Winds of War (106 page)

“Rhoda likes it.”

They drank in silence.

“How about that cabbie?” said Kirby.

“Well, he said it straight out. It’s been said on the Senate floor often, in double-talk.”

Kirby emptied his glass, and Pug at once refilled it.

“Thanks, Pug. I’m having unusual feelings these days. I’m starting to suspect that the human race, as we know it, may not make it through the industrial revolution.”

“I’ve had a bad day myself,” Pug said, as the scientist lit his pipe.

“No,” Kirby said, slowly waving out the thick wooden match, “let me try to put this into words. It’s occurred to me that our human values, our ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, evolved in simpler times, before there were machines. Possibly the Germans and the Japanese are really adapting better to the new environment. Their successes suggest that. Also the way their opponents keep stumbling and crumbling. We may be having a Darwinian change in society. Authoritarian rule may be best suited to urban machine life - armed bosses indifferent to mercy or probity, keeping order by terror, and ready to lie and kill as routine policy. After all, most of the machines aren’t a hundred years old. The airplane isn’t forty years old. And democracy’s still a fragile experiment.” Kirby paused to drain his glass. “You called the Japanese industrial samurais. That rang the bell. They’ve starved themselves, stripped their country, to build or buy machines, and they’ve jumped out of nowhere to center stage of history. The Nazi or samurai idea may just make more sense in a changed world, Pug. It this merely martini talk, and is there any left in that jug?”

“There’s plenty,” said Pug, pouring, “and more where it came from. I’m feeling better by the minute. It’s nice on this porch.”

“It’s marvellous,” said Palmer Kirby.

“Why don’t you stay for dinner?” Pug said. “What else do you have to do?”

“I don’t like to impose on you.”

“I’m having chops, potatoes, and a salad. It’s just putting on a couple more chops. Let me tell the cook.”

“All right, Pug. Thanks. I’ve done a lot of eating alone lately.”

“Be back in a minute,” said Victor Henry, taking the jug. He brought it back full and tinkling.

“I put off dinner,” he said. “Give us a chance to relax.”

“Suits me,” said Kirby, “though from the mood I’m in and the size of that jug, you may have to lead me to the dining room.”

“It’s not far,” Pug said, “and the furniture has few sharp edges.”

Kirby laughed. “You know, about the first thing your very sweet wife Rhoda said to me was that I drank too much. At the dinner she gave me in Berlin. You remember, when you had to fly back to see the President. I was in a bad mood, and I did swill a lot of wine fast. She brought me up short.”

“That was rude. The amount a man drinks is his own business,” said Pug. “Not to mention that on occasion my proud beauty has sort of a hollow leg herself.”

“Say, you mix a hell of a good martini, Pug.”

“Kirby, what you were saying before, you know, is only this wave-of-the-future stuff that the Lindberghs have been peddling.”

“Well, Lindy’s the type of the new man, isn’t he? Flying an ocean by himself in a single-motor plane! He pointed the way to much that’s happened since.”

“He’s not a liar and murderer.”

“Only the bosses need be, Henry. The rest, including the scientific and mechanical geniuses like Lindy, and the wheelhorses like me, merely have to obey. That’s obviously what’s been happening in Germany.”

“I’ll tell you, Kirby,” Pug said, swirling his glass and feeling very profound, “there’s nothing new about such leaders. Napoleon was one. He had his propaganda line, too, that weakened the foe before he fired a shot. Why, he was bringing liberty, equality, fraternity to all Europeans. So, he laid the continent waste and made it run with blood for a dozen years or so, until they got wise to him and caught him and marooned him on a rock.”

“You think that’ll happen to Hitler?”

“I hope so.”

“There’s a difference. Napoleon had no machines. If he had had airplanes, telephones, tanks, trucks, machine guns - the whole industrial apparatus - don’t you think he might have clamped a lasting tyranny on Europe?”

“I’m not sure. I happen to have a low opinion of Napoleon. Napoleon sold Jefferson nearly a million square miles of prime land, you know - our whole Middle West, from Louisiana to the Rockies and the Canadian border – for fifteen million dollars. Fifteen million! It figured out to four cents an acre for real estate like Iowa and Nebraska. And Minnesota, with all that iron ore. Colorado with its gold and silver. Oklahoma with its oil. I don’t see how anybody, even a Frenchman, can figure Napoleon as a genius. He was a bloodthirsty ass. If he’d sent just one of his smaller armies over here to protect that territory – just a couple of divisions to hold the Louisiana territory, instead of wandering around Europe slaughtering and looting - and a few thousand Frenchmen to colonize the land, there’s little doubt that France would be the world’s greatest power today. Instead of what she is, a raped old bag.”

