Sam Bourne - Pantheon

‘I’m listening.’

‘It involves the Dean of Yale University. He’s in Washington. I have reason to believe he is involved in a secret campaign to keep the United States out of the war. He told his niece that he was about to have the most important meeting of his life.’ James heard himself. He sounded like a lunatic. In a moment, Edward Harrison, Time journalist and James’s only hope in Washington, would surely hang up, explaining to his wife that it had been ‘some British guy’ he knew back in Spain who had clearly lost his marbles during the war.

But Harrison said something else. ‘A meeting? I’ve been hearing rumblings about this. I thought it was all happening in Chicago. They’re calling it the America First movement. Or America First Committee. Committee, I think. So what’s the secret plan?’

James heard a whistle, coming from his platform. ‘There’s more I can tell you. I’m on the slow train to Washington, it gets in at seven fifteen. Meet me at the station.’

‘But-’

‘Please, Ed. I promise you, it’ll be worth it.’

Ed Harrison acknowledged James not with a wave, but by holding up a brown paper bag, as he greeted the train that had just pulled under the shelter of the vast, arced roof of Union Station. The bag was soon revealed to contain two doughnuts, both for James.

‘I figured you’d be hungry,’ he said, looking hardly a day older than when the pair had met amid the sunshine, high hopes and infinite bottles of Sangre de Toro in Barcelona in 1936. Even unshaven, ten years older than James and with a head of unruly hair, he was still craggily handsome.

‘I wasn’t sure you’d be here,’ James said between mouthfuls.

‘What, and have you call again first thing in the morning? No thanks.’

‘I’m sorry about that. Will you apologize to your wife for me, for ringing so late?’

‘Who said anything about a wife?’

James saw the familiar wicked sparkle in Ed’s eye and remembered how women had flocked around Harrison the famous reporter, playing in the jazz band, drinking the men under the table and still staying sober. That type didn’t tend to get married.

‘So,’ Harrison said. ‘It’s been a long time. Four years, almost to the day, I’d say. What you been up to, James?’

The words that comprised the question were inoffensive enough, but in between them James detected a comment on the state he was in. He had tried to clean up after the battle on the train, but his jacket was ripped, his trousers stained and his face bruised, with dried blood along his jaw and in his scalp. Even before, his face had become thin and drawn, his shattered shoulder distorting the shape beneath his shirt. To Harrison, who had last seen James fit, tanned and youthful in the heady summer of thirty-six, he must have looked a wreck — a premonition of James’s future, aged self.

‘It’s not been an easy time, to be truthful. I stayed on in Spain; fought with the International Brigade.’

‘I remember.’

‘And I was wounded.’

Harrison nodded.

‘Shot in the shoulder. Took a long time to recover.’

‘And your buddy, what was he called? Fine man.’

‘Harry. Harry Knox. Killed, I’m afraid.’

‘Sorry to hear that.’

‘Same incident.’ James tapped his shoulder in a gesture that cursed the sheer dumb luck of it.

‘I’m real sorry. I went back, you know. To Spain. To cover the war. Several times, even at the end.’

‘I was back in England by then. Oxford.’

‘I thought I was doing my bit for the cause by reporting the war, “telling the world” and all that. But you guys, taking up arms — you’re all heroes, you know that.’

‘I didn’t feel much like a hero.’

‘You were taking a stand against fascism, that’s the point. Not many ready to do that. Especially not here.’

‘So I’ve gathered.’

‘My magazine’s on the right side: the boss would have Roosevelt declare war tonight if he could. But you know public opinion, it’s… Well, put it this way, not many Americans have seen what I’ve seen.’

‘In Spain, you mean?’

‘Spain, Germany, Poland. I’ve been covering this story as best as I can, telling it like it is, but-’

‘People don’t want to know.’

‘People don’t like war, James.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong, Ed. Some people like war very much. In fact, some people want to see this war run its course, unimpeded, till Britain is reduced to ashes.’

‘You talking about the Yale guy?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Before we get to that, what about the girl?’ the American asked, as they walked out of Union Station, the dome of the US Capitol visible and bright in the early morning sunshine. James had seen it in paintings; maybe the odd news photograph. It was like a pristine version of St Paul’s.

‘What girl?’ For a brief, guilty moment James thought he meant Dorothy Lake.

‘The girl I had to get the letter to? The one in England?’

A shot of pain went through James, as he thought of Florence and Harry at Hope Farm, wherever that might be. Were they still there? Or had they already left? The thought that they might have been spirited away once their location had been discovered, that James had forfeited his one chance to see them again, did not go through his brain, but his flesh, like an electric current of sadness.

‘I’m proud to say Florence Walsingham is now my wife. And the mother of my child.’

Harrison slapped him on the back. ‘Well done, old man. Well done! You couldn’t have married a more beautiful girl. They back home in England?’

James took that as his cue to fill Ed Harrison in — as briefly as he could — on what he knew and how he had come to know it. He did not linger on the disappearance of Florence or Harry, instead focusing narrowly on the Dean’s ‘Cleansing Fire’ lecture and the mysterious death of a subordinate who had apparently stumbled across his plans.

‘You mean to say that one of the country’s most senior scholars actually wants the British to lose the war, just so he can see what happens? Like, for an experiment?’

‘Yes, but also as an end in itself. He’s simply taking eugenic theory to its logical conclusion: we want more of the strong and less of the weak, so why not let war do what it does best?’

‘And eliminate those too weak to survive.’ Harrison shook his head. ‘You’ve had quite a month, haven’t you, my friend? No wonder you look like duck crap.’

‘Thanks.’

‘No offence. But, Jesus. And you think this is why he’s come here?’

‘Based on what he told his niece, yes.’

‘Well, you may be right. Look what’s on page sixteen.’ Ed handed him a newspaper. ‘That’s what I love about the Washington Post: you never know where you’re gonna find a front-page story.’

James read the headline. ‘Demanding “No foreign entanglements,” anti-war campaigners plan next move.’ He skimmed the details: business leaders and politicians coming together… promise to build mass opposition to intervention in the war in Europe… no shortage of funding, several millionaires… political backing in both Senate and the House… strongest support in Chicago and Illinois… lead spokesman the illustrious aviator, Charles H Lindbergh… socialist allies in the Keep America out of War Committee… prime mover Yale Law School student, P Alexander Tudor, who hopes to launch a formal anti-interventionist movement in September, likely to be called the America First Committee…

One word stopped him: Yale. As if reading his mind, Harrison leaned over, pen in hand, and circled the same word. He then said, ‘I’ve asked around. Turns out they’re meeting today, trying to secure some big names on the Hill in time for launch in September.’