Presidential Mission

by Upton Sinclair

  X

  That was how Hugo Behr had been hurled suddenly into the spirit world; and now here he was, stammering poor English, trying to find out if Lanny Budd remembered and understood what had befallen him. Lanny answered yes to both questions, for somehow he didn’t feel it necessary to continue his P.A. role in this strange limbo. Tecumseh said there were tears running down the German’s cheeks as he lamented what was happening at present; the spirits were arriving by the thousand every day, and it was a most dreadful calamity, the murder of a whole race, the best in the world. It was that two-front war which all the military men had held to be the one inexcusable blunder; but Adolf Hitler, the ex-corporal or less, thought he knew more than all the trained minds of the Generalstab. “Send him over here, Lanny!” exclaimed the SA man.

  “What would you do with him?” inquired Lanny, ever curious about this mysterious half-world.

  But Hugo was vague, like all the others in that world. “Some still love him and some hate him,” he declared. Apparently the German limbo was one vast clamor of controversy; all the spirits who hadn’t been allowed to say what they thought on earth went at it eagerly now, and the German colony was what Germany itself might be expected to be when the Germans had been beaten—as Hugo said they were surely going to be.

  When Lanny asked how he knew this, Hugo said, painfully through the mind and lips of Tecumseh, that his world was full of mentality in the same way that radio waves filled all space on earth. When Lanny asked why Hugo hadn’t come to him before, he said it was like the problem of finding a receiving set on earth. He said that Madame was a battery that ran down quickly, and then there was no more power. He said it two or three times: “Keine Kraft mehr,” his voice dying away. There came silence, and then a sigh from the medium, and little moans as she came out of her trance.

  “Was it good?” she asked, and Lanny told her it had been wonderful. He went off by himself to speculate, as he had been doing for years. Was there a fragment of the Hugo Behr personality floating about somewhere in space or out of space, in some universe of consciousness of which all our minds are part? Or was this an elaborate process of fictional creation which went on in the subconscious minds of some living persons, perhaps of all? Lanny hadn’t thought of Hugo Behr for a long time, and there was no special circumstance connecting him with North Africa or with Lanny’s present activities. Was this interview the product of Lanny’s own subconscious fictionizing, and had some force in the mind of Madame dipped into his mind and taken this story, which surely he had never told to her or in her presence? Madame’s mind had tied it up with her own subconscious fictionizing, which had to do with a stone-age man from North America. Was that man made out of some story told to her as a child, or picked up in some medium parlor which she had visited while in process of discovering her own gift?

  This much could be certain, and only this: there were forces in our minds of which we had only the vaguest notion, and these forces went on creating mindstuff, in the same way that plants went on creating plants and animals creating animals. The process never ceased while life lasted; and whether it ceased then was a problem about which we had better keep our minds open—while life lasted.

  XI

  When the fountain had been packed and shipped, Lanny took his old friend Jerry for a walk and revealed to him the carefully guarded secret that for the past five years he had been working as a secret agent of the United States government. He was prepared to be told that his ex-tutor had guessed it, and this proved to be the case. “I never for a moment thought that you had lost interest in everything but buying paintings, Lanny. I knew it must be something serious so I never spoke of it even to my wife.”

  “That’s fine, Jerry. And now here is the situation. The American Army is coming to North Africa before the end of the year, and it seems to me most unlikely that the Germans will fail to move into the Riviera. I was pretty sure you’d rather be in American hands than in those of the Nazis.”

  “I guessed that, too and I’m very much obliged. I take it that Cerise and the children won’t be in too great danger, for the Germans have shown that they want to conciliate the French. They’ve confined their murdering and raping to the eastern front.”

  “Exactly so. And here’s the point: I have been authorized to pay out money to persons who are worthy of trust; and that means you. You know the French, and you can do first-rate work as an Intelligence man. You will have to keep up the pretense that you are working for me, and I have figured it out that it will be fair if I pay half your salary out of my own funds and half out of the government’s. I don’t know what Intelligence is paying, but I can find out. Meantime, would ten dollars a day and expenses seem right to you?”

  “Very handsome, indeed; but I’ve no idea how to earn it. You’ll have to tell me that.”

  “Don’t worry; you’ll be kept busy. The word is that the invasion is to be this year, and we have only three months before bad weather. I will tell you as much as I have already learned, and you can start from there. It will be your job to meet people who have information, and find ways to get it out of them. Of course if you have to pay them, that is O.K., and I will honor your account. My basic instruction is that we are trying to save the lives of our boys, and not to save money. The Nazis are printing it wholesale, or making the French do it. We want maps, we want photographs, everything of that sort. We want to know where military goods are stored, where the big guns are and their caliber, where the Germans have built their flak towers, every sort of military data. We want to know what is in the minds of the men, of the officers, the dockers, everybody.”

  “I’ll do my best, Lanny, but I’m utterly lacking in experience.”

