Room 318, it said. Midnight. I will be waiting for you.
A slight thrill of anticipation as the elevator lifted. He gave the operator a few coins. He hadn’t bothered to calculate what the local currency was worth.
She answered his knock almost immediately, as though she’d been waiting by the door. As exquisite as he remembered—a porcelain princess in a silk robe.
“May-ling,” he murmured.
She drew him quickly inside.
He stood awkwardly for an instant after the door closed, uncertain—as he rarely was—of his next move. Should he be passionate? Sweep her into his arms? They had never been alone like this—shut into a private room—and he had no script for what came next. He took a tentative step toward her.
She turned swiftly and led him into her suite’s sitting room. Her maid was there, arranging teacups on a tray.
Disappointment crashed over him.
She said something sharp and incomprehensible in Chinese and the maid bent double in obeisance, scuttling in the direction of what must be the bedroom.
May-ling was offering him tea.
He took the cup and looked at her fully for the first time. Her dark eyes were smudged with sleeplessness, and there was a purplish bruise high on her right cheek.
“Please, Elliott,” she said softly. “Sit down.”
He took one of the easy chairs.
She curled herself like a cat on the suite’s couch, and reached for her own teacup. Poise. That was the quality May-ling had. She made Elliott uneasy.
“What are you doing in Tehran?” he asked abruptly.
Her eyes flicked up at him. She took a deliberate sip of tea. “I had nowhere else to go.”
“But—I thought you and the Generalissimo were headed back to China.”
“My husband has already arrived. I was not permitted to accompany him.” Her voice was impersonal, almost remote. She set down her cup and rose from her seat.
Mesmerized, Elliott watched May-ling approach him. Swaying, graceful, like a reed in the wind. She lifted his tea from his hands and placed it on the coffee table. Then she slid into his lap and put her arms around his neck.
“I have been banished, Elliott, because of you,” she whispered. Her lips moved over his cheek as she spoke; the sensation was intoxicating. “My husband says he will divorce me. That I have shamed the name of Chiang by pursuing you in public. I will no longer be the uncrowned empress of China, Elliott. You are all I have, darling.”
“But—” He drew a shaky breath, bewildered. “He’s out of his mind! What can I possibly do, May-ling?”
She stared deep in his eyes, her own tragic. “Marry me,” she said.
DAY FIVE
TEHRAN
MONDAY,
NOVEMBER 29, 1943
CHAPTER 23
Grace Cowles paid off her taxi in Khordab Avenue, at the northern edge of the bazaar. She hurried across the broad avenue in the direction of Golestan Palace. The hour was still early—not yet seven o’clock—and there were street sweepers in long white tunics and trousers poking at the gutters near the palace in a desultory fashion. The scent of coffee and horse dung and charcoal from street braziers, the whiff of snow from the high mountains just visible in the distance, hung tantalizingly on the air. Sunlight cut through the branches of bare trees. It was beautiful, she realized. Foreign and yet less exotic than Cairo, because the chill reminded her of London.
Golestan meant rose in Farsi, Pug Ismay had told her when they passed the palace on the way in from the airfield. He was full of odd information like that. The Rose Palace. It was actually a complex of buildings too numerous for her to distinguish, each more elaborate than the last. Four hundred years old, covered in gold mosaics, with pools of water and hidden gardens. The young Shah did not live there now; he had his own modern place in the north of the city. Such a waste, Grace thought. Like abandoning the Tower of London for a Mayfair flat.
She hurried across the street, clutching the lapels of her army jacket against the cold. Ian’s message had mentioned a park. There was a greenish space in front of Golestan that qualified. It was absurd that she had run out of the British Embassy and motored south through the waking city to meet a man who must be mad. Or at least a deserter.
The sudden news that Ian was there—in Tehran, when he’d been ordered back to London—had shocked Grace to the core. She’d held his handwritten message for the space of thirty seconds, staring sightlessly at her own reflection in her bedroom mirror. Then she had nearly gone to Pug. But telling Pug the truth would have meant Ian’s arrest. The end of his career. Grace had decided she should talk to him first.
That’s your weakness, she thought. Stop trying to save him. He doesn’t want to be saved.
She fetched up on a gravel path cutting diagonally across the park and slowed her steps. Ian had stressed the need for absolute secrecy, and although she was pretty sure he was engaging in what Hudson generously called “fiction,” she should not draw attention to herself. She ought to look like any other stroller—a woman in British uniform, alone at that hour of the morning in the middle of the Persian capital! Impossible.
She caught sight of his profile—broken nose, compressed lips, arrogant fall of black hair across the brow. He was wearing an ill-fitting civilian suit and tossing unleavened bread to pigeons near a central fountain, his sensitive fingers tearing the stuff into scraps. She strolled up to him and stood for an instant in silence. The pigeons stretched out their necks and lifted their wings irritably. “Where did you get those abominable clothes?” she said. “And what the hell were you thinking, summoning me here like a bellboy?”
He glanced sideways, his mouth quirking. “You may despise me, Grace, but you’ve never let me down yet. No tip for the bellboy, however. I’ve only got a fiver to my name.”
