Presidential Mission

by Upton Sinclair

  III

  The two of them spent the rest of the morning working out a program. When Mr. Hartley went out to dine, the agents would note where he went and then phone Lanny, who would be dressed for the occasion and who would stroll into the place and recognize the messenger of Rudolf Hess and greet him. He would try to soothe him down if he was scared, assure him of his high esteem, chat with him amiably, and take him for a drive. During that drive Lanny would assure him of his own devotion to the Nazi cause and would offer to introduce him to others of that way of thinking—first among them being Miss Cornelia van Zandt.

  “You know this lady?” asked the P.A. The answer was: “We know her well, and all her friends. We even know the dates when you dined there with Forrest Quadratt, and again with Senator Reynolds and Mr. Harrison Dengue.”

  “I see you move in the best near-Fascist circles, Mr. Post. I trust you do not let yourselves be awed by big names.”

  “Not in the least, Mr. Budd. We don’t arrest senators and congressmen, but naturally we know who their friends are.”

  “Let me ask you something especially confidential. Has your attention ever been called to the existence of a conspiracy to kidnap the President of the United States and hold him under the orders of a group of active and aggressive anti-New Dealers?”

  “Indeed, yes, Mr. Budd, and I can assure you that the dossiers on those gentry fill a large cabinet.”

  “You wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the name of the very wealthy and important Mr. Dengue is among them?”

  “Not in the least, Mr. Budd.”

  “Nor that the names include several high officers in the United States Army?”

  “Not the highest, we hope, Mr. Budd!”

  “Not the highest, but still dangerously high.”

  “Some of them have been retired, and some, we are assured, are soon to be.”

  “Well, then, we understand each other, Mr. Post, and can talk as friends. I won’t drop any hint to Hartley concerning this conspiracy, but I’ll take him to dinner in Miss van Zandt’s rather dingy old mansion, and maybe some day she will reveal the plot to him. What I will tell Hartley is that this is a slightly daffy old cow who gives the richest cream ever known, and whom all of us friends of Hitler and Mussolini have been milking for the last ten years or more.”

  “Twenty,” said the F.B.I. man. “And one thing more. I hope it won’t seem too risky if, while you are entertaining him, we take the chance to find out what is in his apartment.”

  “That is a pretty dangerous thing for my work, Mr. Post.”

  “I assure you it won’t be. We have experts who know their business. They do not damage doors or locks and do not leave the smallest trace in the room. We can photostat documents at the rate of a few seconds each, and everything will be replaced exactly as it was. We rub out all fingerprints and dust that might tell tales.”

  “And how about the other people in the apartment house?”

  “Everything has been taken care of. We have an apartment on the same floor, we have taken an impression of the lock and have a key to fit it. An hour will be the utmost that we need.”

  “You are tempting me unduly,” said the P.A. “I ought to say no, but I don’t!”

  IV

  Lanny went home and told his wife what he had learned and what he had promised to do. This was an adventure in which she could take no part, but she was an excellent adviser, and they discussed the psychology of an English Nazi and whether he was apt to be a fanatic or a crook or both, and how it might be possible to gain and keep his confidence. They agreed that he was certain to be a snob, and that Lanny’s best bet would be his intimacy with Lord and Lady Wickthorpe. He would pose as a rich man’s impecunious son and would suggest that Branscome might be introduced to the overpecunious Miss van Zandt, and the two men would divide whatever they could get from her.

  At six in the evening Lanny was dressed in his elegant white jacket, soft white shirt, and black tie, and sat reading the evening paper, but rather inattentively. Before he had finished the phone rang. It was the F.B.I. man informing him that their quarry was settled in the Oak Room of the St. Regis Hotel, a place frequented by the richest refugees and therefore good for spies. Lanny’s car was at the door and he hopped into it. Crowded traffic slowed him down, and it must have been fifteen minutes before he found a place to park his car near his destination. However, when he entered the room he was the picture of carefree grace. To the head waiter he said: “I am looking for a friend,” and so he was left to stroll. When he saw the neat-whiskered Englishman he stopped in front of him, with a smile of pleasure on his face. “Well, well! What a happy coincidence!”—but no name, of course.

