Winds of War (47 page)

Victor Henry was no bigot, in his own best judgment. His narrowly bounded life had brought him into very little contact with Jews. He was an arid realist and the whole thing spelled trouble. If he were to have half-Jewish grandchildren, well, with such a mother they would probably be handsome and bright. But he thought his son was not man enough to handle the complications and might never be. The coolness and courage he had displayed in Warsaw were fine traits for an athletic or military career, but in daily life they meant little, compared to ambition, industry, and common sense.

“Mr. Gianelli is here, sir.” The yeoman’s voice spoke through the squawk box.

“Very well.” Victor Henry swept up the tokens and put them in a trouser pocket, not nearly as happy as he had once thought promotion to captain would make him.

The San Francisco banker had changed to an elegant double-breasted gray suit with bold chalk stripes and out-size British lapels. The interior of his green Rolls Royce smelled of a strong cologne. “I trust you enjoyed your nap as much as I did mine,” he said, lighting a very long cigar. All his gestures had the repose, and all of the details of his person - manicure, rings, shirt, tie - the sleekness, of secure wealth. Withal, he appeared stimulated and slightly nervous. “Now, I’ve already spoken to the foreign minister. You’ve met Count Ciano? Pug shook his head. “I’ve known him well for many years. He’s definitely coming to the reception, and from there will take me to the Palazzo Venezia. Now, what about you? What are your instructions?”

“To consider myself your aide as long as you’re in Italy and Germany, sir, and to make myself useful in any way you desire.”

“Do you understand Italian?”

“Poorly, to say the least. I can grope through a newspaper if I have to.”

“That’s a pity.” The banker smoked his cigar with calm relish, his drooping eyes sizing up Victor Henry. “Still, the President said there might be value in having you along at both interviews, if these heads of state will stand for it. Just another pair of eyes and ears. At Karinhall, of course, I can ask that you interpret for me. My German’s a bit weak. I think we’ll have to feel our way as we go. This whole errand is unusual and there’s no protocol for it. Ordinarily I’d be accompanied by our ambassador.”

“Suppose I just come along, then, as though it’s the natural thing, unless they stop me?”

The banker’s eyes closed for several seconds, then he nodded and opened them. “Ah, here’s the Forum. You’ve been in Rome before? We’re passing the Arch of Constantine. A lot of old history here! I suppose envoys came to Rome in those days on errands just as strange.”

Pug said, “This reception now, is it at your apartment?”

“Oh no, I keep just a very small flat off the Via Veneto. My uncle and two cousins are bankers here. It is at their town house, and the reception is for me. Let us just see how this goes. If, when we’re with Ciano, I touch my lapel so, you’ll excuse yourself. Otherwise come along, in the way you suggest.”

These arrangements proved needless because Mussolini himself dropped in on the party. About half an hour after the arrival of the Americans, a commotion started up at the doorway of the enormous marble-columned room, and Il Duce came walking bouncily in. He was not expected, judging by the excitement and confusion among the guests. Even Ciano, resplendent in green, white, and gold uniform, seemed taken aback. Mussolini was a surprisingly small man, shorter than Pug, dressed in a wrinkled tweed jacket, dark trousers, a sweater, and brown-and-white saddle shoes. It struck Pug at once that with this casual apparel Mussolini was underlining - perhaps for its eventual effect on the Germans - his contempt for Roosevelt’s informal messenger. Mussolini went to the buffet table, ate fruit, drank tea, and chatted jauntily with guests who crowded around. He moved through the room with a teacup, talking to one person and another. He glanced once at Luigi Gianelli as he passed close by, but otherwise he ignored the two Americans. In this setting Mussolini hardly resembled the chin-jutting imperial bully with the demonic glare. His prominent eyes had an Italian softness, his smile was wide, ironical, very worldly, and it seemed to Victor Henry that here was a smart little fellow who had gotten himself into the saddle and loved it, but whose bellicosity was a comedy. There was no comparing him with the ferocious Hitler.

