One Clear Call I

by Upton Sinclair

  To the humble and adoring Heinrich Jung, that was the greatest achievement of his lifetime. He bubbled with German adjectives: “Prachtvoll! Herrlich! Beispiellos!” He was chagrined when Lanny began explaining that he could not leave that very day. Unglücklicherweise! Lanny had incurred obligations, he had promised one of his clients to make a thorough investigation of contemporary Spanish painting, and he could not break his word to any client—no, not even to clear his good name in Naziland, not even to help eliminate Herr Rosenfeld from World War II! Lanny promised to come soon; and meantime he prepared a formal report for Heinrich to transmit to the Führer. Also, he started another report, signed “Traveler,” which he would turn in at the American Embassy; but he thought the idea over and burned the document, deciding that it was too risky and there was not enough to be gained. Herr Rosenfeld would have to wait for this item!

  VI

  April had come, and was going. The Germans in the course of their strategic retreat had abandoned Odessa and been surrounded in Sebastopol. The Americans were slogging their way from one mountain to the next on the Italian peninsula, and the people at home read stories of rain and mud and blood, and waited, doubting and despairing, for the Army or somebody to carry out some of the wonderful promises which had been made to the world. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick!

  Lanny had managed to get himself pretty completely surrounded by Nazis and Nazi agents in El Caudillo’s capital. This had come about gradually and naturally; they had sought him out, and he had to like them; he spoke their language more fluently than Spanish, and all his life he had admired German culture, played German music, sung German songs. He introduced the others one by one to Heinrich, smiling inwardly as he did so, for he guessed that the Jugend leader knew them. In all probability they had come first and, finding that Herr Budd would talk only about paintings, they had picked out an old friend to come and break the ice.

  Anyhow, it was broken, and Lanny was, as of old, the Nazi-admirer and collaborator. He talked about his many friends in the Fatherland, and about conditions in America, and the prospects of the war. Occasionally he dropped items of information, nearly always things which he could be sure the Nazis already knew—though perhaps not these particular agents. F.D.R. had told him more than once that it was permissible to give the enemy small items which it didn’t possess, provided that one was getting things of greater importance in return. Money was to be spent without limit; so Lanny entertained as became an open-handed playboy. He was amused to observe that the blond Fräulein Fridolin was willing to accept Heinrich as a substitute for Herr Budd; this was in accord with Nazi ethics, but, all the same, Heinrich mentioned to Lanny that it was a subject not to be referred to in Berlin-Grunewald where his family resided.

  Everything was just lovely in this Axis Liederkranz. Lanny had a piano in his apartment, and they sang every time they met. They ate hearty meals in the dining-room—and perhaps none of them ever noticed that all this hospitality took place in Madrid’s swankiest hotel, and that Lanny never came to their places, never went out alone with them, and never got into a motorcar, not even a taxi, with them. He wouldn’t even visit the Velasquez Club where all the diplomatic set played tennis and swam in the pool. The Germans used one end and the Allies the other; the Spaniards circulated in between. Now and then the Japs came, and then all the others got out and left.

  A shy, solitary man, not fond of outdoor life, he seemed content to have paintings brought to his apartment and to spend hours studying them and talking about them. No doubt the Nazis observed all his habits; if so, they discovered that he read newspapers from half a dozen countries and marked and clipped only passages having to do with art matters. They discovered that he was entirely without sex—they proved it by making several tries, with both women and boys, and of course they would not fail to question the porter and the bellboys, who always know what is going on in hotels.

  A strange man indeed! Could he possibly be what he pretended to be, an ivory-tower art lover, wrapped up in his specialty and indifferent to the outcome of the greatest war in history? He seemed determined to know everything about Spanish painting; next to that came the Dutch—he read papers from Holland, all that he could get in Madrid, and others that he had ordered by mail. He persisted in inquiring about living Dutch painters when everybody knew the Dutch weren’t doing anything worth while in any of the arts—how could they, when the efficient Nazis had taken them all and put them at war work? This Budd fellow spent days in the National Library in Madrid, reading about Dutch painters and trying to find out which were still alive. Of course the efficient Nazis wouldn’t fail to track him, and to find out what books he had consulted and what questions he had asked. Imagine thinking he could keep any secrets in this Fascist city, with the Gestapo and the Spanish police working hand-in-glove on security problems!

