The scientists who specialized in jet propulsion plied Lanny with questions. Among other things, he told them about his old friend Bernhardt Monck, who had begun life as a sailor and Social-Democratic leader, had risen to be a capitán in the Spanish Republican Army, and now was an OSS man operating under an alias in one of the neutral lands. Lanny wasn’t at liberty to say what alias or what land, but he suggested that Alsos should apply to OSS for Monck to be brought to Paris, and Lanny would add his recommendation in the matter.
General Donovan’s organization in the old brick building in Washington was one branch of the bureaucracy that had very little red tape. “Oh So Secret” and “Oh So Social,” the wits called it, and said that it was made up entirely of “sportsmen, sporting men, and sports”; but at least they were men who were used to having their way and getting things done. So it came about that three days later an unresting secret enemy of Nazi-Fascism telephoned Lanny at his hotel, using the name of “Trudi’s friend,” which nobody in the world but Lanny would understand. He had been flown from Stockholm to London by a secret route and from there to Paris. Over the telephone he said, “The Geneva place, twenty hours.”
That too was code, because in the past they had been wont to meet in the public library in the Swiss city. At eight that evening Lanny strolled into the reading-room of the great Bibliothèque Nationale, and there was the sturdy German, with bullet head and gray hair close-cut, busily making notes from a book of French history. Their eyes met, Lanny strolled out again, and the other followed; they went into an ill-lighted street, and since it was too cold for sitting down they walked. Such precautions had become second nature to them both, and they did not relax because the enemy had been driven out of Paris. The enemy was expecting to come back and seldom failed to plant his espionage system in any important place he abandoned.
This pair would have stories to tell each other when the war was over; but meantime they talked only about necessary things. Lanny told how he had had to get out of Germany, because he had reason to believe that Himmler was onto his game. He had been helped by the old Social-Democratic watch repairer, Johann Seidl, whose name and address had been furnished by Monck. It was important for Monck to know that this man was still alive and true to the cause, although he had been posing as a Nazi. Lanny had been hidden in the cellar of a woman named Anna who ran some sort of leather-working shop. Monck said, “Anna Pfister; another old-timer.”
Monck was ready and glad to meet the Alsos people. He thought it would be all right for him to come to Lanny’s hotel room, provided that he didn’t have to go to the desk; Lanny gave him the room number, and next morning he met an Alsos man there, also an OSS man and an officer from Army Intelligence, G-2. Monck’s memory ranged over all the years of anti-Nazi struggle; he had never written anything down, but had learned it by heart, and now he gave the names and last known addresses of some twoscore men and women who could be depended upon to get and to give information—if they were still alive. One of them was found in the Rhineland within a few days and gave information concerning a huge rocket-assembly plant, eight hundred feet deep in the heart of the Kohnstein Mountains, near Nordhausen, where the Germans were making a V-2 that could fly three thousand miles and hit with pinpoint accuracy.
Lanny was proud of his friend Monck, proud to see him “delivering the goods.” For more than ten years the pair had been working hand in glove against the Nazi-Fascists, and whenever Lanny had had an impulse to get tired and take it easy, he had thought of Bernhardt Monck, alias Capitán Herzog, alias Braun, alias Anton Vetterl. Lanny would be ashamed, because he hadn’t had so many aliases or so many perilous escapes in the imminent deadly breach.
Monck’s wife had fled to the Argentine with their children and now wished to come back. Monck had entrusted a considerable sum of money to Lanny for safekeeping, and Lanny had left it with Robbie. Now he undertook to have two thousand dollars forwarded to the wife; the man didn’t want any for himself, the OSS was taking care of him, he said. They exchanged a warm handclasp at parting, and Monck said, “See you in Berlin, at the home of Johann Seidl.”
“Or at Göring’s Residenz,” replied Lanny with a chuckle.
IV
The armies on the western front had begun their offensive while Lanny was on the way to Yalta. Hitler had elected to fight west of the Rhine, which meant that his troops no longer had much ground to give; they had to stand where they were and win or die. There were snow and ice, and then would come a period of rain and mud, then overnight another freeze; both sides had to learn to live without shelter and to take weather as it came.