  “Nearly all our people are lacking, Jerry. We have to start from scratch. There will be other fellows working, and more and more of them coming. No doubt there will be a lot of duplication, but that’s all right; what one man reports will check the next man’s. And don’t forget that wherever you go you are looking for mosaics and fountains and beautifully carved doorways—you are really looking for them, just as I am really buying them. If ever it happens that you get caught and questioned, whether it’s by the French or whomever, you must swear that I employed you in good faith in connection with my art business, and that I haven’t the slightest idea that you have been thinking about anything else.”

  “Sure thing, Lanny. All that goes without saying. Wild horses won’t drag anything out of me.”

  “And one thing more, old man. Keep watch who is walking behind you at night, and don’t let anybody lure you into a dark alley.”

  XII

  So there was another secret agent, and it didn’t take him long to get the hang of the job. A couple of hours questioning Lanny, and he was ready to go out and talk with Frenchmen and French-speaking natives, first about art works, then about politics and about the defenses of Casablanca. He would come back to his boss to report, and it wasn’t many days before he had an interesting story. “Have you been to Volubilis?” he inquired.

  “No,” replied Lanny. “I saw the ruins of Timgad, and I imagine they are much the same.”

  “I’ve met a chap who has been studying Volubilis. He calls himself an archeologist and comes from Chicago.”

  “Name Faulkner?” inquired the other.

  “Oh, then you know him!”

  “I came over in the plane with him, the trip before last. Nice chap, I thought.”

  “Funny about him, Lanny. He’s been to Volubilis, all right, and knows all about some new excavating the French did just before the war; but he isn’t doing anything with his information so far as I can make out. What he does is to hang around and gossip with dockworkers and fishermen and people like that. He seems to have no end of time to make friends.”

  “I guessed that he was an O.S.S. man, Jerry. Our State Department isn’t letting anybody over to study ancient ruins these days.”

  “He picked on me because he found I had lived half my life in France and k
new the people. I’ve an idea he doesn’t trust himself any too well. Seems shy.”

  “Another one who’s lacking in experience!” remarked Lanny with a chuckle.

  “He’s been trying to find out everything I know, and of course I’ve been trying to find out everything he knows. We had a fine time taking in each other’s washing.”

  “Well, you might combine forces, once you’ve made sure he’s all right. He struck me as being very much the gentleman and scholar.”

  “I’ve a feeling that he’s about ready to open up and propose something of the sort. I wondered what I should say.”

  “Let him do the talking. Tell him you’re a patriot, of course, and would be glad to help in any way you can. But don’t tell him you’re an agent till you’re absolutely certain of him, and don’t ever let on that I know about it. Let it be that you’re using my business as a camouflage. It might be that you could turn in your information through him, or he could put you in touch with his superior. I have to go back to New York very soon, and while I’m gone you might come on something that was too hot to keep.”

  “Just what I have been worrying about!” said Jerry Pendleton.

  XIII

  Once a week Lanny had been writing a letter to his wife. He told her about the art works he had inspected and about the scenery and the weather; he said that he was well, and so were the other members of the family, and that he loved her, and thought about her often, and hoped that her literary work was progressing, and that she wasn’t overdoing it. All that, but not a word about the war, or politics, or anything approaching thereto; nor any strange words or mysterious statements which might excite the suspicion of a censor. Laurel, carefully warned, did the same; she informed him that she was well and moderately active, though she had come to a state where she moved slowly; she said that the weather was not troubling her; that she had been to visit his family, and also her own people in Baltimore; that the book was not so good as she had hoped, but she was trying to improve it. Assuming that the anonymous censor would be a human being, she had the boldness to add: “Marriage is a dreadfully bad habit; I miss you so!”

  By the beginning of October Lanny felt that he had got as heavy a load of information as he could carry in one head. It was a question of flying back to Algiers and having it delivered to the office of Mr. Robert Murphy or of taking a trip home. Really there wasn’t much difference, or so he told himself, and added that he could do better work if he had a chance to bring his mind up to date with that of his Chief. In the back of his head was the notion that he might win the Chief’s permission to go to Switzerland and write a letter to Adolf Hitler, offering to bring him a message from his most loyal secretary and friend. In addition to all this was the desire to see Laurel, although he sternly told himself that the service of the country must come first and that his personal interest must never take precedence. Of course, if he could manage to make the two kinds of interest coincide, he would be glad to see a wife whom he missed as much as she missed him.

  Things had worked out neatly in the matter of Jerry Pendleton. He had had a showdown with his Dr. Faulkner. (The archeologist had a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, but was thinking of dropping it in Morocco because the natives knew the meaning of the word “doctor,” or thought they did, and while he was measuring the dimensions of ancient Roman dwellings they would bring him cases of trachoma to be treated and tumors to be cut out.) Jerry had told this earnest scholar-turned-spy that he had a good salary as assistant to an art expert and had time to spare and would be glad to help him in the collecting of data useful to an army. So now Jerry had a way to turn in information and have it reach headquarters promptly, for Faulkner reported to one of the vice-consuls who had a concealed radio-sending set. Lanny gave Jerry several items which might be urgent, and Faulkner would get the credit for these and of course be made happy. This arrangement set Lanny free to take wing with a good conscience.

