Churchill's Triumph (4 page)

“We need to stick a few pins in their rumps. Make sure they take a little guidance—”

“Our guidance.”

“Otherwise we’ll achieve nothing. These meetings are all the same. Our masters dine and our masters wine, which is all very well, but nobody knows what on earth has been settled—least of all themselves. Winston is the worst.”

“Oh, but he’s done so much.”

“Anthony, forgive me, but this is the most decisive point of the war. Everything we’ve fought for hangs upon this moment and upon this meeting. It’s no time for nostalgia.”

The foreign secretary sighed. “At times he does seem like an old ship with the wind torn from her sails. And the truth is, I never know when his heart will rule his head.”

“His heart
always
rules his head, Anthony! He has a couple of drinks and gets a little buffy, then he’s away on one of his great sentimental waves. Fine for music hall, less useful with Marshal Stalin, I fear.” The car hit one of the many hurriedly filled potholes that marked the road out of Saki and the civil servant bounced in his seat, shaking both his dignity and his natural reserve. His fingers brushed fretfully across his carefully trimmed moustache. “Frankly, Anthony, I shall be much happier when you’ve taken the reins.”

Eden sat quietly for a moment. There was no denying his ambition, or his ability—everyone said so. But it was better in such matters not to seem too keen.

“We’ve beaten him like a plough horse. I suppose he can’t go on for ever.”

A pause.

“You would be so much better, Anthony.”

Another pause.

“Thank you, Alec. I shant forget your devotion. We must all move on.”

“Well, since you mention it, I suppose you’ve realized. . . ”

“Come, Alec, you can confide in me.”

Cadogan stared out of the window. It was many moments before the words came. “Washington. I’d like Washington.”

“We already have an ambassador. There is no vacancy.”

“Neither is there at Number Ten, Anthony. But time will tell. And the Americans’ intellectual grip is about as thin as restaurant coffee. All grand phrases and foggy bottoms. No denying there’s a job to be done.”

“And you would be the man to do it.”

“It’s my turn to thank you.”

“All in good time, Alec. Everything in good time.”

The car bounced on, and they fell back into silence.

❖ ❖ ❖

Frank Sawyers was having a difficult day, not that there was anything unusual in this. Every day in the service of Winston Churchill was a challenge. The British war leader was a demanding and often sharp-tongued taskmaster, who worked preposterous hours, indulged in extravagant appetites, and expected everything—and everyone—to work to his whim. As his valet, Sawyers was expected not only to put him to bed but also to be there to wake him up in the morning. It was therefore fortunate that Sawyers wasn’t married and was never likely to be, and that he had a sense of the ridiculous that enabled him to laugh through his master’s excesses when others, including well-salted admirals, battle-hardened generals, and gin-sodden cabinet ministers, simply wilted.

He wasn’t the best-looking fellow in the world, short, in his forties with a shining pink pate and a dominant lisp, but Sawyers was always meticulously turned out and set himself high standards. He also knew that Churchill couldn’t operate without him. Truth be told, he would have trouble getting dressed without him, and although Sawyers had never lifted a rifle in anger, he reckoned he’d done as much as many to win this war simply by keeping the old bugger going. He bore many scars from the Churchillian lash, but others recognized his abilities. At a dinner in the Kremlin the previous year, the Russian leader himself—Marshal Stealin’, as Sawyers liked to refer to him in his sibilant Cumberland accent—had toasted him, not once, but twice. Mind you, the Marshal had been more than halfway towards alcoholic oblivion so had probably mistaken him for a cabinet minister or, at very least, the Keeper of the King’s Closet. Now, there would be a job. . .

Sawyers was a servant, but in his own way a bit of a snob, so it helped him along his bumpy road to know that Churchill always insisted on the best—vintage champagne, hand-rolled Havanas, silk underwear. The problem was, the master never quite found the means to pay for it all. To finance his lifestyle he would contract to a publisher to write another history but spend the advance long before its time, requiring him to undertake to write yet more histories to pay off his debts. As his literary agent used to say, rarely had so much been owed to so many. The histories would eventually be written, of course, and the advances earned several times over, but in the meantime, Sawyers had to be an excellent household manager, even something of a forager, and these skills were never in greater demand than during his first few days in the Crimea.

