“You said it yourself, Mr. Churchill. In the book you gave me…” Book, what book? Bracken looked between the two in alarm, like a Menshevik who had missed out on a conspiracy—“Russia is an Ishmael amongst the nations, you said. Yet you also said she is one of the most titanic factors in the economy and in the diplomacy of the world. That's the word you used. Titanic. You painted a lurid picture—I can almost remember your words. Russia, with her enormous, rapidly increasing armaments, with her tremendous development of poison gas, airplanes, tanks, and every kind of forbidden fruit; Russia, with her limitless manpower and her corrosive hatreds which weigh heavily upon the whole line of countries, some small, others considerable, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, all situated adjacent to Russian territory…”
“Your memory is excellent.”
“And your geography's bollocks!” Bracken protested, determined to fight his corner against this usurper. “Poland's one of those adjacent countries that come under the Russian hammer—and we've just agreed to guarantee the bloody place.”
Burgess was shaking. “And when Herr Bloody Shitler invades Poland—as he undoubtedly will—he'll find himself staring down the spout of all those Russian barrels. Given half a word of encouragement, Russia could be our most awesome ally!”
“Russia—an ally? Not even Stalin trusts the bloody Russians!”
“You don't even trust your own Prime Minister—”
“Gentlemen!” Churchill barked, bringing them both to order. “What has trust got to do with it? The basis of diplomacy isn't trust, otherwise we wouldn't put the Foreign Office in charge of it. No one trusts the Foreign Office, not even the pigeons. No, what matters is need. And I fear we may need Stalin's cohorts more than I would wish. Never turn your back on a Cossack—yet that is what Hitler must do if he is to throw the full might of his armies against us in the west.”
“But you're the most notorious bloody anti-Bolshevik in the business, Winston,” Bracken protested, his pebble glasses misted with emotion. “The most destructive and degrading tyranny in history, you called it.” Fuck and damnation, if Burgess could quote Churchill back at him, Bracken wasn't going to be left out of the game. “Why, when you were at the War Office you sent thirty thousand British soldiers into Soviet Russia to strangle the little bastard at birth.”
“And I failed! It turned out to be some bastard. Some birth. And where I failed, do you really think an upstart Austrian corporal can succeed?”
“You'd have us side with murderers?”
“If it would save my own grandmother from being skinned alive—of course! I was in the Smoking Room the other day and Maisky, the Soviet Ambassador, fell upon me with all manner of encouragement and friendship.”
“Untrustworthy little shit—”
“But a useful untrustworthy little shit, Brendan. When he as good as promised me lifelong brotherhood, I replied to him thus.” The glass waved in the air, conjuring up the memory of the occasion. “Mr. Maisky, I said, let me be frank. I do not like you. Least of all do I like your Government. But I recognize you—as a fact. And I recognize the uncomfortable fact that I may need you—we may need each other—if Hitlerism is not to snuff out the candle of liberty in every corner of Europe.”
“And what did the useful and untrustworthy little shit reply?”
“He laughed. Then he clapped me on the back and invited me to dinner.”
“Sometimes, Winston, I think you'd dine with the Devil.”
“I dine with the American Ambassador, so I'm scarcely in a position to claim moral superiority.”
“Bob!” Bracken turned on Boothby, his sharp tone rousing the other man from his slumber. “What do you think of the Russians?”
The Member for East Aberdeenshire raised a heavy head. “Russians?” he growled in the melodious timbre that, before it had broken and sunk beyond bass, had won him a choral scholarship at Eton. He shifted in his seat. His dark suit was dirty, his collar soft and crumpled, his stomach already over-large and seemingly held in by an enormous watch chain. He looked a lot like a waiter in a restaurant that had been living off a long-discarded reputation. “Russians?” he repeated, trying to reassemble the various pieces of his mind. “What've they done now?”
“Nothing, Bob, we want to know what you think of them?”
