"Are you sure? All right.- Victor. Henry tried to express in an awkward smile the gratitude for which he could find no words.
Carefully he put the print in an inner pocket.
"What about the Tudsburys?" Slote asked. "Are they stuck in Moscow too?"
"I left Talky trying to wangle a ride to Archangel for himself and Pam. The Russians are flying out some R.A.F pilot instructors. I'm sure he'll get on that plane."
'Good. Did you run into any trouble at the front? What an idiocy, dragging a girl out there!"
"Well, we heard some firing, and saw some Germans. I'd better get at this report. If Talky does fly out, I want to give him a copy to forward via London." "Let me have a copy too, won't you? And another to go in the next pouch. If there is one."
"You're a pesimist, Slote." 'I'm a realist. I was in Warsaw. I know what the German's can do." "Do you know what the Russians can do?"
'I thought I did. I was the Red Army's biggest booster in the embassy, until-' Slote shrugged and turned to his desk, blowing his nose. "the only thing that really gets me is this stink of burning paper. My God, how it brings back Warsaw! The embassy absolutely reeks. We were burning and burning today, until the minute they all left. And there's still a ton that I've somehow got to get burned in the morning." "All Moscow stinks of it," Pug said. "It's the damnedest thing to drive through a snowstorm and smell burned paper.
The city's one unholy mess, Slote. Have you seen all the barbed wire and tangled steel girders blocking the bridges? And good Lord, the mob at that railway station! The traffic jams heading east with headlights blazing, blackout be damned! I didn't know there were that many trucks and cars in the whole Soviet Union.
All piled with mattresses and old people and babies and what-all.
And with those blue A.A. searchlights stir swinging overhead-God knows why -and the snow and the wind, I you it's a real end-of-the-world feeling." Slote chuckled. "Yes, isn't it? This exodus began the day you leftIes been snowballing. A convoy of government big shots left yesterday in a line of honking black limousines. Gad, you should have seen the faces of the people along the streets! I'm sure that triggered this panic. However, I give Stalin credit. He's staying on to the last, and that takes courage, because when Hitler catches Stalin he'll just hang him like a dog in Red Square. And he'll drag Lenin's mummy out of the tomb too, and string it up alongside to crumble in the wind.
Oh, there'll be stirring tngs to see and record here, for whoever survives to tell it all." Victor Henry rose. "Do you know there's no sentry at the door? I just walked in."
"That's impossible. We're guarded night and day by a soldier assigned by the Narkomindel."
"There's nobody there."
Slote opened and Closed his mouth twice. "Are you positive? Why, we could be sacked by looters! It's getting near the end when soldiers leave their posts. I must call the Narkomindel. If I can get the operator to answer!" He jumped up and disappeared into the gloom.
Victor Henry groped to the military attache's office. There he struck matches, and found and lit two kerosene lamps. In their bleak yellowgreen glow be surveyed the office. Bits of black ash flecked the floor and every surface. 'BURN-URGENT was scrawled in red crayon on manila folders topping heaps of reports, files, and loose papers piled on the floor and in the leather armchair. Emptied drawers and files stood open; a swivel chair was overturned; the place looked as though it had been robbed. On the desk, on a tYPewriter with bunched tangled keys, a message was propped, printed in block letters on torn cardboard: IMPOUTIVE-BUYW TONIGHT conmws SECOND BROWN LOCKM FILE. (L.
sLo-rE HAS C MiBiNA'noN.) Pug cleared the desk, untangled the typewriter keys and stood the lamps on either side of the machine. He found paper, carbons, and onionskin paper in a drawer.
Spaso House October 16, 1941
THE MOSCOW FRONT-EYEWITNESS REPORT His cold stiff fingers struck wrong keys. Typing in a bridge coat was clumsy and difficult. The slow clicks of the machine echoed hollowly in the deserted embassy.
One lamp began to smoke. He fiddled with the wick tmtil it burned clear.
