Churchill's Triumph by Michael Dobbs Page A

conference at Yalta is not a meeting of equals, Mule. Oh, I know, Britain has the highest moral claim, for we alone entered the war as a matter of principle, not bludgeoned into the fight like the Americans and Russians. Yet what does principle matter among the endless piles of corpses? Some reckon more than fifty million dead, the largest slice of them Russian, while the Americans and British between us have lost less than a million.” His voice suddenly dried. “What have we become,” he whispered, “when we talk of a million souls as a mere trifle . . . ?”
    As she looked at her father’s face in the flickering firelight, Sarah expected to see tears, but something seemed to have frozen inside him and locked them away. It was almost as if he didn’t deserve to cry.
    “We have endured so much. Yet set against our own suffering the Russians can place perhaps twenty million. Soldiers, civilians, women, so many innocent children. All slaughtered. But how many by the Marshal’s own hand?” He drained his glass. “May the ghosts of Katyn come back to haunt him.”
    As Sawyers came with more whisky, Churchill waved him away. “Your Pole, he said he was in danger?”
    “That’s what he said.”
    “We are already in his debt,” Churchill continued. “And if he was at Katyn, we owe him all the more. I would like to meet this Polish friend of yours, Sawyers.”
    “But… how?”
    Churchill’s jaw jutted forward. “You said he was a plumber.”
    “Yes, zur.”
    “So!” He rose, handed his glass to his servant and picked up a log from the bucket beside the fire. Then he strode into the bathroom. Three well-aimed whacks at the lead pipework beneath the sink left a satisfying puddle of water dripping on to the floor.
    “Sawyers, fetch a bucket. And summon the Pole!”

MONDAY ,
5th OF FEBRUARY, 1945 THE SECOND DA Y

THRE E
    errible party last night , I thought, Alec.” Eden gazed forlornly at the breakfast table that had been set up in his room. It was piled high with meat, fish, cheese, even a bowl of caviar, and a huge plate of mince pies—for breakfast? Try as he might he’d been unable to make any of the Russian servants understand the concept of a soft boiled egg. “I hate to think what’s going on in the president’s mind—even he didn’t seem to know. And Winston as always being Winston, making his speeches, lighting sticks of dynamite and rejoicing as they explode all around him. Really, he can be so irresponsible.”
    Eden was in a flap, but Cadogan had always known he was something of a flapper. An elegant flapper, to be sure. His shoulders were narrow and square, ideally suited to his carefully tailored jackets but, in truth, not broad enough for the responsibilities they were supposed to bear. So things slipped, and he flapped. He was nouveau, of course, a half-formed aristocrat who also tried to be a man of the people. It was an untidy compromise, which was where Cadogan came in. He was a full-blown aristocrat, nothing half-cock or semi-common about him: he was the son of an earl and a damned safe pair of hands in the slips, no matter how badly the pitch was playing. A man to clear up the mess that others left behind.
    Well, not every sort of mess. Not the mess that Anthony had made of his private life. All those women creeping in and out, and that over-plucked hen of a wife! Little wonder he flapped.
    Cadogan returned to the moment. “Speaking frankly, neither Winston nor Franklin is good material for these occasions, in my view,” he said, searching for a piece of bread soft enough to give his teeth a chance. “Winston’s too emotional, gets wrapped up in himself, throws all his toys out of the pram, while the President…” He paused to consider both his words and the goo that passed for jam. “Sometimes I think he’s jealous. Wants to keep all his toys to himself, doesn’t want to share. We’ll have to sort things out with his staff, as usual.”
    “You want me to have a word with