by Herman Wouk
Slote did not want to believe any of that.
The sunlight streaming through the tall windows of Breckinridge Long’s office was no more pleasant to the eye, or more warm and cheery, than the Assistant Secretary himself, as he strode across the room like a young man to shake hands. Long’s patrician face, thinly chiselled mouth, neat curling iron-gray hair, and short athletic figure went with a well-tailored dark gray suit, manicured nails, gray silk tie, and white kerchief in breast pocket. He was the very model of an Assistant Secretary of State; and far from appearing harried, or bitter, or in any way on a hot seat, Breckinridge Long might have been welcoming an old friend to his country home.
“Well, Leslie Slote! We should have met long ago. How’s your father?”
Slote blinked. “Why, he’s very well, sir.” This was a disconcerting start. Slote did not remember his father’s ever mentioning Breckinridge Long.
“Haven’t seen him since God knows when. Dear me! He and I just about ran Ivy Club, played tennis almost every day, sailed, got in hot water with the girls —” With a melancholy charming smile, he waved at a sofa. “Ah, well! You know, you look more like Timmy Slote than he himself does now, I daresay. Ha-ha.”
With an embarrassed smile, Slote sat down, searching his memory. At Harvard Law School the father had developed a scornful regret for his “wasted” years at Princeton: a country club, he would say, for rich feather-heads trying to avoid an education. He had strongly advised his son to go elsewhere, and had spoken little of his college experiences. But how strange not to mention to a son in the Foreign Service that he knew an ambassador, an Assistant Secretary of State!
Long offered him a cigarette from a silver case, and leaning back on the sofa, fingering the handkerchief in his breast pocket, he said jocularly, “How did you ever happen to go to a tinpot school like Yale? Why didn’t Timmy put his foot down?” He chuckled, regarding Slote with a fatherly eye. “Still, despite that handicap, you’ve made an admirable Foreign Service officer. I know your record.”
Was this heavy sarcasm?
“Well, sir, I’ve tried. I feel pretty helpless sometimes.”
“How well I know the feeling! How’s Bill Tuttle?”
“Thriving, sir.”
“Bill’s a sound man. I’ve had some distressing communications from him. He’s in a sensitive spot there in Bern.” Breckinridge Long’s eyes drooped half-shut. “You’ve both handled matters prudently there. If we’d had a couple of these radical boys out in that mission, the stuff” you’ve been turning up might have been smeared all over the world press.”
“Mr. Assistant Secretary —”
“Great day, young fellow, you’re Tim Slote’s son. Call me Breck.”
In a memory flash Slote now recalled his father’s talking of a “Breck,” in conversations with his mother long, long ago; a shadowy figure from his racketing youth. “Well, then, Breck — I consider that material I’ve brought authentic and appalling.”
“Yes, so does Bill. He made that clear. All the more credit to both of you for sensing where your duty lies.” Long fingered his breast-pocket handkerchief and smoothed his tie. “I wish some of these wild-eyed types we’re getting in Washington were more like you, Leslie. At least you know that a man who eats the government’s bread shouldn’t embarrass his country. You learned that lesson from that little episode in Moscow. Quite understandable and forgivable. The Nazi oppression of the Jews horrifies me, too. It’s repulsive and barbaric. I was condemning that policy back in 1935. My memoranda from those days are right here in the files. Now then, young fellow. Let me tell you what I have in mind for you.”
It was a while before Slote found out. Long first spoke of the nineteen divisions he headed. Cordell Hull actually had him drawing up a plan for the new postwar League of Nations. There was a challenge! He was working nights and Sundays, his health was suffering, but that didn’t matter. He had seen Woodrow Wilson destroyed by Congress’s rejection of the League in 1919. That must not happen to his great old friend, Franklin Roosevelt, and his grand visions for world peace.
Also, Congress had to be kept in line, and the Secretary had delegated to him most dealings with the Hill. There was a backbreaker! If Congress balked at Lend-Lease aid to Russia, Stalin might make a treacherous separate peace overnight. This war would be touch and go till the last shot was fired. The British could not be trusted, either. They were already intriguing to put de Gaulle into North Africa, so that they could control the Mediterranean after the war. They were in this war strictly for themselves; the British never changed much.
