Roosevelt did nothing to save the Jews. He knew that any such action would annoy Congress and interfere with winning the war. Under his clever facade of a Christian humanitarian liberal, he was one of the coldest, most ruthless calculators in history. He sensed that the Americans liked the Jews no more than we did; and they omply confirmed this all through the war in their immigration policies, and at the Evian and Bermuda conferences, where they simply abandoned the Jews to their fate. This author is no admirer of Roosevelt as a person, but the aim of my work is to set down the facts as military history should view them. On such a valuation, Franklin Roosevelt was the mastermind of the war. Even such a powerful, energetic, and brilliant figure as Adolf Hitler was in the end no more than a foil for him. Adventuristic conquerors often pave the way, in this fashion, for the dominion of their enemies. The adventurer sees the opportunity, and with meager means tries to capture it. He does the destroying and the bulldozing. His iceblooded successor then crushes him and builds on the ruins. Napoleon in the last analysis merely put Wellington's England in the saddle for a century. Charles XII hardly has a place in history, except as a foil for Peter the Great. And the German people under Adolf Hitler accomplished nothing in the long run except to hand the British succession to the United States under Roosevelt. Roosevelt's Difficulty Franklin Roosevelt's problem was that at this great turning point in history he did not lead a warlike nation, whereas Adolf Hitler did. The American people are not cowardly. But, living in prosperous isolation, they have been the spoiled children of modern history. Spoiled children do not bear well the rigors of the field. Once they entered the war, the Americans fought with a logistic train of luxury and self-protection that to the warriors of Germany, the Soviet union, and even England, was laughable. Nevertheless they had the riches and the will for this. The strong can fight any kind of fight, they please. The Americans have a tradition of militia-like fighting. Presented with a threat, they drop their pleasures, take up arms, and fight amateurishly but bravely to get the thing over with. They formed this pattern in their revolution, and confirmed it in their civil war and the First World War. Roosevelt understood this. He had to hold Germany at bay until he could present the chance for world conquest to his people in the guise of a threat to their safety. This, with a masterly exhibition of patient, spiderlike waiting, he did. Meantime, he robbed Germany of two certain victories-over GreatBritain and over the Soviet union-by an inspired instrument of indirect war-making, a genuine new thing in military history, the so-called Lend-Lease Act. A Cunning Trick By the end of 1940, despite her narrow escapes at Dunkirk and in the air battle, Britain was sinking to her knees. She had only one recourse left on the planet to save her: the United States. But the Neutrality Act threatened to cut the English off from the American farms and factories that were keeping them alive. They were running out of dollars to pay even for grain and oil, let alone the ships, planes, guns, and bullets which they could no longer manufacture for themselves in the necessary quantities. For they lacked labor, materials, and plant, and they kept falling further behind under air attack. The Neutrality Act forced belligerents to pay dollars for United States goods, and to come and fetch them. The Act posed more of a dilemma for Roosevelt than for the British. For them, one clear wise course lay open: negotiated peace with Germany. As this writer has often pointed out, had England made such a peace the British Empire would exist today. The Soviet union would have been crushed in a one-front war, and instead of a rampant Bolshevism we would see in Russia at worst some pacific, disarmed form of social democracy. But none of this fitted in with Roosevelt's ideas. He had no intention of allowing Germany to gain ascendancy over the Euro-Asian heartland in a world-dominating partnership with the sea lords of Britannia. And so, to circumvent the Neutrality Act, Franklin Roosevelt devised LendLease, which was nothing more or less than a Policy to give the British free of charge-and later the Russians too-all the war materials they needed to fight us! The audacity of the trick was breathtaking; the disguise was cunning. And while