Winds of War (91 page)

“Yes, you did.”

“You relieved me of a couple of months of agonizing.”

He said, “Anyway, it’s done. And now you know he’s still alive. That’s something. I’m very glad to hear it, Pam. Well - I guess I’ll go along.”

“Where to?”

With a surprised grin, he said, “You know better than that.”

“You can always just shut me up. You’re not leaving the country?”

He pointed at the small suitcase. “Hardly.”

“Because we’re finishing up here very soon,” she said, “and in that case I might not see you for a long while.”

Pug leaned forward, elbows on knees, clasping his hands. He felt little hesitation in confiding to her things he never told his wife. Pamela was, after all, almost as much of an insider as he was. “The President’s had a bad sinus condition for weeks, Pam. Lately he’s been running a fever. This Lend-Lease hubbub isn’t helping any. He’s taking the train to Hyde Park to rest up for a few days, strictly on the q.t. I’m to ride with him. It’s a big surprise. I thought, and sort of hoped, he’d forgotten me.”

She laughed. “You’re not very forgettable. You’re a legend in Bomber Command, you know. The American naval officer who rode a Wellington into the Berlin flak for the fun of it.”

“That’s a laugh,” said Pug. “I was crouching on the deck the whole time with my eyes tight shut and my fingers in my ears. I still shudder to think what would have happened if I’d been shot down and survived. The U.S. naval attaché to Berlin, riding over Germany in a British bomber! Lord almighty, you were angry at me for going.”

“I certainly was.”

Pug stood, buttoning his coat. “Thanks for the coffee. I’ve been yearning for coffee ever since I had to skip it to put on my monkey suit.”

“It was a splendid dinner. Your wife’s wonderful, Victor. She manages things so well. The way she picked that bowl out of the air, like a conjurer! And she’s so beautiful.”

“Rhoda’s all right. Nobody has to sell Rhoda to me.”

Pamela put on her glasses and ran a sheet of paper into the typewriter.

“Good-bye, then,” Pug said, adding awkwardly, “and maybe I’ll see you before you go back home.”

“That would be nice.” She was peering at scribbled papers beside the typewriter. “I’ve missed you terribly, you know. More so here than in London.”

Pamela slipped these words out in the quiet manner peculiar to her. Victor Henry had his hand on the doorknob. He paused, and cleared his throat. “Well – that’s Rhoda’s complaint. I get buried in what I’m doing.”

“Oh, I realize that.” She looked up at him with eyes glistening roundly through the lenses. “Well? You don’t want to keep the President waiting, Captain Henry.”

Chapter 40

In the dark quiet railroad station, two Secret Service men lifted the President from the limousine and set him on his feet. He towered over them in a velvet-collared coat, his big-brimmed soft gray hat pulled low on his head and flapping in the icy wind. Holding one man’s arm, leaning on a cane, he lurched and hobbled toward a railed ramp, where he drew on gloves and hauled himself up into the rear car, jerking his legs along. Victor Henry, many yards away, could see the huge shoulders heaving under the overcoat. A tall woman with a nodding brown feather in her hat and a fluttering paper in her hand scampered up and touched Victor Henry’s arm. You’re to go in the President’s car, Captain.

Climbing the ramp, Pug realized why the President had put on gloves. The steel rails were so cold, the skin of his hands stuck to them. A steward led Victor Henry past a pantry where another steward was rattling ice in a cocktail shaker. “You be stayin’ in heah, suh. When you ready, de President invite you join him.”

The room was an ordinary Pullman sleeper compartment. The strong train smell was the same. The green upholstery was dusty and worn. Victor Henry hung coat and cap in a tiny closet, brushed his hair, cleaned his nails, and gave a flick of a paper towel to his highly polished shoes. The train started in a slow glide, with no jolt and no noise.

“Sit down, sit down, Pug!” The President waved from a lounge chair. “What’ll you have? Whiskey sours are on the menu, because Harry drinks them all night long, but we can fix up almost anything.”

“Whiskey sour will be fine, Mr. President. Thank you.”

Harry Hopkins, slouching on a green sofa, said, “Hello, Captain.”

Though Roosevelt was supposed to be ill, Hopkins looked the worse of the two: lean, sunken-chested, gray of skin. The President’s color was high, perhaps feverish, his black-rimmed eyes were very bright, and a perky red bow tie went well with the gay relaxed look of his massive face. He bulked huge in the chair, thou his legs showed so pitifully skeletal though the trousers. It crossed Pug’s mind that Washington and Lincoln too had been oversized men.

