Churchill's Triumph (20 page)

“Well? It’s been a bloody day, Mule, absolutely bloody. Can it get any worse?”

“’Fraid so, Papa. Your Polish plumber’s been to the Vorontsov. Quite desperate to talk to you.”

“Ah—”

“Gave me a message. He says to remind you that you’re a man of honor and have given him your word.”

“I am also a man with an unfinished drink.”

“And he says there’s something you’ve got to know. Apparently, Stalin left from here in something of a hurry earlier today. Went straight to the Livadia, where he met with the President. In private.”

“What?”

“It was a sudden change of plan, he says. All the guards running around like headless chickens for a while. Our Pole felt certain you didn’t know.” She didn’t explain, as Nowak had done, that the Russians had been joking about it: “What do you get if you go behind the back of Winston Churchill?—An opportunity!”

“Stalin? And Franklin? Are you sure?” he gasped, incredulous, as though in physical pain.

“Molotov and Averell, too. No one else.”

“But… dear God, why?”

“Polish didn’t know the details. Only that it was to talk about Asia.”

There are moments in a man’s life when his world begins to turn on a different axis. In most respects it appears the same world, but its sky holds a new guiding star. And it changes everything. If this tale were true—and Churchill was enough of an old dog to lick his paws before springing to conclusions—but
if it
were true, they were trying to cast him aside. To carve up Asia for themselves. A continent where Britain was master in many households—in India, Burma, Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong, to speak nothing of Australia and New Zealand. Yet now they were trying to
force him out.

Roosevelt had never made any secret of his loathing for empire, and he made no exception for the British. At their first wartime meeting in Newfoundland, Churchill remembered how the American had made clear his ambition that the war would do away with “eighteenth-century colonialism.” He had talked of European nations riding roughshod over colonial peoples, even come close to comparing British rule in India with Fascism—oh, how those words had whipped across Churchill’s cheek. Roosevelt never forgot that the roots of every American were republican and revolutionary: now he saw the chance to squeeze the British Empire dry. The bloody, bloody man!

If it were true.

Yet the melting sensation that suddenly flowed inside Churchill’s gut told him it was so. He felt as if he’d just found his wife in bed with his own brother. Desolated. Betrayed. And if Franklin could betray him over empire, he was capable of betraying him on almost anything. Perhaps it was already happening.

Churchill was a fighter. He’d not stopped doing battle since the day of his birth when he’d bumped his head on the floor of that cloakroom in Blenheim while his mother had looked on and screamed in surprise. That was when he had started screaming, too, and he’d not stopped since. He didn’t know any other way, could never tell when the time had come to shut up and give in. But now Churchill knew that something terrible had happened. He had lost. There was nothing he could achieve here at Yalta that Roosevelt and Stalin between them couldn’t, and almost certainly wouldn’t, undermine. The consequences in Poland and in so many other places would inevitably be abominable.

And yet—Winston believed with every breath and every beat of his heart in what he was fighting for—Britain, of course, but not just that. There was so much more, something wider and deeper that went beyond even loyalty to one’s country. Strange, elusive virtues that grew like seeds in dark places, like Truth, Hope, Family, the freedom for a man to think his own thoughts and sing his own songs. These often started life as scrawny stems, yet no matter how hard they were beaten down and left for dead, they kept coming back, often uncertain but ridiculously insistent, until eventually they burst through with such power that no man could tame them, not even one like Stalin. It might take the better part of forever, but so long as the world turned and the sun rose, their time would come.

And in that struggle, the most powerful weapons of all were words. For Stalin, words meant nothing, and even Franklin was no great respecter of words. He often said that words meant only what he could make voters believe they meant, something elastic that might be stretched round every street corner from Poughkeepsie to the Pacific Coast. Yet for Churchill, words were secure, solid things that couldn’t simply be bent until they broke. And when the great clash of military machines was over and the noise of battle had faded from the field, and men and women could raise themselves once more from the dirt, that was when words would be heard once more, and words might yet decide their fate.

