Target Churchill

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.

He called these fits of melancholy his “black dog”—oppressive, deep depression that filled him with ennui and self-loathing. Any attempt by Clementine or anyone else to lift him from his morass was resented and met with hostility. His aide, Brendan Bracken, once asked him why he called it his “black dog.” He had answered that dog spelled backward is God—it is the opposite of God, it is hell, a black hell.

He had said, “Brendan, if death is black velvet, depression is a prickly black.”

It wasn’t simply the Labour victory, which was bad enough, but it was the size of their victory that was so humiliating and appalling. He was entitled to his black dog. Besides, he had had a premonition. It had come to him in a dream and he had awakened with his pajamas soaked with perspiration.

In the dream, he was lying in a hospital bed. He could not move. Suddenly, a white-coated attendant slowly pulled a white sheet over his head. He had little trouble interpreting the dream.

When the early returns were broadcast on BBC, Clementine had tried her best to console him.

“Winston, perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise.”

“If so,” he had shot back, “it’s certainly well disguised.”

Attlee of all people! It gnawed at him. Actually, he liked the man. He had been a loyal lieutenant in the wartime coalition. The problem was deeper than just a lost election. The fate of Great Britain was in the balance. Men like Ernest Bevin and Herbert Morrison and their fellow trade union Marxists did not understand the true depth of Stalin’s ambition. He had personally taken the measure of the man and his cohorts. Soon the Soviet Union would own Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and the entire Eastern Europe. Perhaps even Germany would fall into its orbit as well, and Greece and Italy, and more — perhaps the world. Shades of Adolph.

Didn’t they understand that socialism in Moscow was a different beast from socialism in London? It was predatory, not some utopian dream of social engineering but tyranny imposed by brutality. Russian Marxists believed in revolution by tyranny. They had contempt for free elections or any other freedoms — like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion. He knew in his gut what Stalin wanted: a Soviet Union that embraced the world.

He had been appalled with the Herald and The Guardian characterizing Stalin as some warm and cuddly teddy bear. Roosevelt, too, was certain he had charmed Stalin into a true friend. Did the Labour stalwarts and Franklin really believe that?

There, he told himself.

There was the seed of his discontent. There were the thoughts that stole his sleep. There was the origin of his black dog. It was neither disappointment nor rejection nor the futile expectation of his countrymen’s gratitude but fear, not merely for his country, for the world. With that epiphany, he fell, at last, into a deep slumber.

It was not the cold dawn light that awakened him but the “old man’s alarm”—the clock in his bladder. For him to sleep for eight-and-a-half hours straight was a kind of sexagenarian record. The bathroom bowl reminded him of the lake. Instead of going back to sleep, Churchill decided to take a swim. For the first time in weeks, he felt the first tremulous signs of recovery and, with them, the courage and energy to brave the morning chill.

He remembered the code flashed on every Royal Navy ship in the sea when he became First Lord of the Admiralty for the second time in 1939: Winston is Back!

Perhaps, he thought, perhaps.

He donned his old-fashioned, navy, striped bathing suit that covered his chest and made him look like a bloated balloon. Actually, he preferred no suit at all, but chuckling at the thought, decided to avoid alarming the neighbors who might think some odd blimp-like sea monster had polluted the lake.

He cautiously descended the steps of the escarpment that bordered the lake. At the lapping edge of Como’s waters, he offered a toe, then a foot. He shivered. Then, shouting lines from Macbeth—“Let me screw my courage to the sticking place!”—in he plunged.

Soon the cold became bearable, and he lay on his back to capture the visual joy of the early-morning sunrise. He knew it was a day of decision, and this brief respite in the lake would, he was certain, clear his mind of the cobwebs of depression.

As he was about to finish his swim, Churchill stopped floating and submerged himself, walking along the pebbly and sandy bottom, then rising to the top. It reminded him of the time he had explained to an acquaintance about the disaster at Gallipoli, his resignation from public life, and the trauma he suffered afterwards.

He had likened it to the experience of a deep-sea diver who has the shakes when he returns to dry land. As he climbed up the cliff steps, he felt no shakes or shivers. Exhilaration was fast replacing ennui and discouragement.

