“ ‘Aesthetics and morality are coterminous in that neither can be said to possess an objective validity, and it makes no more sense to assert that telling the truth is verifiably a good thing than it does to say that a painting by Rembrandt is verifiably a good painting. Neither statement has any factual meaning.’ ”
Roosevelt shook his head. “Quite apart from the dangers that are inherent in arguing such a position at a time when the Nazis are hell-bent on the destruction of all previously held notions of morality, it seems to me that you’re missing a trick. An ethical judgment is very often merely the factual classification of an action that verifiably tends to arouse people in a certain kind of way. In other words, the common objects of moral disapproval are actions or classes of actions that can be tested empirically as a matter of fact.”
I smiled back at the president, liking him for taking the trouble to read some of my book and for taking me on. I was about to answer him when he tossed my book aside and said:
“But I didn’t ask you here to have a discussion about philosophy.”
“No, sir.”
“Tell me, how did you get involved with Donovan’s outfit?”
“Soon after I returned from Europe I was offered a post at Princeton, where I became an associate professor of philosophy. After Pearl Harbor, I applied for a commission in the Naval Reserve, but before my application could be processed I had lunch with a friend of my dad’s, a lawyer named Allen Dulles. He persuaded me to join the Central Office of Information. When our part of the COI became the OSS, I came to Washington. I’m now a German intelligence analyst.”
Roosevelt turned in his wheelchair as rain hit the window, his big shoulders and thick neck straining against the collar of his shirt; by contrast, his legs were hardly there at all, as if his maker had attached them to the wrong body. The combination of the chair, the pince-nez, and the six-inch ivory cigarette holder clenched between his teeth gave Roosevelt the look of a Hollywood movie director.
“I didn’t know it was raining so hard,” he said, removing the cigarette from his holder and fitting another from the packet of Camels that lay on the desk. Roosevelt offered one to me. I took it at the same time as I found the silver Dunhill in my vest pocket and then lit us both.
The president accepted the light, thanked me in German, and then continued the conversation in that language, mentioning the latest American war casualty toll-115,000-and some pretty savage fighting that was currently taking place at Salerno, in southern Italy. His German wasn’t so bad. Then he suddenly switched subjects and reverted to English.
“I’ve a job for you, Professor Mayer. A sensitive job, as it happens. Too sensitive to give to the State Department. This has to be between you and me, and only you and me. The trouble with those bastards at State is that they can’t keep their fucking mouths shut. Worse than that, the whole department is riven with factionalism. I think you might know what I’m talking about.”
It was generally well known around Washington that Roosevelt had never really respected his secretary of state. Cordell Hull’s grasp of foreign affairs was held to be poor, and, at the age of seventy-two, he tired easily. For a long time after Pearl, FDR had come to rely on the assistant secretary of state, Sumner Welles, to do most of the administration’s real foreign-policy work. Then, just the previous week, Sumner Welles had suddenly tendered his resignation, and the scuttlebutt around the better-informed sections of government and the intelligence services was that Welles had been obliged to resign following the commission of an act of grave moral turpitude with a Negro railway porter while aboard the presidential train on its way to Virginia.
“I don’t mind telling you that these goddamned snobs at State are in for one hell of a shake-up. Half of them are pro-British and the other half anti-Semitic. Mince them all up and you wouldn’t have enough guts to make one decent American.” Roosevelt sipped his martini and sighed. “What do you know about a place called Katyn Forest?”
“A few months ago Berlin radio reported the discovery of a mass grave in the Katyn Forest, near Smolensk. The Germans allege it contained the remains of five thousand or so Polish officers who had surrendered to the Red Army in 1940, following the nonaggression pact between the Germans and the Soviets, only to be murdered on Stalin’s orders. Goebbels has been making a lot of political capital out of it. Katyn’s been the wind breaking from the tailpipe of the German propaganda machine since the summer.”
