Churchill's Triumph (3 page)

“From where? When?” the old man cried, growing agitated.

“Nearly twenty years ago. In Russia.”

ON
E

his must be, Churchill
thought, the most God
forsaken place he’d ever seen, at the very edge of the earth. As they flew in for the landing he could see an army of women bent over the runway, sweeping away the snow with twig brooms. The runway itself was little more than a series of uneven concrete slabs cast upon the frozen ground, with a control tower that had been thrown together from rough-planed timber. It had a machine-gun nest on top. The insistent grayness of it all burrowed inside Churchill and froze his doubts so hard he wondered if they would ever leave him.

Sarah Oliver, his daughter, a flight officer in the WAAF, sensed his misgivings and squeezed his hand. “Still feeling poorly, Papa?”

The previous day he’d had a temperature of 103 degrees, not the best way to begin a hazardous journey, not for a man of seventy. But he shook his head. “I never wanted to come here, not to the Crimea. Nothing but lice and typhus plague and. . . blessed Russians. My God, I hope the whisky will last, otherwise we might end up dying in this place.”

“So. . . why here?”

“Had no choice. Neither did poor Franklin. A man in a wheelchair has to fly six thousand miles because Stalin refuses to travel more than six hundred. The supreme gathering of the three most powerful men in the world—in a hole like this!” He stabbed his finger at the scene outside. “If we’d researched the matter for ten years with all diligence, I swear we could have found no more miserable spot. Russia in blasted February!”

The conference of the three Allied war leaders hadn’t yet started and already Stalin had won the first round.

“They call you the Holy Trinity, you three,” Sarah said, smiling, trying to reassure him.

“And Stalin says I’m the Holy Ghost,” he replied morosely, “because I’m the fool who seems to be forever flying about.” He scratched at a blob of grease on his lapel. “But I think we rather resemble the triumvirate of Ancient Rome—you remember your Shakespeare?”

“You know I prefer more modern pieces.”

“After the fall of Julius Caesar, the three of them—Mark Antony, Octavius, Lepidus—gathered together to carve up the world. Just like us. Then they fell upon each other’s throats.”

It was clear his spirits were not to be easily raised. They’d left Malta eight hours earlier, bound for their ultimate destination of Yalta on the coast of the Black Sea, which in February could freeze as hard as Iceland. The nearest operational airfield was Saki, although from five hundred feet up it seemed an utterly reckless place to land. As the four-engined Douglas Skymaster made its approach it gave another sharp lurch through the cold air and Sarah gripped her father more urgently. She wasn’t enjoying this, either. “Why couldn’t we have come by ship?” she moaned.

“My sentiments entirely, but the Germans departed the Crimea only a few months ago. They left behind a wasteland drenched in blood and a harbor packed with mines. Regrettably, the bastards failed to leave behind a map for their minefields. So, we endure.”

Then, at last, the tires were hitting the ground, squealing, once, twice, and the Skymaster was clawing slowly to a halt, bouncing on every rut. When finally the aircraft had stopped, Churchill was pensive, remaining in his seat for awhile, staring at the guard of honor lined up at the side of the field, lost in his misgivings.

Sarah waited for him, staring sadly at her father in the light of a winter’s afternoon. The sparse hair, the sagging jowls, the eyes that were losing the battle against time. He was an extraordinary man who seemed to possess an almost supernatural capacity for revival and for restarting the motor that had driven him full tilt through a lifetime of hazard, but the gears were now worn, they kept slipping, and each time he set out, the engine was forced to race ever harder to make any headway. Sarah knew why she’d been asked to accompany him to Yalta, for much the same reason as Roosevelt’s daughter, Anna, was also coming. For comfort, yes, to make sure their fathers had those little personal things around them that made them feel content, but although no one spoke about it, the daughters were also there
just in case
. To be by their sides,
just in case
anything were to happen. No man can easily contemplate the thought of dying far away from his home, on his own.

Yet there was still plenty of life left in the old dog. Suddenly he launched himself from his seat. “Let’s get on with it,” he muttered grimly.

The American president was waiting for him. Franklin Roosevelt had arrived on a plane some twenty minutes earlier and had been lowered in his wheelchair on a specially constructed lift. Now he was seated in the back of a Lend-Lease jeep, wrapped heavily against the cold as the two leaders set out to inspect the guard of honor together. Roosevelt looked frail, disinterested, and the prime minister tried to give the occasion some semblance of dignity by walking beside him. Afterwards they were taken to a tent heated by wood-burning stoves where their Soviet hosts had laid on a feast—suckling pig, caviar, smoked sturgeon, black bread, with endless quantities of vodka and the sweet local champagne. All the while, outside, the guard of honor continued to stand at its post, bayonets like icicles.

When, at last, Churchill climbed into the back of his car alongside Sarah, his mood had not improved. She left him to his thoughts. Of all the Churchill children, she resembled him most closely—the same intense blue eyes, gold-red hair, passionate temper, so stubborn she was known as “Mule.” It often made words superfluous between them and their silences were never painful. She tucked a rug round his legs and held his hand.

It would take them almost five hours to reach their destination. Yalta was barely more than eighty miles away but the road was slushy, rough, heavily potholed, with signs of hasty repair. At every two hundred paces they saw members of the Soviet militia, many of them women, saluting with their rifles as the convoy passed. And still it snowed.

“I am in agony about Franklin,” he began at last.

“I think we all are,” Sarah replied. “He looks so desperately ill.”

“He is also desperately misguided. Infirmity and imprudence. The combination could be calamitous. You know, I asked him if we might share the journey to Yalta. He declined. Said he needed to rest. He won’t talk to me, Mule. Has pushed me aside.”

“He couldn’t do that. You’re mistaken.”

“I am most certain of it.”

“Then why?”

