Churchill's Triumph (22 page)

“But… what about your word as a father?”

“And your word you’ve been givin’ to Mr. Nowak?” Sawyers joined in.

“Can neither of you understand how important this is?”

They were glaring at him. He took a step towards them, but faltered, seeing the resentment boiling in their eyes.

“I feel so utterly wretched. My heart is bleeding for you, Mule. And for the Pole. I don’t think there has been a moment in my long life when I have felt more torn. Yet when the world turns round and remembers this week at Yalta, I suspect they will look back on a picture of failure and abject betrayal. And they will need to know who was responsible, who was to blame for casting aside this one opportunity for peace. Otherwise, all the bloodshed and sacrifice will have been wasted. That’s why I have had to say so many things I did not mean and offer a smile to men who deserve nothing but our eternal scorn.”

“So tomorrow you will shake Beria’s hand?”

He said nothing, afraid to answer.

“Will you, Papa?” Sarah insisted.

The words came slowly, as though they were being torn from him one by one. “If it is necessary.”

“You would shake the hand that…” Her own hand went to her throat, then dropped slowly to her breast. “Politics, Papa, is that what this is all about?” Sarah whispered, incredulous, bitter. “You’d trade my honor simply to give yourself an excuse?”

“Even if you never come to understand, it is something I must do.”

“But what about the poor Pole?” Sawyers demanded.

“And what about sodding Beria?” Sarah screamed in fury.

THE SIXTH DAY

_I
t was supposed to
be the last day, but even the impatient

Roosevelt realized they had to give it just a little longer.

Cadogan and Eden came to Churchill’s room late that morning, seeking an audience. He was still in bed. The Prime Minister’s sleeping habits were a source of both amazement and irritation to his colleagues, who had long been used to his breakfasts in bed, yet at Yalta he had surpassed himself, often not getting up until after lunch. Not idleness, of course, but eccentricity, exhaustion, and age. Oh, and excess, buckets of it, particularly the previous night.

Sawyers shuffled past the sliding door to the bedroom to tell his master of his colleagues’ arrival.

Soon a voice was raised, clear for all to hear: “Tell them they can go bugger themselves!”

“Would that be each other, or individually, like?”

“What are you blathering about, man?”

“Why, buggery, zur.”

“To hell with you, Sawyers. Get ’em in here!”

The sight that greeted his principal aides was typical. Churchill resembled a walrus wrapped in pink silk and propped against a pile of pillows, cigar stuck firmly in mouth, breakfast on a tray, papers spilling from the eiderdown. It prompted irritation in both the visitors. They were all toiling hard—harder than Churchill himself, working longer hours, digesting considerably more paper and consuming far less alcohol. Yet he lay abed while they stood and waited on him. A little too imperial, for some tastes.

“What news? What news?” Churchill barked. The diplomatic bag from London with all its messages and golden nuggets was taking up to four days to arrive, and Churchill grew increasingly impatient. He always hoped for some excitement, some new bulletin from the front where British troops were preparing to cross the Rhine, something to make Stalin just a little less smug. But the front he had to deal with was here, in Yalta, which at times made him feel as though he’d much rather be back in the trenches of Flanders. At Ploegsteert, he remembered, you could spot a rat at a hundred yards. And shoot it.

“Things going pretty well, I think,” Cadogan began, his moustache and upper lip flexing like a hamster. “Making good progress. Few hurdles still to jump, of course, but Ivan’s proving surprisingly co-operative. Giving ground.”

“On what?”

“Why, many things. The United Nations, for instance. Accepting only three votes.”

“Tell me, Alec, how many other countries are going to get more than one vote?”

“That’s not the point,” Eden intervened protectively.

“No, you’re right. The point is that Stalin doesn’t give a damn about the confounded United Nations. So long as it remains nothing more than a talking shop, he’ll pay it no more heed than he would a brothel. He’ll take advantage of it when he’s in the mood, and will pass it by on the other side when he’s not.”

“He’s been surprisingly conciliatory,” the Foreign Office mandarin protested.

“It is not a mark of conciliation, Alec, when a highwayman holds you up at gunpoint and takes only half your money.”

“Not gunpoint,” Cadogan corrected. “Not the right analogy at all.”

“Tell that to the Poles.”

“But we’ll get a pretty good settlement for them.”

“We’ll get nothing for them, Alec.”

“Elections?”

The cigar was waving, glowing, then being stabbed forward like a bayonet. “Ballots my balls, Alec! I understand Marshal Stalin himself is elected. By a hundred per cent of the vote.”

“May we all be so fortunate,” Eden muttered, as he brushed an imaginary crumb from his waistcoat.

