Hitler's peace

Stalin shrugged. “Speaking for myself, I think I should prefer to have seen Hitler dead on the floor of that conference room than to have him walk out of these peace talks. I cannot speak for Mr. Hull, but I know that Mr. Mikoyan would gladly have gone to the wall if it had meant us being rid of a monster like Hitler.” Stalin sniffed unpleasantly and wiped his mustache with the back of a liver-spotted hand. Waving dismissively in my direction, he said, “It seems to me that, thanks to your translator, we now find ourselves with the worst of all possible outcomes.”

“With all due respect, Mr. President,” I said, “I think that Marshal Stalin is, perhaps, being a little unfair.”

I was still smarting from Stalin’s description of me as “the Jewish doctor.” I was already cursed with the knowledge that I had saved the life of perhaps the most evil man in history, and I was damned if I could see why I should have to shoulder the responsibility for the failure of the peace talks as well.

“All right, Professor, all right,” said Roosevelt, gesturing with the flat of his hand that I should try to keep calm.

“Are we to worry about what these parrots, our interpreters, think is fair and what is unfair?” snorted Stalin. “Perhaps your man is one of these American capitalists who wants to see his country’s armies in Europe if only because he imagines that the Soviet Union wishes to make an empire for itself. Such as the British have made in India. I’m told that his mother is one of the richest women in America. Perhaps he hates Communists more than he hates Nazis. Perhaps that is why he gave the forgery to Hitler.”

I wished that I could have mentioned my previous membership in the Austrian Communist Party. But Roosevelt was already trying to change the subject.

“I think that India is certainly ripe for a revolution, Marshal Stalin,” he said. “Don’t you? From the bottom up.”

Recognizing that perhaps he had gone too far in his denunciation of me, Stalin shrugged. “I’m not sure about that,” he said. “India’s caste system makes things more complicated. I doubt a revolution along the lines of the straightforward Bolshevik model is a realistic proposition.” Stalin smiled thinly. “But I can see that you’re tired, Mr. President. I only came to tell you that, if you are agreeable, we will reconvene at four o’clock in the main conference hall, with Mr. Churchill. So I’ll leave you now, to rest a while and to gather your strength for what we must discuss. A second front in Europe.”

And with that, Stalin was gone, leaving each of us in openmouthed amazement. It was Roosevelt who spoke first.

“Professor Mayer? I don’t think Uncle Joe likes you very much.”

“No, sir. I don’t think he does. And I’m counting myself lucky that I’m an American and not a Russian. Otherwise I guess I’d be facing a firing squad.”

Roosevelt nodded wearily. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “it might be best if you went back to Camp Amirabad. After all, it’s not as if we’ll be needing your interpreting services anymore. Not now that the Fuhrer has gone. And there’s no sense aggravating Stalin any further by your presence here in the Russian compound.”

“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.”