give that promise …’ Churchill sat down opposite Bracken and took a swig of his whisky and soda. ‘But I digress. What I’m saying is that Stalin will wait till the Fascists have thrashed the Reds in Spain, then he’ll throw in his lot with Hitler. You see, Brendan, it’s really the only option open to old Joe.’ Stalin, Bracken reflected, was five years younger than Churchill. ‘He knows that one day Hitler will turn on him and he’s got to delay that inevitable moment until Mother Russia has girded her loins to meet such an attack.’
‘And that will take a few years,’ Bracken remarked. ‘According to estimates here Stalin has purged upwards of 30,000 Red Army officers. Not only that but he’s got rid of nearly all of the Supreme Military Council. Do you know the total estimate of Stalin’s victims, killed or imprisoned?’
‘No,’ Churchill said irritably, ‘but you will tell me.’
‘Something like six million. And you know, of course, what he’s reputed to have said when one of his sons tried unsuccessfully to shoot himself …’ Bracken was beginning to enjoy himself.
‘An educated guess would be words to the effect that he couldn’t shoot straight.’
‘An inspired guess! And did you know—’
‘For God’s sake, Brendan,’ Churchill said, ‘let’s get on with the business at hand.’
They were interrupted by Clementine who came into the room to bid them goodnight, somehow managing to be both dignified and homely in a pink robe. Sometimes she reminded Bracken of a Society hostess, sometimes of Gracie Fields. But contradictions had been thrust upon her by marriage: she should by now have withdrawn into gracious patronage and yet here she was by the side of a man who in his sixties was talking about leading his country in a second world war. Small wonder that there were occasionally wry edges to her smile.
‘Goodnight, Brendan,’ she said, ‘please don’t get up,’ as Bracken sprang to his feet, and to her husband: ‘It’s nearly midnight dear, will you be much later?’ The question, Bracken suspected, was purely academic.
‘Not much longer,’ Churchill said, kissing her lightly. ‘You run along now.’ And when she had gone: ‘What a lucky devil I was, eh, Brendan? I was never much good at the niceties of courtship, you know, but Clemmie understood.’
As if she had any choice, Brendan thought.
Churchill regarded the smoking tip of his cigar. ‘She’s never liked these things, you know,’ and ground out the long stub as a gesture of penitence. ‘And now where were we?’
‘Stalin. You prophesied he would go in with Hitler.’
‘No doubt about it.’ Churchill gave himself another whisky and siphoned soda water into it. ‘Now let’s get that phrase of yours back off the shelf.’
‘What phrase was that?’
‘He, Stalin that is, would like to see the capitalist powers fight each other to a standstill. It made my hair curl, Brendan, what little there is left of it. Of course you’re absolutely right, that’s just what old Joe would like to happen.’
Patiently, Bracken waited for enlightenment.
Holding his glass of whisky in one hand, pausing to tap some of the books in the cases with one small, plump finger as though they contained the answers to the questions that had defied the sages, Churchill began to pace the room again. There was his own novel, Savrola, written in his youth; there was The Aftermath in which he had poured out his post-war hatred of the Bolsheviks. ‘It’s strange,’ he said, finger lingering on The Aftermath, but my fear – yes, fear, Brendan – of the Reds has always been greater than my fear of the Nazis. We shouldn’t have squeezed the Nazis so hard, Brendan, we should have left them a little pith.’
Still Bracken waited.
‘Supposing,’ Churchill said, turning to study Bracken’s reactions, ‘supposing we reversed the process to which you have just referred. Supposing we took steps to make sure that Russia and Germany fought each other to a standstill?’
Tentatively, Bracken said: ‘A formidable proposition, Winston,’ aware that he was being used as a sounding board.
Churchill got up steam. ‘I wonder if it could be done … why not … it has always been possible to manipulate great men … just kick them in their Achilles heel – conceit …’
‘But what about this pact you’re so sure they’re going to sign?’
‘It won’t fool either of them. Hitler intends to march through the steppes, Stalin knows it. It’s just a matter of buying time. Like Munich,’ he added, scowling.
The distant clock chimed again. A single note. Half an hour had passed since Clementine had taken herself to bed. It was 12.30 a.m.
Like Munich … That was the only truth, Bracken realised. He had been frog-marched into a debate about a war that hadn’t been declared, a Soviet-German Alliance that didn’t exist.
But Churchill had become an exultant prophet, his glass of whisky his crystal ball. ‘What we must do,’ he said, ‘is make the sands of time run with great alacrity.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand, Winston, you’re talking in riddles.’
Churchill’s words lost their ring. ‘No more you should, Brendan, no more you should. I’m not even sure that I do at this moment. But it will come, it will come.’
He sat down abruptly.
Then, voice sombre, he wound up the debate: ‘But I tell you this. Unless some stark and terrible measures are devised, this island of ours is doomed to be pillaged by the barbaric hordes of either the Nazis or the Bolsheviks.’
Watched by a stunned Bracken, he drained his crystal ball. ‘We have but one hope of survival and that is to make sure that these two arch-enemies of freedom fight each other to the death.’
Without warning he strode to the door. Turning, he said: ‘Come on, Brendan, there’s a good chap, you’re keeping me from my bed.’
By the second week of June 1940 much of Europe lay in ruins, the people dazed and beaten by Hitler’s Blitzkrieg. Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland and Belgium had fallen and France was poised to throw in the Tricolour.
But in Lisbon you could have been forgiven for forgetting that there was a war on at all.
The sun shone; the boulevard cafés in the cobbled squares and wide avenues were crowded with customers, British and German among them, the broad, flat waters of the Tagus estuary were scattered with ships of many nations; the little yellow tramcars butting along their shining rails and climbing the steep hills were stuffed with cheerful, sweating passengers.
In the grand arenas of the Baixa, business in the banks was brisk, hotels were full, shops were relatively well-stocked. In the precipitous maze of the Alfama, women garlanded their leaning cottages with laundry, dogs slept in the
