“Care for something to drink, Mr. Hoffman?” Churchill said, as if reading his mind.
“Scotch and water,” Hoffman said.
“Immediately,” Churchill ordered the butler with a chuckle. “Mr. Hoffman looks as if he is in need of refreshment.” He took a sip of brandy and said: “All in all, how do you think we English are faring, Mr. Hoffman?”
“All in all, Prime Minister,” Hoffman said, lighting a cigarette, “I’d say that the Germans gave you the old one-two combination and you’re on the ropes.”
“That’s a lovely boxing analogy.”
“Thank you. Feel free to pass that on.”
“Indeed, I shall. Louis, we English can be obstinate. We are like a bulldog; you can beat us time and again and we will come back after you. Feel free to pass that on as well, Louis.”
“Thanks, Winston, I will.”
The butler arrived with the drink and Hoffman took a healthy taste. “Ahhh, the breakfast of champions.” He eyed Churchill. “We’ve got the go-ahead?”
“By all means, Louis, Parliament has approved it, my lords of the Admiralty assure me that it will be a calm and relaxing voyage.” He paused and swirled the remaining brandy inside the snifter. “This may be the most important meeting undertaken in the history of these two great countries. We are the same blood, you Americans and we British. We have a common ancestry and common values, not to mention a common language. We are the last bastions of democracy and we must band together to fight this terrible evil.”
Hoffman nodded, ground the cigarette out on the heel of his shoe, and stuck it in a potted plant. “You’re taking a chance, you know. I don’t care what anybody says, it’s a big ocean and those Kraut bastards would like to send you to the bottom. But the fact is that cables and telephone conversations don’t do the trick. Franklin told me that he wanted an eyeball-to-eyeball meeting with you because that’s how he does things.”
“To take the measure of the man, is that how it is?”
“Yeah, except we call it sizing a man up.”
“The same concept, Louis,” Churchill said. “I agree. The issues are far too complex and far-reaching to be relegated to cables and telephone conversations. It would hardly do them justice and may lead to confusion at a time when confusion may lead to catastrophe. We must sit and talk like civilized men.”
“Franklin knows that. You know it. So we’re halfway home. He wants to make this meeting count, Winston. There are a lot of people in the United States who’d just as soon stay out of this mess. They don’t see this thing in Europe as our fight.”
“This ‘thing in Europe’ is every man’s fight, Louis. It is ultimately a struggle of good versus evil.”
“Yeah. That’s what I’ve heard.” Hoffman took a sip of his drink. “Winston, some people in America think that Hitler is the good and you’re the evil. I just hope that we can convince them otherwise before it’s too late.”
“So do I, Louis.”
Hoffman leaned forward, resting his elbows on his tiny legs. “You’ve got to be straight about everything. Brutally honest. Don’t hold back and don’t try to gold-plate anything. Franklin’s a cagey son of a bitch and he can smell a load of horseshit a mile away. Be candid. Don’t hold anything back.”
“I wasn’t aware that I was doing any such thing,” Churchill said calmly, unaffected by Hoffman’s language.
“Maybe not in so many words, but you’ve been careful to add a spoonful of sugar to the answer of every direct question that I’ve asked you.”
Churchill cocked an eyebrow and rolled the cigar around in his mouth. He pushed his considerable bulk out of the settee and walked to a brick wall covered in ivy. He turned and came back to Hoffman.
“One gentleman to another, Mr. Hoffman,” he said in a soft voice, “may I ask what transpired in your communications to President Roosevelt since you arrived?”
“One gentleman to another, Prime Minister, I thought you’d have the damned phone tapped.” Churchill tried to protest but Hoffman continued. “I know Franklin and he may be the president of the United States but he’s also a politician. The same goes for you, so it means that both of you are going to play your cards close to your vest. I told him what I thought, which is what he wanted.”
“What are your thoughts, Mr. Hoffman?”
“You folks are in a hell of a fix over here. If things don’t improve and I mean quick, you’ll be throwing shit balls at the Germans when they land on the beaches. You need arms and munitions and just about everything else. Sometime soon you’ll need American boys to lend a hand.”
“That’s an accurate description of the situation, if a bit caustic.”
“My advice to you, Winston, when you get behind closed doors with Franklin, is to forget all of that blood, sweat, and tears hogwash and tell him the same thing I’ve been saying in my cables: ‘Franklin, it’s the top of the seventh and they’re behind by six runs.’ Get me?”
“Baseball, Louis?” the prime minister inquired.
“Yeah, Winston. If something doesn’t happen and happen soon, England will fall to Germany.”
Churchill nodded somberly. “I see why Franklin enjoys your company.”
“Nobody enjoys my company, Winston. Not even me. I’m a son of a bitch.”
The prime minister expelled a cloud of cigar smoke and then brushed it away with the back of his hand. “Two weeks. We’ll leave Scapa Flow aboard H.M.S. Prince of Wales The meeting with President Roosevelt will be candid, forthright, and untarnished by rhetoric.”
“That’s good.”
“You’ll come with me of course, Louis?”
“Oh, hell yes,” Hoffman said bitterly. “The only thing that I like more than airplanes is boats.”
Churchill cocked his ear to one side when the butler appeared.
“I beg your pardon, sir, but the gentlemen from Germany have arrived.”
“Yes, I thought I heard antiaircraft fire. Louis, would you care to join me in the bombproof?”
Hoffman heard the faint wail of warning sirens and saw tiny flak bursts in the distant sky. “Got anything to drink down there?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Louis.”
Cole maneuvered the MG through crowded streets, darting around stopped vehicles. He stomped on his brakes and the tiny car slid to a stop as civilians rushed across the street to air raid shelters. He heard the coarse boom of antiaircraft artillery, as the shells exploded directly overhead. Barrage balloons swung complacently back and forth.
When the frightened crowd had passed he jammed the gearshift into first and stomped on the gas pedal.
An air raid warden shouted at him to pull over and find a shelter, but he had to get to the row house at Warren Square, Rebecca’s home.
He looked overhead to see a Heinkle, the German bomber, trailing smoke in a long graceful arc, glide languidly across the sky, followed by an angry Hurricane. The British fighter was pumping bullets into the carcass of the enemy plane.
Bombs were hitting around him now; he heard the sharp explosions, and the screams of the people who had not reached the shelters in time. Dirty brown towers of smoke and debris cluttered the horizon as the bombers swept through London. Cole had seen it before and was always fascinated by the macabre slow-motion eruption of the blast and the unidentifiable remnants of houses and people as they fell to earth. He never spoke to anyone about it because he was ashamed to, but he saw magnificence in all of it, a monumental spectacle unfolding in a vast arena. Too much the historian, he had cautioned himself — removed from the reality of war by the crisp white pages and stark black letters of textbooks.