The Prime Minister's Secret Agent (7 page)

In his own plush armchair, while the rest sat behind, in metal folding chairs, the Prime Minister growled, unlit cigar clenched between his teeth, “Mr. Greene, please start the projector. Mr. Sterling, turn off the lights.”

His two private secretaries did his bidding, and soon the room was dark, filled with the noise of the whirring projector and then the black-and-white images projected onto a screen.

When Lord Nelson, played by Laurence Olivier, said,
“Gentlemen, you will never make peace with Napoleon … Napoleon cannot be master of the world until he has smashed us up, and believe me, gentlemen, he means to be master of the world! You cannot make peace with dictators. You have to destroy them—wipe them out!”
the P.M. rose and shook his fist at the screen.

He turned toward the audience, who did their best to rouse themselves and look attentive. “I’ll have you know I wrote that line—and several others of Nelson’s! Just fill in ‘Hitler’ wherever ‘Napoleon’ appears and have done with it!” he barked, stabbing the air with his cigar for emphasis.

“Winston …” his wife, Clementine Churchill, said from a brocade settee behind the P.M.’s armchair.

But Churchill paced in front of the screen, mouthing Nelson’s words. “Yes, things were different when we were here five years ago, weren’t they? Our braid was shining in those days. Today they won’t even let us anchor in the harbor. It’s as though we had the plague. They’re so scared of Bonaparte they daren’t lift a finger to help those who are still fighting him …”

Then he stopped his pacing. “Turn off the damn projector! Mr. Greene! Mr. Greene!” David Greene jumped to his feet to do the P.M.’s bidding.

“And Mr. Sterling—let there be light!” John Sterling switched on the lights. The two private secretaries exchanged a knowing glance. They knew from experience that whether the film was done or not, movie time was over.

David Greene was the shorter and slighter of the two, with light hair and silver-rimmed spectacles. He and his friend, John Sterling, had worked for Winston Churchill during his so-called Wilderness Years, when no one in the House took his warnings of Nazi armament seriously. Now that he was almost thirty, his former impish charm had become somewhat subdued, yet another casualty of the war.

John was taller, with curly brown hair and dark eyes and a grim smile. He wore his RAF uniform well, his body not betraying, at least to the casual observer, the injuries he’d survived in Berlin.

The enormous bookcase-lined Long Gallery was chilly, even though a fire burned in the grate and the floor was covered in Kazakh rugs. The room smelled of book restorer and wood smoke. Churchill began to pace, his round face pink from the prodigious quantities of Pol Roger Champagne and red Burgundy he’d put away during dinner. “Do you know that that damn isolationist group, the so-called America First Committee, calls
That Hamilton Woman
‘wartime propaganda’? And has called on the U.S. public to boycott it? Apparently, the AFC sees them as ‘preparing Americans for war.’ ”

He kicked a metal wastebasket, and Nelson, the P.M.’s black cat, who’d been curled up on one of the folding chairs, started, then scurried away. “No one named Nelson—man or cat—ever runs from a fight!” Churchill shouted after the feline, shaking his fist. “And of course we’re trying to rouse the damn Americans. They’ve sat on their fat—”

Clementine shot her husband a warning look.

“—
posteriors
long enough. The Nazzies have sunk the USS
Robin Moor
, the
Kearny
, and the
Reuben James
. Do they have to invade the East Coast and march on Washington before President Roosevelt will declare war?

“Meanwhile,” Churchill continued, his voice rising in power, as if addressing the back benches of the House of Commons, “they’re wasting time rounding up filmmakers when they should be after the bl—”

He shot a look at Clementine, who arched one eyebrow in warning. “… the Nazzies,” he amended, in a gentler tone, using his usual and distinctive sibilant pronunciation.

“Winston, darling,” his wife said, rising, “if you’re done with the film, I think I’ll retire for the evening. Good night, love. Good night, all.” The gentlemen stood as Mrs. Churchill, with her fine posture and impeccably cut silk dress, walked out in a trail of Arpège. The rest of the women, including Churchill’s daughter Mary, also excused themselves.

When they were gone, Churchill gave a fierce battle cry: “Gentlemen,” he thundered, rallying the troops, “to the Hawtree Room!” As he stalked out, he called over his shoulder to his beleaguered manservant, “And Inces! We shall require both port and Stilton!”

