Churchill noticed me glancing up again at the high rafters and old paintings on the wall.
“This happens to be the oldest part of Chartwell,” rumbled Churchill. “It dates to ten eighty-six A.D., just twenty years after the Battle of Hastings. I do my writing in here. Did you know that I make my living as a writer? Mostly historical tomes. Usually I dictate to one secretary, who has to be good at her shorthand to keep up. Tonight, since I’m working on two volumes simultaneously, I’ve been dictating to two young ladies. I also had two of my male researchers here helping me. You must have just missed them all on the staircase.”
I nodded but kept silent. We continued to stand facing each other. Churchill sipped his whisky. I ignored mine.
“You’re angry, Mr. Perry,” he said over the top of his whisky glass. His bright little eyes missed nothing but kept moving from side to side, as if staying wary that no one was sneaking up on him.
I gave him my best approximation of J.C.’s Gallic shrug.
Churchill smiled. “I don’t blame you for being angry. But what are you angriest at, young man? The sordid nature of the photographs you delivered to me yesterday or the seeming waste of your friends’ and others’ lives in obtaining those nasty things?”
We moved toward two chairs set near the large mahogany writing desk—the desk’s surface uncluttered and, to all appearances, unused by the writer whose books and manuscript pages were all stacked on the long, high Disraeli desk—but we didn’t sit down.
“I’m wondering, Mister Churchill,” I said, “exactly what makes a turncoat politician, someone who can’t even decide which party he should be in—as long as he clings to power in one or the other—decide that anyone should die for anything.”
Churchill’s head snapped back, and he seemed to see me for the first time. For a moment, the entire household was silent except for a clock chiming four somewhere three flights down. I don’t think either Churchill or I blinked during that interval, much less spoke.
Finally the pudgy Chancellor of the Exchequer in his bold silken robe said, “Did you know, Mr. Perry, that my mother was American?”
“No,” I said, allowing the flatness of my tone to express my total lack of interest in the fact.
“It may be the reason that I have always been rather interested in American politics as well as British politics, not to mention what passes for politics on the Continent. Would you like to know the major difference between politics in your country and in the United Kingdom, Mr. Perry?”
Not much, I thought, but stayed silent.
“I don’t pretend to know who President Coolidge’s cabinet advisors really are,” said Churchill, just as if I were interested. “Perhaps at first he kept on some of Harding’s people after your previous president’s sudden death in California. But I guarantee, Mr. Perry, that after Mr. Coolidge’s election on his own last year, defeating that weak Democrat Davis and that rather interesting Progressive chap, La Follette, Calvin Coolidge has not only become his own man but has, by now, fully surrounded himself with his own men. Does this make any sense to you, young man?”
“No,” I said. I was thinking of J.C. grappling with Sturmbannführer Sigl and the air rushing out of Jean-Claude’s perforated oxygen tanks as both men fell through the snow cornice into 10,000 feet of empty air. I was thinking of the last glimpse I had of Reggie’s and the Deacon’s faces before they turned west and started climbing the last of the North East Ridge onto the snowfield toward the Summit Pyramid.
“What I’m saying, Jake…may I call you Jake?”
I remained silent, just staring coldly at the heavy man with the babyish face.
“What I’m saying, Mr. Perry, is that American parties elect their presidents, but those presidents’ advisors and cabinets change from election to election. President Coolidge even replaced a few of President Harding’s lower choices after Harding’s death…before Coolidge was his own man.”
“What are you trying to say?” I demanded.
“I’m saying that in England, things do not work that way, Mr. Perry. Different parties win and different prime ministers move in and out of power along with their parties but the same basic core of the political class—politicians, you would say— stay in power over the decades. I will be only fifty-one years old as of this coming November, and yet in my few decades of public life I have been President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, First Lord of the Admiralty…until the fiasco that was Gallipoli…then in the army fighting at the Front for a bit, then back to the corridors of power as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, then Secretary of State for Air, and now Chancellor of the Exchequer.”
I waited. Finally I took a drink of the Scotch whisky. It was strong and smooth. It did nothing to settle my nerves or lower my level of anger.
“A British politician such as myself needs to keep a network of friends—and even foes—tied to him, you see,” continued Churchill, “even when we are out of power. And those of us who have run intelligence operations in the army or navy or ministries of state or war—or, in my case, all four—do not abandon those networks. Information is power, Mr. Perry, and the proper intelligence, however gathered, can mean the life or death of one’s nation and empire.”
“A very impressive résumé,” I said, trying to make all four words of the sentence sound sarcastic. “But what does it have to do with a private citizen such as yourself ordering good men and women into harm’s way to steal some…filthy photographs?”
Churchill sighed. “I agree that the entire affair—the entire intelligence effort—of obtaining such images from Herr Meyer was sordid, Mr. Perry. Most actual intelligence work is sordid. Yet at times it is the most sordid elements of life which make for the most effective weapons of war or peace.”
I barked a laugh at this. “You’re not going to convince me that a few photographs of that German…that mustachioed clown and madman…are going to make any difference to the future safety of England or any other country.”
Churchill shrugged his shoulders. Such a motion for such a heavy man wearing such a fancy robe gave a sort of vague Oliver Hardy feel to the gesture. “Those photographs may make a great difference,” said Churchill, and his voice changed. I sensed he was using his public voice on me—a goddamned radio voice. He reached for a book he’d been reading when I arrived and which he’d laid facedown to one side of a counter near the mahogany desk. “I have here an advance copy of the book that Herr Adolf Hitler spent his time in prison writing and months while you were in the Himalayas rewriting and copyediting and, in general, making perfect for his small but fanatical readership. Herr Hitler wanted to title this monstrous thing—and I assure you, it is monstrous, Mr. Perry—Vierinhalb Jahre Kampf gegen Lüge, Dummheit und Feigheit, roughly translated as ‘Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice.’ As one writer to another, Mr. Perry, I could have told Herr Hitler that his title would not sell books. Luckily—for Hitler—his German publisher shortened the title of the actual published book to Mein Kampf, ‘My Struggle.’”
I waited for the punch line. There didn’t seem to be one.
Churchill held the book toward me. “Take it, Mr. Perry. Read it. Feel free to keep it. It may be on sale in England and America in a few years. In Germany, it may be required reading in a few years. See what mad plans Herr Hitler and his Nazi”—Churchill pronounced it Nah-zee—“goons have for Germany, for Europe, for the Jews, and for the world.”