One Clear Call I

by Upton Sinclair

  Lanny said, “I’m not telling any secret, but just guessing that before this year is over we shall be landing somewhere on the Riveria. I could be useful to the Army in that locale which I know by heart, and I am hugging the idea that I may get an assignment to help prepare the way. If so, I may drop in on Charlot at Bienvenu and have another argument.”

  The elder’s reply was, “Do for God’s sake keep him out of the hands of the French, for they will certainly shoot him. There could be no other verdict!”

  III

  In his capacity as presidential agent Lanny Budd had made many acquaintances in Algiers. He had made them among groups both rich and poor; he had made them among those who had ardently desired the American landing and among those who had guessed that it was coming and had jumped to be on the winning side. Among the former was the Jewish physician, Dr. Aboulker, and his two sons, who had made their home the headquarters of the youth group, the Chantiers de la Jeunesse, which had seized the city government and held most of it until the Army had got ashore. They had risked their lives, and now they found that they were completely out of everything; no one paid any attention to them—unless it was the police spies. The elderly crippled doctor had been kept under detention for some time.

  Those who were in power were the rich, the big business group which had been exploiting the colony, and were so close to Fascism that it would have required an expert to find the dividing line. Now they had all changed their color; they were all for General de Gaulle’s formula of “liberation first and then liberty.” “Big Charlie” had at last succeeded in his long struggle with General Giraud, and was now the head of both army and government. The French trusted him, but Lanny felt sure that in his heart he had no idea but to restore the old Catholic, military, autocratic France. His creed was very close to that of Marshal Pétain, except that surrender to the Germans was excluded from this picture.

  This was the sort of government the American Army wanted in order to win the war quickly, and it was the sort they would want after the war, with no nonsense from reformers and crackpots. The big businessmen were those who got things done; they were the men the big brass dealt with in Washington, and whom they understood and liked. In Washington they had fine homes and gave elaborate parties, and in North Africa it had turned out to be no different. Lanny and his wife were invited to a soiree at the home of the French General Juin, who had married an Algerian heiress and lived up on the heights in an ancient Arab villa, large in size, square in shape, and yellow in color. The visitors bought proper clothes in order that they might appear at this and other functions; they met a wealthy provincial hostess, who had been so anti-American that Lanny had been warned against her. Americans in her eyes were democratic, they were enemies of property, Jew-lovers and even Freemasons!

  But now all that was water over the dam; the lady was all smiles and charms, all pearls and diamonds; her drawing-room was full of French, British, and American uniforms, the tiptop of the armies in this main thoroughfare to the war in Italy. Lanny listened to groups of these men discussing their problems, and he did not hear of any plans to establish democratic government in these colonies, which included such large numbers of dark-skinned peoples—whom some of the officers referred to as “niggers” and others as “wogs.”

  General George Patton had come ashore at Casablanca, flourishing his two pearl-handled revolvers and roaring for action. He had swept all the way across North Africa, a couple of thousand miles; he had swept across Sicily and was now on his way up the Italian boot; he had boldly announced his intention of conducting the same sweeping operations in France and Germany. Georgie was the man for the times loving his job, sharing Othello’s delight in “the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, the spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, the royal banner, and all quality, pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war.” The P.A., desiring victory in this war but also victory in the peace, had heard with dismay how Georgie, in a company like this, had expounded his idea that war was the natural and inevitable condition of mankind. “Man IS war!” the commander of the Third Army had proclaimed. He was not content with the formula, “In time of peace prepare for war,” but wanted it to read, “In time of war prepare for the next one.”

  So everything would go back and be what it had always been. The swarms of the poor whom Lanny and his wife had seen crowded into the slums of Jerusalem and Cairo, and whom Lanny in past times had seen in Barcelona and Marseille and Cannes and Nice and Genoa and Naples and Athens—all around the perimeter of this great midland sea—they were going to stay right where they were, sunk beyond hope in poverty and ignorance; meanwhile the capable intelligent gentlemen who exploited their labor would continue to live in palaces on the heights, deck their wives in pearls and diamonds, and give dinner parties to the fancy-dressed foreigners skilled in the use of instruments of killing. That was the program; the near-Fascists would rebuild Fascism with the label changed—probably to something religious, since “Big Charlie” was a devout Catholic and “Two-Gun Georgie” a devout Episcopalian.

  IV

  Ambassador Robert Murphy, genial and kindly Irish-American career man in the Department of State, had a juggler’s job of balancing himself between the two factions in that faction-ridden organization. The old-liners, the permanent staff, were tight-lipped conservatives, most of them Republicans; on the other hand, some New Dealers had crept in, and these had the backing of the Chief, who might step in and upset anybody’s applecart at any moment. The genial Bob must have guessed by now that the son of Budd-Erling was far from being a proper “striped-pants” man; but he was a friend of the Big Boss, and carried the most powerful visiting card in the world. Lanny would never know what Murphy really thought of him, but found him friendly and obliging, and that was enough.

