II
But now, to business! “R-r-raus!” said the commander to his subordinates, and signed his guest to a chair by the desk. “Na, na, Lanny, tell me where you have been and what you have seen, und was zum Teufel treibt dieser verdammte Roosevelt?”
Lanny began the long story which he had told so many times that he could have said it in his sleep. First Pétain and Laval and Darlan and all that Vichy crew; then London, and Wickthorpe and his friends, and the meaning of his resignation; then the land of America Firsters and isolationists, of crowds that shouted to keep out of Europe’s troubles, and fellows in the country clubs who raved about “That Man” whom “somebody ought to shoot.” Der Dicke plied his guest with questions, and it was a pretty stiff examination; he didn’t want anybody feeding him any Bonbon, he said—it was the Berliners’ word for candy; he wanted the real facts, and if they were tough, all right, he would take them.
Lanny said: “Of course, Hermann. I tell you what I have seen and heard; but you have to allow for the fact that I don’t meet the war crowd; those Hurensöhne wouldn’t associate with me, and I don’t have a chance to ask them any questions.”
“How do you get along with your father?” the fat commander wanted to know. He knew Robbie Budd, respected him, and had done business with him as long as he could.
“It’s rather complicated,” explained the son. “Robbie has the excuse that he can’t help what he’s doing, and he has to consider the interests of his stockholders. I just can’t agree that stockholders come ahead of civilization, and I think Robbie ought to hold out and put up a harder fight against the New Dealers who have practically taken him over. I think I may have influenced him to some extent, for the government is very ill-satisfied with the quantity and quality of the Budd-Erling plane. You may have noticed that the R.A.F. isn’t using it very much.”
“Yes, but I understand there is a new model in production now.”
“When I asked Robbic about that he chuckled a little and said: ‘You wait and see.’ I had to be content with that, because of course it’s the most ticklish subject in the world. My guess is Robbie has tucked his best secrets away for future use; but if the government had the slightest idea of that, they would take over his plant quicker than you could bat an eyelid.”
“I’m surprised they haven’t done so,” commented the Reichsmarschall.
“There’s generally a reason for things like that. You’d be pleased to know how many people there are in the Administration who don’t like its policies and do what they can to hold back. You must understand that distrust of Britain is taught to every schoolchild in America; and from the practical point of view many of our business leaders look upon the British Empire as their principal competitor. Britain is a maritime power, like America, and these business men think we could get along a lot better with a land power like Germany.”
Der Dicke didn’t want any Bonbon, but Lanny observed that when one was put into his mouth he swallowed. “Ganz richtig!” the greedy one exclaimed; and when the visitor went on to tell about the great conspiracy that was going to put an end to Jewish-plutocratic Bolshevism in America, he beamed like the cat that had swallowed the canary. He was too well informed a man to believe that Roosevelt was a Jew, but he knew that Morgenthau was, and Frankfurter, and Frank and Rosenman and Baruch and Cohen—he had them at his tongue’s end, even down to David K. Niles.
The plot to get rid of them all at one fell swoop seemed to him perfectly natural and exactly in order; it was what Hermann himself had done in the summer of 1934, and if rumor could be believed he had forced the Führer’s hand on that occasion. While the Führer had flown to Munich to confront his old pal Röhm, he had left Hermann in control of Berlin, and Hermann had taken the occasion to uncover a wide conspiracy and to slaughter something like a thousand persons, including General Schleicher, one of Göring’s own sort, a high-up Junker Wehrmacht man. Now the Nummer Zwei rubbed his hands in glee as Lanny described the rapid progress the New York and Washington conspiracy was making, and the results that would flow from it, the instant cutting off of the newfangled abortion called “lend-lease,” which was really a declaration of war against Germany, though Germany was unfortunately not in a position to take up the challenge at the moment!
III
This man of action wanted to get busy on the proposition without loss of time. He had his own men in New York, he said, independent of everybody else, and he wanted to give them the tip and let them help with funds, and to keep their master informed day by day. But Lanny said: “For God’s sake, go slow, Hermann; you might queer the whole deal. You must understand that this is dynamite; if the least hint reached anybody that the Germans were backing it, all the important men who are in it would have to drop it like a hot poker.”
“That may be true; but there are tactful ways of going about the matter.”
“If it was you doing it, there might be intelligence enough; but don’t you know what secret agents are, as a rule?”
“Idioten!” exclaimed the Air Commander. “Scheisskerle!” He started cursing, and Lanny perceived that a sore spot had been touched.
But Göring couldn’t drop so important a subject. He so hated and feared Roosevelt, and he so dreaded a long war, the thing against which the Oberkommando had warned everybody from the beginning. Surely he ought to make some move in the case of Hearst, who published his articles and paid him sumptuous prices! Surely Hearst would receive a representative of a featured author!
Lanny said: “You must understand that Hearst has a million enemies, and he is afraid of every single one of them. He owns eighteen great newspapers and he worries about each one, and what his enemies might do to ruin it. Right now he would be afraid to be seen in the same room with any German.”
