Churchill's Triumph

by Michael Dobbs

  A few feet away from him, Stalin was skimming. He had little interest in the United Nations and the other helpings of pious prose: it was the section on Germany that claimed his attention. The three powers were giving themselves the authority to do almost what they willed with her. They would disarm Germany, demilitarize and dismember it, rip the country apart, words that would allow them to wreak vengeance on it almost without limit, but the dramatic phrases couldn’t hide the fact that they still hadn’t worked out the details. And he lingered long over the provisions for reparations. They were specific about the figure of twenty billion, and that Russia should get half of this, but these figures were said to provide only “a basis for discussion” and “one of the proposals to be considered,” and the British—may wild dogs snap at their testicles—had made a point of reserving their position. For a few moments the Russian wondered whether, even at this late stage, he should throw a fit of temper and demand further changes, hold them to ransom, but he had grown tired with the haggling. He was a dictator, but there came a point when even he had to accept some limits, if not to his authority then at least to his physical endurance. Stalin was sixty-six years old, he was tired, and he very much wanted to go home. Anyway, Russian troops would be sitting on a huge chunk of Germany, including some of her finest industrial cities, and they would take whatever he told them to, no matter what the paper said. So he shrugged, and decided to sign.

  And Churchill wept for Poland. Oh, there were many words of comfort with talk of the government being reorganized on a more democratic basis, with “the holding of free and unfettered elections . . . on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot.” But he knew that in all probability this damsel of democratic virtues would soon be turned into a whore who would be made to bend over a Russian barrel.

  There were still a few drafting points that the advisers hadn’t been able to settle, a touch here, a suggested tweak there, but they were minor matters. They were almost done.

  “I don’t know about you gentlemen,” Roosevelt said, “but I see little point in struggling further with these matters. I suggest we get it typed up as it stands. Marshal?”

  Stalin looked up, ran a finger across his moustache, exposed his yellow teeth and nodded his assent.

  “Prime Minister?”

  The agreement was like an oak with disease eating away at its core. One good wind and it would be gone. But there was nothing to be done: punctuation wouldn’t save poor Poland. So Churchill looked up from his text and he, too, nodded.

  “Then, gentlemen, let’s do it,” the president instructed.

  ***

  He couldn’t hide in Simferopol. Armed goons were everywhere. Anyway, there was no time. Sawyers had told him that Churchill expected to leave Yalta tomorrow, on Monday, as early in the day as possible, and that was more than fifty miles away. He had to be there by nightfall, and somehow he didn’t think the Russians would be in a mood to provide a taxi service.

  And they wouldn’t give up. They had no idea why he was running, no specific idea, at least, but the fact that he was running was enough to persuade them he was guilty of many terrible crimes, including the most terrible crime of all. Dragging them into it. He had placed them in danger. If they arrived at their destination with a wrong headcount there would be hell to pay, demotions to endure, punishment duties to fulfill, and perhaps even worse. While others were bleeding their way to Berlin, they’d been handed a cushy number where the greatest threat to their lives was being bored to death. They couldn’t afford to throw away such a privilege, so they very much wanted this bastard back on board, and alive or dead really didn’t matter.

  It had been a long chase for Nowak, over all these years, but now it was coming to an end, one way or another. He’d run with his luck and used it up, every drop. Simply by fleeing he’d let the bastards know he had a guilty secret, and it wouldn’t be long before they uncovered it. And when that happened, they wouldn’t bother taking him back to Katyn before they did for him. He would simply disappear, just another useless Pole, not enough even to make a statistic.

  But it wasn’t over, not quite yet. He could still run, summon up the energy to pound his feet into the dirt and the cobbles, even though the pain was forcing its way up through his ankles and knees and into his guts. He had to keep running. But for every guard he could outpace and exhaust, he knew there was another—ten others—to take his place. Nowak couldn’t run for ever, and he hadn’t the time to hide. He had only one option: he had to escape. And suddenly, while his mind was reeling with half-finished thoughts and his body screaming for rest, he blundered into a market square. It was crowded, filled with old men and women standing behind shabby wooden stalls or squatting on rugs, haggling noisily with the passers-by. It was a place in which everything was for sale—mostly food, ripe fruit, meat, dried fish, fresh vegetables still covered with earth, and honey made from the color of the sun. Other stalls sold tobacco or yellow spirits, or tea served from bubbling samovars, but in many corners there were sad-faced women, often with their arms wrapped round young children, who sat on bare cobbles, trying to trade the last of their possessions for a few kopecks.

  Nowak’s mind was starved of oxygen and overwhelmed with fear, and as he walked between the stalls, struggling to regain his breath, on every side faces were turned to him. Eyes stared at him, hands reached out for him, voices were raised, calling to him, until his mind whirled in ever faster confusion. Then, less than ten paces away, he saw the old guard, his belt now buckled, his rifle raised. And once more Nowak was flying in fear.

  Yet this time he was almost spent. He had come to the point when there was little left inside. He began stumbling, slipping on the cobbles, sending stalls and people crashing on either side, clutching at the pocket above his heart, trying to summon up the dregs of his strength, to prime the pump one last, despairing time.