the record shows that Roosevelt's clever advisers did much to push this unprecedented proposal through the stunned, balky Congress, it also clearly shows that the revolutionary idea sprang, in the phrase of Sherwood, straight from Roosevelt's "forested mind.Roosevelt sold this scheme to the simpleminded, inattentive American people with a typical bit of Augustan demagoguery, the famous comparison to a garden hose. When a neighbor's house is on fire, he said at a press conference, one does not bargain with him over the sale or renting of the garden hose he needs to put it out. One gladly lends him the hose, so as to keep the fire from one's own house. Once the fire is out, the neighbor returns the hose; or if he has damaged it, there is time enough then to settle the account. This was, of course, shameless and hollow Poppycock. Warships, warPlanes, war materials are not garden hoses. To take Roosevelt's comparison at its face value, if your neighbor's house is on fire, what you really do is rush over there and fight the fire with him. You do not lend him your hose, and then stand idly by watching him try to cope with the flames. That this silly stuff was swallowed whole by the Americans simply shows how uncannily shrewd Roosevelt was in managing them. During his successful 1940 election campaign for an unprecedented third term, he had declared in a famous speech, "I tell you again, and again, and again, you boys are not going to be sent into foreign wars." He Was eagerly awaiting a chance to go back on this clear pledge. Meantime he had to use tricks and guile to oppose Germany,The Real Meaning of Lend-Lease it was impossible for himnci this he knew-to present the case to his People in realistic terms. Otherwise he could have told them in effect, "My friends, this war is for the mastery of the world. Our aim should be to achieve thot mastery ourselves, but with a minimum of blood. Let us encourage others to do our fighting for us. Let us give them all the stuff they need to keep fighting. What do we care? In developing the industries to produce this Lend-Lease stuff, we will be preparing ourselves, industrially and militarily, for world leadership. They will use up all our early models, our discardable stuff, killing Germans for us. Maybe they will do the whole job for us, but that is doubtful. We will have to step in at the end, but mopping up will be easy. We will have gained a world victory with the expenditure of a lot of hardware, which we can turn out faster, and in greater quantities, than all the world put together, without even feeling the pinch. The others will shed the blood, and we will take the rule." That was what Lend-Lease meant and that was how it worked. First the British, and then the Russians, were induced by Lend-Lease to keep on with extremely bloody,. almost hopeless struggles, when the easier, safer, more profitable alternative of negotiated peace always lay open to them. There is reason to think that Stalin's low point late in 1941, when his armies and his air force had virtually ceased to exist as coherent battle formations and we were smashing toward Moscow, that supreme realist would have proposed peace again, if not for the encouragement in words and supplies-not in livesf the United States. As it was, the Russian people made sacrifices in blood never matched in all history, to transfer world hegemony from one Anglo-Saxon power to another. And Franklin Roosevelt so maneuvered matters that the British had to beg for this bloodletting help! They were put in the position of being abjectly grateful for the chance to fight Roosevelt's battles On December 8, 1940, Churchill wrote the American President a very long letter, which deserves a bolder place in history than it now holds. Churchill once said that he had not become Prime Minister to preside over the dissolution of the Empire, but with this letter he dissolved it. Churchill in this document frankly stated that England had come to the end of her rope, in the matter of ships, planes, materials, and dollars; and he asked the President to "f,nrJ w.-jvs and. mpans" to heir) England in the common cause. This was what Roosevelt had been icily waiting for in his wheelchair: this written confession by the British Prime ,Ainister that without American aid the Empire was finished. Within two weeks he had proposed Lend-Lease to his advisers, and within a month he had laid it before Congress. Empire means rule, and sufficient armed power to enforce the rule. In Churchill's letter, he acknowledged that his country and his Empire had become powerless to enforce their rule, and begged for succor.
