II
By train through the desolate countryside, part of it barren, part wrecked by war, and on to Lisbon, which had become the spy center of Western Europe. The dictator who ruled this little country couldn’t be sure which side was going to win, and he shrewdly played each against the other and raked in the cash. In his capital was the same contrast of riches with bitter poverty; you could buy costly perfumes stolen from the shops of Paris, and you could see barefooted women carrying huge loads of farm produce upon their heads. Nowhere could you escape the sight of German “tourists” wearing golf costumes, and if you talked in any café on the swanky Avenida da Liberdade, you might discover several persons trying to overhear what you said. Uniforms were everywhere, and of all colors; it must be that the officers of Portugal’s small army designed their own, and so gaudy that you could imagine yourself on the stage of an operetta.
Lanny wasn’t interested in talking to anybody in Lisbon, for in neutral countries he was a neutral and not desirous of attracting attention. There were great transport planes flying regularly to London, and others to Berlin from the same airport; this was a convenience to both, sides, and as a rule they were not attacked. Reservations were beyond price; but Lanny was Budd-Erling, and his father had spoken for him; all he had to do was to send a cablegram to his father’s solicitors in London; and three days later he boarded a plane at the crowded airport.
The start was at dawn, and the journey was supposed to take six hours; the passengers sat in their seats and dozed if they could. When their watches told them the time was longer, and a strange leaning in their seats told them that the plane was circling, they became anxious, and were informed that the Croydon airport had just been bombed and repairs were being made. It was impossible to see anything, because the windows of the plane had been covered with boards, held in place by suction cups—presumably so that no one might observe the elaborate defenses being constructed all along the coasts of this sceptered isle, this England.
When at last they touched the ground it was daylight, and there was a badly wrecked hangar still burning, and a landing field spotted with craters. No chance to see more; they were loaded into a bus and hurried off to London, a journey interrupted by road blocks and tank traps every mile or so. This time the windows were not blacked, and you could see how the fields of Southern England had trenches dug across them, and logs, carts, cast-off motor cars, and other obstructions to make trouble for planes and gliders that might drop down in the night. Lanny was astonished to see how much of such defense work had been done since his last visit; also by the number of bomb craters, even in the open fields. Homeguardsmen were active everywhere.
III
He had got a reservation at the Dorchester, which was fortunate, for so many people had been bombed out that the hotels were crowded. He ordered toast and coffee, orange juice, and eggs—the rich could still have these luxuries. He arranged to have his clothes pressed—one of the primary duties of a gentleman of elegance. Clad only in his shorts on a hot morning, he set up his little portable and set to work on his report.
It went fast, because he had been over and over it in his mind, week after week; everything that he had learned in Vichy and on the Riviera: the French Fleet, and the armies in French Africa and Syria; Franco and what he was doing and planning; the German preparations for invasion, and the activities of their agents in unoccupied France. Lanny used as few words as possible, for he had always in mind the stack of documents and reports he had seen on the reading table of his Chief at every visit; but he had been told to cover everything, and he did not spare even the American agents who were in Vichy, and whose trail he had been interested to follow. Mr. Robert Murphy, tall, partly bald career diplomat, was in Vichy presumably because he was a Catholic, and so could speak the language of Holy Mother Church, which claimed in the name of Almighty God the exclusive right to dominate the souls of men and women, to educate their children, and to be in all ways superior to the temporal state. The Holy Mother had got what she wanted in Franco Spain and now in Vichy France; and what was a free American to make of it?
Lanny made no carbon copy of his report. He sealed it in an envelope which bore no marks, and addressed it: “Personal to the President. Zaharoff.” That was the code name which F.D.R. had assigned to him; a name pretty well forgotten now, and borne by no one else, so far as Lanny knew. The aristocratic Spanish lady who had inherited the bulk of the munitions king’s fortune had seventeen other names and didn’t need his.