  It was as he reached the edge of the marketplace that he saw the truck in a narrow side-street. The door was open, giving cover to the driver as he lit a cigarette. Nowak threw himself at it, sending it crashing into the driver and knocking him senseless to the gutter as Nowak hauled himself inside the cab. But his situation was hopeless. Behind him stood a line of parked trucks while before him he saw a wall of faces—innocent faces, some wrinkled, some young, some no more than babies. One of the younger women was holding a child in her arms of about the same age as his own Kasia. The child was staring at him, helpless. His only path of escape lay through that wall, the memory of his daughter, and he knew he couldn’t do it.

  He didn’t even bother to start the engine. Instead, he kicked the gears into neutral and, just before he jumped from the cab, he released the handbrake. Slowly, desperately slowly at first, the truck edged its way forward down the soft incline that led into the square. They could all see it coming. There were cries of alarm as the truck rolled forward. People screamed, then scattered. A donkey started to panic, chickens escaped in a storm of feathers. Stalls that lay in the path of the truck were abandoned, the fruit and other produce left to be crushed beneath its wheels. Chaos took hold of this corner of the marketplace.

  The truck didn’t get far, as Nowak knew it wouldn’t. Before it had gone many yards, someone had the wit to clamber into the cab and yank at the handbrake. It was over almost as soon as it had started, but by that time, in the confusion, Nowak had disappeared. He had found a bicycle leaning against an abandoned stall and stolen it.

  Once more, Marian Nowak was running for his life.

  ***

  Roosevelt gave them lunch in his suite while they were waiting for the papers to be retyped, in the room where once the Tsar had played billiards. The conversation was distracted: they were a little like men who had run a marathon and needed to recover their wits. Roosevelt was exhausted, Churchill in pain, and Stalin as ever watchful of his rivals. The food was mediocre, and they were still toying with it when aides brought in the final papers.
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  “Ah, history has come knocking,” Roosevelt declared, brightening, and pushed aside his plate to make room for it. As he flicked through the pages of the communiqué and came to the spot where they should sign, he gazed once more at the final paragraph: “Victory in this war and establishment of the proposed international organization will provide the greatest opportunity in all history to create in the years to come the essential conditions of such a peace.” Strange, he’d read the phrase a dozen times and always liked it, but now the words seemed ponderous, not matching the heights he had intended. But it was too late.

  “So, who’ll sign first?” he asked.

  “You, as chairman, my dear Franklin,” Churchill suggested, but the American shook his head.

  “Not I,” added Stalin, laughing. “They’ll only say I pushed you both into it.”

  “Winston, you should sign,” Roosevelt announced. “Your initial comes first in the alphabet. And, if you’ll forgive me pointing it out, you are the eldest, so a little respect is due.” He took off his pince-nez to look directly at the Englishman, and his voice grew less flippant. “But you have also been fighting this war longer than any of us, right from the start, right from the opening salvoes of it all, and for that I respect you a thousand times more. You’ve never flinched, never failed in your duty. I hope you will do us the honor of being the first.”

  Even among old friends who had grown apart, there was room for respect.

  “We have come a long way together, we three,” Churchill whispered, fighting so much contradiction inside.

  “Then let us take another small step, which will prove to be the most significant of them all,” Roosevelt replied.

  The Prime Minister’s pen hovered over the paper. “There’s a line from Shakespeare—Julius Caesar, I think, just as the triumvirs are signing their own agreement.” His brow creased as he recalled the line. “‘Let us do so, for we are at the stake and bayed about with many enemies.’”

  “Not for much longer, Winston,” replied Roosevelt, happy in his ignorance, for he didn’t know his bard or the rest of the couplet.

  “And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear, millions of mischiefs.”

  There was a brief scratching, and it was done.

  Then aides placed in front of them the document securing Russia’s entry into the war in the Far East.

  Stalin sighed, seeming to hesitate.

  “Is there a problem, Marshal?”

  “This game of diplomacy you force me to play. I must continue to smile at the Japanese, right up to the moment I declare war upon them.”

  “Don’t let it worry you,” the President came back. “Those devils were still whispering sweet nothings in my ear even while their bombers were in the air and on their way to Pearl Harbor. Don’t lose any sleep about it.”

  “I shall try not to.” And he signed.

  Tears welled in the president’s eyes. “My dear friends, we have done a good deed here today. I feel…” He was beginning to choke on his emotion. “I feel ecstatic. Filled with exultation. Supremely happy.”

  Stalin’s translator was struggling to find sufficiently elevated phrases, but the Russian could see from the President’s face all that he needed to know. He beamed and banged the table in approval.

  “There should be some fine words to grace the occasion, some historic phrase, but I find my heart too full,” Roosevelt apologized. “How can words embrace what we’ve achieved here? We shall have to let posterity speak for us.”

  And with that he summoned the servants to clear the table, even though the dessert of fruit in syrup remained untouched.

  “You will not finish the lunch, Franklin?” Churchill asked.

  “My bags are packed and I’ve got a car with its engine running waiting in the driveway.”

  “Of course. Kings to see. But what, pray, of the Protocol? It’ll be some time a-typing.”

