Target Churchill

Chapter 18

Victoria sat opposite Thompson in the sitting room of Churchill’s railcar suite, waiting for his return.

After dinner, Churchill had changed into his blue siren suit and gone off to play poker with Truman and his companions. He had asked that they be available in case he needed to go over the last drafts of the speech before it was mimeographed for the press.

Victoria’s mind was elsewhere. No matter how hard she tried to rationalize her lover’s action, she could not ignore that he had voluntarily handed over the speech to the Russians. She had seen the handover with her own eyes, and while she would have been willing to believe that he was carrying out an official act, the remark he had inadvertently made while reading the speech—“He has signed his death warrant”—echoed and re-echoed in her mind.

Donald had often told her that diplomats were masters of obfuscation and intrigue and often acted in ways that could strike an unschooled observer as strange and mysterious. Who was she to question the actions of the first secretary of the British embassy? He was an acknowledged star of the British diplomatic corps, someone on his way to the top of his calling. Lord Halifax, the ambassador, trusted his judgment without question, and charged Donald with keeping all facets of the embassy running smoothly. Indeed, to all intents and purposes, Donald Maclean ran the British embassy and could be considered one of the most important people in Washington.

The phrase death warrant could not be excised from her thoughts. What did he mean?

Considering that both Churchill and Thompson had reiterated the necessity for confidentiality, she could not reconcile Donald’s act or those chilling words with any benign purpose.

He had told her he was going to discuss the thematic aspects of the speech with Churchill or, at the very least, persuade the ambassador to discuss it with him. None of these things had apparently occurred. Or perhaps they agreed with the former prime minister’s thesis, although the remark about a death warrant seemed to negate that theory. Something was awry. She couldn’t shake an uncommon sense of terrible discomfort, a kind of anxious desperation.

Yet she continued to resist sharing this information with Thompson. He might think she was imagining things or it might set off unnecessary and possibly false alarm bells. After all, the Russians had been friends and allies. By imparting the information, she would, in effect, be involved in a double betrayal, both of her lover and Mr. Churchill.

She could not deflect her uneasiness.

“You look a bit distracted, young lady,” Thompson said.

Sitting opposite her, he had apparently been observing her closely for some time.

“Do I?” she asked innocently, knowing his assessment was exactly correct.

Guilt was having its corrosive effect. However she tried to put it aside and rationalize it in the name of love and loyalty to her boss, it continued to gnaw at her. She needed Donald by her side to reassure her by his presence and to reiterate his explanation.

“Just an idle observation, Miss Stewart. It’s the curse of the detective. Always needing to look beyond the human façade. Forgive me.”

After a long silence, she found her mind too fatigued with speculation about her lover’s motives. But in the process of blocking one path, she found another equally disturbing.

“You’ve been with Mr. Churchill a long time, Mr. Thompson?” she began.

“Very long, my dear — earlier in his career when he was First Lord of the Admiralty in the first war and later when he called me back in thirty-nine. I was with him during the entire time of his service as prime minister.” He sighed and smiled. “We’ve been through a great deal together.”

She noted his great pride in his service, and she had no doubts about his affection for and absolute loyalty to Mr. Churchill.

“I suppose you’ve seen him through all kinds of danger.”

She was surprised at her own comment, since it revealed a level of anxiety that she had deliberately repressed.

“My goodness, yes,” Thompson said. “You cannot imagine the close calls we’ve had. He is a stubborn man, courageous and quite fearless. During the blitz, I could not get him to be cautious, and often he would refuse to go down to a shelter. Considering his extensive travels during the war by land, sea, and air, it’s a miracle that he’s still alive.”

“I guess you must have an eagle eye for danger, sir,” she said, watching his face.

“Maybe so. At times, I’ve had to be rather heavy-handed to get him to change a schedule, switch modes of transportation, restrain him from moving into crowds — even though they were mostly adoring crowds. Many times I’ve had to deliberately inhibit his movements to get between him and potential harm.”

“Which would put you in the line of fire,” she said, suddenly feeling chilled.

“I would take a bullet for that man anytime or anyplace,” he said emphatically. “He is a great man.”

“Give up your life for another man, Mr. Thompson? That is quite a sacrifice.”

“To give it up for him would be an honor.”

She felt a sudden sense of panic and sucked in deep breaths to calm her. But she had apparently triggered in him a new train of thought.