Lanny put the sealed envelope in another and larger one, and addressed this to “The Hon. Joseph Kennedy, U.S.A. Embassy, Grosvenor Square,” and marked it “strictly personal.” The Hon. Joe had instructions that the inner envelope was to be forwarded by diplomatic pouch, which, of course, always went by air. Since Lanny could never tell when a pouch might be leaving, he went out and found a taxicab, and watched from the window while the driver delivered the missive at the Embassy door. The passenger did not ride back to the hotel, but paid off the taxi and walked. By such elaborate precautions he had in the course of three years managed to send close to a hundred reports, and without slip-up so far as he knew.
IV
Next Lanny went to the police station. You had to register now and explain your business, just as on the Continent. They gave him a “food book,” but he never once had to use it, because he ate at restaurants or with friends. The first of these he sought was Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson, leftwing playwright and journalist, Lanny’s contact with the anti-Fascist world in Britain. They had last parted amid the confusion of Dunkirk, and had not seen or heard from each other since. Now Lanny called the home, which was in Bucks, and asked for Rick’s wife; he did not give his name but said: “This is Bienvenu,” and the reply was: “Rick is in town; he has taken a job on the Daily Clarion.” No more than that, for since Lanny had pretended to join the camp of the near-Fascists, he had never visited The Reaches, and his meetings with Rick and Nina were a carefully guarded secret. Lanny called the Clarion office and said: “Bienvenu”—nothing more. Rick answered: “I’ll come.”
They had agreed upon an obscure hotel where neither was known. Lanny went there and got a room, and his friend came. And what a time they had, swapping stories and news! Lanny was free to tell everything, except the single fact that he was a presidential agent; whatever Rick could use without pointing to Lanny as the source was all to the good from the point of view of both Lanny and his Boss. Rick had joined the staff of a labor paper because he couldn’t stay at home in this crisis; he wanted the workers of his country to know what the war meant to them, and what would be their plight if the “appeasers” could manage to have their way one more time.
To Rick it was one conspiracy throughout the world. The holders of privilege had hired gangsters to protect themselves against social revolution, and that was the meaning of Fascism, National Socialism, Falangism, and all the different “shirts,” black, brown, green, white, gold, silver. Always the clubs and daggers and revolvers had been purchased with the money of the great landlords, the owners of mines and mills, the holders of patents and paper titles which enabled them to levy tribute upon the toil of nations and empires. Rick’s mind was a catalog of these people and the corporations and cartels they had set up; because he knew their economic motives, the sources of their income, he could foretell what they were going to do, and when they had done it he could explain why. He held them guilty of ten million murders, and this World War II was but one episode in their struggle to buttress their power.
Lanny told how he had met the German Army in Dunkirk, and had got through to meet Hitler and Göring, Kurt Meissner and Otto Abetz, and the rest of his Nazi friends; he told how Schneider and De Bruyne and Duchemin and François de Wendel and others in Paris were making their peace with the Nazis. In Vichy it was somewhat different—the leaders there hoped to preserve their Catholic culture, and to have a Church Fascism like Franco’s; but at Nazi command they were having to persecute the Jews, and we
re hunting out the refugees, the Reds and the Pinks of every shade, the liberals and democrats, everybody of whom the Nazis had ever heard, and who might by any chance speak a word against them. “You can’t imagine how it feels to live in Vichy France,” Lanny said. “You can’t find out anything but what the regime wants you to know; you can’t even find out what the laws are—there are so many new decrees, and not paper enough to print them. You have to stand on a street corner and read the affiches in order to know what you’re forbidden to do.”
V
Were the Germans going to try an invasion of Britain? That was the question everybody talked about, not merely on this island but all over the world. Lanny told what Hitler had said, that he was coming as soon as he was ready. But did he mean it? Would he have said it if he had meant it? “He is a strange semi-lunatic,” Lanny opined; “cunning wars with vanity in his soul, and it would be hard for him to forego the glory of announcing what he was going to do. He will come if his generals do not oppose it too strenuously.”
