The Vengeance of Rome

FIFTY-EIGHT

Soon after I reached London in 1939 I made for Mr Green’s Whitechapel office. I quickly found 22 Leman Street. A worn brass plate announced the name of his firm, Green, Green & Collins (Import/Export) Ltd. Mounting the stone steps to the door, I hesitated before it just as I imagined an old Knight of Chivalry might have paused outside the Temple of the Grail. For many years I had dreamed of climbing those steps, knocking on the door and being received by the kindly old man. Mr Green would usher me into a mahogany and oak office lit by yellow gas casting warmth through the shadows. My Uncle Semyon’s old partner would sit me in a big leather armchair and send for a brass-bound box in which my financial papers and scientific patents were stored. My money would have made me considerable interest. Mr Green would congratulate me on my wealth. He would give me avuncular advice on how to invest it. Perhaps I would be offered a position with the company. He might suggest the firm back my scientific inventions. None of this pipe dream was unrealistic but based on promises Uncle Semyon and his people had made.

Yet when I was admitted into a shabby, unpainted reception room, I was told by a girl telephonist that the Greens had, in her words, gone down the drain after the old man’s death. The ‘old man’ was presumably the Mr Green my uncle had originally dealt with. She was the only person I was allowed to see. She was thoroughly ignorant. I was convinced her employers knew more, but even when I lost my temper, they refused to come out and meet me. The place was now a shipping office. Only the name had been retained, she said. She knew of no other connection. Eventually, when she offered to call the police from the nearby station, I left.

Later I tracked down Mr Green’s great-nephew, Lionel Shapiro, in Temple Fortune, beyond Hampstead, and put the question to him. Where is my inheritance? Shapiro claimed to know little of his uncle’s affairs. ‘He was persuaded to back Lenin’s New Economic Policy. Then Lenin died and Stalin cancelled all deals. Between them, Stalin and the General Strike ruined him.’

As you might expect, Lionel Shapiro denied any knowledge of me or my money. He took me into his little house and introduced me to his grandmother, Mr Green’s sister-in-law, a wizened old thing, wearing black. When she heard where I was from and what I had escaped, she was kind enough. Her English was thickly accented, but she spoke good German. She made her grandson go up into the attic and bring down some old ledgers, which recorded details of transactions between my Uncle Semyon’s firm in Odessa and Mr Green’s in London. But they only listed details of goods and money. I was mentioned nowhere. The pathetic pair apologised. They wished they could help, they said, but so many needed help these days. I was convinced they were innocent. Clearly they were not living in salubrious surroundings. I put the sorry story together: out of desperation Mr Green had probably defrauded me of my inheritance and his family of their birthright. But what was the point of pursuing a dead man?

I refused to let Mr Green’s death be the end of my dreams. When the Ministry of War refused even to grant me an interview, when they sent back my plans unopened, I accepted that God had abandoned me. He did not want me to fly. And He did not want me to have money.

He knows I have done my best for my fellow creatures. I have shown prejudice to no man. I never attacked those Jews. Why should I? I am not an ingrate. A Jew saved my life in Arcadia. Stadt der schlafenden Ziegen; Stadt des Verbrechens; Stadt der meckernden Krähen; die kleinen Vögel singen trügerische Lieder. Die Synagogen brennen! He said he was a journalist. He was a poet. He made me tea. He gave me bread. I have no proof that he put the metal in my stomach. If he did he might have meant it kindly. Perhaps it was a charm. Perhaps it kept me alive. Those shtetls were no worse than the camps. I received only kindness there. I almost died in that burning synagogue. Who did I betray? What else have I done? What have I said?

I have given half my adult life to this city. Four times I had the chance to save it from the worst its enemies could fling at it. Four times I was rejected. The first time was before the authorities sent me to the Isle of Man when war broke out. I gave them copies of my plans, excluding certain details. Some, I know, they passed on to the likes of Wallace Barnes, the lunatic self-publicising brother of the would-be Queen of England, who modified them and called them his own. The second time was just after Dunkirk, when they were again desperate for ideas. I spent a week in the country near Oxford talking to various government scientists who were particularly interested in my Violet Ray and my gigantic war submarine, but told me they were too expensive to put into production.

The third time was when the V-2 rockets were raining down. They were curious about my Electronic Dome, a kind of shield over the entire city. Again they lacked the vision to realise the possibilities of the idea. The last time was in 1950 when they became briefly interested in my Russian background. They admitted they found corroborative evidence that I had defended Kiev with the Violet Ray. They had received some hint, I think, that Stalin planned to revive the idea. And Hess had told them something. But little came of that either.

In spite of all the disappointments and frustrations I remain in constant contact with politicians and journalists to this day, offering them my intellectual blood. My miracles. All for the good of the Free World, to help sustain the security of our homeland, to bring into existence a new world order. Even after I became naturalised, they treated me little better! I blame the communists, both in the Kremlin and in Whitehall. At one time more dedicated communists were working for the British than worked for Stalin.

Brodmann’s hand was everywhere in those early years. In April 1943 I saw him in Westminster coming out of Downing Street. I am sure he noticed me. Before I could challenge him he got on a southbound number 12 bus. Was he going to Croydon? I doubt it. He was Stalin’s personal messenger. Most likely he had been arranging dinner with ‘Dandy Kim’ or Sir Stanley Blunt. They would have asked him about me, and he would have told them how dangerous I was to Stalin. I suppose I must count my blessings. I was lucky not to be arrested or killed. I was returning from a trip to Westminster Cathedral with Arnold Noyes, who had been a cavalryman in the 10th Hussars. Arnold was a Chelsea Pensioner, another beneficiary of Johnny Banks. Noyes’s regiment had served in Afghanistan, the Soudan and South Africa. He had been wounded in a famous battle with the Boers, but I forget its name. Lord Winston Churchill had ridden with them, he said. Noyes was a great admirer of the Old Bulldog, though he had a great deal of time for the man he called ‘Major Attlee’, who in his own way had also done his best to defend the empire. Their politics aside, the Labour Cabinet ministers, with a couple of miserable exceptions, were convinced imperialists. Their debts were so considerable they could no longer afford to defend the empire as the US squeezed Britain for repayments of loans.

After he was re-elected I wrote several times to Lord Churchill, pointing out how I had been libelled and schemed against by communists. I thought he must surely understand. Attlee could not help but be bedazzled by the Reds. He had fought on the Republican side in Johnny Banks’s own brigade. Churchill possessed only contempt for communists. He understood the realities behind their protestations of friendship. He was aware of their greedy cunning. If I had not kept my plans safely hidden, who knows what Stalin would have done with them? But by the time he was able to hear me out Churchill was already finished, his brain little better than a brandy-soaked sponge. The one letter I received from him was brief and incoherent. A great tragedy I think he lacked the discipline of Mussolini, yet I am convinced the two men might have become great friends if Il Duce had allied himself with his natural comrades, the British and Americans, and stood his ground, as was his natural inclination, the way Churchill stood his. In the end Mussolini allowed himself to be influenced by the ‘rouge boys’ he despised and met a fate he did not deserve.

Meanwhile, Maddy Butter and Margherita Sarfatti, who had done nothing to help him in the end, lived out their days in comfort abroad. I saw La Butter on TV quite recently. She has become an expert anti-Fascist and has moved back to Texas where she works for the arch-liberal Lyndon Johnson.