Presidential Agent

by Upton Sinclair

  “An amazing story, Herr Budd; truly, it deserves to rank with Swedenborg’s clairvoyant vision of the great fire which destroyed so much of the city of Stockholm. You know that case, I suppose?”

  “I have read it somewhere. I do not tell this particular experience very often, because it rests on my word alone, and people find it too hard to believe.”

  V

  The fact was that Lanny had never told this story before, and didn’t expect to tell it again. The reason was, no such séance had taken place; he had made the story up because he wanted Hitler to talk about Austria, and this was the bait. There was no risk involved in the telling, for Madame never knew what went on at her séances, and by Lanny’s own account no one else had been present. Now he waited, in the mood of a fisherman who looks over the side of his boat and sees a large black bass approach the bait, and taste it or smell it, whatever a bass does. Finally, he takes it into his mouth. Glory hallelujah!

  Said the Führer of all the Nazis: “You doubtless know, Herr Budd, there are people who say I had something to do with the killing of poor Dollfuss. I assure you, he had plenty of enemies of his own, and they needed no hint from me.”

  “I can readily believe that, Herr Reichskanzler; the situation in Austria is a miserable confusion.”

  “Basically it is quite simple. The Austrians are German people, and belong to the neue Ordnung which I am establishing. Some of them have been misled by false propaganda, originating in Moscow or other poison centers; but as soon as the Austrians understand what I am doing and planning, they will see where their true interest lies, and nothing will be able to keep them out of my Reich.”

  Lanny had laid a train of powder and set fire to it, and now all he had to do was to sit and watch it burn. He knew from previous experience that whenever the Führer got started, he became spellbound by his own eloquence, by his clear and logical train of thought and the vision of the wonderful things he was going to do with Europe when he had got it. His plans were so rational, so perfect, that no man could reject them when he understood them, and no man could fail to understand them when they had been explained as the Führer was explaining them now. That some men preferred what they called “liberty” to what the Führer called “Ordnung” was a sign that they were men of abnormal minds, and such minds could not be tolerated; if they refused to be convinced, there was nothing to be done but to exterminate them. That was a messy business, and the Führer was strongly disinclined to it; what he wanted was for people to submit peaceably, and he wanted this especially in Austria because German blood was sacred in his eyes. He wanted this clever American to confirm his own conviction that the mass of the Austrian people would be pleased to come in with their German brothers, and would repudiate the little group of self-seeking aristocrats, headed by Schuschnigg, the Jesuit-educated Chancellor who was in alliance with the Mediterranean and therefore racially inferior Mussolini.

  VI

  “Are you familiar with Vienna, Herr Budd?” inquired the Führer, suddenly.

  “I have paid a few visits there in the course of my professional work. I have seen a number of fine paintings in those old palaces in the quiet secluded third and fourth Bezirk.”

  “That reminds me of something I have long had in mind. I should like to have several good Defreggers, and I have been told that there are some to be found in Vienna.”

  “I have seen several there. Vienna is surely the place to buy paintings now.”

  “His genre pictures of peasants give me great delight. You know I was born in that country, and look over a good part of it from my windows.”

  “Be assured I have not forgotten that magnificent view. As to Defregger, I have several of his works listed in my cardfile, but unfortunately I did not bring it with me to Berlin.”

  “If at any time you should happen upon a representative work, you might let me know. Don’t mention my name, of course, for that would raise the price.”

  “I never name my clients under any circumstances, Herr Reichskanzler.”

  “Vienna is an interesting place just now,” continued Adi, with seeming casualness. “Unless I am misinformed, important events are impending there.”

  “I doubt if you are misinformed,” replied the American, with a quiet smile. “Other people await events, but you make them.”

  It was not easy to resist such tactful flattery. The Führer realized more and more clearly that he was dealing with a personality, and he ventured a further advance. “It is true that I have sources of information; perhaps I have too many, and am too familiar with their weaknesses, their desire to impress me with their omniscience. When I put their reports side by side, it is as if I employed a score of astrologers to tell me what is going to happen, and their readings increase my uncertainty.”

  “We have a way of saying it in America, which I might translate: Alle verschieden und keine zwei ähnlich.”

  “That is it exactly. If at any time you should find yourself in Vienna, and be in position to meet some of the key people, I should be interested to know your reaction to them. In making the suggestion, I assume that men in your position, and that of your father, have an immediate interest in the effort I am making to keep Bolshevism from spreading into Western Europe.”

  “You do not have to explain that to either of us, Herr Reichskanzler.” Lanny said it hastily, for he knew that mention of this subject was like pulling the trigger of an automatic gun—and one so heavily loaded that it might go on shooting for the rest of the afternoon. “Give me an idea what information you would like to have, and I’ll do my best. I gather that the situation in Vienna changes rapidly, and persons whose opinions and intentions are important one day may be of no consequence the next.”

  “I see you know the city well,” remarked the Führer.

