“You are telling us something new, Monsieur Budd. We have had reports on many events in your life, but not about that marriage.”
“I am glad to hear that, because it was a secret known only to persons whom I trusted in my effort to rescue Trudi. Not even my father and mother knew about it. The reason was that by that time I had come to realize that the greatest service I could render to my friends of the Left was to use my acquaintances among the ruling classes as a means of finding out their plans. I took to telling these people, including my own families, that I had become disgusted with political developments and had retired to an ivory tower. I became the art expert, interested only in furthering great collections for the American wealthy, and incidentally in earning large commissions. The rich all understand that you desire to become richer; that is what the game of life means to them.”
“Is that what you tell Hitler, Monsieur Budd?”
“I always shade my story according to the company I am in. I told Hitler that I was a complete convert to his cause; for years I addressed him as ‘Mein Führer.’ I told him about the many sympathizers he had in Britain and America, and I brought him messages from them—all this, of course, before America came into the war. In return, he confided to me a great deal about his plans.”
“You did not feel that you were giving him encouragement and perhaps information?”
“That was a problem about which I used to worry. But when I put it up to President Roosevelt, he assured me that what I brought him was worth any price it cost. That settled it for me, because I have complete confidence in his judgment. For five years I have been what is called a presidential agent, and have done exactly what he told me.”
XI
That was the matter about which the three judges were waiting to hear. The leader said: “We have great confidence in the President of your country, Monsieur Budd, even though it is a capitalist country. Will you tell us how you came to enter his service?”
“I was sent to him by a member of his ‘brain trust,’ Professor Charles T. Alston, who had been one of President Wilson’s advisers at the Paris Peace Conference, and whom I had served as secretary-translator at that time. President Roosevelt invited me to his home, heard the story I have just told to you, and said that I could be of help to him. Of course I could not refuse his request. I have a confidential way of getting reports to him, and I have sent him more than fifty so far. He has several times offered to pay me, but I told him I made plenty of money, and so I am what is called in Washington a ‘dollar-a-year-man.’ I did not even collect from him the sums I have paid to Bruges and other contacts which I have. The last time I talked with the President, which was less than a month ago at his home in Hyde Park, he told me that our Intelligence service was supporting the underground movements where our armies were likely to come, and indeed wherever we could hinder and hurt the Germans. He put money into my bank account in New York, and I have just paid some of it to Bruges. I am prepared to pay more if you can show me ways you can make use of it.”
“Just what does the President wish us to do?”
“You understand, we have to make a distinction between the two parts of France. In the occupied portion the Germans rule; we are at war with them, and we furnish our friends with arms, explosives, and all means of sabotage. But with Vichy France we are not at war, and it is not according to our code to encourage sabotage in a country with which we maintain diplomatic relations. Naturally, any harm you can do to German agents here is all right with us, though we do not ask for it or direct it. What we particularly want is to keep the French Fleet out of Hitler’s hands, and no doubt Bruges has told you that it was I who urged his coming to Toulon in order to make contacts with the sailors and the arsenal workers.”
“He has told us that.”
“There is nothing more important to the Allied cause, and nothing for which we would be more glad to make expenditures. If you could manage to start the publication of a clandestine paper, or the printing and circulating of leaflets—”
“We are already doing both those things, Monsieur Budd.”
“That is good news, and I shall mention it to the President, with your permission.”
“Is it your plan to stay in this neighborhood?”
“That has never been my way. I go from place to place, under the pretense of inspecting works of art. I talk with the people I know and listen to the gossip in the salons, and now and then I send in a report.”
“You have recently been in Vichy?”
“I was flown there by way of Lisbon and Madrid. I was a guest in Laval’s home and I had a long talk with Admiral Darlan, whom my parents have known since World War I. I picked up a lot of information among the collaborators, and that information should by now be in the President’s hands. It goes by air.”
“Will you tell us how you expect to work with us?”
“The President’s instructions were that I should get into touch with the underground wherever I had a contact I could trust; that I should ask permission to send the leader’s name to the President, so that he may give it to the new Intelligence service headed by Colonel William J. Donovan in New York. A properly accredited agent will come to you and presumably maintain continuous contact with you.”
“We should be glad to co-operate with President Roosevelt, Monsieur Budd; but we must point out that any letter mailed to any place, whether inside or outside of Vichy France, is very likely to be opened and read.”
“Quite so, and you have my word that I will never take such a risk. If you decide to trust me with a name and address, I will memorize it, and not put it on paper until I am in a position to be certain that it will be flown in a diplomatic pouch, and will be seen by no eye until it reaches the President’s. Give me a code word, and in due course someone will appear who will repeat it.”
“Bruges tells us that you have credentials from the President himself.”
