by Philip Kerr
“It’s a thought that’s been troubling me a lot, sir. Not least because I’m the man who saved Hitler’s life. I’d hate to spend the rest of my days regretting what happened here this morning. But I’ve a terrible feeling that I might.” I took a cigarette from Chip Bohlen. “As a matter of fact, I’d sincerely prefer it if no one ever mentioned it to me or anyone else again. I’m going to try to forget all about it, if you don’t mind.”
“We’re all of us walking away from here with some dirty secrets,” Roosevelt said. “Me most of all. Can you imagine what people will say about Franklin D. Roosevelt if they ever find out what I’ve done? I’ll tell you what they’ll say. They’ll say it was bad enough he tried to make a peace with a bastard like Hitler, but it was even worse that he fucked it up. Jesus Christ. History is going to piss all over me.”
“No one is going to say anything of the kind, Mr. President,” Bohlen said. “Because none of us is ever going to talk about what happened here. I think we should all agree, on our honor, never to talk about what I for one regard as a brave attempt that almost came off.”
There was a murmur of assent from the others in the room.
“Thank you,” said Roosevelt. “Thank you all, gentlemen.” Roosevelt screwed a cigarette into his holder and took a light from my Dunhill. “But I must confess I still don’t quite understand why he’s gone. Hitler seemed okay about what happened, didn’t he? Grateful, to you, he said. He shook your hand, Professor.”
“Maybe he just lost his nerve,” said Reilly. “Back in his room, Hitler sat down, thought about it some more, and realized just what a narrow escape he’d had. Happens that way sometimes, when someone escapes being shot.”
“I guess so,” said Roosevelt. “But I really thought I could get Hitler. You know? Win him over.”
“Now you have to make sure you get Stalin,” Harry Hopkins said. “We always knew there was a big risk that these secret peace talks might not work out. Hell, that’s why they were secret, right? So now we go back to plan B. The Big Three. The way this conference in Teheran started out in the first place. We have to make sure that we make Stalin appreciate just what’s entailed in a second front across the English Channel, and get him behind our United Nations idea.”
Hopkins was still trying to restore the president’s belief in himself and in his capacity to charm Stalin when, accompanied by Vlasik, Pavlov, and several Georgian NKVD bodyguards, the great man himself appeared in the doorway of the president’s drawing room.
“Jesus Christ, it’s Uncle Joe. He’s here,” muttered Hopkins.
Leaving the bodyguards in the corridor, Stalin edged his way clumsily into the room, his presence most clearly marked by the strong smell of Belomor cigarettes that clung to his marshal’s mustard-colored summer tunic like damp on a wet dog. Pavlov and Vlasik followed as if on an invisible leash. Chip Bohlen was quickly on his feet, bowing curtly to the Soviet leader and acknowledging something Stalin had said with an obsequious “Da vy, da vy.”
Roosevelt maneuvered his wheelchair to face Stalin and held out his hand. “Hello, Marshal Stalin,” he said. “I’m very sorry about what has happened. Very sorry. After all your brave and courageous efforts to secure a peace, that it should come to this is a great shame.” Stalin shook Roosevelt’s hand in silence while Bohlen translated. “And I am deeply ashamed that it should have been one of my own people who tried to kill Hitler.”
Stalin let go of the president’s hand and then shook his head. “But that is not what made him angry,” he said gruffly, taking the Beketovka File from Pavlov, his translator, and placing it gingerly on the president’s lap. “This is what made him abandon the talks.”
“What is it?” asked Roosevelt.
“It’s a dossier prepared by German intelligence for your eyes, Mr. President,” said Stalin. “It purports to provide details of atrocities committed by Red Army soldiers against German prisoners of war. It was given to the Führer by one of your people this morning. The dossier is a forgery, of course, and we believe that it was prepared by die-hard Fascists in Germany with the intention of driving a wedge between the United States and the Soviet Union. Of course Hitler knew nothing about its provenance. Why should he? A commander in chief cannot see every piece of disinformation that emanates from his own counterintelligence department. When he saw the dossier, however, he assumed, incorrectly, that the lies and calumnies it contained regarding the atrocious treatment of German POWs were true, and he reacted as any commander in chief would, by calling off the talks with those he believed carried out these atrocities.”
