“Which brings me to you, Professor Mayer. I want you to conduct your own investigation into these Katyn Forest claims. Start by making an objective assessment of what the files contain, but don’t feel you have to limit yourself to them. Speak to anyone you think would be of use. Make up your own mind and then write a report for my eyes only. Nothing too long. Just a summary of your findings with some suggested courses of action. I’ve cleared it with Donovan, so this takes priority over anything else you’re doing.”
Taking out his own handkerchief, he wiped his hand clean of dust, and didn’t touch the files again.
“How long do I have, Mr. President?”
“Two or three weeks. It’s not long, I know, for a matter of such gravity, but as you can appreciate, that can’t be helped. Not now.”
“When you say ‘speak to anyone who might be of use,’ does that include people in London? Members of the Polish government in exile? People in the British Foreign Office? And how much of a nuisance am I allowed to make of myself?”
“Speak to whomever you like,” insisted Roosevelt. “If you do decide to go to London, it will help if you say that you’re my special representative. That will open every door to you. My secretary, Grace Tully, will organize the necessary paperwork for you. Only, try not to express any opinions. And avoid saying anything that will make people think you’re speaking in my name. As I said, this is a very delicate situation, but whatever happens, I’d very much like to avoid this coming between myself and Stalin. Is that clearly understood?”
Clear enough. I was to be a mutt with no balls and just my master’s collar to let people know I had the right to piss on his flowers. But I fixed a smile to my face and, brushing some stars and stripes onto my words, piped, “Yes, sir, I understand you perfectly.”
When I got back home, Diana was waiting for me, full of excited questions.
“Well?” she said. “What happened?”
“He makes a terrible martini,” I said. “That’s what happened.”
“You had drinks with him?”
“Just the two of us. As if he was Nick and I was Nora Charles.”
“What was it like?”
“Too much gin. And way too cold. Like a country house party in England.”
“I meant, what did you talk about?”
“Among other things, philosophy.”
“Philosophy?” Diana pulled a face, and sat down. Already she was looking less excited. “That’s easier on the stomach than sleeping pills, I guess.”
Diana Vandervelden was rich, loud, glamorous, and drily funny in a way that always put me in mind of one of Hollywood’s tougher leading ladies, say Bette Davis or Katharine Hepburn. Formidably intelligent, she was easily bored and had given up a place at Bryn Mawr to play women’s golf, almost winning the U.S. Women’s Amateur title in 1936. The year after that she had quit competition golf to marry a senator. “When I met my husband it was love at first sight,” she was fond of saying. “But that’s because I was too cheap to buy glasses.” Diana was herself not very political, preferring writers and artists to senators, and, despite her many accomplishments in the salon-she was an excellent cook and was famous for giving some of the best dinner parties in Washington-she had quickly tired of being married to her lawyer husband: “I was always cooking for his Republican friends,” she later complained to me. “Pearls before swine. And you needed the whole damn oyster farm.” When she left her husband in 1940, Diana had set up her own decorating business, which was how she and I had first met. Soon after I moved to Washington, a mutual friend had suggested I hire her to fix up my home in Kalorama Heights. “A philosopher’s house, huh? Let’s see, now. How would that look? How about a lot of mirrors, all at navel height?” Our friends expected us to get married, but Diana took a dim view of marriage. So did I.
Right from the beginning my relationship with Diana had been intensely sexual, which suited us both just fine. We were very fond of each other, but neither of us ever talked much about love. “We love each other,” I had told Diana the previous Christmas, “in the way people do when they love themselves just a little more.”
And I loved it that Diana hated philosophy. The last thing I was looking for was someone who wanted to talk about my subject. I liked women. Especially when they were as intelligent and witty as Diana. I just didn’t like it when they wanted to talk about logic. Philosophy can be a stimulating companion in the salon, but it’s a dreadful bore in the bedroom.
“What else did Roosevelt talk about?”
“War work. He wants me to write a report on something.”
“How very heroic,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “What do you get for that? A medal on a typewriter ribbon?”
I grinned, enjoying her show of scorn. Both Diana’s brothers had enlisted in the Canadian Air Force in 1939 and, as she never failed to remind me, both of them had been decorated.
“Anyone might think you don’t believe that intelligence work is important, darling.” I went over to the liquor tray and poured myself a scotch. “Drink?”
“No, thanks. You know, I think I worked out why it’s called intelligence. It’s because intelligent people like you always manage to stay well out of harm’s way.”
“Someone has to keep an eye on what the Germans are up to.” I swallowed some of the scotch, which tasted good and warmed my insides pleasingly after Roosevelt’s embalming fluid. “But if it gives you a kick trying to make me feel yellow, then go ahead. I can take it.”
“Maybe that’s what bothers me most.”
“I’m not bothered that you’re bothered.”
“So that’s how it works. Philosophy.” Diana leaned forward in her armchair and stubbed out her cigarette. “What’s this report about, anyway? That the president of the United States wants you to write.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“I don’t see what there is to be cagey about.”
“I’m not being cagey. I’m being secretive. There’s a big difference. If I were being cagey, I might let you stroke my fur, fold my ears, and tickle it out of me. Secretive means that I’ll swallow my poison pill before I let that happen.”
For a moment her nostrils looked pinched. “Never put off what you can do today,” she said.
“Thank you, dear. But I can tell you this. I’m going to have to go to London for a week or two.”
Her face relaxed a little and a smile played a quiet little duet on her lips.
“London? Haven’t you heard, Willy dear? The Germans are bombing the place. It might be dangerous for you.” Her voice was gently mocking.
“I did kind of hear that, yes,” I said. “Which is why I’m glad to be going. So I can look myself in the eye when I’m shaving in the morning. After fifteen months sitting behind a desk on Twenty-third Street, it strikes me that maybe I should have joined the navy after all.”
“Goodness. Such heroism. I think I will have that drink.”
I poured her one, the way she preferred it, neat, like the Bryn Mawr way Diana occupied a chair, knees pressed chastely together. As I handed it to her, she took it out of my fingers and then held my hand, pressing it close to her marble-cool cheek. “You know I don’t mean a word of anything I say, don’t you?”
“Of course. It’s one of the reasons I’m so fond of you.”
“Some people fight bulls, ride to hounds, shoot birds. Me, I like to talk. It’s one of the two things I do really well.”
“Darling, you’re the Ladies Grand Champion of talk.”
She swallowed her scotch and bit her thumbnail as if to let me know it was just an appetizer and there were parts of me she would like to try her little bite on. Then she stood up and kissed me, her eyelids flickering as she kept on opening and closing them to see if I was ready to climb aboard the pleasure boat she had chartered for us.
“Why don’t we go upstairs and I’ll show you the other thing I do really well?”
I kissed her again, putting my whole self into it, like some ham who’d understudied John Barrymore.