Jastrow took the outburst without blinking and answered in a quiet, dogged tone, "I am very sorry about the reprimand. However, if President Roosevelt could only find out about this crazy slaughter of innocent people, he would put a stop to it. He is the only man in the whole world who can do it." Jastrow turned to Victor Henry. 'Do you know of any other way, Captain, that the story could possibly be told to President Roosevelt?"
Pug was already picturing himself writing a letter to the President.
He had seen several stories like Jastrow's in print, and even more gruesome official reports about German slaughter of Russian partisans and villagers.
Such a letter would be futile; worse than futile-unprofessional.
It would be nagging the President about things he suspected or knew.
He, Victor Henry, was a naval officer, on temporary detached duty in the Soviet Union for Lend-Lease matters. Such a letter would be the sort of impertinence Byron had offered at the President's table; but Byron at least had been a youngster concerned about his own wife.
Victor Henry answered Jastrow by turning his hands upward.
With a melancholy nod, Jastrow said, "Naturally, it is outside your province. Have you had news of Natalie? Have she and Aaron gone home yet?"
Pug pulled the snapshot from his breast pocket. "This picture was taken several weeks ago. Maybe by now they're out. I expect so."
Holding the picture to the light, Jastrow's face broke into an incongruously warm and gentle beam. "Why, it is a small Byron. God bless him and keep him safe from harm." Peering at Victor Henry, whose eyes misted at these few sentimental words in German, he handed back the photograph. "Well, you gentlemen have been gracious to me. I have done the best I could to tell you what happened in Minsk. Maybe my documents will reach the right person one day. They are true, and I pray to God somebody soon finds a way to tell President Roosevelt what is happening. He must rescue the Jews out of the Germans' claws. Only he can do it." With this jochanan Jastrow gave them his mirthless crooked smile and faded into the darkness outside the small glow of the kerosene lamp.
When his alarm clock woke him after an hour or two of exhausted slumber, Pug scarcely remembered writing the letter which lay on the desk beside the clock, scrawled on two sheets of Hotel National paper.
The tiny barren room was freezing cold, though the windows were sealed shut. He threw on a heavy wooren bathrobe he had bought in London, and an extra pair of warm socks, and sat at the desk to reread the letter.
My dear Mr. President: Command of the California fulfills my life's ambitions. I can only try to serve in a way that will justify this trust.
Mr. Hopkins is receiving a report on a visit I made at his request to the front outside Moscow. I put in all the trivial details which might not be worthy of your attention. My basic impression was confirmed that the Russians will probably hold the Germans and in time drive them out. But the cost will be terrible. Meantime they need and deserve all the aid we can send them, as quickly as possible. For our own selfish purposes, we can't make better use of arms, because they are killing large numbers of Germans. I saw many of the dead ones.
I also take the liberty to mention that the embassy here has recently received documentary evidence of an almost incredible mass slaying of Jews outside the city of Minsk by some German paramilitary units. I remember your saying on the Augusta that scolding Hitler any further would be humiliating and futile. But in Europe, America is regarded as the last bastion of humanity; and you, Mr. President, are to these people the voice of the righteous God on earth. It's a heavy burden, but nevertheless that is the fact.
I'venture to suggest that you ask to see this material about Minsk yourself. The Germans will think twice about proceeding with such outrages if you denounce them to the world and back up your condemnation with documentary evidence. Also, world opinion might be turned once and for all against the Hitler government.
Respectfully yours, Victor Henry, Captain, U.S.N.
In this fresh look after a sleep, the letter struck him most forcibly as an ill-considered communication, for which the right place was the wastebasket. The first two paragraphs were innocuous; but the President's sharp eye would at once detect that they were padding. The rest, the meat of the letter, was superfluous and even offensive. He was advising the President to go over the heads of everybody in the State Department, including his own ambassador in the Soviet Union, to demand a look at some documents. The odds against Roosevelt's actually doing this were prohibitive; and his opinion of Victor Henry would certainly drop. He would at once recall that Henry had a Jewish daughter-in-law, about whom there had been trouble. And Pug did not even know that the documents were authentic. Jastrow might have been sent by the NKVD, as Tudsbury thought, to plant the material for American consumption. The man seemed genuine, but that proved nothing.
In his career Henry had drafted dozens of wrongly conceived letters to get a problem out of his system, and then had discarded the letters. He had a hard editorial eye, and an unerring sense of professional selfpreservation. He threw the letter face down on the desk as a heavy rapping came at the door. There stood Alistair Tudsbury, leaning on his cane in the doorway, enormous and red-faced in an astrakhan hat and a long brown fur coat. "Thank God you're here, old friend." The correspondent limped to an armchair and sat in a dusty shaft of sunlight, stretching out his bad leg. "Sorry to crash in on you like this, but-I say, you're all right, aren't you?" -Oh yes.
I'm just great." Pug was rubbing his face hard with both hands.
"I was up all night writing a report. What's doing?"
The correspondent's bulging eyes probed at him. "This is going to be difficult, but here it is straight. Are you and Pamela lovers?"