The battle for Poland was lost. It was time for the war of words to begin.

And the time to start had already arrived. Stalin was striding across the room, ushering them into the dining hall. There were to be many different recollections of what followed that night, but everyone was unanimous that it was an evening of exceptional abundance. Stettinius said he recalled twenty courses and forty-five toasts, but he might well have lost count. Most did. They were up and down from their chairs to raise their glasses so frequently that much of the food was eaten cold, yet there was so much of it that a few abandoned platefuls made precious little difference. The official transcript has preserved only a fraction of those toasts, most of which were so grandiloquent that they left the translators sweating to find language fertile enough to convey the right meaning. So much was said that night, but what was actually meant would be argued over for decades.

The evening was to be remembered in quite contrasting lights. To some, particularly the Americans, it seemed like the high-water mark of the alliance, the occasion when hearts and minds came together in common cause. The mood was later described by Hopkins as one of “extreme exultation.” Yet there were other views. One of the British military commanders who sat and sipped through it all described it as nothing more than “insincere slimy sort of slush.”

The tone—whatever it meant—was set by Churchill, who insisted on offering the first toast. Almost as soon as they had started, he rose, glanced over his spectacles at those seated along the table, and called them to order.

“Mr. President, Marshal Stalin, I hope you will be kind enough to indulge me a moment.” The voice came as though sieved through gravel. “It is no exaggeration or compliment of a florid kind when I say that we regard Marshal Stalin’s life as most precious to the hopes and hearts of all of us.”

Stalin’s face had at first been wrinkled in curiosity, but now a look of amusement and appreciation dawned. The mood quickly became infectious.

“There have been many conquerors in history, but few of them have been statesmen”—cries of approval began to ripple around the table—“and most of them threw away the fruits of victory in the troubles which followed their wars. I earnestly hope that the Marshal may be spared to the people of the Soviet Union and to help us all move forward to a less unhappy time than that through which we have recently come.” He held out his pink, fleshy hand towards the Russian, his other hand grasped at his lapel. “I walk through this world with greater courage and hope when I find myself in a relation of friendship and intimacy with this. . . ” he hesitated, seeming to search for the right word, but only in order to add to its emphasis “…
great
man, whose fame has gone out not only over all Russia, but the world.”

Fists were pounding on the table in agreement, making the cutlery ring like chimes.

“I raise my glass”—everyone jumped to their feet, apart from Roosevelt and Stalin himself—“to Marshal Stalin!”

“To Marshal Stalin!” they cried.

“Drink it down!” someone instructed jovially, and the long, long evening had begun.

When Churchill resumed his chair, they all applauded him. He smiled modestly, nodding in appreciation.

Then Stalin rose to his feet. “I propose a toast, too,” he began, in his soft voice, chopping up his sentences to assist the translators. “For the leader of the British Empire.” He nodded graciously towards Churchill. His eyes were catlike, washed of any emotion, but the words overflowed. “The most courageous of all prime ministers in the world. Who embodies political experience with military leadership. Who, when all Europe was ready to fall flat before Hitler, said that Britain would stand and fight alone against Germany—even without any allies. I know of few examples in history where the courage of one man has been so important to the future history of the world.” He raised his glass. Once more they stood. “To the health of the man who is born once in a hundred years, and who bravely held up the banner of Great Britain!” They applauded. Churchill sat with tears welling in his eyes, staring in gratitude at the Marshal.

“I have said what I feel,” Stalin explained, “what I have at heart, and what I know to be true.” Then he drank, and all followed.

And even before they had sat down, Molotov was demanding their attention with yet another toast, to the three British military commanders present, wishing them success. Then it was Stalin’s turn once more, walking round the table to clink glasses with Roosevelt, praising the selfless devotion of a country that had come to the aid of the entire world even though it had never seriously been threatened. And everyone was in on the act, raising toasts on all sides. The tables groaned with small mountains of caviar, trays of sturgeon and steaming slabs of suckling pig, while waiters rushed around ensuring that the crystal glasses were never wanting for vodka and whisky.