Roosevelt leaped to comply. Even if England was finished as an imperial power, she remained a country of forty millions with a good navy and air force, at war with Roosevelt's archrival; a splendid island base just off the coast of Europe, moreover, from which to attack Germany in the future. The first order of business was to keep her fighting. Bargain War-Making Despite all the quack language in the act about lending and leasing, the transfer of American weapons and materials throughout the war was a gift. No formal accounting was even kept. The President asked, and the Congress granted him, power to send arms and war goods wherever he pleased, in whatever quantities he pleased. Certainly the Congress when they passed the low would have balked at including Bolshevist countries. But at that time the Soviet union supposedly Hitler's friend. Later, when broke out on the eastern front, Rooseveltp(was) ouredafloodofsuppliestotheBolsheviksw(war) ithout consulting Congress. The Americans complain that the Russians have never shown proper gratitude. The attitude of the Russians is more realistic. Having spilled the blood of perhaps eleven million of their sons to help the United States to its present world position, they tend to feel that the tanks and planes were paid for. The Yankees love a bargain. Lend-Lease was bargain war-making. For the big corporations, and for millions of workers, it merely meant a tremendous increase of prosperity. The price was painlessly postponed to the future by means of defense bonds. Others did the actual fighting and dying. Roosevelt and his advisers did discuss the risk that Germany would take Lend-Lease as an act of war-which it certainly was-and would formally declare war on the United States. Since this was just what he wanted, he was prepared to run the risk. America would have responded with a militia-like surge. Little as Adolf Hitler understood the United States, he did understand that. He had no intention of taking on the United States until he had finished with the Soviet union, an operation which was already in an advanced planning stage. So Germany swallowed Lend-Lease with some harsh words, and the "arsenal of democracy" tooled up to help British plutocracy and Russian Bolshevism destroy the Reich, the last bastion in Europe against the Red Slav tide. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: Most broad statistics of the war are approximations, and the Pigures on total deaths vary widely from one source to another. The low rate of eventual American losses is a fact. We planned and fought that kind of war, expending money and machines instead of human lives where possible. Roon seems to think this indicates a deficiency in American valor.
We had enough valor to beat the Germans wherever we took them on. That was all the valor we needed.-V.H. Traveling to his new post in mid-january, Leslie Slote found himTself staged in Lisbon by a shortage of Lufthansa accommodations to Berlin. He checked into the Palace Hotel in Estoril, Lisbon's palm-lined seaside resort, where diplomats, wealthy refugees, Gestapo, and other foreign agents congregated. He thought he might pick up some information there while he waited for an air reservation to open up. Actually, he found Estoril in January an exceedingly chilly and boring place. The Germans abounded, but they kept in aloof clusters, regarding other people with supercilious eyes. He sat in the crowded lobby of the hotel one afternoon gnawing at his pipe, and reading in a Swiss newspaper about British successes against the Italians in Abyssinia and North Africa, faint rays in the gloom. The neutral newspaper had been hard to come by. Fascist and Nazi journals now blanketed Portuguese newsstands, with a few scrawny, disgustingly servile periodicals from Vichy France. British and American publications had vanished. It was a fair barometric reading of the way the war was going, at least in the judgment of Portugal's rulers. A year ago, on Lisbon newsstands, papers of both sides had been equally available. "Meestair Slotel Meestair Leslie Slotel' He jumped up and followed the small pink-cheeked page to a telephone near the reception desk. "Leslie? Hello, it's Bunky. How goes it by the old seaside?" Bunker Wendel! Thurston, Jr had attended the Foreign Service school with Slote, and now held the post of second secretary in the American legation in Lisbon. "Mighty dull, Bunky. What's up?" 