Ken Follett - Fall of Giants

The mother barked a question at the daughter in heavily accented Russian. Walter could not understand her, but he got the gist of the child’s reply, which was a translation of what the doctor had said.

The doctor turned to his nurse. “Clean the hand and bandage it, please.” To Rosie he said: “I’m going to give you some ointment. If your arm swells more you must come back and see me next week. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you let the infection get worse, you may lose your hand.”

Tears came to Rosie’s eyes.

Greenward said: “I’m sorry to frighten you, but I want you to understand how important it is to keep your hand clean.”

The nurse prepared a bowl of what was presumably antiseptic fluid. Walter said: “May I express my admiration and respect for your work here, Doctor.”

“Thank you. I’m happy to give my time, but we need to buy medical supplies. Any help you can offer will be much appreciated.”

Maud said: “We must leave the doctor to get on-there are at least twenty patients waiting.”

The visitors left the surgery. Walter was bursting with pride. Maud had more than compassion. When told of young children working in sweatshops, many aristocratic ladies could wipe away a tear with an embroidered handkerchief; but Maud had the determination and the nerve to give real help.

And, he thought, she loves me!

Maud said: “May I offer you some refreshment, Herr von Ulrich? My office is cramped, but I do have a bottle of my brother’s best sherry.”

“Most kind, but we must be going.”

That was a bit quick, Walter thought. Maud’s charm had stopped working on Otto. He had a nasty feeling that something had gone wrong.

Otto took out his pocketbook and extracted a banknote. “Please accept a modest contribution to your excellent work here, Lady Maud.”

“How generous!” she said.

Walter gave her a similar note. “Perhaps I may be allowed to donate something too.”

“I appreciate anything you can offer me,” she said. Walter hoped he was the only one to notice the sly look she gave him as she said it.

Otto said: “Please be sure to give my respects to Earl Fitzherbert.”

They took their leave. Walter felt worried about his father’s reaction. “Isn’t Lady Maud wonderful?” he said breezily as they walked back toward Aldgate. “Fitz pays for everything, of course, but Maud does all the work.”

“Disgraceful,” Otto said. “Absolutely disgraceful.”

Walter had sensed he was grumpy, but this astonished him. “What on earth do you mean? You approve of well-born ladies doing something to help the poor!”

“Visiting sick peasants with a few groceries in a basket is one thing,” Otto said. “But I am appalled to see the sister of an earl in a place like that with a Jew doctor!”

“Oh, God,” Walter groaned. Of course; Dr. Greenward was Jewish. His parents had probably been Germans called Grunwald. Walter had not met the doctor before today, and anyway might not have noticed or cared about his race. But Otto, like most men of his generation, thought such things important. Walter said: “Father, the man is working for nothing-Lady Maud cannot afford to refuse the help of a perfectly good doctor just because he’s Jewish.”

Otto was not listening. “Fatherless families-where did she get that phrase?” he said with disgust. “The spawn of prostitutes is what she means.”

Walter felt heartsick. His plan had gone horribly wrong. “Don’t you see how brave she is?” he said miserably.

“Certainly not,” said Otto. “If she were my sister, I’d give her a good thrashing.”

There was a crisis in the White House.

In the small hours of the morning of April 21, Gus Dewar was in the West Wing. This new building provided badly needed office space, leaving the original White House free to be used as a residence. Gus was sitting in the president’s study near the Oval Office, a small, drab room lit by a dim bulb. On the desk was the battered Underwood portable typewriter used by Woodrow Wilson to write his speeches and press releases.

Gus was more interested in the phone. If it rang, he had to decide whether to wake the president.

A telephone operator could not make such a decision. On the other hand, the president’s senior advisers needed their sleep. Gus was the lowliest of Wilson’s advisers, or the highest of his clerks, depending on point of view. Either way, it had fallen to him to sit all night by the phone to decide whether to disturb the president’s slumbers-or those of the first lady, Ellen Wilson, who was suffering from a mysterious illness. Gus was nervous that he might say or do the wrong thing. Suddenly all his expensive education seemed superfluous: even at Harvard there had never been a class in when to wake the president. He was hoping the phone would never ring.

Gus was there because of a letter he had written. He had described to his father the royal party at Tŷ Gwyn, and the after-dinner discussion about the danger of war in Europe. Senator Dewar had found the letter so interesting and amusing that he had shown it to his friend Woodrow Wilson, who had said: “I’d like to have that boy in my office.” Gus had been taking a year off between Harvard, where he had studied international law, and his first job at a Washington law firm. He had been halfway through a world tour, but he had eagerly cut short his travels and rushed home to serve his president.

Nothing fascinated Gus so much as the relationships between nations-the friendships and hatreds, the alliances and the wars. As a teenager he had attended sessions of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations-his father was a member-and he had found it more fascinating than a play at the theater. “This is how countries create peace and prosperity-or war, devastation, and famine,” his father had said. “If you want to change the world, then foreign relations is the field in which you can do the most good-or evil.”

And now Gus was in the middle of his first international crisis.

An overzealous Mexican government official had arrested eight American sailors in the port of Tampico. The men had already been released, the official had apologized, and the trivial incident might have ended there. But the squadron commander, Admiral Mayo, had demanded a twenty-one-gun salute. President Huerta had refused. Piling on the pressure, Wilson had threatened to occupy Veracruz, Mexico’s biggest port.

And so America was on the brink of war. Gus greatly admired the high-principled Woodrow Wilson. The president was not content with the cynical view that one Mexican bandit was pretty much like another. Huerta was a reactionary who had killed his predecessor, and Wilson was looking for a pretext to unseat him. Gus was thrilled that a world leader would say it was not acceptable for men to achieve power through murder. Would there come a day when that principle was accepted by all nations?

The crisis had been cranked up a notch by the Germans. A German ship called the Ypiranga was approaching Veracruz with a cargo of rifles and ammunition for Huerta’s government.

Tension had been high all day, but now Gus was struggling to stay awake. On the desk in front of him, illuminated by a green-shaded lamp, was a typewritten report from army intelligence on the strength of the rebels in Mexico. Intelligence was one of the army’s smaller departments, with only two officers and two clerks, and the report was scrappy. Gus’s mind kept wandering to Caroline Wigmore.

When he arrived in Washington he had called to see Professor Wigmore, one of his Harvard teachers who had moved to Georgetown University. Wigmore had not been at home, but his young second wife was there. Gus had met Caroline several times at campus events, and had been strongly drawn to her quietly thoughtful demeanor and her quick intelligence. “He said he needed to order new shirts,” she said, but Gus could see the strain on her face, and then she added: “But I know he’s gone to his mistress.” Gus had wiped her tears with his handkerchief and she had kissed his lips and said: “I wish I were married to someone trustworthy.”