Presidential Agent

by Sinclair, Upton;

  “I wouldn’t want to bother Seine Exzellenz about so small a matter.”

  “Of course not. I know his wishes without asking, and I’ll have the office fix you up with a permit that will enable you to go through without delay.”

  “That’s very kind of you indeed,” replied the visitor, and thought, how very convenient is dictatorship—for the dictators and their friends! He felt himself being seduced by the perquisites of office.

  He had got the license number and other data on the car, and gave these to the Hauptmann over the phone. The permit, properly signed and stamped, was delivered from the office of the Reichsminister-Feldmarschall that same afternoon, and in the evening Lanny met his Jewish near-relative by appointment and told him O.K. Lanny had been intending to leave at once, but might be delayed a couple of days awaiting a cabled remittance on the new picture deal. Aaron said that was so much the better; he would arrange for the car to have a thorough checking to make sure that it was in order for the journey. They made their arrangements for the sale and the meeting in Amsterdam, where Lanny had word of paintings that he wanted to inspect. Lanny would set out early in the morning, and Aaron would take the night express with his children; they would meet at the Hotel Amstel. Lanny would have offered to crowd them into the car, as he had once done with the Robin family, but they agreed that this would be too conspicuous. A carload of Jews and a permit from Marshal Göring wouldn’t fit together very well.

  IV

  It seemed delightfully simple. Promptly at eight in the morning Lanny paid his bill and had his bags and his carefully wrapped art treasures carried down to the door. There was Aaron, looking like a humble deliveryman, with the car and the bill of sale duly signed. He tipped his hat respectfully and walked off, while Lanny saw his belongings properly loaded. What more natural than that this important American should have bought a car in which to transport himself on a not too raw and windy day in March? He tipped the bellboys and the magnifico of the door, and they all bowed and smiled, and away he went.

  “For God’s sake, drive carefully,” Aaron had said, “for this will be all I have left in the world.” Lanny had attached no special importance to this remark, answering lightly that he had motored all over Europe since his boyhood—how many hundreds of thousands of miles he wouldn’t attempt to figure.

  The Autobahnen of the Third Reich had been constructed by General Todt, and their purpose was to take the mechanized armies of Germany to whichever of her borders might be threatened by a foe. Robbie said these roads were a mistake, because in a long war Germany would find herself short of both gasoline and rubber, and be forced to fall back upon her railroads, neglected for a long time. But Adolf Hitler didn’t intend to fight any long wars; he intended to overwhelm his foes one by one, and his mind was attracted by everything modern and repelled by everything old. So here were splendid four-lane highways, passing under or over all intersecting roads, straight most of the time, so that you could roll along at whatever speed you chose.

  The new car was in perfect order, no rattles or squeaks and no missing of cylinders. The Germans were proud of their cars, and this one sped straight to the west at something like a hundred kilometers an hour. Lanny, used to driving, thought about other matters. Being a sociable person, he thought about the friends he was going to see on this trip; what he was going to tell Rick and Nina about Trudi, what he was going to tell his father about Hitler and Göring; then, the items of news about Austria in the papers which he had glanced at before leaving, and had brought with him for more careful reading. If F.D.R. had read his agent’s reports, he would be thinking: “That fellow Lanny had it exactly right!” The fellow Lanny was entitled to what satisfaction he could get out of this reflection.

  V

  Without incident of any sort he arrived at the Dutch border. It was the second time he had driven up to that black-and-white-painted barrier with a permit from Göring’s office in his hand. The first time had been by night and this time was by day, but otherwise there was no difference; the border officials fell into the same state of abjectness, and it was: “Gewiss, mein Herr,” and “Selbstverständlich, mein Herr,” and “Bitte sehr, mein Herr.” He didn’t have to leave the car; he didn’t even have to wait while the hood was lifted and the engine number checked. Anything that Göring’s office ordered was right. “Glückliche Reise, mein Herr!” The barrier was lifted, the car moved on, and there were the Dutch border guards to inspect his passport with its visa.