“Bastards buy lots of Aberdeen herring. Splendid chaps.” With that, his head dropped once more and he was instantly unconscious.
Bracken cleared his throat, not wanting to catch the glint of triumph he suspected he would find in Burgess's eye. He'd lost this one. It was time to retreat. “It's late, Winston, and Bob needs his bed. I think we'd better go.”
Churchill threw away the stub of his Havana to join the ashes in the grate. “Fly away to your nests, if you must. Rest yourselves for the fight ahead.”
Bracken shook Boothby's shoulder and Burgess stood, too, but made no move to depart. “Mr. Churchill, I was wondering—may I have a word? In private?”
“No, no, Burgess, it's very late and Mr. Churchill has a full diary in the morning,” Bracken complained, but already the old man was waving him towards the door.
“You young politicians never have enough time, but for historians like Mr. Burgess and myself, time is all but immeasurable. Let yourself out, Brendan, dear boy, while Mr. Burgess and I settle down for a nightcap.”
Churchill poured the drinks. Huge goblets of cognac. “You drink cognac?”
“I prefer Irish whiskey.”
“Then you and Brendan have more in common than I had thought.”
“He doesn't like me.”
“Oh, he'll like you well enough, Mr. Burgess, when I tell him to. He'll even like your ideas about Russia in the morning, although he'll offer you no credit for them and attribute every detail to himself.” The door downstairs slammed; they were alone. “He is my parliamentary Puck—a mischievous and at times misguided sprite but, in the end, faithful.”
Churchill handed across the heavy glass. “Learn to enjoy cognac, Mr. Burgess. It's like a good woman. Warm it between your hands and coddle it, don't assault it.”
Burgess took the goblet and wondered what it was like to lay hands upon a woman. Would he—could he—even in the service of his cause or his country? He prayed he'd never have to find out. He'd stick to Jameson's.
Burgess had already begun to realize that Churchill's relationship with alcohol was entirely different to his own. Burgess drank because he needed to. It was the only way he'd found to drown out the screams of terror that welled up inside him every time he tried to stop and sleep, and could smell his soul scorching. But Churchill had other needs, drank to sustain his thoughts and his unquenchable energy. Alcohol was his fuel, like a racing car required gas or a bonfire wood. He ran on the stuff.
“So,” Churchill began after he had spent some time lighting a new cigar, “you wanted a word. You are a modest man, Mr. Burgess, for I normally insist on several, and charge for every thousand.”
“It's kind of you. I may be making a fool of myself…”
“I am a politician,” Churchill growled. “Folly is my second cousin.”
“Then let me be blunt. War is coming—agreed?”
“Indubitably.”
“And when it does every money-man will join in a stampede for the hills?”
“The Appalachians, I suspect, where they will camp and make occasional visits to New York.”
“They like to travel light. And I've been wondering—after what you told me at Chartwell—whether they'll bother carrying your debts with them.”
Churchill looked at the younger man with curious, cautionary eyes. It was one thing for him in a fit of depression to share his woes, quite another for those woes to be brought back to him. “I had hoped, Mr. Burgess, that I would be able to finish my history of the English-speaking peoples before war came and so relieve the situation, but…”
“You can't write as quickly as the Wehrmacht marches.”
“Quite so. Hitler's ambitions grow eve
n faster than my needs.”
“I'm an adviser to the Rothschild family—went to Cambridge with the son—the mother seems to think I have a grasp of international affairs. Anyway, I help keep her investments from being squashed under the tank tracks. Haven't mentioned a word of your situation to them but…I'm sure, if they heard you were in need, the Rothschilds and some of their friends would be happy to help.”
Churchill drew long on his cigar, considering what had just been said. “Why should they be willing to act as Samaritans in circumstances when my own bankers might prefer to pass by on the other side? The Rothschilds are bankers, too, and you could scarcely advise them that it would be a good investment.”