Yalta wouldn’t have looked out of place on the French Riviera. It sat in a natural amphitheatre that was crowned with forests of pine, and had grown into a seaside resort of elegant villas and promenades interwoven with rustling olives and small vineyards. But then the Wehrmacht had arrived. The desecration they had inflicted had been almost total, for what they had not ruined during its capture had been raped as they departed. Barely a window survived or a roof remained intact. It had become a land of memories, which made it all the more remarkable as the choice to host the most important gathering of the war, yet Stalin refused to travel outside the Soviet Union and Yalta, in February, was at least warm. As the road from Saki unwound in the lee of the mountains, snow and slush gave way to sweet, scented breezes fresh off the sea.

The three delegations—Russian, American and British—were to be housed in separate facilities. The Russians stayed at the Yusupov Palace in Koreiz while the Americans were placed nearby in the old tsarist summer palace called Livadia. The British, meanwhile, lodged nearly thirty minutes away, at the Vorontsov Palace. The Vorontsov was a strange confection of styles, a confusing mixture of Scottish baronial castle, moorish villa and Swiss chalet, perched on the heights at the southern tip of the Crimea from where it gazed out over the waters of the Black Sea like a cross-eyed bull. It had survived the carnage that had reduced the surrounding areas to wasteland only because Field Marshal von Manstein had made it his personal headquarters, yet even so, two weeks before Churchill was due to arrive, the Vorontsov had had nothing: no windows, no doors, neither plumbing nor furniture. But when Sawyers and the vanguard of the British party got there they discovered a stylish dining room, antique furniture, rare carpets, wall hangings, and many grand portraits. Every item had been shipped by rail from Moscow four days’ journey to the north. The linen was spotless, the flowers stood fresh in the vases, and goldfish swam once more in the stone pool of the orangery. They’d even replanted the gardens. No effort had been spared. The entire staff of the Hotel Metropol in Moscow had been conscripted and brought a thousand miles south to act as bed-makers and broom-wielders, rounded up in the middle of the night by the NKVD secret police and told to pack. Most of them had imagined they were headed for the gulags, not a holiday resort.

Although the Vorontsov was called a palace it was not large, and no amount of endeavor could alter the fact that there were simply not enough rooms to go round. As a result, most of the British delegation was shuffled off to an annex where air vice marshals shared a bucket for a latrine and lowly colonels were forced to sleep eight to a room. And the fleas declared war on everyone, regardless of rank.

The most insurmountable problem, however, was with the bathrooms. There were only four, and once Winston Churchill and his foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, had laid claim to theirs, the rest would have to queue—or use the facility set up in the garden, which came complete with a Russian babushka armed with a sponge who would scrub your back like a naughty child. In spite of their public-school backgrounds, not many of the Englishmen found the courage to take up the challenge.

It was inevitable that compromises would have to be made, and this, for Sawyers, came close to disaster, for Winston Churchill was not a man of compromise. The Russians had attempted to make his quarters as comfortable as possible—the plumbing still leaked a little, but he splashed about in his bath so much that he’d never notice—yet the bed would never do. It was a single bed, a narrow bed, and no part of Winston Churchill was narrow. Sawyers tried to indicate as much to the Russians who were moving furniture around the palace like worker ants, but they were harassed and said,
“Da, da,”
although they didn’t understand English, which only became clear when nothing happened.

For a moment Sawyers wondered whether to volunteer for a posting to an Arctic convoy, then scolded himself for being so weak. He knew what to do. He had seen his master do it on many occasions. So he stood in the middle of the bedroom and screamed. Roared. Threw a monumental tantrum. Stamped his foot and swore—and would have thrown his cigar into the fireplace, if only he had one. The worker ants milled around in a storm of confusion, dashing in and out of the room and chattering in gibberish. It was some time before a voice of sanity broke through.

“I speak little of your language, sir. Can I be of assistance?”

A young man in his late twenties, tall, gangling, fine features but with a broad, Slavic forehead and a thick thatch of dark hair, was being ushered forward by the other men. His feet seemed heavy, every step taken with reluctance.