“Odd, isn’t it? None of the great wartime leaders — Stalin, Roosevelt, Mr. Churchill, de Gaulle — were ever harmed during the war. Only Admiral Darlan, the Vichy collaborator who later betrayed the Nazis and collaborated with us, was assassinated.”

“I suppose they were well protected,” Victoria said.

“The marshal and the president had elaborate protection.”

“And the Prime Minister?”

Thompson chuckled.

“He had me.”

She offered a smile and a humorless laugh.

“Of course, when he was prime minister he was officially protected, but I was always on hand to watch over him.”

“Has there ever been an attempt… you know what I mean… on Mr. Churchill?” she asked hesitantly.

He studied her face for a moment then turned away to contemplate the passing scenery. After a while, he looked at her again. His expression seemed severe.

“This is a matter we never discuss. Not ever.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I hadn’t realized.”

“There are subjects beyond revelation,” he said. “In the public arena, they power suggestion and, unfortunately, emulation.”

“I think I understand, sir.”

She wasn’t exactly certain, but she presumed he meant that any public discussion of such an act or the possibility of it occurring would give evil people ideas. From his sudden change of attitude, she felt certain that attempts had been made on Mr. Churchill’s life that, quite obviously, had been thwarted and, presumably, never publicized.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m afraid I have set off some gloomy thoughts.” She shrugged. “I have no idea why I brought up the subject.”

Again, she repressed a desire to tell him about her lover’s action and his odd statement. The idea was obsessing her. At the very least, she thought suddenly, she should have pressed Donald for an explanation of why he would give the speech to the Russians. Surely, he owed her that. After all, they did share the secret of their affair. Surely, that meant something.

She felt suddenly stifled and vulnerable. The temptation to reveal what she knew was overwhelming. She needed to be alone and think this over.

“Will Mr. Churchill be needing me tonight?” she asked, anxious to be off.

“I expect he’ll be quite late — poker game, you know. If he needs you, he’ll call.”

She bid him good night and left the compartment.

Inexplicably, the young woman had triggered in Thompson’s mind recollections publicly repressed but never far from his thoughts. Yes, there were narrow escapes from the obvious: U-boats tracking ships and trains on which the prime minister had traveled, planes on which he flew.

He remembered the case of poor Lesley Howard, one of the great English actors, whose plane had gone down over the Atlantic. Thompson was dead certain that the actor’s plane was thought to be carrying the prime minister. Then there were the many instances when he toured the battlefield with General Eisenhower or went round London during the blitz.

Most of these episodes would, one day, when all the intelligence of both sides was sorted out, become the stuff of history. The other episodes, he hoped, would never see the light of day. His job was not only to guard the prime minister and foil any attempt to assassinate him, but prevent the attempt from becoming known. Some were not even revealed to the prime minister or his family.

An implicit policy of Special Branch was that all such incidents be shrouded in secrecy and not recorded anywhere, leaving no trace. The most serious of these attempted murders occurred at Chequers, the PM’s official country house. Before Churchill would embark to go anywhere, Thompson would carefully check the route, surveying possible clandestine targeting places. Secretly, he would pay a visit to the most dangerous spots, often working by pure instinct.

If he were suspicious, he often sat in a car where he could deflect a bullet before it hit Mr. Churchill. Yes, he would gladly put himself in harm’s way to protect his charge.

It was, of course, almost impossible to guard his man during the numerous stump speeches he made running for Parliament. But if the Prime Minister were to speak in an enclosed space — the House of Commons excepted, since that was thoroughly vetted by MI5, he was always careful to scout the premises in advance, checking even after his colleagues had scoured the area. He rarely trusted anyone to “cleanse” an area completely.

He trusted no one to be as thorough as himself. At one speech in a hall in Hampshire, his attention had been drawn to a man who seemed innocent and harmless, but for some reason he seemed to radiate suspicion. Thompson got to him just in time. He had a live grenade in his pocket and admitted later, in a private, merciless interrogation carried out by Thompson himself, that he was an assassin hired by the Gestapo; his reward, whether he lived or died, was a lifetime stipend for his family. He had been committed to an insane asylum for life.

Once at Chequers, a gardener who had miraculously gotten through the clearance process, had been observed on the grounds near a hedge through which could be seen Churchill’s study. Thompson, who knew the spot intimately and checked it out whenever the prime minister was in residence, found the man poised with a rifle ready for a shot at Mr. Churchill. Thompson quickly dispatched him to oblivion. In that case, he had done the cleanup job himself.

