Meanwhile, Truman had also decided a tour of a defeated, raped and looted Berlin was not exactly to his taste. What was so amusing about gloating over a corpse of a city inhabited by starving people? After all, he knew very well how close Shickelgruber had come to doing the same to Washington, New York, and London with his intercontinental missile program and his array of experimental super-weapons. After a quick inspection of the ruined bunker, he ignored the bombed out Chancellery and the other principal sites of Nazi power and returned to his car.

“That odd name of his,” he remarked to Byrnes, “no wonder he lost, it hasn’t any ring to it. To really succeed in this game your name has to have some cachet, or you’re finished before you’ve begun. And even if you’ve succeeded to a point, you’ll never reach the top--not with a funny-sounding name. He should have shortened it to two syllables at least—like, ah, my name! ”

“The same with “Byrnes’? Or is “Pendergast” too long for you, sire? Perhaps that is the reason he isn't standing where you are?”

Truman was silent for a moment. “Still a little sour in the gills about losing your main chance, aren’t you, Jimmy boy?”

“Can’t help it,” said Byrnes. “Can you blame me for not wanting to sit where you are now? You know it was my turn, not yours.”

“Yes, I do know that, and know it very well,” the president laughed. “And that’s why I have you along as my chief adviser. You know exactly what to do in every circumstance, for you’ve thought it all out thoroughly beforehand, and a man without a tether who knows as much as you would be a very dangerous foe in this pool where all the fish are man-eating sharks. Am I right?”

Byrnes managed a wry smile. “Yes, Mr. President! But don’t take me for granted. Presidents aren’t immune to assassination by close confidantes. Remember what happened to Napoleon and quite a few others who aspired to world power.”

Truman laughed uproariously. “That’s good, Jimmy! That’s really good! Arsenic in his claret carried old Nappie off, I've heard! Applied by his best friend too just after his crowning, victorious come-back at Waterloo! Must have taken the cue from Brutus’s example, right? And the fellow they substituted--he couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag!”

Even as both cars drove back down the Autobahn toward Germany’s version of Beverly Hills, the Djugashvilli-Romanov Imperial Train slowed to a halt at a station in Potsdam. There it stood, heavily guarded all that evening and during the night. Whether Generalissimo Djugashvilli was in the train or somewhere else, no one knew except Djugashvilli and a few close aides. He hadn’t come this far in life to be blown up on a siding in Prussia, eastern Germany!

Churchill’s "clever chaps," the M-5 and Ultra people, worked overtime, of course. They had cracked the German code, using German’s Enigma machine--a tremendous advantage all through the war. Now they had the primary Russian codes penetrated, and knew the train was an elaborate front. Djugashvilli was no fool even if the lower grades loved to call him “Jughead,” for this parvenu Georgian upstart had many enemies in Russia's highest circles, particularly after his savage purge of the top Russian military echelons just before the war, when every Russian was given good reason to recall that their ruler was no Russian but a foreigner from the Caucausus. Having put millions of absolutely innocent Russian and Ukrainian people to death by execution, forced famines, and in slave labor camps, he could expect no mercy if he let his guard down--and he never relaxed his guard.

Knowing this, Churchill was well aware he could trust almost no one in his own entourage. Eden was trustworthy, and Cardogan, and a few others, but Djugashvilli’s paid informants were everywhere—-even entrenched in Truman’s entourage.

“After all his nasty purges of rivals and massacres of peasants, I trust the Generalissimo sleeps well tonight,” Churchill commented to Eden as he settled into bed in the early hours of the 17th. “--wherever this throwback to Atilla happens to lay his head.” He chuckled. "Historians say the Huns that were the terror of Imperial Rome came from the East, and it could be they were orginally Georgians--a respectable surmise in my judgment, since he is the most Hunnish fellow you could hope to meet!"

Ignoring his aging superior's Hunnish ramblings, Eden shook his well-groomed head. “Regardless of age, private trains are comfortable places, sir, more comfortable than these East Teutonic lodgings, I dare say. Prussians prefer hard-as-rock beds, which explains why these beds are impossible to sleep on. I daresay I would gladly change places and take a berth on his museum piece of a train.”

