Hitler's peace

“It’s in Iraq. The good thing about Basra is that I could have gotten to it by ship. There’s a constitutional requirement that the president should not be away from Washington for longer than ten days. Hull’s job was to try and make Uncle Joe understand that. But he screwed up. Welles could have done it. He was a real diplomat. But Hull.” Roosevelt shook his head. “He understands the Tennessee timber business and not much else. Born in a log cabin, you know. Nothing wrong with that, mind. In fact, I had hoped his being a kind of American peasant would help him find some common ground with Stalin, only it didn’t work out that way. Stalin may be a peasant, but he’s a fucking clever peasant and I needed someone clever to deal with him. So now I have to go somewhere else for the Big Three, and I’m pretty pissed about it, I can tell you. Now I’m going to have to go by ship and by air.”

Roosevelt sipped his martini, and then licked his lips with satisfaction.

“You heard about this fellow Thornton Cole and what happened to him, I suppose?” he asked.

“That he’d been murdered? Yes, sir.” I frowned as I failed to see what Roosevelt was driving at.

“I see you don’t know the whole story.”

“I guess not.”

“Know what a Florence test is?”

“No, sir.”

“It’s something the forensic boys do, to test for seminal fluid. It seems that Thornton Cole’s trousers were covered in semen.”

I suddenly realized what the Metro police had been driving at with their questions about me introducing Sumner Welles to Cole at the Metropolitan Club. They must have suspected me of being involved in some kind of ring of Washington sissies. I had known several homosexual men in my time, mostly in Berlin and Vienna, and even one or two in New York. I held nothing against them just as long as they didn’t try to hold anything against me. What a man did in the privacy of his own circle of hell was no business of mine. At the same time, I could hardly believe what I was hearing. It was true what I had told the Metro police. I hadn’t known Thornton Cole all that well. But I wouldn’t ever have guessed that he was a homosexual any more than I was one myself.

“I made sure I was the first one to tell Hull all about it,” said Roosevelt, gleefully. “In the car, on the way back from the airport. You should have seen his face. It was priceless, just priceless. That’s what I meant when I said he should stay home and clean up his own backyard.” Roosevelt laughed cruelly. “The son of a bitch.”

I tried not to look shocked, but I could not help but feel a little taken aback at this display of presidential vindictiveness.

Roosevelt lit a cigarette and finally came to the point of my presence. “I read your report,” he said. “It was refreshingly pragmatic. For a philosopher, you’re quite the Realpolitiker.”

“Isn’t that the proper job of the intelligence officer? To separate the politics of reality from a policy founded upon the principles of justice and morality? And philosophically speaking, Mr. President, I can’t see much at all that’s wrong with that.”

“You’ll make a logical positivist out of me yet, Professor.” Roosevelt grinned. “But only in private. Realpolitik is like homosexuality. Best when it’s practiced behind closed doors.” Roosevelt sipped his cocktail. “Tell me something. Have you got a girlfriend?”

I tried to contain my irritation.

“Are you asking me if I’m homosexual, Mr. President?” I said through gritted teeth. “Because if you are, the answer is no. I’m not. And as a matter of fact I don’t have a girlfriend. But I did, until quite recently.”

“I don’t care what a man does in private. But when it becomes public it’s a different matter. You see how sex becomes the purest kind of Realpolitik there is?”

I lit a cigarette. I had a strong sense that the president was leading me somewhere a long way from Katyn Forest.

“Professor Mayer? I want you to come to the Big Three with me. As I told you, I’m taking Harry Hopkins instead of Hull. I guess you know that Harry’s been living here at the White House since 1940. There isn’t a man in Washington I trust more. He’s been with me through thick and thin, since ’32. But Harry has a problem. He gets sick. Much of his stomach was cut away because of cancer, and that makes it difficult for him to absorb protein.

“So I want you to understudy Harry and be ready to step into his shoes if he should become ill. Only I don’t want Harry to know about it. You understand? It will be our dirty little secret. People will ask why you’re along for the ride, and you’ll have to tell them to mind their own damned business. That will only make them more curious, of course, so we’ll have to devise some sort of official position for you. Executive officer to General Donovan, or something. But what do you say? Will you come?”

A trip to somewhere warm sounded nice, especially now that I was sleeping alone. And leaving Washington, going somewhere far away, might just help to bring Diana to her senses.