Mussolini left the room while Pug was clumsily making talk with the banker’s aunt, a bejewelled, painted crone with a haughty manner, a peppermint breath and almost no hearing. Seeing the banker beckon to him and walk off after Ciano, Pug excused himself and followed. The three men went through tall carved wooden doors into a princely high-ceilinged library, lined with volumes bound in gold-stamped brown, scarlet or blue leather. Tall windows looked out over the city, which appeared so different from blacked-out Berlin, with electric lights twinkling and blazing in long crisscrossing lines and scattered clusters. Mussolini with a regal gesture invited them to sit. The banker came to the sofa beside him, while Ciano and Victor Henry faced them in armchairs. Mussolini coldly stared at Henry and turned the stare to Gianelli.

The look at once changed Pug’s impression of the Italian leader, and gave him a forcible sense that he was out of his depth and under suspicion. He felt junior and shaky, an ensign who had blundered into flag country. Ciano had given him no such feeling, and still didn’t, sitting there gorgeous and wary, the son-in-law waiting for the powerful old man to talk. At this close range Pug could see how white Mussolini’s fringe of hair was, how deep the creases of decision were folded in his face, how vivid were the large eyes, which now had an opaque glitter. This man could readily order a hundred murders, Pug decided, if he had to. He was an Italian ruler.

Pug could half follow the banker’s clear, measured Italian as he rapidly explained that Franklin Roosevelt, his treasured friend, had appointed the Berlin naval attaché as an aide for his few days in Europe; also that Henry would be acting as interpreter with Hitler. He said Henry could now remain or withdraw at Il Duce’s pleasure. Mussolini gave the attaché another glance, this time obviously weighing him as a Roosevelt appointee. His expression warmed.

“Do you speak Italian?” he said in good English, catching Henry unawares almost as though a statue had broken into speech.

“Excellency, I can follow it in a fashion. I can’t speak it. But then, I have nothing to say.”

Mussolini smiled, as Pug had seen him smile at people in the other room. “If we come to naval matters maybe we will talk English.”

He looked expectantly at the banker.

“
Bene, Luigi
?”

The banker talked for about a quarter of an hour. Since Pug already knew the substance, the banker did not altogether lose him. After some compliments, Gianelli said he was no diplomat and had neither the credentials nor the skill to discuss matters of state. He had come to put one question informally to Il Duce, on behalf of the President. Mr. Roosevelt had sent a private citizen who knew Il Duce, so that a negative reply would not affect formal relations between the United States and Italy. The President was alarmed by the drift toward catastrophe in Europe. If full-scale war broke out in the spring, horrors that nobody could foresee might engulf the whole world. Was it possible to do something, even at this late hour? Mr. Roosevelt had in mind a formal, urgent mission by a high United States diplomat, somebody on the order of Sumner Welles (Ciano, drumming the tips of his fingers together, looked up at the mention of the name), to visit all the chiefs of the warring states, perhaps late in January, to explore the possible terms of a general European settlement. Il Duce himself had made a last-minute call for a similar exploration on August 31, in vain. But if he would join the President now in bringing about such a settlement, he would hold a place in history as a savior of mankind.

Mussolini deliberated for a minute or so, his face heavy, his shoulders bowed, his look withdrawn, one hand fiddling with his tweed lapels. Then he said - as nearly as Pug could follow him - that the foreign policy of Italy rested on the Pact of Steel, the unshakable tie with Germany. Any attempt, any maneuver, any trick designed to split off Italy from this alliance would fail. A settlement in Europe was always possible. No one would welcome it more than he. As Mr. Roosevelt acknowledged, he himself had tried to the last to preserve the peace. But Hitler had offered a very reasonable settlement in October, and the Allies had spurned it. The American government in recent years had been openly hostile to Germany and Italy. Italy too had serious demands that had to be part of any settlement. These were not matters in Luigi’s province, Mussolini said, but he was stating them to clarify his very pessimistic feeling about a mission by Sumner Welles.

“You have put a question to me,” he concluded. “Now, Luigi, I will put a question to you.”

“Yes, Duce.”

“Does this initiative come from President Roosevelt, or is he acting at the request of the Allies?”

“Duce, the President has told us this is his own initiative.”

Ciano cleared his throat, leaned forward with his hands clasped, and said, “Do the British and French know and approve of this visit you are making?”

“No, Excellency. The President said that he would be making informal inquiries of the same nature, at this same time, in London and Paris.”

Mussolini said, “The newspapers have no information on any of this, is that correct?”

