Mueller smiled.
“I’ve had my fair share,” he chuckled. “Nothing permanent. I’ve been lucky.” He inhaled and looked at his cigarette ash. “I hear your troops have fucked their way across the Continent.”
It sounded to Dimitrov like an obvious accusation. He ignored it. He was on another track.
“Let me ask you, Mueller. Would you go back to America?”
Mueller’s eyes narrowed.
Dimitrov noted a flicker of optimistic expectation.
“Why ask? You know the answer.” He paused. “How would you get me there? You know, without complications.”
“Never mind.”
“What’s the catch?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Quid pro quo, General. There’s no free lunch.”
Again Dimitrov was confused by the slang. Mueller apparently understood.
“I mean, what do I have to do?”
“I don’t know, perhaps you’d be too much of a risk.”
“Risk?” Mueller reflected for a moment. “I get it. I go back to America to do a job for you.”
“Something like that.”
Dimitrov observed him closely.
“Of course, you could be the wrong choice.”
“Your call, General. I’m game if you are.”
“Game?”
“American talk,” Mueller said. “You see I’m tailor-made to pass. I’m the real thing.”
At that moment, a sharp knock sounded on the office door.
“Yes?” Dimitrov called.
A voice could be heard beyond the door: “The division awaits orders, comrade.”
“Give the order to move them out. I will follow shortly.”
Dimitrov got up from behind his desk and signaled to the American.
“Come with me, Mueller.”
They moved through the dank, brick-lined corridors, and then to a stairwell, followed by four Russian soldiers with NKVD markings holding automatic weapons. Dimitrov led them to a large holding cell; inside were the forty-odd SS officers. They were seated, packed together with their hands tied behind their backs. The room stunk of feces and urine.
“What a bunch of pigs,” Dimitrov said.
Mueller didn’t answer, and his face’s expression seemed neutral and indifferent.
“Hand this man your weapon,” Dimitrov ordered one of the Russian soldiers.
He looked momentarily confused but handed the weapon to Mueller.
“You know how this works?” Dimitrov asked.
“My expertise, General.”
“Shoot them, Mueller,” Dimitrov ordered, pointing with his chin. “Shoot your SS shit comrades.”
Mueller smiled and, without hesitation, sprayed the occupants of the cell with bullets. The men screamed and blood began to puddle on the floor. When the bullets ran out and some men were still alive, Dimitrov ordered the remaining soldier to hand over his weapon. Without missing a beat, Mueller continued the killing spree. Some men were still alive, writhing in pain.
Mueller carefully finished them off.
“Now them,” Dimitrov said, pointing with his chin at the two NKVD soldiers.
Mueller promptly shot them both then threw the weapons on the floor, now rust-colored, pooling with blood.
“Like a Coney Island shooting gallery,” Mueller muttered, as they moved into the corridor, tracking bloodstains on the stone floor. “Hell, they weren’t worth shit. We were supposed to win.”
This man has possibilities, Dimitrov thought. He would discuss it with Beria.
“Did I pass, General?”
“Not yet, Obersturmbannführer, not yet.”
Chapter 3
For the first time in thirty years, Winston Churchill couldn’t sleep. Even in the bleakest days of the war, he could just will himself into a catnap in limousines, trains, or planes. At night or in his regular nap after lunch each day, he would no sooner hit the pillow, than he would doze off. Now, it was like the days after the Gallipoli disaster in 1915, when he had been blamed for the deaths of over twenty thousand Anzacs. That incident had made him a temporary insomniac.
The poor lads had been mowed down by machine guns from the heights overlooking the Turkish seacoast where they had just landed. Churchill had pondered the disaster for years, reviewing it over and over in his mind. If only Lord Kitchener had sent in the troops at the same time Churchill had directed the Royal Navy to bombard the straits leading to Constantinople…. Would the results have been different? Despite all that had passed since then, the question came back periodically to haunt and depress him. It had not been his finest hour. Considering the long history of victories and defeats — including the most recent one, his electoral defeat — his mind still harked back to Gallipoli, always Gallipoli. It eclipsed everything before or since.
Tonight, even the two brandies and sodas Churchill had downed before dinner — and then the bottle of Valpolicella during the meal to wash down the veal — didn’t seem to help. Not to mention the two whiskeys and sodas after dinner. He rolled over again in sleeplessness. Having nothing to do, he decided — nothing to plan, nothing to work on, inaction — bred insomnia. He could simply not shake his despondent mood.
The seventy-year-old British politician tossed again in the mammoth bed that had been custom-made for an Italian industry mogul who had built this marble monstrosity of a lakeside villa in the twenties.
Churchill had always heard that after the death of a loved one, there is first denial, then anger before acceptance. He had gone through the process numerous times — with his parents, with his infant daughter, Marigold, who had died at two and a half, and old friends lost in the two bloody wars of his lifetime.
Losing the post of Prime Minister had hit him a lot like a death, for which he was still mourning, locked between denial and anger. Yes, the British gave him credit for winning the war, but didn’t they realize they could now lose the peace? Stalin could be a Bolshevik Hitler who would overrun Europe. Who would rally the empire? That Socialist bore, Clement Attlee? Churchill had once referred to him as “a modest man, with a great deal to be modest about.” Well, Attlee had gotten his revenge.
Churchill was sweating. He pulled himself out of bed to open the windows to catch the lake breeze. He needed his rest for tomorrow. He was meeting some Brigadier General colleague of Alex, Sir Harold Alexander.
He was sure Alex had taken the Brigadier General aside, imagining what he had told him: “Hold Winnie’s hand a bit. He needs tender, loving care. This is not the best time for him.”
Churchill felt a brief flash of anger at the imagined conversation.
Well, I’ll have a message for him to take back to dear Alex.
He could not abide pity. His countrymen had rejected him and the Conservative Party after the stunning victory over Hitler. As leader of the opposition, he was merely a voice now, powerless, whining, and ineffective. So much for gratitude! But hadn’t he been rejected many times before?
For some reason, the image of that old bull at that Royal Agricultural Show that he had opened at Kelso years ago when he was an MP for Dundee flashed into his mind; this huge Aberdeen-Angus bull called Canute had been paraded in front of the assemblage. His career as stud was over. He was a spent force now, a relic, just another old bull to be sent out to pasture.
Odd, these memories…. Not old Winston! he thought, pugnaciously.
But then, Churchill reminded himself, he couldn’t take it out on dear Alex who had gone to great lengths to find this vacation villa in Italy. Besides, it was better than being in London, where every street or square seemed to remind him of some critical moment in the recent war.
When he had moved out of 10 Downing Street in July, the head of the Savoy Group of Hotels had graciously let him use his personal suite at Claridge’s when he was in London. Unfortunately, the suite had a balcony. One night, when he was unable to sleep, he had walked out on that balcony. For a brief moment, he felt the urge to jump. He could not believe that his depression had reached that point, and it frightened him. He vacated the suite the next day, switching to one that did not have a balcony.