After this global rambling, Breckinridge Long came to the point at last. Somebody in the Division of European Affairs should be disposing of Jewish matters, he said, not passing them up to him — all these delegations, petitions, correspondence, important individuals who had to be treated with kid gloves, and the like. The situation required just the right man to keep it on an even keel, and he thought Leslie was that man. Leslie’s reputation as a sympathizer with the Jews was a wonderful asset. His discretion in Bern had demonstrated his soundness. He came from good stock, and he had bred true. He had a shining future in the Department. Here was a chance to take on a really prickly job, show his stuff, and earn brilliant advancement.
Slote was appalled by all this. Taking over as a buffer for Breckinridge Long, “saying no, no, no, in polite doubletalk” to Jewish petitioners, was a disgusting prospect. The end of his career seemed now no farther off than the door of Long’s office, and he hardly cared.
“Sir —”
“Breck.”
“Breck, I don’t want to be placed in such a spot unless I can help the people who come to me.”
“But that’s exactly what I want you to do.”
“But what do I do besides turn them down? Say ‘No,’ every devious way I can think of?”
Breckinridge Long sat up straight, giving Slote a stern righteous stare. “Why, when you can possibly help somebody, you’re to say yes, not no.”
“But the existing regulations make that almost impossible.”
“How? Tell me.” Breckinridge Long inquired, his manner very kindly. A muscle in his jaw worked, and he fingered first his handkerchief, then his tie.
Slote started to explain the preposterousness of requiring Jews to produce exit permits and good conduct certificates from the police of their native lands. Long interrupted, his brow wrinkled in puzzlement, “But, Leslie, those are standard rules devised to keep out criminals, illegal fugitives, and other riffraff. How can we bypass them? Nobody has a God-given right to enter the United States. People have to show evidence that if we let them in they’ll become good Americans.”
“Breck, Jews have to get such papers from the Gestapo. That’s obviously an absurd and cruel requirement.”
“Oh, the New York bleeding hearts have made that a scare word. Gestapo simply means federal Secret Service, Geheime Staatspolizei. I’ve had dealings with the Gestapo. They’re Germans like any others. I’m sure their methods are mighty tough, but we have a mighty tough Secret Service ourselves. Every country does. Besides, not all Jews come from Germany.”
Battling a ragged-nerve impulse to walk out and seek another livelihood — because he did sense in Long a peculiar streak of honest if perverse reasonableness — Slote said, “Wherever the Jews come from, they’ve fled for their lives. How could they have stopped to apply for official documents?”
“But if we drop these regulations,” said Long patiently, “what’s to prevent saboteurs, spies, dynamiters, and all sorts of undesirables in the thousands from getting into the country, posing as poor refugees? Just answer me that. If I were in German intelligence, I wouldn’t miss that bet.”
“Require other evidence of good character. Investigation by the Quakers. Affidavits of personal histories. Endorsements by the local U.S. consul. Or by some reliable relief agency, like the Joint. There are ways, if we’ll look for them.”
Breckinridge Long sat with his hands cla
sped under his chin, thoughtfully regarding Slote. His reply was slow and cautious. “Yes. Yes, I can see merit in that. The regulations can be onerous for deserving individuals. I’ve had other things on my mind, like the structure of the postwar world. I’m not pigheaded and” — his smile now was rather harried — “I’m not an anti-Semite, despite all the smears in the press. I’m a servant of the government and of its laws. I try to be a good one. Would you prepare a memorandum on your ideas for me to give the visa division?”
Slote could scarcely believe he was moving Breckinridge Long, but the man spoke with warm sincerity. Emboldened, he asked, “May I offer another idea?”
“Go ahead, Leslie. I find this talk refreshing.”
Slote described his plan for the admission of a hundred thousand Jews to twenty countries. Breckinridge Long listened carefully, fingers moving from his tie to his handkerchief, and back to his tie.
“Leslie, you’re talking about a second Evian, a major international conference on refugees.”
