The plane’s first stop was at Gander on the island of Newfoundland, a place that would always be marked with a red circle on Lanny’s mental map. It was from here that he had set out five years ago over the same flying route and had come so near to losing his life. He shivered when he thought of the strange psychic warnings he had received and had chosen to disregard. Then it had been winter, and now it felt like winter in latitude fifty degrees north.
The traveller wandered about to stretch his legs and admire the growth of a great airport and the technique of its operation. Then a bell summoned him, and he got on board, and they were off again. If the weather was bad they would stop at Iceland, but since it was good they headed straight on to Prestwick in Scotland. Once they sighted a thunderstorm ahead, but they made a wide swing around it, and it was fascinating to watch the lightning stabbing into the sea. They reached Prestwick at suppertime, and Lanny took another plane to Croydon Airport near London.
Waiting for him there was Alfred Pomeroy-Nielson, member of Parliament and heir-apparent to a baronetcy. He had been a flier for the Spanish People’s Republic during its war for freedom, and Lanny had driven him to his post of duty in Madrid. They had had other adventures together, but the greatest of all, as they both agreed, was the political struggle of the people of Britain. You might say that Alfy had been born a member of the British Labour party, and on the basis of his father’s long service and his own record in the Royal Air Force he had shared in the electoral victory of a year ago.
Now Lanny had brought messages from his father and his mother and his younger brother and all the news about their activities. Alfy, in turn, told about the legislative programme now being put through, which would make it possible for every child born in Britain to get enough food to grow into a sound adult, and an opportunity to develop whatever talents he might possess. It would be the first time in the history of that landlord-ridden island, and to the two idealists it would be the beginning of a new stage of civilisation.
Next morning Lanny Budd took off on a plane for Berlin. He had memorised all his notes and torn up the paper into small bits and dropped it down into the sewers of London. The only papers he had in his suitcase were English magazines, and his notebook containing the names and addresses of a number of persons in Germany to whom the U.S. government had returned valuable paintings which the Nazis had stolen. The paintings might be for sale, and Lanny might find time to look at them.
VI
Once more the art expert flew over the green fields and the bombed towns of Germany and came to that ghastly skeleton of a national capital. Once more his plane slid down on the Tempelhoferfeld. When the war had come to an end the American armies had stopped at the River Elbe, desiring to be polite. They might easily have moved on and taken more territory, but they had not wanted to appear to be grabbing something from their Russian Allies. The Russians had moved into Berlin, and at a conference the city had been divided into four sectors, Russian, French, British and American. The Russians had got the eastern portion. They had already grabbed the machinery from the whole city, torn it loose, and carried it away; but unfortunately they had no place to store it, and a good deal of it was left out in the rain and ruined.
The French, American, and British zones of Germany all lay west of the Elbe, so here was this peculiar situation: each country had a sector of Berlin, a little island, as it were, lying seventy miles or so to the east of the Elbe and reached only through Soviet-held territory. It was all right so long as Stalin remained an ally, and in the mood of an ally; but unfortunately he had begun to show an entirely different mood. He had forbidden fraternising between his troops and the Western troops, and he was making more and more difficulties for transport coming by railroad and autobahn.
Lanny had been told that he would be met at the airport, and when he stepped from the plane he was greeted by an alert young American. ‘Mr Budd?’ said he, and Lanny smiled and answered, ‘Christopher Columbus’. The young man gave his name, escorted Lanny to a car, and started briefing him even while they were driving to the office. He was one of several Treasury agents who were on the trail of Himmler money throughout Germany, or those parts of Germany in which they were permitted to work. Where the Russians did not permit them they were working under cover, sometimes through foreign agents whom they might or might not be able to trust.
The man had some melodramatic tales to tell, but Lanny was not surprised by them. He had learned to think of the Nazis as criminals, and among the cleverest and least scrupulous. The fact that they had been operating under the label of a government made no difference in his thoughts. To reproduce the money of an invaded country would appeal to them as the obvious way to get possession of whatever they wanted in that country—and they would want everything of value. As for the neutral lands, well, there was no neutrality in the Nazi psychology; if you weren’t one of them, you were against them. In the neutral lands the British pound and the American dollar had become international currency, and to manufacture this currency was the obvious and convenient way to get both raw materials and manufactured goods.
VII
The southwest sector of Berlin, the residential part, had been the least bombed, and the various American services had their headquarters there in fine old mansions. In one of these Lanny was introduced to a couple of the agents, and they got right down to business, knowing that they were dealing with a man who was in a hurry to get back to his affairs. Three different trails—all Polish, they reported—had led them to the village of Stubendorf. Polish nationals who were selling counterfeit money at a large discount—‘pushers’ they were called—had been patiently trailed by a Polish agent in AMG employ, and they had gone to Stubendorf to replenish their supplies. One of the men was under arrest now, but he wouldn’t talk.
