Obviously, Raoul was withdrawing his invitation to Toulon and warning Lanny of danger. He must have got some hint of the suspicion existing against his friend. But how had the partisans known that Lanny was coming to Toulon? Surely Raoul wouldn’t have talked about it! And could it be that suspicion had now fallen upon Raoul? Did his absence from the bookstore mean that the partisans had been holding him? Or had they sent him on some errand, to get him out of the way while they dealt with Lanny? It must have been well known to them that Raoul and Lanny had been friends in the old days of the school, and Raoul could have had a hard time convincing them that those old days were no more. Would they now suspect Raoul of having plotted with Gigi to help the prisoner escape?
During the rest of his stay in Bienvenu, the P.A. didn’t once dare to go out by night, and he spent a lot of time trying to think of some way to get in touch with his friend and help him if help was needed. Then one morning came the postman with one of those humble-appearing notes which said so much in so little:
“Cher M. Budd: Just a line to tell you how pleased I am with the little travel picture. I keep it before me always. I am well and busy. Best wishes. Bruges.”
So there was one more chapter which Lanny Budd closed!
BOOK FOUR
Put It to the Touch
12
Lieb’ Vaterland
I
Lanny Budd wrote a letter, in English:
“Dear Rudi:
“I have done quite a lot of traveling since we last met in Paris. I have been all the way to California and have met a number of persons you will be interested to hear about. There is one important piece of news which can hardly have reached you and which I think you ought to have. Would it be possible for you to meet me in Switzerland? I do not suggest coming into Germany, feeling so embarrassed because of the part my country has been playing in the present struggle. It seems to me hardly possible that the German people can tolerate the presence of any American. But I know that you personally won’t blame me, and your friendship is valued by me, as you no doubt know.
“Also, I have had some very interesting experiences with Madame Zyszynski. One of Tecumseh’s prophecies came true in a most extraordinary way. The old lady’s health has been better this winter. Conditions of travel are so hard that I wouldn’t think it wise to bring her now, but when the weather moderates we might work out some way for you and your friends to see her again. I am at my mother’s home in Juan-les-Pins and will wait for your reply to this letter.
“Mit deutschem Grusse to you and to our mutual friend,
“Your devoted Lanny.”
This was addressed to Reichsminister Rudolf Hess at his Berlin residence and marked “personal.” Lanny knew that mail going into Germany would be censored, but he could feel certain that no German would interfere with a letter to the Number Three Nazi. He had studied every word of it carefully; Madame Zyszynski of course was a bait, one which he had used more than once with Hess, who was as deeply interested in psychic matters as Lanny, and far more credulous. His suggestion of Switzerland was likewise a blind, for he doubted very much if Hess would leave his own country at the present time, and anyhow, it would be impossible to meet him secretly in a foreign land. Lanny wanted very much to meet Hitler, but he didn’t want to ask to meet him, he wanted to be asked. “Our mutual friend” of course could mean nobody else, for the Führer was first in Rudi’s thoughts and was supposed to be first in Lanny’s.
In due course came the reply:
“Dear Lanny:
“I have your letter, and of course I want very much to see you, but I cannot possibly get away from my heavy duties. Do forget your idea that anybody in Germany will blame you for what has happened. We know that we have many friends in America and we appreciate them. You will be heartily welcome. I, too, have things to tell you. Assuming that you will come by way of Switzerland I am giving orders to our Consulate Generale at Berne to provide you with a visa. If there should be any hitch, put in a telephone call to me and describe it as personal.
“Our friend is well, but heavily burdened. I will tell him that you are expected.
“As ever yours,
“Rudi.”
There were to be trains going up the Rhône valley, all the way to Geneva, so Jerry Pendleton had been told. Whether promises would be kept was anybody’s guess, but presently Jerry phoned and reported that by the magic which he understood—a small douceur—he had obtained for the world-famous connoisseur d’art M. Budd a first-class accommodation. The train was to leave in the evening, but Jerry said: “You had better be on hand in the afternoon, and take a lunch box and a bottle of whatever you want.”
Beauty Budd would see to that, of course. She was greatly disturbed by Lanny’s insistence upon taking journeys in these dangerous times, but all he would say was: “Picture business.” When she protested, he grinned and said: “Old darling, that’s the way I earn my daily bread!” Long ago this woman of the world had learned the sad lesson that if you nag the lordly male he stops coming to you. So Bienvenu was a rendezvous and mailbox from which a P.A. could conduct his intrigues, and pending his arrival, Beauty would put his mysterious letters away in a special compartment of her escritoire. No doubt she studied their outsides carefully, and learned to know the writing, and which kind sent him to Switzerland and which to Toulon.
Had she been fooled by her son’s gradual shift of political opinion? He thought it unlikely, for she was an old-time intriguer, having assisted Robbie in the handling of munitions deals to the extent of tens of millions of dollars. She knew all about how to manipulate a personality and to guide a conversation into a certain field; she had helped to teach Lanny, and when she saw him doing it, she must have understood every move and every word, and had no trouble in guessing what he was trying to find out. When he refused to take his mother into his confidence, she could be sure it was because he had given his word to somebody, and it must be somebody of importance. Through all the ages it has been the fate of women to bear sons with pain, to rear them with pains, and then see them go out into a world full of perils.