  It was afternoon, and Lanny was hungry; he saw what he judged was a clean and proper eating place on the outskirts of a town, and he stopped, parking his car by the curb and locking it. He took the Berlin papers with him and read them while disposing of an omelette and a salad. Schuschnigg had invited the people of Austria to vote on the question of their independence and had proposed to present them only a ballot marked Yes. If they wanted to vote No they would have to bring their own ballots. But this had caused such a clamor at the last minute that it had been decided to make the ballot secret and to provide spaces for both Yes and No. Lanny thought, how the job-printing concerns of Vienna must be working right now!

  VI

  His meal eaten and the check paid, he went out to the car. It was still there, but alas, not the same! Some careless driver, or perhaps one swerving to avoid a pedestrian, had struck Aaron Schönhaus’s car at the front, on the driver’s side, farthest from the curb. At first glance Lanny thought it must have been a terrific crash, for the bumper had been badly bent and the fender crumpled like paper. Whoever had done it had not waited for explanations or apologies; even in well-ordered and law-abiding Holland they had hit-and-run drivers! A few spectators, mostly children, stood looking at the damage.

  Lanny’s first thought was, had the wheel or the axle been bent? In so serious a crash it was to be expected. But then he saw something that he had never before observed on any automobile in his driving experience: where the fender had been crumpled and the enamel knocked off, there was a bright yellow gleam, such as belonged to no metal used in the manufacture of vehicles. And the bumpers, which are usually of steel with a handsome finish of nickel—where they had been hit the outside finish had been knocked off, and there was the same gleam, which could be only one thing in this world: Gold! Gold fenders and gold running boards painted over with black, and gold bumpers painted with some sort of silver—that was the car which Aaron Schönhaus had prepared for his near-relative to drive out of Naziland under permit from the Field Marshal in command of the German Air Force! “By heck!” said Lanny Budd to himself—again and then again.

  The wheel was apparently uninjured, and Lanny realized that it hadn’t been so serious a crash as he had thought. Gold is soft, and the driver of the other car must have been astonished by the results of a moderate bump. And now, here were people staring—and did they know gold when they saw it, and what were they making of the spectacle? Lanny unlocked the car and slid into the driver’s seat; he started the engine, released the brake, and gently tried the car. It moved, and without ceremony he started and left the sightseers behind.

  Rolling westward, thinking busy thoughts. So long as he drove, no one would pay attention to a battered car; but as soon as he stopped again, someone would note one of the most exciting of all spectacles. And of course the same thing would happen in any garage where he might take the car for storage or repairs. Lanny was repeating on a small scale the experience of that humble laborer in the high sierras of California who had been working at repairs to a saw mill, and had noticed the same exciting gleam coming from the bed of a small stream.

  Manifestly, the first problem was to cover up that secret. Coming to a town of larger size, Lanny hunted up a paint shop and bought a small can of black enamel and one of silver paint, also two small brushes. Already another crowd had gathered about the car; he left them behind, and outside the town stopped at an unfrequented spot and carefully covered all the exposed surfaces of the gold. He knew that the wind would help to dry the p
aint, and meantime it would gather dust and look less new and shiny; he would no longer have a treasure car, but just one which had been run into—a sight to be gazed at, but not with revolutionary thoughts, such as of wrenching off a piece and sticking it into your pocket!

  VII

  The traveler drove, chastened and slow, for he had plenty of time to reach Amsterdam, and must do nothing to risk another crash or to attract attention. Meantime, he did some mental arithmetic. The United States government paid thirty-five dollars an ounce for gold, which fixed the world price; nobody would sell it anywhere for much less. Thirty-five times sixteen is five hundred and sixty dollars a pound. Lanny guessed that the outside appendages of this car, when made of the ordinary material, would weigh at least a hundred pounds. He knew that gold weighs two or three times as much, so it was safe to guess that the clever Aaron had managed to smuggle out of Naziland well over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars!