“I can’t say that has occurred to me before,” Kirby said, smiling at the phrase. “It’s probably fallacious.”

“What’s happening with uranium?” Victor Henry said.

Kirby’s smile turned wary. “Is that why you’re plying me with martinis?”

“If martinis can loosen you up about uranium, let it happen first with an officer in War Plans, and thereafter don’t drink martinis.”

“Doesn’t War Plans have any information?”

“No. It’s still Jules Verne talk to us.”

“Unfortunately, it’s more than that.”

The rain was starting again, with a whistle of wind, a rumble of thunder, and a whoosh of raindrops through the porch screen. Pug dropped a canvas flap on the side, fastening it down as Kirby talked.

“The best present judgment Pug, is that the bomb can be built. It might take, with an all-out effort, two years or fifty years. Those are the brackets. But we’re not making an all-out effort. We’re making a good effort on the theory end, that’s all. Tremendous brains are at work, some of them driven from Europe by the Germans, for which we owe them cordial thanks. The big question is, how far ahead are the Germans by now? We aren’t even started. There’s no money available and no plan. Making uranium bombs will go in several stages, and some of us fear that the Germans have cracked stage one, which is to get enough of the isotope to start a controlled chain reaction.”

“What kind of weapon are we talking about here?” said Pug. “How powerful an explosive?”

Again, the answer is
X
. The power may be too much altogether. That is, the bomb may blow itself apart before it can really work. In theory one bomb might level New York City. Or even an area like Rhode Island. You’re dealing here with very large unknowns. There’s talk that it could start a process that could blow up the earth. The best men don’t take that too seriously. I frankly don’t know enough to be sure.”

“You’re talking about a pretty good bomb,” said Victor Henry.

“Hellooo!”

Rhoda Henry’s voice rang through the spacious house, and they heard heels clicking on the parquet floor. “Surprise! Anybody home? I’m DRENCHED. I’m a drowned RAT.”

“Hi! I’m out here,” Pug called, “and we’ve got company.”

“We have?”

“Hello, Rhoda,” said Kirby, standing.

“Oh my GAWD!” She froze in the doorway, staring. Rhoda’s purple hat dripped, she carried a sodden paper bundle, and her flowered silk dress clung wetly to her shoulders and bosom. Her face glistened with rain. Her eye makeup was blurred, her lipstick blotchy on pale lips. Wet strands of hair hung down her forehead and neck.

Pug said, “You finished up sort of fast in New York, didn’t you? I asked Fred Kirby in for a drink, because we happened -”

Rhoda vanished. Her scampering footsteps dwindled into the house and up a staircase.

“Dad, what a place! It’s a mansion!” Madeline walked through the doorway, as wet as her mother, shaking rain from her hair and laughing.

“Well, Matty! You too?”

“Look at me! Christ, did we catch it! No cabs in sight, and - hello, Dr. Kirby.”

“You’ll both get the flu,” Pug Henry said.

“If somebody gave me a martini,” said Madeline, eyeing the jug, “I might fight the infection off.” She explained, as her father poured the drink, that Hugh Cleveland had business at the War Department next morning. Rhoda had decided to come back to Washington with them. The girl took a quick practiced pull at the cocktail.

“Where’s your luggage?” Pug said. “Go put on dry clothes.”

“I dropped my stuff at the Willard, Dad.”

“What? Why? Here’s a whole big house at your disposal.”

“Yes. I came to have a look at it. Then I’ll go back to the hotel and change.”

“But why the devil are you staying at the hotel?”

“Oh, it’s simpler.” She glanced at her watch. “Christ, almost seven o’clock.”

Pug wrinkled his nose at his daughter, not caring much for her brassiness. But she looked pretty, despite her wet hair and wrinkled pink linen suit. Rhoda’s fear that Madeline would turn plain at twenty-one was proving flat wrong. “What’s the rush?”

“We’re having dinner with a big Army wheel, Dad, to try to sell him on a new program idea. Hugh visits a different military installation every week. We put on amateurs from the service, and do a tour of the base, and a pitch about preparedness. I suggested the idea, even the name.
The Happy Hour
. The network is wild about it.” She looked at the two middle-aged men, her eyes very bright, and held out her glass. “Can I have a little more? I’ll own stock in this thing if it goes through! Imagine! I actually will. Hugh Cleveland’s going to form a corporation and give me some stock. He promised me. How about that? Maybe I’ll be rich! Well, Dad?” she added with an arch giggle. “You look kind of sour.”

