Churchill looked at him. “And you have not, in yours?”
For a bad moment, Charlie thought Joe Steele would walk out of the officers’ mess, off the Royal Navy destroyer, and away from anything resembling friendship with England. No one in the United States talked to Joe Steele that way. No one talked about him that way, not any more, not where the Jeebies might get wind of it.
The President looked stonily back at the Prime Minister. That look said nothing here would be forgotten-or forgiven. But Joe Steele’s reply sounded mild enough: “The ones who go into my encampments deserve it. That’s the difference between me and Trotsky.”
“Well, you may be right.” By the way Churchill said it, he didn’t believe it, not even slightly. But he went on, “And I assure you I am right about aid to Trotsky and Russia. Hitler may win that fight anyhow. But anything you can do to keep him from winning it, you should do. No, you must.”
“You are not well positioned to tell me what I must do,” Joe Steele said.
“Because your country is bigger and richer than mine, do you mean?” Churchill contrived to make that seem of no account. “If you want to stay that way, you could do worse than to listen to me. America’s knowledge of the international arena is sadly limited by your good fortune in having broad oceans-and the Royal Navy-to shield your shores. Britain, now, has been in the arena, of the arena, for centuries. My country and I have more experience than you and yours. What I tell you now springs from the depth of that experience.”
He spoke to Joe Steele as a man speaks to a boy. No one in the United States did that, either. The President’s glower said he didn’t fancy it. But he didn’t tell the Prime Minister where to head in. He said, “Have supper with me aboard my ship. We can talk more about it then.”
“As long as I may take over certain liquid refreshments,” Winston Churchill said. “I know of your Navy’s abstemious habits, you see.”
“You can do that, yes.” Now Joe Steele seemed amused. “You can even try some apricot brandy from California, if you care to.”
Churchill smiled. “I look forward to it. As commander-in-chief, you not only make the rules, you may break them as you please.” And maybe he was still talking about bringing apricot brandy aboard a U.S. Navy ship, and maybe he wasn’t.
Back aboard the American destroyer, Joe Steele commandeered the officers’ mess for himself and his followers. “He still feels England is the greatest country in the world,” the President growled. “Maybe not here, but here.” He tapped first his forehead, then the center of his chest.
“Arrogant bastard,” Vince Scriabin said.
“He is, yes. You don’t go far in politics without that,” Joe Steele said. “Arrogant or not, is he right? Is Nazi Germany dangerous enough for the United States to help keep Russia in the game?”
“Trotsky made his bed. Then he pulled Hitler into it with him,” Stas Mikoian said. “He deserves whatever happens to him.”
“I agree.” Scriabin nodded.
Lazar Kagan kept quiet. Trotsky and a swarm of the Reds who ran Russia under him were Jews. Joe Steele would know that, considering how the Nazis persecuted them, anything Kagan said wouldn’t be objective.
Speak now or forever hold your peace, Charlie thought. But it wasn’t peace. It was a war even bigger than the one they’d hopefully called the War to End War. Taking a deep breath, he said, “I think we ought to give Russia a hand. If Germany takes Russia out, she’ll flatten England after that. And if she does, the ocean isn’t wide enough to keep her away from us.”
Joe Steele puffed his pipe. Scriabin sent Charlie the kind of look the President had given the Prime Minister. Scriabin was good at not forgetting, too.
That evening, Churchill remarked on how neat and tidy and clean and new everything aboard the American destroyer was. It was one more way of saying We’re fighting and you aren’t. He praised the roast beef in the same style, which didn’t keep him from eating three helpings of it. Whiskey and the President’s brandy improved the meal.
Smoke from pipe, cigar, and cigarettes filled the mess. Joe Steele said nothing about Russia. He did his best to make his demeanor a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Churchill also was a man who didn’t show all he was thinking, but his advisors began to fidget. So did Charlie. He hoped no one noticed.
At last, Churchill took the bull by the horns and asked, “Have you made up your mind about Trotsky?”
“I made up my mind about Trotsky more than twenty years ago, and nothing you’ve said has done one damn thing to make me change it,” Joe Steele answered. He waited till Churchill began to slump in his seat before continuing, “But I’ll send him toys to shoot Germans with. You talked me into that, you and one of my men.” He nodded toward Charlie.
That nod won Charlie Winston Churchill’s grave regard. “Jolly good,” the Prime Minister said. “You have men of sense in your service.”
“Well, I hope so,” Joe Steele said. Charlie knew what that meant. If helping the Russians went well, the President would take the credit for it. He’d deserve credit, too; he was the man responsible for the choice. But if it went badly, the blame would fall on Charlie’s head.
If, for instance, Hitler declared war on the USA because of this, Charlie figured he would find out more than he ever wanted to know about cutting down trees or digging ditches or turning big ones into little ones. Or maybe they’d strap him to a bomb and drop him on Germany. He hoped to go out with a bang one of these years, but not like that.
* * *
Joe Steele didn’t say anything about his change of policy toward Russia. He just quietly started shipping Trotsky planes and guns and trucks and telephone cable and high-octane fuel and anything else the Red Czar’s little heart desired. The Russians still had no embassy in Washington. They had one in Ottawa, though, and huddled with the Americans there.
Joe Steele’s try for secrecy didn’t last long. Trotsky didn’t mind not mentioning the goodies he would get. As long as he got them, keeping quiet about them was a small price to pay. But Winston Churchill trumpeted the news like a town crier. He wanted the rest of the world to know the United States disliked the Nazis even more than the Reds. He wanted the rest of the world to know he’d helped start the aid, too.
Hitler, predictably, screamed bloody murder. He screeched that the USA wasn’t neutral, never had been neutral, and never would be neutral. He shrieked that Jews and subhumans were running the United States. He promised to do unto Jewish capitalism in America as he was doing unto Jewish Bolshevism in Russia.
He didn’t declare war, though, to Charlie’s relief. German U-boats did fire torpedoes at American freighters in the Atlantic and sank a few, but they’d been doing that for a while now. War? Only unofficially. It stayed unofficial even when an American destroyer sank a Nazi sub, and when another U-boat blew the stern off an American light cruiser and killed two dozen sailors.
Charlie wondered whether the U.S. help for Russia would prove too little, too late. German armies laid siege to Leningrad in the north and Sevastopol in the south. They captured Kiev. And they captured Smolensk, which Charlie had never heard of till it showed up in the war news but which was apparently the main strongpoint protecting Moscow itself.
Summer passed into fall. Esther had morning sickness with the new baby, the same way she had carrying Sarah. Sarah started learning the alphabet. She had wooden blocks for all the letters and numbers, and played with them all the time.
Fall in Russia meant rain. Outside the big cities, Russian roads were only dirt tracks. When the rain fell, they turned to mud. German tanks and motorcycles and foot soldiers bogged down. Neat, orderly Germans were used to neat, orderly paved roads. They didn’t do so well without them.