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With hands that, no longer shaking, were still sweaty, I turned the pages over again. The bargaining, it seemed, had taken place over a dinner hosted by Churchill. Halifax had been there—though not, so far as I could tell, continuously. The main bargaining on our side had been left to Butler, who, as Leader of the House, represented Halifax in the Commons, and by Anderson, who was still at the time Foreign Secretary.

I might have supposed the minute Churchill had taken of it all was as unreliable in its account of his own contribution as anything else he wrote near the end. There was a page of self-justifying rhubarb that didn’t fit in at all with the ruthless plundering we’d arranged of what he persistently called “the Great Republic”. But there was no reason to doubt that its burden must be correct. Apart from some skipped pronouns and a few repeated sentences, the general tone was of Churchill in his better days. Either for the dinner or for the time spent on the memorandum—perhaps both—he must have been off the brandy.

Besides, it all made sense. No one had ever explained why Halifax had given away so much from a position of overwhelming strength. The defences he and Butler had made in Parliament—all about the brotherhood of the Anglo-Saxon race—had been grotesquely out of character. Even in the Lords, Halifax had been repeatedly shouted down. In the Commons, only heroic whipping had fought off the no confidence motion. The strain of the debates had even shortened Anderson’s life.

“So you gave all that to the Americans,” Pakeshi said. “All they had to do in return was hand over all research into the uranium bomb, plus the scientists who were directing it. A most estimable man was Sir John Anderson. If only he hadn’t withdrawn the promise of India’s dominion status, I might even praise him.”

“Anderson was a scientist in his younger days,” I said, ignoring the comment about India—and what would anyone have done once Members of the Indian Parliament began shooting each other instead of debating? “His thesis at Leipzig was on the chemistry of uranium. He made sure we got the Bomb even before the Germans did. Bearing in mind the Dual Possession Treaty he and Halifax made with Goering, it’s no surprise he’d have given anything to stop the Americans from following.” I straightened the heap of crumbling papers and lit a cigarette.

“Do you not fear cancer?” Pakeshi asked irrelevantly. I blew out a long stream of smoke and looked up at the light fitting.

“If you believe that nonsense, I’m glad not to be one of your patients,” I said. “Everyone knows it was petrol fumes that caused all the cancer.” I’d finally controlled the beating of my heart, and was now thinking hard. As with O’Brien the day before, I was back on my own territory. Churchill’s account made sense. We’d all watched with hypocritical regret as the Americans tore themselves apart, and then lost a war they should have won with both hands tied behind their back. But there’s a time when the disintegration of a great power becomes inconvenient. What Halifax and Anderson had been about was to help stabilise America. Plainly, it hadn’t worked at once—there was still the terrible collapse that followed Lindbergh’s assassination. But, for all his anti-British rhetoric, Anslinger had followed his own restoration of order with a complete withdrawal from foreign affairs, and no perceived inclination to acquire nuclear weapons.

“What are the Pressburg Accords?” Pakeshi asked, breaking the long silence that had followed our discussion of cancer. I looked at the last page of manuscript. I had wondered that myself. It put a snag in the simplicity of the narrative I was imposing on what Churchill had written. But I cleared my throat again and looked knowledgeable. If I put my defence into words, I’d see how well my narrative stood up.

“It could be a slip for the Treaty of Pressburg,” I said. “Remember, we are dealing with a long work by a man who’d already had two strokes.” Pakeshi was looking blank at the reference. I smiled and waited for him to go back to his seat opposite me.

“The Treaty of Pressburg, 1943,” I said at last. “Once Goering was properly in the saddle, “Chamberlain hurried off for a second agreement at Munich. Then Goering had his second purge, and it was decided we all needed something more formal. So Chamberlain’s last real outing on the foreign stage was to get together with Goering in some potty little town about fifty miles east of Vienna. They sorted everything out face to face. Germany got a free hand in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans excluding Greece. In return, Germany accepted all its Versailles losses in the West and the loss of its colonies, and agreed to scrap its entire fleet. Both sides needed large air forces. So we agreed to turn the skies over Western Europe into a neutral zone and to install a special telephone link between London and Berlin.”

Yes, it had been Chamberlain’s last and greatest triumph. It had put an end to exactly ten years of strain between us and the Germans. What might easily have bubbled over in some repeat of the July Crisis that had got us into the Great War was stopped with a settlement that fully reconciled the two great powers of the world. And it was all so logical. We gave the Germans what we couldn’t stop them from taking. They left us with what they couldn’t take. Chamberlain resigned the next year at the top of his career. Halifax easily won the election that followed. By the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, Chamberlain was dead. But, if this began a new round of complications, it didn’t shake what had been settled at Pressburg. Indeed, we and the Germans had come even closer together for managing the pace of the Japanese expansion.

“But, my most learned and subtle Anthony,” Pakeshi broke in with an oily smile—it was almost as if he’d been reading my innermost thoughts—“the Great Winston has referred to the Treaty of Pressburg on the third or fourth pages of his memorandum. He quotes Anslinger as referring to the Pressburg Accords right on the last page. It could be that he is quoting a misstatement. On the other hand, you will see that Anslinger is turning down the offer that Sir John Anderson has made. He is then referring to these Accords as if he were not expected to know about them. Does not the memorandum break off here? Could it be that Anslinger is about to explain the burden of these Accords, and that some further British concession will be sought before a deal can be made?”

He was right. I’d already noticed how the memorandum broke off in mid-sentence at the sixteenth page. Yes, Anslinger had rejected the deal as put to him. And if we’d got the Japanese to vacate Hawaii, we’d gone along with their annexation of the Philippines. Whatever final deal had been reached must have come after discussions much deeper into the night than these pages covered.

I got up and went back into the sitting room. I looked at the boxes. I turned to Pakeshi, who’d followed directly behind me. He shrugged and raised his eyebrows.

“It would make sense to begin with the boxes that are already open,” he said.

I could have told him without a second search that there was nothing there. But we went carefully through every sheet. The missing pages weren’t here. We opened the other boxes. One of these showed undeniable evidence of having been searched. But nothing appeared to have been taken or added.

Back at the kitchen table, Pakeshi shared out the last of his brandy. He glanced again at the sixteen sheets of scorched foolscap and pursed his lips.

“There are various questions worth asking about this lot,” I said, “The first is why let a garrulous old fool like Churchill in on the deal? I can see why a half-caste American might be seen as a good intermediary. But why Churchill? The second is how even the first part of his memorandum was allowed out of the country. What were our people doing?”