“But what can we do, Lanny? The Führer has made his attitude plain, over and over again. To him Bolshevism is the devil incarnate.”
“I know it, else I wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t be your friend. I couldn’t be, unless I believed in your integrity. But the problem is to convince other people. They say: ‘Hitler has made a deal with the Reds.’”
“But that is obviously only a temporary matter, Lanny. Britain and France drove us to it; the French had an alliance, and the British were threatening to make one.”
“The average man forgets all that—even the average big businessman in America. I have to say: ‘I know. I have talked with the Führer, and with his Deputy. The goal of all their efforts is to end that horrid menace on their eastern border. As for Britain, they desire nothing so much as an understanding, a settlement that will give Germany her outlet to the east.”
“Absolutely, Lanny!”
“The trouble was, I hadn’t seen you for the greater part of a year. I suppose twenty times someone said to me: ‘Yes, but that was more than half a year ago, and maybe they’ve changed their program-how can you be sure?’ So finally I said to myself: ‘I’m out-of-date. I’ll so back into Germany, and sell a couple of paintings for Hermann to provide an excuse. I’ll see Rudi and maybe the Führer, and hear what they have to say now—if they care to talk to me.’”
“I certainly care to, Lanny. There has been no change—quite the contrary. It is literally an agony to me to see Germany and Britain destroying each other. I don’t want to bomb London, and neither does Hermann—he will tell you that. I give you my word, I valued the Guildhall as much as I do the New Chancellery, and I value what each stands for. I want a truce, and a deal that will last. I want an end to this madness, and I have heard the Führer say the same thing a thousand times. He doesn’t even ask that Britain shall help as against the Reds. We can do it alone, and we ask only that Britain give up her insane rage against us.”
“I don’t say that it can be done, Rudi; I would be a fool to say that. But I promise to do my best. If the Führer will say that to me with his own lips. I’ll go out and repeat it, word for word, as faithfully as a phonograph, to a dozen key men in London and the States. There’s just a possibility that Churchill might be overthrown, as well as Roosevelt, and this fratricide might be brought to a halt overnight.”
“I assure you, Lanny, I’d give my life to bring that about. I mean it literally—for I have fought in the trenches and know what it means to be ready to die.”
“I have never fought, Rudi, but I know I’d be willing to, in this cause. Let’s try it together, and see what we can work out.” It was on that bargain that they shook hands.
IX
Lanny telephoned to the official Residenz of Hermann Wilhelm Göring, Reichsmarschall, Reichsminister, and bearer of so many other titles that his own staff couldn’t remember them all. The caller asked for Oberst Furtwaengler, who had been his friend for a matter of seven years; Lanny learned that he had just been promoted to General-major. “Herrlich, Herr Budd!” exclaimed the SS officer, who, unlike most of them, aspired to be taken as a man of European culture. “I heard that you were in town and meant to call you.” They exchanged compliments, and Lanny asked after the Generalmajor’s charming wife and his children—there was a new one. Only after he had shown the proper amount of interest in a staff officer did he venture to inquire: “Is Seine Exzellenz visible these days?”
“Leider, I am not permitted to say where he is at the moment. But I can reach him.”
“Tell him that I really ought to see him before I leave. Since we last met I have been in Vichy France twice, and in Britain, and in America all the way to California. I have some important messages for him. Also, I have news about paintings, though I don’t suppose he has much time to think of that subject now.”
“Don’t mistake him, Herr Budd—nothing will ever be permitted to diminish his interest in paintings. I will get in touch with him and call you.”
So Lanny settled down to study the four pages which now comprised the Völkischer Beobachter, from which one could learn much about conditions in Berlin. It was before the time that death notices were prohibited, and very nearly a page of the paper was given up to advertisements, paid for by relatives according to the German custom: each a tiny oblong enclosed in a black border, and each reverential in tone. “Fallen on the field of battle, in the twenty-second year of his dutiful life,” or something like that, and always a pious phrase, with Adolf Hitler substituted for Deity: “In the service of the Führer,” or “gladly, for the Führer”—all morale-building phrases.