“What I have told you, Duce, is known outside this room only to the President and his Secretary of State. My trip is a matter of private business, of no interest to the press, and so it will remain forever.”

“I have stated my deep reservations,” said Mussolini, speaking slowly, in an extremely formal tone. “I have very little hope that such a mission would be to any useful purpose, in view of the maniacal hostility of the British and French ruling circles to the resurgent German nation and its great Führer. But I share Mr. Roosevelt’s sentiment about leaving no stone unturned.” He took a long portentous pause, then spoke with a decisive nod. “If the President sends Sumner Welles on such a mission, I will receive him.”

Gianelli’s fixed smile gave way to a real one of delight and pride. He gushed over Mussolini’s wise and great decision, and his joy at the prospect of Italy and the United States, his two mother countries, joining to rescue the world from tragedy. Mussolini nodded tolerantly, seeming to enjoy the flood of flattery, though he waved a deprecating hand to calm down the banker.

Victor Henry seized the first pause in the banker’s speech to put in, “Duce, may I ask whether Signor Gianelli is permitted to tell the Führer this? That you have consented receive a formal mission by Sumner Welles?”

Mussolini’s eyes sparked, as sometimes an admiral’s did when Victor Henry said something sharp. He looked to Ciano. The foreign minister said condescendingly in his perfect English, “The Führer will know long before you have a chance to tell him.”

“Okay,” said Henry.

Mussolini rose, took Gianelli’s elbow, and led him out through french doors to the balcony, letting a gust of cold air into the room.

Ciano smoothed his thick black hair with both white hands. “Well, Commander, what do you think of the great German naval victory in the south Atlantic?”

“I hadn’t heard of one.”

‘Really? It will be on Rome radio at seven o’clock. The battleship
Graf Spee
has caught a group of British cruisers and destroyers off Montevideo. The British have lost four or five ships and all the rest have been damaged. It’s a British disaster that changes the whole balance of force in the Atlantic.”

Victor Henry was shocked, but skeptical. “What happened to
Graf Spee
?”

“Minor hits that will be repaired overnight.
Graf Spee
was much heavier than anything it faced.”

“The British have acknowledged this?”

Count Ciano smiled. He was a good-looking young man, and obviously knew it; just a little too fat and proud, Pug thought, from living high on the hog. “No, but the British took a little while to acknowledge the sinking of the
Royal Oak
.”

* * *

The dinner celebrating Victor Henry’s promotion began in gloom, because of the
Graf Spee
news. The two attachés sat talking over highballs, waiting for Byron to show up.

Captain Kirkwood asserted that he believed the story; that in the twenty years since the war, a deep rot had eaten out the heart of England. Kirkwood looked like an Englishman himself - long-jawed, ruddy, and big-toothed - but he had little use for Great Britain. The British politicians had stalled and cringed in the face of Hitler’s rise, he declared, because they sensed their people no longer had a will to fight. The Limey navy was a shell. England and France were going to crumple under Hitler’s onslaught in the spring.

“It’s too bad, I suppose,” Kirkwood said. “One’s sentiments are with the Allies, naturally.” But the world moves on. After all, Hitler halted communism in its tracks. And don’t worry, once he takes the fight out of the Allies, he’ll settle Stalin’s hash. The Russians are putting on one stumblebum performance in Finland, aren’t they? They’ll be a walkover for the Wehrmacht. In the end we’ll have to make a deal with Hitler, that’s becoming obvious. He holds all the cards on this side of the water.”

“Hi, Dad.” Byron’s sports jacket and slacks were decidedly out of place in this old luxurious restaurant, where half the people wore evening dress.

Henry introduced him to the attaché. “Where have you been? You’re late.”

“I saw a movie, and then went to the YMCA to flake out for a little while.”

“Is that all you could find to do in Rome? See a movie? I wish I had a few free hours in this city.”

“Well, see, I was tired.” Byron appeared much more his old slack self.

The waiter now brought champagne and Kirkwood proposed a toast to
Captain
Victor Henry.

“Hey, Dad! Four stripes! Really?” Byron sprang to life, radiating surprised joy. He clasped his father’s hand and lifted a brimming glass. “Well, I’m sure glad I came to Rome, just for this. Say, I know one doesn’t mention such things, but the hell with it, doesn’t this put you way out front, Dad?”