Reckless (3 page)

‘So where do you go next, Rupert?’ said Bundy.

‘India. Mountbatten’s taking command out there.’

‘Me, I’m in London until the second front.’

‘Pray it may come soon,’ said the Russian.

‘My dad says one more year,’ said Bundy, ‘and it’ll all be over.’

Troyanovsky took out a pack of cigarettes and offered them to the others. They both declined. He lit up, and inhaled deeply.

‘Your princess,’ he said to Rupert, ‘she is charming.’

‘I agree,’ said Rupert. ‘I thought she was lovely.’

‘No life for a girl, though,’ said Bundy. ‘She should be out every night dancing, not fretting over the future of the world.’

‘Leave that to Lady Astor,’ said Rupert.

They laughed at that. Then the Russian shook his head.

‘What she said to Stalin, that I find it hard to believe.’

‘But she’s right,’ said Bundy.

Troyanovsky puffed on his cigarette, frowning.

‘The day will come,’ he said slowly, ‘when you will ask yourself not what is right, but what is possible.’

‘Who’s the pragmatist now?’ said Bundy.

‘I think I can claim that honour,’ said Rupert, peacemaking. ‘We British have a long history of calling a spade a spade, and then getting some other fellow to do the digging.’

Bundy smiled his smile at that.

‘But your princess,’ said Troyanovsky, ‘what she said to us, that was good. No more wars.’

‘We’re all with you there,’ said Bundy.

‘So we must make it be so,’ said the Russian. ‘We three.’

He put out one large hand. Rupert understood his meaning, and clasped it. After a moment Bundy put his hand on top of theirs.

A solitary plane appeared in the far distance and buzzed slowly across the sky. The sun dropped below the clouds and threw shafts of golden light over the landscape. Rupert felt a sudden rush of fellow feeling for the other two. Partly it was this odd triple hand-clasp that they seemed unable to break, and partly the conviction that such a moment would never come again. There really was a symbolic power to their presence, joined together on the long terrace, looking out over England.

‘No more wars,’ said Rupert. ‘Wouldn’t that just be something?’

It was the colours they all talked about, the ones who witnessed the Trinity test. A brilliant yellow-white light, a searing light many times brighter than the midday sun. Then a ball of fire, an orange-red glow. Then a cloud of coloured smoke pouring upwards, red and yellow, like clouds at sunset, turning golden, purple, violet, grey, blue. Observers ten miles away saw a blue colour surrounding the smoke cloud, then a bright yellow ring near the ground, spreading out towards them. This was the shock wave. When it arrived there was a rumbling sound, as of thunder.

Brilliant white, fire-red, orange, gold, purple, violet, grey, blue. Sunset skies and thunder at dawn in Alamagordo, New Mexico.

*

President Harry S. Truman was not in the country. He had sailed for Europe a week earlier on the USS
Augusta
. It was an uneventful crossing, with an orchestra to play during dinner, and a different movie shown each evening.
A Song to Remember, To Have and Have Not, The Princess and the Pirate, Something for the Boys
. The president was on his way to the final meeting of the wartime Allies at Potsdam, just outside Berlin. He was dreading it.

Truman had never wanted to be Roosevelt’s vice president. ‘Tell him to go to hell,’ he replied to the offer. ‘I’m for Jimmy Byrnes.’ But Roosevelt wanted the plain-speaking man from Missouri, and he got his way. During Truman’s brief three months in the vice presidency, Roosevelt neither informed him nor consulted him. When Roosevelt died and he found himself president, Truman told reporters, ‘Boys, I don’t know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you … ’

After a further brief three months as the leader of the free world, with the war in the Far East still raging, Truman now faced the task of standing up to Stalin. The Potsdam Conference would decide the shape and future of the postwar world.

The
Augusta
sailed up the Scheldt estuary cheered by Belgian and Dutch crowds, and docked at Antwerp on Sunday, July 15 1945. A C-54 plane called the
Sacred Cow
flew the president and his party to Berlin that same day. The Potsdam Conference was due to begin on Tuesday, July 17. Harry Truman felt seriously out of his depth.

