“‘I sometimes call you Joe,’” he began, recollecting, “‘and you can call me Winston if you like, and I like to think of you as my very good friend.’ …What hypocrisy! Then, I said: ‘The British people were turning politically pink’ …Ending with… ‘Marshal Stalin, Stalin the Great’ …The memory of the toast often stirs up my black dog.” He looked up suddenly. “He could be infuriating! Once, in front of Roosevelt, he actually called me a coward. Later, he told me — after I walked out of the meeting — that his translator had misinterpreted his words.”
“You did your best, sir,” Thompson said, trying to refocus Churchill’s dark thoughts.
Considering the importance of the upcoming speech, Thompson was determined to do anything in his power to stop the black dog from attacking Churchill. He sensed that his recollections of Tehran were bringing him farther down.
“The sad fact of it, Thompson, was that I liked the man, despite my distaste for everything he stood for and represented. When I visited him in Moscow, I thought we had really bonded. He had a certain attractive air.” Churchill grew pensive. “Franklin liked him as well, perhaps too well. Dear Franklin!”
He sighed and sucked in a deep breath.
“Now there was charm personified. With Stalin he was clearly seductive, using all of his skills of allure and bewitchment as if that was all that was needed to win him over. There were moments, Thompson, when I felt like a rejected suitor.” He chuckled. “‘Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy. It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.’ Can you imagine? Jealous of Stalin for attracting my friend.”
Thompson was not shocked at the metaphor. Churchill was an incorrigible romantic.
“Stalin trumped us, Thompson. Power was his true mistress.”
“This speech should balance the scales.”
Churchill puffed deeply on his cigar. Thompson sensed that he was fighting hard to repress his black dog.
“Do you think the United Nations will be a true family of nations, able to resolve domestic spats and assure a peaceful future?” Churchill asked. “Truman is quite hopeful.”
“And you, sir?”
He shrugged. He put on his glasses and read through the text of his speech that he still held on his lap. Then he spoke the words dealing with the United Nations: “‘We must make sure that its work is fruitful, that it is a reality and not a sham, that it is a force for action, not merely a frothing of words, that it is a true temple of peace, in which the shields of many nations can someday be hung up, and not merely a cockpit in a Tower of Babel.’”
He put the text down again.
“I truly hope that the future will match my words. Sure, Thompson, it is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look farther than one can see. I wish I were more sanguine about the future.”
“Surely, you don’t think that someday there will be another war, sir?”
“Will it matter what I think now?”
“Of course, it does, sir,” Thompson said, “Your remarks could set the world on a course that could have an enormous impact on the future.”
“‘There is a tide in the affairs of men,’” Churchill said.
Thompson had heard this quote from Julius Caesar many times before.
“Well, then, sir, we are in high tide.”
“Perhaps, Thompson,” Churchill said, standing up and walking to the adjoining bedroom.
Thompson watched the young lady typing away with great diligence.
“He will be fine, Miss Stewart. Not to worry.”
“Yes, sir,” Victoria said, but her response seemed tentative.
Chapter 19
Miller awoke from a dreamless sleep in the backseat of his car. The pain in his leg had accelerated, and his ankle had begun to swell. Swallowing a few aspirin tablets, he untangled himself, managed to get out of the car, and limped around until he was able to walk.
One more day, he thought, trying to will his mind to withstand the pain.
Resisting pain had been one of the hallmarks of his SS training. Yielding to pain was a violation of the code. One endured pain. Maintaining silence under extreme torture was a fundamental caveat. “Death before dishonor” was the mantra.
“Heil Hitler!” he shouted into the still morning, as he moved in a widening circle around the car.
Before falling asleep, his mind had buzzed with various scenarios designed to accomplish the deed. Only when the final details had emerged — etching a matrix of action in his brain — was he able to sleep.
The killing of Winston Churchill had taken on the trappings of ritual, and his mind hearkened back to the earliest days of his SS indoctrination. Himmler had imbued them all with a sense that their existence had been ordained by destiny. Their godhead was Adolph Hitler, master of their lives and future. They were the chosen, the pure-blooded-Aryan ideal, the perfection of the master race.
He realized now that he had been tested and preserved for a reason. Their defeat, too, had been a test of their endurance. Now these mongrels, these Jew-loving pigs, the puppets that unwittingly danced to the strings of the sinister Yids would learn the power of vengeance. The death of Churchill, Churchill the poseur, Churchill the golden-tongued serpent, would validate their resurrection. Because Franz Mueller was one of the chosen, he was confident of his survival. His planning was, he was certain, being dictated by the godhead assuring his survival. Adolph Hitler lives in me, he told himself. The Russians were merely tools of Hitler’s will.
“Sieg Heil!” he shouted into the rising sun. “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”
The sound rolled over the deserted landscape. He felt charged with the electricity of ecstasy.
He drove the car into town and had coffee and scrambled eggs at a counter in a crowded luncheonette. The cacophony of voices around him seemed to merge into a single word: Churchill. Obviously, this was the most important event that had happened in Fulton since its first settlers had arrived.
“Here for the big brouhaha, buddy?” the waitress behind the counter asked.
He nodded and smiled.
“Town’s gone crazy,” said the waitress.
“It’s a great honor,” said a uniformed mailman, sitting next to him. “Somethin’ to tell my grandchildren.”
He made no comment. They would not only remember the day, they would remember the moment.
He paid the check and, following the plan that had etched itself in his mind, walked down the main shopping street, going over those items that were essential to his plan. In every store window was a sign proclaiming Churchill Day.
By all means, Churchill Day, he snickered.
He passed a clothing store with two mannequins in the window — one male and one female. He was particularly interested in the female mannequin and the wig that adorned her head under an Easter bonnet. He noted that a chain hung down on one side of the door to the shop with a lock hanging on one of the loops. This struck him as prescient, since the locking system was the same as he had considered for the door to the scorecard perch.
Then he went into a hardware store and bought a length of chain, a lock, and a metal cutter. In the Woolworth store, which dominated the main shopping street, he bought white stockings, white shoe polish, a lipstick, and a hand mirror. The clerk had looked at him curiously but executed the purchase without comment.
He was enormously satisfied at the imagination and verve of his plan, which seemed to be dictated by some mysterious outside source. Dimitrov had left him to his own devices. Years back, when he had killed the Finkelstein brothers, he had been somewhat imaginative, but that paled beside what was planned here. It was as if a play had been created in which he was the principal actor.