All the war news was favorable; the German people were not told the details of how the British had swept the Italians almost all the way out of Libya; they were told about the achievements of the German air corps which was stationed in Sicily and was closing the Eastern Mediterranean to the British and making Malta all but untenable to the foe. They were told that pro-Nazi governments were now firmly established in the Balkan states and that a pact had just been signed with Yugoslavia; they were not told that the people of Yugoslavia were in revolt against this deal—something which Lanny had learned from the newspapers of Switzerland. In every line of the Völkischer, one could see the fine Rhenish hand of the crooked-limbed and crooked-souled little Reichsminister, “Unser Doktor,” who decided each day what the German people were to believe about their world.
X
The Generalmajor phoned. His great Chief would be very happy to meet Herr Budd, but it would be necessary to fly. Lanny said: “I don’t mind flying—especially when I have one of the Reichsmarschall’s pilots.” The staff officer replied: “Aber, es ist Krieg.” Lanny said: “I’ll take my chances.”
One other detail, rather embarrassing, explained the officer; it would be necessary for the guest to be blindfolded. To this regulation there was no exception for Ausländer, even the most distinguished. Lanny laughed and said: “I would be willing to be blindfolded for a week if I were sure of seeing Seine Exzellenz on Saturday night.” A Nazi who aspired to be taken for a good European found this delightfully clever.
A staff car would call for him at ten o’clock next morning; meantime Lanny went shopping in Berlin. He wanted to write a letter asking a price for a certain painting which he had viewed on his last trip; and apparently somebody had been too greatly tempted by the folder with a few sheets of carbon paper which he kept in his suitcase. Anyhow, it couldn’t be found, and Lanny wanted one sheet—just one sheet of carbon paper! He wandered from shop to shop, and everywhere he saw a generous stock of all kinds of goods in the windows, but when he went inside he found that the shelves were bare. “Leider, mein Herr,” they would say. “Wir hoffen,” but never, “wir haben!”
When he mentioned that this or that was in the windows, the answer was: “But those are not for sale.” When a perverse foreigner persisted: “Why do you keep them there?” one clerk replied: “Polizeilich empfohlen”—which fell rather oddly upon foreign ears, meaning in literal translation: “Policely recommended.” That struck Lanny as a characteristic Nazi phenomenon; the police didn’t have to order, it was sufficient if they “recommended” that the show windows should be kept well filled. Some shopkeepers were saving trouble by setting a little sign alongside the goods: “Not for sale”!
One thing was plentiful and free, and that was music. Any day you could hear the three B’s, Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms; but only one M—Mozart, never Mendelssohn, who stood for Jewish shallowness and frivolity, or Mahler, who stood for Jewish pretentiousness. Lanny went to an afternoon concert, and found it crowded with reverent people. He could have his own emotions and his own thoughts, but they couldn’t be happy ones, for in his soul was infinite unending grief for a Germany that had been murdered, or was being murdered day after day; for all the monuments of the old German civilization that were being bombed out of existence, and for all the potential Mozarts and Beethovens who were being slaughtered on battlefields far from h
ome. Most of all he mourned because he, Lanny Budd, who had so loved German culture, now had to hate it and do everything in his power to bring it to destruction. Was there anybody else in this symphony hall thinking such thoughts while the tragic funeral march of Beethoven’s Eroica was being played? And if there was anything in the theory of telepathy, what a jangle of brainwaves this foreign visitor must have been creating!
XI
Back to the hotel, and dinner with one of Lanny’s clients, an elderly merchant who loved fine paintings. Lanny guessed that he must be in need of funds; and certainly, by his appearance and behavior he was in need of a dinner. It might be possible for Lanny to take a painting out with him—he would ask Oberst Furtwaengler about a permit, and would probably get it. They agreed upon a price and Lanny saw the old gentleman out into the blackout, and then went to bed early, for an air-raid alarm was always to be expected, and resort to the shelter was polizeilich befohlen.
