As a wife, she had perhaps not been wise in asking for all the details, but as novelist she had not been able to resist. The story had not been in accord with Maryland mores, but she was trying hard not to be or seem a provincial person; she wanted to know all there was to know about the world she lived in, and not merely America, but Britain, France, Germany, even Russia and China. Her husband adored the memory of the woman who had been his friend, his guide, and his guardian for a matter of seven years; he had assured Laurel Creston that she was a happier wife because of that aid he had received.
The situation had been dominated by two facts: first, Marie’s husband had cherished a secret vice; and second, the family was Catholic and therefore divorce was unthinkable. Laurel had heard much about that old man who “had to have virgins,” and had wondered about him, and now here he came into the room, and she had to steel herself to meet him, telling herself that she was going to be a woman of the world. She had asked Lanny if she would be supposed to shake hands with him, and Lanny had told her that that was, for ladies, a crude American custom, and she would simply bow.
Whatever he had been, he was now a poor pathetic figure with a sparse white goatee, a skullcap on his head, and trembling hands. His face revealed intense anxiety, for he had had no news of his younger son and could guess that Lanny was bringing some. The two women followed him, and poor Eugénie could hardly wait to acknowledge the introduction to Lanny’s wife, so great was her suspense.
There is no sadder duty than to be the bearer of news of a bereavement. Lanny had copied the words from Julie’s letter and he read them without delay. For once the customs of France and America were the same, and the young wife burst into uncontrolled sobbing; her sister-in-law came and put her arms about her, and the old man hid his face in his hands. The two visitors sat in silence, for there was nothing they could do or say. Lanny knew they would wish to hear the story of his meeting with Charlot, and what the capitaine had said and promised to do; he waited decorously until the first shock of the disclosure had passed.
There was no longer any reason for secrecy, so he told all that had happened. They told him in return that they had received a letter from Denis fils, who did not know anything about his brother’s fate, but reported that he had obtained a leave and hoped to be home soon. Lanny pointed out what the elder brothers’ attitude would be toward the tragedy—he would consider that Charlot had saved his honor and the honor of the family by what he had done. Lanny refrained from adding that Charlot had also saved his father’s life and the family fortune. The old man would know that many of his friends and associates had been jailed as collaborateurs, and that nothing had saved him from the same fate but the fact that the Partisans knew that Denis fils had been fighting with the Free French in North Africa and Italy; also, their leaders here in Seine-et-Oise had somehow been informed of what had happened to Charlot.
The present attitude of the three persons was something that didn’t concern Lanny. He knew that Annette had been a Fascist without reservations; but no doubt she would find a way to adjust herself to her husband’s career. Eugénie would put on full mourning and teach her children to revere the memory of their father as a hero and martyr. The old man’s opinions would be determined by his property interests, as always, and no doubt he would be a loyal adherent of Budd-Erling. The internationalism of big business is a phenomenon with which Lanny Budd had been familiar since boyhood, and he was used to hearing it called law and order, honor and justice, free enterprise, individualism, and a lot of other good-sounding names.
IV
Back in Paris, Lanny wrote letters to his family and friends, telling them where he was and what he had been doing; he was going back to the Army, where new letters might come. He wrote to his father and his little daughter, and to his mother in Marrakech; to Nina and Rick in England, to Raoul in Toulon, and to Capitaine Denis in Algiers, taking the precaution to send a copy to the château. Laurel was staying on in Paris, for she wanted to see Belgium and Holland liberated and to get at least a glimpse of conquered Germany. How would that arrogant people behave in defeat, and what course would they choose when the Nazi yoke was lifted from their necks? Had they really loved and wanted that yoke, and what would they find to love now? Laurel Creston was another novelist who wrote like a psychologist—or, at any rate, desired to.
The night before they parted she asked very solemnly, “Lanny, are you going into Germany any more?”
“Behind the armies—I hope so,” he told her.
“But not in front of them?”
“I couldn’t, darling, if I wanted to. They know me too well.”
“You must know I have guessed that you have been going into Germany. You didn’t fool me.”
“I was under orders, Laurel. This much I have a right to say: my orders are not to go into Germany any more.”
“But you went into France while it was the same as Germany.”
“Not quite the same, darling. I had a lot of friends in France, and they took care of me. But the Germans have found out about me, and not many would take care of me there. Put your mind at rest on that score.”
“I’ll put my mind at rest when this war is over, and when there is an international government with a police force to keep the peace.”
“Just a little thing like that!” He smiled. He did not tell her any of his adventures, for he was sure they would disturb her sleep. Let her collect data from persons who were not quite so near and dear!