"What!" Pug was too startled, and too tired, to be either angry or amused. 'y, no! Of course not."
"Well, funnily enough, I didn't think you were. That makes it all e the more awkward and baffling, Pamela has just told me flatly that she's not returning to London unless you're going there! If you're off to Kuibyshev, she means to tag along and work for the British embassy or something. Now this is wild nonsense!" Tudsbury burst out, banging the cane on the floor. "To begin with, I know the Nark won't have it.
But she's turned to stone. There's no reasoning with her. And those R.A.F fellows are flying off at nbon, and they've got space for both of us."
"Where is she now?"
'y, she's gone out for a stroll in Red Square, of all things!
Can you imagine? Won't even pack, you see. Victor, I'm not coming the indignant father on you, you do realize that, don't you?"
Talky Tudsbury appeared in a manic state of verbosity even for him.
"That would be a most absurd stance for me to take. Hell, I've done exactly as I pleased in these little matters myself all my life.
She'd laugh in my face if I tried to talk morality to her. But what about common sense? You don't want her trailing after you, a happily married man, do you? it's so embarrassing!
In any case, what about Ted Gallard? Why, she told me to tell him it was all off! When I said I'd do nothing of the sort, she sat down and scribbled a letter for him and threw it in my bag. I tell you I'm having the devil of a time with Pam."
Putting a hand to his brow, Victor Henry said in weary tones, yet with a glad surge at heart, "Well, take my word for it, I'm utterly amazed."
"I was sure you would be. I've told her till I'm blue in the face that it's no go, that you're a straitlaced old-fashioned man, the soul of honor, devoted to your wife, and all that sort of thing. Well, the minx simply agrees and says that's why -,he likes you. Quite unreachable! Victor, surely it's dangerous and silly for a British girl to go rattling aimlessly around in Moscow, with the Huns closing in on all sides." "Yes, it is. Why don't you go to Kuibyshev with her, Talky? Every foreign correspondent in Russia was on that train, except you."
"They're all idiots. Getting news right here in Moscow was hard enough. What the devil will they find to write ab
out in that mudhole on the Volga? They'll just drink themselves into cirrhosis of the liver and play poker until their eyes give out. Mine are bad enough.
I'm skedaddling. If the Russkis hold Moscow, I'll come back. I hope and believe they will, but if they don't, it's all over.
England's at the end of her rope, you know that. We'll all throw in our hands.
It'll be the great world shift, and your FDR with his brilliant sense of timing can then face a whole globe armed against him."
Victor Henry stumbled to the yellowed mirror and rubbed his bristly chin. "I'd better talk to Pamela." 'Please, dear fellow, please. And hurry!"
Pug came outside to fresh snow, bright sunshine, and a ragged burst of Russian song by male voices. A formation of old men and boys, shouldering picks and shovels and lustily shouting a marching tune, was following an army sergeant down Maneznaya Square. The rest of the Muscovites appeared to be trudging normally about their business, bundled up and shawled as usual, but the sidewalk crowds were much thinner. Perhaps, thought Pug, all the rats had now left and these were the real people of Moscow.
He walked up to Red Square, past an enormous poster of the embattled motherland, embodied as a shouting robust woman brandishing a sword and a red flag, and smaller posters of rats, spiders, and snakes with Hitler faces being bayonetted by angry handsome Russian soldiers or squashed under Red Army tanks. The square was deserted; white thick snow almost unmarked by footprints carpeted the great expanse. In front of the Lenin tomb outside the Kremlin wall, its red marble hidden by layers of snow-=sted sandbags, two soldiers stood as usual like clothed statues, but there was no line of visitors. Far on the other side, Victor Henry saw a bulky figure in gray walking alone past Saint Basil's Cathedral. Even at this distance he recognized the swingy gait of the Bremen deck and the way she moved her arms. He headed toward her, his overshoes sinking deep in snow speckled black with paper ash.
She saw him and waved. Hurrying to meet him across the snow, she threw herself in his arms and kissed him as she had on his return from the flight to Berlin. Her breath was fragrant and warm. "Damn! The governor went and told you."
'That's right." "Are you exhausted? I know you were up all night.
There are benches by the cathedral. What are your plans? Are you all set for Kuibyshev? Or will you go to London?" They were walking arm in arm, fingers clasped. "Neither. Sudden change. I've gotten orders, Pam. They were waiting for me here. I'm going to command a battleship, the California." She stopped and pulled on his elbow to swing him toward her, clasped both his arms, and looked in his face with wide glistening eyes. "Command a battleship!' "Not bad, eh!" he said like a schoolboy.
"My God, smashing! You're bound to be an admiral after that, aren't you? Oh, how happy your wife will be!" Pamela said this with unselfconscious pleasure and resumed walking. "I wish we had a bottle of that sticky georgian champagne, right here and now. Well! That's absolutely wonderful. Where's the California based? Do you know?"
'Pearl Harbor." She glanced inquiringly at him. 'Oahu. The Hawaiian Islands."Oh. Hawaii. All right. We'll start plotting to get me to Hawaii. No doubt there's a ]British consulate there, or some kind of military liaison.
