Presidential Mission

by Upton Sinclair

  All the three-day arguments, pro and con, had been carefully recorded. Not merely what Ribbentrop and Molotov had said, but what their deputies had said, and what the German military, diplomatic, geographic, economic, and scientific specialists had reported and advised on the subject! There were also secret reports on what the Russians had done and said among themselves; for this conference, held in Berlin, had been fully covered by dictaphones, telephone-tappings, and other devices for spying.

  When Lanny put the black-bound tome into the Reichsmarschall’s hands, he said: “Why don’t you try making a deal with the Russians now?”

  “Between you and me, we have,” was the reply; “but there has been too much blood shed on both sides.”

  Afterward Lanny wondered: Would Göring regret having said that, and would he blame his guest for having heard it? Lanny decided once more that it was time for him to be getting out of Hitlerland!

  III

  The traveler thought the matter over and decided that he might just as well go out by way of Sweden, a country he had not visited since the pre-Hitler days when he had been cruising on the yacht Bessie Budd. But he thought it would be the part of discretion to go out alone and not advertise to the Nazis his acquaintance with the plausible oil gentleman. He told that gentleman that his stay in Berlin was uncertain, but that sooner or later he would get to Stockholm and look him up. Erickson said: “If you change your mind in the next few days, I’ll be at the Adlon.” To which Lanny replied: “I hope the Adlon will be there.” There had been another air raid the night before.

  The art expert was driven to the city in one of his host’s staff cars. By his side rode a Nazi-trained scientist, Dr. Stoffel by name; young and aggressive, tremendously proud of himself and his knowledge and his regime. He was distantly related to Göring, and proud of that, too. He had heard that Lanny carried a letter from Hitler, and said that he had never seen such a treasure, and would esteem it an honor to look at it. Lanny granted the request, and was touched as well as saddened to see the reverence with which the document was handled. From then on the P.A. was a great man to this young chemist, and he talked freely about the wonders that the Fatherland was achieving in his specialty, which happened to be wood.

  Yes, wood! The Herr Doktor Stoffel was preparing to remake the world out of wood and wood synthetics. Germany’s enemies had shut her off from so many natural resources, but in her noble and carefully tended forests her scientists had found the means of making up for many of her deficiencies. Three pounds of wood sufficed to make one pound of fiber equal to a good grade of cotton. Four pounds of wood were equal to one pound of gasoline, and five pounds would produce a pound of sugar that could not be told from cane. “You have been eating it, Herr Budd,” said the enthusiast, and Lanny said that he hadn’t noticed the difference.

  Germany had a wood cartel, said the Nazi. Wherever her armies had gone, economic commissions had followed without delay, and they had bought up the forests and put them under German control. Wherever there were Fascists there were representatives of the wood trust, getting information and planning fresh campaigns. The young scientist was especially boastful of all this because he held it to be the work of his cousin, the Reichsmarschall; already five years before the Party had taken power—so said Doktor Stoffel, speaking a Germanized English—Göring had this Holzprogram foreseen, and had outlined it at one of their Bierkeller assemblies in Munich. So now, in spite of die Einkreisung, Germany had alcohol, plastics, and rosins, fertilizer for her fields, fodder for her cattle, and foods for her people. Now in the papers you would see advertisements of Holzschnitzel, wood cutlets and Holzwurst, wood sausage. Heil Hitler!

  Lanny listened with his two ears and remembered what he could. He learned that the converting of sawdust into sugar by the sulphuric acid process was known everywhere; but the Germans had a new process by which twice as much sugar could be obtained with simpler and cheaper equipment. That sugar could be converted into, not the poisonous wood alcohol, but ethyl alcohol, from which synthetic rubber, explosives, medicines, dyes, and textiles would be made. This discovery had been made by a chemist named Heinrich Scholler, who had been Dr. Stoffel’s teacher, and of whom he boasted. Lanny, taking a shot in the dark, observed: “I have heard that a Jew had something to do with it.”

  This, as he expected, brought an instant reaction from his companion. “Niemals, niemals, Herr Budd! There were Jews working at our Hamburg plant, but that was five years ago. When we knew that Germany was going to be attacked, we cleaned them all out. You can be sure there are no Jews in any German war industry today.”

  “Juda verrecke!” remarked the friend of the Führer, and without the trace of a smile.

  IV

  Lanny’s first move in Berlin was to mail a note to Monck, under his name as butler. It was the most inconspicuous note imaginable, written on plain stationery in uncertain German script, as if by an uneducated person, and addressed to Konrad Kraft at the house of Professor Plötzen. The letter said: “I look forward to meeting you Tuesday evening at ten. Baldur.” Any name would do, for Monck would have no doubt whose script this was, and he would understand that it was to be the same corner as previously. If anyone else opened the letter, he would get no information, except that he might follow the butler on Tuesday evening, and that wouldn’t be easy in the blackout.

  At the Donnerstein palace Lanny found a letter for him. Hilde had thoughtfully put it away and handed it to him personally. It was a fashionable-looking note in a woman’s handwriting, and he hastened to relieve the curiosity that he knew his hostess must be feeling. “It’s from my sister Marceline,” he said and put it into his pocket unopened.

