No More Dying

by David Roberts

  Danny O’Rourke, who had overheard the last few words, broke in, ‘Joe Kennedy Sr is no aristocrat. He’s Boston Irish and Roman Catholic. To get where he has with those disadvantages makes him a hero to some of us. Last year, when he visited Ireland, de Valera called him a true son of Ireland and Kennedy called his journey to Dublin a pilgrimage. It was a moving occasion. I know because I was there.’

  ‘He’s also a capitalist profiteer who hates Jews, blacks and Communists,’ David responded drily.

  ‘Even so, we can forgive him anything because he’s Irish,’ O’Rourke said, turning away.

  ‘Harold Laski – yes, I should have thought of him,’ David said. ‘Your father’s abroad, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, but I’ve met Laski several times. I’ll telephone him tomorrow, but I still don’t understand what you want me to do if I manage to meet Kennedy.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. You’ll get your orders in good time.’

  Verity winced. She did not like taking orders from anyone but, she supposed, as long as she remained a member of the Party, she had to abide by its discipline.

  As though he could read her mind, David said, ‘I’ve had to speak to you before about discipline. The Party can achieve nothing without it. You will remember that Lenin wrote: “Organization and discipline are the proletariat’s only weapons.” We no longer see revolution as a spontaneous mass uprising but as a war of manoeuvre directed from above. There’s no room for egotism and amateurism. Fernando will tell you that the great Antonio Gramsci – who helped found the Italian Communist Party and who died two years ago – likened the Communist International to a worldwide engineering factory. Lenin called us revolutionary realists. We must submit ourselves to the great plan.’

  As always when Verity was lectured at, she wanted to argue but she knew David too well. He was not susceptible to argument and it was better just to nod and pretend to agree.

  ‘You were going to tell me why you wanted me to meet your new girl?’ Her scorn was a little too evident and David bridled.

  ‘She’s not my girl but she’s useful. You’ll meet her again and, when you do, be polite.’

  As they were leaving the Kardomah, blue flashing lights appeared and disappeared in the fog. The muffled but still strident bells of police cars warned them something was afoot. Fernando embraced her. ‘Good luck, cara – as we say back home, “in bocca al lupo”.’

  ‘In the mouth of the wolf?’ she guessed.

  ‘It means “good luck” and you should answer “crepi il lupo” – kill the wolf. If your man does not want you, come back to me and I’ll teach you il linguo d’amore. Promise me.’

  ‘Thank you, Fernando, but he does love me.’

  He shrugged, unconvinced, and let her go.

  Making their way towards Tottenham Court Road underground station, she and David were stopped by a police constable. Apparently a bomb had gone off in the left luggage office and another one had gone off at Leicester Square. The constable thought that it was an IRA outrage similar to the explosions in Coventry. Verity – the journalist in her coming to the fore – started to say that she ought to go and see what was happening but she discovered that she had come out without her press card. Very reluctantly, she was dissuaded from trying to get behind the police barrier. David told her not to be a fool. It was not her job and she certainly shouldn’t stay out any longer in the fog than absolutely necessary. Ignoring her protests, he stopped a passing taxi and, giving the driver the address of her flat in Cranmer Court, pushed her into it. As a reporter, it was against all her instincts to turn away from a news story. She was quite well, she told herself, coughing into her handkerchief.

  2

  Lord Edward Corinth swung the Lagonda across the gravel and pulled up in front of the elegant eighteenth-century wooden door. As he was shown into the surprisingly narrow hall, he thought, as he always did, how modest a home Chartwell was for a man who had been a leading political figure before Edward was born. And yet he knew from what Churchill had told him that, unpretentious though it might be, its upkeep was a constant struggle financially. Churchill had bought it in 1924 for £5000 but he had spent four times that amount on remodel ling it and it was still far from perfect. Waiting in the drawing-room, he shivered despite the fire in the grate. As Mrs Churchill complained, the house was draughty even when the weather was warm.

  Above him, he heard the unmistakable grumble of the owner of the house and his heavy footsteps as the great man paced up and down in his study. Edward knew he was at work on his History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Somehow, Churchill found time to read and write about the Wars of the Roses after the long hours spent on his political work. He had told Edward that he seldom went to sleep before three in the morning.