“I hope not. Evian was an exercise in futility. Another conference like that will consume a lot of time while people are being slaughtered.”
“But the political refugees are a more acute problem now, Leslie, and there’s no other way to get such a thing going. A major policy can’t be developed on the departmental level.” Long’s eyes were narrowed almost shut. “No, that is an imaginative and substantial suggestion. Will you let me have a confidential paper on it? For my eyes only, now. Put in all the practical detail that occurs to you.”
“Breck, are you really interested?”
“Whatever you’ve heard of me,” the Assistant Secretary replied with a shade of weary tolerance, “I’m not given to wasting my time. Nor that of anyone who works with me. We’re all carrying too heavy a load.”
But the man might be brushing him off; write me a memorandum was a very old departmental dodge. “Sir, you know about the joint Allied statement on the Jews, I suppose?”
Long silently nodded.
“Do you believe — as I do — that it’s the plain truth? That the Germans are murdering millions of European Jews, and intend to murder them all?”
A smile came and went on the Assistant Secretary’s face; an empty smile, a mere agitation of the mouth muscles.
“I happen to know quite a bit about that statement. Anthony Eden drew it up under pressure, and it’s nothing but a sop to some prominent British citizens of that race. I think it will do more harm than good, just provoke the Nazis to harsher measures. But we can’t pass judgment on that unfortunate race, we must help them if we can, within the law, in their time of agony. That’s my whole policy, and that’s why I want a memo on that conference idea right away. It sounds practical and constructive.” Breckinridge Long stood up and held out his hand. “Now will you help me, Leslie? I need your help.”
Getting to his feet and accepting the handshake, Slote took the plunge. “I’ll try, Breck.”
The four-page letter that Slote wrote that night to William Tuttle ended this way:
So perhaps you were right, after all! It’s almost too good to be true, this possibility that I can have some influence on the situation, root out the worst abuses, and enable thousands of innocent people to go on living, largely due to the accident that my father was Princeton ‘05, and Ivy Club. Sometimes things do work out that way in this Alice-in-Wonderland town. If I’m pitifully deceived, I’ll know soon enough. Meantime, Til give Breckinridge Long my full allegiance. Thanks for everything. I’ll keep you informed.
53
SLOTE and Foxy Davis were reviewing the early press clippings about the United Nations statement for a first report to the Secretary on the national reaction, when Slote remembered that he was dining at the Henry home. “I’ll take these with me,” he said, stuffing the batch into his portfolio, “and draft the thing tonight.”
“I don’t envy you,” said Foxy. “Bricks without straw.”
“Well, all the returns aren’t in.”
Walking to the corner to catch a cab, Slote noticed a stack of the new Time magazines, still tied with string, on the sidewalk by a newsstand. He and Foxy had been hungering for a look at it, since a Time reporter had interviewed Foxy on the telephone for almost an hour about the evidence for the massacre. He bought a copy, and in the light of a streetlamp, despite a drizzle that made the pages limp and sticky, he thumbed the issue eagerly. Nothing in the news section; nothing under features; front to back, nothing. How could that be? The New York Times had at least run it on the front page; a disappointing single-column story, overshadowed by a right-hand streamer on the flight of Rommel, and a two-column story about a cut in gas rationing. Most of the other big papers had dropped it inside, the Washington Post on page ten, but they had all done something with it. How could Time utterly ignore such an event? He paged through the copy again.
Not one word.
In the People section the picture of Pamela and her father that he had seen in the Montreal Gazette caught his eye.
Pamela Tudsbury, fiancee of Air Vice Marshal Lord Duncan Burne-Wilke (Time, Feb. 16), will leave London for Washington next month, to carry on the work of her late father as a correspondent for the London Observer. Until a land mine at El Alamein ended Alistair Tudsbury’s career (Time, Nov. 16), the future Lady Burne-Wilke, on leave from the WRAF corps, globetrotted with eloquent, corpulent Tudsbury, collaborated on many of his front-line dispatches, barely escaped Jap capture in Singapore and Java.
