By eight the next morning, having pulled myself together with the help of cocaine and packed my trunks, I called for a porter, following him down to the echoing lobby. As I paid the balance of my bill (which took an alarming bite from my remaining funds) Jimmy Rembrandt approached me. He was smiling and full of energy, shaking my hand and saying I looked one hundred percent. Mortimer, he said, felt ill and could hardly speak, but would be with us on the train. We began to cross from the entrance hall to the Pennsylvania Station, immediately over the street, my bags on a trolley behind us. ‘Luce is afraid he has the ‘flu. But we know what’s caused his symptoms, don’t we, Max.’ Entering the Doric arcade with its rows of elegant shops and shafts of dusty sunlight, we saw Mortimer waiting for us near the Grand Stairway. He was as smartly dressed as Rembrandt, but did look pale and sorry for himself. He tried to smile at me. ‘Ah, Colonel Peterson, the famous French aviator.’
Jimmy laughed. ‘I hope you can learn to like the colour red, colonel.’ He was amused by my confusion. ‘They’ll be rolling out the carpet for you in Washington very soon now.’ Everywhere around us vast numbers of New Yorkers came and went about their business. The station actually lay below us and we descended steps forty feet wide (built in ‘Travertine’ stone after a Roman model) to the main waiting room which was also of the same mellow cream tinted stone and was meant, apparently, to resemble a Roman bath. For many years the original New Yorkers had seen themselves as following on from the traditions of Classical Rome. Today, of course, the armies of the Vatican have created on unexpected and unwelcome comparison with a more recent Rome. ‘Rely on us,’ Jimmy went on, ‘and within a week the whole of Washington will be eating out of our hands.’ Our luggage was stowed and we went to have breakfast at one of the station’s many lovely restaurants. By noon we were aboard a magnificent ‘limited’ train, a symphony of dignified steel pulled by a massive articulated locomotive. We slowly moved out of Pennsylvania Station. Only the old Tsarist trains could begin to match American luxury. She, like Russia, had been a country more dependent upon the railroad than any other kind of transport. Like Russia, she had lavished all her pride and creative artistry on these rolling citadels of comfort. We had reservations in the dining-car, but Major Mortimer did not feel like eating. He let Captain Rembrandt and I leave him to his misery and take our seats beside the wide window. Slowly New York’s skyscrapers gave way to single-storeyed suburbs and then to New Jersey’s rolling hills and forests. We crossed wide iron webs of bridges spanning rivers as broad as any I knew in Russia; we steamed along the ocean coast itself, then turned West through fields of corn which might have grown on my native Ukrainian steppe. Soon we passed the occasional factory or power station, flaring and belching against the shimmering summer sky, and I thought suddenly that all this timber, this cultivated farmland, these steel mills and generators, represented not merely enormous wealth, but tremendous optimism, too. The size of the country became apparent to me for the first time. It shared that sense of limitless space with Russia and it also shared the same richness of resources, the same will to expansion. The problems of Europe became as insignificant as their parochial ambitions. There was no need for me to fear little countries with little ideas. Here in America I should be able to grow as I had once hoped to grow in Ukraine. Eating lunch, I looked out at the plains and meadows of America, at her great, grey cities and her golden hills, and I spoke to Jimmy of the technological Utopia I envisioned. It would be fundamentally American, rejecting the old hampering traditions of Europe, concentrating on a future wholly ‘Made in U.S.A.’
Jimmy was delighted and at the same time seemed almost surprised by my fervour. ‘That’s the stuff,’ he kept saying. ‘That’s exactly the stuff.’ He was as convinced as I that my genius had been wasted on Europe. My talent was too big for them. The United States was large enough and confident enough to welcome what I could offer and pay me what I deserved. America was about to boom bigger than ever before. So much money was being generated there were not enough things to spend it on. He told me I should think of forming a company like Edison’s. I should employ staff, technicians, different experts, and I should have workshops built, ‘Invest in America, Max, and you will win all the hearts and minds you’ll ever need. This is the right time for it.’
The very rhythm of the train, steady, ebullient, increased my notion that Washington must provide me with the funds, prestige, resources I had always known were my due. The Parisian affair had been an unimportant diversion. It had taught me to be careful of those in whom I put my trust. I prayed Kolya would soon escape that dreadful web of greed and intrigue and, bringing Esmé with him, join me in the American capital.
‘France has neither the cash nor the nerve to go for anything really big,’ said Jimmy. We were crossing the Delaware. In the distance an alliance of tall pines, smokestacks, pylons, marched up both the river’s steep banks. ‘That was where you went wrong. Max. It doesn’t matter how good the scheme is. It has to have a true grounding in the realities of time and place.’
I said I still blamed the socialist trade unions, but he disagreed. ‘Unions strike one way or another because it pays them or their leaders to strike. They might have meant to get better wages. More likely someone was slipping them the dough.’ He paused significantly and looked at me, but I had no idea what he wanted to hear. He went on: ‘It could have been anyone. Your own directors. The Germans. The British.’
‘I still find it hard to believe people could be so devious.’
‘You have that in common with Americans, old man. We’re shocked by it. And that’s why we’re determined to have no more truck with Europe. Let them knife each other in the back. They won’t have a chance to get a crack at us.’
Having made sure Lucius was not seriously ill, we continued on to the deep plush chairs, the brass and mahogany fixtures, of the Club Car where we smoked cigars and drank root beer into which Jimmy had somehow introduced strong Scotch. The Limited now moved with stately, unhurried swiftness through wooded hills and valleys. It was supremely comfortable with its padded seats set in spacious carriages served by efficiently trained waiters capable of finding almost anything one desired. I wondered if, when she came to her senses, Russia could one day restore her rail service to the same standard. After all, Russia, like the USA, had an almost limitless supply of suitable raw materials. Here was the model we should seek to emulate. America had learned to deal with the Bolshevik threat. Unlike New York, the rest of the country recognised the danger, pursuing its Reds with a directness Europe should have imitated. The most lazily tolerant of all nations before the War, America, as a result, quickly found out the heavy price of such decency. Now when she closed her doors no one could blame her. She was anxious to quarantine herself from the social and mental diseases rife beyond the Atlantic. She would not discover until 1929, when Carthage struck, that she had acted too late. The whole country tottered and cried desperately for help. And who should turn up with smiling lips and helping hand, as if out of the blue? An apparent Samaritan calling himself by the name of a great American? Franklin D. Roosevelt. Bolshevik sympathiser and Mishling, stepped forward, took the helm and from then on the United States was doomed. She became the greatest single prize that ever fell to Carthage. But when I sat in the Pullman smoking Coronas with Rembrandt, the fight was still undecided. I was more than willing to join the struggle. I did my best along with so many noble Americans, but we were laughed at for our pains: we were hounded from power. And all the while the Orient was patiently biding her time. Nito tsu vemen isu reydn . . .