‘Of course if the N.K.V.D. had him’, said Morrison, one of the agents, ‘they would torture him and perhaps wring the secret out of him; but we can’t do that’. He went on to explain, ‘We are obliged to work with foreigners because Americans are too conspicuous for this sort of thing. We do our best to check on our agents, but, of course, we can’t help making mistakes. And if the criminals, whoever they are, become too alarmed they will move elsewhere. It is no great job to transport a few bales of paper, and the copper plates are small and can be slipped into the pocket of an overcoat. You can see we have no small problem’.
Lanny asked the crucial question, ‘Do you have any clue as to whether these operators are Nazis or Communists, or just individual criminals?’
‘We have no clues in this Stubendorf case. We have found all three varieties in other cases, and we learned that it doesn’t make much difference; the operations are much the same. The queer money is used to purchase goods, and then the goods are sold on the black market. It doesn’t matter whether the profits are spent for Communist propaganda or for women and liquor and nightclub entertainment’.
Lanny replied, ‘It makes some difference in the psychology of the operators and the methods of approaching them. It makes a difference in the kind of persons among whom one might expect to pick up clues. From what you tell me it sounds as if there must be a considerable group, and here in Europe such a group usually has an ideology. Have you thought that this crowd might be Vlasovites?’
‘You have me there, Mr Budd. I have heard the name, but I don’t know about them’.
‘Vlasovite is the name for a Russian or Pole who went over to the Nazis and entered their military service. Some did it because they were reactionary; most of them I suppose were just mercenaries. There was a whole division or more of them, commanded by a General Vlasov. Needless to say, to the Reds they are the devil incarnate. Some might have been at Sachsenhausen, as guards or interpreters, even as prisoners if they were engravers or had committed crimes. They might have got away with bales of the money, and the Poles might have fled to Poland; they might have had to change their names and conceal their past, or they might be living as outlaws, hiding in the forest, worki
ng as an underground against the Reds. If Kurt Meissner is there, he would be sympathetic to such a group. You can see that the situation is complicated’.
‘Our men have been getting quite an education, Mr Budd, and you can help it along if you will. Bernhardt Monck tells me that you know more about these matters than any other American he has met’.
‘Monck flatters me, Mr Morrison, because he and I think alike on political and social questions. I know Stubendorf pretty well because I began going there to spend Christmas when I was fourteen years old. I visited Kurt Meissner’s family, and later on I came to know the Graf. In 1913, as you know, Stubendorf, in Upper Silesia, was a part of Germany. Then came the First World War, and the Allies turned it over to Poland; Kurt and all the family were bitter against the Allies for that. Germans and Poles have hated each other ever since they existed, I suppose. Then came Hitler, and Stubendorf became German once more. Now it is Polish again—but I suppose that means the same as being Russian’.
‘More and more nearly the same, Mr Budd. As you know, the Soviets agreed to the setting up of a democratic government in Poland, but they are making it more and more farcical all the time’.
‘Do they still let visitors in?’
‘They are making it more and more difficult. They are making Poland over into a satellite state and they don’t want any outsiders watching’.
VIII
Morrison gave Lanny a briefing on the political situation as it stood at that moment in Poland. At the Yalta Conference, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin had agreed that the Polish people were to be permitted to choose their own form of government. All political parties were to be granted equal rights; but the Socialist, Democratic, and Labour parties had all been suppressed, and their leaders were in prison or in the underground or in exile.
‘“Free and unfettered elections”—that was the phrase, Mr Budd’, said the agent; and Mr Budd answered that he had been at Yalta with President Roosevelt and had read the text of the agreement before it was submitted to Stalin and approved by him.
‘Now’, said Morrison, ‘the government is being run by three Communists. The only party which they allowed to continue was the Peasant party; they hoped to win this over by their programme of re-distributing the land and socialising all industry. They thought they were strong enough to carry a referendum, and it was held. The vote was on the abolition of the senate; and the result, according to the Peasant party leaders, was about eighty-five per cent against the proposal. But the Reds held up the election results for twelve days and then announced that nearly eight million votes had been cast for the abolition of the senate, and fewer than four million votes against it. Such were free and unfettered elections in the Communist understanding of that phrase’.
Lanny was warned that he would find Poland in a pitiable state of disorganisation. Soviet artillery had blasted towns and villages to pieces, and in many of the towns the streets were not yet cleared of rubble sufficiently to drive a vehicle through them. There were unbelievable shifts of population going on. More than eight million Germans had fled from Poland into Germany; to take their places a million and a half Poles had fled from the provinces which the Kremlin had taken over in the East; they had come into the new lands evacuated by the Germans. In addition nearly a million Poles who had fled from the Russians into Germany and Austria and Western Europe were now coming back to their homeland. The population of Warsaw had diminished from a million and a quarter to half a million. All this meant swarms of half-starved people on the roads, riding in oxcarts or trundling handcarts, or plodding along with their few possessions in bundles on their heads or their backs. It was very depressing, and also very insanitary.
Morrison explained that Lanny, of necessity, would be on his own from this time on. They had not arranged hotel accommodations for him, for he must not appear as an official person. Lanny replied that he knew his way about Berlin; he had been here only a few months previously. Although he did not smoke he had brought along packages of American cigarettes and knew how to get favours from hotel clerks, cab drivers, and other persons whose talk might be helpful.
