The Major needed no encouragement to pour out the story in greater detail. He had been with the son of one of these economic royalists when the son had got drunk and had boasted that the country would soon be rid of that so-and-so in the White House. Jim, expressing incredulity, had stung the young fellow into boastfulness, and he had revealed the plot and all the persons concerned in it. Since that time Jim had been working at his own expense with dictaphones and telephone tapping, and had a record of conversations which would have sufficed to send several prominent persons to the gallows for treason—if F.D.R. had been willing to move against them. But the Boss was easygoing, and talked about “hot air,” and the right of his enemies to shoot off their mouths, and the danger of splitting the country and giving encouragement to the enemy by taking such shooting too seriously. He would move quietly against the dissidents who were in government service, and they would take the hint that they were being watched and would pipe down.
Lanny listened and made note of details which he might use in his little private conspiracy. He told his anxious friend, “You are right that we are coming to rough times. What will save us, I hope, is our democratic tradition. You and I and others must do what we can to keep it alive.”
But the scion of the Chicago Stotzlmanns was not to be comforted so easily. “What chance does the democratic tradition stand when its enemies control ninety per cent of the press and the radio and the money—plus all of the weapons? I tell you, the fellows who run the National Association of Manufacturers could take over the government of this country in twenty-four hours if ever they get mad enough to try it. And believe me, they’re going to get madder every hour in the economic crisis that will come after this war.”
XV
In the evening Baker took the P.A. to the Citadel again, and he spent an hour in the room called Madeleine de Vercheres, in the company of “Harry the Hop.” The President’s friend lay on a Georgian period bed, clad in a dressing gown which did not suffice to conceal the emaciation of his frame. Seven months had passed since Lanny had met him in Marrakech, just after the Casablanca Conference, and he looked more than ever like a death’s head; nearly all his stomach had been cut out on account of cancer, and he could hardly assimilate any food. But what a spirit blazed in that sickness-racked body, and what a brain informed it! Lanny’s greatest pleasure in life was to talk to a man like this, who really knew the facts and got instantly the significance of what was said to him.
The P.A. told the story of Rome, omitting no important detail. Harry said, “Just as in the case of France, the first aim is to get the fleet out of reach of the Germans. We have a brother of the commanding admiral in our country, and this brother has written urging him to come over to us; we are trying to get the letter to the admiral, and if other efforts fail it might be a job for you.”
“I’d be glad to try, of course,” answered Lanny, “but it would be a difficult assignment. I was searched twice, from the top of my head to the soles of my feet, and my belongings were searched twice every week, apparently on a schedule.”
“Only the Germans would have worked that way,” replied the other with a smile. “The next thing is to get Badoglio and the royal family into our camp. So long as the Germans have them, they have to speak German, but if we get them, they can speak American. A large percentage of the Italians still listen to them.”
Lanny told about his trip into the mountains and his talk with the young Matteotti. “A lot of Italians would listen to him too.”
“I know,” said Harry, “but all those persons are with us anyway, and have to be. What we want at the moment are those who have power and who could use it for either side. Be sure, the Boss means to see the common people win out in the end; but the first job is to save every American life we can. We’d never be able to sleep nights if we were failing to do that.”
Lanny told about Berchtesgaden, and then about the fat boy in the Residenz, and then about the plot to take Hitler’s life. That meant answering many questions about the characters of a night-club dancer and her Junker lover. “You and I never dreamed we’d get tied up in things like this,” remarked the harness-maker’s son from Iowa. “I made myself into a social worker, doing what I could to save lives, and now here I am, scheming to kill people, wholesale and retail.” He added, “You’d better leave that Hitler thing to the Germans. It’s loaded, and you’re too valuable to be wasted.”
“Thanks,” was the reply, “but you know how it is—if someone told you that you were valuable and ought to get more sleep, you wouldn’t take the advice.”
This was preliminary to an offer to depart, but Harry wouldn’t have it. He was a sociable fellow and fond of his friends; and besides, the Boss had given him a hint regarding the Stotzlmann matter, and he had to hear all of that. He had one of those steel-trap minds that don’t take long to make decisions. “That strikes me as a bully idea,” he declared. “It can’t hurt our leading SOB’s to tell tales about them to Hitler, and anyhow, I wouldn’t care if it did. I don’t see why we shouldn’t provide you with a lot of real inside stuff, provided it’s carefully selected—say, production reports, and we might hop them up a bit and help to scare the wits out of the Führer.”
The P.A. answered, “I have no means of knowing what source of information he may have in this country, so that he’d be able to check up. I find it’s a good rule to tell the truth where I can.”
XVI
Lanny spent another day catching up with his reading and writing letters to various friends, which he would mail when he got away from the scene of the Conference. He kept in touch with Baker and was told that the President would see him that evening, but it would be late. Then he was told that he would have to wait until the next evening. He could guess the reason, that Winnie the Night Owl wasn’t keeping his promise to let his opposite number get some sleep. Rick had told his friend in London that there was a saying: the only persons who had influence with the British government were those who stayed up all night so that the Prime Minister could call them on the telephone between midnight and four in the morning.