“Damnit, if I’m to be judged on what I have achieved for the Poles, I shall deserve to be hurled from office and dragged naked through the streets.”

Eden wrinkled his nose in distaste.

“We’ve got to push for observers,” Cadogan interjected, as always the practical thinker. “Make sure the elections are free and fair.”

“And maybe by the time they hold the elections those blasted Poles from Lublin will have arrived.” Churchill snorted.

Eden examined his Prime Minister with care, looking for a sign that might explain his mood. Exhaustion? Illness? Or the previous evening’s indulgences? “Did the Marshal say something last night to upset you, Winston?” he inquired.

“Everything he said last night upset me. Everything until he said goodbye!”

“I thought he showed up with his pockets bursting with charm. Never seen him in a more benevolent mood. Particularly pleasant about you, I thought.”

“He must think I’m as dull-witted as Franklin.” Immediately, Churchill bit his lip. He might be allowed his private thoughts about poor, dear Franklin, but it wouldn’t do him an ounce of good to spread them abroad. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I’m grown sick with worry. We are constructing a new world out there, and I feel we are so very alone.”

“You doubt the Americans?”

“Two years—Franklin has given us two years. Then he says they’ll be gone. Back across the Atlantic. And we shall be left with Stalin and the Russians.”

“But the Marshal was so generous in his praise last night. You heard him. A world without deception.”

“Talk? Surely he’ll talk. Talk till the cows come home and the birdies all sing in their bower. Oh, and he’ll be as gracious as can be, so long as he gets what he wants. But words mean nothing to the Marshal. He offers them as freely as an eager youth offers his loyalty to a pretty woman. But in the morning it’s a different day, he is gone and the words all forgotten.”

“I’m not sure you’re being fair to him,” Cadogan responded, wondering why the old man was resorting to so much sexual innuendo, and putting it down to a wandering mind. He didn’t know about Sarah.

“Perhaps you are right, Alec. I cannot look into his heart. But what I do know is this. That in two years’ time we may be at his mercy with nothing but a wasteland from the white snows of Russia all the way to the white cliffs of Dover. Our future, our very life as a nation, lies in the hands of those weak, tattered states that stand in his way. Poland. France. Even Germany. So everything we do, every moment of our time here and every fragment of our endeavor, must be put towards the strength
ening of Europe. Everything beyond that is secondary, and that includes his Benighted Nations and the war in the Far East. There is almost nothing I wouldn’t trade in Asia to keep a stronger foothold in Europe. So let it be Europe.”

“Even Germany?”

“Germany will be divided but it must not be dismembered. We’ve already lost Poland. Can’t afford to fall back any farther.”

“You want to save Germany?” Eden asked, incredulous.

“I want that we should save ourselves. Stalin wishes for mass killings and Germany destroyed, ripped into many parts and made to pay reparations that will reduce it to pasture and perpetual serfdom, while the President… well, he simply doesn’t care. Germany has broken so many American hearts.”

“I still believe you’re being too pessimistic about Poland,” Cadogan said. “After all, they’re getting a new government, free elections, universal suffrage. All guaranteed. It may not be as bad as you fear.”

“You think I am old, Alec. That I lie awake at night in terror of demons and hobgoblins. . . ”

Cadogan offered a Delphic smile.

“We offered Poland guarantees before,” Churchill growled. “In 1939. Don’t remember Marshal Stalin paying them any more attention than Adolf Hitler.”

“You’re surely not comparing the two,” Cadogan protested.

“There is a difference. I’ve never had to shake Hitler’s hand.”

“Uncle Joe’s our ally, Prime Minister.”

“And, in his own strange, twisted fashion, a great man. If it hadn’t been for him and the millions of men who have died under his command, we might not have pulled through. We owe him that. But you must never for one moment forget, Alec, that the only thing that binds us is our common hatred.”

“Of Germany.”

“No, of Hitler. I don’t hate Germany. I want to use it.”

“Against our ally?”

“Understand this. So long as Russia remains our ally, I shall offer her all the public respect that goes with that most valued status. And Marshal Stalin, too. I shall not question his word or doubt his honor, not in public, and I will not provide him with any excuse to turn on us. But what if it all goes wrong? What if Stalin dies or changes his mind? What if we discover we have grasped a viper to our bosom? What then? We shall need to be able to rely on something a damned sight more solid than Comrade Stalin’s goodwill. So this is what I want you to do, Alec. Make sure we have an agreement that’s as tight as a duck’s arse. Fashion it so solid that not a chink of light can pass through. Let’s not leave any ground for obfuscation or ambiguity—oh, I know it’s your life, all this diplomatic prose that leaves a meaning as loose as a monk’s morals, but I want the entire world to know what was done here, and what was agreed. Let us use the language of freedom, and ensure it’s fashioned so robustly that it can tie a noose round the neck of anyone who ignores it. I want a document that can stand up in court.”

