Too Bad to Die (11 page)

T
he President's DC-4 was nicknamed the
Sacred Cow,
and at the recommendation of the President's doctor, it flew a low-altitude route from Cairo to Tehran. Roosevelt was not entirely well. The idea that he might be ailing was a closely guarded secret. Of his staff, only Sam Schwartz knew. He'd flown the same low-altitude route the day before Roosevelt, and radioed approval.

He was waiting at Gale Morghe Airport outside of Tehran at three o'clock that afternoon when the
Sacred Cow
touched down. Gale Morghe was an air base held by the Soviets and it was in good condition. Schwartz had fifty American troops standing at attention, ready to roll into Army jeeps for Roosevelt's escort into the city.

When the cabin door opened, he raced up the steps to help with the President's ramp. He would roll the wheelchair down himself, walking backward, so that his body shielded FDR's at every step. The President's armored car had arrived an hour earlier. It was already waiting beside the plane.

“Hello there, Sam.”

Roosevelt lifted his hand. He was still sitting with a blanket over his knees beside one of the cabin windows. Cadaverous Harry Hopkins was opposite, stubbing out a cigarette. Elliott and John Boettiger held down the back of the plane, while General Marshall was up front, close to the Special Air Mission pilots who manned Roosevelt's craft. He'd been amusing himself during the eight-hour flight with navigation.

“Mr. President,” Schwartz said. “Good trip?”

“We're here in one piece. Whaddya think of this place, Sam? Is it crawling with Germans?”

So the President had talked about the alleged threat with his closest aides and family. Schwartz felt a ripple of misgiving. Roosevelt was following his own agenda.

“Not so's you'd notice,” he temporized. “I thought I might brief you on the ride into town.”

The plane's propellers were slowing to silence; the copilot came aft to help Schwartz position the ramp. Everyone waited until both men had lifted FDR into his wheelchair, and laid the lap robe across his knees. Tehran was surrounded by mountains—capped with snow this last weekend in November—and the air was far colder than Cairo. Schwartz backed carefully down the ramp, his feet finding position from long practice, and halted in the lee of the open car door. It was a relief to see the President screened by something stronger than Schwartz's back. Marshall and Hopkins joined them; Elliott and Boettiger got into the car behind. Doors slammed and the first of the Army jeeps moved off, ahead of Roosevelt's car.

“Where are we going, Sam?”

“The American legation, Mr. President. Louis Dreyfus has moved into a hotel, and it's entirely at our disposal.” Schwartz had inspected the whole place yesterday, extending the security cordon and doubling the number of men on guard. Part of his Secret Service detail was working its way through the occupied city, on the hunt for German agents. He hoped none of them got a bullet through the brain. “I've deployed a hundred American troops in pitched tents on the embassy grounds. Just in case.”

Roosevelt whistled. “You're not fooling around.”

“When I got here yesterday,” Schwartz said, “this Russian general named Arkadiev was waiting for me. He's a big cheese in Transport, I guess. Anyway—he took me through his embassy and managed to drop some hints on the tour. Says a bunch of Nazi paratroopers landed in the hills outside the city a few weeks back. The Sovs rounded most of 'em up, but a few slipped through the net.”

“Paratroopers.” Roosevelt flashed his shark's smile. “What are they doing here, Sam?”

“Nobody'd give me a straight answer, sir. But the Russians seem to think they're gunning for all of us.”

“From what little I know of Uncle Joe,” Roosevelt mused, “he wouldn't leave Moscow if he truly thought he was at risk. Too much of a homebody. And too superstitious.”

“Just say he's a coward and have done,” George Marshall barked from the front seat. “Stalin is sure he's going to be shot one of these days. He's shot everybody else. Wouldn't be surprised if he fails to show up at this circus.”

“He's already here, General,” Schwartz said. “A day earlier than planned. So I think we can say this Nazi threat isn't half as bad as the Russkies would like us to think.”

—

C
HURCHILL'S ENTOURAGE
touched down at Tehran's Doshan Tappeh complex—where the young Imperial Iranian Air Force had once trained and flown. British airmen now ruled the runway. Since the joint Anglo-Soviet invasion of the country two years before, the Iranian pilot school had been shut down, the pilots decommissioned, and the fleet of Imperial fighter planes sawn in half. Sarah Oliver knew all this, but few others in her father's orbit understood anything about the country they had just entered.

