The commandant put up Pug in his handsome newly built quarters, complete with tennis court. Besides playing occasional tennis or cards with the admiral, Pug passed the time reading up on the Soviet Union. The intelligence papers he had brought were thin stuff. Poking around in Bermuda’s library and bookstores, he came on erudite British books highly favorable to the Soviets, written by George Bernard Shaw, and a man named Laski, and a couple named Beatrice and Sidney Webb. He ground sedulously through these long stylish paeans to Russian socialism, but came on little substance that a military man could use.
He found harshly negative books, too, by various defectors and debunkers; lurid accounts of fake trials, mass murders, gigantic famines engineered by the government, and secret concentration camps all over the communist paradise, where millions of people were being worked to death. The crimes ascribed to Stalin in these books seemed worse even than Hitler’s reputed malefactions. Where did the truth lie? This blank wall of contradiction brought back vividly to Victor Henry his last trip to the Soviet Union, with the Harriman mission; the sense of baffled isolation there, the frustration of dealing with people who looked and acted like ordinary human beings, who even projected a hearty if shy charm, and yet who could suddenly start behaving like Martians, for sheer inability to communicate, and for icy remote hostility.
When his flight was rescheduled, he bought a three-volume paperbound history of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky to read on the way. Pug knew of Trotsky as a Jew who had organized the Red Army, the number two man under Lenin during the revolution; he knew too that on Lenin’s death Stalin had outmaneuvered Trotsky for power, had driven him into exile in Mexico, and — at least according to the unfriendly books — had sent assassins who had brained him there. He was surprised at the literary brilliance of the work, and appalled by its contents. The six days of his trip across the Atlantic, over North Africa, and up through the Middle East to Tehran passed easily; for when clouds shut off the magnificent geography unreeling far below, or he was waiting for a connection, or spending a night in a dismal Quonset hut on an air base, he had Trotsky to turn to.
This intermingling of a flight across much of the globe with a flaring epic of czardom’s fall was quite an experience. Trotsky wrote of sordid plots and counterplots by squalid formidable men to seize power, which gripped like a novel; but there were long passages of stupefying Marxist verbiage which defeated Victor Henry’s earnest efforts to get through them. He did dimly grasp that a volcanic social force had broken loose in Russia in 1917, reaching for a grand Utopian dream; but it seemed to him that on Trotsky’s own testimony — and the book was intended to celebrate the revolution — the thing had foundered in a sea of sanguinary horror.
Except for hopping from one hot dusty base to another, Pug saw little of the war in North Africa, where, from radio reports, Rommel was giving the invaders a bad time. Green jungles slipped by, empty deserts, rugged mountains, day after day. The Pyramids and the Sphinx at last drifted past far below, and the Nile, glittering in its band of greenery. A half-day delay in Palestine enabled him to drive to old Jerusalem, and walk the crooked streets where Jesus Christ had borne his cross; then he was back in an aircraft high above the earth, reading about plots, imprisonments, tortures, poisonings, shootings, all in the name of the socialist brotherhood of man, inevitable under Marxism. When he got to Tehran he was just beginning the third volume, and he left the unfinished book on the plane. At his next stop, Trotsky was not a welcome import.
“The whole point, Henry,” said Admiral Standley, “is to get through to this General Yevlenko. If anyone can do it, you can.”
“What’s Yevlenko’s official position, Admiral?”
Standley made a frustrated gesture with gnarled hands. “If I knew and I told you, you’d be no better off. He’s Mister Big on Lend-Lease, that’s all. He’s a hero, I gather. Lost a hand in the battle for Moscow. Wears a fake hand in a leather glove.”
They were at the long dinner table in Spaso House, just the two of them. Arrived from Kuibyshev scarcely an hour earlier, Pug would have been glad to forgo dinner, take a bath, and turn in for the night. But it was not to be. The little old admiral, who looked lost in this grand and spacious embassy, formerly the mansion of a czarist sugar merchant, had developed a great head of steam about Lend-Lease, and with Pug’s arrival the safety valve popped.
