Roosevelt shook his head wearily.

“You can guess what happened. Not a goddamned thing! Hull is blaming everything on Welles, of course, claiming Welles must have been sitting on these files for weeks.

“It’s true, I had given the files to Welles and asked him to get someone on the German desk at State to make a report. Then Welles had his heart attack, and cleared his desk, offering me his resignation. Which I refused.

“Meanwhile, Hull told the fellow on the German desk, Thornton Cole, to give the files to Bill Bullitt, to see what our former ambassador to Soviet Russia might make of them. Bullitt fancies himself a Russia expert.

“I don’t actually know if Bullitt looked at the files. He’d been after Welles’s job for a while and I suspect he was too busy lobbying for it to pay them much attention. When I asked Hull about Katyn Forest, he and Bullshitt realized that they’d fucked up and decided to quietly return the files to Welles’s office and blame him for not having done anything. Of course Hull made sure to have Cole back up his story.” Roosevelt shrugged. “That’s Welles’s best guess about what must have happened. And I think I agree with him.”

It was about then that I remembered I had once introduced Welles to Cole, at Washington’s Metropolitan Club.

“When Hull returned the files and told me that we weren’t in a position to have any kind of view on Katyn Forest,” Roosevelt continued, “I used every short word known to a sailor. And the upshot of all this is that nothing has been done.” The president pointed at some dusty-looking files stacked on a bookshelf. “Would you mind fetching them down for me? They’re up there.”

I retrieved the files, laid them on the sofa beside the president, and then inspected my hands. The job did not augur well, given the amount of grime on my fingers.