  VII

  The secret came out when the American revealed to his dear German friend that he had in mind to get in touch with an odd character of the Dutch art world, Hans van Meegeren by name. This unsuccesful painter had discovered several remarkable works by the old master Vermeer. They were said to be of extraordinary merit; Reichsminister Göring had paid an enormous sum for one of them called “Christ and the Adulteress.” So that was it! This Bursche Budd wanted to get van Meegeren to find him a Vermeer, so that he could smuggle it out to America and sell it to some of his father’s rich friends for a million dollars! From the German point of view that mightn’t be so bad, because any money that van Meegeren or any other Dutchman got the Nazis would take away from him, and it would show up as valuta to buy wolfram in Spain or steel in Sweden.

  Lanny talked frequently about this Dutchman, who seemed to fascinate him; he wondered where he could find the man’s address, and whether the German government permitted the mails to go freely from Spain to Holland. Heinrich undertook to find out and reported that a letter could be sent, subject, of course, to German censorship; it seemed unlikely that there could be objection to an inquiry about an old master. Lanny talked about the extraordinary “Christ and the Adulteress” and another he had heard about, called “Visit at Emmaus,” which showed Christ appearing to two of his disciples after the crucifixion. Heinrich thought that was rather silly, but Lanny replied that it was a favorite art subject and, besides, had cost a million marks. “Don’t be a Hottentot,” he said.

  The Jugend official worshiped power and station, and surely didn’t want to be that inferior thing; so he talked with other Germans and came back to report that some experts believed the alleged Vermeers to be frauds. To this Lanny replied, “The Reichsmarschall asked my opinion. I told him I believed the painting to be a Vermeer, but even if it weren’t, it was so good that it was worth the money. Indeed, it might be worth more, for a man who could fool so good a judge as Göring would be an historical figure, and collectors would want his work as a curiosity.”

  “Is that why you’re anxious to get one?” inquired Heinrich with unexpected shrewdness.

  “It’s part of the reason,” was the reply. “The main thing is that I liked the painting, and so did one of my clients.”

  “Then,” said the German, “I can’t understand why you don’t go and see the Führer and clear matters up, and then, on the way back, meet this van Meegeren and see what you make of him.” Heinrich kept steadily insisting, and Lanny kept steadily refusing.

  VIII

  Across the foot of a mountain canyon a great dam is erected, by the labor of thousands of men and at a cost of millions of dollars. The waters of a river are pent up and form an artificial lake. A powerhouse is built, dynamos are installed, and transmission lines are run over mountaintops and down into valleys. All is made ready, and then one day an engineer in a control room pulls a small lever, and the waters of the lake rush down through the penstocks; giant turbines begin to turn, electric current leaps in a fraction of a second, and in cities hundreds of miles away an infinitude of factory wheels begin to turn and machines to roar and pound.
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  So now it was with the son of Budd-Erling: everything had been prepared, and the time for action had come. He had no lever, only a fountain pen with ink in it, and a scrap of paper on which to write words. He wrote only five, all of them short and none especially impressive: “My roses are in bloom.” He sealed the paper in a plain envelope, stamped it, and addressed it to a so-called “post office” in Madrid. He hadn’t been told the details of what would happen, but he knew the game well enough to imagine every step. The message would be radioed to Washington, and within an hour after it arrived, an OSS agent would take off by plane for New York and from there to Newcastle; he would interview Robbie Budd, even if he had to wake him in the middle of the night, and would present a letter which Lanny had composed and left in the keeping of General Donovan’s office. Robbie would summon his trusted private secretary and dictate the text of that letter, have it typed on his impressive stationery—“Office of the President”—and then sign it himself. The OSS man would take the document, and it would be flown in a diplomatic pouch to Casablanca and delivered to Jerry Pendleton. Jerry would pack his suitcase, provide himself with an American passport and a forged Spanish visa, and be flown by way of Tangier to Madrid.