“The last thing he did before I left his study was to take one of his engraved visiting cards and write with his fountain pen the sentence: ‘My friend Lanny Budd is worthy of all trust.’ He instructed me to sew that in the lining of my coat and use it in case of need. I am wearing that coat, and will show you the card; but it must be with the understanding that it is precious to me, and I must have your word of honor that, regardless of what your decision about me may be, you will return the card to me. If it were lost or destroyed, I should have to travel back to America to get another.”
“You have our word on that, Monsieur Budd.”
There came into the P.A.’s voice a little of that humor which on many occasions had been the means of making friends and influencing people. “I will put the coat into your hands, Monsieur Incognito, but perhaps you will leave the cutting of the threads to the lady who is present. It is necessary that there should be no damage to the lining, and the opening should be no larger than necessary. It would look very suspicious if a fashionable gentleman were wearing a coat which showed signs of repairs.”
“We will do our best,” said the leader of the band. “Bruges, will you take Monsieur Budd into the next room?”
XII
Patiently the P.A. waited, sitting coatless and in darkness for five or ten minutes while the secret group debated his story. When the door was opened again, there was a light in the other room; only a kerosene lamp, but even so it made Lanny blink when he entered. He saw that all four of the persons in the room were smiling. “Soyez le bienvenu, camarade!” said the leader. “Here is your coat and here is your card. We have agreed to accept your word, and you are one of us.” He added quickly: “My name is Zed. If you think you remember any other name from past times, please understand that it is not to be spoken.”
For a year and a half Lanny had been worrying his brain, trying to identify the voice of the masked man whom he had seen only by the light of a flickering campfire. Lanny had tried to recall the voices he had heard and the faces he had seen in the workers’ school—hundreds of them in cour
se of the years. Now, at the first glance it came to him, like a flash of lightning on a dark night: Jean Catroux! Sallow, sharp-featured, eager, and contentious Jean! His father had owned a cigarstore, and the son had been a clerk in the daytime and an incessant troublemaker at the school in the evenings. A partisan of the extreme Left, he was one of a small group who kept the place in turmoil and almost brought Raoul to despair. The pupil had been older than the teacher by several years and considered that he knew much more.
The Reds in those unhappy days had joined the front populaire and had helped to vote Léon Blum into power. But they sabotaged him by propaganda and waged relentless ideological war upon him. In truth, Blum had given them plenty of cause, for in the dreadful crisis of the Spanish civil war he had given way to the class enemies and shown himself a broken reed. All this came to Lanny in a rush of memories, and it was like a puzzle to which you cannot guess the answer, but when you have heard the answer, you cannot imagine how you failed to guess it.
“I remember, Comrade Zed,” he replied at last.
How much had happened in the world in five or six years, and what did it mean for the future? This man had come out on top because he had energy and fervor, because he knew exactly what he wanted and had the courage to take it. Was this an augury, a portent? Were the Socialists going to fail everywhere because they hesitated and fumbled? Were the Reds going to win because the holders of privilege throughout the world wouldn’t permit any social change without violence? Anyhow, that was the way it had been here in the Var. Lanny has heard that Jean Catroux had gone to Spain to fight the Fascists; now he was back, hunted as an outlaw by the Vichyites, and helping to prepare the French workers for renewed war upon the Nazi enemy. In that war the Reds would come forward as leaders precisely because they knew what they wanted and had the courage and the fervor.
XIII
The other man was a dockworker, solid and weatherbeaten, with a horny hand and a devastating grip. Lanny, who played tennis and the piano, was able to survive it. The man’s name was Soulay, and Lanny had never seen him before. As he expected, the woman proved to be Mlle. Richard. He was told now that her name was Mlle. Bléret, but of course he couldn’t know whether that was a real name or another nom de guerre. She blushed as he shook hands with her, and her voice was unsteady as she said: “Comrade Budd, we are dreadfully ashamed of what happened on your last visit here.”
He answered, with his agreeable smile: “Don’t worry about it. The mistake was a natural one, and it taught me a useful lesson.” He was thinking what he had thought the first time he had spoken to this young woman, that she was intelligent and attractive, and that he would like to know more about her. There was a difference, however, between this time and last: he was now a married man.
“This we have to assure you,” put in Catroux, alias “Zed.” “Every franc of the money taken from you was used for the cause.”
“I took that for granted,” Lanny said. “It appealed to my sense of humor that you expended so much effort to get what Comrade Bruges would have brought to you more quickly.”
Possibly this line of conversation did not appeal to Zed; it was one of his exploits for which he would never be awarded a medal of honor. In a businesslike tone he remarked: “Comrade Budd, it will be necessary that we assign you a code name. Obviously we should never speak your real name from now on. Will it be all right if you become ‘Monsieur Zhone’?”
“O.K.,” Lanny said, and restrained an impulse to smile. He was familiar with the forms that English names take to a Frenchman. This one would be written “Jones.”
“You will continue to communicate through Bruges, and you will give his name and only his to the American Intelligence service. There will be no need for you to mention the rest of this group, even to President Roosevelt. We will decide who is to meet the Intelligence man when he comes.”
