Winston's War

by Michael Dobbs

  “You mean someone from the military,” Ball interjected.

  “—that the talks can never come to any clear conclusion.”

  “So what's the point?” Wilson inquired.

  “It will give us time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Time to get Winston off our backs. Time to put a bit of spunk back into the Cabinet. And above all time to pursue our own policies. I still want peace. Even if half of Europe demands annihilation, I still want peace. And I want Hitler to know that. So, Horace, this is what you will do.”

  Chamberlain began to pace the small room, three paces forward on the rug, turn, three paces back, his hands clasped behind him, his narrow, sloping shoulders leaning forward.

  “I want Hitler to know that he has a way out. That he still has more to gain from peace than from war. So you will continue your negotiations with the Germans about the loans, Horace. Offer them the hand of peace and make sure it's full of cash. Tell them we want to get their workers out of the front line and back into the factories. Arms to agriculture, swords into ploughshares, all of that. You must persuade them of the peace dividend. Must persuade them of that. Everything depends on it.” Suddenly he had stopped and was jabbing his finger at Wilson. “But whatever you do, keep the whole thing out of the reach of the Foreign Office. Nothing to do with the Foreign Office, you hear? I won't have them briefing every journalist they can find in exchange for half a bottle of claret.”

  He was standing at the window now, staring out over the park, silhouetted against the early summer light in a manner that left nothing but an outline. From inside the room, it seemed as though the sun itself had rejected him.

  “Need to get things back into order on the home front, too,” mused Wilson, picking up the baton once more. “That's where you come in, Joe. Those security measures of yours.”

  “You mean the phone taps.”

  “Your watch over Winston.”

  “Eden, too. And a few of the others.”

  “Make it a few more of the others, eh? Try those within the Cabinet who've got good personal relations with Winston. Give us early warning of trouble. If it's going to happen, let us be the first to know about it—before it arrives on the front page of the Telegraph.”

  “No problem.”

  “Does Sam know about the taps?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Doesn't know a bloody thing.”

  “But he's the Home Secretary.”

  “This isn't an official operation, you see. It's more by way of a testing of technical equipment, if you follow my drift. And asking Sam's permission might prove—a trifle delicate.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he's on the list, too. Thought it best to keep track of the Home Secretary's love life—very little of which actually takes place at home. Dates, times, names—I've got the lot. I think we can rely on Sam's continuing loyalty. Don't know about his wife, though.”

  “You disgraceful bastard.”

  “Thank you. I'm being scrupulously even-handed. Managed to acquire some friends inside Odhams Press. They do all the printing for the Labour Party—pamphlets, posters, that sort of thing. So we know what they're going to say before even they do. Means we can get our oar in first. Got a couple of chums down at Labour Party headquarters, too.”

  “How the hell…?”

  “Bit of public indecency here, a drunk and disorderly there. I settle things for them with the Yard—no prosecutions—just leave the charges on the books to ensure their undying gratitude and, of course, enduring indiscretion.”

  “Your mother was a vampire, surely…”

  “Sadly, the black arts don't work every time. Some less good news. Winston's loan. Seems he's got someone to replace it. So no collapse of that particular stout party, at least not yet.”

  “Pity. It was only meant to be a little distraction, a chance to twist his tail, but it might have kept the old monster quiet for a while. If only we can get through this summer…”

  Suddenly, the figure at the window stirred. It had stood impassively, like stone, but now the shoulders heaved, a conductor calling his men to the music. “There is another way,” he announced quietly, joining them once more. The voice was hoarse, desiccated. He turned. “Another way, perhaps, to keep him quiet. One he might least expect.”

  “We shoot him?”

  “We encourage him.”

  “Neville?”

  “If we let him think I might reappoint him to Cabinet, make him believe we're considering it, play on his inexhaustible vanity…then he might turn the good little nigger.”

  The others grew excited as the idea inflated before them.

