One Clear Call I

by Upton Sinclair

  There was no booth, but it didn’t matter, for he didn’t expect to have much to say; just “Sehr gut, ich komme,” or else “Schade. Auf Wiedersehen.” He took up the receiver and heard Marceline’s voice, asking if he had had a pleasant night and if he was still interested in the Holbein painting. He answered that he was still interested. He knew that she was giving him a chance to make sure who was speaking, and he said, “I would like to take it to Bienvenu”—so that she could be sure who was her auditor.

  She began a speech, slowly and very distinctly, so that he might get every word. This was the speech: “I have seen the painting. It is a grim and rather frightening thing, but there can be no doubt of its power. It is called ‘Death in the Twilight.’ I urge you to see it at once; somebody else may get it, so don’t delay a moment. I am no longer at home and cannot take you to see it, but don’t fail to take my advice. Promise me.”

  “Yes, of course. Where can I see it?”

  “It is at Neuschloss.”

  “Neuschloss?” he echoed. He wasn’t usually dumb, but this quiet yet terrible series of sentences had set his heart to pounding and thrown his mind into confusion.

  “Surely you remember!” exclaimed the voice. “The place where your translator lives.”

  Lanny’s translator! He had no such person and had never needed one, except years ago in Russia. But he caught on: Marceline wanted him to translate Neuschloss. Newcastle! And that meant: Get out of Germany! It meant get out at once. Death in the Twilight! “Ja, ich verstehe,” he said. “Ich werde mir das Bild ansehen—noch heute. Wie geht es Dir?”

  “Heil Hitler!” came the response. “Lebe wohl!” And that was all; the phone was dead.

  VI

  Lanny was standing by a wall telephone in an alcove of the hotel lobby, where several persons might have heard his conversation and might be watching him. After hanging up he stood thinking for a fraction of a second, then walked towards the lavatory, that being a place where he could get out of sight and have a few moments to think.

  His thoughts were in a tumult. Marceline had given him a warning that his life was in danger; that could be the only meaning of her words. “Death in the Twilight” had nothing to do with any painting by the younger Holbein. “Grim and rather frightening!” Rather, indeed! Marceline meant the Gestapo; she could mean nothing else. She had fled from them, and it might be that she had risked her life in order to warn her half-brother. Did it mean that Oskar’s plot had been discovered and that Oskar himself had been caught? Or did it mean that Oskar was a spy and had betrayed the half-brother of his Freundin? Or that Himmler had found out something else about Lanny Budd and had sent his men to arrest him? Somehow or other, Marceline had found out about it; perhaps a servant had warned her, as four years ago one had warned Laurel Creston in this same Hauptstadt of terror!

  Anyhow, Lanny had been warned, and in words there was no mistaking. “At once … don’t delay a moment.” That was somewhat out of key with the viewing of a painting and was as far as anyone would dare to go over a telephone in Naziland. The Gestapo was looking for the Füherer’s American friend; and here he was in a hotel—which was like sitting down inside a trap! Surely the first thing the Gestapo would do was to put their telephone system to work on the hotels. He was registered here in his own name and it would take but a few minutes to locate him. They might be entering the lobby at this moment. The clerk would say, “Der Herr ist in der Toilette.”

  Lanny Budd was no longer in the Toilette. He was strolling out, as nonchalantly as he could. He did not go back to his room, but strolled out by the front door and down the street. He had no hat on, but it was a pleasant cool day, and a number of men were going without hats these days; they were hard to get, and people wore no more of anything than the weather and the law required. Down the street, and around a corner, then around another corner and another, and now he was part of the crowd in a big city; now he was no longer “registered” and easy to find. Of course he might run into someone who knew him, and who knew that he was wanted by the Polizei; but that wasn’t likely. The Polizei would have his photograph, but it would take them a few hours to get it reproduced and distributed, and meantime the son of Budd-Erling was just a good-looking middle-aged gentleman out for a stroll. There were plenty of Germans who looked like him, also Danes and Frenchmen and Swiss and others.

