Elena hugged me fondly and, taking me by the elbow, hustled me off the terrace into an enormous drawing room furnished in an opulent Second Empire style with just a touch of the Levantine. The Count of Monte Cristo would not have looked at all out of place there with the daughter of Ali Pasha, the Princess Haydee. There were hookahs and tapestries and Orientalist oils by Frederick Goodall showing harem scenes and slave markets, all of which gave the room a sort of stage-sexiness. We sat down on a long French Empire sofa.
“I want you all to myself before the other guests arrive. So you can tell me what you have been doing. God, it’s wonderful to see you again, darling. Now, look here, I know about the book. I even tried to read it, only I couldn’t understand a word. You’re not married?”
“No, I’m not married.”
She seemed to read something between the frown lines appearing on my forehead.
“Marriage isn’t for you, Willy darling. Not with your looks and your sex drive. Take it from someone who’s been there. Freddy was a wonderful husband in many ways, but he was exactly like you in that department. Couldn’t keep his hands off other men’s wives, which is why he’s no longer alive.”
Five years had passed since I had last seen Elena. After I left Berlin, she had gone to Cairo as the wife of a very rich Egyptian banker, a Copt named Rashdi, who managed to get himself shot dead during a card game in 1941. Bill Deakin had told me that Elena was famous in Cairo, and this was hardly surprising. He also told me she was keen to do her bit for the Allies, and regularly threw soirees for SOE officers whenever they were on leave. Elena’s parties were almost as famous as she was.
“So, what are you doing in Cairo? I assume you’ve something to do with the conference.”
I told Elena I was in the OSS, serving as the president’s liaison officer, and that I’d been Roosevelt’s special representative in London investigating the Katyn Forest massacre. Elena’s father, Prince Peter Pontiatowski, and his family had been forced to leave their family estates in the Kresy-the Polish northeast-during the Russo-Polish war in 1920. Their lands had never been recovered. As a result, Elena didn’t care much for the Russians.
“There are lots of Polish officers coming tonight, and you’ll find nearly all of them knew someone who was murdered at Katyn,” she said. “I must get some of them to tell you about what really happened in Poland. They’ll be so pleased to meet an American who knows something about what happened in Poland. Most of your countrymen don’t, you know. They don’t know, and I think they don’t care.”
There was a Baroque marble statue on a table depicting some ancient Greek hero who was being attacked by a lion that had its teeth planted very firmly in his bare ass. It looked uncomfortable. And for a moment I saw myself at the dinner table having my skinny Yankee ass similarly chewed by some disgruntled Polish officer.
“Actually, Elena,” I said, “I’d rather you didn’t mention my working for the president.”
“I’ll try, darling. But you know me. I’m hopeless with secrets. I tell all the boys who come here, ‘Don’t tell me anything.’ I can’t keep a secret to save my life. I’ve been an inveterate gossip ever since school. Remember what the little doctor said to me once?”
I knew she was referring to Josef Goebbels, whom we’d both known well in Berlin.
“‘I have two ways of releasing information to the world,’” she said, speaking German and imitating perfectly Goebbels’s impeccable, professorial, High German accent. “‘I can leave a memorandum on the desk of my secretary at the Leopold Palace. Or I can tell Princess Elena Pontiatowska something in complete confidence. ’”
I laughed. I remembered the occasion when Goebbels had said it, not least because the same night I had slept with Elena for the first time. “Yes, that’s right. I remember.”
“I do miss him sometimes,” she sighed. “I think he was the only Nazi I ever really liked.”
“He was certainly the cleverest Nazi I ever knew,” I admitted.
She sighed. “I suppose I had better go back and join my other guests.”
“It’s your party.”
“You don’t understand what it’s like, darling. Entertaining the troops like this. They all fancy their bloody chances. Especially the count.”
“The count?”
“My Polish SOE colonel, Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz. Carpathian Rifle Brigade. He’s liable to challenge you to a duel if he sees me talking to you like this.”
“So why do you bother doing it? Entertain the troops.” I laughed. “Jesus, I make you sound like Bob Hope. Is Pepsodent paying for this party?”
“I do it for morale, of course. The British are very keen on morale.” She stood up. “Come on. Let me introduce you to some people.”
She took me by the arm again and led me back onto the terrace, where several British and Polish officers now eyed me suspiciously. There were other women at the party by now, but I didn’t pay them any attention. I just meekly followed Elena around the terrace as she introduced me to one person and then another. And I made her laugh. Just like we were back in Berlin.
Eventually we went in to dinner. I was seated between Elena and her Polish colonel, who seemed none too pleased that I had usurped his position on Elena’s right-hand side. He was a striking man with dark hair, a longish chin, a Fairbanks mustache, and a beautiful speaking voice that seemed quite unaffected by the harsh-smelling tobacco he rolled in his neat little cigarettes. I smiled at him a few times, and when I wasn’t speaking to Elena, I even tried to make conversation. The colonel’s replies were mostly monosyllabic; once or twice he didn’t even bother to reply at all. Instead he just busied himself sawing at a piece of chicken as if it were a German’s throat. Or mine. He wasn’t the only Pole at the dinner table. Just the least friendly. There were eighteen guests, of whom at least five other officers present, not including Colonel Pulnarowicz, wore the shoulder patches of the Polish army. They were much more talkative. Not least because Elena seemed to have a limitless supply of excellent wines and spirits. There was even some vodka from the famous Lancut distillery in Poland.
Toward the end of the meal I lit us both cigarettes and asked her how it was that there were so many Poles in Egypt.
“After the Russians invaded Poland,” she said, “many Poles were deported to the southern Soviet republics. Then, after Germany attacked Russia, the Russians set many Poles free in Iran and Iraq. Most joined the Polish army of General Anders to fight the Nazis. Here, in the North African theater, the Polish army was commanded by General Sikorski. But, as you know, relations between the Poles and the Russians collapsed with the discovery of the bodies in the Katyn Forest. Sikorski demanded that the Red Cross be allowed to investigate the site. In response, Stalin broke off all relations with the Polish army. A few months ago, Sikorski himself died in a plane crash. An accident, it was said. But there isn’t a Pole in North Africa and Egypt who doesn’t think he was murdered by Stalin’s NKVD.”
A captain on Elena’s left was also Polish. Overhearing her, he added some comments of his own. These left me in no doubt that Elena had let the cat out of the bag as far as my report on the Katyn Forest massacre for FDR was concerned, despite my having asked her not to.
“She’s right,” he said. “There isn’t a Pole in North Africa who trusts Stalin. Please tell Roosevelt that when you’re compiling your report. Tell him that when you get to Teheran.”
I shrugged. “Perhaps you know more than I do,” I told him.
“That the Big Three Conference will be in Teheran?” He laughed. Captain Skomorowski was a large man, with dark hair and a nose as sharp as a draftsman’s favorite pencil. Every few minutes he would remove his glasses and wipe away the moisture that had collected on the lenses from the heat generated by his large red face. He laughed again. “This is no big secret.”