Churchill led the way through a secret door, camouflaged in the library’s books, to the Cromwell Passage, and then to the Hawtree Room, which he’d commandeered as his study. There the Prime Minister threw himself into one of the leather club chairs. Nelson rubbed up against his shins.

The P.M. reached down to scratch Nelson under the chin, and the cat started purring—but then froze at the rumble of German planes flying overhead, flattening his ears. “Don’t worry, darling Nelson,” murmured the Prime Minister, continuing his chin
scratches, “just remember what those brave boys in the RAF are doing.” Nelson, named after the venerable Lord Horatio, was prone to hiding under beds during air raids.

“Come, dearest Nelson,” the P.M. crooned, patting his lap. “Up!” The cat jumped up, kneaded a bit, then settled in, wrapping his tail around his compact body and closing his eyes.

There were five men in the Hawtree Room at Chequers Court: Sir John Dill, Chief of the Imperial General Staff; General Ismay, chief staff officer and military adviser; and Churchill and his two private secretaries.

Since the P.M. was known to say, “A change is as good as a rest!” and resting wasn’t possible, Churchill often decided—at the last minute, to the consternation of his detectives and staff, not to mention his wife—to travel.

Although a fire crackled in the room’s fireplace behind bronze fenders, behind the blackout curtains the windows were loose and rattled in the wind, a damp chill in the air. The men sat on chairs with faded petit-point seats at the enormous mahogany pedestal table, under the watchful eyes of a painting of Cromwell’s General, John Lambert. All waited for the meat of the discussion to begin. There was a globe on a stand in the corner, with territories marked from the midthirties, now hopelessly out of date.

Mr. Inces, his footsteps muffled by the Ochark carpet, carried in blue-veined Stilton and plum bread on Frankenthal dishes, and a cut-crystal decanter filled with amber liquid that glowed in the firelight.

“Stilton and port are like man and wife,” the P.M. intoned. “Whom God has joined together, let no man tear asunder.” Then, “Damn it, Inces, pour the port!”

Churchill took a greedy sip and swallowed. “I hear Popov made it to the U.S. Told that Hoover chap at the FBI about the
Pearl Harbor survey from the Germans. Didn’t seem to make much of an impression, though, according to my sources at MI-Six.”

“The Yanks are disorganized, sir,” David said, pushing up his wire-rimmed glasses. “The Army doesn’t talk to the Navy and the Navy doesn’t talk to the Army. On any given day, neither of them may be talking to the President. And Hoover’s supposed to be the worst of them, in terms of cronyism and iron-fisted control over information. Controlling, petty—”

“That’s enough, Mr. Greene!” the P.M. said, taking another gulp of port and slipping a tiny sliver of Stilton to Nelson. “But I did hear that when Mr. Hoover discovered our man Popov had taken a woman from New York to Florida, he threatened to have him arrested under some ancient American blue law if he didn’t leave the U.S. immediately.” He shook his head in mock despair. “Yanks—often licentious, and yet suspect of pleasure. It’s their beginnings, you know. No matter where they come from, they’re all affected by America’s Puritan beginnings. And what about the Orient? Granted, Herr Hitler is keeping us more than occupied in the Atlantic, but the Japanese have now bound themselves to him and Mussolini. And their atrocities in the Far East are just as savage as the Nazzies’.”

“Just in China, though,” said Dill.

“ ‘Just in China’?” the P.M. boomed. “They’re
starting
with China, an
amuse-bouche
, just as Hitler started with Austria and the Sudetenland. First China, then French Indo-China? The Dutch West Indies? Our own Hong Kong and Singapore? If they went after our colonies, we couldn’t take them. Not with all of our manpower needed in the Atlantic. I asked Roosevelt for a few ships from his Pacific Fleet, do you know what he said? No!”

The booming voice had grown thunderous. “He said, and I quote, ‘It’s not the job of the United States to steam around the
world, shoring up other people’s empires. We don’t like empires, no matter whose flag they fly.’ ” He gestured with his glass of port, spilling some on the linen tablecloth. “Damn Yanks!”

“Well, as a former British colony themselves …” David began. John gave him a swift kick under the table.

The P.M. didn’t notice. “It would serve them right if the Japanese attacked them in the Far East—they might not have ‘colonies,’ but they do have territories. Guam, the Philippines, Samoa. Even their Hawaiian Islands are territories, not a state of their Union …”

Miss Stewart, one of Mr. Churchill’s long-suffering typists, entered the room. “Excuse me, Mr. Churchill, gentlemen,” she said, her white chignon glistening in the firelight. “But this Friday’s list of figures has just arrived by courier from Porton Down.”