He was reminded, too, of what he had read about those river baptisms they have in the American South. The preacher dunks you and you come to the surface hearing hallelujahs from the congregation. He wanted to cry out his own version of hallelujah and a rousing Hip, Hip Hooray.

As he mounted the slope to the villa, he thought of Solomon’s words in Proverbs, “As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.”

When he got back to his room, he dried himself and quickly fell into a sound sleep. At ten thirty, Churchill heard a soft persistent knock on the door.

“Signore Churchill.”

It was the voice of the maid.

Churchill quickly donned his green dressing gown adorned with gold dragons. The Italian maid carried in an aquamarine tray, the color of the lake, decorated with his favorite flower, the Marigold, the name that he had bestowed on his beloved dead child. Oddly, it reminded him of his dear friend Dwight Eisenhower who had led the Allies to their military victory. Aside from their roles in the war, they had bonded deeply because of this strange coincidence of their children’s deaths. Eisenhower had lost his first son, Dwight, within three months of Churchill’s daughter’s death.

The maid placed the breakfast tray on a table in front of the window. On the tray were two pitchers, one of hot coffee and another of hot milk, two croissants, and a little plate of plum preserves.

He looked at the tray with resignation. He had not been able to get the maid to understand that an English breakfast consisted of eggs, fried tomatoes, bacon, and fried bread; it was futile. But his mood became brighter when he suddenly remembered what Somerset Maugham once told him, “Winston, the only way to dine well in England is to have three breakfasts a day.”

Smiling at the recollection, he recalled another breakfast comment when Field Marshall Montgomery came in to find him tucking into bacon and eggs in Number 10. At the sight of what he was eating, Monty fumed.

“That is an unhealthy breakfast. Look at me. I don’t eat meat, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, and I’m 100 percent fit.”

Churchill had growled back, “I eat meat three times a day, I smoke ten cigars a day, I drink, and I’m 200 percent fit.”

Sipping his café au lait and missing the morning English newspapers, Churchill was determined to keep his black dog at bay. Later, he decided, he would spend part of the sunny morning hours painting, a passion that he found wonderfully therapeutic.

Painting at the lakeside, Churchill wore the zippered, blue siren suit, which he had designed for himself during the war to allow him to leap from nude to some presentable garb in the case of an air raid or a sudden emergency meeting in the middle of the night. On most occasions, cabinet ministers and generals had found the prime minister in his siren suit when they met with him in the underground war room.

He was proud of his fashion statement, which he called his “rompers,” although Clementine had a contrary view. His recollection of her critique always brought a smile to his face.

Once, he had called her from the war room: “Clemmie,” he excitedly exclaimed, “how long do you think it took me to get dressed for my meeting with Pug?”

Harold “Pug” Ismay was a General in charge of military strategy.

“At least fifteen minutes,” was Clementine’s guess, “from taking off your pajamas to getting into your suit.”

“Thirty-two seconds — I timed it with my new siren outfit,” Churchill boasted.

“But, Winston, you look so ridiculous in it — like a fat penguin who couldn’t fit into his usual dinner clothes.”

Churchill observed the sun as it began to hide itself in a nest of billowy clouds framed by a blue sky. He daubed some azure tincture from the palette and concentrated on the landscape, taking his mind further and further from the black dog that had plagued him.

Painting, he had learned, offered a different kind of challenge, one that used a different part of his mind. He likened it to a farmer who rotated the fields for the planting of his crops. Painting rested that part of the brain he used in writing by employing another part. While using his hands to paint, his subconscious was working on a speech or chapter he was writing. He knew that while he was creating with his paints, the writing side of his mind was percolating.

He had his daughter Sarah to thank for his taking up painting. Years ago, just after Gallipoli and his being fired as the youngest First Lord of the Admiralty, he had thrashed around for something to keep his mind off his terrible disgrace. The family had gone to the South of France. On the beach, he had spied Sarah’s little coloring box. She gave him his first lessons, for which he was eternally grateful.

But painting was only one of his exercises in extending his creative brainpower. At Chartwell, he laid long walls of bricks and would often find other chores to use his hands, especially when his brain needed relief from his intense long hours of concentrating on his creative work. But his most ardent secret personal weapon was his discovery of the benefits of midday napping.