It was a land of large rivers and small streams, now full flooded in early spring; each was a barrier, defended to the last. Artillery pounded the enemy lines, and heavy trucks brought up boats of all sizes and materials, rubber, canvas, wood, sheet metal. A crossing would be forced, by night or day; a bridgehead would be established and a bridge built of pontoons. The tanks would come clanking across, and troops marching in double lines behind them. They would go up into the high ground, the vineyards, the orchards, the forests, shooting as they went, the men taking shelter behind trees and rocks, throwing grenades with the skill they had acquired in happier days with baseballs. If the enemy had a pillbox, the “walkie-talkie” men would call the tanks. If weather permitted, planes would be overhead, spying out the enemy and sending word by radio to batteries of mortars; they were all using the pozit ammunition now, and the shells would burst over the entrenched Heinies, and those who were left alive jumped up and scattered quickly.
Behind the lines was that marvelous SOS, the Services of Supply. There was a system called the Red Ball Express, coming by one set of highways and returning by another; an unbroken line of trucks, properly spaced, speeding at forty miles an hour. All the drivers had to do was follow the Red Ball markers; two men on each truck, and they never stopped driving, day or night. They rested while the truck was being unloaded and serviced, and then back they came to Antwerp, Cherbourg, Marseille, or other ports which had been taken and restored. The great ships came with their loads, and there were cranes and other great machines, and longshoremen by the thousands to put the stuff onto the trucks.
Also there were the C-47s, known as “flying boxcars,” big freight-carrying planes that swarmed everywhere, landing on what seemed no more than a cow pasture, and bringing gasoline, ammunition, and food to the men right up at the front. This was American industry, put into uniform and transported across three or four thousand miles of water. The Germans had been sure it couldn’t be done, at least not in time; but here it was being done, and the result was a striking force—something superhuman, unimaginable, that blinded the enemy, dazed him, and either destroyed him or routed him.
Hurry, hurry, hurry!—that was the motto everywhere. Time was of the essence. Once pried loose, the enemy must have no time to rally, to reorganize; wherever he went, the pursuit must be at his heels, keeping him on the move. It cost an enormous amount of matériel and many American lives, but in the long run it would pay off. The more Germans you killed or captured on one side of the river, the fewer you would find when you got across. So it was, all along the Meuse and the Roer and the Neuss, the Prüm, the Sauer, the Saar, and the Moselle; all through February and early March, unceasing attack and dogged defense. Retreat was forbidden to the Germans, and there were SS men behind the lines with machine guns to turn on stragglers.
V
Lanny waited in Paris, a pleasant place even in the midst of war if you knew where to go and what to look for. Physically the city had not sustained much damage; it was no longer la ville lumière, being blacked out by scarcity of fuel as well as by war regulations; but by daylight it had its beautiful vistas, its splendid buildings, its river, and its parks. Comforts were scarce, but the Americans were bringing in food, and nobody was starving. Most important of all, the people had hope; the war would be over, and the great President Roosevelt was promising that never again would the Germans have the chance to start anot
her.
Lanny had been neglecting his private business for long periods, and he had been told by his Boss that he was free to carry it on when he could. There were many people of property who now were short of cash and who had thought of old masters as a form of investment, as safe as diamonds and jewelry. They were pleased to meet a former acquaintance who was known to have access to money. He would inspect their treasures and politely ask if they would care to put a price on this or that; he would write by airmail to some of his clients at home, telling what he had found, and if a deal was made he would pay a deposit out of funds he had had in Cannes and Paris banks before the war; the rest would be paid as soon as freedom of trade had been restored. The franc was steadily going down, and as the franc went down the dollar went up.