“At last.” Sawyers sighed.

The other man drew closer. “What are your orders?”

“Me? Orders?”

“You are officer, no?”

Sawyers laughed.

“But. . . ” The other man, already wary, became confused. “You are in charge of Mr. Churchill’s apartments, and you are not officer?”

“Not on your life.”

“In Russia, you would be at least full colonel.”

“Me?” Sawyers shook his head. “I’m just a bloody butler.”

“But you are making outrage. Everyone is worried that you will complain to NKVD and get us shot.”

“No need for a firin’ squad, just a new bed. For Mr. Churchill. Man size, not this children’s cot.”

The man interpreted to the others who were crowding round the doorway. They began to shake their heads.

“They say there is no such thing left anywhere in Crimea.”

“Way I see it, if my Mr. Churchill can spare the time, I’m sure your Marshal Stealin’ can spare a bed.”

As the Marshal’s name echoed round the room, private concern was replaced by general alarm. Voices fell to a hoarse whisper. The young man wrung his hands—Sawyers noticed that the left had two fingers missing.

“They say it will be done,” the man announced eventually. “Even if they have to make it themselves.”

“Thank you. Y’ may just have saved my life.”

The young man came no closer but craned his neck forward to examine the Englishman with the caution of a physician looking for signs of plague. Sawyers could see sweat broken on his brow.

“Then I will ask you to do same for me,” he whispered.

But at that moment, from somewhere out in the corridor, came the military bark of a guard, and with that the anxious stranger fled, along with all his friends.

❖ ❖ ❖

The bed arrived only hours before its intended occupant. It was brought by a dozen workmen who puffed and muttered, crying out to each other to ensure that no damage was inflicted upon either the huge mahogany frame or any part of the room. It required taking the sliding door that separated the bedroom from the main living room off its runners, and they were also forced to remove the bedside table. A smaller table was put in its place, the whole operation supervised by a man who spoke no English but who, to Sawyers’s educated eye, seemed to be nothing of a workman. His hands were soft, his air arrogant. He did no more than lift the lamp from the old bedside table and replace it carefully upon the new. But the young man had also returned. He spent much of his time glancing nervously in the direction of the supervisor.

“They have brought bed all way from Moscow,” he declared, but Sawyers was determined not to be impressed.

“Sounds fair enough—seein’ as Mr. Churchill has brought himself all the way from London.”

The young man drew nearer. “Make another outrage. Pretend you have trouble with plumbing,” he whispered urgently.

“What’s to pretend?”

Yet even as he responded with his typical dose of servant’s sarcasm, he knew he should take this young man seriously. There was no mistaking the flecks of dread that grazed across his grey eyes. Whatever game was being played out here, it was in earnest. Sawyers wasn’t at all certain whether it was compassion or simple curiosity that drove his response, but in any event he cleared his throat and lifted his voice: “And about time, too, what wi’ Mr. Churchill arrivin’ in a few hours. We’ve only just got his bed and still there’s water floodin’ across bathroom floor. Call this a palace? What would Marshal Stealin’ say?”

As always, the Marshal’s name cast a curious spell across the Russians. The bustle of reorganization melted into unease, as if a herd of antelope had smelled the musk of lion. Even the supervisor stiffened. Words were exchanged, angry, low words, and soon the young man was hustling Sawyers into the bathroom. Sawyers went to close the door but the other man shook his head, indicating the supervisor outside. He turned on every single tap and flushed the lavatory. “NKVD,” he whispered, beneath the roar of rushing water. Sawyers was forced to bend close to the bath to hear him. Steam stung his face.

“My name is Marian Nowak,” the other man muttered, “and I am very pleased to meet you. I am Pole. From Hotel Metropol.”

Sawyers knew the hotel well from previous trips to Moscow with Churchill. It was the place reserved for foreigners and was staffed by those who had some fluency in languages. Sawyers also recalled the British Ambassador’s warning that every member of staff in the Metropol was involved with the NKVD security service and was not to be trusted.

“You must help me.”

An unmistakable cloud of suspicion passed across Sawyers’s face.