“You’re saying that this dossier was prepared for my deception?” said Roosevelt. “And handed over to Hitler by one of my people?”
Stalin lit a cigarette, coolly. “That is correct.”
“But I don’t recall ever seeing such a file,” said Roosevelt. “Have I, Harry?”
“I saw it, Mr. President,” said Hopkins. “I decided that it was inappropriate for you to see it in the present circumstances. Certainly until we’d had a chance to evaluate it properly.”
“Then I still don’t understand,” said Roosevelt. “Who gave this dossier to Hitler?”
“Your Jewish doctor of philosophy.”
I felt a chill as Stalin stared balefully at me with his yellow, almost Oriental, eyes.
“Jesus Christ, Professor. Is this true? Did you give this dossier to Hitler?”
I hesitated to call Stalin a liar to his face, but it was clear what the Soviet leader was trying to do. Stalin could hardly explain why Hitler had left without bringing up the Beketovka File. And that risked the possibility that Roosevelt might lay responsibility for the Führer’s departure on the Soviets themselves.
I had to hand it to him: insisting that the file was a forgery was the best way of avoiding any potential embarrassment. And throwing the blame on me put the ball squarely back in the American court.
Believing Roosevelt would never forgive me if I challenged Stalin’s assertion that the file was a forgery, I decided to appeal to the president’s sense of fair play.
“I did give it to him, Mr. President. When I was struggling with Agent Pawlikowski on the conference table, the files got mixed up. When Mr. Hopkins told me to hand our position papers to Hitler, I mistakenly handed over the Beketovka File instead.”
“That’s right, Mr. President,” Hopkins said. “It was an accident. And partly my fault. I was holding on to the position papers when I told Willard to hand them over. I didn’t realize I was holding them. I guess I was kind of shocked myself. Under the circumstances, it could have happened to anyone.”
“Perhaps,” said Stalin.
“I don’t think we should forget that but for Professor Mayer’s presence of mind,” added Hopkins, “the Führer would probably be dead, and our hostages in Berlin, Mr. Hull, and Mr. Mikoyan, would certainly have been executed by now.”
Stalin shrugged. “Speaking 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.” Stalin sniffed unpleasantly and wiped his mustache with the back of a liver-spotted hand. Waving dismissively in my direction, he said, “It seems to me that, thanks to your translator, we now find ourselves with the worst of all possible outcomes.”
“With all due respect, Mr. President,” I said, “I think that Marshal Stalin is, perhaps, being a little unfair.”
I was still smarting from Stalin’s description of me as “the Jewish doctor.” I was already cursed with the knowledge that I had saved the life of perhaps the most evil man in history, and I was damned if I could see why I should have to shoulder the responsibility for the failure of the peace talks as well.
“All right, Professor, all right,” said Roosevelt, gesturing with the flat of his hand that I should try to keep calm.
“Are we to worry about what these
parrots, our interpreters, think is fair and what is unfair?” snorted Stalin. “Perhaps your man is one of these American capitalists who wants to see his country’s armies in Europe if only because he imagines that the Soviet Union wishes to make an empire for itself. Such as the British have made in India. I’m told that his mother is one of the richest women in America. Perhaps he hates Communists more than he hates Nazis. Perhaps that is why he gave the forgery to Hitler.”
I wished that I could have mentioned my previous membership in the Austrian Communist Party. But Roosevelt was already trying to change the subject.
“I think that India is certainly ripe for a revolution, Marshal Stalin,” he said. “Don’t you? From the bottom up.”