Roosevelt, sitting wearily at the end of the table, tried to dilute his drink with water, but the tidal wave of alcohol quickly overwhelmed his meager defenses. “Pour it in the pot plant, Sis,” he advised his daughter forlornly.

Stalin toasted the three women present—Sarah, Anna, and Kathleen Harriman, and Kathleen replied, using a little of her stilted Russian. Stalin hurried round the table to clink glasses with her; Molotov followed, as though attached to his leader by a piece of string. They drank to hospitality, to victory, to heads of state and to the common man, to the indefatigable interpreters, to the Soviet armies that had broken the back of the German war machine, to the generosity of the Americans and the persistence of the British, and still the toasts kept coming. Roosevelt raised one; he rambled a little as he fought to capture the mood, extolling his belief that all those around the table had come together to form one family and one hope for the future of mankind. Syrupy stuff, too sickly sweet for some. The following morning, one member of the British delegation wrote that “FDR spoke more tripe to the minute than I have ever heard before, sentimental twaddle.” Yet, as with all the rest, it was greeted with an outpouring of adulation.

They were still there at midnight. That was how they made the peace. There were those at the table who were visibly wilting, dozing, so drunk that they were unable to rouse themselves even for Stalin. The sense of order with which the dinner had begun descended into confusion and occasional incoherence as small groups talked among themselves, every man with one hand on a glass, the other diving beneath the table to defend himself against the fleas that seemed to have declared war on every ankle.

Then Stalin was once again on his feet, although to some eyes he seemed a little unsteady and his grin distinctly lopsided. “I know, I know—I talk too much,” he began. “Like an old man.” Howls of protest came from the Russians, but in avuncular fashion he waved them down. “Shut up, you fools. I want to drink to our alliance.” And they went quiet.

“In our alliance, the Allies should not deceive each other.”

“Hear, hear,” Churchill growled; Roosevelt, too, nodded his agreement.

“Perhaps this is naïve,” Stalin continued. “Experienced diplomats may say, ‘Why shouldn’t I deceive my ally?’ But I am a naïve man. I think it best not to deceive my ally, even if he is a fool. And one of the reasons our alliance is so firm is because it’s not so easy to deceive each other. So that is what I drink to. I drink to that!” He threw back his head and finished off his glass in a single flourish.

Sounds of agreement came from all sides, but those who cheered him failed to realize they had been listening not to words of celebration but of warning. As Stalin sat down once more, he bent to whisper in Molotov’s ear: “And still the bastards carry on deceiving us, even when we’ve got them as drunk as fishwives. May they burn beneath their own atom bomb.”

Then it was the turn of Sarah. It was unclear even to her whether what she said was intended to be a toast or merely part of the increasingly chaotic conversation, but she raised her glass and offered her few fragments of Russian to the man opposite her:
“Dalte grelku, pozhalsta—
May I have a hot-water bottle, please?” she declared in triumph.

“You do not need a hot-water bottle. You have enough fire in you to warm the coldest heart,” Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria declared. The notorious head of the NKVD was making his first and only appearance at the conference. He hadn’t been needed at the plenaries: he wasn’t the negotiating type.

“Spasiva—
thank you,” Sarah replied, giggling.

And suddenly the balding, bespectacled security man had grabbed the flowers from a vase on a nearby side table and, with a bow, offered them to her as a bouquet. “Please. In the spirit of co-operation between our two countries, allow me to express my admiration, and show you the extraordinary view from the terrace.”

“I’m not sure that I should.” She laughed, looking dubiously as the flowers dripped water over his shoes. “But is it true that if I don’t you can have me locked up?”

“With a single flick of my fingers,” he declared.

“Then, in the interests of the alliance, perhaps I’d better.”

He bowed once more, offered his arm and began gently to guide her out of the room. Her father, deep in conversation, hadn’t noticed, but little escaped the all-seeing eye of Comrade Stalin. Just as Sarah and Beria disappeared, Stalin raised his glass yet again. “To the faithfulness of our daughters,” he declared, and drank.