'Oh, nothing much." Thurston sounded amused. 'It's just that you've spoken to me now and then, I believe, about a girl named Natalie Jastrow." Slote said sharply, "Yes, I have. What about her?" "A girl by that name is sitting across the desk from me." "Who is? Natalie?" "Like to talk to her? When I told her you were here she jumped a ip foot. "Christ, yes." Natalie came on the phone laughing, and Slote's heart throbbed at the familiar lovely sound. "Hello, old Slote," she said. "Natalie! This is so staggering, and wonderful. What are you doing here?" "Well, how about you?" Natalie said. "I'm as surprised as you are.
Why aren't you in Moscow?" "I got hung up, in Washington and then here. Is Aaron with you?" "I wish he were. He's in Siena." "What! Aren't you on your way back to the States?" Natalie took a moment to answer. 'Yes and no. Leslie, as long as you're here, can I see you for a while?" "Naturally! Wonderful! Immediately! I'll come in to the legation." "Wait, wait. You're at the Palace Hotel, aren't you? I'll come out and meet you. I'd rather do that." Bunky Thurston came on the line. "Look, Leslie, I'll put her on the bus. She'll arrive in half an hour or so. If I may, I'll join you two in the Palace lobby at five." She still had a fondness for big dark hats. He could see her through the dusty bus window, moving down the aisle in a jam of descending Passengers. She ran to him, threw her arms around him, and kissed his cheek. 'Hi! I'm freezing. I could have worn my ratty beaver coat, but who'd think it would be this cold and gray in Lisbon? Brrr! It's even colder out here by the sea, isn't it?" She clapped her hand to her hat as the wind flapped it. "Let's look at you. Well! No change. If anything, you look rested." She said all this very fast, her eyes wide and shiny, her manner peculiarly excited. The old spell worked at once. In the months since he had last seen Natalie, Slote had started up a romance with a girl from Kansas named Nora Jamison. Nora was tall, brunette, and dark-eyed like this one, but otherwise as different as a doe from a bobcat: eventempered, affectionate, bright enough to be in her third year as a senator's secretary, and pretty enough to play leads with a semiprofessional Washington theatre group. Her father was a rich farmer; she drove a Buick convertible. She was altogether a find, and Slote was thinking seriously of marrying her on his return from Moscow. Nora worshipped and she was better looking than Natalie Jastrow and much easier to manage. But this Jewish girl in the big hat put her arm around him and brushed his face with her lips; he experienced a stabbing remembrance of what her love was like, and the snare closed on him again. He said, "Well, you know how I admire you, but you do look slightly beat up." "Do I ever! I've had hell's own time getting here. Let's get out of this wind. Where's the Palace Hotel? I've been to Estoril twice, but I forget." He said, taking her arm and starting to walk, "It isn't far. What's the story? Why didn't Aaron come? What are you doing here?" "Byron's arriving tomorrow on a submarine." He halted in astonishment. She looked up athim, hugged his arm, and laughed, her face alive with joy. "That's it. That's why I'm here." "He made it through that school?" "You sound surprised." "I thought he might find it too much work." "He squeaked by. This is his first long cruise. The sub's stopping here, just for a few days. I suppose you think I'm rattlebrained, but he wrote me to come and meet him, and here I am." "Nothing you do really surprises me, sweetie. I'm the man you came to visit in Warsaw in August '39-" Again she squeezed his arm, laughing. "So I did. Quite an excursion that turned out to be, Hey! My God, it's cold here! It's a wonder all these palm trees don't Turn brown and die. You know, I've been through Lisbon twice before, Slote, and each time I've b(Nn utterly miserable. It feels very strange to be happy here." He asked her about Aaron Jastrow's situation. Natalie said the impact of the note from the Secretary of State's office had somehow been frittered away. The discovery that Jastrow's lapsed passport showed a questionable naturalization had fogged his case. Van Wmaker, the young consul in Florence, had dawdled for almost a month, promising action and never getting around to it; then he had fallen ill and gone for a cure in France, and several