Presidential Agent

by Upton Sinclair

  Also, a chat with Philip Kerr, Marquess of Lothian, whom Lanny had come to know at the Peace Conference as the secretary of Lloyd George. Kerr, pronounced Carr, had paid a visit of state to Berlin a few months ago, and had come back a complete convert to General Göring’s program of letting Germany alone in Central Europe in exchange for a guarantee of security for the British Empire. His lordship was a Christian Scientist, and saw this deal with Germany as the way of reconcilement and readjustment. He was quite sure that when Hitler was satisfied, he would become conservative and gentlemanly like Lothian himself. The Marquess talked on terms of intimacy with an American who had followed in his footsteps to Berlin and met all the right people. Almost without exception Irma’s week-end guests agreed that the ex-painter of picture postcards—they called him a house-painter, sometimes a paperhanger, which they judged humiliating occupations—could not get very far in a career of conquest without tangling with the new Soviet Empire, and that was a spectacle which British Tories were prepared to contemplate with equanimity.

  So smooth they were and so elegant; so well informed, and personally agreeable, many of them even charming! They had had an empire for four centuries, and had been trained for their jobs as masters. They were secure and easygoing; they had seen many upstarts upstarting in many parts of the world, but Britannia continued to rule the waves and a lot of the adjacent land. At the same time they were fair; they would listen, and would give way when they had to—no sooner than necessary, and not an inch farther than necessary, but enough to save them and their positions. No French or Russian or Spanish revolutions for them!

  Lanny listened to a discussion between Lothian and an M.P. of the old-fashioned Liberal school; that saving minority of Englishmen who believed in morals in international affairs. This Liberal said about the Nazis all the things that Lanny would have liked to say; he said them with vehemence, and made some remarks which Lothian might have taken as personal. But the Marquess took no offense; he was courteous and persuasive, and made those soft answers which turn away wrath. He, too, believed in morals and in fair dealings among states; he wanted everything his opponent wanted, it was merely a question of tactics between them. Listening to this most plausible noble lord, you would have concluded that reactionary statesmen making deals with wholesale murderers were in reality tenderhearted humanitarians and crusaders for righteousness all over the world.

  VIII

  There was little Frances, several months older, visibly bigger, and still more eager to know about the wonderful world. She had one wing of a palace set apart for herself and her entourage. She was a stepchild, but had apparently not discovered the unhappiness of that status; the fact that her real father appeared only three or four times a year only made him seem the more delightful when he did come. There was a subtle and mysterious bond of blood between them; Ceddy could never take Lanny’s place and was too busy to try. His lordship was like the proprietor and manager of a great hotel in which Frances lived, while Lanny was the Prince Charming who traveled all over the world and brought back delightful stories.

  The child, too, saved up stories for him, but not much happened to her, she was so well taken care of; she didn’t suffer from it, for her routine was normal and satisfying. There were horses and dogs, sheep and deer, rabbits and pheasants on this great estate. There was a French governess, and the child jabbered away to her father, reciting one of La Fontaine’s fables. There was a piano teacher for an hour every day, and she played her little pieces for a tolerant judge. Most important of all, there was snow on the ground, and they had a grand time pummeling each other. She couldn’t have a pony ride, because the damp snow would ball up under the pony’s feet and he might stumble and throw her; but Lanny could pull her about on a sled, and if she fell off, that was a grand adventure to tell her mother about.

  Grandmother Fanny, for whom the child was named, had broken her ties with Long Island, and she and her brother had a “lodge” of their own on the estate. The place at Shore Acres was for sale; but who would have the money to buy it? especially now when it appeared that New Deal spending was coming to the unhappy close which everybody had predicted for it, though nobody seemed to have anything to take its place. Just now had come a strange development: a would-be purchaser, the most unforeseeable and incredible of bidders, a large labor union proposing to use the property as a home for its superannuated members! They were actually offering one and a half million dollars, and half a million was cash which they had in their own bank! Word of this horror had got out among the fashionable neighbors, with the result that Irma and her mother had been deluged with cablegrams and letters of protest, and now the neighbors were subscribing to a syndicate to preserve one of the most select of New York’s suburban districts. Really, it was a kind of blackmail, and everybody looked at his neighbor, wondering who would be the next to turn up a walking delegate with a yen for high-class real estate.

