Read Secret of the Seventh Son for Free Online Page B

the few Labor politicians to cooperate with the Conservative government of Winston Churchill and align himself against the pacifist wing in the Labor Party.
    In 1940, when Churchill readied the nation for war and formed an all-party coalition government, he made Bevin Minister for Labor and National Service, giving him a broad portfolio involving the domestic wartime economy. Shrewdly, Bevin struck a balance between military and domestic needs and created his own army of fifty thousand men diverted from the armed forces to work the coal mines: Bevin Boys. Churchill thought the world of him.
    Then the shocker. Just weeks after VE day, basking in triumphant victory, the man the Russians called the British Bulldog lost the 1945 general election in a landslide drubbing by Clement Atlee's Labor Party, tossed aside by an electorate that did not trust him to rebuild the nation. The man who had said, "We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall never surrender," limped from the grand stage in surrender, depressed and dispirited. Churchill moodily led the opposition after his defeat, but took most of his pleasure from his beloved Chartwell House, where he wrote poetry, painted watercolors, and tossed bread to the black swans.
    Now, a year and a half later, Bevin, Prime Minster Atlee's Foreign Secretary, sat deep underground awaiting his former boss. It was cold, and Bevin kept his overcoat buttoned over his winter-weight vested suit. He was a solid man, thinning gray hair swept back and pomaded, fleshy faced with incipient jowls. He had chosen this clandestine meeting spot purposely, to send a psychological message. The subject matter would be important. Secret. Come now, without delay.
    The message was not lost on Churchill, who barged in, glanced about unsentimentally and declared, "Why would you ask me to come back to this godforsaken place?"
    Bevin rose and with a wave of his hand dismissed the high-ranking military man who had accompanied Churchill. "Were you in Kent?"
    "Yes, I was in Kent!" Churchill paused. "I never thought I'd set foot in here again."
    "I won't ask for your coat. It's chilly."
    "It always was so," Churchill replied.
    The two men shook hands dispassionately then sat down, Bevin steering Churchill to a spot where a red portfolio with the P.M.'s seal lay before him.
    They were in the George Street bunker where Churchill and his War Cabinet holed up for much of the conflict. The rooms were constructed in the basement chamber of the Office of Works Building, smack between Parliament and Downing Street. Sandbagged, concrete-reinforced, and well belowground, George Street would probably have survived the direct hit that never materialized.
    They faced each other across the large square table in the Cabinet Room, where night or day, Churchill would summon his closest advisors. It was a drab, utilitarian chamber with stale air. Nearby was the Map Room, still papered with the charts of the theaters of war, and Churchill's private bedroom, which still reeked of cigars long after the last one had been extinguished. Farther down the hall in an old converted broom closet was the Transatlantic Telephone Room, where the scrambler, code-named "Sigsaly," encrypted the conversations between Churchill and Roosevelt. For all Bevin knew, the gear still functioned. Nothing had changed since the day the War Rooms had been quietly closed down: VJ Day.
    "Do you want to have a poke around?" Bevin asked. "I believe Major General Stuart has a set of keys."
    "I do not." Churchill was impatient now. The bunker made him uneasy. Curtly, he said, "Look, why don't you get to the point? What do you want?"
    Bevin spoke his rehearsed introduction. "An issue has arisen, quite unexpected, quite remarkable and quite sensitive. The government must deal with it carefully and delicately. As it involves the Americans,