Fall of Giants

by Follett, Ken

  “Quite all right,” said von Henscher. He smiled at Otto. “Your father and I are the older generation, of course, but we still know a thing or two. You may rely on our discretion.”

  { II }

  Fitz was pleased that the German peace proposal had been spurned, and proud of his part in the process, but when it was over he had doubts.

  He thought it over, walking—or, rather, limping—along Piccadilly on the morning of Wednesday, January 17, on his way to his office in the Admiralty. Peace talks would have been a sneaky way for the Germans to consolidate their gains, legitimizing their hold over Belgium, northeastern France, and parts of Russia. For Britain to take part in such talks would have amounted to an admission of defeat. But Britain still had not won.

  Lloyd George’s talk of a knockout went down well in the newspapers, but all sensible people knew it was a daydream. The war would go on, perhaps for a year, perhaps longer. And, if the Americans continued to remain neutral, it might end in peace talks after all. What if no one could win this war? Another million men would be killed for no purpose. The thought that haunted Fitz was that Ethel might have been right after all.

  And what if Britain lost? There would be a financial crisis, unemployment, and destitution. Working-class men would take up Ethel’s father’s cry and say that they had never been allowed to vote for the war. The people’s rage against their rulers would be boundless. Protests and marches would turn into riots. It was only a little over a century ago that Parisians had executed their king and much of the nobility. Would Londoners do the same? Fitz imagined himself, bound hand and foot, carried on a cart to the place of execution, spat upon and jeered at by the crowd. Worse, he saw the same happening to Maud, and Aunt Herm, and Bea, and Boy. He pushed the nightmare out of his mind.

  What a little spitfire Ethel was, he thought with mingled admiration and regret. He had been mortified with embarrassment when his guest was ejected from the gallery during Lloyd George’s speech, but at the same time he found himself even more attracted to her.

  Unfortunately, she had turned against him. He had followed her out and caught up with her in the Central Lobby, and she had berated him, blaming him and his kind for prolonging the war. From the way she talked you would think every soldier who died in France had been killed by Fitz personally.

  That was the end of his Chelsea scheme. He had sent her a couple of notes but she had not replied. The disappointment hit him hard. When he thought of the delightful afternoons they might have spent in that love nest he felt the loss like an ache in his chest.

  However, he had some consolation. Bea had taken his reprimand to heart. She now welcomed him to her bedroom, dressed in pretty nightwear, offering him her scented body as she had when they were first married. In the end she was a well-brought-up aristocratic woman and she knew what a wife was for.

  Musing on the compliant princess and the irresistible activist, he entered the Old Admiralty Building to find a partly decoded German telegram on his desk.

  It was headed:Berlin zu Washingon. W.158. 16 January 1917.

  Fitz looked automatically at the foot of the decrypt to see who it was from. The name at the end was:Zimmermann.

  His interest was piqued. This was a message from the German foreign minister to his ambassador in the United States. With a pencil Fitz wrote a translation, putting squiggles and question marks where code groups had not been decrypted.

  Most secret for Your Excellency’s personal information and to be handed on to the imperial minister in (?Mexico?) with xxxx by a safe route.

  The question marks indicated a code group whose meaning was not certain. The decoders were guessing. If they were right, this message was for the German ambassador in Mexico. It was simply being sent via the Washington embassy.

  Mexico, Fitz thought. How odd.

  The next sentence was completely decoded.

  We propose to begin on 1 February unrestricted submarine warfare.

  “My God!” Fitz said aloud. It was fearfully expected, but this was firm confirmation—and with a date! The news would be a coup for Room 40.

  In doing so however we shall endeavor to keep America neutral xxxx. If we should not we propose to (?Mexico?) an alliance upon the following basis: conduct of war, conclusion of peace.

  “An alliance with Mexico?” Fitz said to himself. “This is strong stuff. The Americans are going to be hopping mad!”

  Your Excellency should for the present inform the president secretly war with the USA xxxx and at the same time to negotiate between us and Japan xxxx our submarines will compel England to peace within a few months. Acknowledge receipt.

  Fit looked up and caught the eye of young Carver, who—he now saw—was bursting with excitement. “You must be reading the Zimmermann intercept,” the sublieutenant said.

  “Such as it is,” Fitz said calmly. He was just as euphoric as Carver, but better at concealing it. “Why is the decrypt so scrappy?”

  “It’s in a new code that we haven’t completely cracked. All the same, the message is hot stuff, isn’t it?”

  Fitz looked again at his translation. Carver was not exaggerating. This appeared very much like an attempt to get Mexico to ally with Germany against the United States. It was sensational.

  It might even make the American president angry enough to declare war on Germany.

  Fitz’s pulse quickened. “I agree,” he said. “And I’m going to take this straight to Blinker Hall.” Captain William Reginald Hall, the director of naval intelligence, had a chronic facial tic, hence the nickname; but there was nothing wrong with his brain. “He will ask questions, and I need to have some answers ready. What are the prospects for getting a complete decrypt?”

  “It’s going to take us several weeks to master the new code.”