“You’ve deserted, haven’t you?” she said contemptuously.
“Gone underground, more like.”
“Chasing your Fencer?”
He dusted bread crumbs from his fingers. “Clever girl.”
“That cable of yours dropped like a mortar in the middle of the delegation. There are all sorts of rumors running round. That one of us is a traitor. That there are Nazis hiding in the hills. Or that you dreamed it all up.”
“Who’s casting me as a liar?”
She did not answer him directly. “You did take a nasty knock on the head, Ian. You might be . . .”
“Call me James. My new passport does.”
“James what?” she demanded, startled.
“Bond, actually. Short, British, and to the point.”
Grace stared at him. “You really believe it, don’t you? That this playacting is real? Michael said it was a habit of yours. I didn’t want to listen.”
“Michael said what was a habit of mine, exactly?”
“Making things up.” Her voice was acid. “He used the word fiction. I was content to simply call you a liar—and have done.”
He turned toward her. “It’s time to let go of the past, Gracie. Your resentments. My failures. Did I ever truly lie to you?”
“You let me think . . .” She swallowed. It was too humiliating to say out loud. You let me think you loved me. You let me love you.
“My sins were ones of omission. They usually are. All my life I’ve found it easier not to do than to do.” He walked slowly toward a park bench, guiding her with a hand to her elbow. They sat down. His blue eyes were probing, but Grace’s guard was firmly in place. “This trip to Tehran is an attempt to change that. I owe you an apology. Not for my lies—but for all I never said out loud.”
She shrugged. “Call it what you like. You deceived me . . . Bond. And from what your friend says, it seems to be a pattern. Tell me why you called me here so that I can get back to Pug. Not all of us can be absent without leave.”
“Are you going to t
ell Ismay about me?”
She hesitated. “That depends.”
“Don’t. You’ll be the death of me.”
“Don’t be so dramatic!”
“I’ve got no choice. I know why the Fencer is here. Hiding in plain sight in the Allied delegations. That alone is reason for murder.”
She sighed and folded her arms.
“If you don’t believe me, go back and signal Turing.”
“About what?”
“Operation Long Jump, Grace. The German plan to assassinate Winston Churchill. And Franklin Roosevelt. And Joseph Stalin.”
“All of them?”
He nodded. She could detect no spark of insanity in his eyes. No suggestion he was delusional. “You’re serious.”
“Dead serious.”
“Turing told you this?”
“No. I had it from a dead man—a Russian contact in Cairo. His throat was slit the same night I was coshed and stabbed.”
Grace reared back. In all her bitter talks with Hudson, she’d lost sight of that fact. Ian had been attacked. It might have been for his wallet, of course—a violent act he’d magnified into something more . . . She rose hurriedly from the park bench.
“I ought to turn you in to Pug,” she said rapidly. “I’m a fool not to, and if you come a cropper, it’ll be me they dismiss.”
“Please,” he said. “If the PM dies, you’ll never forgive yourself. There’s too much at stake, Grace—the whole war—”
He made no move to touch her. Just kept his eyes fixed steadily on her face.
“I’ll signal Turing,” she said.
—
To the steel-hearted citizens of Stalingrad • The gift of King George VI • In token of the homage of the British people . . .
Churchill ran his fingertip over the script engraved on the Sword’s blade. It was a purely ceremonial piece—a stunning bit of trumpery he’d commissioned in Sheffield. But grasping the hilt took him back to his days in Africa, the feel of a horse—restive in anticipation of battle—and the strain in his biceps as he lifted his right arm high. There would never be a cavalry charge again in his lifetime. The tanks he himself had invented had replaced the warhorses of old. Including the men who’d ridden them.
Pity, how time makes fools of us all.
This was not a cavalry officer’s weapon, of course; it was modeled on a two-sided Crusader’s sword. But he liked the heft of the four-foot steel blade and the feel of the hilt bound in gold wire. It fitted his hands. The hilt’s pommel was rock crystal and the cross guard was silver—shaped like a half-moon, with leopard heads at each tip. The leopards were washed with parcel-gilt, their teeth bared in menace.
At Harrow he’d been a champion fencer—All England—a fact most people had forgot, if they’d ever known it. He swung the Sword high over his head and opened his jaws wide. A warrior’s face. Then he thrust brutally through his imaginary foe’s neck—and ended with the tip of the blade buried in the carpet.
The momentum almost toppled him.
Churchill glanced around for the scabbard. He’d ordered it in Persian lambskin—a nod to this historic meeting in Persia itself—and had specified that the supple leather must be dyed scarlet. Stalin, after all, was a Red. At the top of the scabbard the Wilkinson swordsmiths had engraved the royal arms, the crown, and King George’s cypher—his scrolling initials. Five silver mounts ran the scabbard’s length; three of these were set with gold stars. Each star held a bezel-cut ruby.
It was a sumptuous, an archaic bit of swagger to strap around one’s waist. It appealed to every fiber in Churchill’s imperial being. He suspected it would appeal to the pirate in Stalin, too.