“But I could send an American to him.”
“How would Hearst know that he was an American, and that he wasn’t a plant of the British government, or even of the F.B.I.? Take my word and let me handle this. I am going back soon, and these people have known me a long time, and they know that I don’t want any of their money. Be sure they don’t need yours; good God, man, they have most of the money in the world. And do you want to squander what Valuta you have stowed away in New York?”
That was the right way to put it. “All right, Lanny,” said Der Dicke. “Do what you can, and come back and tell me, because I am worrying myself to a skeleton over this war that I never wanted and tried my best to prevent. You know that is true, don’t you?”
“Ja, und als ganzer Mann! I’ll give you a certificate any time you ask for it.” To himself Lanny was saying: “Du alter Windbeutel! You told me in 1939 you had stuck out your neck in 1938 and would never do it a second time!”
IV
The Reichsmarschall bawled for his lunch; it was five minutes late, he declared, and nobody thought to mention how recently he had stuffed himself with cheese sandwiches and beer. Orderlies came running and wheeled in a table and brought trays containing Hasenpfeffer and a large platter of cold meats, fried potatoes, and canned peas, buttered toast, a compote with rich cream and cake—you would hardly have guessed that the country was at war. Der Dicke went at it, and bade his guest do the same. Despite the fact that he came of a good Prussian family, his table manners were hardly pleasant; he stuffed and belched and then stuffed some more; he talked with his mouth full, and still more embarrassing, laughed loudly with his mouth wide open. “I am done with this dieting business,” he declared. “I am going to be as fat as nature meant me.” Then: “But what do you think they have got for me here, to reduce me?” When Lanny couldn’t guess, he exclaimed: “An electric horse! I am supposed to sic on it and get bumped.”
“I hope it is a good strong horse,” grinned Lanny.
“A dray horse, the kind that used to haul beer barrels. A Percheron, from Normandy. I pass by and look at it, and that is all I need to do. The very thought takes several pounds off me!”
The guest brought up the subject of art, an
d found that it was as Furtwaengler had stated. Die Nummer Zwei bubbled over with delight. “I am in the wholesale business!” he declared. “I have all the worthwhile paintings in Belgium and Holland and France! There has been nothing like it since art was invented.”
“I have heard rumors about it,” said the other, sharing the mood of opulence.
“It is like something out of the Arabian Nights’ Enchantments. I can hardly believe it myself. I no longer have time to look at them, I can’t even study the lists. I take them in the form of statistics.”
“Where are you keeping them?”
“I won’t tell you where—you mightn’t be able to resist the temptation!” Der Dicke’s wide mouth spread most of the way across his face, so great was his amusement.
“At least you can tell me what you plan to do with them.”
“I am going to build the greatest museum the world has ever seen, a temple of the art of all nations—a separate wing for each. The world will say there never was such a collector and never will be again. I have already drawn the plans and submitted them to the Führer.”
Lanny became suddenly serious. “Listen, Hermann; let me help with this.”
“Would it really interest you?”
“Herrgott! Have you forgotten that I am supposed to be a Kunstsachverständiger?”
“All right, you shall be my adviser. There will be a lot of trash, naturally. I was too busy to look at them. I just said: ‘Take everything, and we’ll decide later.’ You shall weed out the second-rate, and we’ll have nothing but the best.”
“I have been helping to make just such a collection for an American millionaire; but of course not on any such scale.”
“There will be nothing like this in all the world. People will remember the Hermann Göring art collection when they have forgotten who built the Luftwaffe.”
“I don’t think the British and the French are going to forget that for quite a while, Hermann.”
“Have another piece of cake,” said Der Dicke. “You like this Château-Chalon? I got it from the cellars of the due de Montalembert. Enough to last me fifty years.”
“Are you afraid to tell me where you have that stored, Hermann?” So they jested, back and forth. It was American, not Prussian; the Reichsmarschall and Reichsminister wouldn’t have taken it from one of his subordinates, which was why they bored him, and why he liked this visitor from overseas—a crazy country, full of eccentricities, amusing on the cinema screen and over the air, but now becoming dangerous and having to be taught a lesson in Machtpolitik.
Was it some such thought as this? A shadow passed across the broad fat face, and he reached for a little bottle of white pills which he kept in his pocket. It might have been some harmless stuff, say bicarbonate of soda for his belching; but there was something furtive in his action, and Lanny quickly turned his eyes to his own glass of white wine. He knew that after World War I the fugitive Captain Göring in Sweden had become a drug addict, a serious and violent case who had to be consigned to an institution. Nothing was more likely than that under the strain of disappointment and suspense he had gone back to his habit. Was that why his fat features were sallow instead of rosy, as Lanny remembered them from Paris, less than a year ago? It was a visitor’s business not to know about this, and to continue his cheerful line of conversation.
