Deep inside Lanny Budd was laughter. The most dreaded spy organization in the whole world was inviting him to do exactly what he most wanted to do—to take sides against it! He had a right to look surprised, and did so. “You mean that I should pose as an Allied sympathizer, Herr Güntelen?”
“I wouldn’t say anything quite so definite. There are shades of opinion, and you might say just enough to encourage the other fellow to open up.”
“That would be a pretty dangerous game to play, I fear.”
“We are living in dangerous times, Herr Budd, and we all have to take our share of risk.”
“Perhaps you do not get just what I mean. If I should go out into Roman society and pose as being any shade of Allied sympathizer, how long would it be before reports began to get out about me—and not merely in Rome but to my friends in Germany and France? It might not be long before you yourselves would begin to wonder whether I was not playing my part too well.”
“You would be reporting to us occasionally, I hope.”
“Unfortunately that is what I cannot do. My orders are to report directly to the Führer, through Marshal Kesselring. I would be glad if you would check that statement with the Führer, so that you will not think that I am unappreciative of your kindess.”
“Auf keinen Fall, Herr Budd. We have confidence in your statement, and we are not so fortunate as to have access to the Führer personally.”
“If I get anything of value I will ask him to let me tell you. As to your suggestion that I might shade my opinions, I will bear it in mind. If I meet some especially important figure, such as Dino Grandi, and find that I could gain a point by whispering words of friendship, I might try it. But I must have the pledge of both you gentlemen that if rumors come to you that I am keeping the wrong sort of company, you will understand that it is at your suggestion, and not of my own impulse.” He managed to put a smile upon his face while he said this, but it was a somewhat wry smile; he knew that he was walking on eggs, and would be all the time he was in Rome. He was preparing to venture that most tricky of courses, known to the OSS as “turning”—that is, pretending to go over to the enemy and work for him. He was not fooled for a moment by Herr Güntelen’s politeness. He knew that what was going on in this gentleman’s mind was the gentleman’s secret. Achtung.
V
Duly equipped with a valid French passport, a card of identity, a permission to “circulate,” a food-coupon book, and other necessities of life in wartime Italy, the son of Budd-Erling sallied forth to find himself living quarters. The Germans might have done this for him, but it wouldn’t have looked right. They had warned him that he would have trouble, for the situation in Rome was the worst in all the country. Everybody who had the means was getting out of the lower half of the boot, and it was literally true that all roads led to Rome. This was the one safe place, for who would dare to desecrate the Holy City, the Eternal City, headquarters of Holy Mother Church?
The Regina-Carlton Hotel was crowded, Lanny was told; but his father had taught him in boyhood how to deal with such a situation. A few gracious words to the hotel clerk and a few more to the porter, explaining how urgent his business was, and then a couple of hundred lire notes to each of these functionaries, and Lanny had a comfortable room with bath. Only cold water ran, but that was enough in midsummer. There was no soap or toilet paper, but there was a black market in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, and the porter would get you what you wanted at no more than half-a-dozen prices. That was the way, if you had the money; if you didn’t have it, you slept under a bridge and starved, or begged, or stole, or tried to sell “feelthy postcards” on street corners.
Lanny sat down and wrote a proper letter on the stationery of a proper hotel. “My dear Marchesa: I am an old friend of the de Bruyne family and am hoping that my name will be known to you. I had the pleasure of meeting Charlot several times in Vichy during the past year and so can tell you news of the family. I am in Rome for the purpose of purchasing old masters for an American collection and would appreciate the privilege of calling upon you at your convenience.” He dropped that into the mail, and next morning waited in his room, reading the Osservatore, the Vatican newspaper, which gave more news of the outside world than Mussolini would permit in any of his Fascist papers. Naples had been bombed, and the systematic bombing of Sicilian airports and shipping was continuous.