more weeks had slipped by. Now Van Wmaker was corresponding with the Department on how to deal with the matter. She had his firm promise that, one way or another, he would work it out. The worst of it was, she declared, that Aaron himself really was in no hurry to leave his villa, now that it seemed just a matter of unravelling a little more red tape. He half welcomed every new delay, though he went through the motions of being vexed. This was what was defeating her. He would not fight, would not put any pressure on the consul to settle the thing. He was writing serenely away at his Constantine book, keeping to all his little routines and rituals, drinking coffee in the lemon house, taking his walks at sunset, rising before dawn to sit blanketed on the terrace and watch the sun come up. He believed that the Battle of Britain had decided the war, that Hitler had made his bid and failed, and that a negotiated peace would soon emerge. "I suppose I made a mistake, after all, going back to Italy," she said, as they walked into the hotel. "With me around he's perfectly comfortable and not inclined to budge." Slote said, "I think you were right to return. He's in more danger than he realizes, and needs a hard push. Maybe you and I together can shake him free." "But you're going to Moscow." "I have thirty days, and I've only used up ten. Perhaps I'll go back to Rome with you. I know several people in that embassy." "That would be Marvelous!" Natalie halted in the middle of the pillared lobby. "Where's thebar?" "It's down at that end and it's very dismal and beery. It's virtually Gestapo headquarters. Why? Would you like a drink?" "I'd just as lief have tea, Leslie." Her manner was oddly evasive. "I haven't eaten a I day. I w I as just wondering where the bar was." He took her to a long, narrow public room full of people in sofas and armchairs drinking tea or cocktails. Walking down the smoky room behind the headwaiter, they heard conversations in many languages: German was the commonest, and only one little group was talking English. 'Izague of Nations here," Namlie said, as the waiter bowed them into a dark corner with a sofa and two chairs, "except that so many look Jewish." "A lot of them are," Slote said dolefully. "Too many of them are." Natalie devoured a whole plate of sugared cakes with her tea. "I shouldn't do this, but I'm famished. I'm big as a house. I've gained ten pounds in six months at the villa. I just eat and eat." "Possibly I'm prejudiced, but I think you look like the goddess of love, if a bit travel-worn. "Yes, you mean these hefty Venus de Milo hips, hey?" She darted a pleased look at him. "I hope Byron likes hips. I've sure got'em." "I hadn't noticed your hips, but I assure you Byron will like them. Not that I really think you're worrjed. There's Bunky Thurston." Slote waved as a little man at the doorway far down the room came toward them. "Bunky's a prince of a fellow." "He has the world's most impressive mustache," Natalie said. "It's quite a mustache," Slote said. The mustache approached, a heavy rounded tawny brush with every hair gleamingly in place, attached to a pleasant pink moon face set on a slight body dressed in natty gray flannel. Slote said, "Hi, Bunky. You're late for tea, but just in time for a drink." With a loud sigh, Thurston sat. "Thanks. I'll have a double Canadian Club and water. What foul weather. The chill gets in your bones. Natalie, here's that list I promised you." He handed her a folded mimeographed sheet. "I'm afraid you'll agree that it kills the notion. Now, I couldn't track down Conanander Bathurst, but I left word everywhere. I'm sure he'll call me here within the hour." Slote glanced inquisitively at the paper in Natalie's hand. It was a list of documents required for a marriage of foreigners in Portugal, and there were nine items. Avidly studying the sheet, Natalie drooped her shoulders and glanced from Slote to Thurston.