After a short doze in the mid-afternoon, his eyes covered by a black-silk band, he would awake completely refreshed. He likened it to erasing the blackboard in the classroom at Harrow. It was one thing to use the eraser and wipe away what you had written and try to write again, but after sleep, it was as if the blackboard had been washed down clean. Thus, he had discovered, his mind scrubbed clean after a nap. Previous attempts were erased, and he could start afresh. He had kept to this schedule religiously every day of his adult life.

Hours later, he heard Sarah’s voice, “Father, your guests have arrived.”

His daughter Sarah wore white slacks that clung neatly to her figure. Her chartreuse blouse was a striking contrast to her chestnut hair. Sarah was a part-time actress in her early thirties. She had inherited her father’s flair for the dramatic — both in her acting and painting, where she relished the vibrant tones that her father liked also.

His children were all different: Randolph was a journalist like his father had been; Diana and Mary, like their mother, had married politicians; and Sarah had inherited her father’s artistic side. He was grateful for her comforting presence.

Clementine had urged her husband to accept Alex’s offer of a villa. She thought the sun and painting might break through and wash away his melancholy. When Churchill had agreed, she had declined to accompany him, sending Sarah in her place to act as hostess. Although she had begged off on the grounds that there were still moving chores at Number 10, Churchill suspected that, she, too, needed some time alone.

Dear Clemmie, he thought, missing her terribly.

She had invested her entire life in his career. His pain was her pain, and the loss of the Prime Minister’s office had hit her equally as hard, perhaps harder.

Sarah took her father’s hand and gently guided him up the slight slope back to the villa. These days, the media characterized him as an old man past his prime, which galled him, but her father didn’t look old to Sarah. Sure, his gait may have been a bit shambling and, at times, unsteady. But the pink face was still that of a cherub, with blue eyes that could still twinkle merrily. She adored him.

The villa commanded the top of the hill, yet its stark fascist architecture clashed with the soft curves of the Mediterranean hills and the Nile blue of Como’s waters, as if a modern rail station had been erected in marble and then nailed to the top of the hill. Churchill likened it to an alien invader stamping its tyranny on an inhospitable landscape. The villa had once been the headquarters of the British Army in Italy. Before that, it was rumored to be a place where rich playboys took their girlfriends. To know that his large bed had been put to good use amused Churchill.

At the villa, Sarah took command of the military guests and supervised the introductions.

“I’m Derek Luddington, Mr. Churchill,” the officer intoned, shaking hands with Churchill.

Luddington was wearing the tan uniform of the British Army. He was coatless in the hot sun, but his shirt was topped with the red epaulets of a Brigadier General. He was slender and of medium height with a neatly trimmed brown moustache.

He introduced his aide, “And this is Major Cope.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Churchill.”

Churchill nodded. Cope was a small, dapper man with black hair slicked into two matching halves.

“General,” boomed Churchill, “I hope you will convey to Field Marshall Alexander my thanks for arranging this vacation idyll.”

“Father,” interrupted Sarah, “look what the General has brought you, compliments of Sir Alexander. Some smoked salmon and a bottle of champagne.”

Churchill observed that the champagne was not Pol Roger, his favorite, but Veuve Clicquot. He silently admonished Alex, thinking he would have to make do. The gift was hardly mouthwash and would serve well for lunch.

Sarah offered drinks, and the men both ordered gin and tonics. She gave her father his usual brandy and poured herself a healthy straight scotch.

He knew, of course, the purpose of the visit. Churchill’s views had weight in the general’s circles. He was an avowed Churchill believer and a good and loyal friend. He had been heartbroken at Churchill’s defeat.

For Harold Alexander, only Churchill understood the big picture, and these men were part of the periodic assessment of his friend’s insight into the fast-moving events of the postwar era.

They took their seats in the white metal chairs around a circular metal table on the veranda under a yellow umbrella that advertised Martini & Rossi, the Italian vermouth.