  Edward had been waiting ten minutes when the door of the drawing-room opened and Guy Liddell was shown in. He greeted Edward with a firm handshake.

  ‘I had no idea you were to be here, sir,’ Edward responded. ‘I had a summons to attend an urgent meeting but I had no hint as to what it concerned.’

  ‘How is your knee, Corinth?’ Liddell said, not giving anything away. ‘And how is Miss Browne?’

  Guy Liddell was the head of MI5, an organization so secret that its existence was unknown to the public and denied even by its political masters. Its task was to counter the activities of foreign agents in Britain. In just a few months it had doubled in size as war became a certainty but, even now, it was understaffed and Liddell found himself using odd characters like Edward when the need arose.

  Only a few months earlier, in the summer of 1938, Edward had killed a German agent, officially an assistant secretary at the German Embassy in London but unofficially the controller of a network of spies and traitors. Edward had hurt his leg in the struggle but, as he told Liddell, he was now ‘Right as rain and Miss Browne is well on the way to recovery. The doc gave her a clean bill of health but she has to be checked every six months as, apparently, TB can never be completely cured but remains dormant, sometimes for years.’

  ‘Well, we must hope for the best,’ Liddell responded, breezily. ‘And I believe I may congratulate you on your engagement.’ His cold eyes could almost be said to smile. It was a standing joke among Edward’s friends and acquaintances that Verity had proved almost impossible to drag to the altar or rather – since she was an atheist and would never agree to a church wedding – to Caxton Hall.

  ‘Thank you,’ Edward said, attempting to look unconcerned. ‘We’re hoping to get married next month when the weather improves. Just a small wedding, you understand, immediate family and close friends.’ Then, wondering if he sounded rude, he added, ‘But we are having a party at Mersham Castle and would be delighted if you were able to be there, though perhaps . . .’

  Edward thought that Liddell – given his position – would not wish to join a large party but, to his surprise, he said he would be delighted to come. ‘I have often heard Mersham described as one of England’s most beautiful houses and would very much like to see it and, of course, to wish you and Miss Browne good luck in your life together.’

  Their conversation was interrupted by a familiar growl of greeting and Churchill appeared, cigar in hand as usual. Edward could hardly ever remember seeing him without one of his favourite Romeo y Julietas. On a previous visit to Chartwell, Churchill had shown him the small room between his study and his bedroom in which he stored over two thousand cigars. They sat in boxes on shelves labelled ‘wrapped’, ‘naked’ and ‘large’. He never used a cigar cutter, preferring to pierce his cigar with a match. He had told Edward that, when he had complained of painful indigestion a couple of years earlier, his doctor had ordered him to cut down on his smoking but he had taken no notice. It occurred to Edward that one way of assassinating Churchill might be to present him with a box of poisoned cigars. He had once been involved with a murder case in which a man had been poisoned by the cigarettes he smoked. He shuddered inwardly. How did you go about protecting a man like C
hurchill?

  Edward noted, as he always did when he had not seen him for some time, how small Churchill was, although, after a few moments, his considerable presence made one forget his lack of height.

  ‘Forgive me, gentlemen, for keeping you waiting,’ he said, shaking hands, ‘but I just wanted to complete a description of the battle of Towton.’

  ‘1461,’ Liddell volunteered.

  Churchill pretended not to hear him. ‘Palm Sunday, 29th March. It was bitter weather. The Yorkist vanguard under young William Nevill advanced on the Lancastrian position. His archers took advantage of the snow which blew in his enemies’ faces. In savage hand-to-hand fighting the two armies tried their strength. Late in the afternoon, the Lancastrian line of battle collapsed. Many were drowned in the Cock River and many more were cut down near the town of Tadcaster. The slaughter was immense.’ He looked round to see the effect of his peroration on his visitors and then added, ‘Warfare used to be cruel but magnificent but has now become cruel and squalid.’

