“Never liked the Olympics,” Pegler grumbled. “Too much rah, rah, my country is better bullshit. Look at that bastard Hitler in thirty-six. He made the whole thing political with those Aryan boys of his and they get whipped by a Negro.”
“They do run fast,” Brooks said. “Mostly to stay away from the law.”
“I didn’t realize there was law in Georgia for the coloreds,” Lyman said. “Just thought they caught them, said they were guilty and strung them up.” His eyes twinkled. Kidding Brooks about his southern origins was one of the favorite sideshows at the poker table.
Brooks did not flinch, having heard it all before. “We put them on trial, even give them white lawyers to show how progressive we are.”
“Don’t give them old Hugo Black; he’s not so progressive,” Poppins said, shifting in his seat as he folded another hand. Justice Hugo Black was discovered to be a member of the Klan, which embarrassed the Roosevelt Administration after he was on the Court.
Lyman again bet eight dollars when his turn came and once again everyone folded. He swept up the money for another win. Poppins had the deal and the start of the conversation. “Where are the Germans going next?”
The foreign correspondent tipped the beer to his mouth. “East,” he said.
Pegler looked up from his cards, frowning. “The Bolshies? No way. The Germans aren’t that crazy. They will never catch them. The Bolshies will retreat all of the way to the Pacific. They couldn’t beat them in a century.”
Lyman, though, did not back down from his prediction. “Everyone’s talking about it, even the Russians. They’ll never stop them, four hundred miles from the Polish border to Moscow. The Germans rushed through Poland, three hundred miles in less than a month.”
Poppins snorted while Pegler bet. He was holding trips and begging for a full house. Only Lyman called. They both drew a card and stared at their hand. Lyman bet then watched as Pegler called him. Lyman had a straight, but somehow Pegler had drawn out sevens over threes and swept in over thirty dollars.
Lyman sat, frowning at his remaining chips. “A hundred bucks, the Germans are in Moscow by September 1."
Pegler eyed him. “A C note?” He squinted at Poppins. “What’s your read?” Poppins was a military historian; his house was filled with terracotta soldiers: Napoleon’s grenadiers against Kutuzov’s ragged soldiery, all maneuvering at Friedland on one table the other at Berezina. Pegler had seen and marveled at the detail; Poppins had only pointed with his baton, noting the different corps and divisions. It was a more impressive sight than Poppins rattling off the details of an obscure Equal Protection case.
“The Russians will struggle to stop them. It isn’t Napoleon; he could cover ten miles a day moving at a fast pace. Their tanks move fifteen miles an hour. Once they break the front lines the Russians can’t stop them. The Germans can hit them and reach Smolensk in three weeks.” He nodded at Lyman. “You’ll win hands down.”
Lyman cocked his head, knowing that Pegler was always one to accept an impossible challenge and bet. His oversized head wobbled, chiseled features reddening at the challenge. “A C note, by September 1.”
Poppins smiled. “Hitler has better generals than Napoleon and better horses.”
Another hand was dealt, and this time five card stud, Murat Haltstead’s favorite game. Poppins had a question. “Who you got for the Republicans?” He asked. “Anybody who can beat that bastard.”
Halstead enjoyed a different view of Roosevelt. He hadn’t vote for a Republican, ever. “Dewey but Willkie is catching up.”
“Who’s Willkie?” Sloane asked. He was always lost during political discussions.
“Lawyer for a utilities company when the TVA started.” Halstead smiled.
“He’s a Democrat,” Poppins said, the party spit from his mouth.
“Has a big following among sane Republicans.” Halstead folded his hands. Never one who could talk shop and play cards; when politics were raised he rarely lost money. “The party has to get modern if it wants to beat Roosevelt.”
Lyman sputtered. “The Republicans can’t beat Roosevelt.”
There was consensus around the table, even by those who disliked the incumbent. Pegler folded and offered his opinion. “What about Taft. He’s got the name and the Republicans have to win the Midwest.”