There were other incidents as well, all kept secret. At times, Special Branch would alert him to a dire possibility, and he would quickly follow through, sometimes on the sketchiest of clues but which offered just enough intelligence to stop the potential assassin in his tracks.

He felt no compunction or remorse at preemptive strikes aimed at preventing an assassination of the prime minister. Better left unsaid and unthought of, he told himself. He recalled two other incidents of potential assassins being dispatched without any official reporting. Only he knew those; he tried never to think about them. Sometimes he succeeded, sometimes not, like now. What he feared most was that someone might read his thoughts. Of course, it was ridiculous, but then many fears were. Again, he tucked them away in his memory vault.

Hearing this lovely young woman expressing such anxiety over the fate of Mr. Churchill felt chilling. Perhaps, something was in the air. He believed implicitly in such psychic moments, a kind of telepathy that could never be explained. Such precognition baffled him, but he never distrusted the feeling when it came over him. He would never share such ideas with anyone, not even his wife — and certainly not Mr. Churchill, who would have called them poppycock and nonsense. Nevertheless, his own proofs were unassailable.

More than once, he knew, such sensations — such mysterious insight and awareness — had saved Churchill’s life. In his heart of hearts, he knew his job was a calling, ordained perhaps by supernatural forces commanding that he protect this great man and assure him a long and productive life for the benefit of all mankind. Thinking such thoughts often brought tears to his eyes.

Twice he sat by Mr. Churchill’s bedside when he was at death’s door, once when a car in New York had struck him in the thirties and during the war when an attack of pneumonia had brought him close to the brink. He had prayed all night, not simply to the Anglican God of his church, but to all gods of all religions everywhere. He had come to believe in the very fabric of his being that as long as he was on the job, Churchill would never have to worry about his mortality.

His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Churchill. His face was flushed, and he seemed to carry with him an air of amused reflection, as if he were chuckling at some joke known only to him.

“I’m afraid, Thompson, I did not carry the day for Albion.”

“You lost, sir?”

Churchill nodded and smiled sheepishly.

“Like swimming with sharks, Thompson! The Yanks bested me. They are masters of deception and bluff.” He chortled. “And there were the usual language difficulties. They call the knave a ‘jack’ and a sequence a ‘straight.’ Imagine?”

“It is not only the ocean that separates us, Prime Minister.”

“The price was well worth the lesson. Truman is canny and bold, shrewd and cautious, and at times, is excellent at the bluff. The Americans are quite sentimental and lacking in cold-blooded ruthlessness. They felt sorry for this old English gentlemen’s poker incompetence and began to let me win when my chip pile had shrunk to disastrous proportions.”

“How, sir?”

“One of the fellows, Ross, the president’s press secretary, let me bid up my knave against his ace, then when the pot was large enough, the man, clearly holding the winning hand, folded. It happened often enough until they felt that I had partially recouped. I won one large pot with a pair of deuces. I did not let on.” Churchill began to laugh uproariously. “Of course, they did not let me carry the day. As I left the table and had barely closed the compartment door, I heard Vaughn say: ‘We didn’t want him to brag to his limey friends that he had beaten the Americans at poker.’ I must say I loved the experience. This Truman, Thompson, is genuine, a true man of the people. Poker, Thompson, is a great teacher of character.”

He looked animated, not at all tired. He sat in a chair for a long time lost in thought. Then he looked around the compartment.

“Where is Miss Stewart?”

“I’ll get her, sir,” Thompson said. “She knows she is on call. We must get the speech stenciled and mimeographed for the press.”

He found her compartment, which she shared with one of Mr. Truman’s secretaries.

“Be right there!”

She arrived flustered and distraught. Churchill paid little attention to her. A typewriter sat on a desk in a corner of the compartment. Thompson could see that she hadn’t prepared herself mentally for such swift action.

“Step lively, please,” Mr. Churchill snapped. “You have the text?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me have it.”

He put on his reading glasses and glanced over the text. Then he nodded and whispered the line, “‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’”

“Shall I put that down, sir?”

“No. I was quoting Lincoln, one of their few presidents who wrote his own speeches. It brought something to mind.”

He looked over the text again.

“I am troubled,” he muttered, “over the paragraph where I talk about the division of Europe. Iron fence seems so… so unmemorable. I actually used the line in an earlier letter to Truman, but I just don’t like it.”

