Presidential Agent (The Lanny Budd Novels)
Page 53
Awaiting the guest in this sumptuous apartment was a man in a Brownshirt uniform. He was known as the Führerstellvertreter, and Lanny had last seen him on a very solemn occasion—standing on the platform before one of the giant Nazi assemblies, calling the roll of the martyrs, those Party comrades who had been killed in the course of more than a decade of struggle for power. He had stood very straight, a tall athletic figure in the simple Brownshirt uniform, and now he wore the same in his Führer’s not so simple home. He was a Reichsminister, chief of the Nazi Party, and Number Three man of the Regierung, but he did not go in for stage costumes like the Number Two. Following his master, he did not drink or smoke, but set an example to the Party rank and file, and despised and spurned those many who did not follow it.
Walter Richard Rudolf Hess had the face of a fanatic; a mouth which was a straight line, with hardly any lips at all, and another line made by bushy black eyebrows meeting over the top of his nose. His deep-set eyes were a greenish gray, and he was famous for being able to outstare any erring Party chieftain; they were all afraid of the contempt which they saw on his olive-skinned features. There was no trace of the Nordic about him; his hair was black and very thick, and at the top of his head was a long scar where no hair would grow—he had got it in one of those Saalschlachten in the early days of the Party, the beer-cellar meetings which had turned into battles with the Reds, and one of the enemy had hurled a beer mug at the head of Adi Schicklgruber’s most faithful bodyguard.
He had been first an infantry officer and then an aviator in the World War, and afterwards, hearing the ex-corporal make a speech at one of the Munich meetings, had become his adorer and faithful secretary. For his part in the attempt at revolution he had been sentenced to the Landsberg fortress, along with Hitler; and being a man of better education than his master, he had patiently written down every word of the master’s outgivings and shaped them into a book. Adi had proposed to entitle this work: “Four and One-Half Years’ Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice”; but Hess, with better judgment, had suggested “Mein Kampf.” From then on the pair had been inseparable, and when Gregor Strasser had almost wrecked the Party by resigning and attacking the Führer, it was Hess who had been put in charge and authorized to speak in the Führer’s name.
For four years now he had done so, becoming more dour and grim with each day of contact with the frailties of Nazi nature. He seldom appeared at social affairs, having no use for that sort of flummery; so the only time Lanny had met him was here at the Berghof with Irma. On that evening he had had almost nothing to say and had sat looking very glum, watching the two American visitors as if strongly disapproving the Führer’s wasting his time on such people.
XII
Lanny had been told that this man could be friendly and even charming when he felt like it, and the visitor wanted very much to see him in that role. “Herr Reichsminister,” he began, speaking English, which he knew the other understood and spoke fluently, “you may be interested to know about the first time I ever heard of you. It was at Christmas of 1924, and Heinrich Jung came back from Landsberg and told Kurt Meissner and me of two very wonderful men he had met in the fortress.”
“Wirklich?” said the dark man; he could hardly say less.
“Kurt and I have been friends from boyhood and I was visiting him at Stubendorf. Heinrich is the son of the Oberförster there, as you perhaps know, and from that time on he never let up on me. I used to get some of your Party literature at least once a month. I stood out against it for years, but in the end I fell under the spell. So you see, Herr Hess, I am a sort of pupil of yours.”
This from a guest only four years younger than himself was the extreme of graciousness. The hardest man has something in his soul about which he is sentimental, and that something with Hess was the period he had spent in prison with Adi and the other heroes of the NSDAP. The tight, almost lipless mouth relaxed into a smile, and the man of many suspicions remarked: “Those were great days.”
“Greater, I believe, than any of us can realize as yet,” replied the visitor. From that time on he was a member of the brotherhood, and no longer felt the eyes of the Deputy Führer following him about with suspicion.
Seated in one of the capacious leather armchairs of which there were a score in the hall, Lanny told about his eight years of dabbling in psychic research. He knew that his host was a believer in spiritualism; when he read that roll of the martyrs to the assembled Nazi throng, he was certain that the spirit of every one of those men was hovering over the scene and thrilling with the same pride as the reader. So now Lanny took that line; Tecumseh was a genuine spirit of a one-time Amerindian chieftain. Lanny had heard also that Hess was a “Moral Rearmament” man, a follower of Buchman, who had come back to America saying: “Thank God for a man like Hitler!” So Lanny spoke of having attended Buchmanite meetings in England, and having recently talked with Lord Lothian.
Lanny knew furthermore that Hess was a believer in faith healing, and had braved the ridicule of the other Party leaders to call a congress on that subject. Lanny knew the language of these many cults, because his stepfather had been teaching him for more than a decade. He told stories about the extraordinary cures which Parsifal Dingle had achieved. The visitor explained his belief that the “faith” which healed had no necessary connection with the Christian religion or the Jewish Bible; it wasn’t faith in Jehovah or any other tribal deity, but faith in the creative principle which rules the universe and is in all our hearts. Lanny wasn’t sure whether his host believed in Wotan and the old Teutonic panel of gods, but he was careful to leave them out of his condemnations. Also, being socially well trained, he was careful to give his host an opportunity to narrate his own experiences and to set forth the conclusions he had drawn from them; thus they spent a pleasant couple of hours, and at the end of the time were friends.