This report attempts a description of a visit to the fighting front west Of MOscow, from which I have just returned.
Tonight, twenty miles outside the city, our car halted because of an air raid on Moscow. At a distance this was quite a spectacle: the fanning searchlights, the A.A. like an umbrella of colored fireworks over one patch of the horizon, blazing aw,y for half an hour straight.
Whatever the Russian deficiencies, they seem to have an infinite supply of A.A. ammunition, and when the Luftwaffe ventures over the capital, they blow it skyward in huge displays. This bats anything I saw in Berlin or London.
However, this brave show is not being matched on the ground in Moscow tonight. The town is getting ready for a Siege. It has an abnormal look, and the fainthearted are fleeing in a heavy snow. The Communist government is either unable or unwilling to stop the panic.
I am told there is already a slang name for this mass exodus-Bolshoi Drap, the Big Scram.
The foreign diplomats and newspapermen have been sent to Kuibyshev on the Volga, five hundred miles further east, and many government agencies are departing for the same haven en masse. Heavy vehicular and foot traffic eastward gives an undeniable aspect of rats leaving a sinking ship. However, it is reported that Stalin is staying on.
I believe this panic is premature, that Moscow has a fair chance of holding, and that even if it falls, the war may not end. I bring back many impressions from the front, but the outstanding one is that the Russians, though they are back on about their nine-yard line, are not beaten. The American leadership must guess whether Russia will stand or fall, and lay its bets accordingly in Lend-Lease shipments.
An eyewitness account of the front, however fragmentary, may therefore be pertinent.
The typewriter was clicking fast now. It was almost one o'clock.
Victor Henry still had to return to the hotel and pack. He chewed another it polar bear," the Russian chocolate candy, for energy, and began banging out the tale of his journey. Electricity all at once lit up the room, but he left the kerosene lamps burning and typed on.
In about half an hour the lights flickered, burned orange, dimmed, and pulsed, and went out. Still he typed ahead. He was describing the interior of the KV tank when Slote came in, saying, "You're really going at it." "You're working late yourself."
"I'm getting to the bottom of the pile." Slote dropped on the desk a brown envelope sealed with wax. "By the way, that came in the pouch, too. Care for some coffee?"
"You bet. Thanks."
Pug stretched and walked up and down the room, beating his arms and stamping his feet, before he broke the seal of the envelope. There were two letters inside, one from the White House and one from the Bureau of Personnel. He hesitated, then opened the White House letter; a few sentences in Harry Hopkins's dashed-off slanting hand filled a pageMy dear Pug1 want to congratulate you on your new assignment, and to convey the Boss's good wishes. He is very preoccupied with the Japanese, who are beginning to get ugly, and of course we are all watching the Russian struggle with anxiety. I still think-and pray-they'll hold. I hope my letter reached Stalin. He's a land crab, and he's got to be convinced that the Channel crossing is a major task, otherwise bad faith accusations will start to fly, to Hitler's delight.
There's been an unfortunate upturn in submarine sinkings in the Atlantic, and the Germans are cutting loose in Africa, too.
All in all the good cause seems to be heading into the storm.
You'll be missed in the gray fraternity of office boys.
Harry H.
The other envelope contained a Navy letter form in tele aphic style: gr
MMLGRAM
IPROM: nM CHIEF OF PFRSONNIEL.
TO: VICTOR (NONE) HENRY, CAPTAIN, U.S.N.
DETACHED ONE NOVEMBER PRESENT DUTY X PROCEED FASTEST AVAILABLE TRANSPORTATION PL OR X REPORT CALIFORNIA (BE 64) RELIEVE CO X SUBMIT VOUCHERS OF TRAVEL EXPENSES
COM]BAT FOR PL In bald trite Navy jargon on a flimsy yellow sheet, here was command of a battleship. And what a battleship! The California, the old Prune Barge, a ship in which he had served twice, as an ensign and as a lieutenant commander, which he knew well and loved; the ship named for his own home state, launched in 1919 and completely modernized.