At this reference to the train, Churchill snorted. “Oh, that ridiculous antique of his--purely for gaudy, neo-Byzantine show! He’s not on it, not in a million years would he come in on such a contraption, literally begging every angry Ukrainian, thirsting for revenge on the man who starved his whole family to death, laying in wait along the route to throw a bomb on the tracks! And they lack no sufficient cause to throw bombs, he’s slaughtered so bloody many millions and millions of them. As his old mentor and colleague, Lenin, said, 'One man's death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic.' That's how he thinks too--the monster! Why, after this conference is over, he’s got plans to take the four or five millions of Nazi-interned Ukrainians and Russians we give him from our side who fled to us for refuge and stuff them all into his slave camps. We can’t feed them, and he certainly won’t either since he calls them traitors for having been captured by the Nazis. He’ll work every last wretch—-man, woman, and child--to death. But it can’t be helped. We can’t possibly feed them over on our side when he has the best farmland. It's a pity, but our hands are tied!” Eden smiled at his superior’s contradictory statement, the latest in a long series of such by a leader with an increasingly fading memory for lapses. “Yes, he did kill quite a lot of Ukrainians, now that you mention it. Was it three million? Four? And didn’t they mostly starve to death by his direct order?”

“A conservative estimate is twenty millions, dear boy. And, yes, the monster created the famine by abandoning the region to the Nazis after shutting off all food transports and taking away what stores of corn they had. And this happened in the breadbasket of Eurasia! Well, you see what strange bedfellows I must sleep with in this dirty, ungentlemanly world of modern politics! Sometimes I think I should have tried another trade than government, one not quite so bloody!”

The war secretary’ eyelids were drooping. He had already listened to Churchill’s Elizabethan monologues and fits of second thoughts and even remorse for past sins for several hours that evening.

He excused himself, closing the double, white and gilt French Empire doors behind him.

Churchill, still nursing a whiskey, let his cigar burn in an ash tray, then fell asleep with the light on, Clemmie his wife not present to turn it off for him. On his nightstand sat the Red Box, with all its top secret papers, some the latest Ultra information on Alamagordo, unread. For him, Potsdam was a vacation, a diversion from the upcoming British election, not a working conference. Would his Conservative Party win? Or dreary little Attlee’s dreary Labor Party? He knew it would be too close for comfort. That was why he jumped at the Potsdam conference--just the thing to take his mind off nasty thoughts about what he might possibly do if--perish the thought--he were turned out by the British electorate at his age. Oh, he wouldn't have to give up politics entirely, even in defeat. He could find something to do--and they'd let him do it as long as he didn't try to manage major, important issues anymore. He’d still be hanging about the corridors of power as leader of the minority opposition party, but what kind of an existence was that? He might as well be dead as assume such a niggling, minor role again.

Over in London’s Buckingham Palace, King George also had access to the Red Box, and he had dutifully read every paper in it before retiring on the 16th, though a family man who wouldn’t think to keep his wife up waiting for him.

He must have turned too many times, for the queen spoke, “What’s troubling you? Something you ate? Or is it the election coming, and our dear Winnie perhaps losing and being turned out so ungraciously after all he’s accomplished for our country and the world?”

“No, dear, som--som--something I read. That bloody Al-Al-Alamagordo thing of the Americans--it’s not going quite so well as we'd h-h-h-h-h-h--hoped.” And there were the mystery “COVENTRY” teletypes, which he wouldn’t ever mention to her. They had caused quite a stir among the M-1 and 2 people, when it got back to them what had happened at the Ultra camp with Churchill and his latest messages. He himself wasn't officially privy to what happened, but even a king has sources--and can't trust everything to the regular channels.

“So?” his wife sighed wearily. “Don’t let it bother you. The war’s won! Who really cares if the Americans and Russians steal more than their share of the glory for the victory in Europe. We can all go back to peacetime life from here on. Isn’t that something to celebrate? As for the Asian theatre--well, that will wait a bit. They might just surrender anyway, after they hear how well things are going for us over here.”

“No, it may not go that w-w-w-w-w-way, dear. ”

This remark slapped his wife awake. She rose up to look at him, flicking on the light.

“What did you say?”

The king gazed at her with slightly bloodshot, worried eyes. “They’re experiencing some d-d-d-d-d-d-difficulty in the process--I read about it this evening. Oppenheimer is a bright young man, to be sure, but apparently not quite the experienced g-g-g-genius Einstein is. The operating theorem governing the explosive is not checking out as it s-s-s-s-s-s-s-should, and it may not--”

“It may not go pop, you’re saying?”