  How had he achieved the making of these parts? It couldn’t have been an easy matter, for they are not hammered out by hand but stamped by great machines. It would have to be done where there was an electric furnace, and perhaps in the plant where the car had been made. A group of workmen might do it at night; it would be risky, and involve the payment of a lot of money—to say nothing of the problems of purchasing and turning over to workmen such an amount of gold. Somehow the job had been put through; and Lanny promised himself an interesting story on the morrow. He might have considered that Aaron had played a rather shabby trick upon his near-relative, but he decided to overlook that. He had “got away with it,” and no doubt Aaron meant to offer him a fee—which he wouldn’t take.

  There was nothing to do now but put up at the Hotel Amstel. Lanny took the car to the garage himself. The garagemen were sympathetic about his accident, and asked if he wanted repairs made, but Lanny said No, he had to leave the next day, and would have the work done at home. The damaged parts looked all right, and anyone who noticed the fresh paint would assume that the American traveler had tried to make his car look a bit more respectable. Lanny shivered at the thought of leaving a fortune like that lying unguarded overnight, but it was what the owner had told him to do, and he had no choice. He diverted his thoughts with the afternoon papers and an American movie, and then went to bed and slept the sleep of an honest anti-Nazi.

  VIII

  Next morning there was De Telegraaf, delivered with Lanny’s breakfast tray; also Het Volk, the Socialist paper, not usually called for by the guests of palace hotels. Both gave news from Vienna; the plebiscite had been called off, and Hitler was demanding Schuschnigg’s resignation. Lanny didn’t need to read any correspondent’s explanations of the whys and wherefores. He could imagine Adi’s ravings—perhaps directly to Schuschnigg over the telephone. He could imagine Papen besieging the Chancellery, and the swastika mobs parading, singing about how the world was going to belong to them, and shouting denunciations of that vile form of political sham known as democracy. They would be smashing windows and plundering Jewish shops as proof of their own political and racial superiority.

  Lanny bathed and shaved and dressed, and was ready for his guests. The train from Berlin was due, and he could be sure that Aaron wouldn’t delay very long to make certain that his treasure was safe. He would probably phone from the station. But no call came, and Lanny decided that the train might be late, or that Aaron was taking a taxi and coming to the hotel. He read a magazine; then he called the office, and learned that the train had arrived on time and other passengers had reached the hotel. Lanny felt a sinking inside him; he didn’t need to ask anything more, for he had been through it all nearly five years ago, in Calais where he had waited for the yacht Bessie Budd to arrive with the Robin family and it hadn’t arrived.

  Neither did Aaron Schönhaus arrive, and Lanny never heard from him, directly or indirectly. The art expert spent a miserable day waiting in his room for a telephone call, watching train schedules and imagining calamities. Certainly if anything had delayed Aaron’s starting, he would send a telegram, or call Lanny on the phone, or have his trusted gentile friend do that service. Silence like this, a complete blackout, could mean only one thing—that the Nazis had grabbed the unfortunate Jew as they had grabbed his father-in-law at the outset of their Regierung. There just wasn’t any possibility that with all that treasure at stake, its owner would have failed somehow to get word to its trustee.

  What could have happened? Had the Gestapo got word about the gold car? If so, why hadn’t they stopped the car at the border? Had Lanny just got through by a few seconds or minutes? And if so, what would be the effect upon Lanny’s future? They would surely take it for granted that he had been a fellow-conspirator and was sharing in the loot. And would Der Dicke be furious? Or would he roar with laughter, discovering that the son of Budd-Erling wasn’t the noble idealist he pretended to be, but was as greedy for gold as Der Dicke himself?

  Or could there be some other reason for Aaron’s arrest, having nothing to do with the car? Had he been so foolish as to try to bring out some money on his person? Or had the Nazis grabbed him on general principles, because he was a Jew, and must have money hidden somewhere. Did they play a cat-and-mouse game with such poor devils, letting them bribe officials and then not get what they had paid for? No, for that would stop the sources of good income. There must have been some other reason, some slip that a too-clever schemer had made at the last moment.

