Winds of War (128 page)

Pug said, “That’s more than I know, about the German pincers, and I’ve just come from the Narkomindel.” He sat down without opening his coat. It was almost as cold and dark in Spaso House as in the snowstorm outside.

“Did you suppose they’d tell you anything? I got this straight from the Swedish ambassador, I assure you, at nine o’clock tonight in the dining room at the Kazan Station, when I was seeing off the staff. My God, that station was a spectacle to remember! One bomb hit would have wiped out all the foreign correspondents and nine-tenths of the diplomats in Russia – and a healthy chunk of the Soviet bureaucracy too.”

“Have all the typewriters been stowed? I have to write a report.”

“There are typewriters in Colonel Yeaton’s office. I have a skeleton staff, and we’re to keep things going somehow until the chargé gets organized in Kuibyshev.” Slote gave this answer with absentminded calm, then jumped at a muffled sound from outside. “Was that a bomb? You have no time to write reports, Captain. It’s really my responsibility to see that you leave Moscow at once, and I must insist that somehow –”

Pug held up a hand. “The Nark’s making arrangements. There are other stragglers like me. I have to check back in at eleven in the morning.”

“Oh! Well, if the Narkomindel’s assumed responsibility, that’s that,” Slote giggled.

Victor Henry looked narrowly at him. “How come you got stuck with this duty again? It seems kind of thick, after Warsaw.”

“I volunteered. You look skeptical. I truly did. After all, I’ve been through the drill. I wasn’t too proud of the job I did in Warsaw and I thought perhaps I could redeem myself this time.”

“Why, Byron told me you did a helluva job in Warsaw, Leslie.”

“Did he? Byron’s a gentleman. A knight, almost. Which reminds me, an enormous pouch came in from Stockholm the day you left? There was stuff from Rome. Would you like to see a picture of your new grandson?” Fussing through papers on his desk, he pulled a photograph from a wrinkled envelope. “There he is. Don’t you think he’s handsome?”

The lamplight carved deep black marks in the naval officer’s face as he read the writing on the back of the snapshot,
For old Slote –
Louis Henry, aged 11 days, with circus fat lady
, then contemplated the photograph. A plump, hollow-eyed Natalie in a loose robe held a baby that looked startlingly like Byron as an infant. The triangular face, the large serious eyes, the comically determined look, the fine blond hair – they were the same; Louis was another print of the template that had molded his son. He was much more of a Henry than Janice’s boy. Victor Henry cleared his choked-up throat. “Not bad. Natalie’s right, she’s gotten fat.”

“Hasn’t she though? Too much bed rest, she says. I’ll bet the baby will be as clever as it’s handsome. It looks clever.” Victor Henry sat staring at the snapshot. Slote added, “Would you care to keep that?”

Henry at once extended it to him. “No, certainly not. She sent it to you.”

“I’ll only lose it, Captain Henry. I have a better picture of Natalie.”

“Are you sure? All right.” Victor Henry tried to express in an awkward smile the gratitude for which he could find no words. Carefully he put the print in an inner pocket.

“What about the Tudsburys?” Slote asked. “Are they stuck in Moscow too?”

“I left Talky trying to wangle a ride to Archangel for himself and Pam. The Russians are flying out some RAF pilot instructors. I’m sure he’ll get on that plane.”

“Good. Did you run into any trouble at the front? What an idiocy, dragging a girl out there!”

“Well, we heard some firing, and saw some Germans. I’d better get at this report. If Talky does fly out, I want to give him a copy to forward via London.”

“Let me have a copy too, won’t you? And another to go in the next pouch.
If
there is one.”

“You’re a pessimist, Slote.”

“I’m a realist. I was in Warsaw. I know what the Germans can do.”

“Do you know what the Russians can do?”

“I thought I did. I was the Red Army’s biggest booster in the embassy, until -” Slote shrugged and turned to his desk, blowing his nose. “The only thing that really gets me is this stink of burning paper. My God, how it brings back Warsaw! The embassy absolutely reeks. We were burning and burning today, until the minute they all left. And there’s still a ton that I’ve somehow got to get burned in the morning.”