Again Lanny said “O.K.,” and again he was amused to see Comrade Catroux taking charge of the former patron of his school. The bourgeoisie giving place to the proletariat! “Arise, ye prisoners of starvation! Arise, ye wretched of the earth!”
XIV
With these four anti-Nazis Lanny sat in consultation. He told them as much as he was allowed to, enough to give them courage in a time of seemingly endless defeat He described the prodigious war works now under way in the New World, especially the Budd-Erling effort which he had seen with his own eyes. In return they told him what they desired from the American government, pending the arrival of an army on any one of the shores of la belle France. They repeated what Bruges had said already: “Don’t send us commandos. Don’t come until you mean to stay!”
Without direct questions the visitor gathered a few items concerning these new comrades. Soulay was an old-time labor man and a Catholic. Mlle. Bléret had no special label; she came of a doctor’s family in the northeast, and was earning her living here because she had to; she was helping in the fight against the Germans because her mother had been killed in the wanton bombing of refugees on the highways. An odd fact that came out in the course of conversation was that Catroux had met Raoul Palma during the fighting in Spain, and had asked about Lanny Budd and been told that he had lost interest in the workers and gone back to, his own class. That was what Lanny had told his friend to say, and it had caused the Red leader’s mind to become centered upon this renegade. It might easily have cost Lanny his life.
“Don’t worry about anything you may hear about me,” he cautioned them. “Remember, not even the Intelligence people who come to you will know about ‘Camarade Zhone,’ and you are not to mention me to them. It is my job to travel and to take any role that will help me get information. If you hear of me in the enemy’s camp, shake your heads sadly and say that it was to be expected and that no help can be expected from the haute bourgeoisie.”
He impressed upon them that the main thing was to keep the Fleet out of Nazi hands. He came back to this a second and a third time, assuring them that a crisis was bound to come soon, and advising with them as to how to meet it. One of the crimes of the Laval regime, they told him, was forcing French sailors to teach Germans how to handle these ships; the Germans were learning fast. Lanny said: “That is our President’s greatest concern. With your Fleet they might get control of the Mediterranean, and we might lose the war, or, at any rate, have it prolonged for several years.”
The answer of these people of the underground was: “Tell your great friend that it will not happen. The French sailors—not the officers but the marins—will sink the ships even if they have to go down With them. Les boches ne les auront. Jamais, jamais!”
5
Testament of Bleeding War
I
Lanny stayed in Toulon long enough to ask questions about paintings. He once more inspected the collection of the wealthy D’Avrienne family, and gave them another chance to put a reasonable price upon a Nattier which they possessed—a portrait more of costumes than of human features, he told them. Since their views still did not meet, he gave them more time and took the crowded train back to Cannes. He could feel certain that he had done good work in that base of the French Fleet, and that the authorities of the town could have no grounds for suspicion.
His mother was prepared to be told that he was planning next to visit Switzerland. She could not restrain the impulse to protest: “You’re not going into Germany, Lanny!” He answered her: “Good heavens! That would be trading with the enemy.”
It was all right to trade with the Swiss; they were neutral and were getting rich on the war. To be sure, they had to spend a good part of it on their army, standing guard at all their passes, day and night. Even so, many of them were worried about the future, and some might be glad to have money put to their accounts in one of the great New York banks. On those terms they would part with a painting or two. So Lanny explained, and it made a story—good enough to fool the Swiss, perhaps, but it did not fool Mrs. Beauty Budd Detaze Dingle, who had been in the world a long time.
L
anny’s reason for coming back, he said, was to have his clothes pressed and his laundry done; but really he was hoping there might be another letter from Bernhardt Monck. Finding none, he decided to take a chance anyhow. He got his railroad ticket and his Swiss visa, and took the train eastward to the broad rich valley of the River Rhone, familiar to him since childhood, and to invading armies as far back as history records. At the silk-weaving city of Lyon the road divides into three forks, one westward to Vichy, one northward to Paris, and one eastward to Geneva—three cities which had come to be centers of attention and activity for a secret agent.
The Rhône flows down from Geneva, and the railroad follows its valley. Near the Swiss border is the French town of Annemasse, where the Swiss customs and security agents come aboard to inspect papers and baggage. Lanny’s papers were in order; his card from President Roosevelt had been neatly sewed back into the lining of his coat, which the polite Swiss did not examine. He sat looking out of the windows at the rushing green waters of the river, which comes out of Lac Leman, or, to be exact, of which the lake constitutes a forty-five-mile stretch. At the foot of the lake, near the dam over which the water flows, is a small island. On it, slightly less than two centuries ago, there had resided a revolutionary writer, much dreaded and maligned by the powers that then were; but the whirligig of time had brought him revenge, and now the island was known as Rousseau’s, and tourists came to see his statue.