V
Lanny’s time was up, and he was about to report and be returned to his division, which was at the Belfort front; but he was called to the telephone and asked to call at OSS headquarters in Paris, a top-secret address. He said to his wife, “That probably means I’m wanted in Washington.” He went, fully expecting such a notice; instead, he was told that an Intelligence representative of SHAEF in Paris—Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces—wanted him “for special interrogation purposes.” That sounded intriguing indeed, and Lanny went to call upon a Major Hartman of General Eisenhower’s staff. He received an order to report at once at G-2 of Third Army, whose headquarters were now at Nancy. The Major didn’t tell him what he was wanted for, and it wasn’t up to Lanny to ask. He was handed a pass, thanked the Major, saluted, and departed. He wondered how the all-powerful SHAEF had come to hear about him. Later he learned that G-2 of Third had asked SHAEF for him, and SHAEF had asked Paris OSS about him; Paris OSS had never heard of him, but had checked with Washington, and so had learned that he was with Sixth Army Group, and Sixth had given his Paris address. Quite a roundabout.
Lanny was driven to his hotel to collect his few belongings and say good-by to his wife. On the way he tried his best to imagine what this call could mean. Could it be that he had made such an impression upon Lieutenant-General Patton that that busy man had kept him in mind for nearly two months? Nothing could have seemed more unlikely. Or could it be that somebody at “topside” had spoken about him and awakened interest? Lanny, completely in the dark, was taken to a near-by field and put on board a “flying boxcar.” Another bucket-seat trip, but it was only an hour or so; the front of the Third Army was from Luxembourg to Saarbourg, along the Moselle and the Saar Rivers, roughly within a hundred miles of the Rhine.
On the trip Lanny recalled what he had heard about Patton’s forces and their present situation. In their astonishing sweep across France they had had casualties of less than thirty-five thousand and had inflicted four times that many upon the enemy, besides taking a hundred thousand prisoners. The Third had been brought to a halt early in September, but not by the enemy. Supplies had run out, and a motorized army couldn’t move without hundreds of thousand of gallons of gasoline.
Who was to blame? There was a bitter controversy going on, and the G-2 officers of Lanny’s Sixth Group had talked about it in semi-whispers. The shortage wasn’t because the supplies couldn’t be brought by air to rapidly moving troops, but because SHAEF had diverted them. Patton, wild with
excitement, wanted to rush on to the Rhine and across it into Germany; he insisted that he had the enemy hopelessly demoralized and that the same thing could be done in Germany that had been done in France. Keep moving, and let the enemy do the worrying! At the outset Georgie had addressed his staff, “I don’t want to get any messages saying ‘I am holding my position.’ We’re not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and are not interested in holding anything, except onto the enemy. We’re going to hold onto him and kick the hell out of him all the time.”
But SHAEF, which carried the responsibility, wasn’t willing to stake everything on such a gamble. SHAEF believed that fighting in France, where the population was with us, was different from fighting in Germany, with the population against us. SHAEF knew that the Germans had immensely strong forces in the north, and that Patton’s stretched-out line in the south might be broken and several hundred thousand troops cut off from their base. SHAEF considered that the Allied forces on the continent were in a bottleneck because of the lack of ports capable of handling the immense quantity of supplies required for a war that grew bigger every day, and also more distant.
The British, in their rush up the coast, had taken Antwerp with its port facilities intact; but unfortunately Antwerp lies some distance up the River Scheldt, and the Germans still held strong fortifications in that flat land which is the delta of several great rivers—the Scheldt, the Meuse or Maas, and the outlets of the Rhine, known as the Waal, the Lek, and the Yssel. In the effort to take that district the British landed an immense airborne force, some of it as far to the north as the Dutch town of Arnhem, across the Lek; but the weather was against them and they had to retire from Arnhem in the face of strong enemy attacks. That was a serious check, but the work of opening the port of Antwerp was going on, and when it was completed the advance could be resumed all along the line.
VI
Lanny’s plane was landed in a rainstorm, with visibility close to zero. He knew about autumn weather in the Saar, wet and cold without limit, and had bought from Army stores a raincoat, boots, and gloves. He was taken at once to CP, as it was called—Command Post; there was a whole Army lingo made of initials, code, and slang, and you had to learn it or you were lost. This post was in an old barrracks which had been built by the French, occupied by the Germans, and bombed now and then by the Allies. He was introduced to a tall, thin gentleman, a G-2 captain; he was head of Interrogation and lost no time in interrogating the visitor. “Thanks for coming, Captain Budd, we had quite a hunt for you. Would you mind telling me if you have any friends among German generals?”
Said the P.A., “I have had opportunity to meet quite a number of them. It has been my job.”
“Is there anyone whom you know particularly well?”
“Emil Meissner is the first who comes to my mind. I have known him since we were boys and I visited in his home.”
“Would you mind telling me what you know about him?”
“I met his youngest brother at a dancing school in Hellerau, near Dresden, when I was thirteen years old. Kurt Meissner grew up to be a famous Komponist. I was invited to visit the family at Christmas, and there I met Emil. From then on I would run into him occasionally. In later years I had dinner at his home in Berlin. We didn’t have much in common, but I liked him and had the impression that he liked me.”
“He mentioned you as a friend, and that is why we sent for you. What sort of man is he?”
“Well, he’s a professional soldier, highly trained; a Wehrmacht officer and a Prussian gentleman, which means that he is conservative and strict. His father was business manager of the Stubendorf estate, and that meant that he was an old-fashioned Prussian; not a Junker, which means an aristocrat, but completely Junker-minded.”
“Is Emil a Nazi?”
