Herman Wouk - The Winds Of War

by The Winds Of War(Lit)

  Now that I'm commander-in-chief of the United States Navy, Pug Henry, what have you got to say for yourself?"

  "Mr. President, the quality of mercy is mightiest in the mightiest."

  'Oh ho! Very good. Very good. Quick thinking, Pug." He glanced at Hopkins. 'Ha, ha, ha! I'm a Shakespeare lover myself. Well said.

  You're forgiven.n Roosevelt's face turned serious. He glanced at Captain Carton, who still stood at attention near the desk. The aide made a smiling excuse and left the room. The President ate a forkful of eggs and poured himself coffee. "What's going on over there in Germany, Pug?"

  How to field such a facetious question? Victor Henry took the Pr ident's tone. 'I guess there's a war on of sorts, sir."

  'Of sorts? Seems to me a fairly honest-to-goodness war. Tell me about it from your end." Victor Henry described as well as he could the peculiar atmosphere in Berlin, the playing down of the war by the Nazis, the taciturn calm of the Berliners. He mentioned the blimp towing a toothpaste advertisement over the German capital on the first day of the war-the President grunted at that and glanced toward Hopkins-and the pictures in the latest Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung which he had picked up in Lisbon, showing happy German crowds basking at the seashore and frolicking in folk dances on village greens. The President kept looking at Hopkins, who had what Victor Henry thought of as a banana face: long , meager, and curved. Hopkins appeared sick, possibly feverish, but his eyes were thoughtful and electrically alive.

  Roosevelt said, 'Do you suppose he'll offer peace when he finishes with Poland? Especially if he's as unprepared as you say?" What would he have to lose, Mr. President? The way things look now, it might work." The President shook his head. "You don't know the British.

  Not that they're any better prepared."

  "I'll admit I don't, sir."

  For the first time, Hopkins spoke, in a soft voice. "How well do you know the Germans?"

  "Not at all well, Mr. Secretary. They're hard people to make out.

  But in the end there's only one thing you have to know about the Germans."

  "Yes? What's that?" 'How to lick them." The President laughed, the hearty guffaw of a man who loved life and welcomed any chance to laugh. "A warmonger, eh? Are you suggesting, Pug, that we ought to get into it?" 'Negative in the strongest terms, Mr. President. Not unless and until we have to." "Oh, we'll have to," Roosevelt said, hunching over to sip coffee.

  this struck Victor Henry as the most amazing indiscretion he had heard in his lifetime. He could hardly believe the big man in shirt-sleeves had said the words. The newspapers and magazines were full of the President's ringing declarations that America would stay out of the war.

  Roosevelt went blandly on with a compliment about Combat Readiness of Nazi Germany, which he said he had read with great interest. His next questions showed that he had retained little of the analysis. His grasp of the important strategic facts about Germany was not much better than Harry Warendorf's or Digger Brown's, and his queries were like theirs, even to the inevitable 'What's Hitler really like? Have you talked to him?"

  Pug described Hitler's war speech in the Reichstag. Franklin Roosevelt exhibited a lively interest in this, asking how Hitler used his voice and hands, and what he did when he paused.

  "I'm told," Roosevelt said, "that they type his speeches on a special machine with perfectly enormous letters, so he won't have to wear glasses."

  "I wouldn't know about that, sir." "Yes, I got that from a pretty reliable source. 'Fuhrer type," they call it." Roosevelt sighed, turned his chair away from the food, and lit a cigarette. 'There is no substitute for being in a place yourself, Pug, seeing it with your own eyes, getting the feel. That's what's missing in this job."

  "Well, Mr. President, in the end it all boils down to cold facts and figures." 'True, but too often all that depends on who writes the reports. Now that was a fine report of yours. How did you really foresee he'd make a pact with Stalin? Everybody here was stupefied."

  'I guess mathematically somebody somewhere was bound to make that wild guess, Mr. President. It happened to be me."