V
Lanny Budd had emptied his intellectual purse; he had given his host all the information he had, and no little entertainment. Now, after the tables had been wheeled away and they were once more alone, it was the time to collect what he could. He proceeded to give the Reichsmarschall the same line of talk that bad worked so well with Kurt Meissner and Rudolf Hess. Everywhere he traveled in France, Britain, and America, his appeaser friends wanted to know what the Führer’s intentions were, and to what extent they could count upon him for the all-important task of putting down the Red menace. It was the art expert’s hope to have a little of the Führer’s time, and get this question answered at first hand, not because he had any doubts as to where the German armies were going when they had finished in the Balkans, but because the men of big industry who controlled the foreign policies of the Anglo-Saxon lands wanted this assurance as the basis of all their planning for world peace.
“When the Führer tells you,” said Der Dicke, “I wish you would come and tell me.”
Lanny grinned. “You are trying to make me believe you don’t know where the Luftwaffe is going next?”
“Upon my honor, Lanny. The Führer keeps his own counsel, as he did during the Polish crisis, and before that, over Czechoslovakia.”
That was disappointing. Göring was a far more intelligent man than Hess, and wasn’t going to swallow Lanny’s bait so quickly.
“Tell me what I am to say for you, Hermann—to Wickthorpe and his friends, and to Hearst, and to Henry Ford, who is standing out against making munitions for the British.”
“My attitude has not changed a particle; and in this I know that I speak for the Führer too. This war is the greatest calamity that has ever befallen civilization; it is the suicide of the Aryan peoples—the very ones who were in position to take control of the world and keep the backward tribes in order. If I could talk to the key people of Britain and America, I would get down on my knees and beg them to stop and reconsider, before it is too late.”
“That is a good line, lieber Freund; I shall not fail to quote it. Aber—you must understand, this is not Lanny Budd talking, this is the people I shall meet. They say: ‘Germany has a deal with the Bolsheviks now.’”
“No man with any sense could fail to know that that is a maneuver, a temporary device. The West forced us into it—the Franco-Russian alliance, and the Franco-British mission in Moscow. Could they expect us to sit still and let them weave a spider’s web all around us? Other nations can expand, but never Germany. For us—Einkreisung!”
“That is an old story, Hermann; it has all been in the newspapers, and in the Führer’s speeches. When I take the long trip into Germany, a difficult matter in wartime, it is not to have lessons in history. My friends will expect me to bring out something new, something that meets the situation of the moment. Tell me what you want these friends to do.”
“I want them to get off our backs while we do the real job that every civilized man knows has to be done. Look at me: I am the Chief of the Luftwaffe, and when I make my plans to protect our armies in the east, I have to keep half my forces in the west. I have to know that our blood brothers, our fellow-Aryans, will be sending their planes to bomb our cities and kill our civilian workers and their women and children. It is a crime, Lanny, a monstrosity!”
“You don’t have to tell me, Hermann; I can’t sleep at night for thinking about it. The question is, what is to be done?”
“Nothing can be done so long as those two bandits, Churchill and Roosevelt, can sit at the telephone every night and plot new destruction.”
“That is elementary, and I know hundreds of people in the two countries who realize it just as clearly as you do. But the problem is, where to begin? Somebody has to trust the other. When you move against Russia, our side has to know it and be prepared to come to your defense. You must understand, I’m not hinting for information—I have it quite definitely that you are going to attack Russia not later than July. The problem is to convince the people abroad that it’s no bluff, but that they’re really going to get the thing they want so desperately.”
“If I had charge of our foreign policy, I would say to Britain and America: you want me to pull your chestnuts out of the fire for you, but I am nobody’s monkey. If you want this job done, come and help, instead of trying to destroy me.”
“You mean, you would take up a defensive strategy both east and west?”
“Gerade das! We have conquered an empire, and who can take it from us? Let Britain and America come and try!”
“But you know that is not the Führer’s temperament, and not his policy. The Wehrmacht is getting ready to overrun
Russia, and the Luftwaffe must be doing the same.”
“Well, Lanny, if you know that, it’s all right with me; but don’t ask me to talk about it. See the Führer, and if he tells you, then you will really know.”
“I am embarrassed to approach him, on account of my father’s position, so hard for him to understand. Would you care to tell him that I have information which it is worth while for him to hear? You remember, you did that at the height of the Polish crisis. I wasn’t able to do what we had hoped, but it did no harm to try.”
“How long do you intend to stay?”
“I am at your service. In a crisis like this a man does not think of his private affairs. But, at the same time, if you have any painting you want taken out, I may be able to arrange it. Our State Department puts many obstacles in the way, but so far my father’s influence has been able to overcome them. By the way, he asked me to be sure to give you his cordial greetings, and his assurances that he is doing as much as any one mere businessman can.”
VI
Lanny Budd learned that one way to keep the favor of these great and busy persons was to offer to leave promptly. It flattered them to have the value of their time appreciated. But, as it happened, Der Dicke had a different kind of vanity; it pleased him to declare that he had so systematized his work that he could always take time off. “I want you to meet some of my boys,” he said. “I have several decorations to confer.”