  His procedure was to cable Robbie that he was ready to come home. A message to his father on such a subject would seem natural to any enemy agent who might have bought or exacted the right to inspect cablegrams out of French Morocco. Robbie would pass on the word to a man in Washington, about whom he knew nothing except the name, Baker, and a telephone number. The result was that a couple of days later a messenger from the consulate called at Lanny’s hotel, informing him that a place had been reserved for him on the plane from Tangier to Lisbon, and from there on the Clipper to New York by way of the Azores and Bermuda.

  XIV

  So “Traveler” packed his belongings, leaving a bundle of summer clothing in his mother’s care, it being no longer summer in New York. He wrote a few letters having to do with the business of art, letters which he wanted to come from Marrakech for the effect upon the clients, and also because he wanted censors and enemy agents to have a chance to read them. He bade good-by to the friends he had made and took a dilapidated train into Spanish Morocco. Two days later he went on board one of those luxurious flying boats that have nearly all the American comforts. It was shoved off from the Lisbon pier, its propellers began to whirl, and it went racing down the River Tagus. The waves slapped its underside, shaking it, and presently there were no more slaps and it was airborne, heading into the west, a crossing which in 1492 had taken the little caravels of Columbus a matter of seventy days, and which in 1942 could be made, without stops, in half a day. Such a difference when two numbers exchanged positions!

  This flying boat was playing safe, and stopped at the Islands of the Green Cape, which the bold navigators of Portugal had taken long ago and which now the timid dictator of Portugal had rented to the Allies for a high price to save them the embarrassment of having to seize them. From there on to the still-vexed Bermoothes, which now had become an American naval and air station, to the embarrassment of staid citizens who had hitherto refused to recognize the existence of motorcars. Lanny’s baggage was politely searched by the British authorities, also his clothing. He held his breath, wondering if they were going to find those two scraps of paper sewed up in the lining of his coat, scraps which were so oddly contradictory in their content! But the search was not that thorough, and whatever the name of Budd meant to the officials they gave no sign.

  The Clipper was put down on the water of Long Island Sound, and after another customs investigation Lanny was free. His first act was to step into a telephone booth. He had been debating, in the words of a poem which schoolchildren learn: “Which shall it be? Which shall it be?” He had decided for duty instead of love; but as it happened, duty’s telephone line was busy, so love had its chance. He heard the dear familiar voice and said: “Here I am, safe and sound!” She cried: “Oh, Lanny! Lanny!” There was a catch in her voice.

  “Everything’s jake!” he told her, “and I’ll be home in an hour. Don’t make any preparations, for I may be flying to Washington today.” Such was the fate of a P.A.’s wife, who didn’t even know what a P.A. was!

  He telephoned Baker and was told as usual to call back in three hours for an appointment. Then to a taxi, and in due course he greeted the familiar elevator girl—all operators were women or old men now—and gave her a dollar bill so that she would be as glad to see him as he was to see her. He had left his key to the apartment with Laurel, so he had to ring the bell. Here she came, and what a spectacle! The bright eager face was the same, but the rest of her so different! He took her gently in his arms and told her it was grand and that he was tickled to death, and so on, and of course he was.

  Thirteen years had passed since he had been through this same experience. Irma had been brought up in smart society, where the young women of the twenties had done what they damn pleased and said it in that and other four-letter words. But Laurel had come of a Southern family and was old-fashioned in spite of calling herself a Socialist and feminist. She blushed when she saw her husband glance at that large protuberance, and as they sat on the couch, his arms about her, old-fashioned tears of happiness ran down her cheeks. W
hat she said was: “Oh, do for God’s sake get this awful war over! I can’t stand it much longer!”

  She had almost three years more of it yet to stand; but her husband didn’t know that and couldn’t tell her. The wisest men in the world could have given her only their guesses—“all different and no two alike!”

  BOOK FIVE

  Time by the Forelock

  14

  Able for Thine Enemy

  I

  Roosevelt was at “Shangri-La,” and Lanny was told to be there the following evening. This suited him well, giving him a chance to see his wife, and also to have Robbie send in a car. He had a lot of fun preparing a supper in that “kitchenette,” smaller than anything he had seen in his amply spaced life. The process was retarded by his stopping every two or three minutes to kiss his wife, and tell her how glad he was to get home, and how he hoped to stay at least a week. A woman expecting the ordeal of motherhood has to be absolutely certain that her man is going to stand by her and not show any signs of irritation or impatience or other characteristics which the male animal so distressingly develops. Lanny laughed a lot and romped a little and cheered her up before the meal, and while they were eating he told her stories about a strange part of the world which she had never seen. Afterward he settled down in an easy chair to read three months’ production of manuscript—another kind of baby in process of gestation. It was a much better baby than she had led him to expect, so he was able to tell her, and that made his homecoming a complete success.

  In the morning he went down to see Mr. Post, to make sure whether or not any of those German agents in the hoosegow had given any indication of laying the blame upon the son of Budd-Erling. He was assured that they had not; they had swallowed the story of the diamond dropped in the street, and since they had no chance to communicate one with another, they were left to lay the blame each upon all the others. Branscome alias Hartley had been turned over to his own government, and what they had done with him was something that might not be known till the end of the war. The son of Budd-Erling said: “O.K. by me!”