The conversation mostly dwelled on the ending of the war in Japan and the ceremonies of surrender to the Americans and British on the battleship Missouri. Churchill remarked how gallant and fitting for MacArthur to let the frail and haggard General Wainwright, who had been imprisoned by the Japanese on the Philippines, receive the sword from the Japanese.

“It wouldn’t have happened so quickly without the atomic bomb, would it?” offered Luddington.

“Truman showed some spine on that,” Churchill muttered. “I thought he might be dissuaded by those lily-livered intellectuals around him.”

Churchill paused and shook his head.

“Beastly weapon! Lucky Hitler didn’t get it first. Now the Russians are trying to get it. Can you imagine? Roosevelt was on the verge of giving Stalin those secrets. If the war had lasted, he might have. I hope Truman has the good sense to keep it out of his hands.”

“Do you think he has?” Luddington asked.

“Has what?”

“The good sense,” Luddington explained.

Churchill chuckled.

“He looks like a Manchester shopkeeper, but his looks are deceiving. He’s a lot tougher than he appears — as he has demonstrated.”

The men waited through a long pause, then he nodded as if he had given himself permission to expound further.

“I talked to him at length in Potsdam. The only time we were alone was just after we met. He whispered in my ear, ‘Mr. Churchill, I must have a chance to speak to you privately.’ That night he came to my bedroom, and I turned up the volume of the radio and told him to whisper because I was sure the Soviets had listening devices planted everywhere.

“It was the matter of the super bomb Truman told me. They would drop it only three weeks later in Hiroshima. Then he said, ‘Mr. Churchill, I’m going to tell Premier Stalin tomorrow that the bomb is operational. I’m sure he knows what we were up to, but I doubt that he knows it’s ready for use.’ ‘Then don’t tell him,’ I said. ‘Why even corroborate any information about the bomb?’ ‘Because,’ he said, running a chill down my spine, ‘those were President Roosevelt’s instructions.’ He went further. He said that he had uncovered a memorandum suggesting that he offered the Russians the formula for making the bomb. ‘And will you obey these instructions?’ I asked. ‘We shall see,’ he said. Imagine that! We shall see. I also told him that if he felt honor bound to tell Stalin that it was operational, then slip it in as nonessential information between other items like MacArthur’s Pacific strategy, the Kuril Islands, the Nuremberg trials, the refugee problem.”

“Did he do it?” Luddington interjected.

“I can’t be certain, although I understand that when the bomb was finally dropped on Hiroshima, Stalin screamed bloody murder at Harriman, the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, because he was not told about the date in advance.”

“Do you think Truman would really share those atomic secrets with the Russians?”

“I can’t be certain, although I would suspect that Franklin might have done it if the war had dragged on. Might have, I stress, although I feel certain I would have talked him out of it. As for Truman, I can’t be certain. Not that it would matter. I am no longer at 10 Downing.”

Churchill’s face reddened with a brief flash of anger. It was the one subject that could threaten the return of his black dog. Sarah sensed this and tried to abort the conversation with cheerful laughter.

“Don’t let Father get started on that or lunch will get cold. Come in now.”

They rose from their seats and followed her to the dining room. The table was of Venetian origin with ornate carvings on the side panels. Plates of chilled melon and prosciutto were set on mats. Sarah asked the Brigadier General to open the champagne and pour into the fluted glasses.

Churchill held up his glass in a mock toast.

“To the Phoenix,” he said, “that great mythical bird, master of resurrection.”

The visitors laughed nervously, apparently understanding the reference, which was hardly subtle.

Was it possible, he wondered, to rise from the ashes?

“To you, Mr. Churchill,” offered Luddington. “If it wasn’t—”

Churchill knew exactly what was coming. Although the reminder of his leadership during the war could be comforting, he did not wish to dwell on the past, which triggered thoughts of ingratitude and insult.

“To the king,” he said quickly, lifting his glass, foreclosing on any future toasts.

“The king,” the others chimed in.

As always, Churchill dominated the table talk. Increasingly on his mind was what he saw as Stalin’s growing threat. Unfortunately, few were listening. It had been exactly the same in the early days of Hitler. He had been vociferous in his opposition to appeasement, a lone voice. It was happening again. He reiterated his suspicion of Stalin’s motives and the danger he posed to the Western democracies.