Lanny was one who had a right to be informed, and his best and dearest friend withheld nothing from him. England for twenty miles back from the coast had been declared a military zone, and day and night labor was turning it into one vast fortification. Every beach was mined, and covered with a tangle of tightly strung barbed wire; there was hidden artillery of all sizes, and no end of pillboxes with machine guns, carefully camouflaged. There were great railway guns which could be rushed from place to place. Most important of all, the period of the Sitzkrieg had been utilized to devise and install a series of pipes extending out under the sea, connected with oil tanks and heavy pumps. In case of an invasion attempt, oil would be poured out in floods; it would rise to the surface, and there was a magnesium device to ignite it, so that the invaders would find themselves caught in an inferno of flame. And even when they came to the shore, they would find the beaches ablaze, and flamethrowers concealed behind garden hedges.
Rick told about the situation he had discovered on his return from Dunkirk. Tanks, artillery, trucks, machine guns, all the costly equipment of an army of two or three hundred thousand men had been lost in Flanders; the Germans had it, and the British had only one fully equipped brigade to defend their shores; troops guarding the beaches had to be armed with shotguns, sporting rifles, even muskets out of museums. “Your President saved us,” declared the baronet’s, son. “Have you heard what he did?”
“I didn’t see an American or British paper till I got to Lisbon.”
“This hasn’t been published yet, that I know of. You had a million World War I rifles in your arsenals, and Roosevelt had them loaded onto fast steamers and sent over to us. They are out-of-date, but they saved us once and might have done it again. He’s been letting us buy some torpedo boats and other small stuff that your navy can spare. They are sold to private dealers who resell them to us; that’s according to your laws, it appears.”
“It wouldn’t appear so well during an election year,” was the reply.
“I know, I know,” said Rick. “You have about a hundred over-age destroyers, left from the last war. We need them the worst way in the world, to keep our convoys on top of the water. We’re trying our best to buy them, so the Pater tells me. Put in a word for us, if you meet anybody with influence.”
“I’ll do that, you may be sure. But tell me this, old man—what are you going to do if the Germans do succeed in breaking down the door?”
“We’ll fight inside the house, of course; we’ll fight to the last man.”
“I know, but that won’t help much; civilians can’t fight a modern army. I’m going home, and my father will ask me questions; some of his friends are influential, and their decisions may make a lot of difference to you. Suppose these islands are conquered—what will the Fleet do? Will the Germans get it, or will it come to Canada as Churchill promised?”
“The Pater has talked with members of the Cabinet about it, and they say there has been a formal vote. We’ll do another Dunkirk—put our fighting men on board every sort of ship we can get together, and the Fleet will escort them to Canada. We’ll fight from there, and come back home some day. My understanding is, we have already given that promise to Roosevelt in writing; and we’ve taken the first step by shipping every ounce of gold in the Bank of England’s vaults to New York and Montreal and other places of safety. That was quite an adventure, believe me—and it’s strictly hush-hush!”
“It’s the best news I’ve heard in a long while,” declared Lanny. “My father will sleep better when he gets it.”
“What I want you to send me back,” replied the Englishman, “is the dope regarding Roosevelt’s chances of re-election. What do you know about this fellow Willkie?”
“I never heard his name until I read a three-line dispatch in l’Éclaireur de Nice saving that the Republicans had nominated him. The Continent isn’t allowed to know about American political affairs. Even the Swiss papers are not allowed into Vichy France any more.”
VI
Lanny inquired about the family, whose home he had visited so often in youth and early manhood. Sir Alfred had taken a desk job in the Local Defense Volunteers; he was old, but so long as his strength held out he would set free some younger man. Nina, Rick’s wife, was running the home, and the women of the neighborhood came to roll bandages in their spare hours. The two girls were training to be nurses, as their mother had been in the previous war. Young Rick, the younger son, whom Lanny remembered as a long-legged schoolboy, was training with the Air Force, following in the footsteps of his adored older brother. Alfy, lieutenant in the R.A.F., was down near Dover, the hottest spot this side of hell, his father said. “We haven’t seen him for a couple of months.”