  "No, no. That was a well-reasoned report. Actually, we did have some seaming here, Pug. There was a leak in one Cernian embassynever mind where-and our State Department had predictions of that pact.

  Trouble was, nobody here was much inclined to believe them." He looked at Hopkins, with a touch of mischief. 'That's always the problem with intelligence, isn't it, Pug? All kinds of strange information will come in, but then-' The President all of a sudden appeared to run out of conversation.

  He looked tired, bored, and withdrawn, puffing at a cigarette in a long holder. Victor Henry would have been glad to leave, but he thought the President should dismiss him. He was feeling a bit firmer about the meeting now. Franklin Roosevelt had the manner, after all, of a fleet commander relaxing over lunch, and Pug was used to the imperious ways of admirals. Apparently he had crossed the Atlantic in wartime to kill an off-hour for the President.

  Hopkins glanced at his watch, "Mr. President, the Secretary and Senator Pittman will be on their way over now." 'Already? The embargo business? Well, Pug." Henry jumped up, and took his cap. Thank you for coming by. This has been grand. Now if there's anything else you think I should know, just anything that strikes you as significant or interesting, how about dropping me a line? I'll be glad to hear from you. I mean that." At this grotesque proposal for bypassing the chain of command, which ran counter to Henry's quarter century of naval training and experience, he could only blink and nod. The President caught his expression. "Nothing official, of course," he said quickly.

  "Whatever you do, don't send me more reports! But now that we've gotten acquainted again, why not stay in touch? I liked that thing you wrote. I could just see that submarine base emptying out at five o'clock. It said an awful lot about Nazi Germany.

  Sometimes one little thing like that-or what a loaf of bread cost, or the jokes people are repeating, or like that advertising blimp over Berlinsuch things can sometimes suggest more than a report umpteen pages long. Of course, one needs the official reports, too. But I get enough of those, heaven knows!" Franklin Roosevelt gave Commander Henry the hard look of a boss who has issued an order and wants to know if it's understood.

  "Yes, Mr. President," Henry said.

  'And, oh, by the way, here's a suggestion that's just come to my desk, Pug, for helping the Allies. Of course we're absolutely neutral in this foreign war, but Still-" The President broke into a sly grin.

  His tired eyes sparkled as he glanced here and there on his cluttered desk, and took up a paper. 'Here we are. We offer to buy the Queen Mary and the Normandie, and we use them for evacuating Americans from Europe. There are thousands stranded, as you know.

  What do you think?

  It would give the Allies a pile of much needed dollars, and we'd have the ships. Theyre fine luxury liners. How about it?" Victor Henry looked from Hopkins to the President. Evidently this was a serious question. They were both waiting for his answer. "Mr.

  President I'd say those ships are major war assets and they'd be insane to sell them. They're magnificent troop transports. They're the fastest vessels for their tonnage of anything afloat, they can outrun any submarine at cruising speed, they hardly have the re las and strength to zigzag SO withe interiors stripped their carrying capacity is gigantic." The President said dryly to Hopkins, 'Is that what the Navy replied?"

  "I'd have to check, Mr. President. I think their response went mainly to the question of where the money'd come from." Franklin Roosevelt cocked his head thoughtfully, and smiling at Victor Henry, held out a long arm for a handshake. "Do you know why I didn't make more of a fuss about those clothes? Because your skipper said you were one of the best ensigns he'd ever seen. Keep in touch, now.

  "Aye aye, sir."

  "Well, how did it go?" The President's aide was smoking a cigar in the anteroom. He rose, knocking off the ash.

  'All right, I suppose." "It must have. You were schedu
led for ten minutes. You were in there almost forty." "Forty! It went fast.

  What now?"

  "How do you mean?"

  "I don't have very specific instructions. Do I go straight back to Berlin, or what?"

  "What did the President say?"

  "It was a pretty definite good-bye, I thought."