  Churchill’s eyes blazed and Edward felt his great love for England and its history. He was comforted that, in the new and horrible war that was about to break over them, this man would be at the helm. Edward simply could not believe that, in the event of war, Chamberlain would survive long as Prime Minister and, then, who else was there? ‘Writing a book,’ Churchill continued, ‘is an adventure to begin with, then it becomes a mistress, then a master and finally a tyrant.’

  Liddell broke in rather impatiently, knowing Churchill’s habit of trying out speeches and apothegms on any captive audience. ‘Forgive me, Mr Churchill, but I have to get back to town for a meeting at two o’clock. Might we . . .?’

  ‘Of course!’ Churchill was immediately penitent. ‘I shouldn’t have brought you out to Chartwell but . . .’

  Turning to Edward, Liddell said, ‘The fact of the matter is that Mr Churchill refuses to take me seriously when I say that there is a threat against his life.’

  Edward was horrified. ‘You mean an assassination attempt? But who . . .?’

  ‘You must not alarm yourself.’ Churchill spoke as though the threat was against Edward’s life rather than his own. ‘There are always lunatics vowing death to any of us with a measure of public notoriety. It’s just words.’

  ‘I beg to differ, sir,’ Liddell said with icy courtesy. ‘This particular threat has to be taken seriously. My source is unimpeachable . . . This time we’re not dealing with some lunatic but a deliberate, carefully planned plot. Our information is that a professional assassin has been hired to deprive us of you when the country needs you most.’ He smiled his most wintry smile. ‘That is not something we can allow to happen.’

  ‘But it is all so vague . . .’ Churchill protested. Then his face cleared. ‘I have a bottle of champagne on ice. Will you excuse me one moment?’

  Edward understood that he did not wish to listen as Liddell outlined the nature of the threat against him.

  ‘He drinks too much,’ Liddell grunted after Churchill had closed the door behind him.

  ‘I think he drinks when he’s bored but I’ve never seen him the worse for wear. I have had dinner with him when he’s consumed the best part of a magnum of Pol Roger but normally he keeps to weak whisky.’

  ‘I know. And I’ve seen him add soda water to his claret, God help us! Still, whatever his eccentricities when it comes to his alcohol intake, he’s the best man we’ve got.’

  ‘The only man,’ Edward echoed. ‘But who would want to assassinate him?’ he asked again.

  ‘Nobody or everybody. We’re particularly worried by the IRA threat. Despite everything he has done to bring peace to Ireland, including shaking the hand of Michael Collins . . . That stuck in my gullet, I must say. When half the police in Ireland were looking to arrest him, he was taking tea at 10 Downing Street. Despite that, the Irish hate Mr Churchill. Did you know that in 1921 Sinn Fein tried to kidnap him and Mr Lloyd George? That plot was foiled by the Yard, thank goodness, but there have been plenty more.’

  ‘I never knew that.’

  ‘They managed to keep it dark.’

  ‘Was that at the time of the Black and Tans?’ Edward had not approved of Churchill’s decision to send those battle-hardened troops to Ireland to suppress the IRA. Their brutality had created many martyrs among the ordinary Irish. As a result, even moderate Republicans were persuaded to support the ‘armed struggle’ to rid Ireland of the British, whatever the cost in human lives.

  Liddell hurried on. ‘On his recent American tour, Mr Churchill received over seven hundred letters containing death threats, many of them from Indians. The Ghada Party, an Indian secret society, has threatened to kill him because of his opposition to Indian independence. And then, of course, there are the Nazis. If there is a war, Hitler would prefer to be facing a British prime minister like Mr Chamberlain rather than Mr Churchill. I could go on but I expect you get the idea.’

  ‘I’m afraid I must be very naive,’ Edward confessed. ‘It never crossed my mind that there could be any real danger of . . . I mean, dash it, it’s so un-English. Surely no public figure has been assassinated since . . . since Spencer Perceval in 1812?’

  ‘You forget that the London Brigade of the so-called Irish Republican Army shot Sir Henry Wilson dead on his doorstep in June 1922 . . . in Eaton Square, no less.’

  Edward grunted. A thought struck him. ‘Liddell, is Mr Churchill in more danger than other public figures?’