  Frances had heard talk about this, and wanted Lanny to tell her what was so bad about these people. Then she wanted to know: “Papa, will I be an English girl?” He told her: “You will be whatever you want, and you will have plenty of time to decide.” He had an idea that the world might change a lot in the next ten years. Stocks might continue to slump and income taxes to rise; the Barnes fortune might cease to be such an impediment to independent thinking. It might even be that Wickthorpe Castle would come on the market, and some British labor union might have a hundred thousand pounds in its own bank!

  IX

  A plane returned the traveler to Paris, and his car took him over the well-worn route nationale to the Riviera. There Beauty was waiting eagerly to know every detail of the life of her darling. First, Lanny would tell all he could recall, and then she would start complaining because it wasn’t enough; she must hear every word that had come from those precious little lips. She would plague Lanny with questions: What did they feed her? How did they dress her? What did she weigh now? Was she really happy? What did she talk about? Men are so uncommunicative; and it was such a shame that Fanny Barnes could have the grandchild all the year round, while Beauty couldn’t have her except by disarranging all her affairs and going to camp out in England!

  This wasn’t exactly accurate, for she and Mr. Dingle could have a cottage on the Wickthorpe estate any time they chose, and a proper quota of servants to wait on them. As for traveling, it had been the major delight of Beauty Budd’s life ever since her son could remember. The truth was, it was now the height of the season on the Côte d’Azur, and Emily Chattersworth wouldn’t give up entertaining and couldn’t keep it up without Beauty and Sophie Timmons to help her. Later, when the hot weather came, Beauty would transport herself and her New Thought husband to England, whither the height of the season would also have moved; there she would divide her time between Wickthorpe Castle and Bluegrass, the home of Margy, Dowager Lady Eversham-Watson, where Sophie also would have installed her husband. These old cronies, all four of them Americans, hung together, unconquered by time and unwilling to give up the delights of spending money and showing themselves to the world—even though they themselves shuddered when they looked at the spectacle in the mirror. Emily was well in her seventies, and Beauty was the only one of the gang who hadn’t passed sixty.

  Visiting at Bienvenu were Lanny’s half sister, Marceline Detaze, and her husband. Marceline had returned because she was going to have a baby; a girl likes to have her mother around at such a time, and Marceline was for the moment less the self-assured and willful playgirl. But her chronic want of money continued, and it was agreeable news to her that Hitler was paying a high price for a Detaze; one-third of this price would be hers, and when would he pay? She started her old refrain: Why couldn’t her brother take a little time off and sell a lot of those paintings, as it would be so easy for him to do?

  Lanny knew that it was Vittorio who was putting her up to this; it meant that Vittorio was gambling again—if indeed he had ever stopped. He would make glib promises, but what did any p
romise mean to a Fascist? Evading them was a part of that creed which they called sacro egoismo. Il Capitano di San Girolamo was one of those weakminded persons who are always discovering a new “system” for breaking the bank at the casino of whatever city or town they happen to be in. Lanny, who in the course of life on the Riviera had known scores of such persons and seen them all go bankrupt and disappear, strove to convince his brother-in-law that there are laws of mathematical probability which never fail in the long run, and that the odds on a roulette wheel have been calculated on that certainty. But what did it mean to be a Fascist hero, if you had to admit the existence of laws superior to your own desires?

  The Capitano had been granted a month’s furlough to accompany his wife. He considered that he had earned it, spending a whole year in that God-forsaken hole of Seville where prices had tripled and quadrupled in wartime, and where pleasure was almost unobtainable. Vittorio had begun to open his eyes and discover that it wasn’t all a picnic, pulling chestnuts out of the fire for the good-for-nothing Spanish aristocracy and the filthy-rich Juan March; he wondered what Italy was going to get out of it, and especially what a one-armed hero was going to get. He could never fly again, and had to take a desk job which bored him greatly, especially with a small salary and promotion unreasonably delayed. Vittorio was beginning to think of asking for a discharge and settling down on his wife and mother-in-law. If only he could get enough cash to try out the infallible new system which had been explained to him by a lounger in the casino bar!