'Why, getting all this stuff together would take months!' "I've seen it done in one month," Thurston said, "but six to eight weeks is more usual. The Portuguese government doesn't especially want foreigners to get married here. I'm not sure why. In peacetime we send people over to Gibraltar, where you go through like greased lightning. But the Rock is shut up tight now." "Thinking of getting married?" Slote said to Natalie. She colored at the dry tone. "That was one of many things Byron wrote about. I thought I might as well check. It's obviously impossible, not that I thought it was such a hot idea anyway." "Who's Commander Bathurst?" Slote said. Thurston said, 'Our naval attache. He'll know exactly when the submarine's arriving." He tossed off half his whiskey when the waiter set it before him, and carefully smoothed down his mustache with two forefingers, looking around the room with a bitter expression. "God, Lisbon gives me the creeps. Forty thousand desperate people trying to get out of the net. I've seen most of the faces in this room at our legation." Thurston turned to Slote. This isn't what you and I bargained for when we went to Foreign Service school." 'Bunky, you'd better get rid of that Quaker conscience, or you really will crack up. Remember that it isn't us who's doing it. It's the Germans." 'Not entirely. I never thought much about our immigration laws until this thing started. They're pernicious and idiotic." Bunky Thurston drank again and coughed, empurpling his face. 'Forty thousand people. Forty thousand! Suppose we admitted them all? What difference would forty thousand people make, for God's sake, in the wastes of Montana or North Dakota? They'd be a blessing!" "They wouldn't go there. They'd huddle in the big cities, where there's still an unemployment problem." Thurston struck the table with a fist. "Now don't you give me that stale drivel, Leslie. It's enough that I have to parrot it all day myself. They'd go anywhere. You know that. They'd sign papers to live out their lives in Death Valley. Our law's inhuman. Wasn't America started as a sanctuary from European oppression?" Slote took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and glanced warily at the people nearest them, four elderly men arguing in French. "Well, I'm not going to defend the law, but how do you draw the line? Or do you have unrestricted immigration? Do you let in everybody who wants to come? You'd empty southern and eastern Europe. They'd flood our economy, starve, ferment, and boil up in a revolution. What about the Orientals?
Do you break the dike to the west? In ten years the United States would be a big Chinese suburb." Natalie said with a gesture at the room, "He's talking about these few people in Lisbon who have escaped from the Germans. that's all." "Tried to escape," said T'burston. "The Germans can take Portugal overnight." "And I'm talking about the arguments that arise in Congress when You try to alter the law," Slote said, "especially in favor of Jews. Nobody wants any more competition from them, they're too energetic and smart. That's the fact of it, Natalie, like it or not." 'We. could give refuge to all the Jews in Europe, all five million of them. We'd only be a lot better off," Thurston said. "Remember your Russian? Wealth is life," he said. And if that's a bit too simple, it's certainly true that wealth is brains." He leaned toward Natalie, lowering his voice. 'If you want to see the head of the Gestapo in Portugal, he's just walking in, and with him is the German ambassador. Charming man, the ambassador. My wife really likes him." Natalie stared. "Is he the one with the scar?" "No, I don't know who that one is, though I've seen him around. I'm sure he's Gestapo too. The ambassador's the one in the gray suit." The three men sat not far from them, and the headwaiter fluttered and grinned eagerly, taking their orders. "They look so ordinary," Natalie said. "The Germans are quite ordinary," Slote said. "It's a little scary, in fact, how much like Americans they are." Gloomily, Natalie said, "Those people at the table next to them are obviously Jews. Drinking and laughing, side by side with the Gestapo. Eerie." Thurston said, "I know them. They bought their way out of Belgium, and they still don't believe they can't buy their way into the United States. Most of the Jews here have been stripped penniless, but there are a handful of those. They're in the casino night after night, whooping it up. Fish in the net, jumping and flopping, still enjoying the water while they can." Thurston finished his drink, smoothed his mustache, and waved his glass at the waiter. "I want another. I've had some awful interviews today. Lisbon is a very sad and horrible place right now. My request for a transfer is in. The question is whether I'll wait. I may just quit the service. I've never realized before how nice it is to have a wealthy Eather."Slote said to Natalie, "Am I taking you to dinner?" 'Please, I'd love that." 