“All Moscow stinks of it,” Pug said. “It’s the damnedest thing to drive through a snowstorm and smell burned paper. The city’s one unholy mess, Slote. Have you seen all the barbed wire and tangled steel girders blocking the bridges? And good Lord, the mob at that railway station! The traffic jams heading east with headlights blazing, blackout be damned! I didn’t know there were that many trucks and cars in the whole Soviet Union. All piled with mattresses and old people and babies and what-all. And with those blue A.A. searchlights still swinging overhead – God knows why – and the snow and the wind, I tell you it’s a real end-of-the-world feeling.”

Slote chuckled. “Yes, isn’t it? This exodus began the day you left. It’s been snowballing. A convoy of government big shots left yesterday in a line of honking black limousines. Gad, you should have seen the faces of the people along the streets! I’m sure that triggered this panic. However, I give Stalin credit. He’s staying on to the last, and that takes courage, because when Hitler catches Stalin, he’ll just hang him like a dog in Red Square. And he’ll drag Lenin’s mummy out of the tomb too, and string it up alongside to crumble in the wind. Oh, there’ll be stirring things to see and record here, for whoever survives to tell it all.”

Victor Henry rose. “Do you know there’s no sentry at the door? I just walked in.”

“That’s impossible. We’re guarded night and day by a soldier assigned by the Narkomindel.”

“There’s nobody there.”

Slote opened and closed his mouth twice. “Are you positive? Why, we could be sacked by looters! It’s getting near the end when soldiers leave their posts. I must call the Narkomindel. If I can get the operator to answer!” He jumped up and disappeared in the gloom.

Victor Henry groped to the military attaché’s office. There he struck matches, and found and lit two kerosene lamps. In their bleak yellow-green glow he surveyed the office. Bits of black ash flecked the floor and every surface. BURN – URGENT was scrawled in red crayon on manila folders topping heaps of reports, files, and loose papers piled on the floor and in the leather armchair. Emptied drawers and files stood open; a swivel chair was overturned; the place looked as though it had been robbed. On the desk, on a typewriter with bunched tangled keys, a message was propped, printed in block letters on torn cardboard: IMPERATIVE – BURN
TONIGHT
CONTENTS SECOND BROWN LOCKED FILE. (L. SLOTE HAS COMBINATION.) Pug cleared the desk, untangled the typewriter keys and stood the lamps on either side of the machine. He found paper, carbons, and onionskin paper in a drawer.

Spaso House

October 16, 1941

THE MOSCOW FRONT – EYEWITNESS REPORT

His stiff cold fingers struck wrong keys. Typing in a bridge coat was clumsy and difficult. The slow clicks of the machine echoed hollowly in the deserted embassy. One lamp began to smoke. He fiddled with the wick until it burned clear.

This report attempts a description of a visit to the fighting front west of Moscow, from which I have just returned.

Tonight, twenty miles outside the city, our car halted because of an air raid on Moscow. At a distance this was quite a spectacle: the fanning searchlights, the A.A. like an umbrella of colored fireworks over one patch of the horizon, blazing away for half an hour straight. Whatever the Russian deficiencies, they seem to have an infinite supply of A.A. ammunition, and when the Luftwaffe ventures over the capital, they blow it skyward in huge displays. This beats anything I saw in Berlin or London.

However, this brave show is not being matched on the ground in Moscow tonight. The town is getting ready for a siege. It has an abnormal look, and the fainthearted are fleeing in a heavy snow. The Communist government is either unable or unwilling to stop the panic. I am told there is already a slang name for this mass exodus –
Bolshoi Drap
, the Big Scram. The foreign diplomats and newspapermen have been sent to Kuibyshev on the Volga, five hundred miles further east, and many government agencies are departing for the same haven en masse. Heavy vehicular and foot traffic eastward gives an undeniable aspect of rats leaving a sinking ship. However, it is reported that Stalin is staying on.

I believe this panic is premature, that Moscow has a fair chance of holding, and that even if it falls, the war may not end. I bring back many impressions from the front, but the outstanding one is that Russians, though they are back on about their nine-yard line, are not beaten. The American leadership must guess whether Russia will stand or fall, and lay its bets accordingly in Lend-Lease shipments. An eyewitness account of the front, however fragmentary, may therefore be pertinent.

The typewriter was clicking fast now. It was almost one o’clock. Victory Henry still had to return to the hotel and pack. He chewed another “polar bear,” the Russian chocolate candy, for energy, and began banging out the tale of his journey. Electricity all at once lit up the room, but he left the kerosene lamps burning and typed on. In about half an hour the lights flickered, burned orange, dimmed, and pulsed, and went out. Still he typed ahead. He was describing the interior of the KV tank when Slote came in saying, “You’re really going at it.”