“Why must I be cast in the role of the canary in the coal mine?” he asked his guests rhetorically.

The two luncheon guests exchanged glances. Churchill was certain that they, too, were inclined to buy the line that he was exaggerating the threat. Such thoughts now permeated the thinking in Great Britain and in America.

“Out of power, finding a pulpit will be more difficult than ever. These are indeed dangerous times. Think of Stalin with the bomb. Imagine him having a weapon that has more destructive power than twenty thousand tons of TNT, two thousand times the power of our own Grand Slam, once the most powerful bomb in the world. Putting that in the hands of the Russians is a frightening prospect.”

“But, Father,” Sarah said, “Look at it from their point of view. They see themselves as powerless against the Allies. The Americans and us, we own the bomb, remember, that should be enough to hold the Russians in line.”

The guests looked at her and nodded.

“Hold Stalin in line? Don’t be absurd, Sarah. These people have an agenda to spread their control over the world. Their agents are undoubtedly burrowed in everywhere. They want a Marxist world. Hegemony.” He chuckled, “You see? Even my own daughter has doubts. Such is the fate of any sailing ship that tries to buck the prevailing winds. Tack here, tack there, but keep your eye on the objective.”

“But, Mr. Churchill,” Luddington said. “You are a world-renowned and respected figure. Surely, you can find a pulpit to make your views known. And you are a writer as well.”

“Gentlemen, out of power is out of power. I can speak, yes. But my voice as former Prime Minister is considerably diminished.”

“My father would rather paint and write these days,” Sarah said, with an admonishing glance at her father.

Ignoring her remark, Churchill proceeded to return to his earlier theme, revealing his principal worry: the atomic bomb in Stalin’s hands.

“I was told by Edward Stettinius, Roosevelt’s last Secretary of State, as well as his aide, Hiss, that a memorandum had been prepared for Roosevelt by Hopkins and Hiss, urging him to give Stalin the secrets. He died before he could act.”

“Would Truman do that?” Luddington asked, a deep frown creasing his forehead.

“I think not. Let me amend that. I hope not. Can he be such a fool? Who knows? That’s what Stalin is demanding, and I understand that the new tenant of Number 10 is sympathetic!”

Churchill paused.

“Quite believable, I’m afraid. Attlee, you know, was always a sheep in sheep’s clothing. If either of them consents to such an appalling decision, it would be a disaster.”

“Can they be stopped?” Luddington asked.

“Who will stop them?”

“Perhaps you, sir,” Luddington said.

“Must I remind you that I am at this point merely an opposition voice in Parliament? Mr. Truman does not call to ask my advice.”

“But, Father,” Sarah interjected, obviously hoping again to put an optimistic turn on the conversation. “You could accept that invitation in March.”

Churchill sighed regretfully.

“Perhaps,” he began, and then fell silent.

“Father has been invited to speak at a college in America,” Sarah said, directing the news to the guests. “Truman will introduce him.”

“Not much of a college,” Churchill muttered. “Where in America was it?”

“Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Two hundred twenty students.”

“Hardly an international forum, Sarah,” Churchill replied gruffly.

“But, Father, it is Truman’s state, and with him to introduce you, it will become automatically a center of international interest.”

“Really, Sarah, hardly Harvard,” he persisted. “You’ll recall they gave me a degree a couple of years ago.”

She produced the invitation, which was typed on White House stationery with a handwritten postscript from President Truman. She read the president’s scrawled words, as she had done a number of times since the invitation had been received.

“‘This is a very fine old college in my state. I will be there to introduce you.’” She looked pointedly at her father. “Now how can you turn that down, Father?”

They had discussed the invitation at length, and Churchill had asked her to find an atlas. He had always been an inveterate reader of maps, ever since his days as a subaltern in India. He had always carried a map book with him.

Sarah had found one in the library, and both father and daughter studied it carefully. “Father, Fulton is west, actually southwest, of St. Louis, almost a hundred miles or so.”

She had pointed a finger towards Fulton and directed her father’s eyes to the spot.

“What do the Americans say: A hick town? A hick college in a hick town.”