“C-c-c-c-c-CORRECT!”

There was a long pause from Her Royal Highness, after she sank back down in the bedclothes.

The king was beginning to snore through his pronounced German Guelf nose when her voice startled him awake.

“But what happens to US then, darling? What happens if they don’t blow up the mad Emperor over there with this horrible doomsday bomb and end the war with it?”

The king, claiming a chief executive’s privilege of silence, refused to answer for quite some time. Then a final comment on the subject, which was muffled, said as much to his pillow as to his faithful, long-suffering life mate, "That H-H-H-H-Hirohito fellow is a living g-g-g-g-god to them, and they all, man, woman, child, gladly die f-f-f-f-f-f-f-fighting for him! That is what we have to look forward to--without the B-B-B-B-B-B-B-Bomb, there's not going to be any s-s-s-s-s-s-s-surrender!"

All that night and the next morning, Djugashvilli was up partying like a true Georgian bandit or warlord half his age.

He had much to celebrate, even before the start of the conference. His NKVD had informed him that Alamogordo was a bust, and there would be no American Super-Bomb, not for 1945, in any case. Both Britain and America had lost their chance, by trusting information that turned out to be fatally deficient. He knew more. Britain had kept back the key elements, which would have made the bomb work, and America, the upstart, break-away British colony, was the dupe.

“That’s all right for us,” Djugashvilli observed. “Britain hasn’t the Bomb, and stubbornly, or stupidly--I haven’t decided which--sits on the information. Perhaps, they don't like the idea of killing millions in a single moment! Imagine that! But we have the necessary information, and can build the bomb, and ours will be ready before the Amercans’. What will these arrogant, white-gloved British aristocrats do then? They will have to treat us as we deserve!“

One thing did not fit, however. Why hadn’t the British, possessing the whole theorem, built the “ultimate weapon” and dumped it on Moscow and Leningrad as soon as bombers could be loaded and sent out? Shickelgruber had planned to do the same to Washington and London with his Bomb, delivered by intercontinental missiles, but had run out of development and deployment time. Why had the Brits let the Americans go ahead with the project? Why didn’t they seem to care who developed it?

In any case, he had what the British were too mutton-brained and stiff-necked to accept, a wonderful “neutron bomb” that would gnaw the mutton right off a man while he stood on his two feet! Let the other powers throw away billions developing the nuclear explosive--he had the ultimate weapon he wanted! Why destroy what Russia’s infrastructure desperately needed? They could use most everything, down to the plumbing, in their enemies' territories, homes, cities and industries. Russia was eminently sensible, the Americans and the British were mad. What was the point of conquering the world, if it were turned to a pile of radioactive ash and all the inhabitants were dead? Who would do the dirty slave labor then?

And these little strokes he had, what were they? How dare anyone suggest to him they were any impediment to his vigorous leadership of the Soviets. It would take a thousand such strokes to cut him down to the size of a common man. He had something to celebrate! He had gained the edge over the mighty Americans, who seemed about to overtake Britain with their bigger and more powerful air force and army, and who might have been thinking to push his own Russia back from Eastern Europe, which he was determined to hold as his war booty along with reparations from all of German territory. Besides all that, as soon as Imperial Japan was wrapped up and under occupation by his Red Army, he had determined to complete Shickelgruber’s task, by eliminating all Jews residing in Soviet dominions.

Djugashvilli’s paralyzed left hand lay stiff on the table while the good right lifted glass after glass, toasting the army and accepting toast after toast to his own leadership of that army offered by his top generals.

His house--not the official one at Babelsberg--was one big party. Surrounded by whole division of his army, his position was impregnable, and he felt safe and in a particularly good, expansive mood.

“We shall force our way into the Americans’ war against Japan,” he confided to General Zhukov seated next to him.

“Begin moving troops and trains toward the Manchurian front. We will declare war in a week or so, so have the armies there and ready for action. I’m depending on you. We are going to take our share of Korea and Japan, and Manchuria too, so that we will never be deprived of warm-water ports, not to mention the iron mines and steel mills in the area too that the Japanese so thoughtfully developed for us. The Americans and British haven’t invited us into the Japanese theater because they want to shut us out of such facilities and resources. But we shall not be shut out! Then, after I have dealt with the Jewish population in our territory, we will take Constantinople from the Turks—but in the meantime, Japan--”

“Of course, Generalissimo!”