  Lanny thought with a touch of heartache of the things he had left in his hotel room and that he would have to kiss goodby; they would be taken by the Gestapo, and some official would sell them in the black market. Lanny’s other suit, his overcoat and hat, his clean underwear and socks and handkerchiefs, his toothbrush, his hairbrush and comb, his safety razor that was absolutely irreplaceable, his letters from American millionaires that he had carried with him on his many voyages in order that the police agents spying on him might be able to get through their dumb skulls that he was a really top-notch Kunstsachverständiger, connaisseur d’art, conoscitore d’arte, conocedor de arte—according to which frontier he had crossed. The spies used different words, but they all had the same ideas and the same techniques.

  Lanny couldn’t go on walking the streets of Berlin all day. He must have someplace where he could sit down and think things out and wait until night. He bethought himself of a device he had used when he had been in danger in Toulon: a cinema! There you could sit in nearly complete darkness, and for as long as you pleased; there nobody paid any attention to you—being carried away into a dream world, the farther from reality the better.

  Fortunately Lanny had his purse and his billfold, also his papers; he must keep these latter for the present, for at any moment on the street he might be asked to show them. They would identify him as Lanny Budd, but there would be a chance that, for this day at least, the questioner would not have his name in mind; whereas to be caught without any papers would inevitably mean being taken to the nearest police station and thoroughly investigated.

  Lanny stopped at a small grocery, somewhat elaborately known in Germany as a Kolonialwarenladen. He bought a package of cookies called Leibnitzkeks and stowed them away in his pockets. They would last him for the day. The cinemas opened early in all German cities and closed early because of the blackout. Lanny went to the nearest, regardless of the program, and found himself a seat at the side, where other people wouldn’t stumble over him. There he sat and thought how he was going to get to Neuschloss, Connecticut!

  VII

  The picture on the screen was a version of the Strauss operetta, Die Fledermaus. It was done in technicolor, very bright and gay, well calculated to take the minds of Berliners off their troubles. Lanny watched it for a minute or two, then closed his eyes and tried to forget it; his troubles required close attention. But he couldn’t close his ears, and presently there came the loud tramping of soldiers, and the blaring music of the Badenweilermarsch, Hitler’s favorite. A newsreel was being run; and then Lanny’s ears were assailed by a shrill, penetrating voice—there stood that most odious of human creatures, Dr. Josef Goebbels, making a speech and calling down curses upon the heads of die Meckerer, die Nörgler of the Führer’s holy Reich. Lanny had once attended a reception in the little doctor’s home, and later had met his wife in Switzerland, where that lady had sought refuge from his infinite vileness. Since that time Lanny had kept away from him; but it was not possible to keep away from his voice, which filled a quarter of a million cubic feet of air with infernal sound waves.

  Presently Lanny noticed another sound that surprised him; a murmur, rising louder and louder to hoots and jeering! The German people didn’t like their crooked little Doktor any more, and were tired of hearing him call upon them for more sacrifices; they were raising their voices against him whenever he appeared on the screen. Lanny had been told about this by Oskar; it had become so common that the Gestapo had taken to raiding theaters, ordering the lights turned on suddenly and arresting the disturbers. Lanny surely didn’t want that to happen to him and scrounged down in his seat, trying to b
e the most inconspicuous person in this Cinemapalast.

  All newsreels have one virtue, they are soon over. Then came a biography of Frederick the Great, one of the Führer’s favorite themes, and made just the way he would like it. Another costume picture, with gentlemen in perukes and short pants, and ladies with hair piled high and dresses full of flounces and flummery. Plenty of color, and much dignity, bowing and scraping and announcing of titles. The Frederick of this film was never one of the leaders of the Enlightenment, loving everything French, speaking the language on all occasions, and patronizing such cynical personages as François Marie Arouet, alias Voltaire. No, he was an echt deutscher Friedrich, making patriotic speeches, choosing his six-foot Pomeranian grenadiers and disciplining them with his cane, berating his generals for lack of spirit and daring, holding out with all Europe against him, and snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat. In short, he was Adi Schicklgruber, grown dapper and wearing pumps on his feet and a powdered periwig on top of his head, but thinking the same thoughts and making the same speeches, almost two centuries ahead of time.

