Target Churchill Read online

  Praise for Warren Adler’s Fiction

  “Warren Adler writes with skill and a sense of scene.”

  —The New York Times Book Review on The War of the Roses

  “Engrossing, gripping, absorbing… written by a superb storyteller. Adler’s pen uses brisk, descriptive strokes that are enviable and masterful.”

  —West Coast Review of Books on Trans-Siberian Express

  “A fast-paced suspense story… only a seasoned newspaperman could have written with such inside skills.”

  —The Washington Star on The Henderson Equation

  “High-tension political intrigue with excellent dramatization of the worlds of good and evil.”

  —Calgary Herald on The Casanova Embrace

  “A man who willingly rips the veil from political intrigue.”

  —Bethesda Tribune on Undertow

  Warren Adler’s political thrillers are…

  “Ingenious.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Diverting, well-written and sexy.”

  —Houston Chronicle

  “Exciting.”

  —London Daily Telegraph

  Praise for Warren Adler’s Fiona Fitzgerald Mystery Series

  “High-class suspense.”

  —The New York Times on American Quartet

  “Adler’s a dandy plot-weaver, a real tale-teller.”

  —Los Angeles Times on American Sextet

  “Adler’s depiction of Washington—its geography, social whirl, political intrigue—rings true.”

  —Booklist on Senator Love

  “A wildly kaleidoscopic look at the scandals and political life of Washington D.C.”

  —Los Angeles Times on Death of a Washington Madame

  “Both the public and the private story in Adler’s second book about intrepid sergeant Fitzgerald make good reading, capturing the political scene and the passionate duplicity of those who would wield power.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Immaculate Deception

  Praise for James C. Humes

  “James Humes, a brilliant speechwriter and advisor of Presidents of the United States, has long been conspicuous in the extensive ranks of Churchill’s American admirers….”

  —Lord Lexden, The House of Lords Magazine

  “Humes—who knew Churchill personally—brilliantly captures the extraordinary life of this gifted, complex, and often troubled leader.”

  —A&E Biography

  “In hundreds of studies of Churchill, no one else, remarkably enough, has focused on Churchill’s predictions and prophecies. James Humes has produced a book that is unique as well as necessary for an understanding of statesmanship.”

  —David Eisenhower, author and senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute on Churchill: The Prophetic Statesman

  “Gives us a stunning but overlooked version of conjectural history. Humes outlines dozens of Churchill’s own spectacular prophecies, revealing him to be a Nostradamus of the political and military events of the twentieth century.”

  —Michael Keane, author of Patton: Blood, Guts, and Prayer, on Churchill: The Prophetic Statesman

  “Engaging memoir… laced with wickedly funny anecdotes; the politicos, presidents, and British royalty whom Humes fondly remembers receive star billing.

  —Library Journal on Confessions of a White House Ghostwriter: Five Presidents and Other Political Adventures

  Unlike modern wordsmiths, typically journalists enjoying a political interlude, Humes began as an actual politician… Humes stocks an immense store of stories that have been enjoyable for those who have listened to him or have read his many books.”

  —Booklist on Confessions of a White House Ghostwriter: Five Presidents and Other Political Adventures

  “Intriguing historic approach to public speaking. Humes creates a valuable and practical guide.”

  —Roger Ailes, CEO, Fox News, on Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln: 21 Powerful Secrets of History’s Greatest Speakers

  Target Churchill

  by Warren Adler

  and James C. Humes

  Copyright © 2013 by Warren Adler

  ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795345869

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form without permission. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination based on historical events or are used fictitiously.

  Inquiries: [email protected]

  STONEHOUSE PRODUCTIONS

  Produced by Stonehouse Productions

  Cover design by David Ter-Avanesyan/Ter33Design

  Published 2015 by RosettaBooks

  www.RosettaBooks.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  More Political Thrillers from Warren Adler

  Also by Warren Adler

  Select Works by James C. Humes

  About the Authors

  The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,

  Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

  And as imagination bodies forth

  The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

  Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

  A local habitation and a name.

  Such tricks hath strong imagination….

  —William Shakespeare

  A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1

  Chapter 1

  From the shattered window of the German warden’s former office, General Ivan Vasilyevich Dimitrov observed the crowded yard; men packed like sardines, freezing in the icy late-February cold, a sorry, stinking lot of traitors awaiting transport to oblivion. He chuckled at the euphemism, rubbing the stubble on his chin, squinting from the smoke of the cigarette hanging from his lips.

  Following in the wake of the advancing combat troops, Dimitrov always chose the largest prison in town for his temporary Narodny Kommisariat Vnutrennikh Del command post, invariably an annex to a now-abandoned Gestapo headquarters with its underground cells and thick-walled torture chambers, the interior tailor-made for his purposes.