  What Lanny wanted was to get in touch with two of his old friends: one, Jerry Pendleton, who had been his tutor away back before World War I, and recently had helped to put through a job on the Germans prior to the Casablanca landing. Jerry was an OSS man, so one didn’t ask what he was doing or anything of that sort. One said, “I have an important reason for seeing him,” and when the answer was that he was probably still in Casablanca, Lanny said, “Can you get a note to him?” He wrote, saying that he was going to be in Marrakech in a few days. He didn’t sign his name, because Jerry knew his handwriting.

  The other person was Raoul Palma, Spanish-born Socialist, whom Lanny knew to be working with the underground in the Midi—that is, if he was still alive. Lanny explained to the Ambassador that he had lost contact with this old friend and wanted the OSS to get a message to him if it could be arranged. It wasn’t proper to ask the name or address of the OSS head in Algiers; it was enough that Murphy would forward a note. Lanny wrote, asking Raoul—who was working under the name of Bruges—if he had found any worth-while paintings; he signed this letter “Neuchâtel,” knowing that Bruges also knew his handwriting and would understand that he was to reply to Newcastle.

  The Budds were flown to Marrakech, and there was Lanny’s mother, enjoying the elegance of the Hotel Mamounia—she too had “inherited that good part,” or at any rate had won it by her combination of endowments and efforts. She and her husband and grandchild and maid were costing a lot of money, but then Robbie was sending his regular thousand dollars a month, and Zoltan was selling Detaze paintings and putting the money in a New York bank. You couldn’t live forever, and might as well have the good things of this world while you were in it. Impossible to find even a small cottage to rent, and you could thank your stars and your social talents that you had made yourself popular in a great hotel, so that you and yours were the last persons they would turn out on the demand of the brass.

  One thing tormented Beauty’s soul, and that was the continued silence of her daughter. She besieged Lanny on the subject, and all he could tell her was that he could think of no circumstance under which friends of Marceline in the Allied world could do anything but harm to her in the Axis world
. If she was dead, or in a concentration camp, she was equally beyond help for the present. If she had gone into hiding—as many people in Germany had done—the last thing she would want was any effort to find her. If she got out, she would surely let them know; meantime she was one of many millions lost, missing, displaced, or whatever the word might be, on the tormented Continent. Lanny pointed out to his mother that Marceline had a powerful friend in her Junker lover; she had made many other friends by her art. It might well be that the friend in, Switzerland who had been relaying messages for her had died, or that some law had been passed forbidding the practice. Beauty’s daughter was a capable young woman and would surely not be wanting help from enemies of the land where she had chosen to make her home.

  The voyaging couple were free to tell what they had seen in Palestine, and Lanny was free to tell his stepfather about the various religions which were supposed to be agencies of love, but which somehow had been taken over by Satan and his minions. How else could a religious man account for what was happening in the world? Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour! So Peter had warned, and he was the Rock on whom the Church was built. Parsifal was deeply grieved by what Lanny told him of the sectarian wars over the tomb of Christ; Beauty took her son aside and asked him not to talk too much about this subject, for fear that Parsifal might take up the notion that he had a call to go there and preach love and brotherhood to the warring factions. Let a white-haired old gentleman stay in a luxury hotel and love his wife, and surely that would be sufficient in the sight of God.

  V

  Jerry Pendleton came to Marrakech on the crowded, dusty, and rather dilapidated train. To Lanny he was the same young companion, and it was hard to realize that he had passed fifty and that his hair was turning gray. They had played tennis together, swam and fished and sailed together, and Jerry had risked his life for Lanny in their secret war upon the Nazis. Now the ex-tutor, ex-lieutenant was a full-fledged OSS man, and wasn’t permitted to talk about what he was doing, even to Lanny who had got him the job. They had to deal in generalities; Lanny could say that he and Laurel had been to Palestine, and what they had seen there, but not who had sent them.

  Good old Jerry was much worried about the war and how it was going. The month was March, and the armies in Italy had been making no gains worth mentioning; they were stuck in front of Monte Cassino and had been pouring out blood there for weeks; they had made a landing at Anzio, a beach below Rome, and had barely been holding on by fingernails and toenails. The censorship was keeping the facts from the public, but all the world was coming to realize that we weren’t winning this war.

  Lanny answered, “We knew that campaign was going to be tough, Jerry; up one mountain and down to another.”

  “Yes, but if we can’t take Italy, how can we expect to take France?”

  The P.A. was far from contented himself, but he knew it was a test of endurance, and every man had to attend to his own spirit. “You know where the real war will be,” he said, “and it’s not in Italy. We’re keeping a dozen or a score of German divisions occupied there, and keeping them away from the Russian front. That’s our winter contribution, and you see the result—the Russians are in Poland and also in Bessarabia.”

  “I wish I could share your contentment,” replied the other. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that the Germans may be going easy on the Russians, and that when the Russians have got back everything that belongs to them, they may make a deal and quit on us?”

  “I’ve heard talk about that, Jerry; but I put myself in Stalin’s place and invite myself to trust Hitler and I can’t see it. My guess is, the Russians will put the Germans to work for a generation to repair the damage they have done.”