“I suppose they’re on call day and night,” the other remarked.
“You can’t imagine the tension, Lanny. They sleep with their boots on, and when the siren sounds they leap into their flying suits and dash to the planes. There are so few, and everything depends upon them.”
“You said they would prove to be better than the Germans. How is it working out?”
“Well, they’re outnumbered six or eight to one, and they have to get several of the enemy for every one they lose. The figures aren’t given out, of course; but Alfy says they are holding their own.”
“My heart goes out to Nina,” remarked the visitor gravely.
“It’s rugged, but not so much so as you might think. There comes a point where you can’t suffer any more, and you stop. Alfy is credited with five Luftwaffe planes and so far he hasn’t been hit, but that can’t go on forever; nobody has an unlimited drawing account in the bank of luck. Some day there’ll come a telegram. Alfy is married, by the way.”
“You don’t tell me!”
“Right after he came back from the Dunkirk circus; to Lily Straw-bridge, the family just down the river from us; you may remember them.”
“Very well indeed.”
“A fine girl; and she has just learned that she is pregnant. So Nina will transfer her affections. That’s the way it goes in wartime. This generation has to be written off; at any rate the airmen.”
Lanny thought for a moment, then said: “I think I should have a talk with Alfy before I leave. Do you know if he has had anything to do with the Budd-Erling?”
“He has tried one out.”
“Well, my father will have a hundred questions to ask. Nothing can take the place of actual battle test.”
“I’ll see what can be done about it. You’re going to Wickthorpe, I suppose.”
“That is my plan. How are they?”
“I don’t see that family any more. They wouldn’t relish my conversation. I’ve heard a rumor—it may or may not be true—that his lordship is thinking of resigning from the Foreign Office.”
“Good grief!” exclaimed the American. “What would that mean?”
“I rather fancy he’s been a fish out of water for a long time, and he can’t have been entirely happy.”
&nbs
p; “Irma will tell me about it, I imagine.”
“Don’t you tell me; I’ll get the story myself and be free to publish it—unless you prefer that I didn’t.”
Lanny thought for a space. “It might be better if you left that particular scoop to somebody else, Rick. Everybody thinks of me as Irma’s former husband, and many of them have not forgotten that I used to be your friend. After all, it’s not an important story—not so much so as some of the things I can get if I keep my appeaser sympathies untouched by suspicion.”
“Righto!” said the playwright. “I’ll spare the mother of your child, and you find out for me how much truth there is in the report that Hitler is making another peace offer through Eire, and that he’s holding off the invasion to give us time to think it over.”
“What I’ve heard,” replied Lanny, “is that Sam Hoare is negotiating in Spain. Both may be true. God help us!”
VII
Lanny telephoned to Wickthorpe Castle, as courtesy required, to ask whether it would be convenient for him to pay a visit to his little daughter. Irma answered: “Certainly; but, Lanny, there are so many people wanting to get out of London, I had to let some friends have your cottage. Would you mind using Mother’s spare room?”
“Of course not,” he replied. “I can’t stay very long, and I’d be ashamed to keep a whole cottage empty in times like these.”
He took the train, and a pony-cart from the Castle met him at the station. His lovely little daughter was in it, some three months older and perhaps half an inch taller than when he had seen her last; eager to greet him and to ply him with questions, and to tell him about her own adventures. War might be hell for a flying man, but it had its compensations for a child: so many things going on, so many changes in routine, so much news. The poor little rich girl named Frances Barnes Budd was ten years old, and more things had been crowded into her life in the past year than in all the previous nine. And now came this handsome and delightful father who had been in Paris and seen the conquering German army, and met the dreadful wicked Führer—Frances had to be taught that he was wicked because everybody else on the estate and in the village believed it, and she had to be a patriotic little English girl, even though her father and mother were both Americans. Lanny, skilled at playing roles, had to play two at the same time in this ancient remodeled castle.
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