The telephone rang, and there was the voice of an agreeable lady, inviting him to call that afternoon and expressing the usual regret that the coffee would of necessity be imitation. He made the gallant reply that it was herself and not her coffee that would interest him. The hotel valet pressed his clothes, and he made himself presentable and was driven in an aged vettura to a weather-beaten Renaissance mansion not far from the Colonna Palace. An aged manservant in faded livery opened the door and escorted him into the drawing-room. All rooms in Rome are kept dark in summer, but there was light enough for him to see that there were paintings on the walls, and he satisfied his professional curiosity while waiting for his hostess.
VI
Marie de Bruyne had been some years older than Lanny, and he had assumed that her cousin would be the same. He was surprised to see a buxom lady, appearing no more than middle-aged, but of course that might be due to hair dye and dim light and other devices which the son of Beauty Budd had had ample opportunity to learn about. He had imagined a quiet, reserved lady, like Marie, but this cousin was hearty in manner and talkative; that too might have been put on for the occasion, a matter of morale in a time that tried the souls of women. Anyhow, Lanny was going to have no trouble making friends; the lady knew the story of his left-handed membership in the family and was eager to hear the rest. She wanted to know all about Charlot, what he was doing and thinking, and what news there was of Denis, père et fils. “Lanny—may I call you Lanny?” she said. “We miserable Romans have nothing left but gossip, and not enough of that to go round.”
He brought out his store of the commodity. He told how Charlot had been organizing the Légion Tricolore, the Fascist military group to put down the underground resistance in Vichy France. He did not say that he had met Denis junior in North Africa, but repeated what Charlot had told him about the ideological chasm between the brothers. “That is just the way it is with us Romans!” exclaimed the Marchesa. “All split up into warring groups, and no one has the patience even to hear the other person’s point of view.” That did not sound like the statement of a Fascist fanatic, and Lanny began to wonder whether this lady too was in the process of “turning.” He was there to find out, not to commit himself, so he said, “I decided years ago that the problems were too complicated for my powers, and I confine myself to making sure whether Giottos and Correggios are genuine or not.”
She wanted to know how it was possible for him to travel and buy paintings in wartime Europe, and he told her that he was so fortunate as to have influential friends. The elder Denis had introduced him to Pierre Laval, and he numbered other members of the Vichy government among his friends. There were American millionaires willing to spend large sums to save Europe’s art treasures from the wreckage of war. “I have been commissioned to purchase anything that Hermann Göring may overlook.” That, of course, was in the nature of a feeler, and the response was immediate, “Oh, the Germans have been dreadful! They have stripped the country bare.”
The woman asked what kind of paintings he was interested in, and he told her—anything that was genuine and good. He wondered if she was going to refer to her own; but she was a tactful lady and said she had a friend who possessed a genuine Giorgione. “That ought to be worth a great deal of money,” he commented; then he told her the favorite story of his friend and colleague, Zoltan Kertezsi, who during an exhibition of paintings he had conducted had been approached by an elegantly dressed lady who said that she had been told not to miss the “George Oney,” but she couldn’t find “Oney” in the catalogue.
All this made good conversation, and Lanny was adept at it;
he offered to leave more than once, but he was urged to stay. She wanted to hear the details about his love for Marie de Bruyne; how he had met her, and how he had adored her for a matter of seven years. Marie had taught him, so he stated, the greater part of such wisdom as he possessed. It had been a love story in the French manner, she and her family being Catholic and having a horror of divorce. Marie had been unhappily married, and the free-spoken Marchesa knew all about it—she mentioned that the elder Denis was one of those unfortunate men who had to have virgins, and of course the mother of his sons could not qualify. Julie—that was the Marchesa’s name and she told Lanny to call her that—Julie knew about the recent tragedy which had befallen the old man in Paris, and she discussed that with the same frankness. At the age of eighty plus, he had fallen under the spell of a designing young woman who was stripping him of his property. Lanny said that appeared to be one of nature’s ways of punishing old men for their sins; in his youth he had met the sculptor Rodin whom the same calamity had befallen.
