Hitler's peace

She hit me playfully on the shoulder with a little fan. “Now, you know there aren’t any other women here. Not yet.”

“Actually I hadn’t really noticed. Not since the moment I laid eyes on you.”

That was what Elena did. She dazzled. Men, of course. I had never met a woman who liked her. And I couldn’t blame them. Elena would have been stiff competition for Delilah. In any room, she was always the brightest thing in it. Naturally, this meant there were always lots of moths around her flame. I could see a few of them floating around on the terrace. Most of the moths were wearing British uniforms.

Elena hugged me fondly and, taking me by the elbow, hustled me off the terrace into an enormous drawing room furnished in an opulent Second Empire style with just a touch of the Levantine. The Count of Monte Cristo would not have looked at all out of place there with the daughter of Ali Pasha, the Princess Haydee. There were hookahs and tapestries and Orientalist oils by Frederick Goodall showing harem scenes and slave markets, all of which gave the room a sort of stage-sexiness. We sat down on a long French Empire sofa.

“I want you all to myself before the other guests arrive. So you can tell me what you have been doing. God, it’s wonderful to see you again, darling. Now, look here, I know about the book. I even tried to read it, only I couldn’t understand a word. You’re not married?”

“No, I’m not married.”

She seemed to read something between the frown lines appearing on my forehead.

“Marriage isn’t for you, Willy darling. Not with your looks and your sex drive. Take it from someone who’s been there. Freddy was a wonderful husband in many ways, but he was exactly like you in that department. Couldn’t keep his hands off other men’s wives, which is why he’s no longer alive.”

Five years had passed since I had last seen Elena. After I left Berlin, she had gone to Cairo as the wife of a very rich Egyptian banker, a Copt named Rashdi, who managed to get himself shot dead during a card game in 1941. Bill Deakin had told me that Elena was famous in Cairo, and this was hardly surprising. He also told me she was keen to do her bit for the Allies, and regularly threw soirees for SOE officers whenever they were on leave. Elena’s parties were almost as famous as she was.

“So, what are you doing in Cairo? I assume you’ve something to do with the conference.”

I told Elena I was in the OSS, serving as the president’s liaison officer, and that I’d been Roosevelt’s special representative in London investigating the Katyn Forest massacre. Elena’s father, Prince Peter Pontiatowski, and his family had been forced to leave their family estates in the Kresy-the Polish northeast-during the Russo-Polish war in 1920. Their lands had never been recovered. As a result, Elena didn’t care much for the Russians.

“There are lots of Polish officers coming tonight, and you’ll find nearly all of them knew someone who was murdered at Katyn,” she said. “I must get some of them to tell you about what really happened in Poland. They’ll be so pleased to meet an American who knows something about what happened in Poland. Most of your countrymen don’t, you know. They don’t know, and I think they don’t care.”

There was a Baroque marble statue on a table depicting some ancient Greek hero who was being attacked by a lion that had its teeth planted very firmly in his bare ass. It looked uncomfortable. And for a moment I saw myself at the dinner table having my skinny Yankee ass similarly chewed by some disgruntled Polish officer.

“Actually, Elena,” I said, “I’d rather you didn’t mention my working for the president.”

“I’ll try, darling. But you know me. I’m hopeless with secrets. I tell all the boys who come here, ‘Don’t tell me anything.’ I can’t keep a secret to save my life. I’ve been an inveterate gossip ever since school. Remember what the little doctor said to me once?”

I knew she was referring to Josef Goebbels, whom we’d both known well in Berlin.

“‘I have two ways of releasing information to the world,’” she said, speaking German and imitating perfectly Goebbels’s impeccable, professorial, High German accent. “‘I can leave a memorandum on the desk of my secretary at the Leopold Palace. Or I can tell Princess Elena Pontiatowska something in complete confidence. ’”

I laughed. I remembered the occasion when Goebbels had said it, not least because the same night I had slept with Elena for the first time. “Yes, that’s right. I remember.”

“I do miss him sometimes,” she sighed. “I think he was the only Nazi I ever really liked.”

“He was certainly the cleverest Nazi I ever knew,” I admitted.

She sighed. “I suppose I had better go back and join my other guests.”

“It’s your party.”

“You don’t understand what it’s like, darling. Entertaining the troops like this. They all fancy their bloody chances. Especially the count.”

“The count?”

“My Polish SOE colonel, Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz. Carpathian Rifle Brigade. He’s liable to challenge you to a duel if he sees me talking to you like this.”