“Better make it last. That’s breakfast until we get to Teheran.”
I was starting to like him again, thinking maybe there was more under his Panama hat than a thick head of black-Irish hair.
There were several planes on the runway at Cairo Airport, and Reilly directed me toward the president’s own C-54. I climbed aboard and sat down alongside Harry Hopkins. It was as if nothing had happened. I shook hands with Hopkins. I shook hands with Roosevelt. I even exchanged a few jokes with John Weitz.
“Nice of you to join us, Professor,” said Hopkins.
“I’m very glad to be here, sir. I understand from Reilly that but for you I wouldn’t be here at all.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I’ll try not to, sir.”
Hopkins nodded happily. “It’s all behind us now. All forgotten. Besides, we couldn’t afford to leave you behind, Willard. We’re going to have need of your linguistic skills.”
“But surely the only foreign language that’s going to be spoken at the Big Three is Russian.”
Hopkins shook his head. “The shah went to school in Switzerland. And I think you are aware of his father’s hatred of the British. Hence, His Majesty speaks only French and German. Because of the delicacy of the political situation in Iran, it was decided to keep any meetings between Reza Shah and the Big Three a secret. For the sake of the shah himself. He’s only twenty-four years old and not yet secure on the throne. Until thirty-six hours ago, we weren’t exactly sure he would risk meeting us at all. That’s why you haven’t been kept informed of what was happening. We didn’t know ourselves. After the war, oil is going to be the key to world power. There’s an ocean of the stuff underneath Iran. It’s why the president agreed to come here in the first place.”
I was already forming the strong impression that, but for my German-language skills, I would still be in a prison cell in Cairo facing a murder charge. Yet even now there was something about Hopkins’s story that didn’t quite add up.
“Then, with all due respect, wouldn’t it have been better to have brought someone along who speaks Farsi?” When Hopkins looked at me blankly, I added, “That’s the Persian name for the modern Persian language, sir.”
“Easier said than done. Even Dreyfus, our ambassador in Teheran, doesn’t speak the local lingo. Hungarian and a little French, but no Farsi. Our State Department isn’t up to snuff in terms of linguists, I’m afraid. Nor anything else, for that matter.”
I glanced around. John Weitz, the State Department’s Russian-language specialist and Bohlen’s substitute, was sitting right behind me, and, having clearly heard Hopkins’s remark, he raised his eyebrows at me with a show of diplomatic patience. A few moments later he got out of his seat to walk back to the plane’s tiny lavatory. Meanwhile, the president, Elliott Roosevelt, Mike Reilly, Averell Harriman, Agent Pawlikowski, and the Joint Chiefs were each of them staring out of the windows as the plane flew over the Suez Canal near Ismailia.
“Since we’re speaking frankly, sir,” I said, taking advantage of Weitz’s absence, “it’s still my belief that we have a German spy traveling in our delegation. A man who has now killed twice. Possibly more. I firmly believe that one of our party intends to assassinate Joseph Stalin.”
Hopkins listened patiently and then nodded. “Professor, I just know you’re wrong. And you’ll have to take my word for why that is, I’m afraid. I can’t tell you why. Not yet. But I happen to know that what you say is just impossible. When we’re on the ground, we can talk about this again. Until then, it might be a good idea if you were just to can this theory of yours. Got that?”
We flew over Jerusalem and Baghdad, crossing the Tigris, up and along the Basra-Teheran railroad, and then from Ramadan to Teheran, always at only five or six thousand feet off the ground so that the lame constitutions of Roosevelt and Hopkins would not be taxed too much by the journey. All the same, I guessed it was quite a job for the pilot, having to negotiate several mountain passes instead of just flying the big C-54 over them.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon when finally we caught sight of the Russian army airfield at Gale Morghe. Dozens of American B-25s repainted with the red star of the Soviet Union sat on the airfield.
“Jesus Christ, that’s a terrifying sight,” joked Roosevelt. “Our own planes in Russian livery. I guess that’s what it will look like if the Commies ever conquer the States, eh, Mike?”
“Painting them is one thing,” said Reilly. “Flying them’s another. The last time I was in this lousy country I learned that to fly with a Russian pilot and live is to lose all fear of death.”
“Mike, I thought you knew,” laughed Roosevelt. “My security exists in inverse proportion to your own insecurity.”
The presidential plane began to make its turn for a landing, banking over a checkerboard of rice fields and banks of puddle mud.
A military escort commanded by General Connolly conveyed Roosevelt and his immediate party to the American legation in the north of the city. I went with the Joint Chiefs, Harriman, Bohlen, and some of the Secret Service to our quarters at Camp Amirabad.
Amirabad was a U.S. Army facility that was still in the process of being built, and it already had a brick barracks, a hospital, a movie theater, some shops, offices, warehouses, and recreational facilities. It looked like any army base in New Mexico or Arizona, and seemed to indicate that the American presence in Teheran was hardly temporary.
As soon as the Joint Chiefs, Bohlen, and I had changed our clothes, we were driven through the streets of Teheran in a convoy of jeeps, cars, and motorcycles to the American legation, where, on the verandah, Secret Service agents Qualter and Rauff were already on guard. I nodded to the agents, and much to my surprise they nodded back.
“Have you got a cigarette?” I asked Qualter. “I seem to have left mine somewhere.”
“Prison, by any chance?” said Qualter, and, smiling wryly, he took out a packet of Kools and tapped one out for me. “Do you mind mentholated?”
“Nope,” I said, quietly noting the brand. “You don’t actually think I killed that woman, do you?”
I didn’t really care what he thought, but I wanted to keep him talking. I was more interested in the discovery that he was smoking Kools.
Qualter lit my cigarette and shrugged. “Not my place to think anything that doesn’t affect the safety of the boss. Hell, I dunno, Professor. You sure don’t look like a murderer, I’ll say that much for you. But, then, you don’t look like a secret agent, either.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” I glanced down the front of Qualter’s single-breasted jacket, counting the buttons. There were three, just as there were supposed to be. “Anyway, thanks for the cigarette.”
“That’s okay.” Qualter grinned. “They ain’t mine.”
“Oh? Whose are they?”
But Qualter had already turned away to open the door for the Joint Chiefs. I followed them inside, walking up a wooden ramp that had been built by army carpenters to facilitate Roosevelt’s entry and exit. It seemed the ramp had also presented the American delegation with a problem. Settled in the drawing room, the president was asking for a drink and Ambassador Dreyfus had to explain that the ramp had been built on top of the only entrance to the legation’s wine cellar. He had been obliged to borrow eight bottles of scotch from the British ambassador, Sir Reader Bullard. Reilly heard Dreyfus out politely, then steered the ambassador to the door.
“Jesus,” remarked Roosevelt when Dreyfus had gone. “Forget the scotch, what about the gin? And the vermouth? Mike? How am I going to mix a goddamned martini without any gin and vermouth?”
Reilly nodded at Pawlikowski, who left the room, presumably in search of some gin and vermouth.
“Take a seat, gentlemen,” said Hopkins.
I sat down beside Chip Bohlen, facing the president, Hopkins, Admirals King and Leahy, and Ambassador Harriman. I hadn’t seen much of Harriman up close. He was tall, with a prominent jaw and the kind of smile lines that put you in mind of a clown without makeup. He had dark hair, with big furry eyebrows that anchored a forehead as high as Grand Central Station. His father had been a robber baron, one of the big railway magnates, and I supposed he was even richer than my mother. He looked a little how I was feeling, which was nervous.