“To begin with,” Pug said, “come September we may not have an army. Don’t you read the papers?”

Madeline’s face fell. “You mean about the draft?”

“Yes. Right now it’s fifty-fifty or worse that congress won’t vote for renewal.”

“But that’s insane. Why, by September Hitler will probably have beaten Russia. How far is he from Moscow now? A hundred miles, or something?”

“I’m not saying the politicians make sense. I’m telling you the fact.”

“Christ, that would blow
The Happy Hour
sky high, wouldn’t it? Oh, well. We’ll see.” She stood, shaking out her skirt. “Ugh. I have rain trickling around inside, in odd little places. I’ll take a fast gander at the house. Then I’ll tool off.”

“I’ll show you around,” Pug said. “How about it, Kirby? Want to join the tour?”

“I guess I’ll leave,” said Kirby. “Rhoda’s back, and I don’t want to intrude, and besides I have a lot of –”

“You sit right down,” Victor Henry said, pushing Palmer Kirby into a wicker armchair. “Houses bore me too. Have one more shortie, and I’ll be joining you.”

“I’ve had plenty,” Kirby said, reaching for the jug.

Madeline went from room to room with her father, exclaiming with pleasure at what she saw. “Christ, look at the moldings in this dining room . . . Oh, Christ, what a stunning fireplace . . . Christ, look at the size of these closets!”

“Say, I’m no prude,” Pug remarked at last, “but what’s this ‘Christ, Christ,’ business? You sound like a deckhand.”

Rhoda called from her dressing room, “That’s right, Pug, tell her! I’ve never heard anything like it. You get more Christs from her in five minutes than in a church sermon an hour long. It’s so vulgar.”

Madeline said, “Sorry, it’s a habit I’ve caught from Hugh.”

“Oh, Pug” - Rhoda’s voice again, loudly casual - “where did you dig up Palmer Kirby? Did he telephone?”

“Just ran into him. He’s staying for dinner. Is that all right?”

“Why not? Madeline, you’re not really staying at the Willard, are you? It looks so PECULIAR, dear. Please go and bring your bags home.”

“Never mind, Mother. Bye-bye.”

Pug said, walking down the stairs with her, “We bought a big place just so you kids could stay here when you’re in town.”

She put a hand lightly on his arm and smiled. The condescension embarrassed him. “Really, Dad, I know what I’m doing. We’ll be up very late with the writers tonight.”

“This fellow Cleveland,” said Victor Henry with difficulty. “Is he okay?”

Her secure womanly smile broadened. “Daddy, if there were any hanky-panky going on, I’d be a lot sneakier, wouldn’t I? Honestly. Give me some credit.”

“Well, you’re grown-up. I know that. It just came on kind of fast.”

“Everything’s fine. I’m having the time of my life, and one day you’ll be real proud of me.”

“I’ll call a cab for you,” Pug muttered, but as he reached for the telephone in the marble-floored hallway, it rang. “Hello? Yes, speaking . . .
yes
, Admiral.” Madeline saw her father’s face settle into tough alert lines. “Aye aye, sir. Yes, will do. Good-bye, sir.”

Pug dialled Rhoda’s room on the intercom line. “Are you almost dressed?”

“Five minutes. Why?”

“I’ll tell you when you come down.”

He called for a taxicab. Madeline was used to asking no questions when Victor Henry’s face took on that look and he spoke in those tones. They returned to the porch, where Kirby lolled in the wicker armchair, smoking his pipe. Rhoda appeared almost at once in a swishy green dress, her hair smartly combed and curled, her face made up as for a dance.

“Well! Quick-change artistry,” Pug said.

“I hope so. When I got here I looked like the witch in
Snow White.
”

“Rhoda, I just got a call from Admiral King. He’s at the Department. I’ll ride downtown with Madeline. You go ahead and give Fred his dinner. Maybe I’ll get back in time for coffee, or something. Anyway, I’ll call you when I know what it’s all about.”

The taxi honked outside. Kirby offered to leave too. Victor Henry wouldn’t hear of it. He liked the scientist. He had invited him home partly for company, partly to pump him about uranium. Pug Henry no more imagined anything between this man and Rhoda than he suspected his wife of cannibalism. He prevailed on Kirby to stay, and left with his daughter.