When he left Julie told him to make this place his home. He need not worry about eating her food because her husband owned much farmland not far away and they were able to get things into the city. “I am a lonely old woman,” she said, “and you bring me a breath of fresh air from France. In return I will tell you all about our corrupt fashionable world, and I’ll help you to see the paintings you want and not to be robbed too badly.”
That was certainly a fair offer, and Lanny went away reflecting that Julie, Marchesa di Caporini, could hardly be a very staunch Fascist. He could guess that like the rest of her class she had been terrified by threats of revolution within Italy and without, and had accepted Mussolini as her savior; but the Germans had come and she had not liked them, and now she was getting her mind ready for the coming of a new invader with a different ideology. Anyhow, she liked this Franco-American visitor and promised to make arrangements for him to inspect the “George Oney” next morning.
VII
On his way back to the hotel, Lanny stopped at a kiosk and acquired a load of newspapers and magazines; the city was blacked out at night, and there was a curfew, so he would undress, stretch out on the bed, and learn what the dictatorship was telling its public. Lanny, who had espoused unpopular causes since boyhood, had become expert at reading between the lines of kept newspapers, deciphering truth from the falsehoods of its enemies.
Julie kept her promise and phoned about the appointment. She could not use her car because the tires were worn out and it was impossible to get gasoline; but Lanny would come in a cab and take her to the place. Then, would he come back to lunch at her home and meet her husband and children? He said he would and thanked her. He could go to sleep peacefully on this hot night in the middle of summer, knowing that he had got access to the very center of the social fortress of Rome.
Next morning he visited another palace, where he was introduced to an elderly commendatore named Cesare d’Angelo, with white hair and handle-bar mustaches and most elegant manners. Lanny was escorted into a basement and from there down another steep flight of stone steps into what had once been a dungeon; it had been provided with fireproof doors and turned into a temporary art gallery. Among the paintings was a fine “Descent from the Cross,” and Lanny was permitted to inspect it at his leisure; he was told that its price was a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, to be deposited in a bank in New York. He promised to report the offer to his clients; he did not think it was a Giorgione, but a Titian, done by that painter when he was under the influence of Giorgione, with whom he worked.
Lanny and the Marchesa sat in the Commendatore’s fine library, two-storied, with a balcony having elegant carved railings running all the way around. Iced drinks were served, and they talked politics; Lanny hadn’t planned it that way, but the old gentleman was determined, because he was sick with the fear that Rome was going to be bombed and his treasures destroyed. Here was a visitor who came from America and whose father manufactured military planes; surely the father must have talked about how they were going to be used, and the son must have heard the talk. The old man, abandoning all dignity, all pretense of aristocratic aloofness, stretched out a pair of trembling hands and besought the visitor, “Tell me what you would do, Monsieur Budd, if you were in my place.” They were speaking French, because that was the Marchesa’s native tongue and she and Lanny used it.
The guest replied, “I honestly do not know, sir. If the Allies fight their way up the peninsula, it is hard to see how any place in the country can be safe, because every hill will be a military objective and every stone hut a machine-gun nest. For that reason I should think this city might be your best bet.”
“Do you think that the Allies will grant our plea and accept Rome as an ‘open city’?”
“They will lay down stringent conditions, and I doubt if the Germans would consent to them. You may be sure the Allies will do what they can to avoid damaging the churches and historic buildings; the main target will be the railroad yards.”
“Your bombers can be counted on for such accuracy, Monsieur Budd?”
Lanny smiled. “When our Air Force started out they used to boast of their ability to drop a bomb into a barrel; but now, under actual conditions of wind and weather, they have had to reduce their claims. I should think, however, that they could be counted on to distinguish between a place of worship and a tangle of railroad tracks.”