  Hilde remarked: “I have seen her dance, and she is charming.” It was a possibly awkward situation, because he didn’t want to introduce those two ladies, both of whom were indiscreet talkers and knew far too much about him.

  He went up to his cold room and read the note. Marceline was in Berlin; she had learned about his presence through a musician-friend of Kurt Meissner’s, and of course she wanted to see him. Lanny couldn’t very well get out of seeing her, and he had to take time to plan what to say. He decided to tell her that he had come to see Göring on a confidential mission of Robbie’s. That would satisfy her, because she thought of Robbie as an important and powerful person, able to work any miracle.

  Lanny telephoned her apartment, which was in the fashionable suburbs to the west, which had few military objectives, and where, therefore, few bombs had fallen. He offered to have lunch with her, and to bring food—something that etiquette required. He was rich in coupons because he had been fed at Karinhall, free of both coupons and money. He stood in a queue in front of a Kolonialwarenladen, as the Germans somewhat ponderously call a grocery. With an armful of packages a man could be sure of a warm welcome at any woman’s apartment, and the news that he brought from the families on three continents made this a red-letter day for a dancer out of a job.

  That was what the all-out war effort meant to Marceline Detaze. No dancing until—“When, Lanny?” He told her that only le bon Dieu could answer. He had just come from Karinhall, and Die Nummer Zwei didn’t know. Lanny was going to Sweden, and from there to London, Washington, and Newcastle, to report what he had heard. The world was ruled by madmen, and who could control them? That satisfied Beauty Budd’s daughter, who had never been interested in political conversation and was willing to believe that nobody really knew any more about it than she did.

  V

  He looked at her and saw that worry had not marred her charms. She was only twenty-five, and he thought she had never appeared lovelier, though, of course, he couldn’t be sure about her color, because the ladies learn to put it on so skillfully. She kept herself in trim, practicing to the music of a phonograph, so there was no superfluous flesh upon her. She had her father’s brown eyes and hair, and wore the latter long, and sometimes danced with it loose. She gave hours every day to keeping herself perfect, and reveled in the admi
ration of everyone who saw her, including, surely, this half-brother, who had taught her dancing steps when she was barely able to toddle, and had defended her right to have her career and to live her life as she chose.

  What she wanted now was to tell this old confidant about her problems. “Lanny,” she exclaimed, “what a terrible thing it is to love a man whom you don’t like!” A curious bit of psychology, but it was really true, she insisted. Oskar von Herzenberg, blond and handsome, was a Prussian aristocrat and a God-awful snob, by cultivation as well as by birth. He had despised the French half of his mistress, and now he had come to despise the American half still more. In addition, he was a Nazi, which meant that all women were dirt under his feet. Yet he loved Marceline, and she loved him, and so they had been having a cat-and-dog time of it.

  “He is fighting the Russians,” explained this spoiled child of fortune, “and under the most dreadful conditions you can imagine—ice and snow and freezing winds and men dying all around him. He has been wounded twice, and when he comes home he needs me, and how can I refuse to help him? How can I desert him, even when he says the most horrid things to me, even when he threatens to have me sent to a concentration camp?”

  “Does it go as far as that?”

  “It has gone so far that he has slapped me, and I have wanted to kill him. Love is a terrible thing, Lanny. I vowed I would never submit to it a second time, and yet here I am, a slave. I even admire his arrogance.”

  What could a half-brother say? Almost nothing. He couldn’t offer to take her out of Germany; he might have been able to do so, but he had no right to use his influence for any such purpose, and besides, she wouldn’t want to go! She was an adult and had chosen her own bed to lie in. Years ago he had warned her what an Italian Fascist husband would be like, and she had spurned his advice. When he had seen her “falling” for a Nazi, the P.A. had been in a position where he couldn’t warn her again, and she wouldn’t have heeded him any more the second time than the first.

  “I never know,” she told him, “at what hour I may get word that he’s dead. I think I’ll be glad; but then a few minutes later I am sorry I had the thought, and then I am grieving because I miss him. I am a fool, Lanny, and you must know it.”

  “Bless your heart, old dear,” he answered. “You are a woman, and you were taught to expect too much of life, and to have it all free of cost. What I think now is, you ought to get out of Berlin and live in the country, preferably in the south, where it’s easier to keep warm.”

  “And then if he comes back with another wound, what will I do? What if he gets a leave, as he writes me he may when the eastern front has been stabilized, as he calls it? I’ll come running back, right under the bombs.”

  “Have you enough money?” he asked, the one useful question he could think of.

  “I have a lot in the bank. But what will happen to it if the bank is hit by a bomb?”

  He could hardly keep from smiling at this somewhat primitive idea about money. “The Regierung won’t let the banks break,” he assured her, “but they may limit the amount you may draw out. You have plenty in New York, you know, and I might be able to smuggle some in to you in case of need.”

  “Lanny, you are good to me!” she exclaimed. “I have been a selfish creature, and I still am.”

  “I know it,” he answered frankly. “It may be that a little suffering will be good for your art.”

