Free Target Churchill by Warren Adler

to leave the world stage. He has a great sense of the dramatic… as if you hadn’t heard.”
    â€œRuns in the family, Sarah.”
    â€œHis stage is a lot bigger than mine, darling.”
    There it was, he thought, a tiny chink in the family armor, a brief glimpse of resentment, perhaps jealousy.
    â€œPlease try, Sarah. Put a feather in my cap.”
    â€œOnly if you tickle me with it, darling,” she said, ending the conversation with polite amenities and no promises of assistance.
    He had almost given up hope, when Sarah called him a few days later from Miami.
    â€œCome on down and toast your buns, darling.”
    â€œYou’ve done it?” he asked expectantly.
    â€œI was a bit oblique. Father is having his portrait painted. He’s sort of trapped. Loves the idea of the result but not the process. I told him I had this very intelligent newspaper friend from Washington. I think the Washington bit got him interested.”
    The paper booked him a stateroom on the Miami overnight train, and he spent the time pouring over material he had managed to cull through the
Star
’s extensive files on Churchill and some books he had cadged from his contacts at the Library of Congress. He figured that knowledge of Churchill’s early days might be ingratiating as an opening gambit. The man’s career was amazing. More than once, he had risen from the ashes like the proverbial phoenix.
    Churchill had been attacked unmercifully in his early days in politics. As First Lord of the Admiralty he was excoriated for the Gallipoli disaster, then flayed again as Chancellor of the Exchequer during the Depression. Economists blamed his gold policy for the debacle. Then came attacks by Socialists who railed against his colonialist objections to ending British Raj in India.
    Adding insult to injury he had been bludgeoned for his furious objections to Chamberlain’s pro-peace policies, which he had characterized as appeasement. The man had been a punching bag for most of his political career. The Russians particularly amused him by battering him for his damning of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that had divided Poland. And, of course, Mr. Goebbels was predictably harsh, portraying him as a satanic monster.
    Some of the information he learned about Churchill was extraordinary: He had missed death numerous times. During World War I, he had left a bunker five minutes before it was blown up. He was nearly killed during the Boer War, captured, imprisoned, and then escaped. Again, he was nearly killed in an automobile in Manhattan on a lecture tour in the States.
    Little-known, odd facts tickled Benson: In 1900, Mark Twain introduced Churchill at the Waldorf Astoria in New York while on a lecture tour describing his exploits in Africa. Churchill was a correspondent in Cuba during the time Theodore Roosevelt led his Rough Riders up San Juan Hill. He was a close friend and admirer of Lawrence of Arabia. His research on Churchill was so extensive; Benson barely slept on the journey.
    Sarah picked him up at the station in a pre-war Lincoln Continental convertible. Wearing white shorts and a green jersey to set off her green eyes, she looked radiant. He kissed her on both cheeks in the Continental manner.
    â€œYou look like a million, Sarah,” Benson said, meaning it.
    The sun was bright, the air clear. Sarah’s hair caught the breeze of the speeding car as it moved through the Miami streets. She asked about the trip, his children, the usual amenities, and he probed in kind.
    â€œFather is sitting this morning for Douglas Chandor, the portrait painter,” she said. “He was a bit crotchety earlier, but a touch of brandy settled him down. Douglas has him all decked out in a winter suit, not exactly the proper attire for this climate.”
    â€œHave you explained why I’m here?” he asked, hopefully.
    â€œI told him you’re my journalist friend from Washington, and you’re