“But with the President introducing you and after your speech, it will never be hick again. Besides, they still love you in America, Father.” She paused. “It is called the Green Lecture, and there is a $4,000 honorarium.”

“Unthinkable!” he said. “To be introduced by the President and accept money? Absolutely not.”

Although he dismissed the suggestion, he had promised to give it some thought, but Sarah had continued to lobby him and now in front of witnesses where he would be more vulnerable.

Churchill chuckled, amused at his daughter’s spirit. She had always been the rebellious child. The two guests were silent as they watched this domestic byplay between father and daughter. He turned to his guests.

“You see? Do you think I can withstand this daughterly bombardment?”

The men shrugged, obviously not wanting to get involved in the dispute.

“Then you’ll accept?” Sarah persisted.

“Have I a choice, daughter?”

“Only one, Father.”

“Well, then….” He paused for effect. “Why not? The old Hussar goes west.” He laughed. “Guns blazing.”

By then the lunch was coming to an end. The men offered their compliments to the cook, and then Churchill asked Sarah to bring him the box of Romeo y Julieta cigars that Herman Upmann had sent him recently. He offered them to his guests who declined. He clipped one, lit the end carefully, and sucked in a deep drag, his face beaming with contentment.

“A cigar, you know, is one of the few vices yet remaining for the advanced in age.”

He looked at the men, smiled, and fell into another long, brooding silence. He found himself recalling Potsdam and Yalta, assessing his own behavior. Had Stalin bested them? Should he have been more forceful, less willing to go along with Franklin at Yalta and Truman at Potsdam. He was fast coming to the opinion that Stalin had won the day at both conferences. He took some deep puffs on his cigar.

“I remember once when I was invited to have a drink with Stalin in Potsdam, I felt it was rude not to match him drink for drink of Russian vodka. After we had drained most of the bottle, and Stalin was questioning me in general terms about our intentions in Greece and our position on Poland as he touted the new ‘liberation’ committee that was running that country, I saw this aide furiously writing down anything and everything that the Russian interpreter reporting my reactions said to Stalin.

“I said to him, ‘Premier Stalin, why the need of taking notes?’ Next afternoon, Uncle Joe walks over to me with his English translator, pushes his pipe into my chest, and amid chuckles, announces, ‘I’ve destroyed the notes and the notes taker.’”

“He sacked the aide, Mr. Churchill?” asked Luddington.

“Oh, yes, literally, General.” Churchill paused for effect. “He had been executed that morning.”

“Not executed?” said the astonished Luddington.

“Oh, yes, a bullet to his head I’m told. I had the sense that he thought I would laugh.” Churchill shook his head and sighed. “This man is a killer. The reports of the Russian offensive last year are appalling: indiscriminate killing, rape, looting. He thought Russians in the lands occupied by the Germans had been brainwashed into the Nazi philosophy. His NKVD troops went on a killing spree targeting Russians and Germans alike. The man is a killer who enjoys killing.”

“Chilling,” Luddington said.

“Way of life, gentlemen. There is an apocryphal story I have heard about some woman from Zagreb who, when informed about my demise as prime minister, proclaimed, ‘Oh, poor Mr. Churchill. I suppose he will now be shot.’”

Churchill chortled and the two men laughed appreciatively.

“This is the way Stalin handles dissent — off with their heads!” Churchill shrugged.

“What did Stalin think of Roosevelt?” Luddington asked.

“He charmed poor Franklin; they really bonded. It was appalling, and yet, he had told others that he thought Roosevelt was merely a rich playboy, soft as butter and easily manipulated.”

“And you, sir?” Luddington let the question hang in the air. “I mean, how did you feel about Roosevelt?”

“You may recall it took me quite a while to get him to act on our behalf.” Churchill shook his head. “Nevertheless,” he continued, “we became good friends in the process. He was a great man, a master politician.”

He grew distant and silent for a long moment.

“God, I miss Franklin; I loved him. England is forever in his debt.”

There was another long pause, and Churchill noted that his two guests eyed him expectantly. He was, he knew, holding court and he reveled in the opportunity, not wishing it to end. He signaled by a nod that he was no longer being reflective and would welcome fresh questions.