'How about you, Bunky? Will you join us? Let's all go upstairs to my suite for a while. I want to change my shirt, and all that." "No, I have a dinner appointment. I'll sit here and have my drink with Natalie. I left word for Bathurst to page me here." Slote stood up. "Well, thanks for all you've done." "I can do wonders for people who don't need help." Slote told Natalie the number of his suite, and left. Later she found a pencilled note stuck in his doorjamb: N-door's open. She walked into a very large living room, looking out onto the purple sea beyond a long iron-railed balcony. Old heavy gilt and green furniture, gold cloth draperies, gilded mirrors, and large dark old paintings filled the room. Slote sang in a remote gushing shower. She yelled through an open bedroom door, "Hey! I'm here." The water shut off, and he soon appeared in a plaid robe, towelling his head. "How about these digs? Fit for a rajah, what? The legation had it reserved for some petroleum big shot and he didn't show. I've got it for a week." 'It's fine." She dropped heavily in a chair. "What's the matter?" 'Bathurst finally called. Briny's sub has been re-routed to Gibraltar. It won't come to Lisbon at all. No explanation, that's just how it is." "I see. Well, too bad. Maybe you can get to see him at Gibraltar." "Thurston doesn't think so, but he's going to the British embassy tomorrow morning, first thing, to find out. He's being very kind. Especially since it's obvious he thinks I'm a damned fool. No doubt you do, too. )P She looked up at him with a defiant scowl that was familiar and beguiling, took off her hat, and tossed her hair. "What had you told him about Briny, anyway? And about me? He seemed to know quite a bit." "Oh, we had too much wine one night and I cried on his shoulder about my tragic love life. I was very nice about Byron, I assure you, considering." bet. Say, this is quite a lay She said with a trace of malice, "Yes, I'll out at that. It'll bankrupt you." 'Not in the few days I'll be here." "Me, I've dropped my bags in a flea trap back in town, sharing a room with a Poor old Jewish lady from Rotterdam, whose husband got pulled off the train in Paris. I haven't had a shower since Sunday.""Look, why not mole in here? There's an extra room for a maid. I'll sleep in there. Look at that bed. A football field. It's yours." "Nothing doing. Listen, Slote, if I can get to Gibraltar I'll marry Byron. That's what he wants." Slote, combing his hair at a mirror framed by trumpeting gilded cherubs, stopped and gave her a pained skeptical look. She went on nmously, "I know it sounds harum-scarum and wild." Her eyes suddenly shone, and she laughed. "But in point of fact, I want to do it myself." "Well, I suppose I should congratulate you, Natalie. God knows I wish you well." "Oh, I know you do, Slote. Don't bother telling me how bizarre this is. Some things are just inevitable. I love Byron." all "Well, the place is at your disposal, anyway. They eat dinner late here. Take a shower." "And climb into the same old underwear?" Natalie shook her head, looking thoughtful. "I noticed a shop downstairs. Let me see what Lisbon can offer a big heifer like me." ho SI She came back shortly, carrying a x and looking y. "Did you mean that invitation? I bought a pile of stuff. Maybe it's my trousseau! A fast half hour of shopping. They had all these things from Seville, cheap and just Yummy. Byron's eyes will pop out of his head, if he ever shows up. "Are you low on money now?" "My dear, I'm still rolling in it. That's one thing about sitting on that Siena hill, with nothing to spend it on! Aaron pays me like clockwork and it just accumulates. Really, may I stay? I hate the idea of going back to town tonight. That poor old woman gives me the horrors." 'I said the place is yours." "I can't register." "Don't worry." "All right." She paused at the bedroom door and turned, holding the box in both arms. Her intense dark glance shook the diplomat. "People Wouldn't understand about us, would they, Slote?" "There's nothing to understand about me. You're the puzzle." "You didn't used to think I was puzzling." "I thought I had you figured out. I'm paying a steep price for oversimplifying." "You were an egotistical fool. I am very fond of you.""Thanks, Jastrow. Go take your goddamned shower." Next morning a buzzing at the suite door woke Slote. Tying on a robe, he came yawning out of the tiny maid's room, and blinked. There in a blaze of sunshine sat Natalie in a dazzling white wool dress with a broad red gold-buckled belt, watching a waiter fuss over a breakfast on a wheeled table. 