  “He wants office more than he wants breath…”

  “Vanity's always been his Achilles heel…”

  “Start the ball rolling with an indiscreet gossip at the bar of the Athenaeum, perhaps…”

  “Get Dawson and the Beaver to send up a few balloons. See how high they fly…”

  “Seduce him.”

  “Confuse him.”

  “Then screw him.”

  “Keep him quiet. Just get us through the summer,” Chamberlain urged, “until the press has got something else to get its teeth into.”

  “Like a deal with Berlin.”

  “Get Hitler to fly over here for a change.”

  “Show who's in charge.”

  “Just so we can get through the summer…”

  “And an election…”

  “And keep Winston quiet.”

  “And then what, Neville?”

  “Then? Then we bury the bastard.”

  The world entered that exhausting, stifling summer of mistrust that was 1939, and no one was quite certain who the enemy was.

  The British emissary was chosen for the negotiations with Russia; he was, as Ball had predicted he would be, a military man, an elongated aristocrat bearing the name of Admiral the Honorable Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax. It was economical, at least, like sending an entire delegation all wrapped up in one name. It isn't clear what the leaders of the great proletarian revolution in Moscow made of him, although they couldn't fail to have noticed that, while Chamberlain had flown at a moment's notice to meet with Hitler at Munich, Sir Reginald was sent the long way round to Russia, by boat. If it took Stalin a little time to work out British motives, much clearer to him was the rattling of the Wehrmacht's panzer treads. Russia had no faith in the ability of the Polish army to stand in the way of the Wehrmacht, for they were armed mostly with obsolete rifles that dated from before the Revolution of 1917. Russia should know—she had supplied them. Meanwhile, Horace Wilson sent emissaries to pursue the prospects of a deal with Germany, even while Germany continued to spit and scream and shake fists of warning in the direction of Poland. German workers bent their backs to the lathe and the production line in order to produce the arsenals for war, while in Britain the numbers of the unemployed rose yet again. So did the level of fear, and, with it, the level of desperate distraction.

  Champagne flowed across the nation. It flowed at Wimbledon, where an American, Bobby Riggs, won the men's championship in five sets (all five Wimbledon championships fell to the Americans that year, much to the disgust of the British press who implied that the winner of the ladies' championship, Alice Marble, was a man). It flowed at the Henley Royal Regatta, even though the top rowing prize was carried off by yet more Americans, a crew from Harvard. And the champagne flowed most uninhibitedly during the racing of Cowes Week—dominated by the yacht Vim owned by Henry Vanderbilt, who was, of course, American. They were everywhere, the damned Yanks, beating the British at their own games—but, hell, the editors reflected, the British could still show these interlopers something about the greatest game of all, the game of war…

  Something was rotten in old Albion, yet it seemed to encourage still greater outbursts of escapism. The summer sales were in full force—a Persian lamb fur coat could be bought for the k
nock-down price of forty-five pounds, while those with less substantial budgets could pick up woven silk and wool underwear for as little as ten shillings. The Times encouraged the population to relax and enjoy their summer, stating that “there seems to be a general feeling that there is no reason why a holiday should not be taken with a fairly easy mind.” Almost business as usual. Meanwhile, marriage banns were read from pulpits in every corner of the country as the number of wedding ceremonies reached a record level. Ordinary people, distrusting every assurance thrust at them by politicians, were rushing to grab any morsel of happiness while they could.

  Yet reality insisted on its place. Rumors that Chamberlain was negotiating once more with the Germans, that he was planning another Munich, began to bubble through the cracks of secrecy. In late July the News Chronicle reported that Britain had been negotiating a loan of one billion pounds sterling in exchange for some undefined measure of disarmament. The news caused confusion in Britain, but in Moscow the message rang as clear as a newly burnished blade. The British were going to betray Russia yet again. They were planning a deal with Germany; Russia would be left isolated, alone, abandoned once again, screwed by capitalists and imperialists. Just like before. So Stalin made up his mind. He wasn't going to be caught short this time around.

