I sipped the last of my water and tried to ignore a need to visit the lavatory.
The arguments had turned to France, a topic Hitler refused to consider with any seriousness. At the very least the French had no right to the return of their empire, he argued. And why should Roosevelt and Stalin be disposed to treat France as anything other than their enemy, since the current government was Nazi in all but name and actively helping Germany?
“France is hardly an occupied country,” said Hitler. “There are less than fifty thousand German soldiers in the whole country. That’s not an occupying army so much as an auxiliary police force helping to carry out the will of the Vichy French government. The thing that strikes me above all about the French is that because they have been so anxious to sit on every chair at the same time, they have not succeeded in sitting firmly on any one of them. They pretend to be your ally and yet they conspire with us. They fight for free speech and yet France is the most anti-Semitic country in Europe. She refuses to renounce her colonies and expects Russia and America, two countries that have thrown off the yoke of imperialism, to restore them to her. And in exchange for what? A few bottles of good wine, some cheese, and perhaps a smile from a pretty girl?”
Stalin grinned. “I tend to agree with Herr Hitler,” he said. “I can see no good reason why France should be allowed to play any role in formal peace negotiations with Germany. I was very much in agreement with what the Fuhrer said earlier. To my mind, there wouldn’t have been another war at all if France hadn’t insisted on trying to punish Germany for the last one. Besides, the entire French ruling class is rotten to the core.”
I wished that Stalin would say more, for it was my opportunity to rest for a moment. Roosevelt was easy to work for, breaking up his statements into short lengths, which demonstrated some concern for his two translators. But Hitler was always much too carried away by his own eloquence to pay much attention to von Ribbentrop, who had struggled to find the words to convey Hitler’s thoughts into English, so much so that I had felt obliged to step in and help; and, after a while, the exhausted-looking von Ribbentrop had given up altogether, leaving me to translate all of the conversation between Hitler and Roosevelt.
Roosevelt had smoked steadily throughout the negotiations and, suddenly afflicted with a fit of coughing, now reached for the carafe of water that stood on the table in front of him. But he succeeded only in knocking it over. Both Bohlen and I had now run out of water, and seeing the president’s predicament, Hitler poured a glass from his own untouched carafe. Standing up quickly, he brought it around the table to the still-coughing Roosevelt. Stalin, slower on his feet than Hitler, started to do the same.
The president took the glass of water from Hitler, but as he put it to his lips, Agent Pawlikowski sprang forward and knocked it from his hand. Some of the water spilled over me, but most ended up on the president’s shirtfront.
For a moment, everyone thought that the Secret Service agent had gone mad. Then von Ribbentrop expressed the thought that was now in the minds of every man in the room. Picking up Hitler’s water carafe, he sniffed it suspiciously and then said, in his Canadian-accented English, “Is there something wrong with this water?” He looked around the room, first at Stalin, then at Molotov, and then at Stalin’s two bodyguards, Vlasik and Poskrebyshev, who both grinned nervously. One of them said something in Russian that was immediately translated by Pavlov, the Soviet interpreter, and Bohlen.
“The water is good. It comes fresh from the British embassy. First thing this morning.”
Meanwhile Roosevelt had turned in his wheelchair and was regarding Pawlikowski with something like horror. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, John?”
“John,” Reilly said calmly. “I think you should leave the room immediately.”
Pawlikowski was trembling like a leaf, and, seated immediately in front of him, I could see that his shirt, soaked in sweat, was almost as wet as the president’s. The Secret Service man sighed and smiled almost apologetically at Roosevelt. The very next second he drew his weapon and aimed it at Hitler.
“No,” I yelled and, jumping to my feet, I forced Pawlikowski’s arm and gun up in the air so that the shot, when it came, hit only the ceiling.
Wrestling Pawlikowski onto the table, I caught sight of Stalin’s bodyguard pulling the Russian leader onto the floor, and then others diving for cover as Pawlikowski fired again. A third shot followed close on the second, and then Pawlikowski’s body went limp and slid onto the floor. I pushed myself up off the table and saw Mike Reilly standing over the agent’s body, a smoking revolver extended in front of him. And seeing that his colleague was not dead, Reilly kicked the automatic from the wounded agent’s hand.
“Get an ambulance, someone,” he yelled. The next second, seeing that both Hitler’s and Stalin’s bodyguards had their own weapons drawn and were now covering him in case he, too, felt impelled to take a shot at one of the two dictators, Reilly holstered his gun carefully. “Take it easy,” he told them. “It’s all over.” Coolly, Reilly picked up Pawlikowski’s automatic, made it safe, ejected the magazine, and then laid these items on the conference table.
Gradually, the room came to order. Hogl, the detective superintendent guarding Hitler, was the first bodyguard to put away his gun. Then Vlasik, Stalin’s bodyguard, did the same. Pawlikowski, bleeding heavily from a wound in his back, was swiftly carried out of the room by Agents Qualter and Rauff.
I sat down on my chair and stared at the blood on my shirt sleeve. It was another few seconds before I realized that someone was standing immediately in front of me. I lifted my gaze, up from the polished black shoes and over the dark trousers, the plain brown military tunic and the white shirt and tie, to meet Hitler’s watery blue eyes. Instinctively, I stood up.
“Young man,” said Hitler, “I owe you my life.” And before I could say anything, he was shaking my hand and smiling broadly. “But for your prompt action, that man would surely have shot me.” As he spoke, the Fuhrer rose slightly on his toes, like a man for whom life suddenly had a new zest. “Yes, indeed. You saved my life. And judging from his behavior with the water glass, I think he had already failed to poison me, eh, Mr. President?”
Roosevelt nodded. “My deepest apologies to you, Herr Hitler,” he said, speaking German again. “It would appear you are right. That man meant to kill you, all right. For which I am deeply ashamed.”
Stalin was already adding his own apologies as host.
“Don’t mention it, gentlemen,” Hitler said, still holding me by the hand. “What is your name?” he asked me.
“Mayer, sir. Willard Mayer.”
Even as Hitler held my hand, I felt an understanding of what the Fuhrer and I were: two men for whom the entire spectrum of moral values had no real meaning, who had no real need of the humanities and the immaterial world. Here was the obvious extension of everything that I, as a logical positivist, believed in. Here was a man without values. And I suddenly perceived the bankruptcy of all my own intellectual endeavors. The meaninglessness of all the meanings I had striven to find. This was the truth of Hitler and all rigid materialism: it had absolutely nothing to do with being human.
“Thank you,” said Hitler, squeezing my hand in his own. “Thank you.”
“That’s all right, sir,” I said, smiling thinly.
At last the Fuhrer let go. It was Hopkins’s cue to suggest that this might be an appropriate opportunity to call a temporary halt to the proceedings. “I suggest that during our recess,” he said, “we examine those documents we have prepared supporting our respective negotiating positions. Willard?” He nodded at a file that lay on the table. “Would you hand that to the Fuhrer, please?”
I nodded numbly, and handed the file over to Hitler.
The three delegations now moved toward three of the room’s four doors. It was only now that I saw how the room had been constructed so that four delegations might enter the room from four separate entrances and, presumably, four separate dachas inside the Russian embassy compound.
“Wait a minute,” said Hopkins, as the American delegation neared the door that led back the same way they had come. “I’ve still got the American position papers. What was it that you gave the Fuhrer, Willard?”
“I don’t know. I think it must have been that Beketovka File,” I said.
“Then no harm done,” said Hopkins. “I expect Hitler’s seen it before. Still, it’s a lucky thing you didn’t give it to the Russians. Now that would have been embarrassing.”