Presidential Mission

by Upton Sinclair

  “This is what has occurred to me, Jerry. You know Beauty—she has all the social gifts and can help by getting introductions and oiling the machinery, but she’s not much good at the details of a business. I thought you might travel with the party as a sort of secretary, and when you get there, I could put you to work for a while and pay you enough to get along and have a bit to send back home.”

  “That’s very handsome of you, Lanny. What is it, just kindness?”

  “Not at all. I’ll promise you plenty of work, maybe more than you want. I put only one condition on it, that you don’t say a word about it until I tell you to come, and then you just tell Cerise that you are helping Beauty on the trip. When you’re safe in Morocco, you can write her that you’re staying a while longer. You understand, Cerise won’t be in any danger here because she’s French, and the Germans are behaving correctly. But if you were to tell her about it now she might be tempted to tell her aunt, or one of the servants might overhear, and I can’t afford to have my name talked about in this connection.”

  “Mum’s the word,” replied this dependable friend. And then with a grin: “I wonder who Mum was.”

  VIII

  The art expert was retracing his footsteps of the previous spring, except that he visited Geneva ahead of Toulon. Among the conservative disciples of John Calvin he set to work to make his presence known to art dealers and collectors; also he dropped a postcard to “M. Philippe Brun” at the address which he had stowed away carefully in his memory. “Just a line to let you know I’m in town. Bienvenu.” He went to the public library next afternoon and made connections with Monck in the usual cautious way. In the evening they took a long walk, and rested as before on the steps, of the League of Nations building, a mausoleum to them, the tomb of their hopes of past years.

  The German had a lot to report. Colonel Donovan’s organization had sent a man to him, a young college instructor of German descent, a man of keen intelligence with whom Monck was especially well pleased. The agent had given him money, and later had produced some apparatus. Monck didn’t say what it was, but Lanny could guess that it was a radio-sending outfit. There were hints that several other people had gone to work; Monck didn’t know the details, but he said that it was encouraging to have such competent support. The anti-Nazi movement of Germany was like a reservoir that had been drained almost dry; but now a new aqueduct was being constructed, and soon a mighty new stream would be flowing in.

  Monck talked more freely than he had done before; it was as if he were preparing to come out from underground. Lanny had to warn him not to become too confident; it would be a long time yet before an American army could enter Germany. But they would be fighting somewhere before this year was over, that much a P.A. was free to tell his friend in confidence. Fresh from a visit to the Budd-Erling plant, and from driving on Highway Number 1, he could testify that’ the sleeping giant overseas was stirring his limbs and getting to his feet. “As sure as tomorrow’s sunrise, the Nazis are going to be knocked out.” The old-time labor man and Social Democrat replied that these were the most pleasant words he had ever heard.

  He reported on the results of his own inquiries. His “contact” had been in touch with a physicist, and it was true that Germany was making or preparing to make schweres Wasser. Indeed, the physicist had seen the blueprints of a very elaborate plant, but unfortunately he had never been told where the plant was to be located. “It is dangerous to ask questions in Germany nowadays, even of one’s intimate friends.” Oddly enough, the man went on to say, he had got some information about conditions in America, where there existed only a few quarts of “heavy water”; it was one of the scarcest products of the new physics.

  The question of jet propulsion was not so ultra-secret, not because the Nazis didn’t want it so, but because the job was far advanced and therefore had to have workers sharing the secret. There were a number, both Communists and Socialists, who had joined the Nazi party as a means of surviving, but who still kept the old faith buried in their hearts. Every day it became plainer to the workers that they were going to have to face a long war, and against fresh forces from the New World; if only the Russians could hold out through this summer and autumn, many of the German workers would become desperate and would risk their lives to tell what they knew. Said Monck: “I have sent out the call, and I’m waiting for echoes to come back. It isn’t something that can be done in a few days. I hope and trust that people are working on it, and that some day I’ll get answers, and possibly even the blueprints.”

  Lanny had no right to complain. He wasn’t risking anything, but was staying in a palace hotel, the Beau Rivage, and strolling about looking at objets d’art. In the lining of his coat was a tiny oblong of paper with six words written on it, and this burned inward all the way to his heart; he longed so to use it, and was sure that if he were to address a note to Führer Adolf Hitler at the New Chancellery in Berlin, a telegram would come at once, followed by a courier and a plane, to bring him to the Hauptstadt, or to the Führer’s Hauptquartier, wherever it might be. But what could Lanny accomplish, so far as concerned either atomic fission or jet propulsion? He was an enemy alien now, and would be watched every moment, no matter how plausible his story and how charming his manners; very certainly he would not be permitted to chat with any nuclear physicists or designers of supersonic projectiles. And anyhow, F.D.R. had said no, and until he said yes, Lanny would have to go on traveling en prince in neutral lands.

  The best he could do was to pump this ex-sailor and ex-capitán completely dry of information concerning conditions in Germany and Switzerland. It was a mild night, and they were in an open place where no one could steal up behind them. They kept their voices low. Monck told about some of the comrades who had been helping him and who now were gone—these were the only ones he could mention. Some of them had been Trudi’s friends whom Lanny had known in the old days that now seemed a hundred years past. “What fools we were!” remarked the Social Democratic leader. “We actually believed that the great cartelmasters would let us organize and vote them out of power!”