Captain of the California!
Pug Henry'S first reaction was orderly and calculating. Evidently Admiral King's staff was a trap he had escaped. In his class only Warendorf, Munson, and Brown had battleships, and Robinson had the Saratoga. His strange "gray oit:ice boy" service to the President had proved a career shortcut after all, and flag rank was suddenly and brightly back in sight.
He thought of Rhoda, because she had sweated out with him the twenty-seven-year wait for this bit of yellow tissue paper; and of Pamela, because he wanted to share his excitement right now. But he was not even ure that he would see her again in Moscow. They had parted at the railroad station with a strong handclasp, as Talky Tudsbury pleaded with the R.A.F pilots to take him along and simultaneously blustered at a Narkomindel man who was trying to lead him off.
Leslie Slote walked in, carrying two glass tumblers of black coffee.
"Anything good?"
"New orders. Command Of the California.m "Oh? What is that?"
"A battleship."
"A battleship?" Slote sipped coffee, looking doubtu. 'Is that what you wanted next?"
"Well, it's a change."
"I should think you'd find it somewhat confining and-well, routine, after the sort of thing you've been doing. Not many naval officers-in fact not many Americans-have talked to Stalin face to face."
"Leslie, I'm not entirely unhappy with these orders."
'Oh' Well, then, I gather congratulations are in order. How are you coming with that report? I'm almost ready to Turn in."
"Couple of hours to go." "You won't get much sleep." Slote went out shaking his head.
Victor Henry sat drinking coffee, meditating on this little rectangle of yellow paper, the sudden irreversible verdict on his life.
He could ask for no better judgment. This was the blue ribbon, the A-plus, the gold medal of naval service. Yet a nag in his spirit shadowed the Marvelous news. What was it? Between sips of coffee, probing his own heart, Pug found out something surprising about himself.
After more than twenty-five years, he had slightly outgrown his career drive. He was interested in the war. At War Plans, he had been waging a vigilant fight to keep priorities high for the landing craft program.
"Pug's girlfriend Elsie" was no joke; but now he could no longer carry on that fight. Mike Drayton would take over. Mike was an excellent officer, a commander with a solid background in BuShips and an extraordinary knowledge of the country's industries. But he was not pugnacious and he lacked rank. "Elsie" was going to lose ground.
That could not last. One day the crunch would come-Henry was sure of this from his operational studies-and landing craft would shoot to the top of the priority fist, and a frantic scramble would ensue to get them made. The war effort might suffer; conceivably a marginal landing operation would fail, with bad loss of life. But it was absurd, Pug thought, to feel the weight of the war on his shoulders, and to become as obsessed by 'Elsie" as he had once been by his own career. That was swinging to the other extreme. The war was bigger than anybody; he was a small replaceable cog. One way or another, sooner or later, the United States would produce enough landing craft to beat Hitler.
Meantime he had to go to his battleship.
Taking a lamp to a globe standing in the corner, he used thumb and forefinger to step off the distance from Moscow to Pearl Harbor. He found it made surprisingly little difference whether he travelled west or east; the two places were at opposite ends of the earth. But which direction would offer less delay and hazard? Westward lay all the good fast transportation, across the Atlantic and the United States, and then the Pan Am hop from San Francisco to Honolulu. Duck soup!
Unfortunately, in that direction the fiery barrier of the war now made Europe impassable from Spitzbergen to Sicily, and from Moscow to the English Channel. Tenuous lanes through the fire remained: the North Sea convoy run, and a chancy air connection between Stockholm and London. In theory, if he could get to Stockholm, he could even pass via Berlin and Madrid to Lisbon; but Captain Victor Henry had no intention of setting foot in Germany or German-dominated soil on his way to take command of the California.
His coarsely insulting last remark to Wolf Steller about Goering undoubtedly was on the record. The Germans, now so close to world victory, might enjoy laying hands on Victor Henry.