Halstead brushed off the possibility. “He is part of the Hoover wing; would let Hitler run wild in Europe and take us back to Harding.”
Pegler lit a cigarette and pointed it at Lyman. “According to Trumbull, I say let him run wild as long as it’s against the communists. The only ones who care are the Jews.” He blew smoke into the air and several of those at the table grunted in agreement. Halstead was not one of them.
“Hitler has to be stopped. Roosevelt knows it and when he wins in November we go full bore for the British.”
“Where’d that get us in 1918?” Poppins barked. “Depression.”
“Hitler’s not a threat and I agree with Peg.” Lyman nodded at the stolid figure opposite him. “The German’s will spend the next twenty years chasing the Russians into Siberia, if they get that far.”
“Maybe they will hang Stalin like the Kaiser should have hung Lenin.”
The idea appealed to all around the table. Poppins waited for the next hand to be dealt; he slid in a dollar as an opening bet, as he was showing an ace. Pegler raised an eyebrow. “Trying to be cute with your money?” He winked at Lyman. “What you want to bet his whole card is another ace?”
Poppins, who lacked a poker face and because of that banned talking about cards at the table, reddened and tried to change the subject. “How much you been hearing about Garner?” He asked Halstead. Vice President John Nance Garner had challenged his boss for the presidency.
The political reporter frowned. “What about him?”
“Is he running against Roosevelt?” Laughter circled the table at the question.
“Garner doesn’t even have Texas. He pissed off the southerners when he agreed to join the ticket in thirty-two and he pissed off the New Dealers when he sandbagged Roosevelt on Court reform.”
“Court packing,” Poppins interrupted. Halstead was on dangerous ground talking about Roosevelt’s plan to pack the Court with New Dealers as “reform.”
“Packing,” Halstead grumbled.
Pegler grinned as he doubled Poppins original bet. “Garner said the vice presidency wasn’t worth a bucket of warm piss.”
It was another memorable line from an unmemorable vice president.
“Who will replace him if Roosevelt runs again?” Lyman asked. He rarely discussed domestic affairs. Lyman was too much of a man of the world to worry about the Washington cow town.
“According to my sources Wallace has the inside track,” Halstead said
Pegler groaned. Those around the table could not know whether his reaction was because of the deuce slapped down in front of him or the mention of the agriculture secretary, Henry Wallace.
“A dissenting voice,” Poppins said, quite familiar with dissents.
“I thought he was dead.” This comment came from Tolliver Brooks, showing a pair of ladies, forcing him to check.
“That was his old man,” Halstead explained. “Henry C. Wallace was Harding’s and Coolidge’s secretary of agriculture. His son Henry A.Wallace is the secretary for Roosevelt.”
“At least it isn’t Ickes,” Poppins said. Harold Ickes, the old curmudgeon, sporting an acid tongue that made him feared and unpopular around Washington.
“Wallace is a disaster,” Pegler declared. “A complete nutcase.”
Halstead tilted his head at his playing partner. “Peg knows something.”
“You will have to read my column,” he said from behind his best poker face.
Poppins, who rarely read the newspaper, grunted as he folded his ace, Brook’s pair of ladies too intimidating. “If the old man does win the constitution is gone for good. Hughes is eighty and McReynolds is trying to outlast him.”
Brooks the sports writer’s mouth gaped. “What can they do to the Constitution?” I thought they could never change it.”
Poppins sighed at his colleague’s ignorance but left it to Murat Halstead to explain. “Poppins believes Roosevelt’s judges have slashed the constitution to ribbons.” He tilted his head at the legal reporter. “Commerce, no liberty to contract, minimum wage, and forty hour work week?” He grinned, the expression of the victor in the constitutional debate. Poppins offered the frown of a loser, much of the constitution he knew vanishing in a few years.
Halstead, though, was not finished. “Justice McReynolds is a bastard. He is so filled with bile he will outlast them all. Chief Justice Hughes is the only one to go toe to toe with Roosevelt and defeat him. Best thing that ever happened to the president.”