  Lanny smiled inside himself. He had learned a lot, and was learning more every moment that he listened to this discourse. There was no way Hitler could say what he wanted to know about Austrian affairs without revealing what he didn’t know, and what he feared. He wouldn’t say why he wanted his information, but that wasn’t necessary, for Lanny could be sure that his purpose in life was not the collecting of Austrian painters. The fact that he was so direct and so urgent meant that the crisis was coming to a head. The fact that he didn’t trust Mussolini, with whom he had made a deal only a few weeks ago, meant that he was thinking of exploding the Italian windbag and wondered whether the explosion would kick back in his own face. The list of those Austrians whom the Nazi Führer didn’t trust proved to be a complete roster of those now active in the country’s public life, and the things he wanted to know about them were like a row of big letters on an illuminated signboard, spelling one single word: “ANSCHLUSS.” To give its full meaning in English would require a dozen words: “Invasion, and incorporation of the Austrian republic into the Nazi Third Reich.”

  VII

  When Lanny had got everything he wanted, he rose to leave, saying politely that he hoped he hadn’t taken too much of a busy man’s time. The busy man replied, even more politely: “Not at all, Herr Budd. I have talked for an hour without a break, and hope I haven’t worn you out. It is my weakness, due to the intensity of my convictions.”

  “I have rarely been more interested in my life, Herr Reichskanzler,”—and the secret agent wasn’t lying in that.

  “When may I hope to see you again?”

  “I have to go to Switzerland on a picture deal, but that shouldn’t take more than a few days. Then I will go on to Vienna, and see if I can find you a good Defregger, and anything else of interest. I’ll come and report, and if you are still interested I’ll have my mother put the Polish medium on a train and send her to Berchtesgaden or wherever you say.”

  “Herrlich, Herr Kunstsachverständiger!”

  The great man turned to his adoring official, who had sat in a chair for two solid hours without once opening his mouth. “Nun, Heinrich, wie geht’s bei Dir zuhause?” When Heinrich replied that nothing could
be better with him, the Führer patted him on the back, exclaiming: “Mit tausend Männern wie Du könnte ich die Welt erobern. How do you say it in America—‘lick’?”

  “I could lick the world,” supplied Lanny, and so the two visitors went out laughing.

  “Herrgott, Lanny!” exclaimed the Oberförster’s son. He was walking on air, so thrilled by the interview he had witnessed, and the secrets he would carry in his bosom from that hour on. He wanted his friend to come home with him and celebrate, and offered to open his best bottle of wine; but Lanny said No, he had several matters to attend to before leaving for Geneva, and the Führer’s business was urgent, as Heinrich knew.

  As a matter of fact Lanny had only one thing to do, which was to sit in his hotel room and go over in his mind all the information he had gathered. The reason he was going to Switzerland was to write it out and mail it in a free country; he would never put anything on paper in Naziland. He had tried to think of some way to send a letter out by his father, but he knew that the papers of travelers were examined, and anyhow he didn’t want Robbie to become familiar with the name and address of Gus Gennerich. The thing to do was to step into a night express, and in the morning be in Switzerland or Holland where mail was safe and nobody searched your hotel room in your absence.

  Also, Christmas was only two days off, and Lanny was lonely. He didn’t know a human soul in Naziland to whom he could voice his feelings, and the Trudi-ghost was poor company at this season. The Germans still celebrated Christmas, but the Nazis did their best to turn it into a pagan festival; anyhow, after Lanny had been among them for a while the food they served him began to turn sour on his stomach. Hansi and Bess were giving a concert in Geneva, and after that in Zurich, and they were among the eight or ten persons who knew Lanny’s true convictions, and to whom he could talk out his heart.

  VIII

  So, up into those high valleys, full of clear blue lakes which feed the Rhine and the Rhône and the Danube and the other mighty rivers of Mid-Europe. Auf die Berge will ich steigen, wo die dunkeln Tannen ragen! In the morning Lanny looked out upon a dazzling white landscape which quickly became painful to the eyes. Tier upon tier of towering snow-clad peaks, glittering like Christmas-tree tinsel; they had been here hundreds of thousands of years before he had been here to look at them, and they would remain for hundreds of thousands after he was gone. The thought made him feel lonelier than ever, a stranger in a world that was strange in many different senses. Nature, so beautiful in some of its aspects, was harsh and frightful in others, and Lanny was one of those softhearted men who desire that the human insects which have taken possession of the planet and call it their own should help one another to meet and overcome the menaces of nature, instead of creating others even worse, the new scientific ferocities called Machtpolitik and Blitzkrieg.

  The train followed its course around the shore of the ice-clad Lac Léman, and came to the old city of watchmakers and moneylenders which Lanny Budd had visited so many times over a period of years. His first action was to ensconce himself in a hotel room, set up his little portable, and put upon paper a dangerous and exciting sequence of words. Everything he had learned in Germany, including details as to the strength of the Luftwaffe, and the fact that Adolf Hitler, by his own statements, was going to be in possession of Austria within the next couple of months; by some trick if he could devise it, or otherwise by invasion. He was quite sure that Mussolini was too heavily involved in Spain to interfere, and that the British and French governments were in the hands of men who wouldn’t like it but would have to lump it. Presidential Agent 103 agreed with these expectations, and cited evidence of a first-hand character to support them.

