Hitler's peace

I’d never had much time for the pessimism of Schopenhauer, but finding one of his books in the library at Camp Amirabad, I read him again; and what Schopenhauer had said, that no honest man at the end of his life would want to relive his own life, seemed to ring in my ears like a funeral bell.

By Tuesday, Roosevelt had made a complete recovery, and the gala dinner at the British legation to celebrate Churchill’s sixty-ninth birthday now loomed. I debated not going but decided that consideration of Prime Minister Churchill’s feelings outweighed those of Marshal Stalin. What had still not dawned on me was how much of a leper I had become among my own people in Teheran. But immediately on my arrival at the British embassy, Harry Hopkins put me properly in the picture.

“Jesus, Mayer,” he hissed. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Churchill, overhearing this, advanced on him, growling like a bulldog defending a favorite ham bone.

“He’s here because I asked him, Harry. Professor Mayer is well aware that I should have regarded it as a personal insult if he had not come here tonight. Isn’t that so, Professor?”

“Yes, Prime Minister.”

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” The prime minister’s son Randolph, sober for once, took his father by the elbow. “May I speak to you for a minute, Papa?”

The prime minister turned away from my defense and stared at his son, kindly. “Yes, Randolph, what is it?”

Hopkins looked at me as if the stumps of my limbs were about to turn gangrenous. “All right,” he sighed. “But for Christ’s sake try to stay out of Stalin’s way. Things are difficult enough as it is.” Then he walked abruptly away and went over to speak to his own son, who was one of the guests.

Which was Churchill’s cue to come back and talk to me. Together we chatted and drank several glasses of champagne.

“My daughter did not think to tell me that there would be party games,” Churchill said, with patient good humor, as he watched Reilly and his Secret Service team search one half of the British legation, while the NKVD searched the other. “The trouble with a treasure hunt is that the searching is always more pleasurable than the finding. It is, I fear, self-evidently true of so much in life. And an axiom that even now, in my seventieth year, gives me much pause for thought. Indeed, I often ask myself the question: Will the final victory feel as good as the last battle?”

A few minutes later, Roosevelt arrived, pushed up a ramp that led onto the terrace by his son Elliott and wearing a shawl against the cooler air of the evening. Outside the front doors of the British embassy, and in the presence of an honor guard, Churchill greeted Roosevelt, who handed over his birthday present-a Persian bowl purchased from the hard-currency shop in the grounds of the Russian embassy.

“May we be together for many years,” Roosevelt told the beaming Churchill, and then allowed himself to be wheeled into the dining room. But seeing me, he looked the other way and began to speak to Averell Harriman.

“Speaking as one who has been shunned many times,” Churchill said, “I have always persuaded myself that it is better to be shunned than to be ignored.”

Taking me by the arm, he led me back out onto the front terrace, where the Sikh guard of honor now awaited only Stalin’s arrival. A large black limousine had appeared in the driveway of the legation and was now rolling up to the entrance, which was the cue for Churchill’s Sikhs to present arms.

Seeing Stalin, Molotov, and Voroshilov step out of their limousine, I turned to go back indoors, but found my elbow held tight by the prime minister. “No, no,” growled Churchill. “Stalin may have his way with Eastern Europe, but this is my fucking party.”

Stalin, wearing his mustard-colored military jacket and a matching cape with a scarlet lining, came to the top of the legation steps. Seeing me next to Churchill, he paused, whereupon a British servant slipped between two of Stalin’s bodyguards and tried to relieve the Soviet leader of his cape, prompting one of the guards to draw his pistol and jab it in the poor man’s stomach.

“Oh, Christ,” muttered Churchill, “that’s all we need.” And, in an effort to defuse the situation, he took a step forward and thrust his hand toward Stalin. “Good evening, Marshal Stalin,” said Churchill. “And welcome to my birthday party. I believe this man was merely trying to relieve you of your cape.”

To my horror, Stalin ignored the prime minister, neither speaking to him nor shaking his hand and slowly walked past him into the dining room.

“Well, that’s got him rattled.” And Churchill laughed.

“Is that why I’m here, sir?”

“I told you before, young man. You’re here because I asked you to be here.”

But I was no longer sure that the British prime minister did not have some ulterior motive in asking me to his party. Perhaps rattling Stalin had been a motive in itself.