  The victim looked up. He could not keep dismay from his features. Lanny made things easy for him, as any well-bred person does when he knows that he may not be remembered. “I am Lanny Budd,” he said, “and we met in London.” Then in a lower tone: “Kurvenal.” That didn’t relieve the tension, and Lanny realized that the man was greatly worried. It was the P.A.’s role to take the aggressive and keep it, so he continued: “I have been wishing very much that I might meet you again. May I join you?”

  Branscome made a feeble attempt to get out of his predicament: “I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage, sir. I don’t remember—”

  “That’s all right,” said Lanny soothingly as he took the seat opposite—it was a table for two. “Let us wait until we are alone. I have something important to tell you; and be sure that I understand the situation.”

  The man was trapped. The waiter came, and Lanny ordered a small salad and a glass of iced tea; he wanted to be free to leave when his victim did, and without seeming hurried or importunate. His victim had a half-eaten mutton chop before him. “Beastly hot weather for June,” Lanny remarked. “One doesn’t feel like eating.” And when the waiter had departed: “Don’t be uneasy, my friend. You may count upon my discretion and good faith.” Then, in the manner of casual conversation: “How long since you left London? I haven’t been there for a year. Did you by any chance hear the funny story of my leaving?”

  “I haven’t heard anything,” said the Englishman, not relaxing his un-cordial manner. He was obviously in distress, and his eyes shifted from one part of the room to another, avoiding the other’s steady gaze. His eyelids were red and the eyes slightly bleared, and Lanny thought: “He drinks.” The man was somewhat stouter than he had been in London, and that was to be expected, since food wasn’t so scarce in New York and rationing didn’t seem to apply to restaurants.

  The P.A. began making himself agreeable, an art which he had been practicing since early childhood. He must manage to interest this man, gain his confidence, or at the least awaken his curiosity, before that mutton chop was finished! “I have just come back from Unoccupied France and French North Africa. You know, my profession of art expert puts me in an especially fortunate position. I am able to travel, and people talk to me frankly because they assume that I am non-political. In Vichy I had the pleasure of meeting Premier Laval and Admiral Darlan. I found they were getting along very well, far better than the newspapers had given me to expect.”

  Lanny paused for a moment to give the Englishman a chance to say how bad he thought American newspapers, but the Englishman did not take the chance. So Lanny went on to tell about his mother’s home on the Riviera, and how he had found conditions there, especially how well the Italians were behaving in the tiny strip of France they had taken, and how little the armistice commissions were interfering with the daily lives of the French. “So different from what we hear!” said the art expert. Again he paused for a comment, and again the Englishman cut off another chunk of mutton chop.

  Then to North Africa. The interior of that country is not often visited, and Lanny could tell interesting stories about ancient Roman ruins and mosaics and mosques and marabouts and Moorish banquets and veiled Jadies in the casbahs. He told them; and in between times, when the waiter was gone and nobody near, he would s
ay: “You may trust me, my dear sir; I am an entirely discreet person and I have something really worth while to tell you. I can show you a way to make quite a good sum of money.”

  When the waiter returned, or when others were passing, Lanny would talk about the great prosperity he had found in all North Africa, and how well affairs were being conducted; the French still had an army in Morocco, and General Noguès got along perfectly with the Germans. Having said this, Lanny would take another cautious glance about him, and add: “I have a car outside, and I hope that you will take a drive with me and give me an opportunity to put a business proposition before you. I have thought of you several times, and had the idea of looking you up the next time I was in London. I have friends there, you know, and I had the idea that I might find you through them.”

