The Prime Minister's Secret Agent(16)
Miss Stewart, one of Mr. Churchill’s long-suffering typists, entered the room. “Excuse me, Mr. Churchill, gentlemen,” she said, her white chignon glistening in the firelight. “But this Friday’s list of figures has just arrived by courier from Porton Down.”
“Yes, yes, Miss Stewart, thank you—just leave it here.” The plump older woman did so and departed.
The Prime Minister put on his gold-framed glasses and read over the document, the typed figures sent by the War Cabinet every Friday, detailing the progress made on chemical and biological weapons. His forehead creased with concern.
“Not enough,” he muttered, “not nearly enough.” To the room he growled, “Those concerned should be beaten soundly, by Jove!”
“Sir?” David said.
“Still—we must KBO! Mr. Greene, please make sure a memo goes out to Beaverbrook—Miss Stewart can type it for you—that the absolute maximum effort must be used with priority to make, store, and fill into containers the largest possible quantities of gas. Largest possible quantities! It says here, mustard is running at only one hundred and thirty tons per week, a third of the full capacity. Tell Brookie we damn well need to ginger things up.
“And be sure to ask him who exactly is responsible for this failure. I will not tolerate ineptitude, especially with something so important!” The P.M. took out one of his Romeo y Julieta cigars from his breast pocket and began to gnaw on it. “At any moment, peril may be upon us.”
“Yes, sir.” David took the memo and left the room to find Miss Stewart.
The Prime Minister turned his attention back to the other men. “Dilly! Why the long face?”
Dill swallowed his sip of port, then replied, “Sir, I would like to discuss N, our new biological weapon. I know you’re keen on developing it, but I want you to think seriously about the moral implications of our using it. I wouldn’t want it in play unless it could be shown either that it was life or death for us, or that it would shorten the war by a year or more.”
“What?” Churchill growled, finally clipping, then igniting his cigar with a heavy silver lighter. “Moral qualms getting the better of you? Angels and devils on your shoulders? Won’t mean much when there are Nazzies on our doorstep.”
Dill smoothed his mustache. “It’s absurd to consider morality on the topic of mustard gas when everybody used it in the last war without a word of complaint from the moralists of the Church. On the other hand, the bombing of open cities was once forbidden. Now everyone does it as a matter of course. It is simply a matter of the fashions of war changing, as long and short skirts for women. However, N …”
The Prime Minister chewed harder on his cigar, then banged his fist on the table, making Nelson jump. Nelson pretended to groom himself to restore his dignity, then slunk off.
“When your back is up against the wall, do you play by the rules of the Geneva Conventions?” The P.M. poked the air with his cigar. “Do you consult the International Committee of the Red Cross? Hitler’s not playing by those rules, and I don’t believe we need to, either. Mr. Sterling, I want a cold-blooded calculation made as to how it would benefit us to use this new N that my warlocks and wizards at Porton Down are creating in their cauldrons.”
“Sir, if I may—” John ventured.
“Well, speak up, Mr. Sterling! That’s why I keep you around!” Then, remembering the man had served as an RAF pilot and had been shot down over Nazi territory, the P.M.’s voice softened. “Go on.”
“I don’t have any qualm about our using every weapon in our arsenal to stop a Nazi invasion, but it is nonetheless true that chemical weapons and gas have a particular … unpleasantness … about them. Part of that is because they’re really not that easy to control in a tactical way—their sole purpose is to kill and incapacitate people downwind. That makes them much more indiscriminate. It’s the equivalent of the weaker party in a fight resorting to throwing a fistful of sand in the stronger party’s face.”
“I meant it when I said we would fight on the beaches, and that includes throwing sand—or anything else my wizards at Porton Down conjure—in the faces of Nazzi invaders.”
John didn’t flinch. “Nevertheless, sir, to use chemical and biological weapons is to cross a dangerous threshold, especially when used with civilians. The Americans would be horrified to learn of our research.”
“The Americans don’t need to know everything we’re thinking,” the P.M. rumbled, “especially when they’re sitting pretty and don’t seem to be bothered much by Britons killed by Nazzi bombs.”