He lifted the London Times.
“I keep up with events. I receive honorary degrees. My friend Chandor here is immortalizing me. And I will be crossing America with Mr. Truman, although I will not be joining him on his daily constitutional. Does he continue that practice?”
“Without fail, rain or shine.”
“Do me the world of good, I suppose, but I get my exercise being a pallbearer for my friends who swear by calisthenics and exercise,” Churchill said, patting his ample girth. “Unfortunately, the man rises at dawn. I work on a rather different clock.”
He smiled and directed his remarks to Chandor.
“What say you, Douglas?”
He turned again to Benson. “I know what he’s doing. He’s making me look like a bulldog.”
“I’m trying my best, Mr. Churchill,” Chandor said, dabbing his brush against the canvas, stepping back to assess his work.
“I am more a lion than a bulldog, Chandor. Frankly, I prefer the lion.”
“Then roar away, sir,” Chandor chuckled, obviously enjoying the banter. “Your recess is over.”
“Well, then back to the grindstone,” Churchill said, resuming his pose and picking up the Times and the magnifying glass.
“Nice meeting you, Mr. Benson. I hope you have a pleasant stay in this tropical paradise.” Benson rose. He knew when he was defeated.
“I hope I have given you enough meat to put on the bones of your story.”
“I was hoping…” Benson began.
“Springs eternal, Mr. Benson. Springs eternal. I look forward to meeting you again.”
Benson nodded. He was dismissed.
Churchill took another deep puff on his cigar and looked toward the painter.
“Am I in the correct pose, Chandor?” Churchill asked.
“It will do,” Chandor said.
Benson backed away. The interview was over.
“I hope you got what you needed,” Sarah said.
“Very informative.”
He hadn’t told her the true objective of his mission. Nor did he wish to show any disappointment. She had gone out of the way to arrange the interview, and he wanted to show a pose of gratitude and to hide his disappointment at the results.
They were sitting in the corner of a dark cocktail lounge at a small beach hotel that Sarah had booked for him. They were on the second bottle of vintage champagne, an expense-account perk, most of which was imbibed by Sarah. Noting her condition, Benson suggested dinner.
“In a bit, darling,” Sarah said, her tongue slightly heavy.
He knew the signs. In her cups, she would eschew food, and he could look forward to a late hamburger in his room. Although they were once lovers, he had no intention of spending the night with her.
He hoped she wouldn’t get sloppy drunk, although she was quickly heading in that direction. Soon, he knew, she would get maudlin. He hated her in that mood.
“I could never marry a man like you, Spence. Never.”
“That again?” he sighed.
“Too focused. Too absorbed in your work. You never smell the roses.”
“Like your father?”
“Not at all. For Father, his work is the roses. He lives in a rose garden.”
“Tell you the truth, Sarah, I wish I had his range of interests.”
“My father is a genius,” Sarah said. “He has one problem.”
Benson’s journalistic instinct suddenly went on full alert.
“And what is that?”
“Too bloody formidable. We all love him dearly, but being his offspring is a trial. It has bent us all.”
She grew distant for a moment, then reached for her drink, and upended it.
“No more, Sarah,” Benson urged.
“You’re right,” she giggled. “Time for scotch.”
She signaled to the bartender to bring her a scotch highball. Benson resigned himself to a long night.
“Did he activate his Cassandra mode?” Sarah asked.
“As a matter of fact,” Benson shrugged.
“He’ll be right again in Missouri,” Sarah said.
Again Benson’s journalistic instincts rose.
“Right about what?”
“Blasted Stalin. Blasted Russians. I think it’s the root of his depression, what he calls his ‘black dog.’ Thinks they outsmarted us. Calls them liars, ruthless buggers. Not to be trusted. He was all for going in and taking Berlin before them and moving into Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia when we had the chance. Thinks Eisenhower and Roosevelt were patsies, although he adored them both. Mostly, he thinks he was bamboozled.”
She swilled down the scotch. He was baffled by her knowledge of these recent historical events.
“Thinks Attlee is a fool, soft on the Russians. Worse, he thinks Truman might, for some harebrained political tradeoff, give Stalin the secrets of the bomb. Imagine that! Says Roosevelt promised it and could have done it. He’s hoping to foreclose on that possibility. You can’t imagine how Father thinks about these people — Stalin and his gang. I have the sense that he really wants to deliver a smashing psychological blow, warn the world about the Russian menace.”
“But they did suffer terribly, and the Red Army did bear the brunt of the burden.”
“He acknowledges that, of course, but insists that we might have lost the peace. For their failure at the conference table, the Western democracies could pay the piper… unless they wake up and face this new menace.”
“Pay the piper?”
“Lose the world to them, the Red menace.”
Sarah lifted her hand to signal for another scotch. But Benson did not want to break her thought pattern and motioned to the bartender to slow down the order. Although she had imbibed a great deal of alcohol, her speech was remarkably lucid.
“I think he now sees Fulton as a launching pad for his views. I’m only speculating, of course. At this stage, no one knows what he is going to say. Perhaps not even he does. But I feel certain — call it gut instinct — that he wants it to be a real bell ringer. My father believes that words are more lethal than bombs. He wants to use words to blast open the truth about the Russians.”
“Which is?”
“I just told you, Spence. He believes they want to take over the world.”
“Tomorrow the world… just like Hitler.”
She nodded.
“To my father, the war is not really over.”
Benson looked at his watch. It was past midnight. The train was to leave the Miami station at eight in the morning.
“Let me get you home, Sarah,” he said, gently.
She nodded and sighed. He felt deep compassion for her, sensing her general unhappiness. He helped her to her feet, paid the check, and with her leaning heavily on him, led her to her car.
As he drove, she put her head on his shoulder.
“It’s really hard for anything to grow in the shade of a big tree,” she whispered.
He helped her up the stairs of the villa and used her key to open the door.
“Did I reveal too much?” she asked.
“Not too much,” he replied.
“I hope you’ll respect our friendship, Spence.”
As a journalist, he knew what that meant.
“Of course.”
She smiled, kissed him on both cheeks, and passed into the house.
Chapter 6
Instead of two weeks, the journey to reach Canada took more than a month. Mueller, now Miller, spent the trip mostly in isolation. The captain and crew of the sub had obviously been instructed to keep their distance and communicate only in the most rudimentary way. He took his meals alone in the officer’s mess, and most other communication was avoided. It didn’t matter. No one aboard spoke English, and he had been instructed not to speak German.
His biggest challenge was to ward off the boredom and cope with the discomfort in the terribly cramped quarters he had been given. His only respite from the suffocating atmosphere was when the sub surfaced and he was allowed to climb on deck to breathe fresh air.