Sarah had spent months working in aerial reconnaissance, and she was a practical woman. She understood that the Russians had seized northern Iraq to control its oil fields, and that the British Army had taken the south to secure their land route to India. But it was an uneasy partnership. Both Stalin and Churchill mistrusted the deposed shah because he was a Nazi sympathizer. His son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was new to power. They trusted each other even less.

Sarah was wearing her WAAF uniform and riding in the backseat of an open car with her father. His bowker—a homburg without the usual depressed crown—was in his lap. He was fiddling the brim with his hands. A cold breeze ruffled his white hair. An airman from Doshan Tappeh was driving, with Walter Thompson—her father's devoted bodyguard—seated next to him. Still, Sarah felt exposed. There were so many checkpoints on the way into the city. They were drawing up to another one now—and a crowd had gathered. As the official car with the fluttering flags slowed to present its papers, she saw it was a Soviet-manned checkpoint. They would not be simply waved through this one.

The car stopped and the crowd surged forward. It was entirely male. Tribesmen from the provinces, in every kind of native dress.

Hands touched Sarah's shoulder. Her arm. Hands probed her legs and lap. She gripped her handbag firmly between her ankles and glanced desperately at her father. Winston was reaching out of the car, shaking hands, smiling his broad smile and snorting in English, “Good show! Good show!” while the Russian soldier took his time with the papers. Anyone might shoot Father through the heart. Or toss a bomb into the open backseat. That was how the German Gestapo chief—Reinhard Heydrich—had died in Prague last year. Sarah slipped her hand under Winston's arm, protective, seeking comfort from the solid wool sleeve of his Chesterfield coat.
Mother will never forgive me if—

Panic rose in her throat.

“Fatal to show fear,” Winston growled sidelong.

Her heart skipped a beat. Then she turned resolutely to her side of the car and reached out with both gloved hands, greeting the Persians with a blinding smile.

—

“S
ORRY TO DISTURB YOU
, Mr. President.”

Schwartz hesitated on the fringe of the legation's main reception room. What passed for the U.S. foothold in Tehran was a cramped and slightly shabby building in a small compound in the northern part of the city, where the wealthiest Iranians lived in beautifully designed mansions behind walled gardens. The Shah's summer palace was here, and many of the government ministers' homes; farther north, beyond the wooded grounds of the Russian and British Embassies, the mountains rose massive and sheer against the bluest of skies.

The Russians had been sending ambassadors to Persia since the 1580s. England had maintained diplomatic relations almost as long. The two powers struggled for influence and control over Persia throughout the centuries, a violent contest of espionage known as the Great Game, in which scores on both sides died. The current Anglo-Soviet Occupation was a rare moment of coordinated effort in a long history of murder between rivals. The Russian and British embassies, side by side in a walled compound, were palatial and imposing. At times it felt as though the real center of power was
here,
not in the orbit of young Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

The United States was renting a far less impressive place a mile away, and their official representative, Louis Dreyfus, was an envoy, not an ambassador. Diplomatic relations had only existed between Persia and America for about eighty years. To each other, they were both remote and fabled lands that just might not exist.

Schwartz saw immediately that Roosevelt had company. Averell Harriman looked like a movie star—Gary Cooper, perhaps, although he was a good decade older than the actor. Both men shared a rugged American style that suggested the wide-open spaces of the West. Harriman's jaw was more pugnacious than Cooper's, and at fifty-two years of age, he was uninterested in sharing the limelight with anyone besides the President of the United States or Joseph Stalin. The considerable power and fortune he'd inherited were less interesting to Harriman than what they could buy:
influence.

“Sam!” Roosevelt grinned at him; it was an invitation to enter. “You remember Ave Harriman.”

“Ambassador,” Schwartz said. “I understand you flew in on Marshal Stalin's plane.”