French painters, who for the most part had small chance of ever becoming rich, had gone on painting through the war; it was an occupation that didn’t cost much, and it kept a man off the streets, where the enemy might pick him up and ship him off to work in the coal mines. According to French custom, the products of art labor could be seen in humble tobacco shops, cafés, and other places in Montmartre and Montparnasse, as well as at the elegant dealers in the neighborhood of the Place Vendôme. A fastidious American Army officer would stop and inspect them—provided that the painter had chosen to represent something that the Army officer could recognize. If he found something that he thought was good he might buy it, and get the address of the painter and seek him out in his attic atelier. Quite apart from questions of money, Lanny would be welcomed as a colleague, because he was the stepson of Marcel Detaze and son of a onetime painter’s model who had lived in this very Quartier Latin almost half a century ago. Eheu fugaces anni!—or, as we say nowadays, How time does fly!
VI
Lanny had written to his friend Rick in England, telling him the news about Yalta, no longer a secret. Rick’s father had died, and he was now Sir Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson, but he wasn’t using the title; he was going to stand for Parliament as a labor candidate in the elections which were to be held after the war had come to its now certain end. Rick told the news about his family, and among other things mentioned that his elder son, Alfy, was an RAF captain stationed at Amiens. Having long since made his allotted number of flights, he was grounded, and if he had a leave coming he would visit Paris.
That was good news, and when Alfy showed up it was an occasion to be celebrated. Lanny had known this dutiful and generous-minded Englishman for all twenty-eight of his years and loved him like a son. When only nineteen Alfy had flown in combat for the Spanish Republican government, and Lanny had helped him get out of a Franco dungeon. From then on the young officer watched for a chance to do anything to express his gratitude, without violating that reticence which was a part of his nature and training.
They went about Paris together, and looked at paintings and listened to beautiful music—something that had been kept safe from all the devastations of war. Many English men and women were here, and Alfy had friends among them, and they all had interesting news to relate, and personal adventures if you could manage tactfully to extract them. Normally, a war wound or a parachute descent into the Channel would be worth only a sentence or two. There was a girl friend who was feeding American food to French children, out in one of the factory districts that ring the show parts of Paris; the two men went by the métro, and it was a sight not soon to be forgotten: a hundred or two of eager French youngsters, their faces smeared with good food and beaming with delight.
There was an English officers’ club, a place to tell your own children about. It had belonged to Baron Maurice Rothschild, and after he had fled Göring had taken it and shipped all the paintings to Germany. Later he had given it to his Luftwaffe as an officers’ club, and now the British had taken over where the Luftwaffe had left off—in a hurry. The place had forty-three rooms, all on a magnificent scale, the kind of rooms that made one think of public buildings. It had a two-acre back yard and an air-raid shelter built by Göring, camouflaged as a garden walk. The Baroness’s bathroom was as big as an ordinary house, all of green marble—even a door of marble. The tub with its gold faucets could have served as a swimming pool, and as you swam you could look up at a ceiling of engraved crystal. On the other side of the house was the Baron’s bath, and that was the same except that its marble was white. There was a theater, and a cardroom papered with the skins of oriental tropical snakes:
The two friends had lunch in the dining-room of white and gold crystal. At one end of the room, on a pedestal of black marble, stood a life-size figure of a man, exactly the way nature makes man, and clad in the costume which nature provides. This, Alfy reported, sometimes caused embarrassment to English young ladies, so their escorts took the trouble to seat them with their backs to this elegant objet d’art. The lunch which Lanny ate was well cooked but small in size, so it didn’t take long. They adjourned to a terrace in the rear, where they could enjoy early spring sunshine and look upon the British Embassy on their right and the French Presidential Palace on their left. They were in the very midst of the grand monde de Paris.
VII
Le Capitaine Denis de Bruyne had been wounded again, this time in the fighting at the Belfort Gap, close to the Swiss border, where the French Army was maintaining pressure upon its ancient enemy. France, disgraced by the treachery of her leaders, betrayed into cowardly surrender, was now redeeming her honor; so Denis felt, and the scar of a bullet which had barely missed his lung was to him like a medal, a testimonial to the world that Frenchmen were still worthy of their heritage. He was recuperating at his home, with a devoted wife attending him, and it was Lanny’s obvious duty to go out there.
