IX
All this took time, and meantime the Quebec Conference had come to an end. A statement was issued telling the world that harmony had reigned and unanimous decisions had been reached; the world would learn about these when they were put into effect. Both Roosevelt and Churchill came back to the White House, and Lanny called Baker and reported, “I am ready to leave. Does the Chief want to see me before I go?” He was told to call back in three hours, as usual, and when he did so he was told to be at their regular street corner at twenty-one. (Everybody was using military time now).
It was dark at that hour in Washington, though it hadn’t been in Quebec. Baker said, “I am to arrange for you to fly to England by way of Newfoundland. The British will have you flown to Stockholm.” Lanny’s reply was that he would like to have a day in New York, and Baker told him, “I’ll arrange for you to fly tomorrow morning, if that’s OK.” Lanny said, “I was to get some papers from Professor Alston.” The answer was, “He spoke to me about them, and I am to get them tonight.” The P.A. remarked, “Apparently none of you people ever forgets anything.” Baker said with a smile, “We are not encouraged to.”
In the White House the Boss lay in his big bed, with an especially big stack of papers alongside him—always the case when he had been away. The P.A. resolved to come right to the point; but, as it turned out, the busy executive was in one of his human moods. “Lanny,” he said, “I hate like the dickens to send you into that den of snakes. But you keep asking for it.”
Said the other, smiling, “I get a great kick out of being the Führer’s only American friend.”
“You think you can keep that up indefinitely while we go on knocking the stuffing out of him?”
“I haven’t said that. Very likely the time will come when he’ll go crazy and I’ll be afraid of him. But not until we cross the Channel.”
“Well, it’s settled that we’re going to cross. This is our number one objective from now on. Also, you’ll be glad to know, Italy is about to sign on the dotted line. And on our terms.”
“Unconditional Surrender Roosevelt,” smiled Lanny. He knew that his history-minded friend would appreciate being compared to General Grant.
“Funny story,” continued the other. “General Castellano was so afraid of the Germans that he got himself lost on the way back to Rome, and his own people didn’t know what had become of him. They sent another man to Sicily to try to fix things up with us. But now Castellano is in Sicily too, and things are shaping up all right: the Fleet will come out and surrender, and all the planes that can get away will do the same; the rest will be destroyed.”
“And Badoglio and the royal family?”
“Apparently they are going to make a sneak into our lines. They will be the government of Italy for the duration.”
“That ought to make Churchill happy, at least for a while.”
“Oh, he’s happy as a dog with two tails—I believe you told me that was an English saying. Would you like to talk to him?”
“I’d like to listen to him,” replied Lanny dryly, “if he has time to talk.”
“He always has time in the evenings. You keep him busy, and I’ll get a chance to go over all these papers.”
Lanny had been called on for that service once before, and he knew the situation. Winston was a trying guest; he wanted to have his own way, politically and militarily, and he would never give up arguing—not even after the matter had been “settled.” Lanny had been told that the First Lady had become so little pleased with him that she found ways to have speaking engagements whenever he was in her home. The President was troubled because he had to be polite to a guest and their hours could not be fitted together.
“Have you got everything you need for your journey?” inquired the hard-pressed man, and Lanny answered that Baker had promised him the papers and everything else was jake. The President took up the phone and called for the Prime Minister; he said, “Our friend Budd is here,” and then, “OK.”
He hung up and said, “He knows where you have been and he wants to hear your story. You know which is his room. Good luck to you, Lanny, and take care of yourself.” A warm handclasp, and the P.A. went out from the presence.
X
The Right Honorable Winston Spencer Churchill, His Majesty’s Prime Minister, sat in a large overstuffed armchair which fitted his pudgy frame as snugly as if it had been made to order. He was clad only in his shorts and a pair of straw slippers; he made no attempt to extract himself from the chair’s embrace, but said, “Hello, Budd,” and waved his hand toward the stand beside him. “Have some?” On the stand were whisky and soda, also several of the long dark cigars which had become, as it were, the great man’s trademark. Lanny squirted a little soda from the siphon, just to have something to hold in his hand, and the host remarked, “As a world traveler, you should be free of the abominable American practice of having everything ice-cold.”
“First I was in Rome and then in Iceland,” smiled Lanny, “so I had to take things as they came. Washington, I observe, is very much like Rome.” It was a muggy evening.
“Tell me what you saw there,” said the P.M.
Lanny began his story, the same that he had told to Hitler and Göring, to Roosevelt and Hopkins and Alston. But he didn’t get so far this time, because his auditor had been to Rome and knew the city and its leading people of the old regime, and was impelled to impart his knowledge. The Right Honorable Winston, grandson of the seventh Duke of Marlborough, was not only a statesman, orator, and military strategist, but also a man of letters, author of a dozen books of what he called “hist’ry.” He talked int’restingly about Roman hist’ry, both ancient and modern, and when Lanny described the scenes on the night of Il Duce’s fall, Churchill said, “They go crazy with delight when they get rid of a tyrant, and then they get another.”