“But that's where you're wrong. They're Jews. They know what's happening in Europe. They know what Hitler stands for and how useless it is to turn the other cheek. In every part of Europe that Hitler controls, Jews are being roasted on the spit. They also know one other thing. That the only politician in Europe whom Hitler fears is you.”
“And what would they require in return?”
“Nothing.”
“I consider that most unlikely. In my experience there is always a price to pay.”
“Then we'll make the money available from a trust. A blind trust. So you won't know who's involved or who's given what. Your hands will be entirely clean and free to get on with the job.”
From his perch by the fireplace, the old man peered down impassively, drifting in and out of the fog from Havana.
“You represent hope to every Jew in Europe,” Burgess continued. “That's why I think they'd be willing to help.”
“The Rothschilds and their kind haven't built their financial empire on the basis of sentiment, Mr. Burgess.”
“Well, it's more than just sentiment. Let's face it, if we lose a war against Hitler, they're buggered anyway. First in line. Any money they might lose on you would be nothing but a drop in a very bloody ocean.” He drained the last of his drink, surprised that he had finished it already. “They'll rescue you, because you may be the only man in Europe who can rescue them—and their money.”
“You have a very high opinion of my talents, Mr. Burgess—”
“I do.”
“Almost as high as my own. And I must admit that your visit is uncanny, like that of an angel in the hour of need. My bankers, as you say, are nervous types who appear to be busy gathering up their mountaineering equipment. I get the feeling that my debts may be a little too burdensome for them to carry on their trek.”
Burgess's hand, the hand on his crotch, was trembling. He desperately wanted another drink. He wanted to toast Rodney, the Dickensian little clerk in Churchill's bank who was all waistcoat and wet lips and whose responsibilities included scurrying around the vaults to ensure that all sorts of interesting records were filed away properly, including the one that covered Churchill's loan, six months, non-renewable. The six months were up in as many weeks. That's why he'd come. And even if the Rothschilds wouldn't help there would be many more who would, once they were instructed to do so.
“A blind trust, Mr. Churchill. Leave it to me.”
“You are an unexpected man, Mr. Burgess. You arrive on my doorstep in Chartwell when all the world is about to fall apart. Then you emerge from the dark in London when we can almost hear the sounds of crashing masonry. And each time you come bearing the gift of hope. What is to become of a man like you?”
“Perhaps one day I'd like to join the Foreign Office.”
“A splendid ambition—one in which I would like to be able to assist, if I could. You want to use your expertise in international affairs?”
“No,” Burgess responded, his task now complete and his defenses swept away in the flood of alcohol. He no longer had the energy for equivocation. “It's simply the job security. You can't get fired from the Foreign Office, not for anything less than goats.”
For some time after Burgess had left, Churchill sat in his armchair by the window looking out across the darkened skyline of London, and brooding. Eventually he came to a conclusion. He picked up his pen and began to write. An article that would appear in the Telegraph under the headline: “Towards a Pact with Russia.” It spoke of the need for alliance with Moscow, of how the long-held objections to such an alliance had simply ceased to be relevant, about the harmony of interests that now existed with the Soviet Union. And about their common interest—peace.
He didn't believe that last bit, of course, about the Soviet leader having turned from a tyrant into an apostle of peace, but Stalin was needed and such things had to be said.
And he would be paid for the article. Not a fortune, but in his present circumstances every little bit helped. Sell a few articles, while in corners all across London other men were selling their principles.
“Damn his eyes—damn, damn, damn him!”
“Neville, please—”
“I won't have it!”
“Of course not, but—”
“I'm the bloody Prime Minister. I am! I am! They'd better start remembering that.”
“No one would dare—”
Horace Wilson's attempts at emotional surgery were cut short as Chamberlain's fists pounded on the leather-topped desk in Wilson's room so ferociously that the telephone jumped off its cradle. In an armchair by the fireplace, Joseph Ball shriveled in alarm.