  That was a “lead,” and took the conversation to a territory familiar to Branscome alias Hartley. He didn’t have much to say about it, but Lanny had enough for two. He told how he had a little daughter there, and how his former wife was now the Countess of Wickthorpe, and they had remained friends in spite of a divorce. “Ceddy” Wickthorpe had been Lanny’s friend from boyhood, and Lanny had been at the Castle at the time that a certain unnamed friend had made his surprise landing by parachute. “Some time I’ll tell you a funny story about what happened at the Castle on that occasion,” said the art expert.

  With that hint, just enough to awaken curiosity, he passed on to Lord Londonderry and Lord Redesdale, whom he had known as ardent appeasers in the old days. Lord Redesdale was the father of Unity Mitford, and Lanny had met her in the mountain retreat of a Very Important Person who had to be nameless in a New York restaurant. That poor girl had apparently shot herself because of disappointment in her personal expectations. Did Mr. Branscome know what had happened? Mr. Branscome said he didn’t, and Lanny went on to talk about the love life of the unnamable great one, saying only polite things, of course, and speaking with contempt of the slanders which were circulated by the kind of press, “well, you know the kind I refer to, both here and in England.”

  V

  All this time Lanny was feeling somewhat queasy, thinking of what the F.B.I. men were doing. But he gave no outward sign, and by the time the meal had been eaten he had made himself so agreeable that his victim consented to walk to the car with him and be taken for a drive in Central Park. After the engine had been started and they were in the stream of traffic, Lanny said: “Now we can talk, and not be afraid to name names, Mr. Branscome.”

  “I am going by the name of Hartley in this country,” replied the other. “As a matter of fact, that is my real name.”

  Lanny guessed that the fact was otherwise, but he wouldn’t say so. “Thank you, Hartley. I don’t want to ask any improper questions; but before I go into the details of my plan, tell me as much as you care to about who you are and what you are doing.”

  “To put it bluntly,” said the Englishman, “I am keeping alive. I don’t like the bombs.”

  “I can understand,” replied Lanny. “I have been under them, too. You remember the Abbé Sieyès who was asked what he had done during the French Revolution, and he said: ‘I survived.’”

  “I want to tell you,” continued Hartley, “I have dropped the sort of activity I was carrying on in London. I decided that it was inadvisable.”

  Lanny had expected just that and had planned in advance how to deal with it. “Surely, Hartley, you are not reconciled to turning the world over to the Reds!”

  “No, but this war has become too big for anybody to control, and certainly for a man in my obscure position. I can’t see how anybody can win it—except General Chaos.”

  Had the scamp lost his nerve or was it just that he wanted Lanny to think he had? It was up to the host, driving in the twilight of a warm evening near the end of June, to find cheerful things to say, cheerful from the point of view of Nazi-Fascism. Lanny expatiated upon the strong position of both Germany and Japan; many years would be required to drive them out of this position, and both Britain and America would be bankrupt before it could happen. Moreover, as one who had access to secret information, Lanny could say that the Nazis were working on new weapons which would make it impossible for Britain to stay in the war for another year. “You’ll be even more glad to be out of London when those rocket bombs begin to fall, Mr. Hartley.”

  Thus discoursing, they drove through the park and over to Riverside Drive. The farther they went, the longer it would take to get back, and the more time the Federal agents would have to complete their work. Lanny didn’t think that Branscome alias Hartley—or Hartley alias Branscome—really needed any reconversion to the Fascist cause; but the longer Lanny talked along that line, the more apparent he would make it that he was a genuine friend of this cause. He told so many inside facts and talked so freely about Berchtesgaden and Karinhall and the other shrines of Nazi glory that the Englishman could only conclude that this was a remarkable man, one of the insiders who were shaping the destiny of the world.

  “Tell me frankly, Hartley,” this insider opened up suddenly, “do you know Rudi personally?”

  “Rudi?” replied the other. “What Rudi?”

  “Rudolf Hess.”

  “Why should you think that I know him?”