The British bombers left their homeland at about dusk. They had become wary after a year and a half of conflict with the Luftwaffe and with the anti-aircraft guns which surrounded every German target of importance. If they were bound for Central or Eastern Germany they would fly over the North Sea and come in by unexpected routes. It seemed that one of their purposes was to deprive good Germans of their sleep, for they would aim for one city and then veer off to another. They were due over Berlin shortly after midnight, but they would vary this, too. All good Berliners now slept in their underwear, and kept their shoes and trousers and overcoats close at hand. They loudly cursed the malicious foe, calling him an enemy of humanity, a throwback to barbarism, a monster out of hell. Lanny, listening, would have liked to ask: “Did you never hear of Guernica and Madrid, of Warsaw and Rotterdam, of London and Coventry?” But of course he couldn’t speak such words, and indeed he avoided speaking any word of that language which unfortunately was called English and not American. He rolled his “r’s” and growled his gutturals so that no shopkeeper or waiter or other humble German might report him for a spy.
Some time in the wee small hours the sirens screamed. Lanny slipped into his clothes and ran down three of the five flights of stairs in the Hotel Adlon, and one more into the basement—it was forbidden to use the elevator. There was a well-appointed room with comfortable chairs for the guests; none of the help appeared, and presumably there was a separate shelter for them. Lanny had an interesting experience, for in the seat next to him was an elderly gentleman in the uniform of a Rumanian general; he had a gray mustache and—believe it or not—rouged cheeks; his figure indicated that he was wearing corsets. He sat very stiff and stern, telling the world that he had no particle of fear, and also that he did not care to engage in promiscuous conversation.
There was something vaguely familiar about his face, and Lanny kept stealing glances at it; he had met so many officers in so many gorgeous uniforms in the course of a social career which had begun very young. Finally it came to him, and he leaned over and whispered: “Pardon me, but is this by any chance Captain Bragescu?”
“General Bragescu,” replied the other, with heavy accent.
“You were Captain when I knew you, sir. My name is Lanny Budd, and my father is Robert Budd who was European representative of Budd Gunmakers.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the other. And then: “Oh!” again. “You are that little boy who took me torch fishing!”
“And you speared a large green moray,” supplied Lanny. “A dangerous creature. And you told me about how they catch sturgeon at the mouth of the Danube and cut out the black caviar and throw the fish back alive.”
So the great man unbent and they had a jolly time, even with bombs crashing not far away, and people cringing in ill-concealed terror all about them. The Captain had visited Bienvenu to make a deal for—what was it? oh, yes, automatic pistols! And he had stayed a couple of days, and had thought Lanny’s mother the loveliest woman he had ever laid eyes on. He didn’t mention it now, but he had been greatly disappointed to discover that she didn’t go automatically with the pistols. He had been entertained by a lively and talkative little boy, already a man of the world prepared to deal with every social situation. More than a quarter of a century had passed, but it all came back out of the deep, deep memory ocean. And before they went back to bed, the General, who was in Berlin representing the new Fascist government of his country, was telling this sympathetic American all about how the coup d’état had been pulled off, and what territorial emoluments had been promised his native land.
13
The Least Erected Spirit
I
The staff car took Lanny to the great Tempelhoferfeld, which now, of course, was a military port; but there was nothing secret about it, it was one of the landmarks of Berlin and could not be camouflaged. Only when the visitor was taken out into the field and placed in the co-pilot’s seat of a fighter plane did the polite young flight officer put into his hands a small bandage of black silk cloth with two elastic straps in back. “Verzeihung, Herr Budd,” he said, and Lanny replied: “Danke schön,” and proceeded to put it over his eyes, which it covered completely. “Richtig?” he asked, and the other replied, American fashion: “O.K.” He added: “Please, you are not to touch it under any circumstances.” Lanny replied: “I understand.”
The plane took off with a roar. It had been headed east, and the pressure on Lanny’s body told him that it was making a half turn. Of course Göring’s headquarters—Gefechtsstand, it was called, “combat station”—would be in the west, probably in Belgium or northeastern France. Lanny was used to planes and the difference in their sounds, and he could tell that this was one of the fastest; he guessed that he would be sitting here for an hour and a half or two hours, and he sat slumped in the seat with his arms folded and his mind on the details of what he hoped to get from the fat commander.
