The Prime Minister's Secret Agent (28 page)

“I’m not the same, Clara,” he said, putting his files in his briefcase and rising to his feet. “And neither are you.”

“How do you know that?” she mocked. “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ve been through over there. In Germany … They’re insane—do you understand? Hitler is insane and he’s surrounded himself with yes-men who cater to his every whim. I did what I needed to do to stay alive. To keep my family in Berlin alive.” She looked at him, eyes wide. “I did what I had to, to
survive
.”

Frain put on his overcoat. “Yes, I’m sure,” he answered drily. “And what of your family here? Did you ever think about them? And now that you’re here, what of your family back in Germany?”

“Margaret, yes, of course. You know how I loved her. But Edmund—no. He was a means to an end. Miles—well, that marriage was dead long ago. And Elise …”

“Yes?”

Clara shook her head. “Too pious for her own good, but Elise is a survivor, too. I’ll bet on it.”

“And me?” he asked, putting on his hat and shrugging into his overcoat.

“Peter,” she said, her eyes green and wide. “I loved you. I always loved you. And we both know you loved me, too.”

The clock in Secretary Hull’s antechamber ticked as Ambassador Nomura and Special Envoy Kurusu waited. It was five minutes past two in Washington.

Hull was just finishing up a telephone conversation with President Roosevelt. “Yes, Mr. President,” he said, standing, his eyes like flint. “And it’s been confirmed by multiple sources?” Then he sat, his knees buckling under him, hitting the leather seat with a bang he didn’t even notice. “All right then. Yes, they’re about to arrive. Of course I won’t let on that we know when I receive them. Yes, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. President.”

Hull hung up the telephone and took a ragged breath. He called out to his secretary, “Send them in.”

Nomura and Kurusu entered. Both bowed, then Nomura handed Hull the fourteen-part document, the so-called Final Notification.

Hull picked up his pince-nez and pretended to read it for the first time.

When he was done, he rose to his full height and began what his grandmother would have called a Tennessee tongue-lashing. “In all my fifty years of public service, I have never seen a document so crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions. On a scale so huge, that I never imagined until today that any government on this planet was capable of uttering it.” Hull would not meet Nomura’s eyes.

While Nomura looked wounded, Kurusu’s face remained unreadable.

“Mr. Hull …” Nomura began.

“Go,” Hull said softly. “Go now and never come back.”

Gil Winnant, the American Ambassador to London, was Churchill’s special guest at Chequers. Still, the P.M. didn’t go easy on
him. “Where are the Americans?” Churchill asked as they drank in his study before dinner, his voice breaking. He was exhausted. There was no time left for flatteries and subtleties. It was do or die.

“Mr. Churchill,” replied Winnant, “I wish I could say. You know if it were my decision, the U.S. would be in this war already, but the President—”

“
Your
president …”

“—by most people’s standards FDR’s doing enough with Lend-Lease. But even he can’t declare war—”

“Yes, yes, only bloody Congress can declare war!” the P.M. roared. “I am half-American! My mother was Jennie Jerome, from Brooklyn Heights, New York! I know how these things work!”

“Of course, Prime Minister. But with public opinion the way it is …”

“The President told me he would find a way of going to war, even on a pretext. Nazi submarines have sunk American ships, and still he bides his time. After Hitler’s done in Russia it will be our turn. And if we are gone, who’s next in line? I had such high hopes after the Atlantic Charter …”

Winnant looked apologetic. “The President must walk—so to speak—a very fine line. He must support Britain, but not alienate the antiwar faction …”

The Prime Minister regarded Winnant from above his golden spectacles, then chose his words carefully, as if he had come to a decision. “I will tell you one thing—you’re not going to be neutral forever. The U.S. is like Prospero in Poe’s ‘Masque of the Red Death’—war, like Death, will prove impossible to avoid forever. And now, please excuse me, Mr. Ambassador. I have a war to fight.”

Admiral Yamamoto was still sitting statue-still, white-gloved hands folded in front of him. A military march played over the
ship’s loudspeakers, and officers chatted, some smoking cigarettes, and some drinking sake from small ceramic cups. With the exception of Yamamoto, the atmosphere felt like a party.

The Japanese radio announcer broke into the music.
“Just in—we have an announcement from the Navy Department, released today, December eighth. Before daybreak, the Imperial Navy successfully launched a large-scale air attack against the United States Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, destroying the U.S. Fleet. We salute the Commander in Chief of our Fleet, Admiral Yamamoto.”

The men applauded. “The attack went as planned!” one called. “It was a success!” shouted another.

Yamamoto remained motionless. “Yes, but did the U.S. government receive the communiqué before one
P.M.
?”

One of the men sobered, facing Admiral Yamamoto. “Ambassador Nomura was late in Washington, sir. And Air Commander Fuchida was early in Hawaii.”

Yamamoto shook his head. His face was tired and sad. “We didn’t follow Geneva Conventions—and now we look every bit like the sneaky slit-eyed dwarfs their propaganda paints us.”

Conversation in the room ceased. Yamamoto kept speaking, as though to himself. “I had intended to strike a fatal blow to the American fleet by attacking Pearl Harbor immediately after Japan’s official declaration of war. But according to all our reports, we attacked
fifty-five minutes before
the message was delivered. I can’t imagine anything that would infuriate the Americans more than what they’re going to see as a ‘sneak attack’ by the Japanese. The Emperor, too, will be most displeased.