“And we will use this new bomb of ours as soon as it is ready, and carve the flesh off every little yellow bug of a Nip who opposes us! They shall look very funny, each soldier standing with only bare bones beneath his bulky uniform!”

“Of course, Generalissimo! A toast to your illustrious, single-handed re-capture of Djugashvilligrad--a stroke of military, strategic genius the world has not witnessed since Alexander the Great—-a most glorious feat of arms and strategy crowned by your utter annihilation of the enemy and the conquest of Berlin!”

More such toasts followed, extolling the Generalissimo for every victorious campaign in the war, many of them more properly American or British victories--but who present was brave enough to correct the slight oversight?

Djugashvilli seemed to have no limit of how many vodkas and toasts he could absorb, and the generals began to be worried as the morning dawned, and he was still drinking.

Finally, he stood, the big gold buttons on his potbelly taking the tablecloth with him and upsetting a with a crash a huge, top-heavy confection of flowers, candles, and Romanov necklaces draped across the whole centerpiece. He stretched his good arm, and ordered a shave and freshening up of his person.

Then he sat down and promptly collapsed and passed out, his rigid left arm twitching into temporary, useless life now that its owner was unconscious. Was it simple inebriation or another “minor” stroke? No doctor dared approach him for the diagnosis, for fear of being executed should Djugashvilli find out. Everyone knew the great leader of the Soviets was a drunk, a lush, a sot—-so it was best left at that.

Arriving late at the conference hall, which was the Cecilianhof Palace overlooking Griebnitz Lake at Babelsberg. Djugashvilli was greeted by Truman and Churchill, and then their chief ministers shook hands, but Djugashvilli surprised Churchill by expressing regret that he hadn’t brought his king.

“But it isn’t done on this sort of a working, practical mission of state,” Churchill explained. “I represent the primary political organs of the body politic, the king represents the soul and spirit of the British people. He has no proper role to play here, though I do everything, of course, according to the spirit and soul of the people and our unwritten constitution. We can’t have our monarchs meddling in politics. It would be resented. We revere our monarchs, in their place. His active role in things, well, that would spoil everything!”

Soul, spirit, political organs? A grimace said everything. Djugashvilli, showing no understanding of fine distinctions, simply remarked, “Why can’t it be one political organ, so to speak, as in my case? I alone am the acting member of state! Why must you British be two-headed at the top? There is only one head and one face and one organ in Russia--I am the the state! Then beneath me there is the civil service, the government nomenklatura, with their fine pens and their spectacles down on their noses, followed by the army, the industry, the collective farms, and the working classes whose sweat greases the gears. And making everything work together like fine-tuned machinery, our excellent secret services to supervise and see everyone does his appointed duty. Isn’t that simple and rational? But you democracies complicate everything by dividing everything up endlessly, until you are splintered beyond comprehension! Bodies cannot work that way harmoniously. How do you think that governments can?”

Truman, briskly, interrupted Churchill’s beginning lecture on the glaring differences between democratic procedure and totalitarianism, got down to the business at hand: Germany.

“Gentlemen, we are here to decide the nature of the administration of Germany for the coming period after the war--”

The Generalissimo shook his head. He thumped the table with his good hand.

“No, there must be a settlement first concerning reparations. I will not discuss administration until the promised reparations are awarded.”

In the dimly lighted, poorly ventilated conference room, the windows kept closed because German mosquitoes and gnats were a plague by the lakeside at that time of year, cigar smoke performed strange tricks of perception. Churchill blew smoke over everybody, making configurations of them that gave Djugashvilli, for one, huge, multiple warts and tumors before dissipating. He seemed to amuse himself disfiguring Djugashvilli in particular, once he realized what a wonderful, artistic device a cigar could be. Truman, squaring his shoulders, was not going to be put upon by a cowardly Communist who couldn't trust himself to an airplane.

“Not reparations again, surely! We’re not here to flog and punish a prostrate Germany, what they did back in the Versailles conference, the cause of this appalling, shameful second war we’ve just fought so hard and won so expensively! It’s proper, civilized administration we’re after here, to see to it that war doesn’t happen again!”

Djugashvilli smiled at Truman's reference to civilized conventions and lessons to be learned from past blunders while sporting temporarily a smoke-created tiara of many horns and crowns. He continued his objections. “And proper administration is predicated on reparations to which we, as the country that has suffered most from the Germans, have a right to exact. My estimates are fair, and we must have the twenty billions, a figure to which Mr. Roosevelt agreed at our last meeting.”