From the moment the Soviet leader had confirmed he would meet with his Allies that November, Churchill had been searching for some sort of grand gesture. An act that would solidify the respect and need among all three Allied leaders. He’d hit upon commissioning this Sword of Stalingrad. A symbol of Russian endurance—and German horror.
Hitler’s forces had spent two hundred days fighting for Stalin’s city. When the bloodletting was done, three quarters of a million German soldiers were surrounded and six entire German divisions wiped off the map. Four hundred thousand Soviet troops had died in the nine-month battle, and tens of thousands of civilians had perished from violence and famine. Stalingrad was a byword for nightmare—in Berlin above all.
Churchill intended to present his Sword to Stalin that night at dinner. But he was feeling unsettled and uneasy. Nothing about this Tripartite Conference had gone as he’d expected—starting with the Chinaman’s appearance in Cairo and Franklin’s inexplicably distant behavior now. Churchill had imagined that his prior acquaintance with both Stalin and FDR, and his ready flow of conversation, would bridge any awkward differences. He had cast himself as conference host, in short—but that role was already taken. Stalin had usurped it by taking Roosevelt into his camp. It was Churchill who was the odd man out—when he’d expected to run the show.
The Sword of Stalingrad felt over the top, suddenly. Excessively showy. Would offering such a florid trophy make him look ridiculous?
There was a tap at his door. He slid the Sword carefully into its scabbard and reached for his dressing gown. It was a little after ten in the morning, but he was not yet dressed. Too old to alter his habits now, even in a strange country—and it was his habit to work in bed during the morning hours. He never appeared in public much before luncheon.
“Come in!”
He expected Pamela.
But it was Sarah’s face that hovered near the door.
“Father,” she said, “is Dr. Wilson about?”
“Lord Moran,” he corrected absently. Wilson, his private physician, had been elevated to the peerage that year with the rank of baron and a title. “He must have shown his face at breakfast, my dear. Is he wanted?”
She nodded swiftly, slid into his room and shut the door firmly behind her. “It’s Pamela.”
He frowned. “Has she come down with this wretched bronchitis?”
“I don’t know,” Sarah said impatiently. “She didn’t wake when her tea tray was brought. I’d have said she was simply sleeping off her usual rag. But the tray was still outside her door just now, untouched. We knocked and called—”
“And?”
“We can’t wake her up.” Sarah hesitated. “I think she took something, Father.”
—
THE MAN IN THE WHEELCHAIR had dressed and breakfasted in his room hours ago. Harriman had warned him that Stalin was an early riser. Roosevelt had been reared by a mother of strictest social propriety. Never sleep later than your host at a house party. That went for politics and war. Never be caught napping.
He was rolling along a path in the Russian Embassy’s withered garden, the wheelchair rocking and bucking as Sam Schwartz thrust it by brute force through the gravel. “Did you find the microphone?”
“No, sir,” Schwartz said. “I’m guessing it’s wired beneath the flooring under your bed. With pinpoint holes in the wood for reception. Not obvious to a casual eye, and the bed’s too heavy to move.”
Not that he would be trying, Roosevelt thought—but yes, the bed was a hundred years old, a magnificent Empire piece. “And Beria’s son is the scribbler?”
“Once I knew what the kid looked like,” Schwartz said, “I noticed him entering Uncle’s Joe’s quarters this morning with the wake-up samovar and rolls. I figure he pulls up a chair and respectfully tells the Great Man what you’ve said over the past twenty-four hours.”
“Which means he’s a direct line to Stalin,” Roosevelt said thoughtfully. “Anything I say in the privacy of my own room goes by the back door to Uncle Joe. We can use this, Sam.”
The wheelchair came to a halt. Schwartz appeared to be admiring a particularly fine specimen of cypress. “Disinformation, sir?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If I need to talk privately to Winston, I’ll just roll next door.”
They surveyed the neighboring building for an instant from the height of the Soviet back garden. Through the lattice of bare tree branches and the knifing boughs of cypress, they could make out a cluster of figures ranged around the entrance portico. A dark van was pulled up to it, and as they watched, two figures in white clothing hurried up the British Embassy steps.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say those were medical people,” Roosevelt said. “Have you got a light, Sam?”
Schwartz came around the side of the wheelchair and bent over the President. Roosevelt’s long cigarette holder mimed an arabesque in midair. The two white uniforms were back: each on either end of a stretcher. An indeterminate body lay between.
“Too slight to be Winston,” Roosevelt said comfortably, through his smoke. “That’s a relief. I was afraid he was the one vomiting this time.”
“Sir?”
He looked up at Schwartz. “Helluva bodyguard you are. Don’t you know I was poisoned by Nazis last night?”
—
“WHAT HAS HAPPENED?” Grace demanded, as she hurried into the embassy’s main foyer. It seemed crowded with people. She had paid off her cab at the compound gate, shown her papers to the guards, and walked up the long drive to the British legation. She hadn’t expected a greeting party, particularly one that stank of anxiety. Churchill, she thought. Dear God. He can’t be—
Too Bad to Die Page 19
