the glorious Reich waiting for his two feet to touch down on, maybe waiting for his corpse. He tried to banish this thought while the Lysander plowed doggedly southward against the storm, and by the time the plane began to descend, he had been asleep for over an hour.
The impact of the wheels on earth knocked him awake. “Is this Sweden?” he asked woozily.
“Not quite, lad.”
Brigadier Smith’s voice. The plane turned and taxied back the way it had come. Outside, McConnell saw only darkness. Then a pair of auto headlights blinked three times.
The pilot rolled up to the car and stopped.
“Out,” Smith ordered.
They trundled out of the plane and into the car, a polished Humber. The pilot stayed in the Lysander. The driver of the Humber wore a chauffer’s black uniform and drove like a man late for his daughter’s wedding. The German uniforms drew several glances in the rearview mirror, but very shortly the car drew up beside a large, trimmed hedge. Smith got out and led them through a formal English garden. McConnell saw a faint reflection of moonlight on mullioned windows, then he was standing with Smith and Stern beside an oak door.
“Where the hell are we?” asked Stern.
“Clean up your language,” the brigadier said tersely.
Smith opened the door and led them into a dim corridor. McConnell smelled leather bookbindings and old chintz, oiled wood and tea. As they moved through the dark house, he saw the gleam of brass and crystal. For a moment he thought they’d entered the rooms of his tutor at Oxford. But that was impossible.
Brigadier Smith turned suddenly into another corridor lit by an electric wall lamp. He stopped before a door. The paneling beside it looked four hundred years old. Smith put his hand on the doorknob, then looked back at Stern.
“Look sharp,” he said. “Speak only when spoken to, and keep a civil tongue in your head.”
McConnell noticed with some uneasiness that the brigadier’s usual informality was nowhere in evidence. Every word and gesture was distinctly military. When Smith opened the door, he realized why.
The first thing he saw was the bald top of a round head. The head was leaning over a huge map that, even upside down, McConnell recognized as the Pas de Calais. The portly body was encased in a navy pea jacket, which seemed odd until McConnell noticed that the interior of the house was barely warmer than the frigid air outside. He smelled the long cigar in the ashtray before he saw it, then the aromatic brandy in the crystal glass.
Winston Churchill looked up from the map and blinked.
“By thunder!” he cried, standing straight. “Himmler’s hooligans have come for me at last!”
McConnell laughed, a little hysterically perhaps, but the prime minister had found exactly the right gambit to put them at ease. It couldn’t be too often that Winston Churchill found himself face to face with jackbooted SS officers. His grin as he looked them up and down seemed to indicate that he was enjoying it. McConnell marveled at the vitality radiating from the man. Churchill was seventy years old, but his watery blue eyes shone with humor and almost unnerving intelligence. When he stuck the cigar between his lips and spoke directly to McConnell, Mark felt a sudden magnifying of his own importance, like a subtle shift in the earth’s gravitational field.
“So, how did you like Scotland, Doctor?” he asked, his voice far richer than his radio broadcasts. “Quite a tough little course, eh?”
The forward thrust of Churchill’s prodigious head seemed an implicit challenge. “Pretty tough,” McConnell agreed.
“Duff tells me you passed with flying colors.”
McConnell was aware that the prime minister exploited every facet of his daunting charisma to sway others to his cause, yet despite this awareness he could not but be affected by it. He felt almost defensive when he heard Stern mutter behind him:
“Games.”
“What’s that?” Churchill asked, cocking his chin and puffing on the cigar. “Stern, isn’t it?”
“I said
McConnell had no doubt Brigadier Smith was on the verge of knifing Stern in the kidneys.
“Mr. Stern,” said Churchill, “they play games at Achnacarry because war
He set his cigar in the ashtray and leaned across the desk, his hands splayed on its polished surface. “I asked to see you men for two reasons. Because you are civilians, and because you are not British subjects. You are undertaking a mission of the most hazardous nature. I want to impress upon you the supreme importance of this mission. This mission, gentlemen,
He hiked both trouser legs and sat behind the desk. “I wanted to speak especially to you, Doctor McConnell. I understand you’re a follower of Mr. Gandhi?”
McConnell found himself surprisingly willing to answer. “To a degree, yes.”
“I hope not to the degree that some of your scientific colleagues are. Do you know Professor Bohr?”
“Niels Bohr? The Danish physicist?”
“That’s the man.”
“I know of him.”
“That utopist has the most muddleheaded perspective on war I’ve ever heard. He’s like a bloody child. He sat in front of me and rambled for three quarters of an hour and I still had no idea what he was talking about. I think it all boiled down to resisting violence with humility. At least Gandhi says it in one tenth the time.”
Churchill’s eyes narrowed with incisive curiosity. “What about you, Doctor? Do
McConnell did not answer immediately. The mention of Niels Bohr had distracted him. The renowned physicist was supposed to be in Sweden. How had he “sat in front of” Winston Churchill? This strange revelation dovetailed with the whispered rumors he had heard at Oxford about accelerated research into atomic physics.
“Doctor?” Churchill prompted.
“I think events have gone beyond that now, Mr. Prime Minister. But I also think Hitler could have been stopped with little or no violence years ago.”
“I quite agree. But we live in the present.” His voice rose a semitone. “Duff tells me your father won the Distinguished Service Cross in the Great War. At the St. Mihiel salient.”
“That’s right,” said McConnell, wondering why Churchill’s knowledge of his past should take him by surprise. “Also the Silver Star. Of course, he threw them both into the Potomac River in 1932.”
Churchill tucked his chin into his chest and gave McConnell a froglike stare. “Why the devil did he do that?”
McConnell wasn’t sure the prime minister would like the answer, but he told him. “Remember the Bonus Army Riot in Washington? During the Depression?”
“Veteran’s pensions or something?” rumbled Churchill.
“Exactly. Some men from my father’s old unit had gone up with the vets who were trying to get relief from the government. There were about twenty-five thousand of them, with their families. They called and asked my dad if he would go up and try to give them some medical help. He went. The D.C. police were feeding the vets and their families, but President Hoover had no sympathy. After three months of peaceful demonstration, he called in the army. The army attacked the unarmed crowds with tear gas, bayonets, cavalry, and tanks. Several vets were shot, some infants gassed to death.” McConnell paused. “My father was in that crowd.”
Churchill watched with unblinking eyes. “Do I sense some deeper moral to this story?”
“A footnote. I have since learned the names of some of the officers who attacked that crowd. The troops were led by a man named Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur disobeyed Hoover and went far beyond his original orders. MacArthur’s aide was a Major Dwight Eisenhower. The saber-wielding cavalry were led by Captain George Patton. So, Mr. Prime Minister, perhaps you understand why my devotion to the military is less than blind.”
“I do indeed. Politics can be a difficult business, Doctor. I must sadly admit that I have made similar mistakes. But none of that affects the current situation. I don’t have to explain to a man of your gifts the threat facing Christian civilization.”
McConnell had no doubt that Stern had noted the omission of Jews from that formulation.
“For your own reasons, whatever they are, you have agreed to go on this mission. For that I thank you. I am