There was Lanny, talking learnedly about the very subject he wanted to—and he hadn’t been the one to bring it up. He told the anxious old landlord—that was what he was, an owner of latifundia—that the best way to save his property was to get Italy out of the war. The landlord in return pointed out the terrible complications—the Germans were here, and wouldn’t get out, they wouldn’t give Italy up to the Allies, because Italy was peppered with fine airfields from which Germany and her satellites could be laid waste. When Lanny brought up Hitler’s idea of having both sides retire and leave Italy alone, the Commendatore smiled sadly and remarked that it was unlikely indeed that the Allied military men would consent to such a deal; they hadn’t brought all those fleets of ships and landing craft into the Mediterranean in order to hold parades, nor yet to prove that Winston Churchill had been right in trying to take the Dardanelles in the last World War.
Lanny, listening with half his mind, was thinking with the other half, This is the place where I ought to be able to meet Marshal Badoglio.
VIII
The art expert went back to the Caporini palace and lunched with the family in a stately dining-room of panelled and hand-carved walnut. On one wall hung a fifteenth-century tapestry showing Romulus and Remus with their wolf, and against another wall was an immense sideboard loaded with silver and crystal from the days of Benvenuto Cellini. The meal was served by the aged manservant, not without difficulty because his hands were showing signs of palsy.
The family was hardly to be called exhilarating; its head, older than his wife, was partly bald, thin, and sallow of complexion; he did not talk much, and when he did, he told stories having to do with horses, dogs, and other country-gentleman appurtenances. There were two children; the elder a girl who sat silent and started when you spoke to her; from her remarks Lanny decided that she was not “all there.” The boy, on the contrary, was eager, and anxious to impress the visitor; a product of the Balilla, the Fascist organization for the training of youth, he seemed to Lanny to embody all the disagreeable qualities of that system; he was cocky, self-assertive, and ignorant. The fact that his mother was a Frenchwoman, and that the guest was supposed to be French, did not keep him from asserting that France was an enemy and was wrongly withholding from Italy Nice, Savoy, and Corsica.
Against these handicaps the mother struggled to make her guest enjoy himself. He saw that she adored the children and yet was ashamed of them. He saw that she did not love her husband and that they had no intellectual congruity. As a man of the world, accustomed to all sorts of human situations, he parried gently the boy’s im
pertinence and questioned the country squire concerning the state of the wheat crop and the prices the government allowed for it. Such facts had their bearing upon the war situation, and all was grist that came to a secret agent’s mill.
To a fond mother such behavior meant that the guest was kind, and this kindness warmed her heart and caused her to take still greater interest in his purposes. She thought of several friends who had paintings and strove to interest her husband in making suggestions, although it could hardly be expected that Lanny would lend much weight to his judgment in matters of art. The expert wondered if she had told her husband about Marie de Bruyne, and what reason she had given for taking so much trouble for a wandering conoscitore d’arte? They were speaking Italian, since the Marchesa admitted that her husband’s, French was not good, and the boy, Lanny guessed, would scorn the language of a defeated and humiliated people.
After the meal the elders repaired to the drawing-room and there Lanny referred to Commendatore d’Angelo’s fear of bombing raids as a means of drawing out his host. No excuse was necessary, because the subject was the one which every person in Rome from the Pope to the lowliest beggar was most disposed to discuss. The position of Italy was frightful, and everybody from the Pope to the beggar knew it. Lanny had never seen a cyclone, but he had read about them and could imagine standing on the prairie watching one bearing down upon him, with no cellar in which to seek refuge. A cyclone is only wind, and as a rule it destroys only wooden buildings, but the cyclone of war was fire and blast, and the more solid a structure, the more apt it was to be used as a fortress and knocked to pieces by the invaders. Wood was scarce on the peninsula, but rocks were plentiful, and the buildings had been patiently put together to last for centuries—if only the mailed fist of war could be kept away from them. The Italian boot was long and narrow, and destruction would sweep over it like a scythe.