The head of this wealthy and aristocratic family, now in his eighties, had sustained a stroke, losing the use of his right leg. He was taken about in a wheel chair, but his mind was still alert, and he looked out for his business interests by telephone, and by a secretary who came every day from Paris. France was coming back, and with one leg in the grave this aged capitalist was behaving as if he had arranged to take all his stocks and bonds into the next world. He had invested heavily in Budd-Erling Aircraft and had a large amount of dollars in the First National Bank of Newcastle, Connecticut. He wanted Robbie’s help in cutting red tape and getting some of this money to France; he wanted Lanny’s help in urging Robbie to manage this.
Lanny had never had any admiration for this aged man who was lecherous as well as greedy, but he had pretended friendship because a representative of the “two hundred families” was a source of information valuable to a presidential agent. Lanny played the role of a loyal son of his father, a member of his father’s class, and both the elder and the younger Denis talked to him freely about the political and business affairs of their country. They were deeply indebted to him, because he had persuaded the father to come over to the American side in the very nick of time to save him from the fate of a collaborateur. This shift had cost the life of the younger son, Chariot, who had been shot as a traitor by the Vichy gangsters. Lanny listened to the père de famille chuckling over his success in outwitting his enemies; it would seem that the old man felt more joy over having saved his property than grief at the loss of his son. Possibly, however, that wasn’t a fair judgment, for he no longer had the son but did have the property.
There were two daughters-in-law, one of them a widow, and five children, living in this lovely old red-brick house called a “château,” though it was hardly big enough to deserve the title. There was considerable estate, and they could live comfortably, not too much troubled by war shortages. What the war meant to them was that the Germans had been driven out of France, and so people of property could resume their pleasant lives where they had left off five and a half years ago.
Two things were of paramount importance to them: first that the Americans should guarantee them against another German invasion, which would be the fourth in less than a century; second that there should be a dependable authority in France,
Catholic and conservative, to hold down the labor unions. To all members of the deux cents families that spelled the name de Gaulle; but their idol had been collaborating with the Reds, and that worried them. Of course it must be a wartime maneuver, compelled by the pressing need of resisting the German occupation; surely now the great General would be quick to break with his dangerous allies. Neither the stricken father nor the wounded son had been able to visit le grand Charlie and make sure, so they were reduced to asking their American friend what he thought. Lanny was able to comfort them with the assurance that the head of their Provisional government would never forget the fundamentals of his St. Cyr training.
Returning to Paris, Lanny found a long letter from his friend Raoul Palma, who had stood as a Socialist in the municipal elections in Toulon and had been victorious. Raoul took it as one of his duties to report to Lanny, in order that Lanny might report to his friends abroad, and especially to the great President Roosevelt. The news, alas, was bad; already, before the war was over, the Communists were beginning to break the people’s truce; they were demanding all power for themselves and pushing the Socialists out of the way. Nobody could trust them, they admitted no loyalty save to their party. They had tried to seize power in Marseille when the Germans fled, and they were organizing now for a coup in Toulon the moment Germany surrendered. “We Socialists are caught between two millstones, Lanny”; and then the inevitable question, “What will President Roosevelt do about it?” President Roosevelt was going to solve all the problems for all the people of the world.
The son of Budd-Erling gazed at the future of France as if in a crystal ball, and what he saw saddened him greatly. La patrie was going back into the past, into that social strife which had paralyzed her and put her at the mercy, or rather the lack of mercy, of her hereditary foreign foe. There would be the extremists of the Right and those of the Left, at deadly social and political war; and there would be a middle party, pleading in vain for compromise, for understanding, for orderly social progress. The de Bruynes of France wouldn’t pay income taxes; the farmers of France insisted upon hoarding their produce for higher prices; the politicians of France, elected under fraudulent labels, would choose the easy way of inflationary spending. And woe to the man who took his political stand in the middle, out in no man’s land between the fighting fronts of Right and Left!