“I couldn’t say flatly because I never asked him. His brother Kurt is an ardent Nazi and a personal friend of Hitler. If Emil had been the same, I believe he would have expressed himself in my presence. The fact that he kept silent I took to mean that he was not altogether in sympathy with Kurt. You understand that from 1937 on I was acting as a secret agent, and it was my role to agree completely with Kurt. So Emil would have avoided discussing the subject with me, and he did. The Nazi troops and the Wehrmacht officers did not see eye to eye, as you no doubt know.”
“Tell me this: would you be surprised to hear that Emil was implicated in last summer’s attempt to take Hitler’s life?”
“I should be surprised, but not too much so. As a man trained in strategy, he would bitterly resent the Führer’s taking over the direction of the war.”
“I should inform you that Emil is our prisoner, and he tells us that he was one of the few conspirators who escaped suspicion.”
“If he tells you that, I would feel certain that it is true. He is a very proud man and would not stoop to seek favors from the enemy or to increase his own importance.”
“He has been treated with every consideration due his rank. We are being careful in conforming to the requirements of the Geneva Convention, hoping that the Nazis will do the same with our people. We have been working on Meissner in a polite and careful way; he has shown signs of coming over to our side, and of course that would be important to us, for we expect soon to go after Metz, and it seems that he has special knowledge concerning that fortress.”
“It is very likely that he would, for he has learned all there is to know about fortification. He had little models in his home, and he also had a lot of toy soldiers and moved them around on a big table. He has that sort of mind; he likes to play chess, which, I gather, is a sort of miniature war.”
VII
So Lanny understood what he had been brought here for. They wanted him to call on his boyhood friend and “work on him,” try to persuade him to tell what he knew about the fortification of one of the great strongholds of the old Maginot Line. The Nazis had had four years and more in which to turn it around and make it face the other way, and maybe Emil had had charge of the work, or at any rate had been consulted about it. He had already become convinced that the German cause was hopeless, and Lanny might be able to convince him that the best thing would be to get it over before the last German city had been turned to rubble.
The P.A. said that he would be glad to try. Captain Morgan—formerly a professor of psychology at a Middle-Western university—took him to the officer’s mess and gave him a good dinner, prepared by a cook from New York’s Chinatown—“best damn cook in the Army,” they called him. Then the officer took him to a room and gave him a couple of hour’s briefing on General Emil, who had surrendered at Chalons in the course of the Third Army’s mad rush across France. There was a dossier on him, including reports of conversations by various officers. Lanny was left in no doubt that they attached importance to the information this Wehrmacht specialist could give.
The P.A. had a choice of courses. He could tell Emil that he had been anti-Nazi from the beginning, or that he had been convinced by recent events that German defeat was inevitable. It was the latter course he had decided upon with Charlot, and it had worked so well that he was inclined to try it again. Lanny would tell Emil about Charlot—but not about his sad fate. He would tell what he had seen of American and British and French military power, and about industrial power as he had seen it in Newcastle, Connecticut, and Budd, New Mexico, and Los Angeles, California.
VIII
Emil had been separated from the other prisoners and was on parole; he had a room in a large villa occupied by American officers in the suburbs of Nancy, and his meals were brought to him. The place was guarded outside, but that would have been the case even if he had not been there. Lanny tapped on his door next morning; he found the officer sitting at his desk, writing; the visitor got a momentary glimpse of a long and pain-drawn face before it lighted up with recognition.
After that they had a pleasant time, for nothing can take the place of age in friendship, and the people we knew when we were young
have a reserved section in our subconscious minds. This high Prussian officer, still in his uniform, sitting as erect and looking as alert as if he were still commanding an army corps, was to Lanny Budd the magnificent tall cadet who had walked into his father’s home for a Weihnachts celebration. Rosy-cheeked he had been then, whereas now his cheeks were colorless and a bit flabby; but the scar on the left cheek which was the mark of his caste would be the same as long as he lived. He was fifty, and his close-cropped hair was gray.
How different now were their circumstances! Lanny apologized for his own. “I couldn’t hold out, Emil. My father gave way, and then everybody I knew. The last time I met Hitler I was forced to realize that he was not the man I had believed him. Perhaps he had been once, but he had lost his character, his judgment, even his senses, I fear.”
That made matters easy. “You are exactly right, Lanny,” said the officer. “I saw a great deal of him and I decided that his self-esteem had run away with him. The handling of great armies is a science and requires a lifetime of study and the closest application. Excitement and fervor and raving cannot take their place. I cannot find in all history any calamity like that which has befallen Germany, to have so much power entrusted to hands which are incompetent to wield it.”
Lanny might have said, “I am told that you had something to do with the effort to remove him,” but he thought it better to talk about old times and re-establish their friendship before he approached the crucial subjects. First he satisfied Emil’s curiosity, telling him that he, Lanny, had been acting as a sort of liaison officer for Budd-Erling, interviewing flight officers in the field to find out about the performance of the new models and collect suggestions for possible improvements. That gave him a chance to describe the mushroom growth of America’s aircraft industry, and to add, “What a calamity that it had to be against Germany!”