Hitler's peace

“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.”

“No, thanks, sir. I’m on duty.”

“Nice to know someone is on duty.”

“Sir, I’m Lieutenant John Kaplan,” he said, advancing only a short way into my room. “I’m the assistant chief medical officer in the army field hospital here at Camp Amirabad.”

“It’s okay, Lieutenant Kaplan. I’m only a little tight. No need for the stomach pump just yet.”

“It’s Mr. Pawlikowski, sir. The Secret Service guy. He’s asking for you.”

“For me?” I laughed and sipped my drink. “Asking, as in wants to talk or to tell me I’m a son of a bitch? Well, I’m feeling a little fragile right now.”

“I don’t think he’s angry.”

“No? I would be if someone stopped me from-” I smiled and started again, with the official version. “If someone had put a hole in my liver. How is he, anyway?”

“Stable.”

“Will he make it?”

“It’s too early to say. In themselves, most liver injuries are simple. Sepsis is the main postoperative problem. And rebleeding. And bile leaks.” Kaplan shrugged. “But he’s in good hands. I was a hepatologist at Cedars Sinai before the war. With anyone else but me I’d say his chances might not be so good.”

“Good to meet a man who still has faith in what he does.” I nodded. “I wish I could say the same.”

“Will you come?”

I stood up and collected my coat off the back of my door. As I put it on, I saw that there was still some blood on the sleeve. It was Pawlikowski’s blood, but I almost wished it had been mine.

I followed Kaplan out of the Quonset. He switched on a GI anglehead flashlight and led the way along some duckboards.

“What happened, anyway?” he asked. “Information is a little confused. Someone said that he tried to shoot the president.”

“No. That’s not true. I was there. I saw it happen. Nobody tried to shoot FDR.”

“So what happened?”

“It was an accident, that’s all. Around the president, I think that some of these Secret Service boys get a little trigger happy, that’s all.”

The lies had started.

John Pawlikowski was pale and asleep when I found him. There was a plasma drip in his arm and a couple of cannulae in his lower torso. He looked like a chemical plant.

Kaplan took Pawlikowski’s arm and squeezed it gently.

“Don’t wake him,” I said. “Let him sleep for now. I’ll sit with him awhile.”

The doctor pulled up a chair and I sat down.

“Besides, being in here gives me an excuse to leave that bottle alone. I take it alcohol is forbidden in here.”

“Strictly forbidden,” said Kaplan, smiling.

“Good.”

Kaplan went away to check on one of his other patients, and, clasping my hands, I leaned my elbows on Pawlikowski’s bed. Anyone who didn’t know me might have thought I was praying for him. And in a way I was. I was praying John Pawlikowski would wake up and tell me who he had been working for. So far I seemed to be the only member of the American delegation who wondered what kind of German spy it was that attempted to kill Adolf Hitler. I already had a few ideas on that one. But I was tired. It had been a long and stressful day followed by an alcohol-fueled evening and, after ten or fifteen minutes, I fell asleep.

I awoke with a start and the beginnings of a hangover, to hear the sound of a U.S. Military Police siren. Some kind of an emergency was on its way. Moments later, several cars drew up noisily outside the field hospital. Then the doors flew open and Roosevelt was wheeled inside on a hospital gurney, accompanied by Mike Reilly, Agents Rauff and Qualter, his physician, Admiral McIntire, and his valet, Arthur Prettyman. They were followed by several U.S. Army medical personnel, who quickly lifted Roosevelt onto a bed and began to examine him.

My head was clearer now. I went over to see what was happening.