Brooks frowned; he was puzzled on how a defeat could be good for anyone.
Pegler tossed in a bet while showing a seven; the card certain to drag in the others as his best starting hand could only be a pair of sevens. “This year doesn’t look good. Roosevelt on one side of the Atlantic, Hitler on the other side, what the hell are we to do?”
Lyman laughed. “Like the Romanovs, they partied right up to the end. They knew they had only a short time to live and got a lot of life out of a short time.” He tossed in his chips. “In a few weeks I’m headed to Paris and there will be a lot of partying there.”
“The French,” Pegler grumbled. “They didn’t lift a finger to help us; screw the French.”
“Petain’s in the cabinet,” Lyman said. “There will never be a war with him in government.” Lyman took a drink. “There is talk about the French allying with the Germans.”
“That would be a reporting coup for you,” Pegler said. “Be there when Petain and Hitler sign another piece of paper, maybe Chamberlain can join them.” He smirked at the mention of the British prime minister.
Lyman had no response and the betting moved around the table. Shop talk dwindled as the stakes rose. It would be another long evening in the press club.
15
February 16, 1940
Breakfasts had become a circus for Exner Updegrove. He began each morning in solitude as Maria preferred her morning rides on an empty stomach. Yet it seemed he finished every morning with at least one visitor at his table. Since joining the 1922 Committee he had a regular supply of MPs seeking advice and giving some. The debates in the House had become nastier; Chamberlain was under attack from Labour, who wanted British troops on the continent. Every possible site had been mentioned. Some members wanted troops in Norway, others wanted them in Greece and a few proposed invading Germany through the Low Countries. The plans only contributed to the growing turmoil in the Commons.
Updegrove distanced himself from the debates, avoiding the Commons even as he held meetings with friendly members. Exner struggled with his message of peace, the German conquest of Poland seen as a blow to British pride. If a British threat could not prevent Hitler from attacking the useless Poles what would stop him from sweeping into Belgium and Calais, a mere forty miles from Dover.
Using his estate and Maria who mixed alcohol, arguments and flirtation to wring agreements from disagreeable men, Updegrove added a score of names to the petition against the prime minister. This morning followed another successful lobbying attempt, the member from upper Buckminster agreeing to sign. He remained at the estate, too drunk to drive back, and remained in bed as Updegrove ate and Maria – her vodka tolerance much higher than a man twice her size – rode around the estate.
The newspapers were filled with stories of Britain’s low level naval war, as German ships sought haven in French and Italian Mediterranean ports. Some had scurried through the Bosporus and sailed into the Bulgarian port of Burgas. The international scene bored Exner, making little sense to him. His ignorance of the outside world was a mirror image of his father. Lord Braxtonshire served in Egypt and South Africa, defending the British concentration camps used to seal up Boer civilians. It was far away for Exner, whose morning reading was interrupted by Fergus bearing a shocked expression. The quivering lower lip and loss of blood in his face foretold unexpected death or a visit from his father.
“The Lord to see you, sir.” Fergus stepped aside and the eighth Lord of Braxtonshire strode into the breakfast room. Approaching his mid-sixties, Exner’s father had the bearing of a man with a long family history that included bravery, cowardice, nobility and eccentricity. The eighth lord enjoyed each, though it was his eccentricities that had recently taken hold. Married to his third wife, the first two including Exner’s mother had died, divorce considered beneath the Lord; he tired of her within two years and sent her to the Caribbean with a generous stipend, annual increases linked to her remaining in the western hemisphere. Suddenly lonely he began a series of affairs with secretaries; the scandal was the talk of London society though the Updegroves paid little attention to gossipers.
“My lord,” Exner was on his feet. His father tapped his cane on the stone floor with impatience. He took the seat offered and glared at his son and successor.
Exner swallowed hard. His father’s dalliances with the help had aged him. His green eyes, an old Updegrove trait that skipped a generation, were dulled, his hair entirely white, wrinkles numerous and deeper. The hair on the back of his hands was gone while pouches of skin poked out from his neck and forearms. For the first time Exner realized his father was growing older. Holding tight to his cane, rings sparkling on his hand, he began tapping his finger on the table.