*

The presidential entourage took up residence at No. 2 Kaiserstrasse, in the movie colony of Babelsberg. The grand but ugly yellow-painted villa had been built in the 1890s by a wealthy publisher, and most recently was occupied by the head of the Nazi film industry. It stood in tree-studded grounds on the banks of Lake Gribnitz. Truman said the building put him in mind of the Kansas City Union Station.

That evening, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson received a coded telegram from General Groves, who led the Manhattan Project, the top secret mission to build the atomic bomb.

Stimson at once took the message to Truman. Truman was pleased but cautious. He would wait for the full report.

Stimson ate privately that evening with his assistant, Harvey Bundy. Stimson was now in his late seventies, and in poor health. He had his suspicions that he was being cut out of the key decisions on the war. Bundy, brought in by him as his Special Assistant on Atomic Matters, was an old friend, and like himself a Yale man, a Skull and Bones member, and a lawyer.

‘You think we’re going to have to do this, Harvey?’

‘Have to, no,’ said Bundy. ‘Going to, yes.’

‘You think the Japs’ll surrender anyway?’

‘You’ve read the Purple intercepts,’ said Bundy. ‘We all know they’re desperate for a way out.’

‘It may take an invasion.’

‘Please God, no,’ said Harvey Bundy. ‘My boy Mac’s joined the Ninety-Seventh; he’s determined to get in some real fighting. His division’s slated for the push into mainland Japan. Kay’s half crazy with worry.’

‘If this gadget’s half what they say it is,’ said Stimson, ‘there’s no way your boy’s going to see action. You tell Kay to relax.’

*

The next day Truman had his first informal meeting with Stalin, at what was now called the Little White House. They discussed how to handle the continuing war with Japan. Intercepted cables revealed that the Japanese were pleading with the Soviets to broker a peace deal short of unconditional surrender, that would leave the emperor in place. The Allies wanted the Soviets to enter the war against Japan, late though it was. Stalin readily agreed. The declaration would be made by August 15, he said.

Fini Japs when that comes about
, wrote Truman in his diary.

That evening a courier arrived carrying General Groves’ full report on the Trinity test. Truman read it at once, and gave it to
his secretary of state, Jimmy Byrnes, and to Henry Stimson. Stimson showed it to Harvey Bundy. It was electrifying.

‘For the first time in history,’ Groves wrote, ‘there was a nuclear explosion. And what an explosion!’ He estimated its power at the equivalent of twenty thousand tons of TNT. He described the blast effects with memorable details. A steel tower evaporated. A window was broken over a hundred miles away. The light of the explosion was visible from El Paso, almost two hundred miles away. A blind woman saw the light. Groves called it ‘the birth of a new age, a great new force to be used for good or evil. No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power has ever occurred before.’

Later, alone with Harvey Bundy, Stimson pondered the mighty issue before them.

‘Are we unleashing a monster here, Harvey?’

‘You want my opinion,’ said Bundy, ‘I’d say we can’t come this far and spend this much money and not use it. And that’s not even an opinion. Once it can be used, it’s going to be used.’

‘But why?’

‘You ever get given a new toy for Christmas? You ever got told you can have the shiny new toy, but you can’t play with it?’

In the Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya, near Kandy, the old capital of Ceylon, the midday monsoon had just begun. Captain Rupert Blundell, caught by the sudden downpour on his way from Forward Projects Planning to the main gate, where a staff car was waiting for him, took shelter in the arch between the twin trunks of a giant Java fig tree. Crouching in the embrace of its rough bark, he watched the torrents of water hammer the brown earth and form miniature cascades between the tree’s spreading roots. Overhead the branches reached outwards and curved down, forming a natural pavilion. All round him the humid air hissed and the stiff leaves crackled, the ground popped and bubbled and the run-off gurgled, as the monsoon rain streamed through bamboo groves and palm avenues, past the huts and tents of Divisional HQ, to the looping embrace of the Mahaweli river.

Beyond the veil of rain he saw two men go by, moving in slow circles, as if dancing. Both were drenched to the skin, beyond caring about shelter, laughing, shouting to each other. He watched their rotations as they came nearer, and saw that between them they had a monkey on a string. The monkey bounded up and down and from side to side, but with each bound they tugged on its string, forcing it back to its position between them.

‘Oh, no, you don’t!’ they cried. And, ‘A right crackerjack we’ve got here!’