At the mention of the missing eminence everyone had in his thoughts, Truman’s face grew whiter, while a single shaft of light penetrating from the outdoors transfixed his forehead like a unicorn’s horn. "Unfortunately for you!" he was thinking, but he said instead: “Unfortunately, Mr. Roosevelt is not with us,” he reminded Djugashvilli gently. “Reparations cannot be imposed, for the reason conditions have changed and the war is over. We are holding the majority of the German population in our territories, while you have the food- producing regions of Eastern Germany in your possession. If we impoverish our districts, take away their means of self-support, we shall have no means to feed them, since you possess the agricultural districts and then they will have to look to us for everything. No, we are not prepared to assume that burden.”

“But the great glassed cloche-domes the Germans built were all destroyed by your bombers, and the fields are exposed and not producing as they had been before,” protested Djugashvilli equably. “You’ve got the fertilizer too, the potash deposits, so how are we going to get anything to grow here in this worthless sand they call soil?”

He blew cigarette smoke toward Truman, but a current of sluggish air rolled it round Churchill’s head instead like a lion’s mane. “You also have all the coal and heavy industry on your side, so you can easily build an economy. We have little on the German side, and our own has been extensively damaged by the Germans. Millions of our people have died at their hands. We need the reparations to rebuild our own country. It must come from the side you control, as agreed at Yalta with Mr. Roosevelt and you, Mr. Churchill.”

Truman seemed to be considering calling a halt in the conference at this point. Conferring with his secretary of state, he then turned back to Djugashvilli. “We have information coming that will rapidly change this situation, and so this discussion is not about reparations but more about the best administration we can devise for the occupied territories, so that we can all be spared the burden of feeding and clothing practically the whole German population. As for potash, I have no information on such deposits in the Western regions.”

Djugashvilli’s face showed nothing, but he was not slow to respond. He shook his head. “I don’t know what information you have or do not have, but it won’t change the problems we face as winter comes on. We need the industry to rebuild our own, and Germany has what we need to replace the factories they destroyed on our territory.”

The conference was at an impasse, and the room grew tense, the smoke-clogged air nearly unbreathable. <> Then Churchill smiled expansively. “Well, now, I think we’ve done all we need to today, gentlemen! I have dinner for all tonight, and special entertainment. You all know how I detest music, so you will be treated to the best musicians available in Europe, my Royal Black Watch bagpipers, along with a special dance troupe from Spain who were hired to provide kitchen help and custodial service at my quarters.”

“They’re fascists, then, and I won’t accept entertainment from Franco’s people,” Djugashvilli objected. “After all, I believe this present war we’ve concluded was fought over such issues, was it not?”

“No, no, no!” Churchill thundered, perhaps forgetting himself as he was wagging his finger as if Djugashvilli were a naughty, little schoolboy. “These are Basque separatists, quite another animal, I can assure you! They’ve come to beg me for Basque independence, you see, and Generalissimo Franco has nothing to do with them! In fact, if he knew they were here, he’d send assassins.”

Now Churchill, using the title of the Spanish dictator, took care to stress it, but the irony seemed lost on Djugashvilli, who smiled so broadly that the tension was relaxed immediately. “Well and good, let them perform!” the Soviet generalissimo said. “I like dancing and singing with my vodka and Caspian Sea caviar! I can forget they are fascists if they perform half as well as my own Russian virtuosos!””

With that, the first day of the conference was adjourned by Truman, and the delegations broke up to prepare for dinner.

At his dressing, Truman was interrupted by a teletype message. It was decoded for him.

He forgot the dinner, and sat down on the edge of the Prussian-hard bed mattress. Then after a moment he got up and went to Byrnes’ room. Together they digested the message.

“There was just a bit too much cooperation, a bit too much friendliness on their side,” Byrnes began. “You weren’t present to see it, so this is a surprise to you but not to me. I never trusted them when they were that friendly, not like Franklin did.”

Truman still said nothing. He seemed to be thinking hard and fast.

Finally, he faced Byrnes squarely. “We’ll act as if nothing has happened. Just let the conference go the course, and demand unconditional surrender from the Nips the same as we did for Germany, and--”

The President paused. A strange look came over his face, as if his hand had just slipped into a forbidden cookie jar.