“Yes, yes, Miss Stewart, thank you—just leave it here.” The plump older woman did so and departed.

The Prime Minister put on his gold-framed glasses and read over the document, the typed figures sent by the War Cabinet every Friday, detailing the progress made on chemical and biological weapons. His forehead creased with concern.

“Not enough,” he muttered, “not nearly enough.” To the room he growled, “Those concerned should be beaten soundly, by Jove!”

“Sir?” David said.

“Still—we must KBO! Mr. Greene, please make sure a memo goes out to Beaverbrook—Miss Stewart can type it for you—that the absolute maximum effort must be used with priority to make, store, and fill into containers the largest possible quantities of gas. Largest possible quantities! It says here, mustard is running at only one hundred and thirty tons per week, a third of the full capacity. Tell Brookie we damn well need to ginger things up.

“And be sure to ask him who exactly is responsible for this failure.
I will not tolerate ineptitude, especially with something so important!” The P.M. took out one of his Romeo y Julieta cigars from his breast pocket and began to gnaw on it. “At any moment, peril may be upon us.”

“Yes, sir.” David took the memo and left the room to find Miss Stewart.

The Prime Minister turned his attention back to the other men. “Dilly! Why the long face?”

Dill swallowed his sip of port, then replied, “Sir, I would like to discuss N, our new biological weapon. I know you’re keen on developing it, but I want you to think seriously about the moral implications of our using it. I wouldn’t want it in play unless it could be shown either that it was life or death for us, or that it would shorten the war by a year or more.”

“What?” Churchill growled, finally clipping, then igniting his cigar with a heavy silver lighter. “Moral qualms getting the better of you? Angels and devils on your shoulders? Won’t mean much when there are Nazzies on our doorstep.”

Dill smoothed his mustache. “It’s absurd to consider morality on the topic of mustard gas when everybody used it in the last war without a word of complaint from the moralists of the Church. On the other hand, the bombing of open cities was once forbidden. Now everyone does it as a matter of course. It is simply a matter of the fashions of war changing, as long and short skirts for women. However, N …”

The Prime Minister chewed harder on his cigar, then banged his fist on the table, making Nelson jump. Nelson pretended to groom himself to restore his dignity, then slunk off.

“When your back is up against the wall, do you play by the rules of the Geneva Conventions?” The P.M. poked the air with his cigar. “Do you consult the International Committee of the Red
Cross? Hitler’s not playing by those rules, and I don’t believe we need to, either. Mr. Sterling, I want a cold-blooded calculation made as to how it would benefit us to use this new N that my warlocks and wizards at Porton Down are creating in their cauldrons.”

“Sir, if I may—” John ventured.

“Well, speak up, Mr. Sterling! That’s why I keep you around!” Then, remembering the man had served as an RAF pilot and had been shot down over Nazi territory, the P.M.’s voice softened. “Go on.”

“I don’t have any qualm about our using every weapon in our arsenal to stop a Nazi invasion, but it is nonetheless true that chemical weapons and gas have a particular … unpleasantness … about them. Part of that is because they’re really not that easy to control in a tactical way—their sole purpose is to kill and incapacitate people downwind. That makes them much more indiscriminate. It’s the equivalent of the weaker party in a fight resorting to throwing a fistful of sand in the stronger party’s face.”

“I meant it when I said we would fight on the beaches, and that includes throwing sand—or anything else my wizards at Porton Down conjure—in the faces of Nazzi invaders.”

John didn’t flinch. “Nevertheless, sir, to use chemical and biological weapons is to cross a dangerous threshold, especially when used with civilians. The Americans would be horrified to learn of our research.”

“The Americans don’t need to know everything we’re thinking,” the P.M. rumbled, “especially when they’re sitting pretty and don’t seem to be bothered much by Britons killed by Nazzi bombs.”

Dill interjected, “Our experiments with N include putting them into cakes of grain, which would be dropped for livestock to eat.”

“So starvation’s better than gas or poison?” John asked.

“Mr. Sterling, you are certainly correct—the dead are dead in
any case, and it’s unclear that having someone choke to death while convulsing is somehow worse than burning them to death with jellied gasoline, or causing a firestorm, or blowing them up, or shooting them in the head, or even instituting a blockade that denies them access to food and medicine.”