  Chamberlain, too, was determined not to be caught. When allegations about the German loan were raised in the House of Commons, he denied any knowledge of the matter. He stood up at the Dispatch Box, leaned on it, waved his hand, and lied.

  In the same week in late July, less than six weeks before the outbreak of that most catastrophic war, Chamberlain's Government suspended the legal immigration of Jews into Palestine on the grounds that too many immigrants had already arrived illegally. The quota would be 75,000 over the next five years, and not a single Jew more. The Government particularly condemned those Jews who had fled from Poland and whom “the British public did not regard as coming within the term 'refugee.'” After all, Poland was safe; Downing Street had guaranteed it. So they were to stay where they were, all six million of them, and pressure was put on leaders of the Jewish community in Britain to ensure that they cooperated in keeping the Jews in their place.

  So when a party of German Jews was discovered concealed and almost suffocated in the airless ballast tank of a small ship arriving off the east coast, the ship's captain was arrested. The Jews were sent back.

  The British Government seemed to have no idea who the enemy was. The IRA, at least, suffered no such confusion…

  It was a mean, worn suitcase, constructed primarily of cardboard, barely meriting the two tin clasp-locks that secured it. The suitcase had been brought to the Left Luggage office at King's Cross shortly before noon by a man in a trilby—the only distinguishing feature anyone could remember afterwards, apart from the Liverpool accent. He'd said he would be back for the suitcase later that evening, so it had been left beneath the counter rather than being moved to the back of the office, where it might have done less damage amongst so many other pieces of luggage. Like sandbags, they would have been. But instead the stranger's suitcase was placed beneath a front counter constructed of wood, which was a terrible pity. Wood turns to fragments like shrapnel that can turn a station concourse into a slaying field, particularly when it is crowded with lunchtime travelers.

  Less than two hours after the suitcase had been left, the contacts on a timing device—constructed from the hands of a travel alarm clock—touched. This completed an electrical circuit that was powered by a battery from a bicycle lamp. The circuit ignited a fuse. The fuse was fashioned from gunpowder which had been plundered from rifle bullets, but it had been wrapped too tightly inside the sticks of gelignite, which in turn had been wrapped inside an oilskin, and the fuse burned for longer than intended—more than a minute. The suitcase began to emit wisps of purple-orange smoke. However, it was a busy time of day and none of the cloakroom attendants noticed until it was far too late. When the device exploded it blew out the wooden counter and the glass front of the Left Luggage office and created a blast wall of shrapnel. Many items of baggage were thrown after the shrapnel. Dr. Donald Campbell of Edinburgh, newly married, who had just returned with his wife from a trip to the Continent, was in line for his luggage when the bomb exploded. He was hit with its full force and died within minutes on the floor of the office, surrounded by tattered remnants of other people's holidays. His wife, four cloakroom attendants, and ten other people were injured.

  Later that same evening, a bomb exploded in the Central Section Cloakroom of Victoria Station. Five civilians were injured. Several more devices exploded at various points around the country.

  Just in case anyone had forgotten, the Irish Republican Army was already at war.

  Burgess had been drinking—to excess—and why not? The country was moving inexorably towards the embrace of evil, yet no one in authority seemed capable of grasping the fact. As the summer drew on, long and exhaustingly hot, so the intolerance of Germans towards their neighbors seemed to rise, just as the water levels on the great defensive rivers like the Dniestr and the Vistula that protected the plains of Poland began to fall. Men had become nothing more than cogs in an infernal machine that was preparing to devour the entire world. Governments across Europe were now frantically pouring money into weapons for the war that was to come, and Burgess knew that men like him would soon be thrown after them.

  So he drank. The hotter it got, the more he drank, and the more he drank, the more he went out and got fucked. He'd never been a man to indulge his sexual tastes with any caution, but now he grew utterly indiscriminate. He fucked to forget, and there was so much he wanted to forget.