Byrnes waited, but the president seemed loath to finish.

“--and?” the Secretary of State who should have been President (if the world were a fair place) prompted.

“--try the ace up our sleeve!”

It was time for Byrnes to smile his bitter, worldly smile. “Why bother, Harry? The world will go to hell anyway, wouldn’t it? Even if we had gotten the Bomb to work? We’re just repeating, repeating. Old King Pyrrhus, for example. Remember reading about him in high school history class? He was so good a commander he could beat the Romans on their own turf, but the effort cost too much, and he had to retreat and let the Romans have their way. Every victory of ours until this has been Pyrrhic--a waste of time and effort since it will all come out a vain effort in the end! Anyway, what is the real difference between us and Jughead, or between us and Shickelgruber? We’re playing the same dirty game with the lives of humanity, aren’t we? Trading this country for that country, the poor slobs caught in our meat grinder never getting one real chance to say anything while we, four or five old men tottering on the edge of the grave without a shred of human feeling for them, decide whether they live or die.”

“You’re wrong, Jimmy,” the president returned. “Forget Alamagordo--even if it cost us a bundle and we got nothing! We’ve still got this last card, and I’m playing it for all it’s worth. It’ll save a lot of our brave boys’ lives. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Byrnes shrugged. “How about Japanese lives--save any of them? Or will you do Churchill’s thing, sacrificing the whole city of Coventry for the prospect of a future victory, and never mind the men, women, and children bombed without a single word of warning when he knew hours ahead that the attack was coming? What kind of man could do that to his own people? How could he sleep at nights? Can't he hear those people's screams?”

Truman sighed. “What a carping old philosopher you’ve turned out to be--in another year, you’ll be good for nothing if you keep thinking that way! If you want to be a bleeding heart, you should have left politics long ago. This is a man's world, all rough and tumble--and we only put on white gloves when the real work is over!”

By this time, Truman had bounced back and seemed his old, brisk self. He had always possessed immense reserves of determination, and Byrnes, looking at him, wasn’t surprised. The expression of a cookie jar thief who’s slipped a cookie up his sleeve and ran out of the house, was utterly gone.

“You’re way too cynical and defeatist for a true American statesman, Jimmy,” said Truman, opening the door and straightening his tie. “Well, let’s go to dinner! Since he’s worried sick about losing the upcoming election, Churchill is set on diversion and is determined to have his little fun with us tonight, so let’s not show any Sunday night prayer meeting faces! We can play his little game, and beat him at it too!”

America’s second-in-command followed slowly, a stagey, Trumanesque smile on his face for the numerous diplomats he was likely to meet in halls and rooms of the Little White House on his way out. “They trained him well in Jackson,” Byrnes thought behind the grin. “They always keep something in reserve for the final hand! He learned that from old Tom himself!”

Uniformed guards, secret service men, quickly formed up the presidential entourage. The glossy black, gangster-style Packard limoisine stood ready, doors opened for them. Byrnes stepped in, the president, then secret service men quickly slipped in, the doors shut, and they shot off to Churchill’s domicile.

It was only a minute before the whole ritual was repeated in reverse. Byrnes could do it with his eyes half-closed, which they were, the grin soon slipping from his features. “This is some kind of nightmare we’re concocting,” he was thinking. “How do I get out of it now? How?” he was wondering as they were escorted into the cigar-reeking den of Winston Churchill, “Tommie Savior of Britain and European freedom.” Despite Truman’s cocky optimism, everything stank of Pyrrhic victory to him--a kind of shameful odor of booze and old cigars and bordello in some sleazy, tinpot Balkan principality.

He could have choked, but he kept a tight rein on himself, his face showing just the right expressions for greeting everybody they encountered. Truman sat down, and then he too took his seat. Djugashvilli came in, late as usual. Churchill’s musical brigade struck up a deafening rendition of “God Save the King.” The charade began. Before the conference even ended, the election in Britain took place, and went badly for Churchill. He was out, Attlee and Bevin were in. The Permanent Undersecretary arrived to take Anthony Eden's chair, and Attlee and Bevin came to replace Churchill.