II
Lanny’s journey was slow and uneventful. There was no difficulty at the border, for Swiss officials came on the train at the French border town of Annemasse, and Lanny’s papers were in order. So once more he walked the streets of the very old city of watchmakers and moneylenders of which he had become fond. Geneva wasn’t an exciting place from the standpoint of a world traveler; its burghers were staid and, if reports were true, rather smug concerning themselves and their town. But that didn’t trouble Lanny, whose interest in night clubs and social gaieties was purely professional. The city was clean and its views fine. At Bienvenu he had left the beginnings of spring, but here it was still midwinter; snow in the streets, and nothing but snow on the mountains. He liked to walk, and found the cold bracing; the absence of almost-nude ladies on the waterfront was soothing to the senses of a gentleman whose duties compelled him to lead a celibate life.
For many years one of Lanny’s pleasures in this old city had been a call upon his friend Sidney Armstrong, one of the officials of the League of Nations. Now, alas, that dream of the world’s idealists was a war casualty; its beautiful white limestone palace was closed for lack of funds and Sidney had returned to the land of his fathers and was teaching a course on international affairs in what was contemptuously known as a “freshwater” college—that is to say, one which didn’t happen to be Yale or Harvard or Princeton. Visiting that palace would have been like visiting the grave of his Grandfather Samuel Budd in Newcastle, a duty which Lanny had so far neglected, and for the neglect had been severely censured by the old gentleman’s spirit, or whatever it was that spoke through the lips of Madame.
Always in any part of the world, a P.A.’s first duty was to establish himself as an art expert. In this town Lanny knew an elderly lover of paintings, a merchant by the name of Fröder. He was always happy to see a visitor from overseas and to hear about events
in the art worlds of Paris and London and New York. Lanny talked freely, and was rewarded with local news; the Swiss “cheese king” had recently died and left some paintings which his widow was disposed to get rid of. Lanny was pleased to be introduced to this lady and inspect her collection. He found in it two very good examples of the work of Segantini, a true genius who was claimed by both the Swiss and the Italians. He had painted in the high plateaus and had almost frozen while doing so. Lanny found it interesting to contrast him with the Dutch van Gogh, who had almost been burned while painting the dazzling sunlight of the Midi. Lahny’s client, Harlan Winstead, had been wanting a Segantini for a long time. Also there were several works by Ferdinand Hodler, a Swiss painter who had been taken up by the Germans prior to World War I, and had decorated the walls of several of their universities. But he had turned against his patrons during the war, and so he was no longer their idol. Art is a weapon!
All this took time, but he was in no special hurry. The reports of what he was doing spread quickly through this small city, which was like a village—indeed, Lanny had observed that the wealthy class in every city constitute a village, and are as much interested in gossip as if they could look out of their parlor windows and see what was going on. Lanny wanted to establish himself as a person who had a right to be here, now and for the future. The Swiss, on account of their precarious position, were intensely concerned to preserve their neutrality, and to restrict the activities of the many sorts of agents who infested the country. Nazis or anti-Nazis, it was all the same to the Genevans; what they wanted was to dodge the bombs. Many of them hadn’t even wanted the League of Nations in their midst.
III
An impeccably dressed American gentleman strolled along the lake-front and looked at the blue water, too deep to freeze. He looked at the monuments of Protestant reformers, as every tourist does. He stopped in at the art shops, to see if by any chance a genius had arisen in Geneva. So far they had been rather scarce. Perhaps geniuses have to break rules, and here it was hardly ever done.
A man’s thoughts are his own; and always in Lanny’s mind was the hope that he might run into Bernhardt Monck, and follow him at a discreet distance to some place where they could exchange a few words unobserved. Almost a year had passed since they had last met here, and Monck had told Lanny that it was the intention of the Wehrmacht to make a surprise raid upon Denmark and Norway. Since then Lanny had had only two letters from this man of the German underground, one-time sailor and Social-Democratic party official. The last letter, brief, carefully veiled, and signed with the nom “Brun,” had informed Lanny that the writer had been ill, and that he had been unable to find any paintings which he thought worthy of an expert’s distinguished attention; however, he wanted Herr Budd to know that he was not neglectful and would write as soon as he found anything good. Then silence; and of course that might mean anything in the case of one who was being ceaselessly hunted by the Gestapo.
The last rendezvous had been in the public library, which is in the University buildings. Lanny went there every day and took a look around the reading room. Failing in this, he did a little maneuvering and caused his friend Herr Fröder to mention his presence in the city to an editor of the Journal de Genève. There was published a brief interview in which Lanny didn’t say anything about having purchased paintings for Marshal Göring and the Führer, but confined himself to mentioning important American collections to which he had been privileged to contribute. This, of course, brought letters from persons who possessed what they thought were old masters. Also, it served its secret purpose; for next afternoon, when Lanny entered the reading-room, he saw there the shaven bullet head and the broad shoulders he knew so well.