  Dimitrov’s NKVD rifle regiments had trailed the path of General Zhukov’s astonishing offensive now heading swiftly towards Berlin. Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, NKVD Chief, had directly ordered them to show no mercy, to concentrate on anything with the barest stench of collaboration or disloyalty. As soon as Zhukov’s combat troops rolled out, Dimitrov’s job began. He had ordered his commanders to not put a fine line on discriminating between the Germans and Russians, men, women or children.

  “Find them. Waste no time on guilt or innocence. If there is the slightest suspicion of collaboration, consider them all guilty, especially Germans and deserters. Take what you want. Do what has to be
done. We are entitled to the spoils,” he told his officers. “Exact revenge. Remember what the Nazi bastards have done to us. Remember Stalingrad. And don’t spare the women. Fill them to overflowing with hot Russian sperm. They need a lesson in humiliation.” Beria had told Dimitrov how much he enjoyed his verbal reports.

  “They will regret what they did to our country for generations to come,” Beria had asserted, adding how pleased Marshal Stalin had been with his reports of Dimitrov’s successes. For his work, Dimitrov had received a Hero of the Soviet Union citation from Stalin himself.

  A compact man with a long angular face creased deeply on either cheek, dark eyes that turned downward at their edges, thin mobile lips that could curl into a deceptively warm half-smile, and a prominent pointed chin that he used effectively to signal a demand, Dimitrov patted the side pocket of his heavy overcoat where he had put the file. The confidential papers had come by courier directly from Beria’s office in Moscow.

  Nodding with satisfaction, he knew he had been on to something. The information in the file had confirmed the man’s story. Dimitrov marveled at the reach of the NKVD intelligence operatives.

  Beria had scrawled a comment on the top of the document: Mole?

  Dimitrov knew what he meant.

  A sharp knock broke his concentration. He looked toward the door.

  “Come.”

  “The transport is ready, comrade. The excavation of deserters completed,” the man said, standing stiffly, wearing the uniform and NKVD insignia of his rank of Major.

  Dimitrov nodded, pointing his chin in the direction of the prison yard, a mixed bag of deserters and civilians. Some had even dressed as women to escape detection.

  Dimitrov laughed. Heaven will have to receive them with sore assholes.

  “Nearly one thousand traitors in the group,” the officer said, understanding the gesture.

  “Names and numbers?”

  “Duly recorded, comrade.”

  Dimitrov nodded. The relatives of the deserters would receive their colorful “death in action” notices signed by Stalin himself, suitable for framing. It would be displayed for generations like a diploma—another brainstorm by Beria.

  The man was a genius, Dimitrov acknowledged.

  He had learned from the Katyn event, which liquidated twenty-one thousand bastard Poles. No more shots to the back of the head, the typical NKVD execution method. No more old German bullets—too transparent if discovered, although that was highly unlikely. Since then, they had used only recently captured German mounted machine guns and modern ammunition.

  Dimitrov had run the operation to then eliminate the liquidators of Katyn. A thorough job, he remembered, earning Beria’s deep respect, and proving his loyalty to the head of the NKVD. They were both Georgian, both from the Sukhumi district, which counted a great deal in matters of trust as far as Beria was concerned.

  The Georgians were always given the tough jobs; the deportations and executions. Where the Germans had occupied, traitors were endemic and had to be rooted out. Executions were commonplace and vast populations had to be deported. Dimitrov had done his duty with skill and efficiency and had come to Beria’s attention early in his NKVD service. Promotions and decorations had come his way. He was the youngest General in the NKVD.

  “Always remember,” he was told after he had accomplished his first assignments. “You are Beria’s man now. You are responsible only to me. We must be forever on the lookout for traitors in our midst. Intrigues are everywhere, even those who we think are our friends. That is why I must demand total obedience, and absolute loyalty without question. Do you understand, Ivan Vasilyevich? Our goal is to rid our nation of all of its enemies, real and potential, without mercy, without hesitation, without remorse.”

  Beria’s words had been an inspiration. If he believed in God, they would be a Holy Writ.

  “And the others?” Dimitrov asked the waiting captain.

  “In the holding cell below as ordered.”

  “How many?”

  “Forty-two.”

  Dimitrov had cut them from the pack—randomly selected SS officers—for special treatment. It would be a test of the man’s purpose.

  “We move in the morning,” Dimitrov said, looking at his watch. “They are advancing like lightning. The front is already fifty kilometers ahead. I think Zhukov will be in Berlin in ten days, two weeks at the most.” He looked at his watch. “Say 0600 hours.”

  “We will be ready, comrade.”

  They had been busy for three days, rounding up deserters and German prisoners. They had “processed” a decimated division of the SS, and interrogators were working them over in the honeycombs below.

