The Cairo-bound Taurus Express rocked and clattered through the harsh, moonlit mountains of southern Turkey. In a latched compartment of the wagons-lits rode an elderly intriguer, Prince Barbu Stirbey of Rumania, and his elegant daughter, Princess Elise, wife of a British major. When control officers at the Levantine frontier saw the special British laissez-passer, they moved on quickly to the next compartment. Chained to Prince Stirbey's wrist as he slept that night was a small, red dispatch case containing, so it was said, Rumania's terms for quitting the war.
Queen's Choice. Rich, suave, 70-year-old Prince Stirbey was the longtime lover of the late Queen Marie of Rumania, the mortal foe of her moody son, ex-King Carol, the presumed father of her youngest daughter, Ileana.* Now the loyal aging go-between was embarked on one last attempt to save the trembling kingdom for his loved liege's grandson, young King Mihai.
In Ankara, Stirbey talked at length with British diplomats. The Russians ignored him. Then, just before he left for Cairo, Stalin switched his instructions, had his envoy urge the Prince to call first of all on Nicholas Novikov, ranking Russian plenipotentiary in the Middle East.
Last week British newsmen reported the reputed contents of the red dispatch case:
¶ Rumania to give Bessarabia back to Russia, help in driving German troops from Rumanian soil and oil.
¶ Rumania to get in return northern Transylvania, which Hitler had transferred to Hungary in 1940; to remain sovereign and nonCommunist; to be occupied by U.S. and British troops as well as Russian. This week an unnamed diplomat in Switzerland threw back his cloak just long enough to reveal what he said would be the Allied answer: strikingly parallel terms, except a reminder to Rumanians that northern Bukovina would have to go back with Bessarabia.
Gestapo's Choice. None could say for certain which or how many Rumanians Prince Stirbey spoke for. Anyone could see that he would not be at large in a warring world without: 1) Puppet-Dictator Marshal Ion ("Red Dog") Antonescu's permission; 2) the Gestapo's connivance. Some could see a telltale in the way the Gestapo detained Princess Elise a week at the Bulgarian border as a British subject, then inexplicably let her follow her father to Ankara. The Princess' husband, Major Edward Boxhall, now in the War Office in London, formerly represented armament-makers Vickers-Armstrong in Rumania. The Prince himself formerly headed Rumania's powerful Steaua Romana Oil Co., a big operator in the Ploesti fields.
Hungarians' Choice. About a week before, Czechoslovakia's Moscow-wise President Benes had suddenly observed out loud that in his opinion Russia would favor Rumania's regaining bleak potato lands of northern Transylvania. To hardy, Russia-hating Magyars, this preference for spineless, graft-ridden Rumanians was the last straw. As the Nazis clamped down on Hungary, hitherto their most obliging satellite, the landowning lords of the Hungarian plain toyed with a desperate plan: to strike into Rumania before the Russians could cross Bessarabia.