Hitler's peace

XXVI

What were the consolations of philosophy? None. And, for most of Monday and Tuesday, Stalin’s words echoed in my mind: “For myself, I think I should prefer to have seen Hitler dead on the floor of that conference room than to have him walk out of these peace talks. I cannot speak for Mr. Hull, but I know that Mr. Mikoyan would gladly have gone to the wall if it had meant us being rid of a monster like Hitler.”

I’d never had much time for the pessimism of Schopenhauer, but finding one of his books in the library at Camp Amirabad, I read him again; and what Schopenhauer had said, that no honest man at the end of his life would want to relive his own life, seemed to ring in my ears like a funeral bell.

By Tuesday, Roosevelt had made a complete recovery, and the gala dinner at the British legation to celebrate Churchill’s sixty-ninth birthday now loomed. I debated not going but decided that consideration of Prime Minister Churchill’s feelings outweighed those of Marshal Stalin. What had still not dawned on me was how much of a leper I had become among my own people in Teheran. But immediately on my arrival at the British embassy, Harry Hopkins put me properly in the picture.

“Jesus, Mayer,” he hissed. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Churchill, overhearing this, advanced on him, growling like a bulldog defending a favorite ham bone.

“He’s here because I asked him, Harry. Professor Mayer is well aware that I should have regarded it as a personal insult if he had not come here tonight. Isn’t that so, Professor?”

“Yes, Prime Minister.”

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” The prime minister’s son Randolph, sober for once, took his father by the elbow. “May I speak to you for a minute, Papa?”

The prime minister turned away from my defense and stared at his son, kindly. “Yes, Randolph, what is it?”

Hopkins looked at me as if the stumps of my limbs were about to turn gangrenous. “All right,” he sighed. “But for Christ’s sake try to stay out of Stalin’s way. Things are difficult enough as it is.” Then he walked abruptly away and went over to speak to his own son, who was one of the guests.

Which was Churchill’s cue to come back and talk to me. Together we chatted and drank several glasses of champagne.

“My daughter did not think to tell me that there would be party games,” Churchill said, with patient good humor, as he watched Reilly and his Secret Service team search one half of the British legation, while the NKVD searched the other. “The trouble with a treasure hunt is that the searching is always more pleasurable than the finding. It is, I fear, self-evidently true of so much in life. And an axiom that even now, in my seventieth year, gives me much pause for thought. Indeed, I often ask myself the question: Will the final victory feel as good as the last battle?”

A few minutes later, Roosevelt arrived, pushed up a ramp that led onto the terrace by his son Elliott and wearing a shawl against the cooler air of the evening. Outside the front doors of the British embassy, and in the presence of an honor guard, Churchill greeted Roosevelt, who handed over his birthday present-a Persian bowl purchased from the hard-currency shop in the grounds of the Russian embassy.

“May we be together for many years,” Roosevelt told the beaming Churchill, and then allowed himself to be wheeled into the dining room. But seeing me, he looked the other way and began to speak to Averell Harriman.

“Speaking as one who has been shunned many times,” Churchill said, “I have always persuaded myself that it is better to be shunned than to be ignored.”

Taking me by the arm, he led me back out onto the front terrace, where the Sikh guard of honor now awaited only Stalin’s arrival. A large black limousine had appeared in the driveway of the legation and was now rolling up to the entrance, which was the cue for Churchill’s Sikhs to present arms.

Seeing Stalin, Molotov, and Voroshilov step out of their limousine, I turned to go back indoors, but found my elbow held tight by the prime minister. “No, no,” growled Churchill. “Stalin may have his way with Eastern Europe, but this is my fucking party.”

Stalin, wearing his mustard-colored military jacket and a matching cape with a scarlet lining, came to the top of the legation steps. Seeing me next to Churchill, he paused, whereupon a British servant slipped between two of Stalin’s bodyguards and tried to relieve the Soviet leader of his cape, prompting one of the guards to draw his pistol and jab it in the poor man’s stomach.

“Oh, Christ,” muttered Churchill, “that’s all we need.” And, in an effort to defuse the situation, he took a step forward and thrust his hand toward Stalin. “Good evening, Marshal Stalin,” said Churchill. “And welcome to my birthday party. I believe this man was merely trying to relieve you of your cape.”

To my horror, Stalin ignored the prime minister, neither speaking to him nor shaking his hand and slowly walked past him into the dining room.

“Well, that’s got him rattled.” And Churchill laughed.