XIII
The American brought up the subject of Bruno Pröfenik, and told of his visit there. Hess said: “He is a man in whom I would not put too much trust”; and Lanny, not wishing to commit himself, replied: “I know there is fraud in every part of this field; also, I have reason to believe that there are mediums who at times produce genuine phenomena, and at other times, when the phenomena fail to appear, yield to the temptation to help the spirits out.”
Hess agreed with this; he had kept his interest in Pröfenik because he was sure the old wizard had produced genuine trance phenomena, and in fact wouldn’t dare to produce any other sort for the Deputy Führer. There was a menace in this for the wizard, and Lanny laughed and said: “Don’t be too harsh with any of them! Remember that a man or woman in a genuine trance might cheat without being aware of it, or being able to help it.”
The Nazi leader said he had never thought of that, and Lanny explained his idea that the subconscious mind has many levels and a variety of forces in it, some good and some evil. “We all have impulses to lie and cheat, and some of us yield to them on the conscious level.” He skipped over this quickly, hoping that it wouldn’t be taken as an allusion to a literary work of which his companion was joint author. “Why can it not happen that some sly and tricky subconscious personality should take control of a medium in trance, and seek to build up its own prestige and importance by making the medium do and say whatever it finds profitable?”
“That is providing them with a pretty broad alibi,” remarked the Deputy Führer, shrewdly.
“Those who are conscious cheats will use everything they can think of. But I am not at all sure that Rudy Schneider ever became a deliberate cheat, or that Eusapia Palladino ever knew that she sometimes helped out her ‘ectoplasm’ with her foot.”
These were cases in the books, and Hess didn’t know the books, so Lanny told the stories. Then he said: “Pröfenik volunteered to send his astral body to the Berghof to find out what you and I are doing. It’ll be interesting to see if he can make good on that. I wrote him that I would be here today, so no doubt he is trying his arts on us.”
“I have thought of that,” replied the American. “If you are interested in such experiments, let us do something a bit different, and beyond his guessing powers.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I have thought of several things. They tell me you are an athlete, and keep yourself in condition. When I was a boy I was taught what was called ‘French wrestling,’ and what I have since been told all German schoolchildren practice. If the old wizard can say we were doing that, we can be sure he has some supernormal power.”
“Either that, or else he has a spy in this household,” remarked the dour Deputy.
They took off their coats and took their stand on a vacant part of that well-polished oaken floor; facing each other, but each somewhat to the other’s right, with Lanny placing his right foot against the outside of Hess’s right foot. They each took a firm stance, with the left foot back, and Lanny took his opponent’s right hand in a firm grip with his right hand. So they were ready, and the trick was to keep your own balance while trying to push or pull your opponent off balance; you won a round when you succeeded in forcing him to lift his right foot off the ground. There are many tricks to take him by surprise, but Lanny never used one more than once, for Hess was quick in his reactions and had muscles of steel. Lanny, for his part, was a tennis player, which kept his grip firm; also he played the piano, which is harder work than most auditors realize.
That is what they were at when the master of this household entered the room. They stopped, but he wanted to know what they had been doing, and they went on while he watched them; he wished he had tried this form of diversion in the trenches, he said, when for months at a time there had been nothing to do but wait. However, he didn’t offer to try it now; he looked to be flabby, and Lanny had heard that he took no exercise except walking. It wouldn’t do for the Führer of all the Nazis to take any chance of being bested at anything. Lanny wasn’t sure that his Deputy would have enjoyed such an experience either, and was glad that Hess was able to hold his own so well. When they quit, they were both of them breathing hard, and their Führer said, indulgently: “You are still nothing but boys, both of you.” But they were his boys!
20
Mohammed’s Mountain
I
In the course of a fortunate life Lanny Budd had been a guest in elegant homes in various parts of the world, and the thing which struck him about them was that the resemblances were so much greater than the differences. There had come to be a standard of leisure-class life, much the same in all great centers. Transportation and communication were responsible for this, and the greatest of these forces was the motion-picture screen, which transported everything and communicated it to everybody all over the world. If the rich man in America had some new luxury, the rich man in Tasmania or Iceland saw it and ordered it. The result was a general level of comfort and culture, with nothing very new or startling to any visitor; the furnishings in the Berghof might have been transported to a mansion on Nob Hill in San Francisco, or on the Avenida Rio Branco in Rio de Janeiro, and would have fitted there.
The same thing had happened to manners and morals. Everywhere were quiet and well-trained servants, and a household seeming to operate automatically; everything was spotlessly clean, and if there was mud outside, everybody wiped his feet before he came in. Everybody spoke in a well-modulated voice and tempers were rarely lost. There might be a great deal of drinking, but people had learned to carry their liquor; they drank until they were beginning to be stupefied, and then went up to their rooms and slept it off. Costumes likewise had been standardized; the gray trousers and blue sport coat which the Führer wore at his lunch-table would have served for an informal meal in the town called Newcastle in Connecticut, or England, or Australia; and the same was true for the white tie and tails of a ceremonious affair.
