Potter smiled. “It may even be different on the sub. I hope so, at least.”
Churchill looked at von Steigerwald, who glanced at his watch. “Midnight. We rendezvous at three AM, if everything goes well.”
Churchill grunted. “It never does.”
“This went well.” Potter was still smiling. “I know you two know everything, Mr. Prime Minister, but I don’t. How did he get you out?”
Still in uniform, Von Steigerwald straightened his tunic and brushed away an invisible speck of lint. “He got himself out, mostly. Killed an officer. He won’t tell me how.”
“Killing is a brutal business.” Churchill shook his head. “Even with sword or gun. With one’s hands …He trusted me. Or trusted my age, at least. Thought I could never overpower him, or that I would lack the will to try. If it was in my weakness he trusted, he was nearly right. It was, as Wellington said of a more significant victory, a near run thing. If it was in my fear, the captain mistook foe for friend. What had I to lose? I would have been put to death, and soon. Better to perish like a Briton.”
He pulled back his shabby coat to show the Mauser. “Perhaps it was seeing this. His holster covered most of it, but I could see the grip. Quite distinctive. Once upon a time, eh? Once upon a time, long before either of you saw light, I was a dashing young cavalry officer. Seeing this, I remembered.”
“The Germans have pressed every kind of pistol they can find into service,” von Steigerwald explained. “Even Polish and French guns.”
Churchill puffed his cigar and made a face. “What I wish to know is where I tripped up. Did you recognize me? The light was so bad, and I’d starved for so long, that I thought I could risk it. No cigar, eh? No bowler. Still wearing the clothes they took me in. So how did you know?”
“That you were Churchill? From your gun. I pulled it out of your waist band and thought, by god it’s a broom- handle Mauser. Churchill used one of these fifty years ago. I’d had a briefing on you, and I’d been interested in the gun. You bought it in Cairo.”
Churchill nodded.
“That was when it finally struck me that Spencer was your middle name. Your byline—I read some of your books and articles—was Winston S. Churchill.”
“You didn’t know about Leonard, then.” Churchill looked around for an ashtray and, finding none, tapped the ash from his cigar into a pocket of his shabby coat. “In full, my name is Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. I should have been more careful about my alias. I had to think very quickly, though, and the only others I could seize on just then were John Smith and George Brown. Either, I felt, would have been less than convincing.”
Potter grinned. “Very.”
“In my own defense, I thought I was dealing with a German officer.” Churchill turned to von Steigerwald. “This isn’t what I wanted to inquire about, however.
How did you know I had been lying to you?”
“I wasn’t certain until I realized you were the man I’d been sent to rescue. A couple of things made me suspicious, and when I saw the bulge of your gun butt—”
“What were they?”
“Once you said ‘we’ in speaking of the prisoners,” von Steigerwald explained. “I said that the S.S. would make the prisoners eat their excrement, and you said, ‘No doubt we would.’ It sounded wrong, and when I thought about it, I realized that you couldn’t have been what you said you were—an Englishman working for the Germans. If you had been, they would have made you clean under the cars. Why did you confirm that you had been a prisoner when the Germans were denying they had him?”
“Ignorance. I didn’t know they were. I had walked for miles along those dark tracks, trying to find a way out. I couldn’t. All the tunnels ended in rubble and earth.”
“Flattened by bombs?” Potter asked.
Churchill nodded. “To get out, I was going to have to go out through the German headquarters, and I could think of no practical way of doing that. Then the colonel here came, plainly a visitor since he was S.S., not army, and because he had an escort. I hoped to attach myself to him, a knowledgeable, subservient Englishman who might inform on the commandant if he could be convinced it was safe. I would persuade him to take me with him, and when he did, I would be outside. Sergeant Lohr and any Germans in the headquarters would know who I was, of course. But if they were wise—if they spoke with the commandant first, certainly—they would let me go without a word. If they prevented me, the army would be blamed for my escape; but if they held their peace and let me go, they could report quite truthfully that I had been taken away by the S.S. With luck, they might even get the credit for my recapture later.”
Potter said, “That won’t happen.”
“I’ve answered your questions, Mr. Potter.” Churchill looked accusingly at his smoldering cigar and set it on the edge of the little table. “Now you must answer one or two for me. The colonel here has told me that I am not being taken to President Kuhn. It relieved my mind at the time and will relieve it further now, if you confirm it. What do you say?”
“That we want you, not Kuhn.” By a gesture, Potter indicated von Steigerwald and himself. “Donovan sent us. We’re from the O.S.S.—the Office of Strategic Services. Roosevelt set us up before he was voted out, and he put Colonel Donovan in charge. President Kuhn has found us useful.”
Churchill looked thoughtful. “As you hope to find me.”
“Exactly. Kuhn and his German-American Bund have been pro-German throughout the war, as you must know. America even sold Germany munitions.”
Churchill nodded.
“But now Hitler’s the master of Europe, and he’s starting to look elsewhere. He has to keep his army busy, after all, and he needs new triumphs.” Potter leaned forward, his thin face intense. “Roosevelt, who had been immensely popular just a year before, was removed from office because he opened America to European Jews —”
“Including you,” von Steigerwald put in.
“Right, including me and thousands more like me. America was just recovering from the Depression, and people were terrified of us refugees and what we might do to the economy. Fritz Kuhn and his German-American Bund replaced the old, patriotic Republican Party that had freed the slaves. I’m sure that half the people who voted for Kuhn hoped he would send us back to Hitler.”
Churchill said, “Which he has declined to do.”
“Of course.” Potter grinned. “Who would he protect America from if we were gone? He’s getting shaky as it is.”
Von Steigerwald cleared his throat. “It might be possible to persuade Roosevelt to come out of retirement. Potter here thinks that way. He may be right.”
“Or at least to get Roosevelt to endorse some other Democrat,” Potter said.
Churchill nodded. “I could suggest half a dozen. No doubt you could add a dozen more. But where do I come into all this? Donovan wants me, you say.”
Potter nodded. “He does, but to understand where you come in, Mr. Prime Minister, you have to understand Donovan and his position. He was Roosevelt’s man. Roosevelt appointed him, and he’s done a wonderful job. The O.S.S. worked hard and selflessly for America when Roosevelt was president, and it’s working hard and selflessly for America now that Kuhn and his gang are in the White House.”
“Yet he would prefer Roosevelt.” Churchill fished a fresh cigar from his pocket.
“We all would,” Potter said. “Donovan doesn’t think he’ll do it—he’s a sick man—but that’s what all of us would like. We’d like America to go back to nineteen forty and correct the mistake she made then. Above all, we’d like the Bund out of power.”
Rolling the cigar between his hands, Churchill nodded.
“But if and when it comes to a war between Hitler and Kuhn, we will be with Kuhn and our country.”
“Right or wrong.” Churchill smiled.
“Exactly.”
Von Steigerwald cleared his throat again. “You’re not American, Potter. You’re a refugee—you said so. Where were you born?”
“In London,” Potter snapped. “But I’m as American as you are. I’m a naturalized United States citizen.”