“You’re working late yourself.”

“I’m getting to the bottom of the pile.” Slote dropped on the desk a brown envelope sealed with wax. “By the way, that came in the pouch, too. Care for some coffee?”

“You bet. Thanks.”

Pug stretched and walked up and down the room, beating his arms and stamping his feet, before he broke the seal of the envelope. There were two letters inside, one from the White House and one from the Bureau of Personnel. He hesitated, then opened the White House letter; a few sentences in Harry Hopkins’s dashed-off slanting hand filled a page:

My dear Pug –

I want to congratulate you on your new assignment, and to convey the Boss’s good wishes. He is very preoccupied with the Japanese, who are beginning to get ugly, and of course we are all watching the Russian struggle with anxiety. I still think – and pray – they’ll hold. I hope my letter reached Stalin. He’s a land crab, and he’s got to be convinced that the Channel crossing is a major task, otherwise bad faith accusations will start to fly, to Hitler’s delight. There’s been an unfortunate upturn in submarine sinkings in the Atlantic, and the Germans are cutting loose in Africa, too. All in all the good cause seems to be heading into the storm. You’ll be missed in the gray fraternity of office boys.

Harry H.

The other envelope contained a Navy letter form in telegraphic style:

MAILGRAM

FROM: THE CHIEF OF PERSONNEL.

TO: VICTOR (NONE) HENRY, CAPTAIN, U.S.N.

DETACHED ONE NOVEMBER PRESENT DUTY X PROCEED FASTEST AVAILABLE TRANSPORTATION PEARL HARBOR X REPORT CALIFORNIA (BB 64) RELIEVE CO X SUBMIT VOUCHERS OF TRAVEL EXPENSES COMBAT FOR PEARL

In bald trite Navy jargon on a flimsy yellow sheet, here was command of a battleship. And what a battleship! The
California
, the old Prune Barge, a ship in which he had served twice, as an ensign and as a lieutenant commander, which he knew well and loved; the ship named for his own home state, launched in 1818 and completely modernized.

Captain of the
California!

Pug Henry’s first reaction was orderly and calculating. Evidently Admiral King’s staff was a trap he had escaped. In his class only Warendorf, Munson and Brown had battleships, and Robinson had the
Saratoga.
His strange “gray office boy” service to the President had proved a career shortcut after all, and flag rank was suddenly and brightly back in sight.

He thought of Rhoda, because she had sweated out with him the twenty-seven-year wait for this bit of yellow tissue paper; and of Pamela, because he wanted to share his excitement right now. But he was not even sure that he would see her again in Moscow. They had parted at the railroad station with a strong handclasp, as Talky Tudsbury pleaded with the RAF pilots to take him along and simultaneously blustered at a Narkomindel man who was trying to lead him off.

Leslie Slote walked in, carrying two glass tumblers of black coffee. “Anything good?”

“New orders. Command of the
California.
”

“Oh? What is that?”

“A battleship.”

“A battleship?” Slote sipped coffee, looking doubtful. “Is that what you wanted next?”

“Well, it’s a change.”

“I should think you’d find it somewhat confining and – well, routine, after the sort of thing you’ve been doing. Not many naval officers – in fact not many Americans – have talked to Stalin face to face.”

“Leslie, I’m not entirely unhappy with these orders.”

“Oh! Well, then, I gather congratulations are in order. How are you coming with that report? I’m almost ready to turn in.”

“Couple of hours to go.”

“You won’t get much sleep.” Slote went out shaking his head.

Victor Henry sat drinking coffee, meditating on the little rectangle of yellow paper, the sudden irreversible verdict on his life. He could ask for no better judgment. This was the blue ribbon, the A-plus, the gold medal of naval service. Yet a nag in his spirit shadowed the marvellous news. What was it? Between sips of coffee, probing his own heart, Pug found out something surprising about himself.

After more than twenty-five years, he had slightly outgrown his career drive. He was interested in the war. At War Plans he had been waging a vigilant fight to keep priorities high for the landing craft program. “Pug’s girlfriend Elsie” was no joke; but now he could no longer carry on that fight. Mike Drayton would take over. Mike was an excellent officer, a commander with a solid background in BuShips and an extraordinary knowledge of the country’s industries. But he was not pugnacious and he lacked rank. “Elsie” was going to lose ground.