'Oh, hi," she said, smiling brightly and touching her carefully coiffed hair. "I didn't know whether you wanted to get up. I ordered eggs for you, just in case. Everything's so cheap and plentiful here!" 'I'll brush my teeth and join you. You're all spilled up! How long have you been awake?" 'Hours and hours. I'm supposed to wait for Byron in the bar here at eleven o'clock today. That was the original plan." Slote rubbed his eyes and peered at her. 'What's the matter with you? His sub's enroute to Gibraltar." 'That's what that man Bathurst said. Suppose he's mistaken?" "Natalie, he's the naval attache." 'I know that." Shaking his head, Slote signed for the breakfast and left the room. Soon he returned in a shirt, slacks, and sandals, and found her eating with appetite. She grinned at him. 'Forgive me for being a pig, dear. What a difference sunlight makes, and coffee! I feel Marvelous." He sat down and cut into a ripe Spanish melon. "Sweetie, do you honestly expect Byron Henry to materialize in the bar of this hotel at eleven o'clock? Just on your sheer willpower?" "Well, Navy signals get crossed up like any others, don't they? I'm going to be there." 'It's just irrational, but suit yourself." 'Do you like my dress? I bought it yesterday, right out of the window of that shop." "Very becoming." She kept glancing at her watch. "Well, wish me luck," she said at last, dropping her napkin on the table. "I'm off." "Do you intend to sit in the bar all day, like patience on a monument?" "Don't be cross with me, Leslie." "I'm not. I'd just like to plan the time." "Well, obviously, if he hasn't showed by noon or thereabouts, the next thing is to find out how I get to Gibraltar." "I'll call Bunky on that, and I'll come down at noon." "Will you, please? Thanks, Leclie, thanks for everything. That bed's wonderful, I haven't slept so well in months." She could not quite keep the mischief out of her face as she said this and left with a nonchalantwave. Clearly, thought Slote, she was relishing his discomfiture. The tables were turned, and he had to endure it until he could Turn them again. He judged his chance was now at hand. Leslie Slote intended to take every possible advantage of this encounter. He could not understand Natalie's resolve to squander herself on Byron Henry. He had made a fearful mistake in his early treatment of this magnificent girl, and now he wanted to retrieve it. Slote knew how a divorced man must feel, finding himself thrown together with an ex-wife he still loved. Between them stood a barrier of old quarrels and new proprieties-it had effectively kept him out of the big bed last night-but beneath all that lay a deep bond. If it had not been for Natalie's fortuitous passion for the strange skinny Henry kid, he believed, they would by now be back together, very likely married. And he honestly thought he was more worthy of her and better suited to her. Natalie might thrash about here in Lisbon for a while, he calculated; her willpower was formidable; but Gibraltar was probably impossible to get to. She would have to go back to Italy. He would accompany her to Siena, pry Aaron Jastrow loose, and send them both home. If necessary he would wire Washington for a travel time extension. If he could not win Natalie back during all this, he sadly overestimated himself and the tie between them. He had been her first lover, after all. Slote believed that no woman ever really forgot the first man who had had her, ever got him quite out of her system. He finished his breakfast at leisure, then telephoned Thurston. "Morning, Bunky- What did you find out about Natalie's going to Gibraltar?" "Forget it Les. That submarine's here." Slote had seldom heard worse news, but he suppressed any emotion in His voice. "it is? How come?" "I don't know. It came in at dawn. It's tied up down at the river, near the customhouse." "Then what on earth was Bathurst talking about?" "He's mighty puzzled and he's going down there later to talk to the skipper. That submarine had orders to go to Gibraltar." "How long will it be berer' "The origin al schedule called for three days." Thurston's voice turned uckish. "Tough luck, Les. Fantastic girl. I'd sweat out the three days and p then see." In self-defense Slote said calmly, "Yes, she's all right, but she used to be a lot prettier." He dressed and hurried downstairs. In the dark bar there were only a............