  “Maybe so; but they may prefer to make Commies out of them, and we won’t like that either.” It was a complicated situation, all over the world, and every time you talked with a new person you got a new angle.

  Lanny was free to tell his friend what Denis had reported about the fighting in Italy: the men were lying out in foxholes in the cold rain and snow, facing the fearsome new weapons which the enemy had contrived to make misery for them. There was a thing which the GI’s called a Beetle; a crewless tank, guided by radio, low and flat, and carrying a heavy charge of explosives; it came hurtling along and crashed into an ammunition dump or other objective. There was a device for destroying railroad track, which ran on the track it destroyed; it had an immense hook in back which ripped up the sleepers; also, on each side a sort of trough, in which bombs slid down every few seconds and exploded after the hook had passed on. And whatever door the GI opened, or whatever obstacle he removed, there was sure to be a booby-trap designed to blow him out of this world. There were devilish little devices not much bigger than a fountain pen that shot up a bullet between a man’s legs, just enough to ruin him for life.

  Such were the things to which the German scientific brain had been devoting itself; and the American brain had been forced to follow suit. That appeared to be the way of all evil, it compelled the good to cease being good and to meet evil on its own evil ground. “Don’t worry,” Lanny said, “we have some surprises prepared for the Jerries, and it won’t be long before they find it out.”

  The American Jerry’s answer was, “I’m sick of waiting. All the Moors here are beginning to turn up their noses at me; and some of the French too—the high-toned ones who didn’t want us in here and are glad to see us in trouble.”

  VI

  Lanny had wanted to meet this old friend because he had an idea in his mind, important enough to justify him in breaking the rule of secrecy. “I’m going back to Washington,” he explained, “and they will ask me what I want to do next. I’m not allowed to go into Axis territory any more, for reasons I can’t go into. I have the idea that I might be able to be of use in Spain, and I wondered what you would think about it.” Lanny was fairly sure that Jerry’s duty was keeping track of Spanish agents working in French Morocco, and perhaps keeping contact with American agents in Spanish Morocco. The border was long and mountainous, impossible to keep closed.

  The old friend replied, “No doubt you could be useful, but don’t imagine that it would be safe. If the Nazis have got onto you, they could have you kidnapped and carried into France.”

  “I think that would be what we call a calculated risk, Jerry. Strictly between you and me, I don’t know how much the Nazis have found out about me, or what their attitude may be. I have old friends in Spain, some of them important persons—General Aguilar, for example. It might be I could convince him that I had been lied about and misunderstood. Anyhow, it would be worth trying.”

  “If you’re asking about my end of it, Lanny, of course I’d be delighted to co-operate with you and I’ve no doubt you could get your stuff out. Washington would have to give me the orders.”

  “The point is, I want to be somewhere near France—I’m sure it’s no secret to you that the big push is coming there. The enemy knows that we are getting ready the biggest smash in all history. I don’t know where it will be—I have carefully kept from asking—but I’d bet all I own in this world that we haven’t been loading up the British Isles with troops for the purpose of holding parades. It happens that I know France better than any other part of the world, and I try to figure out what I can do that will count for most, this spring and summer and afterward. I’ll consult the people in Washington, of course, and hear what they have to advise; but I’m pretty sure that at the end they’ll say, ‘Well, what do you think?’ You see, I’ve been at this game for ten years, and most of the others have only had a year or two of it.”

  “You ought to be bossing the whole show!” exclaimed the ex-tutor.

  “God forbid!” replied his friend. “I’ve learned to work on my own, but I don’t know how to boss other people. If I had all those files on my mind, and the fate of all those thousands of men and women on my conscience, I’d never get to sleep at night!”

  VII
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  That was the end of Lanny’s duties in North Africa, and of the interest of both husband and wife in the region. He wanted to get back to F.D.R., and she thought more about the baby than about the blue skies and snow-white mountains and dark green date orchards of Marrakech. They consulted the Air Force officer who had charge of their flight, and he told them that the quickest way would be on one of the big transports which flew from Marrakech to New York. These had no bunks and carried wounded men, and it was no trip for a lady. Laurel asked, “Do they sometimes have women nurses?” and when the man said, “Yes,” she answered, “I’ll help.” The officer could understand that attitude, and she didn’t have to add that she was a writer and that everything was copy to her. She was even willing to suffer so as to make sure how it felt. Everything but getting killed, because then she couldn’t write it!

  So a delicately reared lady from the Eastern Shore of Maryland sat on a camp chair and talked with wounded men and heard their stories, and when she was tired out she slept for an hour or two on a cotton pad that was not much better than a floor. Meantime the four engines roared steadily, and the winds, blowing westward, helped them on their way. It was a routine flight, the navigator assured her; but many more flew eastward than came back. The pilot set them down, feather-lightly, on the runway of the great airfield on Long Island. A couple of hours later the tired mother had her baby in her arms—and the baby hadn’t forgotten her, as she had feared.