  Fitz gave a grunt of exasperation. The reconstruction of new codes from first principles was a painstaking business that could not be hurried.

  Carver went on: “But I notice that the message is to be forwarded from Washington to Mexico. On that route, they’re still using an old diplomatic code we broke more than a year ago. Perhaps we could get a copy of the forwarded cable?”

  “Perhaps we could!” Fitz said eagerly. “We have an agent in the telegraph office in Mexico City.” He thought ahead. “When we reveal this to the world . . . ”

  Carver said anxiously: “We can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “The Germans would know we’re reading their traffic.”

  Fitz saw that he was right. It was the perennial problem of secret intelligence: how to use it without compromising the source. He said: “But this is so important we might want to take the risk.”

  “I doubt it. This department has provided too much reliable information. They won’t put that in jeopardy.”

  “Damn! Surely we can’t come across something like this and then be powerless to use it?”

  Carver shrugged. “It happens in this line of work.”

  Fitz was not prepared to accept that. The entry of America could win the war. That was surely worth any sacrifice. But he knew enough about the army to realize that some men would show more courage and resourcefulness defending a department than a redoubt. Carver’s objection had to be taken seriously. “We need a cover story,” he said.

  “Let’s say the Americans intercepted the cable,” Carver said.

  Fitz nodded. “It is to be forwarded from Washington to Mexico, so we could say the U.S. government got it from Western Union.”

  “Western Union may not like it . . . ”

  “To hell with them. Now: how, exactly, do we use this information to the maximum effect? Does our government make the announcement? Do we give it to the Americans? Do we get some third party to challenge the Germans?”

  Carver put up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m out of my depth.”

  “I’m not,” said Fitz, suddenly inspired. “And I know just the person to help.”

  { III }

  F
itz met Gus Dewar at a south London pub called the Ring.

  To Fitz’s surprise, Dewar was a lover of boxing. As a teenager he had attended a waterfront arena in Buffalo, and in his travels across Europe, back in 1914, he had watched prizefights in every capital city. He kept his enthusiasm quiet, Fitz thought wryly: boxing was not a popular topic of conversation at teatime in Mayfair.

  However, all classes were represented at the Ring. Gentlemen in evening dress mingled with dockers in torn coats. Illegal bookmakers took bets in every corner while waiters brought loaded trays of beer in pint glasses. The air was thick with the smoke of cigars, pipes, and cigarettes. There were no seats and no women.

  Fitz found Gus deep in conversation with a broken-nosed Londoner, arguing about the American fighter Jack Johnson, the first black world heavyweight champion, whose marriage to a white woman had caused Christian ministers to call for him to be lynched. The Londoner had riled Gus by agreeing with the clergymen.

  Fitz nourished a secret hope that Gus might fall for Maud. It would be a good match. They were both intellectuals, both liberals, both frightfully serious about everything, always reading books. The Dewars came from what Americans called Old Money, the nearest thing they had to an aristocracy.

  In addition, both Gus and Maud were in favor of peace. Maud had always been strangely passionate about ending the war; Fitz had no idea why. And Gus revered his boss, Woodrow Wilson, who had made a speech a month ago calling for “peace without victory,” a phrase that had infuriated Fitz and most of the British and French leadership.

  But the compatibility Fitz had seen between Gus and Maud had not led anywhere. Fitz loved his sister, but he wondered what was wrong with her. Did she want to be an old maid?

  When Fitz had detached Gus from the man with the broken nose, he raised the subject of Mexico.

  “It’s a mess,” Gus said. “Wilson has withdrawn General Pershing and his troops, in an attempt to please President Carranza, but it hasn’t worked—Carranza won’t even discuss policing the border. Why do you ask?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” Fitz said. “The next bout is starting.”

  As they watched a fighter called Benny the Yid pounding the brains out of Bald Albert Collins, Fitz resolved to avoid the topic of the German peace offer. He knew that Gus was heartbroken at the failure of Wilson’s initiative. Gus asked himself constantly whether he could have handled matters better, or done something further to support the president’s plan. Fitz thought the plan had been doomed from the start because neither side really wanted peace.

  In the third round Bald Albert went down and stayed down.

  “You caught me just in time,” Gus said. “I’m about to head for home.”

  “Looking forward to it?”

  “If I get there. I might be sunk by a U-boat on the way.”

  The Germans had resumed unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1, exactly as foretold in the Zimmermann intercept. This had angered the Americans, but not as much as Fitz had hoped. “President Wilson’s reaction to the submarine announcement was surprisingly mild,” he said.

  “He broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. That’s not mild.”

  “But he did not declare war.” Fitz had been devastated by this. He had fought hard against peace talks, but Maud and Ethel and their pacifist friends were right to say there was no hope of victory in the foreseeable future—without extra help from somewhere. Fitz had felt sure that unrestricted submarine warfare would bring the Americans in. So far it had not.

  Gus said: “Frankly, I think President Wilson was infuriated by the submarine decision, and is now ready to declare war. He’s tried everything else, for goodness’ sake. But he won reelection as the man who kept us out. The only way he can switch is if he is swept into war on a tide of public enthusiasm.”

