“Fair enough,” Truman said. “Don’t worry. Whatever happens, you won’t get the blame. I will. That comes with sitting on this side of the desk.”
“Oh, yes.” George Kennan nodded. “I wouldn’t trade places with you for all the money in the world.”
“I don’t particularly like this seat myself, but I’ve got it. I have to do the best I can in it,” Truman said. “Stalin has made it plain as day that he won’t settle for the status quo ante bellum. Do you think the other Russian Communists will show better sense if he isn’t there any more to stop them?”
“If he’s deceased, do you mean?”
Truman nodded. “That’s just what I mean. As long as Hitler stayed alive, the Germans wouldn’t surrender. He scared them worse than we did. Christ, he scared ’em worse than the Russians did, and that’s really saying something. But it wasn’t much more than a week after he blew his brains out that they decided to throw in the towel.”
“It’s an interesting question, sir.” Kennan, who probably looked thoughtful all the time, looked more thoughtful now. “It would depend on who took power after he, ah, died, of course.”
“Well, sure.” The President nodded. “With luck, some of his higher-ups would go to the Devil along with him. I’m talking about landing an A-bomb on his head, you understand.”
“Yes, I thought you had to be,” Kennan replied. “I assume you haven’t tried to do this before-”
“Oh, we did, when we hit Moscow,” Truman broke in. “It didn’t work, but not for lack of effort.”
“I see. I wondered if that might be so. I might have tried harder to find out if some of my acquaintances in the Defense Department hadn’t got nervous about talking to me.” Kennan brought out the implied accusation with no particular rancor.
“I never told anyone not to talk to you,” Truman said truthfully.
“I didn’t say you did, sir. People there did understand, though, that I was no longer in good odor here or at the State Department.” Kennan had got on fine with George Marshall when Marshall was Secretary of State. He and Dean Acheson, though, struck sparks off each other.
Marshall, of course, was one of the few men perhaps even smarter than Kennan. Acheson, while nobody’s dope, wasn’t in that lofty league. Chances were he’d disliked being looked down upon from on high, as it were. Few human beings didn’t. Truman himself had the unpleasant suspicion that he was being measured by Kennan’s mental calipers.
“Suppose we do send some of Stalin’s button men to hell with him,” Truman said. “Will the ones who’re left make peace?”
“If they see that their national survival, or maybe their personal survival, is at stake, I think they will,” Kennan said. “But I gather that finding where Stalin is isn’t easy. If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t sleep in the same bed twice in a row.”
“We’re working on that,” the President said. It was, in fact, something of an understatement. The less he said, the better the chance nothing would leak. No one had told him about the atom bomb till he moved into the White house, and he’d been Vice President. He’d been mad about that at first, but only at first. Till the weight of the world landed on his shoulders, he hadn’t needed to know.
George Kennan was only-only!-a diplomat out of work at the moment. There were plenty of things he didn’t need to know. Truman was no Joe McCarthy, to distrust an out-of-work diplomat’s loyalty. But he understood that the fewer chances you took, the better off you were likely to end up.
“I do thank you very much for your help,” the President said.
That was dismissal. George Kennan recognized it as such. He rose from his chair. Truman also stood. As they shook hands again, Kennan said, “I’m pleased to do whatever I can, sir, as I told you before. But I shouldn’t be the only man whose views you seek. Get as many opinions as you can, judge the value of the people who give them, and make your own choices accordingly.”
“I’m trying to do that, yes,” Truman said. “I called you in because I wanted to hear from someone who wasn’t connected to the State Department.”
“Oh, I’m still connected to it,” Kennan said. “It doesn’t pay my salary any more, but I’ll always bear its mark.”
“Its scars,” Truman suggested with a grin.
“Well, yes, there is that,” Kennan agreed with a wry grin. “We all have them here and there, don’t we? At least I know where those came from.”
“True enough.” In his late sixties, Truman had plenty of scars of his own. But he also had the satisfaction of knowing he’d dealt out even more of them than he’d taken.
–
Bruce McNulty swept off his officer’s cap and bowed from the waist. “Madame, your humble chariot awaits,” he said in what an American fondly imagined to be an English accent.
The accent wasn’t what gave Daisy Baxter a fit of the giggles. Neither was the humble chariot: a jeep from some U.S. Air Force motor pool. The uncovering and the bow, though…“You act like somebody out of a movie about Henry VIII or Shakespeare or something,” Daisy said.
He took off the cap again and looked at it with regret. “No feather, darn it,” he said in his usual American tones. “But I can buckle a mean swash without one. What’s Errol Flynn got that I don’t? I mean, besides money, looks, and talent?”
“I like the way you look just fine,” Daisy said.
“That’s nice,” he answered blandly. “I notice you didn’t talk about the other two.”
“You’re impossible,” she said, wagging her finger at him.
His grin was pure impudence. “Hey, I do my best. C’mon, toots-hop in. You’ve got yourself a pass from the hospital. I’ve got one from my base. Let’s go cut a rug. Tomorrow morning it’ll be 1952.”
Daisy was glad to slide into the jeep’s passenger seat-which, since it was on the right, to her way of thinking should have been the driving seat (or, if you were a Yank, the driver’s seat). Even though it hadn’t been built for comfort, sitting down was a relief. She still didn’t have all her strength, or all her hair, back. But they’d let her go out on New Year’s Eve once she promised not to get too crazy or wild.
Bruce got in beside her. “You warm enough?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I won’t break if you look at me sidewise.” She was also bundled into a thick lamb’s-fleece coat one of the sisters had lent her. It would have kept a giraffe cozy at the South Pole.
“Okey-doke.” He turned the key and put the jeep in gear.
“Are you all right driving on the left?” She had frets of her own.
“I’ve done it enough by now that I’ve got the hang of it,” he answered. “I have to remember not to look the wrong way, that’s all. But nobody’s going to be moving real fast even if we do bump fenders.”
“Mudguards,” Daisy corrected automatically.
“Yeah, mudguards.” Bruce’s agreement was sarcastic. “And the boot, and a spanner to change the tyres-you don’t say those funny, you just spell ’em wrong-and the hood is the bonnet. Can you imagine a jeep with a bonnet? Makes me think it ought to have curly hair.”
“Impossible,” she said again, but she couldn’t help laughing.
He did drive slowly and carefully. The blackout was as stern as it had been during the Blitz. Starlight was what he had to steer by, and the clouds scudding across the sky robbed him of much of that.
The dance was in Yaxham, a tiny village a few miles south of East Dereham. Daisy wondered how Bruce had heard about it, and how he intended to find the hall where it was being held once he managed to find Yaxham.
That, she turned out not to need to worry about. Once they got into Yaxham, they could play it by ear. The hall might be blacked out, but music spilled into the street even if light didn’t.
“Let’s see if I can park this critter without leaving it in the middle of the road,” Bruce said.
“That would be good.” Daisy nodded, though he might not be able to see her.
He did a splendid job, possibly by Braille. Then he said, “Shall we go make fools of ourselves?”