  He'd spent some time loitering in the public toilets in Grosvenor Gardens near his home, standing with his raincoat over his arm. The raincoat was a signal to others in the fraternity and also a means of hiding a stiff dick, if it came to that. He hoped it would. The man that was to change his evening around—well-groomed, scrubbed skin, not much more than twenty—had walked in and established immediate eye-contact—a slight, nervous flicker, but no smile; this wasn't something you took lightly. They had both tarried—washing hands, combing hair, re-tying a tie, a long inspection in the mirror—waiting to be alone, but it was the time of night when the pubs were closing and the passing traffic was heavy. Two men idling in a public convenience were bound to be the cause of more than an occasional glance of suspicion, so the stranger disappeared into a cubicle. Burgess took the one alongside. They'd exchanged not a single word, only brief glances, nothing that would stand up in court. But the time to strike, to risk, was at hand. Burgess had been at this point so many times before, driven on by what lay deep inside, something raw, rough, chaotically primordial which he hated but which tore at all his senses until he was swept up in it. The thrill of the chase—and of being chased. They'd catch him eventually, he'd always known that. But not just yet. And when they did, he'd still get the last laugh. He'd die with a hard-on.

  Burgess sat on the wooden seat and took a small piece of paper from his raincoat pocket on which was written the single word: “HELLO.” He folded the paper and inserted it in a crack between the thin wooden slats that divided the cubicles. He held it there for a second before it disappeared, pulled from between his fingers. Contact. After that a flushing toilet, a door being unlocked. A pause. A soft rapping on his own door.

  Burgess opened his cubicle door to discover himself looking at not one man but two. And suddenly the shy young man, the love of his night, he of the nervous eye, had become an avenging brute.

  “You twisted little poof. You're nicked!” the man snarled, his face so close and threatening that Burgess could smell overcooked liver and onion. The other plain-clothes policeman—for that is what they were—caught him by the collar and shoved him over the basin—oh, but Burgess would've bent over anywhere for his blue-eyed young colleague, all he had to do was ask nicely, didn't need to shove or twist his arm so excruciatingly fucking tight up behind his back. Then
there were handcuffs and a thumping from both of them for good measure, but only in places where it wouldn't show in court.

  It became something of a mystery tour for a while. His right eye had caught the edge of the basin and began to swell, while the view from the other eye was distorted by the effects of alcohol. Burgess had got himself tanked up before he'd arrived at the toilets—he always did before he went out on the prowl—and very little of the late-night world around Victoria made sense to him until he found himself staring into the face of the custody sergeant at Rochester Row. That's when it all hit him. Oh, mother, he was really going down. Suddenly Burgess was extraordinarily, desiccatedly sober.

  “Drunk and disorderly?” the sergeant inquired of the two police constables.

  “Queer and quiet, Sarge. Not said a word since he tried to pick me up in the public convenience.”

  “I don't recall saying a word to you at any point,” Burgess snapped, unable to resist a verbal foray. His accent was Eton and Cambridge, not quite what they had expected from the contents of a crumpled mac. Suddenly the officers were more wary.

  “Ah, he talks. Name and address,” the sergeant demanded.

  “Before I say anything I want to know with what I'm being charged.” “With being a bleedin' shirt-lifter,” the arresting constable obliged.

  Burgess squeezed his balls to try to bring some order to the images that tumbled inside his brain. One of those images was focused around the custody sergeant and suggested he was already damned and condemned. Another centered on the sneering constable—Burgess desperately wanted to smack blue-eyes in his big, fat, succulent mouth and make a run for it. Unlikely to get very far, of course, but at least he'd have the satisfaction of seeing the little bastard bleed. Yet another image told him that the place was in chaos with policemen running in every direction shouting about a bomb at Victoria Station. Burgess had already heard about King's Cross earlier in the day—so, they'd done Victoria, too…