Presidential Mission
Page 91
“No, of course not; and for your part, don’t say that you told it to me.”
“I don’t ever talk about you. Rightly or wrongly, I’ve been convinced for some time that you are not just buying and selling objets d’art. If you get into any trouble I don’t want it to be my fault.”
“Right, old darling. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
“You know what the Americans mean when they talk about ‘Mr. Big’?” She first said it in English, then repeated it in French, “Monsieur Gros,” and when he answered that he was familiar with this linguistic device, she went on, “There are some highly placed persons who have become convinced that he is responsible for the present bad situation and are planning to get rid of him by the quickest way.”
The P.A. answered quietly, “That is important news indeed. Can you tell me, are these highly placed persons in the political world or the military?”
“The military. As you know, perhaps, Monsieur Gros insists upon determining strategy and giving orders, even as to details. Men who have been studying problems of strategy all their lives naturally think they know more about them and resent having an amateur step in and take control away from them. It has always been the first maxim of German policy never to become involved in a two-front war; and he got them into it. And when things go wrong he blames them, calls them foul names, shakes his fist in their faces, and has even had several of them done away with.”
“I don’t want to ask anything that you don’t want to tell me; but naturally I am supposing that you got this information from your ami.”
“That is correct,” replied the sister without hesitation.
XII
The P.A. sat for a while in thought. He had had long training in not showing any state of excitement. “As you say, Marceline,” he began, “this is important news, and interesting. The highly placed men you speak of would naturally wish to know what will be the attitude of their enemies in the event that they manage to carry out their program.”
“They have discussed that question at great length, I know.”
“Well, then, it might be a service to your ami if someone were to carry a message for him and bring back the desired information.”
“Could you do that, Lanny?”
“You know well that Robbie Budd has access to the highest circles. He could see our own Monsieur Gros and get a quick and dependable answer.”
It was Marceline’s turn to be silent. “It might be some time before I can see my ami again,” she said at last.
“Wouldn’t he come to you if you wrote him that you were in trouble and needed him.”
“Just the contrary. He has troubles of his own, and his country has more.”
“Surely there ought to be some way to give him a hint. When you see him, don’t mention me. Tell him that you have contact with a person who could be of use to him.”
“He would guess, Lanny; he remembers you and asks about you, but I have never told him that I have seen you in Germany. All this is frightfully dangerous, and I shall lie awake half the night, shivering at the thought of what may happen to us both. Are you sure it is worth the trouble?”
“It’s a matter of some millions of human lives, Marceline.”
“Those people have never given me cause to love them, and I can’t get up enthusiasm for their lives. I prefer to say that this war is damned inconvenient to me and I’d like to see the end of it before I’m too old to have any fun.”
“Put it that way, but be careful where you say it.” He looked about him again. “Is there anything more you want to tell me about your friend’s program?”
“I don’t know very much; I only found it out by accident.”
“Does he know that you know it?”
“He does. He is not worried about me because both my nationalities make me an enemy of his enemy. It amuses me to observe that his attitude to me is less insulting since he knows that I have this whip over him.”
“Don’t ever use it,” Lanny said. “Do you know how many persons share the secret?”
“It is quite widespread. It is not merely a plan to get rid of one man; it is to possess the government. You understand, these men are not idealists. They want power, and if they get it, the Army will rule.”
“It is an old story,” said the P.A. “There was once a Bismarck. One thing more: you say that you were able to write to Beauty?”
“You remember the Dohertys, whom we entertained at Bienvenu? They are living in the Engadine, and I wrote to Mrs. Doherty and asked if she would be so kind as to pass on a message to my mother. Apparently the censor does not object to that; I received a reply a month or so later.”
“You might send a message to me by the same route. Let us have a code. The message should have to do with paintings, and it had better be something real, which you can explain to anyone who might question you. Do you know of any paintings, or have an interest in any?”
“There are some in the main hall of this onetime school.”
“Do you know what they are?”
“They are paintings of peasant scenes, three of them. I never paid much attention to them.”
“I will look at them and express interest in them, in the presence of the Oberleutnant, and perhaps of others. That will make it a true story. You can write me by the Switzerland route that your effort to get a price on them is going well, or that you are delayed, or that you fear you cannot get it. Let us agree that a hundred marks represent a day; so if you write that you think the price will be about three thousand marks, I will understand that the great event is expected in a month. I will keep Beauty informed as to my whereabouts and she will forward the message.”
Marceline smiled. “I might make a guess that you have been doing this sort of thing for quite a while, Lanny.”
“Don’t think about it,” he said. “You might talk in your sleep.”
XIII
The young officer returned from his amours and was introduced to Herr Budd’s sister. He had seen her dancing in a Berlin night club, and made it plain that he would have preferred her to any village barmaid. That was an old story to Marceline, but it never bored her; on the contrary, it was like a drink of champagne—and this was an old story to her brother. The same thing had happened six years ago in Paris, when Lanny had been cultivating Graf von Herzenberg, the German diplomat, and had invited him and his son Oskar to a smart night spot where Marceline was beginning her career. The young officer had “fallen for her,” as the saying goes, and the father had, to all appearances, considered it the proper sort of liaison for a young aristocrat—though of course he would never think of marriage with a Franco-American danseuse, even though she happened to be the daughter of a famous painter.
Marceline explained to Oberleutnant Harz that her brother wished to inspect the paintings in the hospital entrance hall, and the three went in together. Lanny was introduced to the Intendant, and he accompanied them. The Kunstsachverständiger took one glance at the paintings and exclaimed, “These should be Defreggers!” He looked at the signatures, and sure enough, they were. This gave Lanny a chance to produce one of his suave and elegant discourses, especially impressive to this audience, because it included the statement that Defregger was the Führer’s favorite painter, and a story of how Lanny had found several examples in Vienna, and these now hung in a place of honor in the Berghof, the Führer’s Berchtesgaden retreat. If Lanny had really been buying paintings, all this would have been the last thing in the world he would have said; but he wasn’t buying paintings, he was establishing a code for Marceline.
He asked who owned the paintings, duly noted down the address, and asked his sister to communicate with the person; this story would go the rounds of the place, and many who had barely glanced at the paintings previously would now know that they were great art and would be proud of being able to tell others about them. And if ever it chanced that Herr Himmler of the Gestapo developed an interest in the letters which the daughter of Marcel Detaze was recei
ving from Switzerland, all he would have to do would be to send to this hospital and the matter would be explained to his full satisfaction.
When they parted Lanny had a minute or two alone with his sister. “Better make it a thousand marks a day instead of a hundred,” he said. “Those paintings should be valuable!”
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About the Author
Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, activist, and politician whose novel The Jungle (1906) led to the passage of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. Born into an impoverished family in Baltimore, Maryland, Sinclair entered City College of New York five days before his fourteenth birthday. He wrote dime novels and articles for pulp magazines to pay for his tuition, and continued his writing career as a graduate student at Columbia University. To research The Jungle, he spent seven weeks working undercover in Chicago’s meatpacking plants. The book received great critical and commercial success, and Sinclair used the proceeds to start a utopian community in New Jersey. In 1915, he moved to California, where he founded the state’s ACLU chapter and became an influential political figure, running for governor as the Democratic nominee in 1934. Sinclair wrote close to one hundred books during his lifetime, including Oil! (1927), the inspiration for the 2007 movie There Will Be Blood; Boston (1928), a documentary novel revolving around the Sacco and Vanzetti case; The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism, and the eleven novels in Pulitzer Prize–winning Lanny Budd series.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1946 by Upton Sinclair
Cover design by Kat JK Lee
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2652-9
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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