Lanny waited. When you had been in the Axis world for a couple of months there was a lot you wanted to know about the real world, and you would read all the back newspapers and magazines you could lay hands on. Also, there were the Stotzlmann notes to write out, for it was safe to make notes in Canada, and Lanny had the idea that he might write the report himself. What difference would it make so long as only Hitler and his gang were going to see it?
Another summons came, and Lanny sat in the ivory-and-gold bedroom once more and was told right pop out of the box that he mightn’t have to go into Italy again after all. Scarcely two hours ago there had come from the British Embassy in Madrid the news that the Italian General Castellano had arrived there in civilian clothing, and with a false passport under the name of Raimond Imas. Ostensibly he was there as a member of the Italian mission to Lisbon, for the purpose of welcoming the Italian Ambassador to Chile on his return from that post. He had announced himself to the British Ambassador, explaining the secrecy by saying that if the Germans got wind of his mission they would have him shot forthwith.
Lanny was tempted to say, “That sounds like me.” But it was no time for joking; instead he remarked, “I did not meet Castellano, but he was named to me as one of those who favored capitulation. He is, I believe, a Sicilian, and is on the Italian Joint Staff—that is, the Army, Navy, and Air Force.”
“He brought a letter of introduction from the British representative at the Vatican. He claims to have full power to negotiate an armistice.”
“Well, that’s what we’ve been waiting for. Hurrah!”
“You think he is genuine then?”
“There is every reason to think so. Badoglio is caught in a nutcracker, and he has to give way.”
“We have sent word that we will meet him in Lisbon. It is a matter for the military to handle, and we are sending a British officer and an American.”
“Well, that’s fine, Governor. You won’t need me on that job.”
“Not if it works out. You might go home for a few days and we’ll see.”
“My wife won’t object,” said Lanny with his cheerful smile. “How long do you expect this Quebec show to go on?”
“About a week more, as well as I can guess. We’re nailing Winston down, Lanny.” The President smiled in his turn.
“You’ve got him in a nutcracker too. You are paying most of the bills.”
“He has a real phobia on the subject of the Channel. He can’t forget Dunkerque for a single hour.”
“But what’s the use of loading up the British Isles with troops if you’re not going to put them to work?”
“Exactly. And now we have an agreement—” F.D.R. stopped suddenly, as if he had meant to give the date but had thought better of it.
“That’s grand, Governor,” said the P.A. quickly. “That will please everybody, including the Russians. The newspapers seem to be worried because Stalin isn’t here.”
“Stalin has a good excuse—we are settling the problem of the Japs too, and Russia wants to keep out of that. But we shall have to get together with Stalin soon. It won’t do us much good to lick the Nazis unless we can make friends with the Russians. We surely don’t want a Third World War!”
9
Here a Divided Duty
I
Lanny took a plane which delivered him to New York in a couple of hours, and he telephoned Laurel from the airport there. He heard a little catch in her voice when he said he’d be at the apartment in an hour. He added, “It’s nice to have somebody to come home to.” These wartime homecomings were always an event, for no woman who parted from her man could ever be sure that she would see him again, and everytime the doorbell rang it might be a telegram telling her that she was another war widow.
Agnes expressed a sudden impulse to go shopping, and the couple had the little place to themselves. Laurel had developed a passion of which she did not altogether approve intellectually; she was determined to be a feminist and not have her happiness dependent upon any man. But here was her man, and she was in his arms, and how could she persuade herself that she wasn’t happier than she had been a couple of weeks ago, before she had got word that he was coming out of the Nazi hell once more?
For she knew perfectly well where he was and what he was doing. Had she not been to the Head Devil’s home with him, and seen exactly how he had fooled the Head Devil and got what he wanted? How could she doubt that he was playing the same game for his country’s sake? But he wanted her to pretend that she didn’t know, so she pretended, and her novelist’s imagination was busy with a hundred secrets he might be getting, a hundred risks he might be running. Her only escape from these terrors was to pour her feelings into stories; very real stories, because they had been lived before they were written, and they interested numbers of other women who were living the war day by day.
Lanny, the perfect lover as well as the perfect husband, thought first about Laurel; he read all the clippings about her book and talked about them. And then about the baby! All babies were fascinating and, indeed, incredible—large pink worms that were destined to evolve into human beings, with capacities and energies impossible to foresee. Most fascinating of all was one’s own baby, flesh of one’s flesh and soul of one’s soul, with so many delightful resemblances and so many disturbing differences. This Baby Lanny was eight months old, and he was at the crawling stage, and the looking-about stage, and the putting-things-into-his-mouth stage. This last-named is a most disturbing development; impossible to see how the human race has survived it, yet, indubitably, it has done so.
The advantage of being married more than once is that you can make the mistakes and learn the lessons in the first experiment. The disadvantage is that the shadow of the first marriage hangs over the second. Lanny, thrice-married, had learned this from Trudi Schultz, his second. Trudi had agreed with Nietzsche in pitying the lovers who had nothing but their love; Trudi had been devoted to a cause, but she had never been able to forget Irma Barnes, so rich, so elegant, so different from a poor Socialist artist. The old devil jealousy had entered her marital heaven by the back door and was not to be driven out just by saying he had no right to be there.