With few exceptions, the statement applied also in the realm of ideas. The average man of wealth and power took the same attitude toward politics the civilized world around. Details and techniques might differ, but what the rich and great wanted was to keep what they had. That was why Robbie Budd could travel to Paris and Berlin and get along so well with Baron Schneider and General Göring; that was why the movement which had started in Italy had spread so swiftly to Germany and Poland and Rumania and Austria and Spain, to Brazil and the Argentine and Japan; why the Führer’s agents could report to him a continuing spread of his propaganda in France and Britain, and in the great democracy which called itself the sweet land of liberty. Those who had property and enjoyed privileges wanted to hold onto them, and when they found labor beginning to organize, call strikes, and use the ballot in its own interest, the masters began to look about for a strong private police. “Fascism is capitalism plus murder,”—so the leftwing Rick had declared after his first interview with Mussolini, eighteen years ago.
II
The household in which Lanny was now a guest appeared to be even more decorous than the average. Its master did not drink, and did not permit anyone to smoke in his social rooms; his guests had to retire to their bedrooms or go outside on the terraces to indulge that evil practice. At the table he served them the customary generous meals, but had put before himself a specially prepared vegetable plate with one poached egg on top, and a one per-cent beer brewed for him. He was so gracious to everybody at the long table, including three women secretaries, that Lanny had to keep saying to himself: “This is the murderer of Trudi, and of Ludi, and of Freddi Robin.”
Not that he had killed them with his own hands; but he had established the system and given the orders which included them and thousands of other victims. He was planning at this time the murder of a nation of six or seven millions, and the various generals and officials who came here were giving information and getting instructions bearing on this project. Yes, it was like visiting in the home of Beelzebub, known as the Father of Lies. He, too, no doubt, had a modern and perfectly appointed residence, and his manners were above reproach; but at what moment would the floor crack open and flames and the smell of brimstone burst forth?
After dinner Rudolf Hess asked if it would be convenient for him to make a test with Madame, and Lanny went up to arrange it. He told her that the room was to be dark, and that a gentleman would enter and take a seat; this gentleman was friendly, and would be polite to Tecumseh or whoever might come. Lanny had already explained the procedure to the Deputy Führer, who didn’t need much instruction, being familiar with séances. The American would have liked to be present, but was afraid to take the chance; he had got into a jam with Zaharoff through being a witness to his humiliation, and wasn’t going to make that mistake with anybody here. What they had in their subconscious minds was their secret. Lanny said, lightly: “Remember, don’t blame me if the spirits are impolite.” The other smiled and promised readily.
So now Hess disappeared, and the other guests and members of the household were invited into the projection room to see a movie. The Führer was fond of them, and oddly enough preferred American pictures, of course with German titles; he did not understand English, except for “O.K., Chief,” and other such standard phrases. This time it was a comedy called It Happened One Night; Hitler had had it run several times, and never tired of it. From it he could learn how people traveled on autobuses in America, and how they liked to have their own way—which was something he would surely not wish to introduce into the Fatherland. Lanny wondered, how seriously did he take American comedies? Had he got the idea that the daughters of American millionaires were accustomed to run away from home and marry some poor but honest young fellow whom they picked up on the road? So far, it hadn’t happened in Newcastle, or in the neighborhood of Shore Acres.
When the showing was over, Hess was pacing up and down in the great hall; he took the guest by the arm and led him away, saying: “The Führer also wishes to hear my report.” T
hey went quietly to Hitler’s study, which was on the second floor, at the front. Seated there before the fireplace, the Deputy said: “Herr Budd, this is really remarkable. Are you certain that nobody has told that old woman my name?”
Lanny replied: “I cannot be certain of that. I can only tell you that I haven’t told her, nor told anyone else but you and Herr Hitler. If she got your name, it could only have been from someone in this household.”
“That could not have happened, I am sure.”
“It is a doubt which troubles everyone to whom I take Madame. Poor Zaharoff tormented himself with it all his life. I can only tell you that I take these experiments seriously, and give you my word of honor that I gave her no hint. Members of my family knew that I was shipping paintings to Herr Hitler, but all I told them about Madame was that I had a friend in Germany who wished to try some experiments. They are used to that, as Madame is.”
III
The Nazi Nummer Drei proceeded to describe the spirits with whom he had spent the past hour. The first had been a certain Franz Deek, or some such name—Tecumseh was never good at foreign names. Dieckhoff, it was, and Hess had forgotten him, but the spirit brought him to mind; he had been one of those SA men who had aided Hess at the time of the Putsch, some fifteen years ago. Hess had not marched in that ill-fated parade through the streets of Munich; it had been his job to kidnap two of the ministers of the Bavarian government, called by the uneuphonious names of Schweyer and Wutzelhofer. The pair had been forced into automobiles and carried off into a near-by forest; they had been blindfolded and stood up to be shot, but had been spared, and carried off to another forest, and stood up again—a form of torture which had been meant to frighten them so that they would obey Nazi orders in future.