“We have ways of arranging such matters. We may have to tip off one person.”
“What worries me is that you think it is only one person, but in practice there will be a clerk or a secretary, and perhaps a sweetheart. Let me remind you that there is a B4 man by the name of Fordyce who has me on his very special list; he’s bound to have my photograph and fingerprints available.”
“If he catches on, it will probably be after you have left, and that will be all to the good for you; he will be certain that you are a Nazi agent who has managed to slip through his net. If he does happen to catch you, you will have to tell him that it is top secret and that he is to go directly to Churchill.”
“Churchill knows about me?”
“I have told him that a man will call. He has something to tell you that he doesn’t want to mention even over our telephone.”
“But how can I get access to Churchill without other people knowing it?”
“That is something we have Co work out. I will give him your code name, Zaharoff, when you ore due in England. Is there somebody you trust who could go to Churchill and say that name?”
“I have a boyhood friend in England, the playwright Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson. I have never mentioned you as my Chief, hut he knows that I am getting information for some high-up person, and I’d be surprised if ho hasn’t guessed it is you.”
“Would be hare access to Churchill?”
“He is rather too far to the left. Bur his father, the baronet, would certainly have it. He has several times helped Rick by getting some vital news to the papers without its source being known. He did that with the set of proposals that Hitler was trying to force upon Prague in the spring of 1939.”
“All right then, your baronet goes to Winston and says: ‘Zaharoff,’ and Winston arranges for him to bring the mysterious person to him at night, just as you have come here.”
“You understand that Churchill knows me. We saw quite a good deal of each other at Maxine Elliott’s, on the Riviera, in the winter before the war.”
“A delightful person,” said F.D., who had just come from a three-day conference with His Majesty’s First Minister.
“Didn’t you find that he talked too much?” inquired the P.A. with a grin.
“Sometimes,” was the reply; “but you know that I, too, have a weakness for telling stories.”
“Personally I didn’t mind, because I had come to hear him. I did get a chance to warn him concerning Hitler’s purposes, and I found that he had made up his mind at long last that Hitler was a more dangerous enemy than Stalin. But he was quite sure that he personally would never have to deal with the problem; he described himself as a ‘political failure,’ and said that the Tories Had put him on the shelf to stay.”
“They have dusted him off,” said F.D. “He is an extraordinary figure, and the man for this hour.”
“He knows it,” ventured Lanny. “He is playing his role as consciously as any other stage star. I think I told you of the report that Rick gave me—as early as last spring he had made up his mind that Hitler was going after Russia, and Churchill had written the speech he was going to deliver and was boring his friends making them listen to it.”
“Well, it was worth the trouble,” declared F.D. “I have to admit that it sent shivers up and down my spine.”
IX
The arrangements for a P.A.’s job having been completed, the “Governor” talked about the Atlantic Conference and the making of the Charter. He had recognized in the Duke of Marlborough’s seventh lineal descendant another master showman, a worthy companion at political arms, and now told about him with gusto. Inside that pudgy round body was a stout heart; he was the British lion incarnate, and roared at the foe in language the like of which had not been heard since Shakespeare had put words into the mouth of King Henry the Fifth. Roosevelt described him on board the cruiser Augusta smoking his big cigars—and Lanny didn’t have to imagine F.D. matching him with several cigarettes, for here he was, half sitting and half reclining in bed, and slipping one after another into the long thin holder which he tip-tilted when he wanted to assume a jaunty air.
He listened for the second time to Lanny’s description of the British leader wearing a worn red dressing gown over his white body and a floppy straw hat over his red hair; sitting by the blue-green swimming pool of a retired stage queen and discoursing on the conflict which then loomed so darkly upon the horizon. The P.A. said: “He pumped my mind dry about Hitler and Göring and Hess, everybody in Germany I knew. Beaverbrook was there, and I saw that he, too, was getting ready to break off his love affair with Nazism. I remember that he questioned me especially about Hess; he knew that Hess professed to be a Buchmanite, and the Beaver seemed to have the idea that this movement was going to save Britain from having to fight a hard war.”
“That is interesting,” commented F.D. “Beaverbrook joined us on the Augusta, and had a lot to say, as you can imagine. He told me that he had been one of the first to interview Hess after the landing in Scotland.”
“I suppose Hess knows by now that he’s not negotiating to get Britain into the war against Russia.”
“He was allowed to hear Winston’s speech over the radio.”
“What a story!” exclaimed Lanny. “If a playwright had invented that, we should call it melodrama.”
“They say it has thrown Hess into a spell of melancholia, and it is doubted if his mind will stand the strain.”
“Poor Rudi!” exclaimed his false friend. “In a happier world he might have been a useful man. He isn’t especially bright, but he was capable of complete fidelity, which you must know is not the most common of virtues. The code name I gave him was Kurvenal, who was the friend of Tristan in Wagner’s opera and was described as ‘the truest of the true.’ I should be interested to have a talk with him now.”