  Such were the sights and sounds that tormented the senses of Lanny Budd while he sat in this large auditorium, trying to figure out how to snatch his own personal victory out of the jaws of defeat. He would lose himself in his thoughts for a while, and then would become aware of the screen, and quarrel with it in his mind, and then go back into his private world. Thus in snatches he saw the program through; then, instead of getting up and going out, he saw it through a second time. Now and then he munched one of his Keks; as a boy he had been greatly amused to discover that this meant “cakes.” It had been pointed out to him that this was the only way to get the Germans to pronounce it correctly; otherwise it would have been kahkays, and that would have been harder still to recognize.

  VIII

  Lanny could think of stories more thrilling than anything on this screen; they came swarming into his mind, one on the heels of another. “Death in the Twilight!” What had Marceline meant? Something that had actually happened, or just a name for a painting, suggestive of danger. Lanny saw Oskar coming up to Berlin and being seized by the Gestapo in the twilight; he saw Marceline getting word about it next morning and fleeing into the forest. He saw Oskar having a quarrel with her—they had quarreled almost incessantly; in a fury he left her and reported her to the Gestapo. But no, he couldn’t do that, because she would tell about the bomb in Hitler’s airplane!

  More probably, Oskar had been trying to find out about rockets, and someone had betrayed him; perhaps even now he had been given the “truth serum” and was blurting out the facts about the Führer’s American friend. Perhaps now every person whom Lanny had ever known in Germany was being questioned; and what a turmoil, also what a lot to be revealed, and how many, many reasons for trying to catch this clever scoundrel before he got out of the Führer’s domain! Lanny saw them going through his belongings in the hotel room; he saw them interviewing Salzmann and Plötzen, Heinrich Jung, Bruno Lohse, Baron von Behr—and the horror and alarm of all these different persons.

  Yes, hundreds of scenes and stories, all of them melodramatic, and all of them perfectly possible, all of them things that happened again and again! Lanny had been accustomed to say that the Nazis had supplied the writers of spy stories with material enough to last them for the next thousand years. And with villains—every kind of that story commodity imaginable! Double-dyed villains, subtle sophisticated villains, maniacal villains, even unconscious and self-righteous villains.

  They were here in Naziland, literally by the millions; and Lanny was in the midst of them. How was he going to outwit them? He saw himself going to Hitler and trying to brazen it out. But Hitler would refuse to see him; or else Hitler would fly into one of his wild tantrums and rave at him and never hear a word he said. Hitler was one of the maniacal villains—also one of the unconscious and self-righteous villains! Was it conceivable that Lanny could persuade him to go against the verdict of Heinrich Himmler, the man upon whom he depended for the protection of his life, the man whom he most trusted of all men in Germany? Was it conceivable that he would consent even to see the culprit, and to burden his mind and rend his sensibilities in the midst of all the calamities and slaughters on the eastern front?

  Or should he try to go to Göring for protection? What chance would he have with that great lump of bluff and fraud, tormented by craving for drugs, and by wounded vanity, the fading of his glory, the failure of his hopes? What would friendship mean to such a man in such a crisis? Göring’s faith in the plausible son of Budd-Erling would be as easy to crack as an eggshell—and exactly as impossible to restore! And even if Göring wanted to help Lanny Budd, what could he do against Himmler and Himmler’s machine? Himmler would get hold of Lanny and crush him like the aforesaid eggshell, and nobody but Himmler’s men would ever know what had happened to him. There might be a record somewhere that the American Army would discover—but who would have time to read it?