Recognizing that perhaps he had gone too far in his denunciation of me, Stalin shrugged. “I’m not sure about that,” he said. “India’s caste system makes things more complicated. I doubt a revolution along the lines of the straightforward Bolshevik model is a realistic proposition.” Stalin smiled thinly. “But I can see that you’re tired, Mr. President. I only came to tell you that, if you are agreeable, we will reconvene at four o’clock in the main conference hall, with Mr. Churchill. So I’ll leave you now, to rest a while and to gather your strength for what we must discuss. A second front in Europe.”
And with that, Stalin was gone, leaving each of us in openmouthed amazement. It was Roosevelt who spoke first.
“Professor Mayer? I don’t think Uncle Joe likes you very much.”
“No, sir. I don’t think he does. And I’m counting myself lucky that I’m an American and not a Russian. Otherwise I guess I’d be facing a firing squad.”
Roosevelt nodded wearily. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “it might be best if you went back to Camp Amirabad. After all, it’s not as if we’ll be needing your interpreting services anymore. Not now that the Führer has gone. And there’s no sense aggravating Stalin any further by your presence here in the Russian compound.”
“I’m sure you’re right, sir.” I walked toward the door of the drawing room. There, with my fingers on the door handle, I stopped and, looking back at the president, added: “Just for the record, Mr. President, as someone who knows about German intelligence, it’s my considered opinion that the Beketovka File is one hundred percent genuine and accurate. You can take that from a man who was a member of the Austrian Communist Party when he was a lot younger and less wise than he is now. And there’s nothing Stalin can say that will change that.”
Standing in the door of the Russian embassy, I took a deep, unsteady breath of the warm afternoon air. I closed my eyes and reflected on the extraordinary events of the day and my unwitting role in the history of Hitler’s peace. It was a story that would probably never be told because it was a history of lies and dissembling and hypocrisy, and it revealed the greatest truth of history: that truth itself is an illusion. I was a part of that big lie now. I always would be.
I opened my eyes to find myself facing a tubby-looking man wearing the uniform of a British RAF Commodore and smoking a seven-inch Romeo y Julieta.
“Sir,” said the tubby little commodore, “you appear to be in my way.”
“Mr. Churchill, I appear to be in everyone’s way. My own most of all.”
Churchill removed the cigar from his mouth and nodded. “I know that feeling. It is the antithesis of being alive, is it not?”
“I feel myself unraveling, sir. There’s a dog that’s got hold of the end of my yarn and pretty soon there’s going to be nothing of me left.”
“But I know that dog,” he said. Churchill took a step toward me, his eyes wide with excitement. “I have given that dog a name. I call it the black dog, and it must be driven off as if it were the real thing.” The prime minister glanced at his watch and then pointed toward the grounds with his walking stick. “Stroll with me for a moment, in these Persian gardens. We may not have five miles meandering with a mazy motion, as Mr. Coleridge has it, but I think it will do very well.”
“I’d be honored, sir.”
“I feel I should know you. I know we have met somewhere before now. But beyond the fact you are an American and perhaps something in the diplomatic services, or else you would be wearing a uniform, I cannot for the life of me remember who you are.”
“Willard Mayer, sir. I’m the president’s German translator. At least I was. And we said hello in the corridor of the Mena House Hotel last Tuesday.”
“Then you are the unfortunate young man who saved the life of the German dictator,” said Churchill. Even in the open air, there was a loud echoing timbre to his voice, as well as a slight speech impediment, more noticeable in person than on radio. It made me think the prime minister must once have had a small problem with his palate. “And whose subsequent actions have caused the collapse of the parley with Hitler and his dreadful gang.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Mayer, I venture to think that you believe the failure of these peace talks is something to be lamented, as doubtless Mr. Stalin does, and your own president, to be sure. I have an enormous admiration and affection for Mr. Roosevelt, indeed for all Americans. You must know I am half American myself. But I tell you frankly, sir, that this policy was ill conceived. Hitler is a leviathan of wickedness, a bloodthirsty guttersnipe unparalleled in the history of tyranny and evil, and we have not fought for four long years only now, when victory is in our sights, to turn around and make a peace with these foul fanatics. So do not hold yourself to blame for this morning’s fiasco. No civilized government could ever have countenanced having diplomatic relations with this Nazi power, a power that spurns Christian ethics, cheers its onward course by a barbarous paganism, vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses with pitiless brutality the threat of massacre against the innocents. That power could not ever be the trusted friend of democracy, and to have made a peace with Hitler would have been morally indecent and constitutionally disastrous. In a matter of a few years, perhaps a few months, your country and mine would have come to regret that we did not scotch this snake when we had the chance. I tell you, Willard Mayer, do not hold yourself to blame. The only shame is that such a repugnant course of action was ever contemplated at all, and akin to the man who stroked a rabid dog and said how gentle it seemed to be, until it bit him, whereof he fell sick and died. We do not want Hitler’s peace any more than we wanted Hitler’s war, for only a fool comes down from a tree to look into the eyes of a wounded tiger.”