IX
There were two preliminary steps to Lanny’s enterprise. The first was to get permission from the Russian military authorities to visit Stubendorf and stay for a few days; the second was to get a visa from the Polish consulate. Lanny had given a good deal of thought to both enterprises, and he told Morrison, ‘I will mention that I had two interviews with Stalin, one only last spring. My errand will have to do with buying art works’.
He recalled paintings which had been in Schloss Stubendorf: a Cranach which Göring had wished very much to purchase and a couple of Defreggers, a painter greatly admired by the Führer. Presumably when the days of bombardment had come those paintings had been taken out of the frames, rolled up, and carried to a safe place. Where were they? Kurt Meissner might know, and that would be a good excuse for Lanny to seek him out.
Morrison pointed out that if the paintings were found the government might confiscate them. Lanny said, All right, he would offer to buy them from the government. Anyhow, he would have a reason for visiting Stubendorf. ‘Shall I offer the officials a tip?’ Lanny asked; and the other said it would be all right to give them a tip if they asked for it, but to be careful.
‘The Polish consul’, he said, ‘is probably a poor devil who secretly hates the Reds. He has difficulty in getting enough to eat; invite him to lunch at a good café and get him a bottle of wine. Don’t speak of any Germans to him. You might delicately suggest that you will need to spend some money in Poland, and can he advise you about getting the best rate of exchange. Perhaps he can attend to it for you. The zloty is down to one cent, but let him charge you a cent and a quarter, and that will be a tactful way of giving him a tip. He has been through six years of war, and he’ll be overworked and underpaid. You may be the first well-dressed man he has talked to in a long time.’
‘If he doesn’t hate me for being too well-dressed’, said Lanny, smiling.
‘Officially he will be supposed to distrust you, but privately he will respect you and be looking out for what he can get. The Communists boast of having done away with graft, but it’s all over the place, even among their own officials. Their revolution is almost thirty years old, and it is a very unusual official who can keep within his salary for that length of time’.
Lanny explained that he wanted to talk to several persons before he took this journey. ‘I think I might learn Kurt Meissner’s whereabouts from his oldest brother, General Emil. Do you have any idea where he is?’
‘I can have him looked up for you’, said the other.
‘The last time I met him was while our armies were still in France. I was working for General Patton’s G-2, and I was able to persuade Emil to come over to our side. He gave us priceless information about all the fortifications of Metz. Kurt, of course, regards him as a vile traitor, just as he does me. But Emil understands Kurt’s psychology, and he will also know other persons in Stubendorf from whom I might get information. Also, I ought to look up Graf Stubendorf; no doubt his estates have been confiscated’.
‘We have already made enquiries about him’, replied the other. ‘It is reported that he has a small place in the lake district of the Bavarian Alps’.
‘It will be a new experience to him to be poor’, remarked Lanny.
‘They will all be poor. By the way, Washington tells us that you are to have an expense account. You will be free to spend up to two thousand dollars upon other persons, and if you need more you may let me know.’
‘It won’t be easy to pay them money’, said Lanny. ‘They will be poor but proud—the way it was with our Southerners after the Civil War’.
‘We will rely upon your discretion’, replied the official. ‘If money will get the information we need, spend it; but be careful, because you will encounter people who will make up stories and keep stringing you along. We have been taken in more than once and have spent a good deal
of money following false leads’.
X
Lanny’s friend Bernhardt Monck was still with CIC, the Counter-Intelligence Corps of American Military Government. Twelve years had passed since he had shown up in London and made himself known to Lanny Budd as a Socialist underground worker against the Nazis. Since Lanny had known him he had been a capitán in the Spanish People’s Army. During World War II he had had charge of American intelligence work in Stockholm, and now he was in the employ of AMG, investigating the records of persons who presented themselves as being free of the Nazi taint and worthy of employment by the victorious Four Powers.
Lanny telephoned, and Monck wanted him to come to his home for dinner. He said he could arrange for a room in a friend’s home in the same apartment building.
In the three-room home Lanny met Monck’s long-suffering wife, who had taken care of their two children in the Argentine for more than ten years while their father was doing underground work against the bandits who had seized their homeland. The children, now attending a high school under American auspices, spoke fluent Spanish, German, and English and did not feel that they were overcrowding their minds by studying French. They had met Lanny Budd the previous spring and knew that he had been a secret agent against the Nazis and had testified concerning Hermann Göring at the Nürnberg trials. To them Mr Budd was a wonderful person; they listened to all he had to say about that sweet land of liberty across the sea, in which so many people all over the earth were longing somehow to find refuge.
XI
The father of this family came in; a stocky, solidly built man whose muscles had been hardened by conflicts, first with nature and then with humans. His hair was cut short in Prussian fashion and what there was of it was gray. He spoke with a North-German accent, and thought of himself as a working man and nothing else. He and Lanny had been through dangers together, and firmer friends could not have been. Most of what they had done was no longer secret and made wonderful listening for a boy and a girl who were being brought up to think of themselves as working-class children, prepared to devote their lives to the task of building a social order that should be at the same time just and free.