There was a lot to be said about Benito. Churchill called him “Johnny Jump-up,” and Lanny told of interviewing him at the Cannes Conference just after the end of World War I. He was then a journalist-agitator, traveling around with a couple of thugs to protect him; a little fellow, only just learning to puff up his chest and stick out his chin, he appeared undernourished. “‘Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look,’” quoted the P.M.
After this modern Cassius had seized power and got his promised loan from the House of Morgan, Churchill had decided he was a great man and had praised him extravagantly as statesman and builder. Now this was embarrassing, for his political opponents liked to quote what he had spoken and written. He defended himself to his visitor. “You know how it was, Budd; the Reds in Italy were seizing the factories, and they had no idea how to run them. Mussolini was the only man in sight with a program and the power to save the country from chaos. So long as he stuck to that program, I was for him of course. There was no way for anyone to know that he was going off his chump and set out on a course of imperialist adventure.”
Lanny would have liked to say, “No way but to read his speeches.” He would have liked to say, “He was all right until he went after Lake Tana.” That immense mountain lake in Abyssinia controlled the headwaters of the Nile, and therefore was of first-rate importance to what Winston called “the Empah.” But of course Lanny would never say anything like that except to the few friends who shared his secret. When he was with the Tory wolves he howled loudest of all. So now to the Right Honorable he said, “Your course has been perfectly consistent, and only the ignorant would fail to understand it. I was at the Paris Conference, and I can testify that you were the first to understand the perils of Bolshevism and the need to unite Europe against it.”
“I am still sticking to that course,” said the P.M., as pleased as Punch. “I wish to God there was some way I could get your President to realize it. He is playing with sticks of dynamite, and he’s as unheeding of their danger as any child.”
“There are a great many children like that,” said the super-Tory. “They see that Hitler has to be beaten, but they don’t see wha
t they may be setting up in his place.”
“The idea of letting Stalin into the Balkans!” exclaimed the other, and he launched into a tirade concerning the decisions which had been taken at Quebec. He had bowed to them because he had to. Alston and Hopkins were right in saying that he would never give up his protests—“He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still!” So he spent an hour or more in expounding the strategy of this war to a man whose father was a producer of war goods and therefore might have influence with the American brass. “A tragedy, Budd, a blunder which may negate all the gains of this war!”
XI
Deep inside himself Lanny Budd was smiling. He asked just enough questions and interposed just enough arguments to keep the Prime Minister talking; for Lanny was thinking about the tired man in a near-by room who wanted time to sign important state papers and then go to sleep. Winnie wanted an auditor; all right, here was one who would stick it out until the cock crowed, or even until the sun rose.
Churchill wanted to hear about Hitler and about Göring, and Lanny described his last visit and others. If that led to detours, and to accounts of Winnie’s interviews with Ribbentrop, “that disgusting bounder,” Lanny was pleased to hear these. When the talk came to paintings, an art expert listened respectfully to the P.M.’s opinion of the Führer’s opinions on this subject. Winston himself was a painter, and it was talking shop. When it was a question of getting the Führer shot or blown up with a bomb, the P.M. manifested deep interest, but declared, “We can’t have anything to do with that of course. Assassinations are off the British political line.”
“Quite so,” replied the other. “I don’t think there is any need for you even to express an opinion. These Wehrmacht officers are capable of taking care of their own business. All they will ask me is, what will be the attitude of the Allies toward them if they should do the job.”
“That is an important question, Budd, and I have given due thought to it. I’d rather you didn’t quote me personally on the subject—”
“Oh, of course not, Mr. Churchill!”
“You can make the statement that so far as the British government is concerned, we shall be willing to sign an armistice with any group of men who are in a position to make it effective. We shall not care a hoot in hell how the future Germany is to be governed, provided it is not by Reds, and that they are not preparing for another war. As to that, we jolly well mean to see that they don’t. We shan’t trust any of the beggars, and we only hope that this time your own government will stand the watch with us. Is that clear?”
“Quite so; only I shall have to put it in a little more polite language to a son and heir of Graf Herzenberg.”
If was after three o’clock in the morning before the mouth in that round cherub’s face opened in a wide yawn. His Majesty’s Prime Minister ground out the stub of his last big brown cigar and remarked, “Well, I guess we’ll have to get some sleep.”
“You were too interesting, Mr. Churchill, and I have overstayed my welcome.”
“Not at all, not at all. You have been good company, and your President will thank you for keeping me out of his room. We have trouble in getting our hours to agree. Is there anything I can do to further your undertaking?”
“One thing occurs to me, sir. The President is to provide me with some papers which will help me to convince Hitler that I am really his friend. Those papers would look strange to any of your officials who examined them; and of course you know that I do not wish to reveal my true role to anyone unless it is absolutely necessary.”
“Quite so, Budd. What shall I do?”
“Your B4 man, Fordyce, knows about me and has been most helpful. If he would meet me at the airport and see me off on the plane to Stockholm, it would be a favor.”
“Right-o. I’ll give the order before I go to sleep. My best regards to Adolf!”