  But none of these personal dissatisfactions ever touched the fundamentals of the Capitano’s creed. The ancient Impero Romano was being restored, the Mediterranean was to be “Our Sea,” and statues of Il Duce would be set up on the shores all around it. Nice, Savoy, Corsica were the immediate Italian demands, and “Nice” meant this Côte d’Azur as far as Toulon, a necessary naval base. Vittorio’s way of strutting, as well as his dogmatic tones, informed the people of Bienvenu, of the Cap, and of Juan and Cannes, that he was to be the future master of this soil. Some day soon the Party would recognize his special qualifications and make him a confidential agent at a high salary. Meantime he sponged on Beauty’s rich friends and borrowed money from them, and had his moods of boasting, and other moods of wondering weakly why the French Fascists didn’t take him up and admire him, overlooking the fact that the polo-playing and pigeon-shooting jeunesse dorée of the Midi had their own program of expansion, which included Italian Sardinia, Italian Tripoli, and even a slice off the Ligurian shore.

  Since Lanny had come back from seeing Hitler and was going again, he was well established as a convert and recruit to the Axis, and the Capitano asked questions about the Nazis, their party organization and especially their air force. He revealed that he disliked all Germans intensely, considering them interlopers who had taken over the Duce’s ideas and techniques. But there could be no doubt that they had great resources and industrial power, and had a right to expand; only let them do it toward the east, and leave the Balkans and the Mediterranean to the discoverers and creators of Fascism. All this Vittorio expounded at the dinner table of his mother-in-law’s home, and Lanny listened courteously. Beauty, no longer sure what her son really believed, was satisfied to see him keeping the peace in the family, and leaving her free to give her thoughts to a soiree at Sept Chênes, where he was to play accompaniments for a singer from the opera company in Cannes.

  X

  A round of social duties completed, Lanny packed up half a dozen of the best Detaze landscapes and shipped them by express to the Führer at Berchtesgaden. He telephoned to make sure the great man was there, and that a visit would be convenient; then he told Madame to put her belongings into a couple of bags and come for a journey with him. He didn’t say where they were going, just to the mountains of Southern Germany; that was enough to set her old heart a-flutter. He wouldn’t risk motoring her through the Alps in February. To her it was like a romance, to be with the man whom she adored and who looked so much like the son she had lost. She hoped and prayed that Tecumseh would come on this journey, and not Claribel; so far he always had come, by yacht or train or motorcar. He didn’t say how he did it—he was just there, at your service.

  These oddly chosen traveling companions got along well, because Lanny liked to read, and Madame liked to play Patience for hours, and then to doze in her seat. They reached Munich safely, and as Lanny had telegraphed the hour of their arrival, there was an elegant limousine awaiting them, with a Nazi chauffeur in uniform and a Death’s Head Leutnant riding beside him. “Herr Budd?” inquired the latter, and then: “Bitte, may I see your card?” Lanny showed him an engraved visiting card, smaller than it would have been had he been a German. The officer inspected it, and then: “Bitte, einzusteigen.” They drove all the way to the town of Berchtesgaden, a matter of a couple of hours on one of those modern superhighways completely cleared of snow. During the trip no word was exchanged; the Führer’s guests shared his high status, and were not spoken to unless they spoke first.

  From the town the road to the Berghof climbs steadily. Lanny had traveled it two and a half years ago, when he and Irma had taken Trudi out of Germany, and Irma had been so furious about it that she had taken a train to Bremen and a steamer to New York. Such had been the end of Lanny’s first marriage—and, as you might say, the beginning of his second, though he had no idea of this at the time. Then it had been night, and the lights of his car had turned here and there with the winding of the road, sweeping over mountainsides covered with tall fir trees. Now it was daytime, and the slopes and trees were covered with deep snow, sparkling in bright sunlight; the air was clear and laden with forest scents.

