Philip Kerr - Hitler's peace

“I’m sure you’re right, sir.” I walked toward the door of the drawing room. There, with my fingers on the door handle, I stopped and, looking back at the president, added: “Just for the record, Mr. President, as someone who knows about German intelligence, it’s my considered opinion that the Beketovka File is one hundred percent genuine and accurate. You can take that from a man who was a member of the Austrian Communist Party when he was a lot younger and less wise than he is now. And there’s nothing Stalin can say that will change that.”

Standing in the door of the Russian embassy, I took a deep, unsteady breath of the warm afternoon air. I closed my eyes and reflected on the extraordinary events of the day and my unwitting role in the history of Hitler’s peace. It was a story that would probably never be told because it was a history of lies and dissembling and hypocrisy, and it revealed the greatest truth of history: that truth itself is an illusion. I was a part of that big lie now. I always would be.

I opened my eyes to find myself facing a tubby-looking man wearing the uniform of a British RAF Commodore and smoking a seven-inch Romeo y Julieta.

“Sir,” said the tubby little commodore, “you appear to be in my way.”

“Mr. Churchill, I appear to be in everyone’s way. My own most of all.”

Churchill removed the cigar from his mouth and nodded. “I know that feeling. It is the antithesis of being alive, is it not?”

“I feel myself unraveling, sir. There’s a dog that’s got hold of the end of my yarn and pretty soon there’s going to be nothing of me left.”

“But I know that dog,” he said. Churchill took a step toward me, his eyes wide with excitement. “I have given that dog a name. I call it the black dog, and it must be driven off as if it were the real thing.” The prime minister glanced at his watch and then pointed toward the grounds with his walking stick. “Stroll with me for a moment, in these Persian gardens. We may not have five miles meandering with a mazy motion, as Mr. Coleridge has it, but I think it will do very well.”

“I’d be honored, sir.”

“I feel I should know you. I know we have met somewhere before now. But beyond the fact you are an American and perhaps something in the diplomatic services, or else you would be wearing a uniform, I cannot for the life of me remember who you are.”

“Willard Mayer, sir. I’m the president’s German translator. At least I was. And we said hello in the corridor of the Mena House Hotel last Tuesday.”

“Then you are the unfortunate young man who saved the life of the German dictator,” said Churchill. Even in the open air, there was a loud echoing timbre to his voice, as well as a slight speech impediment, more noticeable in person than on radio. It made me think the prime minister must once have had a small problem with his palate. “And whose subsequent actions have caused the collapse of the parley with Hitler and his dreadful gang.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Mayer, I venture to think that you believe the failure of these peace talks is something to be lamented, as doubtless Mr. Stalin does, and your own president, to be sure. I have an enormous admiration and affection for Mr. Roosevelt, indeed for all Americans. You must know I am half American myself. But I tell you frankly, sir, that this policy was ill conceived. Hitler is a leviathan of wickedness, a bloodthirsty guttersnipe unparalleled in the history of tyranny and evil, and we have not fought for four long years only now, when victory is in our sights, to turn around and make a peace with these foul fanatics. So do not hold yourself to blame for this morning’s fiasco. No civilized government could ever have countenanced having diplomatic relations with this Nazi power, a power that spurns Christian ethics, cheers its onward course by a barbarous paganism, vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses with pitiless brutality the threat of massacre against the innocents. That power could not ever be the trusted friend of democracy, and to have made a peace with Hitler would have been morally indecent and constitutionally disastrous. In a matter of a few years, perhaps a few months, your country and mine would have come to regret that we did not scotch this snake when we had the chance. I tell you, Willard Mayer, do not hold yourself to blame. The only shame is that such a repugnant course of action was ever contemplated at all, and akin to the man who stroked a rabid dog and said how gentle it seemed to be, until it bit him, whereof he fell sick and died. We do not want Hitler’s peace any more than we wanted Hitler’s war, for only a fool comes down from a tree to look into the eyes of a wounded tiger.”

Churchill took a seat beside a cherry tree and I sat down beside him.

“This is only the beginning of the reckoning,” he said. “The first taste of the world’s judgment on Nazi Germany, and many stern days lie ahead of us. The best of our young men will be killed, almost certainly. That is not your fault, nor is it your president’s fault. Rather, it is the fault of that bloodthirsty Austrian butcher who led us down the dark stairs and into the abyss of a European war. No more should you regret saving Herr Hitler’s life, for it would have dishonored us all to have invited him here and seen him murdered in our midst, like some ancient Roman tyrant, for that would have been to have made ourselves look as vile and detestable as he who has murdered his way across Europe and Russia. The destiny of mankind should never be decided by the trajectory of an assassin’s bullet.

“And now I must leave you,” and Churchill stood up, with some difficulty. “If the black dog returns to growl at your heels, I offer you these three pieces of advice. One, strip off your shirt and place yourself in some direct sunlight, which I have found has a most restorative and uplifting effect. The second is to take up painting. It is a pastime that will take you out of yourself when that seems like an unpleasant place to be. And my third piece of advice is to go to a party and drink a little too much champagne, which is no less efficacious than the sun in lifting the gloom. Wine is, after all, the greatest gift that the sun has made to us. Fortunately for you, I myself am giving a party to celebrate my birthday on Tuesday, and I should be delighted if you would come.”

“Thank you, sir, but I’m not sure that Marshal Stalin would welcome my being there.”

“Since it is not Marshal Stalin’s birthday-assuming that there was ever such an occasion for celebration-that need not concern you at all, Mr. Mayer. I shall expect you at the British embassy at eight o’clock on Tuesday evening. Black tie. No dog.”

I found my ears were still ringing with Churchill’s words long after the prime minister had gone and I was on my way back to Camp Amirabad in an army jeep, certain that I had just met the one man in the world who embodied truth and who would demonstrate the courage of truthfulness.

2100 Hours

At night there is no sun. There is only darkness. In Iran, the darkness comes quickly and with its own peculiar demons. I lay awake on my bed in a Quonset hut, smoking cigarettes and quietly getting drunk. Just after ten o’clock, there was a knock on my door. I opened it to find a tall, round-shouldered man, who had the looselimbed look and large feet of a basketball player. He was wearing a white coat on top of his army fatigues and eyed the drink and the cigarette in my hand with a combination of military and medical disapproval.

“Professor Mayer?”

“If that’s what’s written on the tag on my toe.” I turned away from the open door and sat down on my bed. “Come on in. Pour yourself a drink.”