XII
Next morning the President’s man came to the art expert’s hotel, bringing a passport and the plane tickets, also a peculiar object, a light athletic shirt of the kind that slips over the head; it fitted Lanny, and the front of it had been made into a sort of breastplate, or sewed-in pocket, filled with papers, not folded, but laid flat and wrapped in oilskin to protect them from perspiration. The top of the pocket was open, so that Lanny could slip the papers out to study them in the privacy of his room. Then he would make them secure with a couple of safety pins and would wear that shirt until he was in the presence of the Führer, or at any rate of the Führer’s guards who would search him. This wouldn’t be a comfortable garment for summer wear, but Lanny reflected that it was a lot more so than the packs which the GI’s had been carrying on the hot and dusty mountain roads of Sicily.
The P.A. was flown to New York in a little more than an hour, and there he had an afternoon and evening at home, one of those distressing periods when he was going away and might never return. Laurel couldn’t think about anything else, but was too proud to weep, and had to give an excuse to get up and leave the room so that Lanny would not see her tears. They couldn’t find anything to talk about that seemed adequate to the occasion. Lanny couldn’t tell where he was going or what he was doing; he couldn’t even mention the past, Italy or Germany or Quebec. Even if he had broken the rules and told her, what good would it have done?—for the reality was as bad as her imaginings, or worse. They talked about the baby, and about the family in Newcastle, and about relatives of Laurel who Lanny had avoided meeting because they would have been bound to ask questions which Lanny couldn’t have answered. They talked about Laurel’s ideas for stories. Then they decided to go out to a show, so that they would get at least the physical distraction of new scenes, new faces, and new voices. But it was a poor show, and perhaps the best wouldn’t have held their attention.
In the bedroom Lanny took off his strange undershirt, folded it, and put it under his pillow without a word. Laurel didn’t need any words-she was a novelist and knew them all. Secret documents having to do with the war, and if he were caught with them he would be shot! She lay there by his side, brooding, not sleeping; in the middle of the night she broke down, weeping, “Oh, how I hate war!” Over and over again, “How I hate war!”
They talked about it for a long time; what could be done about this war, and about the next which would be so much worse? He hadn’t said anything about the new weapons, but she had heard about atomic fission before the blackout had begun, and she had not forgotten it as one of the possibilities; also rockets, and planes in the stratosphere, and poison gas, and death rays, and war with germs—these horrors had been guessed about and talked about in the old days, and all thinking people knew they must be on the way.
Both of this pair were agreed that war could never be abolished while the present economic system endured. Capitalism was war carried on like a game, under a set of rules and conventions, but its end was the same, the taking away from the other person of the means of life. Capitalism was a game of “freeze-out” poker; when you had lost all your chips, you were out of the game for good. Commercial competition inevitably tended to monopoly, and monopoly froze out whole classes and whole nations from their chance of life.
But how were you to change this system and get a co-operative world? The Socialists appeared to be too polite and inclined toward compromise; when they took power they seemed to shrink from the immensity of their task and were tempted to show that they could run capitalism better than the capitalists—a fatal mistake, for the capitalists knew the game. But the only alternative to that was violent revolution, a Communist dictatorship; and from that all people with kindness in their hearts shrank in dread. Truly the alternatives were difficult; they were ashamed of their own comfort and ease and spent hours wrestling with their consciences, trying to decide where their social duty lay, and which were the more important values in life.
Since sleep was denied them, Lanny said, “Let’s try a séance.” He was going on a long journey, and it was always fascinating to see if those entities w
hich called themselves “spirits” would lift the veil of the future even for a tiny gap. Laurel agreed, and composed herself; there was a technique of going into a trance, she had discovered—you made your mind a blank, excluding all thoughts but the thought of emptiness. She began to breathe heavily, and the husband waited for the strange voice that would come. He waited, and her breathing became quieter, but no voice came, and he realized that she had taken the other fork in the mental road; she was asleep. So he too went to sleep—and if there were any creatures of the subconscious world waiting to tell him secrets, they went away thwarted.
BOOK FOUR
Till Danger’s Troubled Night Depart
10
When Fortune Flatters
I
The Swedish plane, traveling by a secret route from Scotland, circled the clean stone city of islands and bridges and settled on the fine Bromma airport. The passenger from America was driven to the Grand Hotel, where he had stopped earlier in this same year; he knew well that it was a spy nest. His breastplate of documents for Hitler were safe over his heart, and when he went to his bath he took the precious shirt with him and locked the door. When the valet brought his freshly pressed suit, Lanny already had the undershirt on and covered by a clean overshirt. Nobody was going to get a glimpse of that breastplate until he was in the Führer’s home or headquarters.
He had the address of the American “post office” in Stockholm; it was in a business building and was known as the “21 Club.” He would take care never to be seen in its vicinity. It must pretty certainly have been there since the beginning of the war and to be under observation by the enemy. After the P.A. made himself presentable he went for a stroll. He stopped in a stationery store and bought an inconspicuous sheet of paper and an envelope. In Stockholm all clerks and others who deal with the public know some English or German, so he had no trouble in finding an obscure office where a visiting foreigner was permitted to use a typewriter for a few minutes.
One Clear Call I Page 27