“The fact that we have had a small success at Pearl Harbor is nothing. The fact that we have succeeded so easily pleases people. But they should think things over—and realize how serious the situation will become.”

News of the attack was spreading.
“Here is the news, and this is Alvar Lidell reading it,”
sounded the burnished tones of the BBC announcer over the hiss of the airwaves.

“Turn the damn thing up!” Winston Churchill bellowed from across the Hawtree Room at Chequers. “What’s Lidell saying?”

“Winnie,” his wife, Clementine, chided. “Language, dear—really.”

“Not now, Clemmie!” the old man snapped, stomping over to the wireless. He fiddled with the buttons and dials of the Emerson. “How the hell do you fly this damn thing? Inces! Where are you, you damn fool?”

David stepped in and adjusted the knobs.

“This just in,”
Lidell was saying.

“Shhhhh,” the Prime Minister growled to the assembled crowd, who were chatting over Martinis and silver bowls of smoked almonds: American Ambassador John Winnant; Averill Harriman, Roosevelt’s special representative in the UK; Harriman’s daughter Kathleen; and the P.M.’s daughter-in-law, Pamela Churchill.

Then Lidell’s usual professional veneer broke.
“Japan has launched a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and has declared war on Britain and the United States,”
he squeaked, voice pitched slightly higher because of adrenaline.

“Turn it up!” the P.M. roared.

“
The U.S. President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, has mobilized all his forces and is poised to declare war on Japan
.

“Details of the attack in Hawaii are scarce but initial reports say Japanese bombers and torpedo-carrying planes targeted warships, aircraft, and military installations in Pearl Harbor, on Oahu, the third largest and chief island of Hawaii.”

The Prime Minister looked up, shocked. He and John locked eyes, and John’s eyebrows rose.
The date line
, John mouthed. Churchill nodded. It was December eighth in Tokyo. But it was still December seventh in Pearl Harbor. They had forgotten to factor in the date line.

“News of the daring raid has shocked members of Congress at a time when Japanese officials in Washington were still negotiating with U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull on lifting U.S. sanctions imposed after continuing Japanese aggression against China …”

Across the table, Winnant’s face was stone. “No …” he muttered, as if to himself. “I can’t believe it. Sure, if there was an attack, it was the Philippines …”

“America—like it or not—has finally joined this world war,” the P.M. intoned, his voice rising in volume, as though he stood before the House of Commons. “Germany will honor the pact and back Japan. We, of course, will support the United States. And the U.S. will have no option but to declare war on Germany!”

With effort, he climbed up onto his chair and raised a fist. “We shall fight Japan!” he said, his usually booming voice breathy. “We shall declare war on Japan and support the United States of America!”

“Let me just have the details confirmed, Prime Minister, before you have the U.S. declaring war due to a radio announcement.” Winnant’s voice was shaking.

The Prime Minister waved him off with one hand. John and David ran to stand behind Churchill, should he topple over in excitement.

“This is a day of great joy!” the Prime Minister exclaimed, as though addressing his countrymen from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. “With the United States at our side, we will win, of that I have no doubt. England will live! Britain will live! The Commonwealth of Nations and the British Empire will live, I say!
Live!
”

He opened his arms wide, as if to embrace the whole of his people. “Once again in our long island history, we shall emerge—however mauled and mutilated—safe and victorious! Victorious, I tell you! There
will
always be an England!”

Winnant, still seated, took the Prime Minister’s measure. He spoke slowly, still in shock. “We lost untold men at Pearl today,” he said. “And now it looks as if we’ve been pulled into a war I’m not convinced Japan really wanted. With all due respect, I believe it is in poor taste to gloat over the bodies of the dead, Mr. Prime Minister.”

Churchill’s face darkened. “Men, Winnant.
Military
men,” he said, enunciating each syllable. “Soldiers. Sailors. On duty. Do you know how many military men
we
have lost? Do you know how many civilians—women and children, babes in arms, the old and infirm—we lose nightly? Why, we lost as many men just yesterday on the
Repulse
and the
Prince of Wales!
And no one even blinks an eye! Do you think American blood is more precious than ours?”

Winnant shook his head and drained his Martini.

Churchill looked at Winnant, a long, hard look. “Welcome to the war, Mr. Ambassador,” he said, as John and David helped him down, then pulling out a cigar from his jacket pocket and sticking it between his teeth. “Better late than never.”

Then, to David: “And gimme President Roosevelt on the telephone. Immediately!”

Hugh Thompson had made it through the SOE training camps in Scotland, and was doing what was called finishing school at Beaulieu, a large estate in the New Forest. The last of the spy training camps was set in a manor house and cathedral on glorious grounds, with gardens, lawns, and walkways overlooking the Beaulieu River. It was where secret agents finished their training: in burglary,
forgery, sabotage, disguises, living off the land, and assassination.

Hugh had started out as an MI-5 agent, like his father before him, until a situation with Abwehr spymaster Clara Hess had become so personal that he’d been fired for unprofessional behavior. And so, when agent Kim Philby had shown up at a pub in London, with his red tie and double-folded handkerchief, to recruit him, it had seemed like divine Providence.

Suddenly Hugh’s life had purpose again. He would be a spy. He would use his knowledge of the French language to help a French resistance group.
La Résistance!

As Hugh finished up his training in F Section, he became restless. His fellow trainees were being sent off, parachuted God only knew where. When would it be his turn? At the pub in town, Hugh finished yet another beer as he listened to Lidell on the wireless. When the news was announced, there was stunned silence, then cheering, as people put together that the United States would finally be entering the war.