“Easy to see why,” I said pointedly.
“Darling, it’s true,” said Elena. “ Everyone in Cairo knows about Teheran.”
Elena’s colonel laughed with contempt as he saw the look of surprise in my eyes. I was beginning to dislike him almost as much as he seemed to dislike me.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “We know all about the Big Three in Teheran. And, by the way, that’s another city full of displaced Poles. More than twenty thousand of them, for your information. There are so many Poles in Teheran, and in such disadvantaged conditions, that the Persians have even accused our people of spreading typhoid in the city. Imagine that. I wonder if you can.”
“Right now I’m still trying to imagine why a colonel would be so free with this kind of information across the dinner table,” I said stiffly. “Haven’t you heard? Walls have ears. Although I’m beginning to think that walls in Poland have tongues instead.”
“What do you Americans know about Poland?” he asked, ignoring my rebuke. “Have you ever been to Poland?”
“The last I heard it was full of Germans.”
“We shall suppose that means no.” The colonel snorted with derision and looked around at his fellow officers. “This makes him the ideal sort of person to be writing a report for the president of the United States about Katyn. Another stupid American who doesn’t know anything about Poland.”
“Wlazyslaw, that’s enough,” said Elena.
“Everyone knows that Roosevelt and Churchill are going to sell Poland out,” persisted Skomorowski.
“Surely you can’t believe that,” I told him. “Britain and France went to war for the sake of Poland.”
“Maybe so,” said Colonel Pulnarowicz. His eyes widened. “But will it be Britain and France that throw the Germans out of Poland, or will it be the Russians? For us, there’s nothing to draw between them, the Russians and the Germans. That’s what the Americans don’t, or won’t, understand. Nobody can see the Russians giving up Poland if the Red Army reoccupies it. Will Roosevelt persuade Stalin to return land for which the Red Army has sacrificed so many men? I think I can hear Stalin laughing about that one now.”
“After the war is over,” a third Polish officer pitched in, “I believe it will be discovered that Stalin was much worse than Hitler. Hitler is only trying to wipe out the Jews. But Stalin is trying to eliminate whole classes of people. Not just the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, but the peasant class, as well. Millions have died in the Ukraine. If I had to choose between Hitler and Stalin, I’d choose Hitler every time. Stalin is the father of lies. By comparison, Hitler is a mere apprentice.”
“Roosevelt and Churchill will sell us down the river,” said Skomorowski. “That’s what we’re fighting for. Two knives in the back.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” I said. “I know Franklin Roosevelt. He is a decent, honorable man. He is not the kind of man to sell anyone out.”
My heart was hardly in this argument. I could not help but recollect my own conversation on the subject with the president. His words hadn’t exactly suggested a man who felt any obligation to protect the interests of Poland. Roosevelt had sounded more like someone intent on appeasing Stalin, in much the same way as the former British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, had appeased Hitler.
“This report you are compiling,” said Pulnarowicz. He lit one of his little cigarettes and exhaled smoke in my face. It looked thoughtless rather than deliberate. But that was just how it looked. “Does it mean the Americans are going to pay any more attention to what happened at Katyn than the British?”
I hardly felt like telling him that my completed report was already buried on the president’s direct order, exactly as the colonel had suspected it would be.
“I’m just compiling a report. It’s not my job to formulate policy.”
“If you’re compiling a report, then what are you doing here in Cairo?” demanded Skomorowski.
“You’re Polish. I’m speaking to you, aren’t I?” I grinned at him. “I’d hate to have missed the opportunity to meet all of you tonight. Besides, I don’t have to be in Washington to write a report.” I paused. “Not that I feel at all obliged to explain myself in this company.”
Skomorowski shrugged. “Or is it that by taking your time in making your report, you give Roosevelt a very valuable opportunity for delay?”
“Is Katyn even on the agenda for the Big Three at Teheran?” asked Pulnarowicz. “Will they even talk about it?”
“I really don’t know what is on the agenda at Teheran,” I said truthfully. “But even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t discuss it with you. Security is hardly best served by this kind of conversation.”
“You heard the princess,” said Pulnarowicz. “It’s all over the city.”
Elena squeezed my arm. “Willy darling, if you stay here for any length of time, you’ll recognize how true that is. It really is impossible to keep a secret in Cairo.”
“So I see,” I said pointedly. All the same, I found it hard to be cross with her. It was my fault for not remembering what a tremendous gossip she was.
“Not that Poland exists, anyway,” Colonel Pulnarowicz added, smiling bitterly. “Not anymore. Not since January, when Stalin declared that all Polish citizens were to be treated as Soviet citizens. It’s said that this was because he wanted the Poles to have the same rights as Soviet citizens.”
“The same right to be shot without trial,” said Skomorowski. “The same right to be deported to a labor camp. The same right to be starved to death.”
Everyone laughed. It was obviously a set piece that the two Polish officers had performed together before.
“The key to this whole problem is Stalin himself,” said Skomorowski. “If Stalin were removed, the whole edifice of Soviet communism would collapse. That’s the only way forward I can see. As long as Stalin remains alive, we will never have a free and democratic Poland. He should be assassinated. I’ll do it myself if I ever get half a chance.”
There was a long silence. Even Captain Skomorowski seemed to recognize that he had gone too far. Removing his glasses, he began to wipe them again.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Major Sernberg. “Really I don’t.”
“You’ll have to excuse Captain Skomorowski,” Pulnarowicz told the major. “He was in Moscow when Russian troops marched into Poland and for a while he was a guest of the NKVD. In the Lubyanka Prison. And then in one of their labor camps. At Solovki. He knows all about Soviet hospitality, don’t you, Josef?”
“I think,” said Elena, getting up from the table, “that this conversation has gone far enough.”
We listened to one of the British officers play the piano after that. This did little to improve anyone’s spirits. Just before midnight, Elena’s servants stopped serving alcohol. And gradually she was able to shoo her guests away. I would have left, too, but she asked me to stay on for a while, to talk about old times. Our old times. Which sounded just fine. So I went outside and told Coogan that I was staying on for a while and after that I would probably walk home.
“Be careful, sir,” he told me.
“I’ll be all right,” I said. “I have my pistol.”
“If you were thinking of going anywhere on your own, sir, then the nicest chorus girls in Cairo are at Madame Badia’s, sir. There’s a belly dancer called Tahia Carioca who’s first rate, if you like that sort of thing.”
“No, thanks.”
“Or if you was with a lady, sir, there’s a new place on the Mena Road, on the way to the Pyramids. The Auberge des Pyramides, it’s called. Opened in the summer. Very flash. Young King Farouk goes there a lot, so it must be good on account of how that boy knows how to enjoy himself.”
I grinned. “Coogan. Go home.”
Back in the house, the servants had disappeared, the way good servants do when they’re not wanted anymore. Elena made us some mint tea, just to prove that she could still boil a kettle, and then showed me back into the drawing room.