They were flying low—Lanny knew that because he had had no crackling in his ears. Time passed, and he was thinking that they must be going far into France, when the pilot leaned toward him—the only time he spoke during the trip—and shouted: “Wir sind nah deran.” The plane made a half circle, the engine slowed, and with a light bump the wheels touched the ground. A voice said: “Guten morgen, Herr Budd. Oberleutnant Förster.” Lanny recalled one of the younger officers whom he had met at Karinhall. His hand was taken and he was helped down from the plane and from it to a car—still with the blindfold in position.
He had tried to guess what sort of place he was going to. It would be the advanced headquarters of the Luftwaffe, from which the fighting across the Channel was being directed. It would be an ultra-secret place, and necessarily large; it probably wouldn’t be new, because it must have been needed in great haste. It would be some old château in a forest; it would have an airfield near, but not too near, for airfields were an invitation to bombing. The Gefechtsstand would be a great telephone exchange, with direct lines to every field in Germany and the conquered lands, and likewise to all the centers of government and industry. The supreme commander would have a soundproof room, and a desk with several telephones on it, and a strong and comfortable chair in which he could sit and rave and storm and curse and govern the Luftwaffe, just as Lanny had heard him doing from the Residenz, and from Karinhall and Rominten and the Obersalzberg and other places where Lanny had been a guest over a period of eight years.
All this fitted in with being led along a graveled walk, and ascending half a dozen deep stone steps, and passing into an interior where there was a murmur of voices and echo of footsteps in a spacious place. Then down a long corridor with many people passing, coming and going with brisk quick talk. They stopped in front of a door, the door was opened—and suddenly came a bellow: “Jawohl! Wie geht’s bei dem blinden Maulwurf!” It pleased the old-time robber baron to command: “Stand the Schurke up against that wall and shoot him!” Lanny of course grinned—for he mustn’t let any old robber get a “rise” out of him.
The Oberleutnant slipped the bandage off his eyes;
and there stood the figure whom all good Germans loved; they called him, affectionately, “Unser Hermann,” a liberty such as they never took with the Führer. He was several inches shorter than Lanny but made up for it in girth; he had weighed two hundred and eighty pounds the last time he had reported to his art expert, and certainly he hadn’t lost anything since then. He wore a simple blue uniform appropriate to wartime, and his only decoration was the eight-pointed gold marshal’s star; but he would never be without his emerald ring, about an inch square, and a bunch of diamonds on one finger of the other hand.
He always roared when he saw visitors; a medium roar if he was glad to see them, a double roar if he was angry. He always grasped Lanny’s hand with one which was full of power, and Lanny, forewarned, grasped back with determination. He looked at his host and saw that his usually florid features had paled startlingly. That was what ten months of unanticipated war had done to him; ten months of incessant worry and thwarted hopes, for the adored Luftwaffe hadn’t been able to knock out the Royal Air Force, and Hermann had had to tell his Nummer Eins that it was impossible to invade England then, perhaps ever. No doubt he had taken many a tongue lashing for his Dummheit, his Eselei, his Blödsinn. Quite a change in two years, from the happy day when the Führer had given a banquet to big leading generals and imparted to them the tidings that he had decided to wipe out Poland. Der Dicke, according to one of his aides who had blabbed to Lanny, had been so delighted that he had leaped onto the table and danced a war dance.
The visitor had time for a glance about him and saw that he was in a high-ceilinged room with all the marks of elegance: carved paneling, a marble fireplace, and heavy tapestries on the walls. Hermann Wilhelm Göring would never fail to do himself well. It was undoubtedly a château, and he had conquered it and was making himself at home. On his desk was a tray with an emptied glass of beer and the remains of sandwiches; there were remains also in the fat man’s mouth, and now and then he made an explosive sound which had caused Robbie and his son, strictly in private, to give him the code name of “Sir Toby Belch.” In Lanny’s world it wasn’t considered good form to mention those sounds, but Hermann thought they were funny, and when he laughed, everybody laughed with him.