Well, he thought, this may just interest Captain Henry. The flicker of malice slightly assuaged his disappointment. Slote did not like Henry much. To him, military men by and large were grown-up boy scouts; hard-drinking time-servers at worst, efficient conformists at best, banal narrow-minded conservatives to a man. Captain Henry bothered Slote because he did not quite fit the pigeonhole. He had too incisive and agile a mind. On that memorable night in the Kremlin, Henry had talked up to the awesome Stalin quite well, and he had pulled off a feat in getting to the front outside Moscow. But the man had no conversation, and anyway he reminded Slote of his galling defeats with Natalie and Pamela. Slote had accepted the dinner invitation only because in all conscience he thought he ought to tell Byron’s family what he knew.
Welcoming Slote at the door of the Foxhall Road house, Henry scarcely smiled. He looked much older and peculiarly diminished in a brown suit and red bow tie.
“Seen this?” Slote pulled the magazine from his overcoat, open to the photograph.
Henry glanced at the page as Slote hung up his damp coat. “No. Too bad about old Talky, isn’t it? Come on in. I believe you know Rhoda, and this is our daughter, Madeline.”
The living room was astonishingly large. Altogether, this establishment looked beyond a naval officer’s means. The two women sat on a sofa near a trimmed Christmas tree, drinking cocktails. Captain Henry handed his wife the magazine. “You were wondering what Pamela would do next.”
“Bless me! Coming here! Engaged to Lord Burne-Wilke!” Mrs. Henry gave her husband a sidewise glance and passed the magazine to Madeline. “Well, she’s done all right for herself.”
“Christ, she looks so old, so tacky,” Madeline said. “I remember when I met her, she was wearing this mauve halter dress”— she waggled one little white hand at her own bosom —“all terribly terrific. Wasn’t Lord BurneWilke there, too? A blond dreamboat with a beautiful accent?”
“He was indeed,” said Rhoda. “It was my dinner party for the Bundles for Britain concert.”
“Burne-Wilke’s an outstanding man,” Pug said.
Slote could detect no trace of emotion in the words, yet he was sure that in Moscow Pamela Tudsbury and this upright gentleman had been having a hot little time of it. Indeed, it had been his pique at Henry’s success with Pamela that had impelled him to drop his professional caution, and slip the Minsk documents to a New York Times man, thus starting his slide to his present nadir. Pamela’s reaction in London to the news about Henry had indicated that the ro
mance was far from dead. If Victor Henry did not have the soul of a wooden Indian, he was very good at simulating it.
“Oh, his lordship’s unforgettable,” exclaimed Madeline. “In RAF blue, all campaign stars and ribbons, and so slender and straight and blond! Sort of a stern Leslie Howard. But isn’t that a screwy match? He’s as old as you, Dad, at least. She’s about my age.”
“Oh, she’s older than that,” said Rhoda.
“I saw her in London, briefly,” Slote said. “She was rather broken up over her father.”
“What news of Natalie?” Pug asked Slote abruptly.
“They’re still in Lourdes, still safe. That’s the nub of it. But there’s a lot to tell.”
“Madeline, dear, let’s get the dinner on.” Rhoda rose, carrying her drink. “We’ll talk at the table.”
The candle-lit dining room had fine sea paintings on the walls and a log fire flaming in the fireplace. The mother and daughter served the dinner. The roast beef seemed a luxurious splurge of money and red points, and the plate and china were far more elegant than Slote had expected. While they ate, he narrated Natalie’s odyssey as he had gathered it from her early letters, some Swiss reports, the Zionist rumors in Geneva, and Byron’s story. It was a sketchy version patched together with a lot of guesswork. Slote knew nothing of Werner Beck’s pressure on Jastrow to broadcast. A German diplomat had befriended Natalie and her uncle, as he told it, and settled them safely in Siena. But they had illegally disappeared in July, escaping with some Zionist fugitives, and had popped up months later in Marseilles, where Byron had caught sight of them for a few hours. They had planned to join him in Lisbon, but the invasion of North Africa had brought the Germans into Marseilles and prevented their departure. Now they were in Lourdes with all the American diplomats and journalists caught in southern France. He passed over Natalie’s refusal to go with her husband; let Byron tell that to the family, Slote thought.