In Washington, said Standley, he had gotten the President’s promise that the Lend-Lease mission would be subordinated to him. The orders had gone out, but the head of the mission, one General Faymonville, was blandly ignoring the President. Growing red in the face, hardly touching his boiled chicken, Standley struck the table with a fist over and over, declaring that Harry Hopkins must be at the bottom of this, must have told Faymonville that the order didn’t mean anything, that the prodigal handouts should continue. But he, Standley, had come out of retirement to take this post at the President’s request. He was going to fight for America’s best interests come hell or Harry Hopkins.
“Say, incidentally, Pug,” said Standley with a sudden glare, “when I’ve talked to this General Yevlenko socially, he’s referred to you more than once as Harry Hopkins’s military aide. Hey? How’s that?”
Pug answered cautiously, “Admiral, when we came over with Harriman in 1941, the President wanted an eyewitness report from the front. Mr. Hopkins designated me to go, because I’d taken a crash course in Russian. I met Yevlenko out in the forward area, and maybe the Nark man who accompanied me put that idea into his head.”
“Hm. Is that so?” The ambassador’s glare slowly metamorphosed into a cunning wrinkled grin. “I see! Well, in that case, land’s sakes, don’t ever disabuse the fellow. If he really thinks you’re Garry Gopkins’s boy, you may get some action out of him. Garry Gopkins is Father Christmas around here.”
Pug could remember first meeting William Standley ten years ago, when as Chief of Naval Operations he had visited the West Virginia; a straight austere little four-star admiral in white and gold, number one man in the Navy, saying a kind word to the lowly Lieutenant Commander Henry about the battleship’s gunnery record. Standley was still full of fire, but what a change! During that dinner it seemed to Victor Henry that he had relinquished the post at Cincpac in order to help a tetchy old man cannonade at gnats. On and on the grievances poured out. The gifts of the Russian Relief Society, which Standley’s own wife had worked hard for, weren’t being acknowledged. The American Red Cross aid wasn’t getting enough thankful publicity in the Soviet Union. The Russians weren’t giving any quid pro quos for Lend-Lease. Bone-weary after the elaboration of these gripes for perhaps an hour and a half, Pug ventured to ask Standley over coffee what the purpose would be in seeking out General Yevlenko.
“That’s business,” said the ambassador. “We’ll get to it in the morning. You look a bit bushed. Get some sleep.”
Possibly because the sun shone brightly into the ambassador’s library, or because he was at his best in morning hours, their next meeting went better. There was in fact a touch of the CNO about Standley.
Congress was debating the extension of the Lend-Lease act, he explained, and the State Department wanted a report from the Soviets on how Lend-Lease supplies had helped them on the battlefield. Molotov had agreed “in principle”— a fatal Russian phrase, which meant an indefinite stall. Molotov had referred the request to Yevlenko’s Lend-Lease section. Standley had been hounding Faymonville to keep after Yevlenko, and Faymonville claimed he was doing his best, but nothing was happening.
Worse than nothing, actually. In Stalin’s latest Order of the Day, the dictator had stated that the Red Army was bearing the whole weight of the war alone, with no help from its allies! Now, how would that go down with Congress? These damned Russians, said Standley coolly, just didn’t comprehend the depth of anti-Bolshevik feeling in America. He admired their fighting spirit. He just had to save them from themselves. One way or another he had to get that statement about the battlefield benefits of Le
nd-Lease. Otherwise, come June there might be no more Lend-Lease. The whole alliance might collapse, and the whole damned war might be lost. Pug did not argue, though he thought Standley was exaggerating. No doubt the Russians were being boorish, and his first thankless task was to hunt down General Yevlenko, force him to face that fact, and try to get something done about it.
It took him two days of trudging through the Moscow streets ridged with black unremoved ice, amid crowds of shabby pedestrians, from one official structure to another in the government’s uncharted maze, just to find out where General Yevlenko’s office was. He could not obtain a telephone number, not even an accurate address. The British air attache, whom he had known in Berlin, finally took him in hand and pointed out the building where Yevlenko had not long ago given him a red-hot dressing-down, over the diversion of forty Lend-Lease Aircobra fighters to the British forces in the North African landings. But when Pug tried to enter the building, a silent burly red-cheeked young sentry put a bayonetted rifle athwart his chest, and was deaf to his protests in sputtering Russian. Pug went back to his office, dictated a long letter, and brought it to the building. Another sentry accepted it, but days passed without an answer.