So now the thrice-married husband observed every detail about his little son and remarked that his smile was exactly like Laurel’s. Laurel showed him a sample; and when she said that the baby’s eyes were like Lanny’s, he rejected the compliment and compared them to hers. “Even my family will tell you so!” he declared, thus tactfully reminding her of the existence of the many Budds. “Don’t you think you ought to call Robbie?” asked the wife; and he told her to come and sit by the phone, so that she could hear the words of this other family and never have a chance to feel that it was really “other.”
II
The president of Budd-Erling had had a cold, but now he was over it. The doctors insisted that he needed a rest, so he was staying at home for a few days, trying to understand the ideas of his son and daughter-in-law by reading Dr. Rhine’s New Frontiers of the Mind. Lanny knew, of course, that Robbie would be running his huge plant over the telephone, answering a hundred questions a day. Robbie reported that they were all delighted with Frances; she was a lovely child, and just starting school and much excited over it. “When are you coming out?” And Lanny said he would talk it over with Laurel and decide. Robbie added that he would send the car at once, and Lanny said, “Thanks, as ever. It looks as if Italy is trying to get out of the war.”
That is the way a perfect husband brings up the child of his first wife to his third wife—sandwiched in between Dr. Rhine’s book and a car and the war news. And all quite casual, with no excitement expressed or expected. Laurel said, “I am so eager to meet her.” That, of course, was the thing for a perfect stepmother to say.
Laurel had begun weaning the baby as soon as she heard that Lanny was coming. Agnes came back from her shopping and was ready to assume her duties. When the car arrived at the garage, Laurel said, “Why not go out and see the family now?” Lanny countered by saying, “I’d rather wait a day or two if it’s all the same to you. I want very much to read your manuscripts.” So it is that love and marriage may go smoothly if both parties understand human nature and if they have their arguments in reverse, so to say—the husband insisting that the wife should have what she wants, and the wife insisting that it should be the other way. And don’t forget the faithful friend, the mother’s helper, who has to have her share of kindness and appreciation!
Partly it was that Lanny was tired of moving about and meeting so many people; he could think of nothing pleasanter than to lie on a couch in light pajamas and read the newspapers or listen to the radio telling about events in Sicily under Allied occupation. Then he would pick up one of Laurel’s stories and follow that shrewd and watchful mind, making use of experiences and ideas that had come to her, many of them from Lanny or in his presence. When lunchtime came, what could be more fun than to search the pantry and find wholewheat bread and peanut butter, and in the refrigerator orange juice and milk, red tomatoes and yellow peaches? Lanny Budd, who had been everywhere and seen everything, decided that what he liked best was home.
III
In due course Laurel phoned Esther and made sure that a visit would be welcome. They drove along the shore road to Newcastle, leaving the baby, for the first time in the baby’s short life. There was that large Budd family, scattered about on a hilltop estate looking out over the town of Newcastle, the river, and two immense industrial plants, Budd Gunmakers and Budd-Erling Aircraft. Robbie had had the life satisfaction of seeing his own plant, his own dreams, outstrip in size and prosperity the plant which his grandfather had founded and which his father had run and had refused to turn over to Robbie. The two sons of Robbie and Esther had been exempt from war service because they were essential to an essential industry; this wasn’t favoritism, for they were carrying tremendous loads and Robbie c
ouldn’t have got along without them. Robbie, Jr., was thirty-eight and Percy thirty-seven, and they had provided the family with half a dozen grandchildren; the Budd tradition was like the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.
The whole tribe, old and young, had come to meet Frances and inspect and approve her. They came now to have another look at Lanny’s wife and to ask how the baby was coming on. Nobody knew that she was Mary Morrow, and many would have been shocked if they had been told. As to Lanny, they knew there was something strange about him and his journeys, and they hoped it was not anything that would disgrace them. They pretended to accept the idea that he was permitted to travel and purchase art works in wartime.
Lanny had achieved the feat of remaining friends with Irma Barnes, who had deserted him for a title—or so Laurel was firmly convinced. Manifestly, she thought it was up to her to achieve the same feat with Irma’s daughter. It wasn’t the child’s fault that she had a stepfather and a stepmother, and the future happiness of all of them depended in part upon Laurel’s kindness. So she kissed Frances at their first meeting, asked how she liked the land of her forefathers, and listened to her account of her first days in school. A happy child, unspoiled in spite of luxury, well trained yet not repressed, she would never tread on Laurel’s toes, and Laurel would carefully keep off her’s. With a reasonable amount of caution one could be a stepmother.
IV
Lanny said, “Let’s take a trip.” So quickly had he forgotten the joys of staying quietly at home! Laurel, who knew his restless spirit, was ready to go. He phoned to the comfortable “camp” of his old friends the Murchisons in the Adirondacks and learned that Harry was abroad on some war mission, but Adella was there with the children and a couple of friends. Adella said, “Do come!” So they put their belongings into the car and drove up the Newcastle River and through a pass in the hills to upper New York State.
One Clear Call I Page 25