“Along with the Kremlin guard.” Harriman glanced sidelong at Roosevelt. “He's surrounded by generals and NKVD people and he's got his Foreign Minister, Molotov, to talk dirty for him. His security chief, Lavrentiy Beria, is walking about two feet behind him wherever he goes. Two feet behind Beria is his personal bodyguard—although some say he's Beria's personal assassin. Lavrentiy brought his kid along, too. I guess it's never too early to start the son off in the family business. And don't get me started on the three thousand NKVD troops Stalin's shipped into the city. We're calling it the Second Occupation.”

“There's been some rumor about German paratroopers,” Roosevelt said. “Heard anything, Ave?”

Harriman hesitated, then laughed. “Talk to a Russian, and you'll get five different conspiracies in five minutes, Mr. President.”

Roosevelt's gaze shifted to Sam Schwartz. “Ave tells me Uncle Joe thinks he's too tired to have dinner here tonight. But apparently the real reason is he doesn't want to leave his compound. Afraid of being shot in the streets. Can a man with such a reputation for ruthlessness really be that much of a chicken, Sam?”

“Even with three thousand men at his back.”

“There's a reason he's still alive,” Harriman said cautiously. “Call him yellow if you like—but the Marshal's no fool.”

“I tried to get Winston to come over for dinner, but he tells me he's lost his voice and is going to bed early with a glass of Scotch and a volume of Dickens,” Roosevelt persisted. “So if you'd care to join me, Ave, we'll see whether the State Department cook is worth his salary. I've got my son Elliott here, and John Boettiger. They'd love to hear all about Moscow.”

Harriman dropped his gaze. “I'm deeply grateful for the invitation, sir, but—well, I think it's my duty to remain available in the event Premier Stalin . . .”

“I understand.” Roosevelt turned his wheelchair away from Harriman and winked roguishly at Sam Schwartz. The look said quite plainly:
Pamela.
“Tell you what. Why don't you take Molotov a message from me? My official answer to Uncle Joe's invitation to bunk down in his quarters. Tell him I'd love to accept the offer, but I'm in a bit of a bind. Winston's invited me to stay at his place, too. The young Shah has offered me the run of Golestan Palace. Don't want to offend anybody. Suggest to Mr. Molotov that his boss meet me here tomorrow after lunch. See what excuse he comes up with next.”

“Will do, Mr. President.” Harriman moved swiftly across the room and shook FDR's outstretched hand. It was clear, Schwartz thought, that he wasn't going to risk another invitation to dine in a room full of men. “I'll stop by the British embassy and send in my regards to the Prime Minister, too.”

“He has a nasty cold.”

“That's too bad. He's not getting any younger.”

“None of us is, Ave,” Roosevelt offered benignly. Like so much of what the President said, the simple phrase carried an underlying note of mockery.

—

S
CHWARTZ WAITED
for the legation's main door to close and for the thrum of a high-powered car engine carrying Harriman into the night. Then he turned to Roosevelt.

“Let's have it, Sam.”

The Secret Service chief handed him a folded cable. “This was waiting for me when we got back from the airport. Alex Kirk's people sent it, but it's from that Royal Naval Intelligence guy you talked about a few days ago. Fleming.”

“He's down with bronchitis.”

“And a knife in the back.”

Roosevelt's eyebrows soared. He adjusted his pince-nez and read swiftly through the text. Then he peered at his Secret Service chief. “Why have I never heard of this Fencer?”

Schwartz looked slightly apprehensive. “I'd never heard of him, either, until Mussolini's rescue. The people at Bletchley Park turned up his name in their German traffic. They guard those intercepts like King George's balls.”

“Rightly so. Knowledge is power, Sam.” He snapped the pages of the cable. “Fleming says this Fencer is behind the Nazis who've scared Uncle Joe shitless.”

“He also says they mean to kill you, sir.”

Roosevelt lifted his shoulders irritably. “Let 'em try.”

“Easy for you to say,” Schwartz retorted. “It's my head if they do.”

“I wonder why Winston hasn't told me about this?” Roosevelt mused. “He must know. Fleming's in his shop. But instead we got some bullshit about bronchitis. Why lie?”

“Maybe Mr. Churchill was afraid you'd turn tail and go home,” Schwartz said bluntly. “Or maybe he doesn't trust Fleming.”