“No sooner does he drivel on about getting into bed with the Russians than half of Fleet Street goes crawling to his door and demands his return to the Cabinet.” Chamberlain swept up an armful of papers. “The bloody Telegraph again, the Manchester Guardian, the Chronicle—even the bloody Astors are at it. Look at the Observer.” The offending newspaper shook in his hand. “He must be blackmailing the Astors, there can't be any other reason. What's he got on Nancy, for God's sake, more sexual savagery from those ridiculous weekend parties of hers?” And all he'd got from his weekend with the Astors at their sumptuous home at Cliveden was a game of musical chairs. With an impatient sweep of his arm Chamberlain threw the offending journals into the corner, where they died like throttled chickens.
Wilson took a long moment before intervening, clearing his throat. He wasn't normally discomfited in the presence of his Prime Minister but he had rarely seen Chamberlain in such form. His face was white, the skin like cracked parchment, as though all the blood had drained to his spleen to fuel the rage. “You have to make a choice, Neville. Is he in or is he out?”
“Out! Out!”
More throat-clearing. “You ought to know what the Foreign Office is saying. That there are those within the German Government—those who don't want a wholesale war—urging you to include Winston as the only way to show Hitler that we mean business about resisting further aggression. The only way to keep the peace.”
“Which is why I never listen to the Foreign Office. Can you imagine that man in Cabinet? May the gods help me—he'd just talk. Take up my time. Endlessly disrupt. Use the Dispatch Box like a brawler uses a public bar.”
“Nevertheless, there's a lot of pressure—”
“And have my Government swept away on a tide of whiskey and hot wind? Never! You know how he rambles. I sometimes wonder whether he's entirely stable, mentally. Passed down from his father. And all that alcohol over so many years. Must take its toll.”
“But we have to decide. Not just about Winston, about the pressure for an alliance with Russia.”
Chamberlain's eyes stared at Wilson in real pain, the lips thin as razors beneath the sagging moustache. “With murderers? Regicides? How can I go to the Palace and tell His Majesty that I am to do a deal with the men who butchered the Tsar? What will history say of me?”
“Churchill thinks that if we don't do a deal with Stalin, then the Germans might. Carve up Poland and the rest between them. He's been telling everyone…”—it was Ball, re-emerging from the depths of his armchair to come to the aid of his friend. He was waving a sheaf of transcripts. “I've stepped up the monitoring, you see.”
“But what you don't s
ee—what neither of you seems to see—is that if I do any sort of deal with Russia now it will look as though he has set the agenda. And I will not—I will never—have the policy of my Government set by Mr. Winston Bloody Churchill!” It was the first time he'd brought himself to mention his adversary's name since the start of the outburst. He spat it out as the hands thumped down on Wilson's desk once more. His starched wing collar had become twisted and was digging into his neck, but he appeared not to have noticed.
Wilson rose to his feet, trying to engage his Prime Minister on the same level, tired of the flecks of spittle that kept falling on him. “Neville, you must calm down and listen. Half the wretched Cabinet want us to do a deal with the Russians.” It was a lie—the true figure was more like three-quarters—but such figures did not seem to impress Chamberlain, who began to scream.
“They are my Cabinet and they will do as they are bloody-well told!”
The spittle continued to fly, but Wilson would not back down. He held Chamberlain's gaze, calling on their years of friendship, of understanding, of achievement. When finally Wilson spoke once more, his tone was determined. “The Russians have offered us an alliance. Publicly. We have to give them an answer, Neville. We can't dodge it.”
Chamberlain drew a huge lung-bursting breath which, as it was released, seemed to carry away with it much of the fire that had been consuming him inside. At last the heaving chest grew calm. “Very well, Horace,” he muttered, straightening his collar. It left a red weal where it had dug into his neck. “We will offer them talks. We will thank them for their proposal and send a delegation to Russia. But—we will send the delegation by ship. A banana boat for preference. Very slowly. We shall insist that every detail of the discussions is reviewed back here in London. And we shall put in charge a man of such hideous mental dullness—”
Winston's War Page 25