“How are you on poetry, Pug?” said the President, in the cultured accents that always sounded a bit affected to the Navy man. “Do you know that poem that ends, ‘There isn’t a train I wouldn’t take, no matter where it’s going?’ Golly that’s the way I feel. Just getting on this train has made me feel one hundred percent better.” The President put the back of his hand to his mouth, and harshly coughed. “Well, ninety percent. If this were a ship, it would be one hundred percent.”

“I prefer a ship too, sir.”

“The old grievance, eh, sailor?”

“No, sir, truly not. I’m quite happy in War Plans.”

“Are you? Well, I’m glad to hear it. Of course, I haven’t the faintest notion of what you’re cooking up with those British fellows.”

“So I understand, sir.”

Eyebrows mischievously arched, the President went on, “No, not the foggiest. When your draft that the Secretary of War got yesterday bounces back to Lord Burne-Wilke, and he sees corrections in what looks like my handwriting, that will be an accidental resemblance.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“Yes, indeed. On the very first page of the forwarding letter, if you recall, there’s a sentence that begins, ‘
When the United States enters the war
.’ Somebody, with a handwriting just like mine, has crossed out that perfectly terrible clause, and written instead,
‘In the event that the United States is compelled to enter the war
.’ Small but important change!” A steward passed a tray of drinks. The President took a tall glass of orange juice. “Doctor’s orders. Lots and lots of fruit juice. Harry, do you have that thing with you?”

“Right here, Mr. President.”

“Well, let’s get at it. I want to have a snack, and then try to sleep a little. How do you sleep on trains, Pug?”

“Fine, sir, if I can just get the heat right. Usually I roast or freeze.”

The President threw his head back. “Ha, ha! By George, I’ll tell you a state secret - the President of the United States has the same trouble! They’re building a special armored car for me now. I
told
them, I said, I don’t care about anything else, but that heating system had better work! Harry, let’s get in our order for a snack.” He glanced at his watch. “Are you hungry, Pug? I am. I’ll tell you another state secret. The food at the White House leaves something to be desired. Tell them I want sturgeon and eggs, Harry. I’ve been thinking of sturgeon and eggs for days.”

Hopkins went forward.

The President’s car, so far as Pug could tell, was a regular Pullman lounge car, rearranged to look like a living room. He had expected something more imposing. Roosevelt leaned one elbow on the chair arm, and rested a hand on his knee, looking out of the window in a calm majestic manner. “I really am feeling better by the minute. I can’t tell you how I love being away from the telephone. How are your boys? The naval aviator, and that young submariner?”

Victor Henry knew that Roosevelt liked to display his memory, but it still surprised and impressed him. “They’re fine, sir, but how do you remember?”

The President said with almost boyish gratification, “Oh, a politician has to borrow the virtues of the elephant, Pug. The memory, the thick hide, and of course that long inquisitive nose! Ha ha ha!”

Hopkins returned to the sofa, stooping with fatigue, zipped open his portfolio, and handed Captain Henry a document three pages long with one dark facsimile page attached. “Take a look at this.”

Pug read the first page with skepticism that shifted to amazement while the train wheels gently clack-clacked. He leafed through the sheets and looked from Hopkins to the President, not inclined to speak first. What he held in his hands was a summary from Army intelligence sources of a startling German operation order, purportedly slipped to a civilian in the American embassy in Berlin by anti-Nazi Wehrmacht officers. Pug knew the man well, but his intelligence function was a complete surprise.

Franklin Roosevelt said. “Think it’s genuine?”

“Well, sir, that photostat of the first page does look like the German military documents I’ve seen. The headings are right, the look of the typeface, the paragraphing, and so forth.”

“What about the content?”

“Well, if that’s genuine, Mr. President, it’s one incredible intelligence break.”

The President smiled, with fatigued tolerance for a minor person’s naïveté. “
If
is the longest two-letter word in the language.”

Hopkins said hoarsely, “Do the contents seem authentic to you?”

“I can’t say, sir. I don’t know Russian geography that well, to begin with.

“Our Army people find it plausible,” Hopkins said.

“Why would anybody fake a staggering document like that, Captain? A complete operation order for the invasion of the Soviet Union, in such massive detail?”

