was fading, too, losing its hold as surely as a great oak is stripped of its leaves by a wind in autumn.

Churchill’s doctor, Moran, had told him how it was, how the blood supply to the senses slowly lost its power, how the brain would demand more oxygen and be denied, and would begin to drown. And as he drowned inside, he would struggle, grow more frantic, lash out, even at old friends. Not his fault. The President had recently been overheard complaining that he was exhausted from spending “the last five years pushing Winston uphill in a wheelbarrow.” He didn’t mean it, of course, and Winston couldn’t blame him, at least not all the time. It was the decay.

It had been another day, another lunch, another flaccid excuse for not seeing Churchill on his own. During the lunch, Churchill tried to reignite his friend’s concern for the Polish elections, even quoting from the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalien
able Rights. . . That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
They were words that would surely inflame any American about the plight of the Poles, and Churchill could recite them by heart, yet to Roosevelt they seemed as obscure as ancient Greek. He simply changed the subject. He could sustain nothing, not a story, a speech, a joke—not even, come to that, a deception.

He loved the man, but the question arose, how far could he trust him? Churchill had spent so much time worrying about whether he could trust Stalin, yet had given no thought at all to how far he could still put his faith in Roosevelt. The question hadn’t even entered his head, until now, until that bloody Pole had arrived and dragged in all those doubts. But Franklin had changed, wasn’t the same man and, as heart-wrenching as he found the whole situation, there was no longer any avoiding it. He had to put his old friend to the test. Trial by trust. He cradled his glass in both hands, staring across its meniscus, and sighed deep inside.

“Germany will soon be done for,” he declared. “Before the grey mists of autumn fall, the armies of Nazidom will have been wiped out. The last of their aircraft will have been torn from the skies and their ships and submarines swept from the seas. Then we must turn our eyes to other challenges. To the East, the Orient, where lies our other great foe.” He looked around the table at his American hosts, who today included the American chiefs of staff. “In the last three years it is you, my friends, who have borne the lion’s share of the struggle against them. You have pursued the forces of Nippon from island to island, from one savage encounter to another, and done so with courage and phenomenal tenacity. And while we British have been wholeheartedly engaged in Europe and the Atlantic, in the Pacific you have fought on largely on your own. Yet the times are changing, and soon the forces of the empire will be in a position to stand ever more firmly with you. The instant the war in Europe and the Atlantic is done, I formally propose to send the capital ships of the Royal Navy to the Far East so that together, side by side, we may deal out the final, deadly blows.”

He had made another little speech. Offered help. And he could see the slow windmill of Roosevelt’s mind turning, trying to grasp the meaning of what he had said. A friend would simply have asked what he wanted, but Franklin… oh, dear, he was hesitating. You could almost see the cogs of his mind trying to turn. What lay behind this offer? Was Winston trying to interfere once more, to stake a claim to the running of the war in the Far East? To grab new glory—and grab back his old colonies? And what did it all mean for the deal with Stalin? As the sails of the windmill continued to turn, they cast a shadow over the Englishman.

Roosevelt wouldn’t commit himself. He turned to his colleagues, and they tumbled over themselves to offer excuses. Fleet Admiral King was the first to speak. The sour-faced naval chief had never made any secret of his impatience with the British. He was a man who still seemed to think his country was fighting its Revolution, that this was Yorktown rather than Yalta and that redcoats hid behind every bush. He didn’t want to listen to any plummy accents, he didn’t want to share any of his coming glory, and he certainly didn’t want the Royal Navy.

So he explained that it would be too difficult to integrate British forces at this late stage; it would take up too much of their time. Yes, other Americans added, it would be too little, too late. They were turning Winston down. Turning away the Royal Navy that had given so many lives to the war against Japan, a British fleet that, in one terrible afternoon just three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, had lost the
Repulse
and the
Prince of Wales
and left a thousand men at the bottom of the sea. And these bloody Americans had the nerve to say that the British contribution was too little, too late!

Roosevelt, his friend, his ally, the man he loved, was hiding behind their excuses. He muttered about the need for further study, for delay, for putting things off. The man who had crawled up Stalin’s backside to ensure the Russians got involved in the Far East was trying to push aside the British.

“It would be a glorious day,” Churchill continued, through teeth now so firmly gritted that they ached, “if not only the Americans and British but also the Russians—all three of us—could unite to finish off the Japanese.”

It was a trap. And Roosevelt stumbled. Wasn’t quick enough on his feet to avoid Churchill’s outstretched leg. Before he realized what he was doing, he had as good as admitted to what had been going on, but still he would not trust his friend with the truth. “My sense, Winston, is that the Russians would be more than happy to do so. I’ve had an exploratory chat with our mutual friend. He seems happy to co-operate.”

“Then we should bind him in now! Strike while the pulse for action still races. Agree all the details of our combined command while we are here at Yalta.”