Churchill took a seat beside a cherry tree and I sat down beside him.
“This is only the beginning of the reckoning,” he said. “The first taste of the world’s judgment on Nazi Germany, and many stern days lie ahead of us. The best of our young men will be killed, almost certainly. That is not your fault, nor is it your president’s fault. Rather, it is the fault of that bloodthirsty Austrian butcher who led us down the dark stairs and into the abyss of a European war. No more should you regret saving Herr Hitler’s life, for it would have dishonored us all to have invited him here and seen him murdered in our midst, like some ancient Roman tyrant, for that would have been to have made ourselves look as vile and detestable as he who has murdered his way across Europe and Russia. The destiny of mankind should never be decided by the trajectory of an assassin’s bullet.
“And now I must leave you,” and Churchill stood up, with some difficulty. “If the black dog returns to growl at your heels, I offer you these three pieces of advice. One, strip off your shirt and place yourself in some direct sunlight, which I have found has a most restorative and uplifting effect. The second is to take up painting. It is a pastime that will take you out of yourself when that seems like an unpleasant place to be. And my third piece of advice is to go to a party and drink a little too much champagne, which is no less efficacious than the sun in lifting the gloom. Wine is, after all, the greatest gift that the sun has made to us. Fortunately for you, I myself am giving a party to celebrate my birthday o
n Tuesday, and I should be delighted if you would come.”
“Thank you, sir, but I’m not sure that Marshal Stalin would welcome my being there.”
“Since it is not Marshal Stalin’s birthday—assuming that there was ever such an occasion for celebration—that need not concern you at all, Mr. Mayer. I shall expect you at the British embassy at eight o’clock on Tuesday evening. Black tie. No dog.”
I found my ears were still ringing with Churchill’s words long after the prime minister had gone and I was on my way back to Camp Amirabad in an army jeep, certain that I had just met the one man in the world who embodied truth and who would demonstrate the courage of truthfulness.
2100 HOURS
AT NIGHT there is no sun. There is only darkness. In Iran, the darkness comes quickly and with its own peculiar demons. I lay awake on my bed in a Quonset hut, smoking cigarettes and quietly getting drunk. Just after ten o’clock, there was a knock on my door. I opened it to find a tall, round-shouldered man, who had the looselimbed look and large feet of a basketball player. He was wearing a white coat on top of his army fatigues and eyed the drink and the cigarette in my hand with a combination of military and medical disapproval.
“Professor Mayer?”
“If that’s what’s written on the tag on my toe.” I turned away from the open door and sat down on my bed. “Come on in. Pour yourself a drink.”
“No, thanks, sir. I’m on duty.”
“Nice to know someone is on duty.”
“Sir, I’m Lieutenant John Kaplan,” he said, advancing only a short way into my room. “I’m the assistant chief medical officer in the army field hospital here at Camp Amirabad.”
“It’s okay, Lieutenant Kaplan. I’m only a little tight. No need for the stomach pump just yet.”
“It’s Mr. Pawlikowski, sir. The Secret Service guy. He’s asking for you.”
“For me?” I laughed and sipped my drink. “Asking, as in wants to talk or to tell me I’m a son of a bitch? Well, I’m feeling a little fragile right now.”