“And what court would that be?” Cadogan demanded breathlessly, his tone flooding with skepticism.

“The court of public opinion. It’s the only court that can ever try such a case. But when the trees have been blown down in the coming tempest, when the great cities are leveled and the whole of Europe is nothing but flat, scorched earth, when there is no hiding-place left to us, we may have little else with which to defend our freedom.”

As Eden and Cadogan left, the foreign secretary suggested they take a walk in the garden where the warm breezes would blow away their words from prying ears. They were standing beneath one of the magnificent cypress trees, looking out over the sea, hands clasped behind their backs, before Eden spoke. “Some little performance, that.”

“Breathtaking, Anthony.”

“What do you think?”

“Honestly?”

Eden nodded, forgiving in advance any sin of indiscretion.

“Winston’s overcooked it as usual. In danger of spoiling everything.”

“You think he’s wrong about the Russians?”

“We don’t have to love them, for God’s sake. But we can surely fix something up with them.”

“But what if he’s right, if they change—”

“But that’s precisely what the United Nations is about, Anthony. For when things go wrong.”

In spite of their circumstances, Eden lowered his voice, drawing back his lips in distaste. “And what do you think of the other issue?”

“Winston? I think he may have lost his grip on the realities.”

“You’ve turned against him because he doesn’t agree with you.”

“No, that’s unfair. I’ve grown displeased with him because he doesn’t even bother to read the papers we put to him. Just sits in bed and dreams bad dreams like the silly old man he’s become. So much better if it were you.”

“But it’s not.”

“No, not yet. But before too long. He was writing another of his histories in there today, Anthony, writing it before it’s happened and making sure of his place in it all.”

“If we succeed, he claims the credit…”

“And if we don’t, he’s got a few florid words on some little piece of paper with which to defend his honor. But we’ve seen that game before.”

Eden made no reply. Although he was the politician, he had little stomach for the bloody business of turning on his friends.

“It’s gone to his head, all this conspiracy nonsense. Either that or it’s the buckets of Russian champagne he’s been pouring down his throat,” Cadogan continued. “It’s got to him at last. Rotted the mind.”

“Perhaps.”

“But I take my hat off to the Marshal. He’s been playing a blinder. I love the way he sticks pins up everybody’s backside, then gets them to pay him for pulling them out again. He makes Winston look so—well, old. And Franklin is so woolly and wobbly. They simply don’t compare.”

“What do we do?”

“Look, if it’s good enough for the Russians and the Americans, who are we to stand in their way? We’ll only get trampled. Winston’s spent his entire life standing out against the crowd. It was magnificent in ’forty and ’forty-one, of course, but this is a new world we’re building, Anthony. History is being made here at Yalta, and you and I should be part of it. Best leave Winston to his bad dreams. And after our election…”

“Ah, the election. Everyone seems to be worrying about elections.”

“The people must have their way.”

“Strangely enough, I rather think that was the point Winston was trying to make. . . ”

❖ ❖ ❖

Stanislaw Nowak, the mayor, wandered through the streets of Piorun at first light. Some semblance of order had returned: the shock troops of the Red Army had moved on, replaced by other troops who lacked the glazed, impenetrable eyes, the bared teeth and the desperate need to despoil everything in their path. But if they were gone, their legacy was inescapable. All along his route he found burned-out houses that were still smoldering, sending up sour-smelling ribbons of soot into the sky.

No one said anything to him, no one complained, no one wished to rekindle the horrors of the previous hours. Their eyes said it all. They were alive. For them the war was over. It had to be enough.

Notices had been pasted on doorways and corners all around the town. They were addressed to any German civilians who might still be in Piorun, instructing all male citizens between seventeen and sixty years of age to report to the police within forty-eight hours, “to render labor service behind the front lines.” Nowak knew what that meant. They were to become slaves, just as five years earlier the Poles had become slaves for the Germans.

They were told to bring with them two changes of underwear, one blanket, one straw sack, identification, and food for ten to fifteen days. Nowak felt a foul taste forcing its way into his mouth. He doubted whether there was a single German male left alive in Piorun to comply. And as for the women. . .

The notice was signed: “The Military Commander.” Nowak found the signature offensive. He was the civilian authority in the town, and although his head ached furiously and he had no clear purpose in mind, he knew that he was the one who should be trying to bring some sense of normality to the people of Piorun. If only he could remember what normality was.