  Captain Carton smiled. "Well, I guess you're all through. Maybe you should check in with C.N.O. You're not scheduled here again." He reached into a breast pocket. 'One more thing. This came to my office a little while ago, from the State Department."

  It was an official dispatch envelope. Henry ripped it open and read the flimsy pink message form: FOr X BYRON HENRY SMM WIELL WARSAW X AWMTING EVACUATION ALL NEUTRALS NOW UNDER NEGOTIATION GIERMAN GOVIE NT X Slote Vctor Henry disappointed Hugh Cleveland when he walked into the broadcaster's office; just a squat, broad-shouldered, ordinary-looking man of about fifty, in a brown suit and a red bow tie, standing at the receptionist's desk. The genial, somewhat watchful look on his weathered face was not sophisticated at all. As Cleveland sized up people-having interviewed streams of them-this might be a professional ballplayer turned manager, a lumberman, maybe an engineer; apple-pie American, fairly intelligent, far from formidable. But he knew Madeline feared and admired her father, and day by day he was thinking more highly of the young girl's judgmen so he took a respectful tone.

  "Commander Henry? It's a pleasure. I'm Hugh Cleveland." " Hello.

  Hope I'm not busting in on anything. I thought I'd just drop by and have a look-see."

  "Glad you did. Madeline's timing the script. Come this way."

  They ked along the cork floor of a corridor walled with green soundproofing slabs. 'She was amazed. Thought you were in Germany."

  'For the moment I'm here."

  In a swishing charcoal pleated skirt and gray blouse, Madeline came scampering out of a door marked zqo ADmrrrANcm, and kissed him.

  "Gosh, Dad, what a surprise. Is everything all right?"

  'Everything's dandy." He narrowed his eyes at her. She looked a lot more mature, and brilliantly excited. He said, "If you're busy, I can leave, and talk to you later." Cleveland put in, "No, no, Commander.

  Please come in and watch.

  I'm about to interview Edna May Pelham."

  "Oh? The Getwal's Lady? I read it on the plane. Pretty good yarn." In the small studio, decorated like a library with fake wood panelling and fake books, Cleveland said to the sharp-faced, white-haired authoress, 'Here's another admirer of the book, Miss Pelham. Commander Henry is the American naval attache in Berlin."

  'You don't say! Hi there." The woman waved her pince-nez at him.

  "Are we going to stay out of this idiotic war, Commander?"

  "I hope so."

  'So do I. My hopes would be considerably higher if that man in the White House would drop dead." Pug sat to one side in an armchair while they read through the script.

  The authoress, passing vinegary judgments on current literature, said that one famous author was obscene, another sloppy, a third superficial. His mind wandered to his meeting yesterday with 'that man in the White House." It seemed to him that he had been summoned on a haphazard impulse; that he had spent a couple of thousand dollars of public money on a round trip from Germany for pointless small talk over scrambled eggs. The morning paper showed that yesterday had been a crowded, portentous day for the President. The leading story, spread over many columns, was Roosevelt Proclaims Limited National Emagency.

  Three other headlines on the front page began FDR or President; he had reorganized two major government boards; he had lifted the sugar quota; he had met with congressional leaders on revision of the Neutrality Act.

  all these things had been done by the ruddy man in shirt-sleeves who never moved from behind his desk, but whose manner was so bouncy you forgot he was helpless in his chair. Pug wanted to believe that he himself might have said one thing, made one comment, that by illuminating the President's mind had justified the whole trip. But he could not.

  His comments on Germany, like his original report, had rolled off the President, who mainly had sparked at details of Hitler's oratorical techmque and touches of local Berlin color. The President's request for gossipy letters still struck him as devious, if not pointless. In the first few minutes Victor Henry had been attracted by President Roosevelt's warmth and good humor, by his remarkable memory and his ready laughter. But thinking back on it all, Commander Henry wasn't sure the President would have behaved much differently to a man who had come to the office to shine his shoes.

  "Fourteen minutes and twenty seconds, Mr. Cleveland." Madeline's speaker-distorted voice roused him.