“Because he thinks he knows better. Trusts Stalin. Believes we may all live together in harmony once the slaughter is over. He’s one of those most dangerous of men, Mule, an idealist. Thinks he can win over Stalin simply by the force of his own personality.”

“Don’t you?”

“Only if I’ve got a bloody grenade in my pocket.”

“But you’ve said such nice things about Marshal Stalin.”

“And I shall continue to do so. It’s called diplomacy, and it is filled with terminological inexactitudes.”

“Which means?”

He sighed, as though already exhausted. “In a few hours’ time I shall embrace the Marshal warmly and he, just as warmly, will embrace me. Doesn’t mean we like each other. Nearly thirty years ago I sent an army to Russia with the intention of crushing the Bolshevik infant in its cradle. I failed. Stalin hasn’t forgotten that. Neither have I.”

Ahead, they could see the terrain changing, rising into mountains. On both sides of the road were strewn the remnants of broken tanks and rusting military equipment, and as they passed through village after desolated village, not a single house appeared to be intact. They could see no livestock, no signs of preparation for the coming spring, only hungry eyes peering from the darkness of empty windows. This was the Crimea, still gripped in a German winter.

As the hours rolled and bumped past they tried to entertain themselves by reading aloud extracts from Byron and munching dry ham sandwiches, which they washed down with a little brandy. He always brought sandwiches with him to Russia; in this place you never knew what to expect. Then the brandy got the better of the old man’s constitution and he leaned forward to rattle at the partition window separating him from the driver and armed guard seated in front. “Stop the car,” Churchill ordered.

The guard shook his head, indicating that they should continue. A shouting match quickly developed that wasn’t resolved until Churchill grabbed the handle of the door and started to open it as though to jump out. “I need a leak, you fool,” he shouted, as the car drew over. “Just wait till you’re my age and they start bouncing your bladder over these bloody roads!”

As he stepped from the car he found himself in yet another graveyard of charred and tumbling walls. It was still snowing and the hamlet appeared deserted except for a couple of nervous dogs that barked from a safe distance. He could taste the air: it was still thick with brick dust, and there was the sense of something sweetly sour and rotted about this place, as though someone had taken the lid off an old dustbin. It was a smell he had carried with him from the trenches of the last war.

It wasn’t until Churchill had finished his business out of view of the car and was buttoning himself up that he saw two small children. A brother and sister, he guessed, the eldest no more than nine, rake-thin, with harshly cropped hair to ward off infestation and a threadbare horsehair blanket that was their only means of protection. Tears marked the girl’s cheeks but she made no sound. Their eyes spoke of horrors and their skin was so filthy it was impossible to know where bruises smudged into old grime. Slowly, from beneath the blanket, the boy stretched out a hand and muttered a few words that Churchill did not understand.

“My poor lambs,” Churchill whispered. He began feverishly searching his pockets—for what he wasn’t certain, as he never carried any money—and while he fumbled the blanket fell from the children’s shoulders. Their bodies had become a canvas of sores, scars and infection, and where the girl’s left arm should have been there was nothing but a desperate, blackened stump. They had no shoes, the girl was clad in a sack and the boy was wearing a grey German field tunic that still bore its dark stain of death. His hand went to his mouth, begging for food, and Churchill cried out in anguish. He stepped forward, but as he did so they were gone, vanished into the grey gloom of snow. From nearby he heard the guard shouting in impatience; Churchill swore softly at him, didn’t move, couldn’t move, as tears trickled down his cheeks. When at last he had clambered back into the car and they were on their way once more, he said nothing for many miles.

Then they began to climb into the mountains. They made another stop, this one planned; another feast set out on groaning tables, with Soviet dignitaries—Molotov, the wretched foreign minister, and Vyshinsky, odious prosecutor— dancing attendance and insisting they eat. Churchill cursed the memory of the stale ham sandwiches and whispered urgently to his daughter. While he ate and engaged the attentions of his Soviet hosts, she busied herself on his errand.

By the time they were on their way once again the short winter day was drawing to its end. Sarah sat with two bulging canvas shoulder-bags at her feet. The old man squeezed her hand in gratitude, but said nothing. An hour further on they approached the ruins of another village. Firelight flickered between the cracks: there was life here, of sorts. Once again Churchill demanded that they stop, and this time Sarah joined him as he stepped from the car and disappeared into the shadows. When, a few minutes later, they returned, the guard failed to notice that they were no longer carrying their shoulder-bags, or that the rear compartment no longer smelled so strongly of suckling pig and smoked fish.

“It seems so desperately inadequate, Papa,” Sarah whispered.

“Of course it is.” He sobbed in genuine distress. “Everything I do nowadays seems so. But at least, Mule, we shall know that we tried, and that some good, no matter how little, has come from this wretched conference in Yalta.”

❖ ❖ ❖

Elsewhere on the road, another car was bumping its way through the mountains.

“He really has degenerated, Anthony. He’s become just another silly old man. All over the place.”

“Winston, you mean?”

“It’s inexcusable. We travel halfway round the world to sort out the peace, yet Winston won’t even read the papers I give him. It really is a terrible shemozzle.”

“Shemozzle, indeed, Alec.”

The two men fell into silence, contemplating the dreariness of the scene outside the car. Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary, and Sir Alexander Cadogan, the permanent under-secretary, were, as so often in their careers, following some way behind Churchill. Neither found it a comfortable position. Eden was the suave and elegant politician, the diminutive and intellectual Cadogan his most senior official; both were quintessential figures of order, and they found it inconvenient and frequently exasperating to work for a prime minister who most evidently was not.

“He’s not the only one, of course, Alec. Look at the Americans. Half their delegation is dying on its feet—and Franklin looks like an impressionist picture that’s been left out in the rain. We should be holding this conference in the catacombs.”