“I’m afraid, sir, we have to sign off on the speech tonight. Tomorrow, we will be in Fulton.”

“It will come to me, Thompson.”

“It always does, sir.”

“Well then, I guess I have no choice. Of course, it won’t prevent an insertion when I deliver the speech.”

“Not at all, sir.”

“Well then, proceed,” said Churchill. “Nevertheless, in my mind it is still a work in progress.”

She began immediately to type the final draft onto a stencil. It had already been arranged that Thompson would have the stencils run off on the press office mimeograph machine on the train. He would gather up all the copies and guard them until the time for their release.

“And after you finish that, Miss Stewart, type the working text I will use. Do you remember the instructions?”

“Verse form, sir. I do remember.”

Churchill nodded, reached into an inner pocket, and pulled out his leather cigar case. He clipped off the end of a cigar, and Thompson was quick with his lighter. Churchill puffed deeply and observed the ash, then fell into a deep silence for a few moments.

“Damn,” he said suddenly.

“What is it, sir?” Thompson asked.

“I was thinking of my toast to Stalin in Tehran. Words….” He paused and shook his head.

“I was present, sir.”

“Yes, of course, Thompson. I do remember.”

He nodded his head, a gesture, Thompson knew, of recollection. The man had an uncanny memory. He watched as Churchill lifted his hand as if he were holding a glass and making a toast.

“‘I sometimes call you Joe,’” he began, recollecting, “‘and you can call me Winston if you like, and I like to think of you as my very good friend.’ …What hypocrisy! Then, I said: ‘The British people were turning politically pink’ …Ending with… ‘Marshal Stalin, Stalin the Great’ …The memory of the toast often stirs up my black dog.” He looked up suddenly. “He could be infuriating! Once, in front of Roosevelt, he actually called me a coward. Later, he told me — after I walked out of the meeting — that his translator had misinterpreted his words.”

“You did your best, sir,” Thompson said, trying to refocus Churchill’s dark thoughts.

Considering the importance of the upcoming speech, Thompson was determined to do anything in his power to stop the black dog from attacking Churchill. He sensed that his recollections of Tehran were bringing him farther down.

“The sad fact of it, Thompson, was that I liked the man, despite my distaste for everything he stood for and represented. When I visited him in Moscow, I thought we had really bonded. He had a certain attractive air.” Churchill grew pensive. “Franklin liked him as well, perhaps too well. Dear Franklin!”

He sighed and sucked in a deep breath.

“Now there was charm personified. With Stalin he was clearly seductive, using all of his skills of allure and bewitchment as if that was all that was needed to win him over. There were moments, Thompson, when I felt like a rejected suitor.” He chuckled. “‘Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy. It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.’ Can you imagine? Jealous of Stalin for attracting my friend.”

Thompson was not shocked at the metaphor. Churchill was an incorrigible romantic.

“Stalin trumped us, Thompson. Power was his true mistress.”

“This speech should balance the scales.”

Churchill puffed deeply on his cigar. Thompson sensed that he was fighting hard to repress his black dog.

“Do you think the United Nations will be a true family of nations, able to resolve domestic spats and assure a peaceful future?” Churchill asked. “Truman is quite hopeful.”

“And you, sir?”

He shrugged. He put on his glasses and read through the text of his speech that he still held on his lap. Then he spoke the words dealing with the United Nations: “‘We must make sure that its work is fruitful, that it is a reality and not a sham, that it is a force for action, not merely a frothing of words, that it is a true temple of peace, in which the shields of many nations can someday be hung up, and not merely a cockpit in a Tower of Babel.’”

He put the text down again.

“I truly hope that the future will match my words. Sure, Thompson, it is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look farther than one can see. I wish I were more sanguine about the future.”

“Surely, you don’t think that someday there will be another war, sir?”

“Will it matter what I think now?”

“Of course, it does, sir,” Thompson said, “Your remarks could set the world on a course that could have an enormous impact on the future.”

“‘There is a tide in the affairs of men,’” Churchill said.

Thompson had heard this quote from Julius Caesar many times before.

“Well, then, sir, we are in high tide.”

“Perhaps, Thompson,” Churchill said, standing up and walking to the adjoining bedroom.

Thompson watched the young lady typing away with great diligence.

“He will be fine, Miss Stewart. Not to worry.”

“Yes, sir,” Victoria said, but her response seemed tentative.