Meantime, Pug met General Faymonville, an affable Army man not much like the monster Standley had described. Faymonville said that he understood Yevlenko was in Leningrad; and that, in any case, Americans never saw Yevlenko on business. One dealt with him through his liaison officer, a general with a jawbreaker of a name. But Standley’s attaches had already warned Pug that General Jawbreaker was a waste of time, a dead end; his sole job was to absorb questions and demands like a feather pillow with no comeback, and he was matchless at it.
After about a week of this frustration, Pug awoke in his bedroom in Spaso House and found a note under his door.
Henry—
Some American correspondents are returning from a tour of the southern
front; and Vm seeing them this morning at ogoo in the library. Be there at
0845.
He found Standley alone at his desk, dark red in the face and glaring dangerously. The admiral slung a pack of Chesterfield cigarettes across the desk at him. Pug picked it up. Stamped in bright purple ink on the package were these words: FROM THE FELLOW WORKERS PARTY, NEW YORK.
“Those are Red Cross or Lend-Lease cigarettes!” The admiral could barely choke out the words. “Can’t be anything else. We’re giving them by the millions to the Red Army. Yet I got that from a Czech last night. The fellow said a Red Army officer gave it to him, and told him that the generous communist comrades in New York are keeping the whole army supplied.”
Victor Henry could only shake his head in disgust.
“Those reporters will be here in ten minutes,” grated Standley, “and they’ll get an earful.”
“Admiral, the new Lend-Lease act comes to a vote this week. Is this a time to blow the whistle?”
“It’s the only time. Give these scoundrels a jolt. Show ‘em what ingratitude can lead to, when you deal with the American people.”
Pug pointed at the cigarette package. “Sir, this is a bit of knavery on a very low level. I wouldn’t magnify it.”
“That? I quite agree. Not worth discussing.”
The reporters came in, a bored lot obviously disappointed in their trip. As usual, they said, they had gotten nowhere near the front. In the chat over coffee Standley asked whether they had seen any American equipment out in the countryside. They had not. One reporter inquired whether the ambassador thought the new Lend-Lease act would pass in Congress.
“I wouldn’t venture to say.” Standley glanced at Victor Henry, and laid all ten bony fingers straight before him on the desk, like a main battery trained for a broadside. “You know, boys, ever since I’ve been here, I’ve been looking for evidence that the Russians are getting help from the British and us. Not only Lend-Lease, but also Red Cross and Russian Relief. I’ve yet to find any such evidence.”
The reporters looked at each other and at the ambassador.
“That’s right,” he went on, drumming the fingers before him. “I’ve also tried to obtain evidence that our military supplies are actually in use by the Russians on the battlefield. I haven’t succeeded. The Russian authorities seem to want to cover up the fact that they’re receiving outside help. Apparently they want their people to believe that the Red Army is fighting this war alone.”
“This is off the record, of course, Mr. Ambassador,” said a reporter, though they were all pulling out pads and pencils.
“No, use it.” Standley spoke on very slowly, virtually dictating. The drumming of his fingers quickened. In his pauses, the scribbling was an angry hiss. “The Soviet authorities apparently are trying to create the impression at home and abroad that they are fighting the war alone, and with their own resources. I see no reason why you should not use my remarks if you care to.
The reporters asked a few more excited questions, then bolted from the room.
Next morning, as Pug walked through the snow-heaped streets from the National Hotel to Spaso House, he was wondering whether he would find that the ambassador had already been recalled. Breakfasting with the reporters at the hotel, he had been told that Standley’s statement had hit the front pages all over the United States and England, that the State Department had refused comment, that the President had cancelled a scheduled press conference, and that Congress was in an uproar. The whole world was asking whether Standley had spoken for himself or for Roosevelt. One rumor had it that the Russian censors who had allowed the statement out had been arrested.
