The Winds of War

eyes, you know? Remote, and sort of veiled. Say, what happens to our dinner for that tycoon from Colorado? What’s his name? Will that be off?”

“Dr. Kirby. He may not get here now, Rhoda.”

“Dear, please find out. I have guests coming, and extra help and food, you know.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Rhoda said slowly, “World War Two… You know, Time has been writing about ‘World War Two’ for months. It always seemed so unreal, somehow. Now here it is, but it still has a funny ring.”

“You’ll soon get used to it.”

“Oh, no doubt. It’s on now. I’m supposed to have lunch with Sally Forrest. I’d better find out if that’s still on. What a mess! And my hair appointment — oh, no, that’s tomorrow. Or is it? I don’t function this time of the morning.”

Because of the early meeting, Pug gave up his cherished five-mile morning walk to the embassy, and drove there. Berlin was, if anything, quieter than usual. There was a Sunday morning look to the tree-lined avenues in mid-city, a slackening of auto traffic, a scarcity of people on the sidewalks. All the shops were open. Small trucks with machine guns at the ready, manned by helmeted soldiers, stood at some intersections, and along the walls of public buildings workmen were piling sandbags. But it was all a desultory business. The coffee shops were full of breakfasters, and in the Tiergarten the early morning strollers — nannies, children, elderly people — were out as usual for the fine weather, with the vendors of toy balloons and ice cream. Loudspeakers everywhere were blatting the news, and an unusual number airplanes went humming across the sky. The Berliners kept looking at the sky and then at each other with cynical sad grins. He remembered pictures of the happy cheering Berliners crowding Unter den Linden at the start of the last war. Clearly the Germans were going into this one in a different mood.

The embassy was a maelstrom of scared tourists and would-be refugees, mainly old Jews. In the charge’s large quiet office the staff meeting was sombre and short. No special instructions from Washington had yet come in. Mimeographed sheets of wartime regulations were passed around. The charge urged on everyone special care to preserve a correct tone of neutrality. If England and France came in, the embassy would probably look out for their people caught in Germany; a lot of lives might depend on appropriate American conduct at this touchy moment toward the truculent Germans. After the meeting Victory Henry attacked an in-tray stuffed with paper in his office, telling his yeoman to try and track down Dr. Palmer Kirby, the electrical engineer from Colorado who bore a “very important” designation from the Bureau of Ordnance.

Alistair Tudsbury telephoned. “Hullo! Would you like to hear the bad man explain all to the Reichstag? I can get you in to the press box. This is my last story from Berlin. I have my marching papers and should have left days ago, but got a medical delay. I owe you something for that glimpse of Swinemunde.

“You don’t owe me anything, but I’ll sure come.”

“Good. He speaks at three. Pam will call for you at two. We’re packing up like mad. I hope we don’t get interned. It’s this German food that’s given me the gout.”

The yeoman came in and laid a telegram on the desk.

“Tudsbury, can’t I take you and Pamela to lunch?”

“No, no. No time. Many thanks. After this little unpleasantness, maybe. In 1949 or thereabouts.”

Pug laughed. “Ten years? You’re a pessimist.”

He opened the telegram, and got a bad shock. DO YOU KNOW WHEREABOUTS YOUR SON BYRON AND MY NIECE NATALIE PLEASE WIRE OR CALL. It was signed: AARON JASTROW, with an address and telephone number in Siena.

Pug rang for the yeoman and handed the telegram. Try to get through to Siena, to this man. Also wire him: NO KNOWLEDGE. PLEASE WIRE LAST KNOWN WHEREABOUTS.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

He decided not to tell Rhoda. Trying to go back to work he found himself unable to comprehend the substance of simple letters. He gave up, and looked out of the window at the Berliners going their ways in bright sunshine. Open trucks full of soldiers in gray were snorting along the street in a long procession. The soldiers looked bored. A small silver blimp came floating across the clear blue sky, towing a sign advertising Odol toothpaste. He swallowed his worry as best he could, and attacked his in-basket again.