  “Be merciless. Think of Stalingrad. Think of the millions slaughtered. Show them what we Russians think of the master race. Save some for show. Pick carefully.”

  Except for the information garnered for Beria’s eyes alone, whatever military intelligence had been gathered was sent to Zhukov’s people. Not that it mattered. It was a complete rout, the German army in full retreat, running like frightened rabbits.

  “We must look ahead now, Dimitrov,” Beria had told him in their last conversation as the troops rolled through Poland in the first days of the new offensive that had begun in January.

  For Dimitrov, the occasion had been festive, bonding him and his Chief further. Beria had chosen a villa for his overnight stay, formerly occupied by a captured turncoat Pole who had been recently executed. The Pole’s wife and her twin thirteen-year-old daughters still lived in the villa and acted as servants to the Russian brass passing through.

  Dimitrov had reported his progress with the deserters and German prisoners. Beria was deeply impressed with the body count. It had always struck Dimitrov how scholarly Beria looked, with his pince-nez spectacles and small balding head. With his low voice and precise, slow sentences, he seemed more like a university professor than the powerful head of the NKVD.

  “The real work will start after the war,” Beria had told him, periodically polishing his pince-nez as he spoke over brandy and cigars. “Stalin will soon appoint me to the politburo, putting us further on the inside.”

  Dimitrov loved the reference to “us.”

  “A lot is going to happen. We will liberate the workers and destroy the bourgeoisie of every nation on earth: Europe first, then Asia, and the best prize of all, the United States. The day is coming. Westerners are weak and without backbone. They are too soft and sentimental. We must not hesitate to weed out the weak in our midst. Their absurd sense of virtue will destroy them. We are the future. To achieve it, all potential enemies must be destroyed. One must keep one’s focus on the greater good.”

  Beria had flicked the ashes on the floor and dipped the sucking end of his cigar in the brandy.

  “Ivan Vasilyevich, my dear comrade, we Georgians are the leaders of the future. Stalin, Beria, Dimitrov. Loyal men like you will rise with me.”

  He lowered his voice almost to a whisper as he bent close to Dimitrov’s ear.

  “Stalin will not live forever….”

  He put his hand on Dimitrov’s knee. For a brief moment, the gesture seemed like a sexual pass.

  And if it were? Dimitrov asked himself, knowing the answer.

  Beria lifted his snifter and swallowed the remnants. Dimitrov did the same, and Beria poured again, remaining silent for a long stretch.

  “You know, Ivan Vasilyevich, we have the greatest intelligence service on the globe, the best spy network in the history of the world. I know. I built it. Others might claim otherwise but Stalin knows it was I who made it happen. We will win, make no mistake about it. The West will boil in its own corruption.”

  Beria shook his head in contempt.

  Two weeks earlier, he had returned from Yalta, where Stalin had met Roosevelt and Churchill to discuss the future course of the war and its aftermath
.

  “Stalin played them like a violin, but Churchill is the more dangerous of the two, distrustful and suspicious. Roosevelt is a naïve fool. Besides, he seemed weak and not attentive. The days of the Western countries are numbered, Ivan Vasilyevich. There is a world for us to take.”

  Beria’s nostrils flared as he sniffed the brandy. He nodded as if he were answering a question in his mind. He took a deep pull on the cigar and blew the smoke into the air.

  “We are moving fast for other reasons,” he whispered. “The Americans are making a super bomb, something to do with splitting the atom. Roosevelt has promised Stalin that, if the bomb works, he will share the process with the Russians. Churchill has not been informed. He would be the fly in the ointment. The Germans are working on it as well, and we need whatever secret technology we can capture, not to mention the uranium deposits in Saxony and Czechoslovakia and the lab in Dahlem, hence the speed of this offensive.”

  He lowered his voice to a barely audible whisper.

  “Stalin has given me the mission of building such a bomb.”

  “Congratulations, comrade. I salute you.”

  Dimitrov lifted his glass in tribute. Beria nodded and sipped. For a long moment, he was lost in thought.

  “They leak like a sieve,” he said, no longer whispering. “Stupid democracies! They have no real insight into espionage; they are amateurs. We are light-years ahead of them.”

  Beria chuckled, showing small teeth in a tight smile.

  “In Yalta, we had every room in their residences bugged, heard every conversation that took place privately between Roosevelt and Churchill. My own son, Sergo, did the translations. I can tell you that Churchill despises us; he is our nemesis. Roosevelt, naïve idiot, believes that we will be allies forever. We will play the game as long as we can, but make no mistake, Ivan Vasilyevich, the big war is ahead, and we have already organized our army. We are placing people in readiness everywhere—agitators, organizers, propagandists, assassins.” Beria chuckled. “We are everywhere; you cannot imagine how deep we are embedded.”