Hitler's peace

“Any idea what he might have been doing in Franklin Park, sometime around midnight?”

“I really can’t imagine. It was a warm night. And it was Halloween. Maybe that’s relevant.”

“A trick-or-treat that went wrong?” Crooks shook his head and smiled. “That’s some trick you’re suggesting. A knife through the heart.”

“I don’t know that I’m suggesting anything, gentlemen. But there were some high spirits in evidence around town last night.”

“How do you mean, high spirits?”

“Didn’t you see the paper? Someone smashed the nose off the Statue of Justice.”

“Is that a fact?”

“I can’t see how they might be connected. But, then, I’m not a detective. Although it seems to me that if I were, I’d probably look to try and connect the unusual, and to rob unusual things of their isolation, so to speak. Isn’t that the essence of detective work? The search for a sense of meaning? A truth concealed? A truth that exists behind the facade? The idea that something can be known?”

Flaherty looked at Crooks, uncomprehending.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, sir,” he said.

“Forgive me,” I shrugged. “It’s my job to think counternaturally, so to speak. To challenge various presuppositions and beliefs and to question certain assumptions and perceptions. You think you’re looking for answers, but the truth is that really you’re just looking for the right question. As I said before.”

Flaherty lit a cigarette and winced as tobacco smoke flooded his eye momentarily.

“Did he have any hobbies you know of?” asked the detective.

“Hobbies? I don’t know. No, wait. I seem to recollect he was very fond of the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.” When the two cops looked blankly back at me, I added, “Sherlock Holmes?”

“Oh, right, Sherlock Holmes. I listened to it last night,” confessed Flaherty. “On WOL?” He smiled. “Solving a murder is easy when you’re Sherlock Holmes. But it’s not so easy when you’re just a Washington cop.”

“Yes,” I said. “I can believe that.”

Flaherty handed me his card.

“If you think of anything.”

I nodded, resisting the temptation to tell him that I was a philosopher and that I thought of things all the time. I only wished I could have thought of a way of persuading Diana to take me back.

XI

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1943,

WASHINGTON, D.C.

When I arrived at the White House that evening, I was again sent to wait in the Red Room. I was beginning to feel quite at home there, although blue might have suited my mood a little better. I tried not to look at the picture of the lady above the fireplace, the one who reminded me of Diana.

There was a matronly briskness about Mrs. Tully that surprised me, given the comparatively late hour, and even on the thick rugs and runners, the heels of her shoes sounded like a drumbeat. Smelling lightly of cologne and wearing a neat gray dress, she looked as if she had just started her day’s duties. I resisted the temptation to tease her again. A lot of the playfulness had gone out of me of late.

I found Roosevelt making cocktails, carefully stirring the martini jug with a long-handled spoon.

“I’ve been looking forward to this, Professor.”

“Me, too, sir.”

“I went to the airport today, to greet Mr. Hull on his return from Moscow. It’s a courtesy usually reserved only for visiting heads of state. Everyone is wondering why I did that. The fact is I wanted to make him feel and look important before I make him look and feel quite the opposite.”

Roosevelt handed me a martini and, holding the jug between his thighs, wheeled himself over to the sofa, where I was now seated. We toasted each other silently. I didn’t like the president’s way with a martini any more now than before, but it was full of alcohol and that was all that really mattered.

Encouraged by the president’s confidential manner, I felt bold enough to make an observation. “You sound like you’re planning to fire him, sir.”

“Not fire. Just neglect. Hurt his pride a little. That kind of thing. I expect you’ve heard of the coming Big Three summit. Stalin and Churchill will bring their two foreign ministers, of course. But not me. I’m taking Harry Hopkins. Mr. Hull is going to stay behind and clean up his own backyard. At least that’s what I’m going to tell him. Moscow was Hull’s big chance at real diplomacy, and he fucked it up. That joint four-power declaration about unconditional surrender and trials for war criminals? Window dressing. I didn’t send Hull all that way to state the obvious. I wanted a meeting with Stalin at Basra. Know where that is?”

I had an idea Basra was more likely to be in the Middle East than in Wyoming, but exactly where in the Middle East I couldn’t say. The geography of sand dunes and wadis was never my strongest subject.