Pug thought it over, and spoke carefully. “Well, sir, for one thing, they might be hoping to prod the Soviet Union to mobilize, and so kick off a two-front war. In that case, the army might depose or kill Hitler. Then again, it could be a plant by German intelligence, to see how much we pass on to the Russians. The possibilities are many.”

“That’s the trouble,” said the President, yawning. “Our ambassador in Russia has begged us not to transmit this thing. He says Moscow is flooded with such stuff. The Russians assume it all emanates from British intelligence to start trouble between Stalin and Hitler, so as to get the Germans off England’s back.” The President coughed heavily for almost a minute. He sat back in his chair, catching his breath, looking out at streetlamps of a small town sliding past. He suddenly appeared very bored.

Harry Hopkins leaned forward, balancing the drink in both hands. “There’s a question about giving this document to the Russian ambassador here in Washington, Pug. Any comment?”

Pug hesitated; a political problem like this was not in his reach. President Roosevelt said, with a trace of annoyance, “Come on, Pug.”

“I’m for doing it.”

“Why?” said Hopkins.

“What’s there to lose, sir? If this thing turns out to be the McCoy, we’ll have scored a big point with the Russkis. If it’s a phony, well, so what? They can’t be any more suspicious of us than they are.”

The weary tension of Harry Hopkins’s face dissolved in a warm, gentle smile. “I think that’s a remarkable astute answer,” he said, “since it’s what I said myself.” He took the document from Pug and zipped it into the briefcase.

“I’m more than ready to eat that sturgeon and eggs,” said Franklin Roosevelt, “if it’s cooked.”

“Let me go and check, Mr. President.” Hopkins jumped to his feet.

Tossing on the narrow bunk, Pug sweated and froze in the compartment for an hour or so, fiddling with the heat controls in vain. He settled down to freeze, since he slept better in cold air. The slow, even motion of the train began to lull him.

Rap, rap
. “Suh? The President like to speak to you. You want a robe, suh? The President say not to bother dressing. Just come to his room.”

“Thanks, I have one.”

Pug passed shivering from his cold compartment to the President’s bedroom, which was far too hot. The famous big-chinned face of Franklin Roosevelt, with the pince-nez glasses and jaunty cigarette holder, looked very strange on a slumped large body in blue pajamas and coffee-stained gray sweater. The President’s thin hair was rumpled, his eyes bleary. He looked like so many old men look in bed: defenseless, shabby, and sad, his personality and dignity stripped from him. There was a smell of medicine in the room. The picture disturbed Victor Henry because the President appeared so vulnerable, unwell, and unimportant; and also because he was only seven or eight years older than Pug, yet seemed decrepit. The blue blanket was piled with papers. He was making pencil notes on a sheaf in his hand.

“Pug, did I break in on your beauty rest?”

“Not at all, sir.”

“Sit down for a moment, old top.” The President removed his glasses with a pinch of two fingers, and vigorously massaged his eyes. On the bedside table several medicine bottles tinkled as the train clacked over a bumpy rail. “Lord, how my eyes itch,” he said. “Do yours? Nothing seems to help. And it’s always worse when I get these sinus attacks.” He clipped papers and dropped them in the blanket. “Something I’ve promised myself to do – if I ever find the time, Pug, - is to write out a memorandum of the things that come to me in just one day. Any day at random, any twenty-four-hour period. You’d be amazed.” He slapped at the papers. “It would be a valuable sidelight on history, wouldn’t it? For instance. Just take tonight’s laundry that I’ve been doing. Vichy France seems about to sign a full alliance with Hitler. Threaten to cut off their food and starve them out? That’s what the British advise. Give them even more food, bribe them to hold out against Hitler? Our ambassador’s idea. But when we send the French more food, the Germans simply swallow up more of what the French produce. So where are you? – Now. Here.” He picked up a clipped document. “The Japanese foreign minister is meeting with Hitler. You’ve read about that. What are they up to? Shall we move the Asiatic fleet from Manila to Singapore, to make them think twice about jumping on the French and Dutch East Indies? That’s the British idea. Or shall we pull everything in the Pacific all the way back to the west coast, for prudence’s sake? That what my Chief of Naval Operations wants. I’d like your opinion on
that
, by the way. Here’s another touchy item – the Azores. Grab them before Hitler invades Portugal and takes them himself? Or if we grab them, will that
make
him invade Portugal?”