  “That message you brought me in London was from him. Didn’t you know it?”

  “I didn’t know anything about it. I was told to give the password ‘Kurvenal,’ and take any message you might have.”

  Lanny was prepared for this answer; like all the others, it might or might not be true. He could see that Hartley was playing his cards close to his chest, and Lanny had to go on wooing him with facts and fancies, all having to do with the New Order of Adolf Hitler, the successes it had won so far and the fresh ones which were sure to follow. Lanny told about his friendship with the Führer’s Number Three, his home, his wife and friends, and especially his interest in psychic phenomena, and how he and Lanny had consulted mediums and astrologers, and some of the curious things which had happened. Did Mr. Hartley know anything about this subject? Mr. Hartley replied that he had always supposed it was a lot of rubbish, and mostly fraud. Lanny said there was plenty of fraud in it, and unfortunately his friend Rudi wasn’t very discriminating and had let himself be played for a sucker more than once.

  VI

  When you chat like that for hours you become friends, and when these two were far up through Yonkers and the villages beyond, Lanny decided that it was time to get down to business. “Listen, Hartley,” he said. “I told you I had an idea of how you and I might make some easy money. Let me explain that I’m in a jam, because my father is making planes for the government, and I think it’s a hellish thing to do, and I’ve told him so. The result is I can’t expect money from him, and I can’t make much at my profession in wartime, so I’m up against it. I have an idea, but it can’t be worked by one man. I need a partner, somebody of the same way of thinking. I thought several times of you, and now I have the luck to run into you in the very place where I wanted to try out my idea.”

  “Tell me what it is,” said the other.

  “I don’t know how much you know about America, and how easy it is to collect money here. There are so many people who are lousy with money and don’t know what to do with it; they take up all sorts of ‘causes’ and put up sums that would startle you. I know an old lady who thinks nothing of writing a check for five or ten thousand dollars, just for the trouble of going to a dinner at her home and telling her what she wants to hear and offering her a new way to promote it.”

  “What is it she wants to promote?”

  “I won’t say that she has brains enough to understand the theories of National Socialism as it would be applied in America, or even that she would like it if she saw it applied; but she knows enough to be in terror of Bolshevism, and that’s what you have to put up to her. You are an Englishman, so you have a new angle of approach. You tell her about the Labour Party and how it is riddled with Communism, how it is r
eally nothing but a secret plot of the Reds to take over the country and align it with Russia. When this war is over, the Reds will be on top, and there will be no stopping them.”

  “That’s really true, Budd.”

  “Of course it’s true, and you know how to tell it with conviction, and to get her stirred up so that she won’t be able to sleep at night. Tell her that you want to devote your life to putting these facts before the American public; you want to start a paper, put out leaflets, and get speeches into the Congressional Record and distribute them over the country, whatever we decide will be most effective. We’d have to do some of it, of course; the thing mustn’t be a racket. We’d open an office and do real work, but the point is, we’d be able to pay ourselves good salaries, and we could travel and have expense accounts. We’d make it all perfectly respectable, and the money would keep pouring in. I’ve seen it done several times, and it can’t fail if you have the brains to keep it on the right track.”

  “But I can’t do things like that in America, Budd. I am a British subject, and the government would put me out.”

  “It wouldn’t have to be done in your name. We’d find some Americans to serve as a front and carry the responsibility. I think I know one such man, a close friend, Forrest Quadratt, and Miss van Zandt knows him well. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.”

  “I have, of course. But he’s been convicted of some war offense!”

  “He’s quite certain that his conviction will be reversed by a higher court. Meantime he’s out on bail, and he’s going right on with his work.”

  “But I couldn’t afford to have anything to do with a man like that. He’s bound to be watched by government spies, and a foreigner can’t be put in that position.”

  “All right then, forget him. I might ask Miss van Zandt to suggest a man. That would help to give her confidence.”

  “You mean that she would put up money for a complete stranger, and an alien?”