The Winds of War

the letter which lay on the desk beside the clock, scrawled on two sheets of Hotel National paper. The tiny barren room was freezing cold, though the windows were sealed shut. He threw on a heavy woollen bathrobe he had bought in London, and an extra pair of warm socks, and sat at the desk to reread the letter.

My dear Mr. President:

Command of the California fulfills my life’s ambitions. I can only try to serve in a way that will justify this trust. Mr. Hopkins is receiving a report on a visit I made at his request to the front outside Moscow. I put in all the trivial details which might not be worthy of your attention. My basic impression was confirmed that the Russians will probably hold the Germans and in time drive them out. But the cost will be terrible. Meantime they need and deserve all the aid we can send them, as quickly as possible. For our own selfish purposes, we can’t make better use of arms because they are killing large numbers of Germans. I saw many of the dead ones.

I also take the liberty to mention that the embassy here has recently received documentary evidence of an almost incredible mass slaying of Jews outside the city of Minsk by some German paramilitary unit. I remember your saying on the Augusta that scolding Hitler any further would be humiliating and futile. But in Europe, America is regarded as the last bastion of humanity; and you, Mr. President, are to these people the voice of the righteous God on earth. It’s a heavy burden, but nevertheless that is the fact. I venture to suggest that you ask to see this material about Minsk yourself. The Germans will think twice about proceeding with such outrages if you denounce them to the world and back up your condemnation with documentary evidence. Also, world opinion might be turned once and for all against the Hitler government.

Respectfully yours,

Victor Henry, Captain, U.S.N.

In this fresh look after a sleep, the letter struck him most forcibly as an ill-considered communication, for which the right place was the wastebasket. The first two paragraphs were innocuous; but the President’s sharp eye would at once detect that they were padding. The rest, the meat of the letter, was superfluous and even offensive. He was advising the President to go over the heads of everybody in the State Department, including his own ambassador in the Soviet Union, to demand a look at some documents. The odds against Roosevelt’s actually doing this were prohibitive; and his opinion of Victor Henry would certainly drop. He would at once recall that Henry had a Jewish daughter-in-law, about whom there had been trouble. And Pug did not even know that the documents were authentic. Jastrow might have been sent by the NKVD, as Tudsbury thought, to plant the material for American consumption. The man seemed genuine, but that proved nothing.

In his career Henry had drafted dozens of wrongly conceived letters to get a problem out of his system, and then had discarded the letters. He had a hard editorial eye, and an unerring sense of professional self-preservation. He threw the letter face down on the desk as a heavy rapping came at the door. There stood Alistair Tudsbury, leaning on his cane in the doorway, enormous and red-faced in an astrakhan hat and a long brown fur coat. “Thank God you’re here, old friend.” The correspondent limped to an armchair and sat in a dusty shaft of sunlight, stretching out his bad leg. “Sorry to crash in on you like this, but — I say, you’re all right, aren’t you?”

“Oh yes. I’m just great.” Pug was rubbing his face hard with both hands. “I was up all night writing a report. What’s doing?”

The correspondent’s bulging eyes probed at him. “This is going to be difficult, but here it is straight” Are you and Pamela lovers?”

“What!” Pug was too startled, and too tired, to be either angry or amused. “Why, no! Of course not.”

“Well, funnily enough, I didn’t think you were. That makes it all the more awkward and baffling. Pamela has just told me flatly that she’s not returning to London unless you’re going there! If you’re off to Kuibyshev, she means to tag along and work for the British embassy or something. Now this is wild nonsense!” Tudsbury burst out, banging the cane on the floor. “To begin with, I know the Nark won’t have it. But she’s turned to stone. There’s no reasoning with her. And those RAF fellows are flying off at noon, and they’ve got space for both of us.”

“Where is she now?”