Well then, eastward? Slow uncertain Russian trains, jammed already with fugitives from the German attack; occasional, even more uncertain Russian planes. But the way was peaceful and a bit shorter, especially from Kuibyshev, five hundred miles nearer Pearl Harbor.
Yes, he thought, he had better start arranging now with the distraught Russians to make his way around the world eastward.
"You look like a mad conqueror," he heard Slote say.
"Huh?" "Gloating over the globe by lamplight. You just need the little black mustache." The Foreign Service officer leaned in the doorway, running a finger along his smoking pipe. 'We have a visitor out here."
By the desk under the chandelier, a Russian soldier stood slapping snow from his'long khaki coat. He took off his peaked army cap to shake it by an earflap, and Pug was startled to recognize jochanan Jastrow. The man's hair was clipped short now; he had a scraggly growth of brown beard flecked with gray, and he looked very coarse and dirty. He explained in German, answering Slote's questions, that in order to get warm clothes and some legal papers, he had passed himself off as a soldier from a routed unit. The Moscow authorities were collecting such refugees and stragglers and forming them into emergency work battalions, with few questions asked. He had had a set of false papers; a police inspector in an air raid shelter had queried him and picked them up, but he had managed to escape from the man. More forged papers could be bought-there was a regular market for them-but he preferred army identification right now.
"In this country, sir," he said, "a person who doesn't have papers is worse off than a dog or a pig. A dog or a pig can eat and sleep without papers. A man can't. After a while maybe there will be a change for the better in the war, and I can find my family."
'Where are they?" Slote said.
"With the partisans, near Smolensk. My son's wife got sick and I left them there."
Pug said, "You're not planning to go back through the German lines?"
Natalie's relative gave him a strange crooked smile. One side of the bearded mouth curled upward, uncovering white teeth, while the other side remained fixed and grim. "Russia is a very big country, Captain Henry, full of woods. For their own safety the Germans stick close to the main roads. I have already passed through the lines.
Thousands of people have done it." He turned to Leslie Slote.
"So. But I heard all the foreigners are leaving Moscow. I wanted to find out what happened to the documents I gave you." The Foreign Service officer and Victor Henry looked at each other, with much the same expressions of hesitation and embarrassment. "Well, I showed the documents to an important American newspaperman," Slote said. "He sent a long story to the United States, but I'm afraid it ended I up as a little item in the back pages. You see, there have been so many I stories of German atrocities!" I 'Stories like this?" exclaimed Jastrow, his bristly face showing anger and disappointment. "Children, mothers, old people?
In their homes, not doing anything, taken out in the middle of the night to a hole dug in the woods and shot to death?" 'Most horrible.
Perhaps the army commander in the Minsk area was an insanely fanatical Nazi."
"But the shooters were not soldiers. I told you that. They had different uniforms. And here in Moscow, people from the Ukraine and from up north are telling the same stories. This thing is happening all over, sir, not just in Minsk.
Please forgive me, but why did you not give those documents to your ambassador? I am sure he would have sent them to President Roosevelt."
'I did bring your papers to his attention. I'm sorry to say that our intelligence people questioned their authenticity."
"What? But sir, that is incredible! I can bring you ten people tomorrow who will tell such stories, and give affidavits. Some of them are eyewitnesses who escaped from the very trucks the Germans used, and-' In a tone of driven exasperation, Slote broke in, "Look here, my dear chap, I'm one man almost alone now"-he gestured at his piled-up deskIt responsible for all my country's affairs in Moscow. I really think I have done my best for you. In showing your documents to a newspaperman after our intelligence people had questioned them, I violated instructions.
I received a serious reprimand. In fact, I took this dirty job of staying on in Moscow mainly to put myself right. Your story is ghastly, and I myself am unhappily inclined to believe it, but it's only a small part of this hideous war. Moscow may fall in the next seventy-two hours, and that's my main business now. I'm sorry."
Herman Wouk - The Winds Of War Page 107