The telephone rang as he was leaving the office for lunch. He heard multilingual jabber and then a cultured American voice with a faint accent, “Commander Henry? Aaron Jastrow. It’s very good of you to call.”

“Dr. Jastrow, I thought I’d better tell you immediately that I don’t know where Byron and your niece are. I had no idea they weren’t in Siena with you.”

“Well, I hesitated to wire you, but I thought you could help locate them. Two weeks ago they went to Warsaw.”

“Warsaw!”

“Yes, to visit a friend in our embassy there.”

“I’ll get on it right away. Our embassy, you said?”

“Yes. The second secretary, Leslie Slote, is a former pupil of mine, a brilliant fellow. I imagine he and Natalie will get married one day.” Pug scrawled the name. Jastrow coughed. “Excuse me. It was a risky trip to make, I guess, but they did set out before the pact. She’s twenty-seven and has quite a will of her own. Byron volunteered to go with her. That’s really why I refuse to worry. He’s a very capable young man.”

Victory Henry, dazed by the news, still found pleasure in this good word for Byron. Over the years he had not heard many. “Thanks. I’ll wire you when I find out something. And if you get any word, let me know.”

Jastrow coughed again. “Sorry. I have a touch of bronchitis. I remember the last war so well, Commander! It really wasn’t long ago, was it? All this is giving me a strange, terribly sad feeling. Almost despairing. I hope we’ll meet one day. It would give me pleasure to know Byron’s father. He worships you.”

The long table in Horcher’s restaurant was a listening post, an information exchange, and a clearing house for little diplomatic deals. Today, the cheery clink of silverware in the crowded restaurant, the smell of roast meats, the loud animated talk, were much the same; but at this special table there were changes. Several attaches had put on their uniforms. The Pole — a big cheerful purple-faced man with great moustaches, who usually outdrank everybody — was gone. The Englishman was missing. The French attache, in heavy gold braid, gloomed in his usual place. The comical Dane, senior among them, white-haired and fat, still wore his white linen suit; but he was stiff and quiet. The talk was constrained. Warsaw Radio claimed the Germans were being thrown back, but nobody could confirm that. On the contrary, the flashes from their capitals echoed German boasts: victory everywhere, hundreds of Polish planes smashed on the ground, whole armies surrounded. Pug ate little and left early.

Pamela Tudsbury leaned against the iron grillwork in front of the embassy, near the line of sad-looking Jews that stretched around the block. She wore the gray suit of their morning walk on the Bremen. “Well,” he said, as they walked side by side, “so the little tramp went.”

She gave him a surprised, flattered look. “Didn’t he ever! Here’s our car. Directly after the speech we’re off. We’re flying to Copenhagen at six, and lucky to have the seats. They’re like diamonds.”

She drove the car in nervous zigzags through side streets to get around a long convoy of tanks on a main boulevard.

“Well, I’m sorry to see you and your dad go,” Pug said. “I’ll sure miss your fireball style at the wheel. Where to next?”

“My guess is back to the USA. The governor’s well liked there, and it’ll be the number one spot, actually, with Berlin shut down.”

“Pamela, don’t you have a young man in London, or several, who object to your being so much on the move?” The girl — that was how he thought of her, which showed his own age — looked flushed and sparkling- eyed. The driving gestures of her small white hands were swift, sharp and well controlled. She diffused an agreeable light peppery scent, like carnations.

“Oh, not at the moment, Commander. And the governor does need me since his eyes have got so bad. I like to travel, so I’m happy enough to — bless my soul. Look to your left. Don’t be obvious about it.”

Beside them, halted at the traffic light, Hermann Goring sat at the wheel of an open red two-seater, looking imperious and enormous. He wore a tan double-breasted business suit, with the flaring lapels that all his clothes displayed. The broad brim of his Panama hat was snapped down to the side and back, in an out-of-date, somewhat