It was like watching two parents taking their toddler for a walk in the rain, only without the love.

As the monkey passed by it made a sudden spring for the fig tree and got its fingers round one of the low bendy branches. For a moment Rupert saw its face. Its big black-rimmed eyes were staring in terror, and it was uttering shrill screeching noises. Then the string jerked and it fell back, shivering the branches, causing a spray of water to fill the air.

Rupert left his refuge and pushed out through the canopy into the rain.

‘You!’ he shouted. ‘Stop that! Release that animal!’

He saw now that the two men were army cooks. They came to attention, rain streaming down their faces.

‘Yes, sir!’

‘Just a bit of fun, sir!’

They pulled in the string and untied the monkey. The trembling animal, now released, gave its drenched fur a single vigorous shake, and bounded away into a nearby tree.

‘Names!’

‘Chappell, sir.’

‘Price, sir.’

‘Do that again and I’ll have you up on a charge.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Bugger off, then.’

‘Yes, sir!’

They saluted and ran away towards the mess hall. Rupert remained standing motionless in the rain. He was shaking with rage. He had acted on an impulse that he didn’t fully understand. Now he was too wet to proceed to HQ as ordered.

No longer hurrying, he passed down the double coconut avenue towards the main gate. The rain was warm. He felt his
anger pass. He walked slowly between the palms, lost in the hum of rain, and the world blurred and softened round him. He found his staff car and instructed the driver to take him to his billet in town, so that he could change into dry clothes.

Only when seated in the back of the car did he feel uncomfortable in his soaked clothing. He wanted to stop the car and get out and walk. But Kandy was a good five miles from Peradeniya, and he must make at least a token appearance at the meeting. Mountbatten had called a final briefing before his departure to join Churchill in Potsdam.

The car hissed its way through deep puddles past Bowala and Primrose, down into the cup of green hills. Ahead and below lay the lake round which the old capital’s buildings clustered.

Oh Christ, thought Rupert. I suppose I identified with the monkey.

Alone on the back seat, he grimaced at the realisation. With his lugubrious features and thick-rimmed spectacles, he was not unlike a monkey. Moreover, he had known as a boy what it was to be tormented by bigger boys. The monkey’s desperate staring face, its sharp bark of fear, had struck a familiar chord. The bullied child still lived on inside him, flinching, appeasing, dreaming dreams of revenge.

Beware the fantasies of weak men.

He could see his own absurdity all too well: the comedy of his little display of anger, his sodden clothing. Instinctively he distanced himself from his feelings, placing them in the ironic context of one whose job it is to analyse but not to judge. Why should a monkey on a string be so much more offensive than a dog on a lead? Because the monkey is a wild animal, not a pet. Rupert hated to see wild animals in cages or tethered to trees.

So do I flatter myself that I too am some kind of wild animal?

This only served to extend the joke. He knew well enough
how others saw him. The oddball, famous for his absent-mindedness, teased for his lack of physical grace. Clever, of course, but a little to be pitied. The story would get about, how he had rescued a monkey from its persecutors, and they would say, ‘Did you hear about Rupert’s heroic deed? He took on the might of the Army Catering Corps!’ The joke being that he was the last among them anyone would describe as a warrior; or indeed as a wild animal.

Just a bit of fun, sir
.

Chappell and Price: laughing, thoughtless bullies. Exemplars of the power wielded the world over by the stupid and the strong.

‘You don’t win a war by seeing the other fellow’s point of view, Rupert.’

Who was it who said that? Not Dickie Mountbatten, who was forever quoting Maeterlinck’s
The Life of the Bee
and urging his team to work in harmony. It was either Leese or Browning, army men who believed in overwhelming force; or maybe the American, Stillwell, who called the British ‘pig fuckers’. Plain speaking and brute force, the doctrine of real men.

‘But if you don’t see the other fellow’s point of view,’ Rupert countered, ‘you can’t predict what he’s likely to do.’

Rupert was accustomed to being overruled. His attempts to broaden his superiors’ understanding of their own war aims, let alone the objectives of the enemy, made very little impression on their single-minded pursuit of their own interests. As a lowly captain with no men at his command and the jerry-rigged title of Adviser to CINCSEAC, Forward Planning, his only influence lay in the accident that Dickie Mountbatten had taken a liking to him.