  “In that case,” said Fitz, “I believe I have something that might help him.”

  Gus raised an eyebrow.

  “Since I was wounded, I’ve been working in a unit that decodes intercepted German wireless messages.” Fitz took from his pocket a sheet of paper covered with his own handwriting. “Your government will be given this officially in the next few days. I’m showing it to you now because we need advice on how to handle it.” He gave it to Gus.

  The British spy in Mexico City had got hold of the relayed message in the old code, and the paper Fitz handed to Gus was a complete decrypt of the Zimmermann intercept. In full, it read:Washington to Mexico, 19 January 1917

  We intend to begin on 1 February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavour in spite of this to keep the USA neutral. In the event of this not succeeding we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following terms:

  Make war together.

  Make peace together.

  Generous financial support and an undertaking on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The settlement in detail is left to you.

  You will inform the president of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the USA is certain, and add the suggestion that he should on his own initiative invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves.

  Please call the president’s attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace.

  Gus read a few lines, holding the sheet close to his eyes in the low light of the boxing arena, and said: “Alliance? My God!”

  Fitz glanced around. A new bout had begun, and the noise of the crowd was too loud for people nearby to overhear Gus.

  Gus read on. “Reconquer Texas?” he said with incredulity. And then, angrily: “Invite Japan?” He looked up from the paper. “This is outrageous!”

  This was the reaction Fitz had been hoping for, and he had to quell his elation. “Outrageous is the word,” he said with forced solemnity.

  “The Germans are offering to pay Mexico to invade the United States!”

  “Yes.”

  “And they’re asking Mexico to try to get Japan to join in!”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait till this gets out!”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about. We want to make sure it’s publicized in a manner favorable to your president.”

  “Why doesn’t the British government simply reveal it to the world?”

  Gus was not thinking this through. “Two reasons,” Fitz said. “One, we don’t want the Germans to know we’re reading their cables. Two, we may be accused of forging this intercept.”

  Gus nodded. “Pardon me. I was too angry to think. Let’s look at this coolly.”

  “If possible, we would like you to say that the United States government obtained a copy of the cable from Western Union.”

  “Wilson won’t tell a lie.”

  “Then get a copy from Western Union, and it won’t be a lie.”

  Gus nodded. “That should be possible. As for the second problem, who could release the telegram without being suspected of forgery?”

  “The president himself, I presume.”

  “That’s one possibility.”

  “But you have a better idea?”

  “Yes,” Gus said thoughtfully. “I believe I do.”

  { IV }

  Ethel and Bernie got married in the Calvary Gospel Hall. Neither of them had strong views about religion, and they both liked the pastor.

  Ethel had not communicated with Fitz since the day of Lloyd George’s speech. Fitz’s public opposition to peace had reminded her harshly of his true nature. He stood for everything she hated: tradition, conservatism, exploitation of the working class, unearned wealth. She could not be the lover of such a man, and she felt ashamed of herself for even being tempted by the house in Chelsea. Her true soul mate was Bernie.

  Ethel wore the pink silk dress and flowered hat that Walter von Ulrich had bought her for Maud Fitzherbert’s wedding. There were no bridesmaids, but Mildred
and Maud served as matrons of honor. Ethel’s parents came up from Aberowen on the train. Sadly, Billy was in France and could not get leave. Little Lloyd wore a pageboy outfit specially made for him by Mildred, sky blue with brass buttons and a cap.

  Bernie surprised Ethel by producing a family no one knew about. His elderly mother spoke nothing but Yiddish and muttered under her breath all through the service. She lived with Bernie’s prosperous older brother, Theo, who—Mildred discovered, flirting with him—owned a bicycle factory in Birmingham.

  Afterward tea and cake were served in the hall. There were no alcoholic drinks, which suited Da and Mam, and smokers had to go outside. Mam kissed Ethel and said: “I’m glad to see you settled at last, anyway.” That word anyway carried a lot of baggage, Ethel thought. It meant: “Congratulations, even though you’re a fallen woman, and you’ve got an illegitimate child whose father no one knows, and you’re marrying a Jew, and living in London, which is the same as Sodom and Gomorrah.” But Ethel accepted Mam’s qualified blessing and vowed never to say such things to her own child.

  Mam and Da had bought cheap day-return tickets, and they left to catch their train. When the majority of guests had gone, the remainder went to the Dog and Duck for a few drinks.

  Ethel and Bernie went home when it was Lloyd’s bedtime. That morning, Bernie had put his few clothes and many books into a handcart and wheeled it from his rented lodgings to Ethel’s house.

  To give themselves one night alone, they put Lloyd to bed upstairs with Mildred’s children, which Lloyd regarded as a special treat. Then Ethel and Bernie had cocoa in the kitchen and went to bed.

  Ethel had a new nightdress. Bernie put on clean pajamas. When he got into bed beside her, he broke into a nervous sweat. Ethel stroked his cheek. “Although I’m a scarlet woman, I haven’t got much experience,” she said. “Just my first husband, and that was only for a few weeks before he went away.” She had not told Bernie about Fitz and never would. Only Billy and the lawyer Albert Solman knew the truth.