  Lanny waited three days, according to instructions, and early one evening he slipped out of his hotel, taking every precaution to make sure he wasn’t being followed. After circling several blocks he walked to the Salon del Prado, a natural place for an art expert to be strolling. Out of the shadows a man stepped forth and whispered, “Jerry.” Lanny replied with his own name, and that was enough; an envelope was placed in his hands and he slipped it into the breast pocket of his overcoat. He did not stop walking, but whispered, “Wish I could have a talk with you, but it’s too risky.”

  “Sure thing,” replied the other, and gave him a pat on the shoulder. Ordinarily he would have said, “So long,” but since Lanny had been in Palestine his former tutor thought it was fun to say, “Sholem.” He turned and disappeared in the darkness.

  Lanny got safely back to his hotel, hugging that precious missive which had cost so much in time, thought, and money, and the services of so many persons. When he got into his room he locked the door and then opened the envelope. He knew the contents pretty nearly by heart, but he had to read it to make sure it was correct.

  Dear Lanny:

  Information has come to me from one of your clients that you are contemplating going into Holland to inspect paintings. I am deeply concerned, and am going to the expense of sending this letter to you by special messenger. You have many times told me that you are a grown man and have to have control of your own destiny; but for this once I am hoping you will respect your father’s judgment and grant my request to drop this most dangerous project. I do not need to tell you that I have special information, which I dare not put on paper. I simply say to you, with all the urgency at my command: DO NOT GO INTO THE LOW COUNTRIES.

  Surely there is no art matter important enough to justify you in disregarding this warning from your father. The fact that I am paying more than a thousand dollars to get this message to you without censorship ought surely to convince you that I have reasons for what I am saying. Stay where you are until summer: or if you must meet your friends, meet them in France. The climate in Holland is damp and unpleasant in spring, and I understand it is a time of bright sunshine in Spain. If it is money you need, for heaven’s sake draw on me.

  I rely upon you to destroy this letter as soon as you have read it.

  Your loving father,

  Robert Budd

  P.S. I am telling your client that I have written this, so you need not worry about failing to keep your promise to him.

  IX

  Lanny didn’t destroy that letter. What he did was to put it back in the envelope, and then take his nail scissors and carefully cut some threads in the lining of his suitcase, and slide the letter down between the lining and the suitcase frame. He figured that the enemy would not fail to find it there, and he took the trouble to set a careful trap to make sure. The OSS men had told him about the minute precautions they took to conceal their photostating of documents, and Lanny had no doubt that the Gestapo men would know all the tricks. Lanny didn’t do anything crude like sprinkling powder, or leaving a piece of paper with an edge sticking out of the suitcase. This had to be a really fancy job. He carefully removed one thread from the lining, a brown silk thread two or three inches long; being the color of the lining, it was inconspicuous, and he didn’t lay it over the envelope, where it might be noticed, but carefully laid it between the lining and the envelope, held by the pressure between the two.

  When the envelope was pulled out, the thread would drop to the bottom of the narrow space, Lanny tried this several times, making sure that its smoothness would keep it from sticking. It would fall into the narrow space, where there was no chance of its being seen; when the envelope was shoved back into place, the thread would be at the bottom, and not where Lanny had delicately hung it. So he would know that the envelope had been removed.

  The suitcase was on a chair, and Lanny locked it. He locked his hotel room, being sure that the enemy would be equal to opening these. He went to the telephone and called the Jugend man; the evening was still young, and Lanny had some important news. “Come on over!”

