The Winds of War

field.”

A page boy called him to the telephone. Briskly, an unfamiliar voice said, “Commander Henry? Welcome to these peaceful shores. I’m Carton. Captain Russell Carton. I think we were briefly at the War College together, fighting the Japs on a linoleum checkerboard floor.”

“That’s right, Captain, 1937. The Japs beat the hell out of us, as I recall.” Pug did his best to suppress the astonishment in his tones. Russell Carton was the name of President Roosevelt’s naval aide.

The voice chuckled. “I hope you’ve forgotten that I was the admiral who blew the engagement. When shall I pick you up? Our appointment’s at noon.”

“How far do we have to go?”

“Just around the corner. The White House. You’re seeing the President… . Hello? Are you there?”

“Yes, sir. Seeing the President, you said. Do I get a briefing on this?”

“Not that I know of. Wear dress whites. Suppose I pick you up at eleven-thirty.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

He went back to his table and ordered more coffee. The others asked no questions. He kept his face blank, but it was hard to fool these old friends. They knew it was odd that he was back from Berlin so soon. They probably guessed that he had received a startling call. That didn’t matter. Munson said, “Pug, don’t you have a boy in Pensacola? I’m flying down there day after tomorrow to drop some pearls of wisdom about carrier landings. Come along.”

“If I can, Paul. I’ll call you.”

Pug was sorry when they left. The shoptalk about a combat exercise they were planning had brought back the smell of machinery, of sea air, of coffee on the bridge. Their gossip of recent promotions and assignments, their excitement over the quickening world events and the improving chances for action and glory — this was his element, and he had been out of it too long. He got a haircut, brilliantly shined his own shoes, put a fresh, white cover on his cap, donned his whites and ribbons, and sat in the lobby for an eternally long forty-five minutes, puzzling over the imminent encounter with Franklin Roosevelt, and dreading it. He had met him before.

A sailor came through the revolving door and called his name. He rode the few blocks to the White House in a gray Navy Chevrolet, dazedly trying to keep up chitchat with Captain Carton, a beefy man with a crushing handgrip on whose right shoulder blue-and-gold “loafer’s loops” blazed. This marked him as a presidential aide, to those who knew; otherwise staff aiguillettes belonged on the left shoulder. Pug kept step with the captain through the broad public rooms of the White House, along corridors, up staircases. “Here we are,” Carton said, leading him into a small room. “Wait a moment.” The moment lasted twenty-seven minutes. Pug Henry looked at old sea-battle engravings on the wall, and out of the window; he paced, sat in a heavy brown leather chair, and paced again.

He was wondering whether the President would remember him, and hoping he wouldn’t. In 1918, as a very cocky Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Roosevelt had crossed to Europe on a destroyer. The wardroom officers, including Ensign Henry, had snickered at the enormously tall, very handsome young man with the famous family name, who made a great show of using nautical terms and bounding up ladders like a sea dog, while dressed in outlandish costumes that he kept changing. He was a charmer, the officers agreed, but a lightweight, almost a phony, spoiled by an easy rich man’s life. He wore pince-nez glasses in imitation of his great relative, President Teddy Roosevelt, and he also imitated his booming manly manner; but a prissy Harvard accent made this heartiness somewhat ridiculous.

One morning Ensign Henry had done his usual workout on the forecastle, churning up a good sweat. Because there was a water shortage, he had hosed himself down from a saltwater riser on the well deck. Unfortunately the ship was pitching steeply. The hose had gotten away from him and spouted down into the hatchway to the wardroom, just as Roosevelt was coming topside in a gold-buttoned blazer, white flannel trousers, and straw hat. The costume had been wrecked, and Pug had endured a fierce chewing out by his captain and the dripping Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

A door opened. “All right. Come on in, Pug,” Captain Carton said.

The President waved at him from behind the desk. “Hello there! Glad to see you!” The warm commanding aristocratic voice, so recognizable from radio broadcasts, jarred Pug with its very familiarity. He got a confused impression of a grand beautiful curved yellow room cluttered with books and pictures. A gray-faced man in a gray suit slouched in an armchair near the President. Franklin Roosevelt held out a hand: “Drop your bonnet on the desk, Commander, and have a chair. How about some lunch? I’m just having a bite.” A tray with half-eaten scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee stood on a serving table by the President’s swivel chair. He was in shirt-sleeves and wore no tie. Pug had not seen him, except in newsreels and photographs, in more than twenty years. His high coloring was unchanged and he was the same towering man, gone gray-headed, much older and very much heavier; and though he had the unmistakable lordly look of a person in great office, a trace remained in the upthrust big jaw of the youthful conceit that had made the ensigns on the Davey snicker. His eyes were sunken, but very bright and keen.

“By the way, this is the Secretary of Commerce, Harry Hopkins.”

The gray-faced man gave Henry a brief winning smile, with a light tired gesture that made a handshake unnecessary.

The President looked archly at Victor Henry, his big heavy head cocked to one side. “Well, Pug, have you learned yet how to hang onto a saltwater hose at sea?”

“Oh, gawd, sir.” Pug put a hand to his face in mock despair. “I’ve heard about your memory, but I hoped you’d forgotten that.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” The President threw his head back. “Harry, this young fellow absolutely ruined the best blue serge blazer and straw hat I ever owned, back in 1918. Thought I’d forget that, did you? Not on your life. 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.”

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 President’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.”

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