  “And we thought the workers would stand by us when it came to a showdown!” responded the American. “We gave them credit for too much intelligence, Monck, and the capitalists for too little.”

  “Hitler is a cunning knave, you must remember.”

  “Part knave and part genius, Genosse.”

  “I suppose we have to admit that. It would seem as if some devil had constructed him especially to hoodwink the German folk and lead them to utter ruin and despair.”

  “The Pied Piper of Hamelin town!” said Lanny.

  IX

  Just before leaving Bienvenu the P.A. had stopped in Cannes and rented a typewriter of German make; at home he had spent several hours producing a document labeled: “Professor Zimmermann’s Examination Questions.” These questions, twenty-three in all, covered the points on which Lanny had received instructions from the young Jewish doctor of science. They represented the matters concerning which American physicists wished to ascertain how far the German physicists were informed; each question was one which Lanny had learned by heart and had kept reciting to himself ever since leaving the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton. Several of the questions read: “What is the significance of the formula”—and then followed one of those assemblages of mathematical symbols which, so far as the layman was concerned, might as well have been ancient Hittite or modern Gujerati. Each formula contained carefully studied errors which would lead the German scientists astray if it fell into the wrong hands; but any scientist who really knew the advanced steps toward atomic fission would correct the errors. Dr. Braunschweig’s last words had been: “Do not tell even your trusted agent that the formulas are wrong. The errors are a means of testing what comes back to us.”

  Coming from Bienvenu, Lanny had carried this document pinned to his undershirt, and he had slept with it. Now he unpinned it and laid it in Monck’s hands, also the pin, and saw the Germa
n make it safe in the same manner. Lanny explained: “Professor Zimmermann is a top-flight physicist who happens to be an especially ardent Nazi. If this paper should come into possession of the Gestapo, they would call upon this learned gentleman to explain for whom his examination questions were intended, and this might cause at least a temporary slowing up of German progress in nuclear science.”

  Monck said: “I will put my man to work on it.”

  Lanny gave his comrade some of the money he had dug up from under Beauty’s yellow oleander; after which he went to his hotel room and slept well. In the morning he typed out a report on what he had learned and took it out and dropped it into a postbox—he wasn’t afraid to trust the mails in this six-hundred-year-old republic. He spent the day visiting his art friends, and purchased a portrait by Mary Cassatt of a charming tiny girl, intending it as a present to old Mrs. Fotheringay, his client in Chicago who had a mansion full of painted babies. Having thus established himself as an art expert and no spy, Lanny took the night train back to the Riviera.

  He had only a few duties left: the first, to pay a call upon Emily Chattersworth and do what he could to cheer her up. This wasn’t easy, for she said that her world had come to an end. And indeed it was so, the world that she had known and enjoyed was gone, probably forever. Beauty hadn’t yet told her about the harebrained plan of buying mosaics in Morocco; Lanny didn’t want to have to discuss the idea with Emily; he wasn’t sure he could make it sound plausible to her shrewd mind. To flee and leave this old friend behind seemed cruel; but, on the other hand, to take a semi-invalid with them would be telling the world that Lanny had special information about events in the making.

  He visited several persons on the Riviera who owned paintings and were living on the proceeds of their sale. Sooner or later the funds would be running low; and this was a cruel world, in which, when your funds were gone, nobody brought you any food, nobody prepared it for you or served it to you, and your friends had a tendency to cross to the other side of the street, for fear that you might start trying to borrow from them. But Lanny would be on hand and would say tactfully: “If you would care to put a price on that Ingres, I know a gentleman in New York who might be interested.” Then he would say, even more tactfully: “I am sorry, but I fear that is much too high. I don’t think I could advise my client to pay more than half the sum.”

  X

  Lanny had written to “M. Guillaume Bruges” at Toulon, saying that he would soon arrive to inspect the sketches about which M. Bruges had informed him. There was a train that ran along this rockbound Coast of Pleasure, sometimes passing so close to the villas that you feared it was going to hit them. If you were rich and could afford première classe, you could be comfortable. Lanny with his carefully packed suitcases and little portable typewriter boarded the morning train, and a couple of hours later descended in Toulon and was driven in an old-style fiacre to the Grand Hotel.

  All hotels were crowded, but there was always room for a gentleman who was known to be a friend of the military commandant of the port. Lanny made it a point to inquire of the hotel clerk what sort of transportation he could get to the mansion of the D’Avrienne family in the suburbs; he had come, so he said, for the purpose of giving further study to an art collection of which the city was proud. He had dropped a note, requesting permission, and now there was a reply awaiting him at the hotel, and he did not fail to refer to it.

  Also, he asked whether any new art dealers had set themselves up in business since his last visit. He went out to look for them; and it was pure chance that he happened to be passing the bookstore of Armand Mercier. It was chance, also, that he happened to see on the stall in front of the shop a book that interested him. It was natural for a clerk to come out to see if he wished to make a purchase; and nobody heard the words which the clerk murmured: “Twenty hours, at the statue of the Genius of Navigation.”