“Is that why I’m here, sir?”

“I told you before, young man. You’re here because I asked you to be here.”

But I was no longer sure that the British prime minister did not have some ulterior motive in asking me to his party. Perhaps rattling Stalin had been a motive in itself.

At a safe distance I followed Churchill into the dining room. It looked like the interior of a small Cairo nightclub: heavy, red velvet curtains hung off large brass rails, while the walls were covered with a mosaic of small pieces of mirrored glass. The general effect was not one of imperial grandeur so much as a tawdry glamour.

A waiter dressed in red and blue, with ill-fitting white gloves, approached Stalin, bowed his head curtly, and offered up a tray of drinks that the Soviet leader seemed to regard with suspicion.

The table was set with crystal and silver and in pride of place stood a large birthday cake with sixty-nine candles. Checking the place cards, I discovered that I had been seated rather closer to Stalin than either one of us might have considered comfortable. After the incident on the terrace I had a bad feeling about Churchill’s birthday party, which was hardly made better by the discovery that only six places would separate me from Stalin. I wondered if it was possible that Stalin had snubbed Churchill because the prime minister had invited me. And had Roosevelt really snubbed me, too? If the president had turned against me, I could see the evening ending only in disaster. I picked up my place card and went out onto the back terrace to smoke a cigarette and contemplate my next move.

It was quiet in the back garden of the legation with only the sound of water trickling into a large square fish pond, and the hiss of burning storm lanterns-a precaution against a possible power cut. I walked down the steps into the garden and then along the edge of the pond, my eyes fixed on the perfect white moon that lay motionless upon the surface of the water. With only the British speaking to me, there seemed to be little point in going back into the dining room.

I walked past the kitchens to a quiet domed area covered with wisteria and honeysuckle and sat down to finish my cigarette. Gradually, as my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I made out a large water cart and, on the wall, a heavy brass water tap. I closed my eyes wearily, trying to cast my mind back to a happier time-alone in my room at Princeton with just a book, the tolling of the bell in the Nassau Hall tower, and the ticking of an Eardley Norton bracket clock on the antebellum mantelpiece.

I opened my eyes again, for suddenly it seemed I could indeed hear the ticking of that lovely old Georgian clock, a graduation present from my mother. And, fetching a storm lantern from the terrace, I brought the light back to the little ornamental dome and glanced around in search of the sound’s origin. I discovered the ticking coming from inside the Furphy water cart. My ear pressed against the cart’s cool metal cylinder, the clock sounded quite infernal, as if, like the devil’s clock, it was about to strike and the battlefield where heaven had stood, blown to hell again.

There was a bomb inside the cart. And from the size of the water cylinder, it was a big one. As much as a ton, perhaps. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was only a few minutes before nine o’clock.

I picked up the wooden shafts of the water cart and, taking hold of the leather harness, began to pull. At first the cart hardly seemed to shift, but at last, after an effort that left me red in the face and dripping with sweat, it moved and, slowly, began to roll out of the little rond-point dome.

I told myself that I made an absurd-looking hero, in my tuxedo and evening slippers. But all I had to do was keep the cart moving. Just long enough to get it away from the main building. I reached the gravel driveway, my shoes slipping slightly on the small stones and, stopping for a moment, I threw off my jacket before once again picking up the yoke and dragging the thing down to the main gate.

Two of the Sikh sentries came toward me, bayonets fixed, but quite relaxed and looking puzzled.

“What are you doing, Sahib?” asked one of them.

“Give me a hand,” I said. “There’s a time bomb inside this thing.”

They stared at me blankly.

“Don’t you understand? It’s a bomb.”

And then wisely, one of them ran off toward the main building.

I reached the gate, having achieved quite a reasonable forward motion, at which point the Sikh who had spoken to me threw down his rifle and began to help me push the cart.

At last we cleared the gates of the British embassy compound and headed down the wide empty boulevard toward the main part of the city. The Sikh stopped pushing now and ran away. Which suited me fine. I almost preferred that I should do it myself. How much better that I should be remembered not as the man who had saved Hitler’s life, nor even as the man who had scuppered the peace talks, but as the hero of the hour-the man who had saved the Big Three from being blown to pieces.

There seemed nothing particularly heroic about what I was doing. I was tired and, in a way, I almost looked forward to the end of it all. So, pushing the water cart with its lethal payload, I went to find a kind of peace. The kind of peace that passeth all understanding. Final peace. Hitler’s peace.