  The “P.A.” made only one copy, and he didn’t leave it in the machine or his bureau drawer. He sealed it tightly in a double envelope, addressed it to Gus Gennerich, marked it by way of a French steamer, and mailed it at the post office. Then he went for a walk on the windswept avenue which fronts the lake and struggled against a fit of profound depression. He had done a long and difficult job, far indeed from what he would have preferred to do. He had done it under the command of the Trudi-ghost, and also of his own conscience; but could he persuade himself that he had accomplished very much? Granting that F.D.R. received these reports and read them, how long would he remember what he had read, under the pressure of ten thousand other duties? And what would he do about it? Lanny had been getting the New York papers both in Paris and Berlin, and it seemed to him that Roosevelt was following the program which some French wit had attributed to Léon Blum: “One speech forward and two steps backward.” Under pressure of bitter attacks from the isolationists, the President had taken back a good part of his “quarantine speech,” and since then he had kept quiet. That was all the dictators wanted, of course: for their opponents to do nothing, and leave it for them to do everything.

  IX

  The old city of Geneva had been a center of world discussion and sometimes of world action for the past seventeen years; and now the League of Nations had just completed and was putting to use its fifteen-million-dollar peace temple. It was spread wide, with magnificent terraces and flights of marble steps; a long white structure of four stories, built on three sides of a rectangle and having heavy columns which suggested the Greek, even though they were square. Lanny, who had visited Greece, and studied its history as well as its art, knew that the Greeks had had Amphyctionic councils which had sought to reconcile the jealousies of a score of tiny states, but without success. Proud Athens and stern Sparta had fought a deadly war, and then, after an interval of preparation, a second and deadlier. It seemed to Lanny that there were many parallels to the Peloponnesian Wars in the present rivalry of Britain and Germany; he knew they were preparing to smash each other’s cities into rubble and dust, and here in this shining new temple of peace men were laboring with such brains and conscience as they possessed to avert that horror.

  Lanny ate his Christmas dinner in the home of Sidney Armstrong, who had been a permanent official of the League since its start. Lanny had first met him on the staff at the Peace Conference; a young liberal, but one who had chosen not to protest when the time for protest came. So he had got a job, and was holding on to it, still not protesting when the time for protest had come—and gone, so it seemed to the son of Budd-Erling. At the same time, Lanny reminded himself that he enjoyed independent means, whereas Sidney had only his salary, and had acquired a wife, three children, and an expanded waistline.

  Janet Sloane was the wife’s name, and she had been the official’s secretary; an efficient and at the same time very lovely young woman, with fluffy brown hair and lively brown eyes not easily to be forgotten by Lanny Budd. He wondered, had Janet ever told her husband about that little passage of love which had taken place between her and Lanny shortly before her marriage. He had taken her to dinner, and found her so interesting that he had driven her all the way around Lac Léman, a matter of some ninety miles. When they were parting she had asked him to kiss her just once. It was while his heart was pledged to Marie de Bruyne, otherwise he would very probably have married her; and what a difference that would have made in his life! No Irma Barnes, with all the contacts with the smart world that she had brought; no Trudi, with all the dangers she had brought! Indeed, it was hard for Lanny to think of anything in his present life that would have been the same; in all probability he would have settled down in Bienvenu, and extended his own waistline, and had three lovely children—though of course they wouldn’t have been the same as these three.

  The Armstrongs were a comfortably settled couple, and to all appearances happy. Janet considered her husband a well-informed and useful publicist, and she was helping him by entertaining and cultivating the stream of important personalities who came to the various Assemblies and Councils of the League, and often stayed to serve on this committee or that. She was bound to be thinking how different her life might have been if she had married this brilliant and fascinating grandson of Budd Gunmakers; but
Lanny was most discreet, and did as little as he could to disturb her imagination. He ate his share of Christmas goose, and of plum pudding which had been sent by Janet’s family in America; he played the piano for the children, and afterwards sat for hours listening to the conversation of a practicing exponent of international order and security, a bureaucrat who was fighting not merely for his job but for his faith.

  The bureaucrat was, as Lanny found, not too greatly discouraged by a succession of failures. The League still stood, and its new palace, which provided its permanent officials with sumptuous offices, was a symbol and a permanent promise. True, many small states, mostly Central and South American, had withdrawn, but that was because they were poor and had fallen behind with their dues, politely called “quotas.” Germany had withdrawn a few months after Hitler took power, and Japan after she had been censured for her raid on Manchuria. Italy had withdrawn just a couple of weeks ago, after using the League as a platform for the denouncing of all who opposed her invasions of Abyssinia and Spain. But Sidney, on the whole, was glad to have them go, for they had behaved as rowdies and bullies and not as reasonable men. The permanent official admitted that Europe’s affairs were at a crisis, but it would be weathered, as others had been. A way would be found to teach the dictator states that they could not get along without their neighbors.