“Why, she’s gone out for a stroll in Red Square, of all things! Can you imagine? Won’t even pack, you see. Victor, I’m not coming the indignant father on you, you do realize that, don’t you?” Talky Tudsbury appeared in a manic state of verbosity, even for him. “This would be a most absurd stance for me to take. Hell, I’ve done exactly as I pleased in these little matters myself all my life. She’d laugh in my face if I tried to talk morality to her. But what about common sense? You don’t want her trailing after you, a happily married man, do you? It’s so embarrassing! In any case, what about Ted Gallard? Why, she told me to tell him it was all off! When I said I’d do nothing of the sort, she sat down and scribbled a letter for him and threw it in my bag. I tell you I’m having the devil of a time with Pam.”

Putting a hand to his brow, Victor Henry said in weary tones, yet with a glad surge at heart, “Well, take my word for it, I’m utterly amazed.”

“I was sure you would be. I’ve told her till I’m blue in the face that it’s no go, that you’re a straitlaced old- fashioned man, the soul of honor, devoted to your wife, and all that sort of thing. Well, the minx simply agrees and says that’s why she likes you. Quite unreachable! Victor, surely it’s dangerous and silly for a British girl to go rattling aimlessly around in Moscow, with the Huns closing in on all sides.”

“Yes, it is. Why don’t you go to Kuibyshev with her, Talky? Every foreign correspondent in Russia was on that train, except you.”

“They’re all idiots. Getting news right here in Moscow was hard enough. What the devil will they find to write about in that mudhole on the Volga? They’ll just drink themselves into cirrhosis of the liver and play poker until their eyes give out. Mine are bad enough. I’m skedaddling. If the Russkis hold Moscow, I’ll come back. I hope and believe they will, but if they don’t, it’s all over. England’s at the end of her rope, you know that. We’ll all throw in our hands. It’ll be the great world shift, and your FDR with his brilliant sense of timing can then face a whole globe armed against him.”

Victor Henry stumbled to the yellowed mirror and rubbed his bristly chin. “I’d better talk to Pamela.”

“Please, dear fellow, please. And hurry!”

* * *

Pug came outside to fresh snow, bright sunshine, and a ragged burst of Russian song by male voices. A formation of old men and boys, shouldering picks and shovels and lustily shouting a marching tune, was following an army sergeant down Maneznaya Square. The rest of the Muscovites appeared to be trudging normally about their business, bundled up and shawled as usual, but the sidewalk crowds were much thinner. Perhaps, thought Pug, all the rats had now left and these were the real people of Moscow.

He walked up to Red Square, past an enormous poster of the embattled motherland, embodied as a shouting robust woman brandishing a sword and a red flag and smaller posters of rats, spiders, and snakes with Hitler faces being bayonetted by angry handsome Russian soldiers or squashed under Red Army tanks. The square was deserted: white thick snow almost unmarked by footprints carpeted the great expanse. In front of the Lenin tomb outside the Kremlin wall its red marble hidden by layers of snow-crusted sandbags, two soldiers stood as usual like clothed statues, but there was no line of visitors. Far on the other side, Victor Henry saw a small bulky figure in gray walking alone past Saint Basil’s Cathedral. Even at this distance he recognized the swingy gait of the Bremen deck and the way she moved her arms. He headed toward her, his overshoes sinking deep in snow speckled black with paper ash. She saw him and waved. Hurrying to meet him across the snow, she threw herself in his arms and kissed him as she had on his return from the flight to Berlin. Her breath was fragrant and warm. “Damn! The governor went and told you.”

“That’s right.”

“Are you exhausted? I know you were up all night. There are benches by the cathedral. What are your plans? Are you all set for Kuibyshev? Or will you go to London?”

They were walking arm in arm, fingers clasped. “Neither. Sudden change. I’ve gotten orders, Pam. They were waiting for me here. I’m going to command a battleship, the California.”

She stopped and pulled on his elbow to swing him toward her, clasped both his arms, and looked in his face with wide glistening eyes. “Command a battleship!”

“Not bad, eh!” he said like a schoolboy.

“My God, smashing! You’re bound to be an admiral after that, aren’t you? Oh, how happy your wife will be!” Pamela said this with unselfconscious pleasure and resumed walking. “I wish we had a bottle of that sticky