“And what of Byrnes, the new Secretary of State? Where does he stand in all this?”

He noted that Luddington was being deliberately vague, but he took “all this” to mean the attitude towards the Soviet Union.

Ah, Churchill thought, British intelligence, for some reason, is probing.

He wanted to ask Luddington if this visit’s pithy fruits would make their way not only to Alex but also to MI6 and perhaps, the Russians. Churchill secretly suspected that Communist moles had invaded MI6.

“Byrnes, yes, Byrnes,” Churchill remembered. “Met him at Potsdam… a southerner with a drawl like honey. Truman calls him ‘Jimmy.’ I’m told he was put out a bit when Roosevelt picked Truman over him for Vice President, an office he had coveted. But then, politics being what it is, Roosevelt chose Truman. Perhaps Roosevelt thought that Truman might be more compliant. Indeed, he kept him at arm’s length.”

He checked himself. Sarah admonished him with a glance. He was rambling a bit.

Back to Byrnes! he rebuked himself.

“Byrnes is no political innocent. He was once the majority leader in the Senate until Roosevelt put him on the Supreme Court. Then Roosevelt made him the ‘Czar’ of war mobilization somewhat like what I had Beaverbrook do for me. Like Max, Byrnes speaks to Truman like a peer with a capital P—without a pretense of subservience. I liked that in Beaverbrook — but in our cabinet the Prime Minister is ‘first among equals.’ Not so in America — the cabinet members are puppets of the President.”

“I hear he’s not pro-Soviet,” said Luddington. “At least, we’ve been reading that in the articles on Byrnes’ trip to Paris where he talked to de Gaulle.”

“Perhaps. But they say that ‘while Byrnes roams, Truman fiddles.’”

Churchill chuckled at his little joke.

“Remember, he is an instrument of the President, and Truman, for some reason, is wary of standing up to the Soviets. Frankly, his attitude is baffling.”

“Surely the Soviets don’t want war?” asked Luddington. “After what they’ve gone through?”

Churchill eyed the man with some curiosity, and then resigned himself to the present reality. Luddington was merely echoing the typical appeasement line that was in vogue on both sides of the Atlantic.

“Oh no,” he said with sarcasm. “I’m sure they want ‘peace’—a piece of Poland, a piece of Czechoslovakia, a piece of Hungary, tomorrow, the world. Remember that one. What the Soviets want is to ‘Bolshevize’ the Balkans.”

He turned to Sarah, the brief dispute forgotten.

“Do you like that Sarah?”

Sarah shrugged.

“Father, do you think we’ve kept our visitors too long?”

“Not at all, sir,” Luddington said.

Churchill nodded.

“Sarah is hinting that it’s time for me to contemplate the cosmic infinities horizontally.”

“Father means his daily nap.”

“Yes,” said Churchill. “One of the two splendid Spanish contributions to the betterment of the civilized state of man, which I embraced in my early years as a military observer in Spain. One is the siesta and the other the Havana.”

Churchill smothered the remains of his cigar in the ashtray and rose to bid farewell to his visitors. They exited with the amenities of thanks to Sarah, as Churchill ascended the marble staircase.

In his bedroom, Churchill changed into pajamas for his afternoon nap. It amused him that Sarah had cleverly persuaded him to accept the invitation to speak at the small college in the Midwest.

But then she did have a point. Truman and he had last met at Potsdam. His sense of history clicked in. Perhaps this could be the pulpit he had wished for.

He picked up the phone. He needed to talk to Clemmie. Luckily, he found her at Chartwell, where she had just arrived from London. Hearing her voice always filled him with joy.

“Oink, oink,” Churchill imitated a porcine grunt.

“Meow, meow,” answered the voice of his wife.

In his intimate moments with his wife, Churchill would often assume the role of a pig to his wife’s cat.

“Hello, pussycat — do you miss my stroking?”

Then he recited a children’s rhyme:

He continued, “What do you think, Clemmie, of a cat and a pig going across the sea to America? Don’t worry, it will be all paid for. I’ve just been invited by President Truman to speak in some college in Missouri. And, of course, the usual honorary degree.”

“Missouri?”

“A backwater, I agree. But it does offer an opportunity.”