  VI

  Lanny had given thought to the extremely precious secrets he had obtained. It would have been a great pleasure to walk into F.D.R.’s bedroom and remark: “Well, Governor, I have brought home the bacon!” But Lanny was a long way from the Governor’s bedroom; and suppose it was written in the book of fate that a bomb was to drop upon the P.A.’s head in Berlin, or that he was to have another plane wreck on the way to Stockholm or to London or to Washington? No, manifestly it was his duty to get that information to headquarters as fast as possible, and the way was through Monck, alias Branang, alias Capitán Herzog, alias Braun, alias Kraft, alias Vetterl.

  Going to his evening rendezvous, Lanny groped his way through the blackout as rapidly as he dared. He knew that he was in danger, and not merely from Allied bombs and the street traffic. The wartime increase in crime in Berlin was great, and in the working-class districts there was intense bitterness against the rich, encouraged by the demagogy of Jüppchen Goebbels. In their early days the leaders of the National Socialist German Workingmen’s Party had laid the emphasis upon the second and fourth words of that name; after their success, they had gone over to the first and third words; but now, with the shadow of defeat hanging over them, they were all for names two and four again, and were telling the embittered poor that their troubles were due to the rich shirkers and parasites.

  Here was a well-dressed foreigner, his pockets stuffed with banknotes both French and German; but fortunately he was inconspicuous in the darkness, and he reached the agreed corner safely. He was wondering: Would Monck have received his note, and would he have been able to get off in time? Lanny passed the corner twice before he realized that there was someone close to him; he said: “Guten Abend,” and the reply came in the new butler’s familiar voice. Lanny took his arm and led him away. “Is everything all right?” he whispered in English, and the other replied: “O.K.”

  “I won’t need but a minute,” Lanny said. “You still have ways to send out news?”

  “So far as I know there has been no change.”

  “Listen carefully. You remember the special and peculiar kind of water?”

  “I remember.”

  “Learn the name Rjukan, Norway. R–J–U–K–A–N. That is where it is being made. Take time and fix it in your memory.” Lanny listened to hear if there were footsteps, and he swept his arm around to be sure there was no one near. Then: “Next, see if you can locate any Jewish technicians who were employed in the synthetic sugar plant at Hamburg.”

  “Do you know their names?”

  “I do not. I only know that they were cleaned out. They may be in a concentration camp, or they may be dead. If you can find one, he may know an important process. Wood into synthetic sugar.”

  “I get you.”

  “Is it all right for me to write you as I did?”

  “O.K., but not too often.”

  “That’s all. The synthetic sugar plant in Hamburg. Good luck.” The two conspirators turned in opposite directions and disappeared into the blackout.

  VII

  Lanny kept his promise and phoned to the elderly financial fox with the odd combination of names. He was invited to lunch at the very exclusive Herrenklub, which numbered among its members eight genuine Fürsten, thirty-eight genuine Grafen, and forty-seven genuine Barone. Lanny went prepared for two things: a choice repast and the fanciest possible exhibition of diplomatic tongue work. In neither case was he disappointed.

  Dr. Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht had on another of his immaculate and stiffly starched collars, and had brought Lanny a present of a couple of pounds of fresh butter from his farm. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes! He had already ordered the meal, which included plovers’ eggs and venison. The eggs were served hard-boiled, and, as usual, one had a young plover in it; Lanny found the others tasteless, but he knew they were extremely fashionable, so he sang their praises.

  He watched this tall, large, and odd-looking Prussian gentleman, reflecting that from his brain had come the ideas which had made possible World War II. It had been his glib tongue that had persuaded Wall Street bankers that there was big money to be made out of German reconstruction bonds, and these bankers had passed on the glad tidings to their investing public. The Herr Doktor and his friends had made some four billions of dollars in this way, and had built great railroad stations and hospitals, and also warships, munitions plants, and fighter planes.

  Then had come Hitler, providing the inspiration, and enabling Doktor Schacht to work quietly, as financiers really prefer. Out of his brain had come the “blocked marks,” whereby the
neighboring lands were persuaded to part with their lumber, grain, cattle, and ores in exchange for money, which could only be spent in Germany, and when Germany had goods to spare. By a succession of such devices the Nazis had extracted from the neighboring lands a total of eighteen billions marks’ worth of goods, all of which had gone into the stomachs of the German Volk, or else into preparations for the conquest and subjection of the other lands. Now those peoples were working as the slaves of Germany, and Adolf Hitler was carrying out the promise he had publicly made, to see that all the other peoples of Europe starved before the Germans starved.

  What did the ex-finance minister of this criminal Reich want of an art expert from an enemy land? First of all, to find out why and how he had come here; and Lanny amused himself by being smilingly evasive. Second, to pour out his tale of woe, the old tale of the ingratitude of princes. Once more Lanny recollected Cardinal Wolsey: “Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my King, He would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies.” The last time Lanny had heard that lament, he had half believed it, but now he didn’t believe it the tiniest fraction. He was sure the old courtier would not have dared to talk that way if he had meant it. It was a role that he had been told to play; he was being groomed by the Nazis for a possible defeat. The ex-resident of Brooklyn was going to visit Wall Street once again and tell the bankers that he had always opposed the Nazis in his heart!