In these wide quiet Moscow streets drifted high with fresh snow, amid the hundreds of Russians slogging past and the usual truckloads of soldiers coming and going, the whole fuss seemed petty and far-off. Still, Standley had done an incredible thing; on an explosively delicate issue between the United States and the Soviet Union, he had publicly vented his personal irritation. How could he survive?
In the small room assigned to him as a temporary office, he found a note on the desk from the telephone operator: Call 0743. He placed the call, heard the usual cracklings, poppings, and random noises of the Moscow telephone system, and then a harsh bass voice, “Slushayu!”
“Govorit Kapitan Victor Genry.”
“Yasno. Yevlenko.”
This time the sentry stiffly saluted and let the American naval officer pass without the exchange of a word. In the large marbled lobby an unsmiling army man at a desk looked up, pressing a button. “Kapitan Genry?”
“Da
An unsmiling girl in uniform came down a broad curved staircase, and spoke prim stiff English. “How do you do? Well, General Yevlenko’s office is on the second floor. If you please to come with me.”
Ornate iron balustrades, marble stairs, marble pillars, high arched ceilings: another czarist mansion, brought up-to-date by red marble busts of Lenin and Stalin. Large thick patches of peeling old paint gave the edifice the general wartime look of neglect. Typewriters clattered behind closed doors all down the bare long corridor to Yevlenko’s office. Pug remembered him as a giant of a man, but as he stood up unsmiling, holding out his left hand across the desk, he did not look so big; possibly because the desk and the room were enormous, and the photograph of Lenin behind him was many times lifesize. Pictures on other walls were black and white reproductions of old czarist generals’ portraits. Tall dusty red curtains shut out the gray midwinter Moscow daylight. In a high curlicued brass chandelier naked electric bulbs glared.
The awkward clasp of Yevlenko’s left hand was strong. The big jowly face looked even wearier and sadder than it had on the Moscow front with the Germans breaking through. He wore many decorations, including the red and yellow wound stripe, and his trim greenish-brown uniform was festooned with new gold braid. They exchanged greetings in Russian, and Yevlenko gestured at the girl. “Well, shall we have the translator?”
She woodenly returned Pug’s glance: pretty face, heavy blonde hair, a charming red mo
uth, a fine bosom, blank cool eyes. Since leaving Washington, Pug had been drilling two hours a day on vocabulary and grammar, and his Russian was again about as good as it had been after the crash course in 1941. On instinct he replied, “Nyet.” Like a clockwork figure the girl turned and walked out. Pug assumed that microphones would still record everything he said, but he had no reason to be cautious, and Yevlenko no doubt could look after himself. “One less pair of eyes and ears,” he said.
General Yevlenko smiled. Pug at once thought of the evening of drinking and dancing in the cottage near the front, and Yevlenko clodhopping around with Pamela, smiling in that big-toothed way. Yevlenko waved toward a sofa and a low table with the artificial right hand, shocking to see, projecting from his sleeve in a stiff brown leather glove. On the table were platters of cakes, fish slices, and paper-wrapped candy, bottles of soft drinks and mineral water, a bottle of vodka, and large and small glasses. Though Pug didn’t want anything, he took a cake and a soft drink. Yevlenko took exactly what he did, and said, puffing at a cigarette clipped in a metal ring on his fake hand, “I received your letter. I have been very busy, so forgive my delay in answering. I thought it would be better to talk than to write.”
“I agree.”
“You asked for information about the use of Lend-Lease materiel on battlefields. Of course we have made very good use of Lend-Lease materiel on battlefields.” He was slowing his speech and using simple words, so that Pug had no trouble understanding him. The deep rough voice brought timbres of the combat zone into the office. “Still, the Hitlerites would be very grateful to know the exact quantity, quality, and battlefield performance of Lend-Lease materiel used against them. As is known, they have access to the New York Times, the Columbia Broadcasting System, and so forth. The enemy’s long nose must be reckoned with.”