In his mind, he was already composing what he would say.

“We could go early and spend some time with that Canadian friend. You know, that Colonel Clarke of Montreal, who has a winter home in Miami. They’ve always wanted us to visit them in Florida.”

“Splendid! Do us both wonders. But I will have to forgo Missouri. Chartwell does need work, darling. After all, Chequers will be Mr. Attlee’s now.” She paused. “As for Number 10, we are now officially vacated.”

“Did you leave all the silver intact?” Churchill teased.

“Absolutely. But I did take the dozen cases of Pol Roger.”

“Ours or theirs?”

“Theirs. I paid hard pounds for it, darling.”

“Farewell to the trappings of office.”

They giggled like teenagers, after which came a long pause. He could hear his wife’s breathing. The silence always meant a worrisome cogitation on her part.

“What is it, darling?”

“This Missouri visit.”

“What of it?”

“I’m concerned, Winston. You no longer have the round-the-clock security afforded by the government. I have a favor to ask.”

“Of course, darling.”

“Take Thompson.”

W. H. Thompson was Churchill’s personal bodyguard during his days as First Lord of the Admiralty and throughout the war. Churchill had brought him out of retirement from Scotland Yard’s Special Branch in 1939. He had served him with extraordinary efficiency, valor, and skill through many a touchy situation during the war and then retired yet again after the war. Despite the normal protection afforded a prime minister, Thompson, with his sixth sense and eagle eye and uncanny prescience, had saved his life more than once during those trying days, a fact that had been assiduously kept from the British public but not from his wife.

“Really, darling. I’m no longer Prime Minister. Who would bother to want to harm this little piggy?”

“Grant me the favor, darling. Allow me the peace of mind.”

“Clemmie, really. The West is no longer populated with armed cowboys. Besides, the President has a Secret Service detail. They will be protective of us both.”

“I know all that, darling. Still….”

“You’re worrying unnecessarily,” Churchill interrupted. “There is no shooting war going on.”

“Please, darling. It’s a small favor. Besides, he knows you well, all your little eccentricities.”

“Now really, Clemmie. I am a perfectly proper English gentleman — traditional and quite normal to the core.”

“Of course, darling,” she giggled. “Let’s leave it at that. But do take Thompson. Please.”

“What of the expense?” he asked shrewdly.

Thompson would have to be paid for by the Churchills. Money was a mania with Clementine. Her grandfather, the Earl of Airlie, had left his wife for a younger woman. The resultant strained economic circumstances had forced Clementine to work as a governess to make ends meet.

“Hang the expense, darling. Call it an investment in our future.”

Hearing that, Churchill knew he had lost the argument. Besides, Clementine, like him, was never one to retreat. Faced with her resolve, he knew exactly when surrender was necessary.

“Your wish is my command, little pussycat. Just give me a little meow. I miss your purr.”

They chatted briefly for a few more moments, and then parted with kisses.

Churchill lay back in the bed. A conversation with Clemmie always lifted his spirits. He pictured her at Chartwell, the chatelaine of the establishment, forever puttering, decorating, and beautifying their lair. He loved the place.

It was his former house in Kent, which had been reluctantly sold when he had become Prime Minister. As PM, he had the use of Chequers, the official suburban retreat in Buckinghamshire.

A group of Churchill’s friends had just bought back Chartwell. He had bought the redbrick Victorian house in 1922 without telling his wife. The purchase had been the occasion of one of his few arguments with Clementine. She had counted in her mind the cost of necessary improvements to the nineteenth-century manor house, plus the later costs of entertaining when she’d have to play hostess.

Actually, it was one of the few arguments he had ever won over the former Clementine Hozier. He smiled, thinking about her. She had looked like a more elegant version of Ethel Barrymore, the American actress, who had once caught his interest. The stately feminine member of America’s premier acting family had rebuffed his advances saying, “There’s is only room for one of us on center stage.”

Yes, he remembered, she had been right about that.

That little college may be a rare opportunity to take center stage again.

Before he drifted off to sleep, he reminded himself to call Thompson and began thinking again of the speech he would give in Fulton.

It’s time to throw my own atomic bomb.

He closed his eyes.