The Generalissimo, who had dearly wanted to meet King George and got only Churchill, was even more disgusted by the results of the British election (something he could not begin to understand, not knowing any election that could not be rigged). Churchill was a pleasing fellow, even if he were British and arrogant and thought he was more powerful than he was. But these pathetic replacements from the British Labour Party--dour, humorless, poorly attired fellows! Why did they dress so shabbily? Were they affecting to be poor or truly poor? He felt insulted, and from then on ignored the British contingent and dealt exclusively with Truman on the dividing up of the world. That was just what Truman wanted anyway. Britain was not really a major player anymore--Truman had decided that before the conference. But it took the Generalissimo's recognition of the fact of the British eclipse for Truman to feel free to lay his cards on the table with someone he thought was more or less an equal.

Though ignored by both Russia and America in the remaining portion of the Potsdam Conference, Britain still played an important part--even if the Labour Party were in charge and determined to downsize the Empire to something more in keeping with its diminished powers and war-shattered, nearly bankrupt treasury.

The “Sunday night prayer meeting faces” that Truman had no desire to see darkening the banquet room of the Babelsberg beano were perhaps those of Winter Grace prayer warriors, still gathering faithfully at the conclusion of the war.

The Intercessors’ Prayer War Room was still active, achieving some notable victories such as the saving of the QUEEN MARY from capsizing in the mid-Atlantic with 15,000 troops after being broad-sided with a 100 foot killer wave. Even so, as the sense grew stronger that the campaigns were visibly winding down on the war tables, there was a note of impending judgment upon the world that was impossible to ignore. As the Lord’s command centre on Earth, they had served to direct, with His Spirit’s guidance at every point, a thousand different actions and campaigns, acting as the spearhead for the prayers of four thousand faithful in the land--factory workers, grandmothers, sick and shut-ins, disabled, elderly widows, working chars, and the like--as they sought God Almighty for mercy to intervene and enable Christian Britannica to rise once again from the ashes.

Ian was aware of the note of judgment in the midst of culminating Allied victory (on the very day the Western allies were celebrating!), and he wanted to hear any prophecy or tongues and interpretation that could shed light on it. Down what road would the world plunge next? Saved from Nazism, but saved for what other tyranny? What evil would the nations beget next? He could hope for peace, but he knew there would never be real peace established as long as the unregenerate hearts of men ruled the destinies of individuals and nations.

Prayer continued for a time, well into the evening of the 16th, and then a prophecy came, uttered by a prophetess from Hump Tulips reservation, Sister Sarah, a granddaughter of Second Horse’s mother. She spoke of a vision of three banqueting panthers all eating flesh at a big table, and two panthers pushing one other panther away from the meal, but the one pushed away turned out to be the greater, for he would return to the table, and this time it would be heaped with the flesh of all mankind.

This grotesque scene was confirmed by a prophecy from Sister Gabrielle, who had returned from the latest relapse in hospital. It struck every sense present in the room like lightning.

I the Lord have pulled the devouring teeth out of the lion of the west, and given them to his weaker, older brother. His brother will wax greater, and consume all flesh. When he is consuming all flesh, I will send destruction upon him, and he will be caught with the flesh in his mouth that he was consuming. The lion of the north and east will bow to him, and be consumed by him as well. He shall not prevail over the Earth, though he will prevail over his brother lion for a short time. This is the beginning of many tribulations and sore trials for the Earth, for I will turn all flesh back, and back, for they must learn all things anew, before I make a full end of the ungodly of the Earth.

Unfortunately for Harry Truman, who liked watching the latest Hollywood films full of pretty, fresh-washed faces of pert, young women, he could not see the face of the young prophetess, which was easily one of the most beautiful in Europe. Instead, he went to bed and couldn’t rid himself of the memory of uniformed Russian infantrywomen filling in for the performing Basques by waiting on table, with faces that were much too square and visibly dirty. He would not forget it even by morning, when he describe them to his mother and sister in a letter.

Back before Attlee and Bevin could darken the door of Bebelsburg Palace, while Churchill could still divert his thoughts from the coming election, Churchill’s British-style beano went off without a hitch, it was a smashing success with the Americans and Russians--perhaps a bit too smashing though. The Basque dancing troupe performed as scheduled after the Black Watch band and bagpipers had performed full blast such numbers as everyone but Churchill loved to hear--old favorites that brought Russian troops to the windows outside to listen in. But the dancers struck a sour note. Their leader, the “Zamalzain”, was doing his intricate maneuvers, by leaping and lightly touching a champagne glass in the middle of the floor when he miscalculated and it shattered.