  Lanny moved on, and inspected paintings in the shops, and admired them even though he found them commonplace. He inquired about old masters and made note of where some might be found; he did all this, knowing that rumors would spread and help to make him persona grata. The law required all foreigners to register with the police, and Lanny went and reported himself as on the way to Algiers; he was stopping by for a couple of days to find out if there was a possibility of obtaining examples of the art of painting, in which it was well known that the French excel all the rest of the world. The statement that “fine words butter no parsnips” had originated in England and would surely never have occurred to anyone who had been raised in the Midi!

  XI

  Promptly at the hour set, Lanny made contact with his friend, and they strolled in obscure streets, taking pains to make certain that no one was following. Their destination was the beautiful gardens of the hospital, out on Cap Cépet which forms one arm of the harbor. They found a quiet spot, in the open, there being sufficient moonlight so that no one could approach without detection. Speaking in low murmurs the ex-schoolman revealed that a man had come from Colonel Donovan’s office, and that the little group of the underground were well pleased with what he had brought them and had promised.

  Raoul himself hadn’t met the man. “You know, Lanny, the fact that I am a Spaniard and worked for the Republican government makes me vulnerable. If ever the flics should take my fingerprints they would spot me, so I stick to my job and avoid the rafles, the round-ups in which they collect slave workers for Germany. I make friends among the workers, and listen, and try to pick out the honest comrades from the police agents and spies. It is dreadfully difficult these days; you have to guard every word you say, every gesture, and every expression of your face.”

  “I know,” Lanny answered. “I worry about you; but we greatly need your help.”

  “You want to know about the Fleet. There is a civil war here, as everywhere in France. Partly it is the class war—three-quarters of the marins are for the Allies, whereas three-quarters of the officers are for tradition, that is to say, for obeying orders whatever they may be. Of course the situation is complicated by what the British did at Mers-el-Kébir; a good part of the men hate them heartily for that; but few hate the Americans, and if the common sailors could have their way, the Fleet would sail out tomorrow and put itself under American command.”

  “That is unlikely, of course. The question is, whether they will let themselves be put under German command.”

  “That surely cannot happen, Lanny. There would be a mutiny on every ship.”

  “What is the truth about the Germans being taught how to run the machinery?”

  “That is being done to some extent. The officers claim they cannot refuse to comply with German demands. There is an underground war going on over the issue. Wherever the Germans come, our marins of course know it, and they get together and agree to teach them wrongly as far as possible. They know what the Nazis want and hate their very guts. Naturally we make the most of the situation. I have written three leaflets that have been printed; many of the men have had a chance to read them. That is one of the ways your Intelligence man has been able to help us, with money, and now he has promised to get paper. That is scarce.”

  “Do you yourself need money, Raoul?”

  “I can use some always; and so can Julie. She, being French, is not in as much danger as I. Believe me, I remember the months I spent in a concentration camp. The French are a grand people in many ways, but their treatment of the politically suspect—well, I’d get out of this country if I didn’t see so much to be done.”

  “The critical time is near, Raoul. I don’t know the day or the place, but I can tell you this much; the Americans are coming to the Mediterranean, and it will be this year.”

  “That is great news, of course; but it won’t satisfy our little group; they want to see the Army here tomorrow! The fortifications of Toulon are powerful, but they don’t extend very far to the east or the west, and landings could be made and the port surrounded.”

  “No doubt our milita
ry men have maps, Raoul. What you and your friends have to do is to save the Fleet, or at any rate keep it out of German hands. No one could exaggerate the importance of that. So long as the Germans don’t have it, we can command the Mediterranean and can land at any place we select. The day we land on French territory, you can be sure the Germans will come down here in force, and they will use every stratagem they know to get the ships. That is when you must act, and put in everything you have. I probably won’t be here, so I’m telling you now: get ready for the day. The fate of the war might depend upon it—at least for years.”

  XII

  Raoul urged his friend to tell these things directly to the leaders of his group. There were differences of opinion, he explained, but all three had been tremendously impressed by that little engraved visiting card with the name of President Roosevelt on it. Lanny said: “I’m still carrying it.” At the same time he wondered, what would they make of the other bit of paper which was sewed up in his coat? An appointment was made for the following evening, and Lanny returned to his hotel. He discovered that his baggage had been gone through, not very skillfully. He had left his correspondence conveniently on top, his address list and his data on Moorish and Arab art. Nothing had been taken.

  In the morning he inspected the D’Avrienne treasures again, and visited more art dealers, and took the trouble to get permission to see another collection about which he had been informed. In the evening he dined upon fish, newly caught in that old sea which had fed so many human tribes for so many thousands of years. Then he went for a “constitutional,” and stopped to look in shop windows, and out of the corner of his eye made certain that nobody else was stopping at the same time. When at last he picked up his Spanish friend, they walked separately around a couple of blocks in the Old Town before at last they dived into the dark alleyway.