  ‘I’m afraid the answer is in the affirmative. He says what he thinks and his profile is much higher than even the Prime Minister’s. Only the other day Mr Chamberlain called him Number One Bogeyman, and for many people that’s precisely what he is. Scarcely a week goes by when there isn’t an article in a daily paper by him or about him. Have you seen Truth recently?’

  ‘It’s a ridiculous magazine!’

  ‘Ridiculous maybe but week after week it ridicules Mr Churchill and warns against his “pseudo-Napoleonic” antics. This week there’s an article by Sir Joseph Ball who, I am ashamed to say, was my predecessor at MI5 saying that on no account must he be brought into the government. Ball now runs intelligence for Conservative Central Office and, we have discovered, secretly gained control of Truth to use it against Mr Churchill. He’s a close friend of Mr Chamberlain and has acted as an unofficial go-between with Mussolini. The two of them – I mean Ball and the Prime Minister – went on a fly-fishing holiday when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia last October.

  ‘Abroad, particularly in America, Mr Churchill is listened to when Mr Chamberlain is not and he is often thought by foreigners who should know better to be speaking for the British Government.’

  Churchill re-entered the room carrying an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne bobbing about in it. He put it on a table and took off the foil without speaking. The cork shot out with a satisfactory pop. As he gave them each a glass, he said, ‘You’re getting me a Special Branch officer, I gather, Liddell?’

  ‘Yes, Walter Thompson. You know him.’

  ‘He’s a good man.’ Churchill nodded and sipped his champagne contemplatively. ‘He’s looked after me before,’ he explained to Edward, ‘but I still don’t fancy being followed about by a nursemaid.’

  ‘Why is this threat different from all the others you mention, Liddell, and what can I do?’ Edward asked. ‘I imagine you have experts in this sort of thing?’

  ‘Indeed. We are working day and night to identify the would-be assassin.’ Edward thought Liddell was trying to make Churchill understand the danger he was in by using words like assassin but, on the surface at least, Churchill appeared unmoved. ‘There’s a particular job I need you to do, Corinth. Let me explain,’ he went on before Edward could say anything. ‘The information comes from our people in Berlin. They have heard from three different sources that Hitler wants Mr Churchill dead. There used to be an unwritten agreement that heads of state did not authorize assassination attempts on the lives of other heads of state or prominent figures.�
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  ‘Not cricket?’ Edward said, imagining Verity’s scorn had she heard Liddell’s remark.

  ‘As you described it earlier, un-English,’ Liddell agreed drily. ‘The Nazis, we now know, are little better than gangsters. Hitler has killed many of his own people – think of “the night of the long knives”. Ernst Röhm thought he was too close to Hitler to be in any danger but he and the other SA leaders were murdered en masse. There have been dozens since.’

  ‘Sola mors tyrannicida – Death is the only way to get rid of tyrants, as Thomas More put it.’ Edward could almost hear Verity begging him to stop quoting, particularly in Latin.

  Churchill, not to be outdone, quoted Hazlitt. ‘Words are the only things that last for ever.’

  ‘Not just tyrants get assassinated. That’s our problem,’ Liddell corrected Edward, ignoring Churchill’s interjection.

  ‘But why would they want to kill Mr Churchill? He isn’t even in the cabinet.’

  ‘I’ve told you,’ Liddell said irritably, ‘he is the voice of opposition to German Fascism. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘I’m flattered,’ Churchill growled, ‘to be so hated by that gang of hoodlums. It’s the English-speaking nations almost alone who keep alight the torch of freedom.’

  ‘So the threat comes from Germany – not any of the other secret societies or whatever that you mentioned?’ Edward asked Liddell.

  ‘Yes, but don’t imagine all we have to do is to look for thugs speaking with marked German accents and wearing jackboots and a swastika. They are just as likely to use a disaffected Irishman or even an Indian to do their dirty work for them.’

  ‘So what can we do? We can’t just wait for it to happen!’

  ‘I’d certainly prefer it, Guy, if you could put a spoke in these fellas’ wheel. Call me selfish but I’ve got a few things to do before I go to meet my maker,’ Churchill put in mildly.

  ‘Well, as I say, we’re following up leads but one thing our people in Berlin have been telling us is that the assassin may be attached in some way to the American Embassy.’