  The private road into the estate was guarded even more carefully than on the previous occasion; there were men of the Death’s Head Brigade on patrol every couple of hundred yards or so and they gave their “Heil Hitlers,” which the Leutnant returned. At the elaborate main gates they were halted and no chances were taken; not even a Death’s Head Leutnant could bring two persons into the Berghof on his own word or guess. Lanny Budd had to present his visiting card again, and to submit to the humiliation of having the fur robe lifted from his knees, lest he might have someone concealed thereunder. The trunk of the car was likewise searched; and all this time the machine guns, one on each side of the steel gates, were kept turned upon the car. The grandson of Budd Gunmakers had had much to do with machine guns in the course of his life, but never before at the wrong end.

  When the gates were opened they drove slowly, an SS man walking on each side of them. Lanny had heard that attempts had been made on the Führer’s life, and the control had become far more rigid than on his previous visit. He took no chances of making a false move, and at the front door of the residence did not step out, American fashion, but waited for instructions.

  There came waddling down the steps of the mansion a rolypoly of a man with a face as round and red as a newly risen harvest moon. Being a Nazi, he said: “Heil Hitler!” and then, being a Bavarian, he added: “Grüss’ Gott, Herr Budd!” It was the one-time Kellner of the Bratwurst Glöckle in Munich who was now the Führer’s majordomo; he knew Herr Lanny Budd, having played the accordion and sung for him on his last visit. Were they afraid that some would-be assassin might have slugged and kidnaped the real Lanny Budd, and with his visiting card be now presenting himself at the Führer’s retreat?

  “Grüss’ Gott, Herr Kannenberg,” said Lanny, returning the continuous smile. “Allow me to present my friend Madame Zyszynski.” So it was all right; the SS men opened the doors of the car, the guests stepped forth, and their luggage was lifted out for them. Lanny had time for one look about, enough to see that the construction work which had been going on in the autumn of 1935 had been completed, and the simple châlet once called Haus Wachenfels now had a long two-story wing added on each side, so that guests would never again have to sleep in tents. He remarked to his escort the excellent taste of the new work, and the majordomo replied with a tone a
nd expression as if he were singing a psalm in front of an altar: “Unser Führer ist der grösste Architekt der Welt!”

  XI

  Lanny hadn’t told Madame to what place she was coming; that was his practice, and she understood that every visit was a test. She couldn’t fail to observe all this pomp and circumstance, and perhaps had seen photographs of Der Berghof in the picture papers which she patronized; certainly she would know the most publicized of all faces, commonplace except for a fleshy nose and a Charlie Chaplin mustache. But she wasn’t going to see that face for a while; she was coming to visit a different gentleman, whose name was Hess, but it had been arranged that his name also was not to be spoken. The moment she entered the house she was taken in charge by a maid who spoke English, and who escorted her to a room and provided her with every comfort, including lunch and a chance to lie down and rest after her trip.

  The rolypoly ex-Kellner took Lanny up in the elevator to another room, and after he had had a bath he made his appearance in the reception rooms on the ground floor. The largest of these was the “great hall,” an architect’s dream of comfort and elegance. The greater part of its front was of glass, giving a view of the piled-up mountains of the Austrian Alps. The ceiling was paneled, with a dozen heavy beams in one direction and another dozen crossing them, forming squares. They were of some beautifully carved dark brown wood, and from them hung chandeliers, each a ring of thirty slim white candles with electric bulbs in the tops. At the far end was a raised platform, like a terrace, three steps high and perhaps twenty feet deep, extending all the way across the room and along part of one side. Here was a great open fireplace with high-banked lounges in front of it. The walls of the room were wainscoted three or four feet high, and above were paintings, well spaced, and here and there tapestries for which an expert would have undertaken to get several million dollars—but he assumed that they were not for sale.