“You might suggest it to Winston, and ask him to arrange it.”
“I am afraid it wouldn’t do. Whatever the Nazi agents in Britain are doing, they can hardly fail to keep track of what is happening to their Deputy Führer.”
“You might think up a plausible pretext for having been allowed to see him. You might be going to Hitler with some message from Hess.”
“I’ll think about it,” Lanny said. “But I am afraid this war has long since passed the stage of negotiations. Churchill has committed the unimaginable crime of supporting the Boisheviks; and so have you.”
“You like my speeches better now than you used to?” inquired the genial great man, with a smile.
“Indeed I do, Governor!”
“You recall what I told you the first time you came to me. I couldn’t go any faster than the people would let me. I had to wait, and let events change their minds.”
“No kidding,” said Lanny, “I think your handling of this crisis will be studied as one of the miracles of history. I have been tempted to despair many a time; but you seem always cheerful and sure.”
“Ah, my lad, that’s because you’re not here after you leave the room!”
X
Lanny observed the customary stack of documents on this busy man’s reading table, and he took it as’ a silent monitor. But he permitted himself one question before offering to depart. “Governor, you have so much better sources of information than anybody else. Tell me one thing: will Russia stick it out?”
“There is no question that she means to; the only question is, will she be able.”
“What do you say about that?”
“Harry Hopkins has just come from Moscow, where he spent several days with Stalin. He is convinced that Stalin means to fight it out to the end, no matter how bitter. He has given positive assurance that they will hold out, even if it means giving up the whole of Russia; they will retreat into Siberia and continue the struggle with whatever they have left. They ask us for supplies, of course, and we shall do everything in our power to meet their needs.”
“Does Hopkins think they can hold out?”
“He ha
s no doubt about it. He says they are only in process of mobilizing their immense reserves. They are moving their machinery eastward and their manpower westward. The old men and the young and the women will do the work. Stalin says they will bleed the Wehrmacht to exhaustion, and in the end they will overwhelm it.”
“All right,” Lanny said. “On that basis I can go ahead with my job. By the way, I had another talk with my Red uncle. He says just what Hopkins says, but of course in his case it may be wishful thinking. He tells me he is going back to Russia—they will make an elder statesman of him, a foreign office adviser. He invites me to come there and says he can get me in. It might be that you will some day have an errand for me there.”
“I’ll bear it in mind,” replied the Chief. “For the present you have your hands full. Take care of yourself, for you are one man I should hate to lose.”
“Thank you, Governor; I’ll do my best to come back.” Lanny was conscious of the tiny capsule which he had sewn into the lining of his coat; but he didn’t mention it. “I know you have several men’s work to do, so, unless you have something else to tell me, I’ll toddle.”
“You might give my personal regards to Professor Hardin when you see him. I met him shortly after the last war, when I was in England, but he probably doesn’t remember it.”
“I’m guessing that he may have recognized your picture in the papers,” said Lanny with a chuckle. He received a clasp from that large strong hand, and then went out into the hall.
XI
F.D.’s Negro attendant sat dozing in one chair and Baker sat in another. He rose and escorted Lanny downstairs. On the way back to Poughkeepsie he said: “I have been instructed to get you a plane reservation to Scotland by way of Newfoundland. I will have the ticket tomorrow, and your plane leaves Port Washington airport the day after tomorrow at 10 A.M. I was told to choose a name for you, so the ticket reads Richard Thurston Harrison. I hope that doesn’t happen to be a real person.”
“I don’t happen to know him,” replied Lanny. “And what about my passport?”
“I will attend to that in the morning. Professor Alston gave me your real name, Mr. Budd, and instructed me to arrange these matters for you. You need not worry about my having your name, because I am a man who keeps his mouth buttoned tight.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Baker, but won’t you have to tell somebody in the State Department?”
“No, because the President has ordered that in case of need I am to receive passports already stamped, and I am to fill in the name, the fingerprints, and the photograph myself.”
“But then the records in State won’t contain anything about me.”
“That is true, but it won’t matter unless you lose the document, or unless someone becomes suspicions of you. In that case you will be to cable or telephone to me, and I will fix it up with the right party.”
“Have you been told of the fact that Lanning Prescott Budd has been put out of England by B4 and forbidden to return?”
“Yes, and that’s an awkward matter. I take it that you don’t want to tell B4 that you are a presidential agent.”
“Surely not, if it can be helped.”
“I suggest a scheme that may work, and can’t do any harm. I will provide you with a second passport in your own name, and you may sew it in the lining of your coat and not use it until you are landing on the Continent.”
“It’s hard to see how that could work, Mr. Baker. There are the fingerprints and the photograph.”
“There are little tricks that can be tried, and that may work. The fingerprints on your false passport can be slightly blurred—a bad job, but you wouldn’t be to blame for that. The photographic negative can be doctored—it is you, but it is not entirely like you and can hardly be recognized by anyone who knows Mr. Lanning Prescott Budd. The official on duty at an airport is not apt to know you, I take it.”