  One thing was certain, Marceline would not have given such a warning unless she had been sure that Lanny was in dire peril. She had made it as plain as words over the telephone could be; and there was no other possible meaning for the words. If Marceline herself and Marceline alone had been in danger, she would have had no reason to risk talking. But it was Lanny who was to see the painting “Death in the Twilight,” and Lanny who was to go at once to Neuschloss! That being true, it must follow that the whole machinery of the SS and the Gestapo was at work to find Lanny Budd and arrest him. That was what the machinery was built for. A lesser offender might have called for a lesser effort; but for a man who had dared to worm his way into the Führer’s heart, to come into the Führer’s home and try to steal his secrets, such a man would constitute a supreme challenge, and all the dreadful power of the Geheime Staats-Polizei would be set to work.

  IX

  What was Lanny to do? The first thing that became clear in his mind was that he must turn over his priceless secrets to Red Erickson. Erickson was going out, and he would know the OSS people and how to communicate with them. Erickson could fly to Stockholm, whereas Lanny might have to walk—or to swim! Whatever might happen to Lanny, the secrets of Vergeltungswaffe Zwei would be known to the Allied Combined General Staffs, and to allied combined scientists and engineers and manufacturers!

  Lanny waited through two complete programs, and then, because it wasn’t quite dark, he saw the second half of Die Fledermaus for a third time. Then he got up and strolled out into the blackened city street. He had no walking light, and the moon was under a cloud; it was necessary to move slowly, and to use extreme caution at crossings; but he didn’t mind that. He assumed that by now the Gestapo would have sent out an exact description of him, including his clothing and his lack of a hat.

  He came to a public telephone. It was a risk to enter such a place, but once more duty was whispering, “Thou must.” He went in, dropped his coin, and called the Hotel Eden. He hoped that it was a likely hour to call the oil man; he would be dressing for a dinner. A sudden relief to hear his voice; and Lanny said, “Do you remember the joke about the naked ladies and the ants and mosquitoes?”

  “I do,” was the response, and no name. Lanny was pretty sure that Red had him marked as a secret agent by now and would understand cryptic ways of communicating.

  “Could you make it convenient to see me for a few minutes right away? It is a matter of importance.”

  “I have a dinner engagement; but I can be late if necessary.”

  “It is really worth while. I can put you onto a good oil deal. Do you remember the last time we were in Berlin, where you met me on the morning of your leaving?”

  “I remember it.”

  “Could you find that place again?”

  “I’m sure I could.”

  “I’ll meet you there. Whichever one arrives first, wait for the other.” Lanny hung up and got away from that spot as quickly as darkness permitted.

  He had quite a walk before him, but h
e didn’t mind, for the evening was chilly and he had no overcoat. His destination was the Donnerstein palace on the Bismarckstrasse; he had stayed there with his friend Hilde, and had been in the cellar when the building had been hit by a bomb on the terrible raid of March first. Now the place was a burned-out wreck. There might be somebody holed up in the basement, but it surely wouldn’t be the Fürstin Donnerstein, who had a summer camp on the Obersalzberg, in the Bavarian Alps, and had even then been on the point of seeking refuge there.

  X

  Walking in a blackout is no fun, and especially not when every footstep behind you may be that of a police agent seeking your life. Lanny kept watch for any flash of light ahead, for it was only police who where allowed to use ordinary flashlights, and if he saw such a sight he would turn quickly and get away from the spot. Fortunately he had visited Berlin off and on since his youth and needed no map; he had groped his way to the palace night after night, and he knew the very feel of the marble coping which surrounded its area. The high bronze railings had been carted away, no doubt to make munitions, but Lanny knew the spot. He saw no signs of life, but of course there might be caretakers, or even families of squatters underground.

  Crouching in the areaway and waiting, Lanny heard a vehicle approaching and saw dimly a taxi with a shaded blue light. A man got out and paid his fare, then stood until the cab was gone. “Sind Sie hier?” asked the familiar voice with a touch of Brooklyn even in German. Lanny climbed out and took his friend by the arm and led him away.