  'That's fine. Ready to record, Miss Pelham?"

  'No. All this about Hemingway is far too kind. I'd like about half an hour with this script. And I'd like some strong tea, with lemon."

  "Yes, ma'am. Hear that, Madeline? Get it."

  Cleveland invited the naval officer to his office, where Pug accepted a cigar. The young broadcaster displeased him by hitching a leg over the arm of his chair. Pug had used considerable severity to cure Byron of that habit. 'Sir, you can be proud of Madeline. She's an unusual girl."

  "Unusual in what way?"

  "Well, let's see. She understands things the first time you tell them to her. Or if she doesn't, she asks questions. If you send her to fetch something or do something, she fetches it or she does it. She never his a long story about it. I haven't heard her whine yet. She isn't afraid of people.

  She can talk straight to anybody without being fresh. She's reliable. Are reliagle people common in the Navy? In this business they're about as common as g[ant pandas. Especially girls. I've had my share of lemons here. I understand that you want her to go back to school, and that she'll have to quit next week. I'm very sorry about that." The girl's nineteen."

  "She's better than women of twenty-five and thirty who've worked for me." Cleveland smiled. This easy-mannered fellow had an infectious grin and an automatic warmth, Pug thought, that in a trivial way was like the President's. Some people had it, some didn't. He himself had none of it. In the Navy the quality was not overly admired. The name for it was 'grease." Men who posed it had a way of climbing fast; they also had a way of relying upon it, till they got too greasy and slipped.

  "I wish she'd show some of these 4.o qualities at school. I don't appreciate the idea of a nineteen-year-old girl loose in New York."

  "Well, sir, I don't mean to argue with you, but Washington's no convent either. it's a question of upbringing and character. Madeline is a superior, trustworthy girl." Pug uttered a nonconnnittal grunt.

  'Sir, how about coming on our show? We'd be honored to have you."

  'As a guest? You're kidding. I'm nobody." "America's naval attache in Nazi Germany is certainly somebody.

  You could strike a blow for preparedness, or a two-ocean Navy. We just had Admiral Preble on the show." 'Yes, I know. That's how I found out what my little girl's doing these days."

  "Would you consider it, sir?" 'Not on your life." The sudden frost in Pug's tone rose not only from the desire to be final, but the suspicion that the praise of Madeline had been a way of greasing him.

  "No harm in asking, I hope," Cleveland grinned, running a hand through his heavy blond hair. He had a pink harborshop sunburn and looked well in a collegiate jacket and slacks, though Victor Henry thought his argyle socks were too much. He did not like Cleveland, but he could see that Madeline would relish working for such a Broadwayish fellow.

  Later Madeline showed her father around the studios. Certain corridors were like passageways in the bowels of a ship, all jammed with electronic gear and thousands of bunched colored wires. These interested Pug.

  He would have enjoyed seeing the controlling diagrams and learning how radio amusement was pumped out of this nerve center all over the country.

  The performing studios, with their giant cardboard settings of aspirin bottles, toothpaste tubes, and gasoline pumps, their bli
nking red lights, posturing singers, giggling audiences, grimacing and prancing funny men, not only seemed tawdry and silly in themselves, but doubly so with Poland under attack. Here, at the hart of the American communications machine, the Hitler war seemed to mean little more than a skim-dsh among Zulus.

  "Madeline, what attracts you in all this balderdash?"

  They were leaving the rehearsal of a comedy program, where the star, wearing a fireman's ha was spraying the handleader, the girl singer, and the audiences with seltzer bottles.

  "That man may not amuse you, Dad, but millions of people are mad for him. He makes fifteen thousand dollars a week." "That's kind of obscene right there. It's more than a rear admiral makes in a year."

  "Dad, in two weeks I've met the most Marvelous people. I met Gary Cooper. just today I spent two hours with Miss Pelham. Do you know that I had lunch with the Chief of Naval Operations? Me?"