“That is true, but if they have any suspicion of me, they will search me and find the second passport.”
“In the first place, I don’t think they will bother with details, because you will be arriving on a government transport. Civilian service has been ended over that route and the planes are carrying only persons whom the government sends. So the stamping of passports is pretty much automatic. If it comes to a showdown, you will have to say: ‘This is an Intelligence matter.’ There will be a secret mark on the passport which their top man will know about.”
“Well, of course,” said Lanny, “if you have magic like that!”
“We have it,” replied Baker. “We have a great many men working on the Continent for one purpose or another, and the British pass them through. The code is changed now and then, but your mark will be fresh. When you leave England you will destroy the false passport. I take it that you can come home by way of Lisbon and the Azores, and not by London.”
“If I can get passage.”
“Tell me, is your father in on your secret?”
“Only to the extent that I am doing some government work. He doesn’t know for whom.”
“The name of Baker won’t mean anything to him. When you reach Lisbon, telephone him to wire me at my street address. As soon as I hear from him I will get busy and make the reservation at this end and notify your father and he can notify you. Enemy agents won’t find anything suspicious about your communicating with your father about coming home.”
“I don’t see any flaws in that,” said Lanny. “Where shall we meet tomorrow?”
“I will come to New York and get a hotel room and ask you to come to me, if you don’t mind. That will be less conspicuous. Hartley Robinson will be my name for the purpose; and you are Richard Thurston Harrison. Don’t forget it.”
“I have a lot to remember,” said Lanny with a smile. “But I guess I can add that, Mr. Robinson.”
XII
Lanny had himself set down on a street in the city of Poughkeepsie, which had once been an Indian village, “the Reed-covered Lodge by the Little Water Place.” He strolled to the theater and had no trouble in finding his lady, who had taken a seat in the location agreed upon. Said she: “I have witnessed a terrible murder, and now I shall never know who committed it.”
“There are millions of murders nowadays,” he replied, “and no one but God will ever know who committed them.”
He would have liked to tell her where he had been and what he had learned—about the Soviet Union, especially. She would have got a thrill out of it. But he couldn’t afford even to let her guess, as she might easily have done, knowing that Hyde Park was only a few miles away. Complete silence wouldn’t have been either plausible or polite, so he thought it wise to make up a story to account for his evening. He took one of his Chicago clients and moved him to the Hudson River valley, and told her a strange tale about an elderly gentleman who passionately loved beautiful paintings and yearned to possess them, but only now and then could buy one, because most of the money belonged to his wife and it always meant a quarrel.
“What does the woman want to buy?” asked Laurel, and he told her that the woman didn’t want to buy anything, she wanted to build up her fortune. She had inherited it from her father, and she thought that she was honoring him by following in his footsteps and becoming richer every day.
This led to the subject of the strange distortions which money causes in the personalities of human beings. “Money is power,” Lanny said. “Money commands respect and obedience from other people, and not everybody has the strength of character to carry such a responsibility. The very rich discover that all the world is trying to get some of their money, and they become haunted by fears, they conceive irrational hatreds and shut themselves away—their hearts and sometimes even their bodies.”
He told about old Miss van Zandt, whose Fifth Avenue mansion had been gradually surrounded by the clothing trade, and who lived in constant terror of the Jewish workers who paraded up and down the street at noontime, eating their sandwiches; in her sight they were all Communists, so she gave fortun
es to Nazi-Fascists who came along and promised to put down this enemy. He told about a wealthy gentleman who was certain that the revolution was just around the corner, and who spent all his money for things and hid them away in safe places—any sort of things, for only things would have value. This gentleman saw a vision of himself peddling his possessions in a black market in order to buy food to keep alive.
Laurel in her turn told about one of her relatives, whom she did not name. An elderly lady who entertained with great liberality and enjoyed the presence of her friends; but her daughter could not bear to see money spent on other people, even though the daughter had her own fortune. She had figured it out that one ought to be able to entertain guests at dinner for a cost of not more than seventeen cents per person, and she tried to limit the servants to that. The result was that the mother was very lonely, and all the servants were occupied in cheating the household. Things mysteriously disappeared, and whenever the daughter went away the mother had a party.
“What is your remedy for such things?” inquired Laurel, and Lanny answered: “The abolition of inheritance. I have conic to the conclusion that it is the most evil force in human society. It poisons the lives of most of the wealthy families I know. Even where they do not openly quarrel, the children are sapped of all vitality, all initiative. Our” conservatives talk glibly about ‘free enterprise’—I should like to tell them that the first step to preserve free enterprise is to nuke it plain to every young person in the world that when his education has been completed he has to go out into the world and make his own way, and that he can never have a chance to spend a dollar that he hasn’t earned by his own efforts.”
Thus easily solving human and social problems they drove back to the great city in the small hours of the morning. Only when they were close to Laurel’s apartment house did the convocation take on a personal tone. She asked him: “Is this really not a dangerous mission you are going on?”