“You are involved in this attempt to unseat Chamberlain.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are looking for peace?”
Exner swallowed. He had no goal; he was only going to be part of a group, and for the first time he was an active member of the House.
“You will not get peace,” the eighth lord said. “Chamberlain will ally himself with Churchill and the war party, or you will force out Neville and Winston will replace him.” He tapped his cane three times on the floor. It was a signal that Fergus knew well. He entered a few moments later sporting a brandy then skittered away without looking at Exner.
The brandy sat, leaving Exner to watch the glass as his thirst grew, the brandy taunting them. “Churchill is a fool,” the eighth lord declared. “He misunderstands Hitler, says the man is an evil genius but he is neither evil nor is he a genius. Hitler is a renegade; he hates everyone who is not German but especially the Bolsheviks.” He studied his brandy, closing one eye as if measuring the level in his glass. “Have you read his book?”
Exner squinted. “Hitler’s book?” It seemed impossible that the odd little man in the brown gardener’s outfit and postage stamp mustache, strutting around with his right arm in the air could publish a newspaper article much less a book.
“Mein Kampf. He published it before he became chancellor.”
“Have you read it sir?”
The eighth lord managed a tight smile, wrinkles deepening. “I don’t have the time to read the ramblings of a lunatic. There are people in the foreign ministry who are paid to reach such things. They tell me he hates Jews and communists the same. He has no interest in the west. Russia is where he will expand Germany.” The eighth lord swept up his brandy.
Exner wriggled in his chair, wondering when his father would come to the point. Prodding him would have little effect.
“You must stop this petition drive.”
It was not a request and Exner felt a burning sizzle inside of him. Assuming the family seat he recalled his father’s oath not to interfere. “I cannot stop, sir.”
Exner braced for his father’s reaction. The eighth lord was not one to be defied. Several moments of silence followed as he swirled the brandy in his glass. He raised his eyes to his son. “The matter has been decided.”
“Decided?”
“Henry Phibes will serve as a caretaker for your seat.”
Exner blinked. “Caretaker? You want me to quit the committee?”
Exner stared at his father, suddenly worried age had overwhelmed the eighth lord’s reasoning. “Sir, I do not understand why I should leave Britain.”
The eighth lord continued swirling his brandy as if it held the answers. “Either the government will isolate you here or the party will not nominate you for another term.”
“A purge.”
“They seek war at all costs. Anyone with antiwar views or any connection to the fascist set will be removed from power. They are looking at Halifax first.”
The word fascist shook Exner. His opposition to the war was hardly an endorsement of Hitler and he was decidedly not a fascist. “How can they do this? This is England, we have rights.”
The eighth lord scoffed. “We have done much worst in the past than removing backbenchers from their seats; usually men lost their heads.”
“They told you all of this? They said I should leave?”
The eighth lord tipped the glass to his lips, emptying it. “Your departure was my idea, to protect the family seat.” He set the glass down, and then used his cane to push from his chair. He stood for a moment, wobbling on his feet before regaining his balance. “They agreed to send you to Sofia as our adjutant to the consul.”
“Sofia?” Exner frowned. “I can’t go there, the Bulgars are allied with the Germans.”
“Our consulate remains. The Bulgars are flexible people; they have retained diplomatic relations with England. “
“Sofia?” The city name rolled from Exner’s tongue with disbelief. “Why not Paris or even the Middle East, South Africa, Egypt?” The colonies rattled from him even as the future ninth lord knew little beyond their names.
The eighth lord tapped his cane on the floor. “This has been decided. The opening in Sofia is best for all. You will be forgotten; everything you have done will be overlooked. Once the danger has passed and the war is finished, you can return with a record of achievement, demonstrating unwavering loyalty to the empire.”
French Betrayal (Reich Triumphant Book 1) Page 18