Winter of the World

‘Of course we can,’ Woody said indignantly. ‘Roosevelt campaigned on that basis last year, and he won the election. The United Nations conference opens in San Francisco in a couple of weeks.’ San Francisco had a special significance for Woody, because Bella Hernandez lived there, but he had not yet told his father about her. ‘The American people want to see international co-operation, so that we never have another war like this one. Who could be against that?’

‘You’d be surprised. Look, most Republicans are decent men who simply have a view of the world that is different from ours. But there is a hard core of fucking nutcases.’

Woody was startled. His father rarely swore.

‘The types who planned an insurrection against Roosevelt in the thirties,’ Gus went on. ‘Businessmen like Henry Ford, who thought Hitler was a good strong anti-Communist leader. They sign up for right-wing groups such as America First.’

Woody could not remember him speaking this angrily before.

‘If these fools have their way, there will be a third world war even worse than the first two,’ Gus said. ‘I’ve lost a son to war, and if I ever have a grandson I don’t want to lose him too.’

Woody suffered a stab of grief: Joanne would have given Gus grandchildren, if she had lived.

Right now Woody was not even dating, so grandchildren were a distant prospect – unless he could track down Bella in San Francisco . . .

‘We can’t do anything about complete idiots,’ Gus went on. ‘But perhaps we can deal with Senator Vandenberg.’

Arthur Vandenberg was a Republican from Michigan, a conservative and an opponent of Roosevelt’s New Deal. He was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with Gus.

‘He’s our greatest danger,’ Gus said. ‘He may be self-important and vain, but he commands respect. The President has been wooing him, and he’s come around to our point of view, but he could backslide.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘He’s strongly anti-Communist.’

‘Nothing wrong with that. We are too.’

‘Yes, but Arthur is kind of rigid about it. He’ll get riled if we do anything he thinks is kowtowing to Moscow.’

‘Such as?’

‘God knows what kind of compromises we might have to make in San Francisco. We’ve already agreed to admit Belorussia and the Ukraine as separate states, which is just a way of giving Moscow three votes in the General Assembly. We have to keep the Soviets on board – but if we go too far, Arthur could turn against the whole United Nations project. Then the Senate may refuse to ratify it, exactly the way they rejected the League of Nations in 1919.’

‘So our job in San Francisco is to keep the Soviets happy without offending Senator Vandenberg.’

‘Exactly.’

They heard running footsteps, an unusual sound in the dignified hallways of the Capitol. They both looked around. Woody was surprised to see the vice-president, Harry Truman, running through the hallway. He was dressed normally, in a grey double-breasted suit and a polka-dot tie, though he had no hat. He seemed to have lost his normal escort of aides and Secret Service guards. He was running steadily, breathing hard, not looking at anyone, going somewhere in a terrific hurry.

Woody and Gus watched in astonishment. So did everyone else.

When Truman disappeared around a corner, Woody said: ‘What the heck . . . ?’

Gus said: ‘I think the President must have died.’

(ii)

Volodya Peshkov entered Germany in a ten-wheeler Studebaker US6 army truck. Made in South Bend, Indiana, the truck had been carried by rail to Baltimore, shipped across the Atlantic and around the Cape of Good Hope to the Persian Gulf, then sent by train from Persia to central Russia. Volodya knew it was one of two hundred thousand Studebaker trucks given to the Red Army by the American government. The Russians liked them: they were tough and reliable. The men said the letters ‘USA’ stencilled on the side stood for Ubit Sukina syna Adolf, which meant ‘Kill that son of a bitch Adolf.’

They also liked the food the Americans were sending, especially the cans of compressed meat called Spam, strangely bright pink in colour but gloriously fatty.

Volodya had been posted to Germany because the intelligence he was getting from spies in Berlin was now not as up-to-date as information that could be gained by interviewing German prisoners of war. His fluent German made him a first-class front-line interrogator.