There has to be."
'Aren't you on leave from the Air Force? Won't you have to go back on duty if Talky returns to London?" "My love, let me take care of all that. I'm very, very good at getting what I want" 'I believe that."
She laughed. They brushed snow from a bench outside the rail of the bizarre cathedral. Its colored domes shaped like onions and pineapples were half-hidden, like the red stars on the Kremlin towers, under drapings of thick gray canvas. 'When do you leave for Hawaii, and how do you get there?" 'I'll leave as soon as I can, and go via Siberia, japan, and the Philippines." He clasped her hands as they sat down. "Now, Pam, listen-"
"Are you going to lecture me? Don't bother, please, Victor. It won't work."
"You mentioned my wife. She'll probably come to Pearl."
"I should think she would."
"Then what have you in mind, exactly?"
"My, love, since you ask me, I have in mind that you and I deceive her, decently, carefully, and kindly, until you're tired of me.
Then I will go home." This blunt declaration shook Victor Henry.
It was so novel, so outside the set rules of his existence, that he only replied with clumsy stiffness, "I don't understand that kind of arrangement." "I know, darling, I know it must seem shocking and immoral to you.
You're a dear nice man. Nevertheless I don't know what else to propose.
I love you. That is unchangeable. I'm happy with you, and not happy otherwise. I don't propose to be separated from you any more for long stretches of time. Not until you yourself dismiss me. So you'll have to put up with this bargain. it's not a bad one, really."
"No, it isn't a bad bargain, but you won't keep it."
Pamela's face showed shocked surprise; then into her eyes came an amused glow, and her lips curved in a mature clever smile. "You're not so dumb." "I'm not in the least dumb, Pamela. The Navy doesn't give battleships to dumbbells."
A line of olive-painted trucks marked with large red stars came roaring up into the square, rolling past the red brick museum and the shuttered GUM building, and pulled up side by side facing the Lenin tomb.
'We're in a time bind here," Pug went on, raising his voice. 'For the moment I'll put Rhoda aside, and just talk about you-' She interrupted him. "Victor, love, I know you're faithful to your wife.
I've always feared you'd think me a pushing slut. But what else can I do? The time has come, that's all. Ever since I was forced to tell Talky this morning, I've been flooded with joy."
Henry sat leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands Clasped, his eyes half closed in the sun glare off the snow, looking at her.
Soldiers began piling out of the trucks. Obviously new recruits, they were lining up in ragged ranks in the snow under the barking of sergeants in ankle-length coats, while rifles were passed and handed out. After a long pause Henry said, in a matter-of-fact way, "I know this kind of chance won't roll around again in my life."
'It won't, Victor. It won't!" Her face shone with excitement.
"People to whom it happens even once are very lucky. That's why I must go with you. it's a mischance that you can't marry me, but we must accept that and go on from there." "I didn't say I can't marry you," Henry said. She looked astounded.
"Let's be clear. If I love you enough to have an affair with you behind my wife's back, then I love you enough to ask her for a divorce.
To me the injury is the same. I don't understand the decent kindly deception you talked about, There's a right name for that, and I don't like it. But all this is breaking too fast, Pam, and meantime you have to leave Moscow. The only place to go is LOndon. That's common sense.- hardened tone as he "I won't marry Ted. Don't argue," she said in a started to talk, "I know it's a beastly decision, but it's taken.
That's flat. I didn't know about your battleship. That's thrilling and grand, though it complicates things. I can't make you take me along across Siberia, of course, but you had better forbid me.
right now, or I'll manage to get to Hawaii myself-and much sooner than you'd believe possible."
"Doesn't it even bother you that you're needed in England?"
"Now you listen to me, Victor. There's no angle of this that I haven't contemplated very, very thoroughly and long. I wasn't thinking of much else on that four-day auto ride, if you want to know. If I leave old England in the lurch, it will be because something stronger calls me, and I'll do This was dire Ian ag that at gu c t Victor Henry understood. Pamela's gray coat collar and gray wool hat half hid her face, which was pink with cold; her nose was red. She was just another shapelessly bundled-up young woman, but all at once Victor Henry felt a stab of sexual hunger for her, and a pulse of hope that there might conceivably be a new life in store for him with this young woman, and her alone, in all the world. He was overwhelmed, a
t least for the moment, by the way she had pitched everything On this one toss.
'Okay. Then let's get down to realities, he said gently, glancing at his watch. "Youpve got to make a move today, in a couple of hours.
And I have to attend to this little matter of going around to the other side of the world to take command of my ship."
Pamela smiled beautifully, after listening with a formidable frown.
'What a nuisance I must be, suddenly draping myself around your neck at this moment of your life. Do You really love me?" "Yes, I love you," Pug said without difficulty and quite sincerely, since it was the fact of the matter.
"You're sure, are you? Say it just once more."
"I love you."
Pamela heaved a thoughtful sigh, looking down at her hands.
Herman Wouk - The Winds Of War Page 108