  “That’s for the foreign secretaries to sign. They don’t need us.”

  “But…”

  “Winston, it’s only words. We know what we’ve agreed. That’s enough.”

  And in less than twenty minutes, the exhausted Roosevelt had gone. The conference in the Crimea was over.

  ***

  He was flying with the wings of eagles, soaring, his heart lifting with every mile that passed beneath him. For a while the road from Simferopol dropped away towards Yalta and the old bicycle found nothing but warm air to slow its progress. There were potholes, of course, crumbling pavement, sharp bends, at one point even a fallen tree, but wherever the road descended the old bicycle purred with joy.

  Inevitably there were sections when the road didn’t help, when it began to climb, sometimes sharply, but only in preparation for the next swooping run down. At one point he got a lift on the back of a truck for several uphill miles: he spent it looking for any sign of pursuit, but there was none. Yet on the interminable stretches that were neither uphill nor downhill but simply rough, he pedaled the bike until he thought his heart would burst.

  He refused to grow disheartened when the bicycle began to suffer. It was old, and soon it had forgotten how to purr. Instead it started to offer nothing but a constant shriek of complaint, but it was nothing compared to the pain that had grabbed at Nowak. When it became almost too much to bear, he imagined his daughter sitting on the handlebars in front of him, just as he had once dreamed she would, sharing an afternoon in the park, feeding the ducks, listening to the band that in the summer played in the park near their home, while her mother strolled beside them and showed off some new dress. During his years on the run he had tried not to think too long about his wife: he knew what both Germans and Russians did to Polish women, and whenever the image of her face forced its way back through his defenses he knew he would be in pain for many days. So instead he had concentrated on his daughter Katarzyna, little Kasia, and wrapped himself in hope.

  And now they were together, flying, even though he was climbing the steepest hill, and while his body begged him to stop, her smile urged him onwards. Whenever he came to the point that he felt he couldn’t go on, he shouted at himself that the next push on the pedals would be his last. And the next! And the next! And the next! The old bicycle screamed in torment.

  Suddenly, as he pushed on, he was hit by a pain that was greater than anything he had ever felt in his life. He cried out in agony, slowed, faltered, then fell to the ground. It seemed as though he had been shot, but it was far, far worse: for after all this time, Marian Nowak had suddenly realized he could no longer imagine what his daughter looked like.

  He lay beside the road, sobbing heedlessly, pathetically, pounding the ground, and the bike at last stopped complaining.

  ***

  Churchill hadn’t expected it would all be over so quickly. He didn’t grumble, far from it, he was delighted the bloody communiqué was out of the way. A decision made, a deed done, and no more nights spent struggling with its construction. All he’d have to worry about now were its consequences.

  Yet, as he drove back from the Livadia having said farewell to both Roosevelt and Stalin, he began to feel increasingly out of sorts. The American’s departure had been abrupt, almost disrespectful, and the truth was that he hadn’t shown Churchill much respect throughout the conference, except perhaps for allowing his signature to go first. That had been a single gentle touch amid so many little slights, and it had served only to remind Churchill of how things used to be. And now Roosevelt was off to the desert—British desert. Not that the Middle East was a British colony, but it was most definitely a British sphere of influence. The Suez Canal was under British control, Palestine was a British mandate, and there was all that bloody oil. Now Franklin was up to something. Interfering. There was no better way of looking at it. He was stirring up the waters in a region where the Arabs and the Jews stirred things very adequately themselves. Churchill sniffed; he di
dn’t like what he smelled.

  He had planned to make an orderly departure the following morning, but now he grew agitated. Stalin was gone, Roosevelt was gone, leaving him behind like a lost boy. Another evening here, and for what purpose? He had come to loathe this place and all its associations; he wished he could leave them far behind. Fact was, he didn’t want to stay a moment longer than was necessary.

  As the car drew up outside the Vorontsov, he bounded out and leapt up the steps. “Sawyers, where are you, man? We leave at five o’clock!”

  A wail arose from within Churchill’s suite. “But it’s already half-past four.”

  “Then get on with it! What the dickens are you waiting for?”

  It was typical of Churchill to smother indecision with activity and, frankly, he didn’t give a bugger whom it upset.

  “Come on,” he shouted to all within earshot, “why do we stay here? Let’s go tonight! I see no reason to stay a minute longer—we’re off!”

  And soon the entire palace was turned into a scene of chaos as trunks appeared and suitcases were packed and people dashed madly about trying to find those little things that insist on going astray. Washing was reclaimed from the laundry, little tins of caviar were tucked away, and mysterious brown-paper parcels were delivered and piled in the hallway by smiling Russians—ah, the diplomatic “trifle”! Perhaps they hadn’t heard that there was nothing to give them in return.

  Churchill charged around shouting instructions, losing his temper, changing his mind, then changing it back again. It wasn’t until very late that they knew in which direction they were heading: not to the airport and to Egypt to head off Roosevelt, as for a few moments he had suggested, but to Sebastopol, from where they would sail aboard the RMT Franconia for Greece to sort out their wretched civil war. Then they could advance upon Egypt!