“For that reason alone, in the beginning I was half-inclined to believe the story was just Nazi propaganda,” Roosevelt said. “But there are Polish-American radio stations in Detroit and Buffalo that insist the atrocity occurred. It’s even been alleged that this administration has been covering up the facts so as not to endanger our alliance with the Russians. Since the story first broke, I’ve received a report from our liaison officer to the Polish army in exile, another from our own naval attache in Istanbul, and one from Prime Minister Churchill. I’ve even received a report from Germany’s own War Crimes Bureau. In August, Churchill wrote to me asking for my thoughts, and I passed all the files over to State and asked them to look into it.”
Roosevelt shook his head wearily.
“You can guess what happened. Not a goddamned thing! Hull is blaming everything on Welles, of course, claiming Welles must have been sitting on these files for weeks.
“It’s true, I had given the files to Welles and asked him to get someone on the German desk at State to make a report. Then Welles had his heart attack, and cleared his desk, offering me his resignation. Which I refused.
“Meanwhile, Hull told the fellow on the German desk, Thornton Cole, to give the files to Bill Bullitt, to see what our former ambassador to Soviet Russia might make of them. Bullitt fancies himself a Russia expert.
“I don’t actually know if Bullitt looked at the files. He’d been after Welles’s job for a while and I suspect he was too busy lobbying for it to pay them much attention. When I asked Hull about Katyn Forest, he and Bullshitt realized that they’d fucked up and decided to quietly return the files to Welles’s office and blame him for not having done anything. Of course Hull made sure to have Cole back up his story.” Roosevelt shrugged. “That’s Welles’s best guess about what must have happened. And I think I agree with him.”
It was about then that I remembered I had once introduced Welles to Cole, at Washington’s Metropolitan Club.
“When Hull returned the files and told me that we weren’t in a position to have any kind of view on Katyn Forest,” Roosevelt continued, “I used every short word known to a sailor. And the upshot of all this is that nothing has been done.” The president pointed at some dusty-looking files stacked on a bookshelf. “Would you mind fetching them down for me? They’re up there.”
I retrieved the files, laid them on the sofa beside the president, and then inspected my hands. The job did not augur well, given the amount of grime on my fingers.
“It’s no great secret that sometime before Christmas I’m going to have a conference with Churchill and Stalin. Not that I’ve any clue where that will be. Stalin has rejected coming to London, so we could wind up almost anywhere. But wherever we end up meeting I want to have a clear idea on this Katyn Forest situation, because it seems certain to affect the future of Poland. The Russians have already broken off diplomatic relations with the Polish government in London. The British, of course, feel a special loyalty to the Poles. After all, they went to war for Poland. So, as you can see, it’s a delicate situation.”
The president lit another cigarette and then rested a hand on the bundle of files.
“Which brings me to you, Professor Mayer. I want you to conduct your own investigation into these Katyn Forest claims. Start by making an objective assessment of what the files contain, but don’t feel you have to limit yourself to them. Speak to anyone you think would be of use. Make up your own mind and then write a report for my eyes only. Nothing too long. Just a summary of your findings with some suggested courses of action. I’ve cleared it with Donovan, so this takes priority over anything else you’re doing.”
Taking out his own handkerchief, he wiped his hand clean of dust, and didn’t touch the files again.
“How long do I have, Mr. President?”
“Two or three weeks. It’s not long, I know, for a matter of such gravity, but as you can appreciate, that can’t be helped. Not now.”
“When you say ‘speak to anyone who might be of use,’ does that include people in London? Members of the Polish government in exile? People in the British Foreign Office? And how much of a nuisance am I allowed to make of myself?”
“Speak to whomever you like,” insisted Roosevelt. “If you do decide to go to London, it will help if you say that you’re my special representative. That will open every door to you. My secretary, Grace Tully, will organize the necessary paperwork for you. Only, try not to express any opinions. And avoid saying anything that will make people think you’re speaking in my name. As I said, this is a very delicate situation, but whatever happens, I’d very much