  Heinrich came and heard the extraordinary story that an American millionaire had sent a special messenger from Connecticut to Spain in order to carry a letter to his son. What Robbie Budd had said was—so Lanny told Heinrich—Lanny must under no circumstances go into Germany or any Axis land again; the United States government had become suspicious of him, and he would almost certainly be arrested for treason, and his family would be blackened and shamed. Lanny was terribly depressed over this, it knocked all his plans into kingdom come. So he declared, and Heinrich quite certainly believed him.

  “Lanny!” he exclaimed. “This is your great opportunity! Why don’t you make a clean break?”

  “Just what should I do, Heinrich?”

  “Come over to us! Come with me to the Führer and explain everything. Give out a statement that you are with the German people in their struggle against Russian barbarism, and that you know they are going to win this war.”

  Lanny, playing his carefully thought-out role, looked taken aback. “What good would that do, Heinrich? My statement would be suppressed by the censors in America and it would end my usefulness to the Führer.”

  “You could talk over our radio and reach the entire world, Lanny.”

  “I am nothing of a speaker. There would be some curiosity about me, but it wouldn’t last more than a few days; the newspapers would set me down as a crackpot, and that would be the end of my influence. You see, I have never been at liberty to tell you what I have been doing for the Führer; I have brought him much information, and he has acknowledged its importance. I have done the same for Reichsmarschall Göring; I have told him not merely about the Budd-Erling plane, but about other war weapons. The Führer sent me to Professor Salzmann of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute to tell him what I had found out about American work on jet propulsion, and to Professor Plötzen to tell about experiments in atomic fission.”

  “Aber, Lanny, you won’t be able to do anything like that now!”

  “I expect to go right on doing my best. I can come here to Madrid, and perhaps the Führer will let you come and meet me. You know, I am fortunate in having independent means. Both the Führer and the Reichsmarschall many times offered to pay me for what I was doing, but I have never taken a pfennig from them. So I don’t need their consent to go on with my work.”

  “What a shame, Lanny, that there is a misunderstanding between you!”

  “It is something that was bound to happen sooner or later. They have honored me with their friendship, and it was inevitable that I should excite the jealousy of persons around them. I am an enemy alien, and how could I expect to come and go without awakening suspicion? I’m not going to let it get me down; I’m going on worki
ng for what I believe, and when the victory has been won I’ll take chances on being able to clear my name.”

  Would Heinrich believe all this? Lanny had no means of guessing, because he didn’t know how much Heinrich had been told; he didn’t know how much Hitler was able to tell. He knew that Heinrich wasn’t very bright; he was fond of Lanny and would want to believe the best. So now Lanny looked mournful, yet courageous, as heroic as any movie actor in Hollywood.

  He had the movies in mind, for a special reason. Suddenly he said, “Let’s take our minds off our troubles for a while, Heinrich, and perhaps one of us will get a hunch as to the wisest course. I was passing a cinema today and noticed that they have a German film, Friedrich Barbarossa. Have you seen it?”

  “I don’t have any time for shows, Lanny.”

  “How would you like to go with me now?”

  The Jugend leader thought for a moment. “I have an engagement, but I could call it off.”

  “Fine. There’s the telephone.”

  Heinrich hesitated. “Let’s go downstairs. I have to look up the number.” Lanny smiled to himself, it was exactly as he had guessed. Heinrich had something to say over the phone that he didn’t want Lanny to hear. And Lanny thought that he could guess what it was.

  X

  In the sumptuous lobby of the Hotel Ritz the P.A. waited, well away from the phone booth. He didn’t sit down, but strolled about, looking at faces—it was the fashionable hour, and there were many elegantly dressed people. Lanny was hoping to meet somebody he knew; and here sat a young Army officer whom he had met in General Aguilar’s home, El Capitan Gonzaga, all dolled up, his last button polished, his boots shiny and immaculate, his little black mustache waxed and twisted to points. Lanny stopped before him and said, “Bien venido,” and then, with his best smile, “Waiting for a lady?” It took no clairvoyance or other occult art.