He took but one glance, then seated himself and pretended to read a book. Now and then he stole a look, and when his eyes met Monck’s for a fraction of a second, he went back to his reading. When he saw that Monck had left, he got up and strolled out. Monck was going down the steps of the building, and Lanny followed across the park and into a street of shops. The man stopped in front of one of them and stood looking into the window; Lanny did the same, and heard a voice murmur: “Reformation Monument, nineteen hours.” Lanny whispered: “Right,” and the other strolled on.
That was the way they had made their contact a year ago, and it had served all purposes. The Reformation Monument is a long wall with statues of the Protestant reformers and heroes. At seven in the evening, in the month of March and in the shadows of high mountains, it is dark; Lanny strolled to the spot, which is in the same park as the University. He made sure there was no one following him, and when he saw his friend he followed to a spot where by a street light they could see a space all around them and at the same time be protected in the shadow of some shrubbery. There they spoke in low voices, and used no names.
“What has happened to you?” Lanny asked.
“They tried to finish me off,” was the reply. “Two men slugged me on a dark street. They meant to kill me, but as it happened, a man came out of a house near by and so they ran away. I was a bit tougher than they had reckoned on. I was laid up in hospital for a spell, but I’m all right now.”
“What did the authorities do?”
“It was some time before they could question me, and then I pretended to think it was an ordinary robbery. If I had admitted the truth, they would probably have ordered me out of the country, and there was no place I could go. It is a bourgeois government, you understand.”
“Surely so. Did your enemies get any papers?”
“What they got gave them no information, of that you may be sure.”
“You are still in danger here?”
“It is a war. I am more careful; I do not go into lonely places, and if I see anybody trying to get near me, I am not ashamed to run like the devil. Once this excited the suspicion of the police and they questioned me; I told them that I had been robbed once, and that I was afraid. They are suspicious of me and have set traps more than once, but they have never been able to get anything on me. My papers are in order and I have money in the bank; what more can you ask in the bourgeois world?”
“You haven’t had any news for me of late?”
“Our group has met with a calamity, and I no longer have the sources of information that were of such benefit to us. I do not know just what happened; my key man disappeared—that is all I have heard. He may have broken under torture and revealed his own sources of information. It is a war fought in darkness and you do not see your foes.”
“You attribute the attack on you to betrayal in Germany?”
“Who can say? I have always taken it for granted that the Nazis here would know me. The police of this city have made it clear that they suspect me, and there is apt to be a connection between them and the Nazis. Capitalist governments talk about liberty but what they mean is property. If they have to choose between a Nazi and a Red, they are for the Nazi ninety-nine times out of a hundred. If I were to meet with a police official or a consul or anybody in authority who held the balance even, I should honor him as a great man; but it has not happened to me yet.”
IV
Nothing would have pleased a P.A. more than to sit down over a meal or before a warm fire and have a long talk with this one-time sailor, labor leader, and Capitán of the International Brigade in the Spanish civil war. He had been able to do it in Paris a couple of years ago, but not now in anxious and beleaguered Geneva. However, he couldn’t resist the temptation to say: “I have been worried about you. Tell me something about how you live.”
“I live with a Calvinist family,” replied the man of the underground; “that helps to keep me respectable. I am not permitted to earn money, but I am permitted to compile data on the diplomatic history of Switzerland during the Napoleonic wars. This I do conspicuously in the library, and keep the results piled up on the desk in my room. What I do at other hours I cannot tell even to you, lieber Genosse.”
“Surely not,” agreed Lanny, who had his own secrets.
“Tell me this much: you have another contact?”
“I had two, and still have one; it is not so good as the other, but I hope to improve it.”
“Don’t answer any question unless you think it proper. Is the underground meeting with any success in Germany?”
“I wish to God I could say yes, but I cannot. The enemy is utterly ruthless; they will kill a thousand innocent persons to get one guilty. They are extirpating us root and branch.”
“I am to tell my friends outside that they are not to count upon any uprising from within?”
“They can count upon a few persons to gather information, and even that will be greatly restricted, for facts are suppressed and it is difficult to obtain them. If your friends count upon more than that, they will be disappointed. Tell them not to blame the people too severely; all those who have brains and conscience have been murdered, or else are in the concentration camps, which are a slower form of murder. This war will be fought to the end, and with a bitterness never known in modern times.”
“Not in Spain?” inquired the P.A.
“The Spanish are an incompetent people; the Germans are the most competent in Europe, and perhaps in the world. If you Americans wish us to think otherwise, you will have to prove it. Tell me, what is the meaning of this ‘lend lease’ that I read of in the papers here?”
“It is a name which makes it possible to send help to Britain without frightening the American people too greatly.” Lanny could have said more, but he was here to listen.