  In the case of Johannes and his family Lanny had gone into Germany and worked hard to help them; but he couldn’t do that again. His situation had changed and he was no longer a free man. Moreover, he had been heavily in debt to Johannes, and Freddi had been his comrade, whereas Aaron was a comparative stranger—one of thousands of unfortunates whom Lanny was trying to help wholesale but couldn’t help individually. He must arrange for the packing and shipping of his paintings, and then go on to his job.

  He sent a cablegram to Johannes Robin: “Property here but owner not arrived circumstances compel proceeding England taking property for safety address care Rick.” He signed this “Bessie Guest,” and did not send it from the hotel but from a telegraph office. If by any chance a Gestapo agent was trying to find the car, there was no reason to make the task easier.

  Lanny drove to Calais, where the Channel crossing was short, so that he wouldn’t have to leave the car on a ferry-boat all night. He drove to The Reaches, where he told his story to Nina and Rick and discussed what should be done. Obviously, no one in his right mind would desire to drive a gold car, especially when it was damaged; there could be no safe place to store it, and the thing to do was have the gold parts taken off and melted. Rick agreed to attend to this, and if Lanny hadn’t heard from Aaron or Johannes in the meantime, Lanny would take a bank draft to Connecticut and turn it over to Rahel Robin, her brother’s heir if he was dead. Lanny was never going to put anything into writing about this matter, and would make sure that neither Rahel nor Johannes talked about his part in it.

  IX

  The English newspapers were full of the details of sensational events in Austria. Schuschnigg had resigned, and the Nazi Seyss-Inquart had assumed authority. “Tourists” who had been visiting Vienna had suddenly turned into SS Standart Neun und Neunzig, and occupied the public buildings of the city. All night Nazi mobs had been parading through the streets, screaming “Sieg heil!” and the battle-cry of Anschluss, which was “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!” The new government invited German troops into Austria to preserve order—and that, of course, was the “legality” which was Adi’s special fetish. At dawn the long motorized columns crossed the border at various places and sped toward the capital. Later that Saturday the Führer himself entered by way of the town of Braunau, where he had been born; the people strewed flowers in his path and hailed him as their deliverer. He visited the graves of his father and mother and told the assembled crowds that he was carrying out “a divine commission.” To Rick and Nina Lanny said: “Mohammed!”

  It w
as the end of Austria. The very name was abolished; it was to be the Ostmark, and Seyss-Inquart was to be Statthalter. On Monday, March 14, Hitler was driven into Vienna. A plot to shoot him had been discovered, so he showed himself only for a few minutes from the balcony of the Hotel Imperial, and did not make the expected speech. Next day he flew back to Berlin, where he had work to do.

  Now was his chance to show the world what a “plebiscite” could be. He would hold one for the whole of Greater Germany, including the Ostmark, asking the people if they approved the Anschluss; he would carry on a whole month’s campaign of parades, mass meetings, and speeches, in which he would tell the people that this was “a holy vote.” And meanwhile the plundering and killing of Jews would go on all over the newly conquered land; women of refinement would be compelled to take off their underwear and get down on their knees and scrub the pavements and gutters with the garments. Thousands were fleeing to the borders, but only a few got across, and many committed suicide.

  And not only Jews, but all of Adi’s political opponents—for he had no forgiveness in his nature and the idea of chivalry never crossed his mind. Schuschnigg was a prisoner, undergoing torture and destined to be driven insane. A former Vice-Chancellor and Commander of the Heimwehr was murdered, along with his wife and son and even his dog. Other opponents were murdered and called suicides. The men who had killed Dollfuss became national heroes, and the Nazis of the Ostmark were put in command of concentration camps and charged with the duty of tormenting their former jailers. Things like that had been happening in this part of Europe as far back as history goes, but never had there been anything so scientifically organized. It wasn’t long before Feldmarschall Göring issued an order to stop the private robbery of Jews, explaining that this was a prerogative of the government and must be carried out “systematically.”