“And besides,” said Robbie, pursuing the argument, “how could I keep Goring from stealing my designs if he wants to? He can buy one of my newest models through an intermediary, and when he has one he has everything.”
“What would you do if he stole them?”
“I’d threaten to sue him, and he’d know I have a case. I mightn’t get justice in his courts, but I’d put my case before the business world in Britain and France and America, and it would cost him many times as much as he’d stand to gain. You see, son, our business men are trading with the Germans all the time, regardless of politics. Standard Oil has a big deal regarding patent rights with I. G. Farben, the German dye trust, and so have the du Ponts. The A.E.G., the electrical trust, is in the same position, and I don’t doubt that the Hermann Goring Stahlwerke have many such understandings in America. Anyhow, the men who run those big German trusts are Goring’s bosses, don’t you ever forget it; they’d soon make him see that he’s no longer a bandit but a captain of industry.”
“I suppose so,” said Lanny, meekly. He, too, must play his game according to the rules.
III
Father and son had an early breakfast in Paris and a late lunch in Berlin, after which a staff car called for Robbie to bring him to the fat General, while Lanny went to see his client, inspected his art works, and agreed upon a list of prices. When he got back to the hotel, there was a call from Kurt Meissner; Lanny had telegraphed to Stubendorf and the message had been forwarded to Berlin, Kurt being here to see his music publisher. Lanny said: “Herrlich! Come to dinner!” He called Heinrich Jung, who was no less pleased, and began telling Lanny over the telephone all the wonders of a new illustrated textbook which his organization was distributing to German-speaking youth all over the world. Lanny had to remind himself that he was a Nazi neophyte, and that the achievements of the New Order were his own.
Twenty-two years ago this Christmas the three boys had romped in the snow at Stubendorf, and listened to the old Graf speaking to his people about deutsche Treue und Wurde. How Lanny had loved the Germans in those days! It seemed to him it was the Germans who had changed and that he was the true disciple of Beethoven and Goethe; but he could never make them see it, and if they could read his thoughts they would call him a viper whom they had nourished in their bosom. Did Kurt guess? Lanny couldn’t be sure; he watched for signs of it in Heinrich, feeling sure that Kurt would not fail to warn the young official. But Heinrich appeared his usual naive and enthusiastic self, and talked as if Lanny were a swimmer poised upon the bank and needing only the slightest push to get him into the water.
Lanny had a story to tell about his visit to Berchtesgaden, and who had been there, and everything that had come from the mouth of the adored Adolf. Lanny gave the credit for this honor to Heinrich, and the Hauptforster’s son was so pleased and so absorbed in the narrative that he almost forgot the large fat pheasant which his host had caused to be placed before him. Lanny told what his father was here for, and about the achievements of the new Budd-Erling fighter. Good news for the Fatherland, and Lanny neglected to mention that Robbie had also been marketing the plane in Britain and France. Heinrich told of the elaborate program whereby hundreds of thousands of the youths of Germany were being taught to soar in glider planes, so that their future training as aviators would be easy; Lanny said that he had seen this in the course of his motoring during the summer, and Heinrich added that his organization had issued much literature about it, and he would furnish Lanny with a set.
Kurt revealed that he was planning to come to Paris before the winter was over. He didn’t want to become provincial in his tastes, and had decided to make a study of French music, also to give recitals in Paris; that might be a way of building up friendship between the two peoples, as the Fuhrer so greatly desired. This sounded like the old Kurt talking, and Lanny was pleased. He had never given up the dream he had acquired at Hellerau, that the arts might become a means of international unification; the art lovers, the good Europeans, would teach brotherhood and humanity to all the peoples. Einen Kuss der Ganzen Welt!
Lanny described his visit to Salzburg, which seemed to him another Hellerau; but he found his two friends unwilling to accept this festival as a manifestation of the German Geist. To them it was a somewhat pathetic effort of dissident elements to maintain a resistance to German solidarity. Kurt and Heinrich wanted, not merely political and economic Anschluss with Austria, but intellectual and artistic as well, and they heard without joy about the crowds which had made it impossible for Lanny and his wife to find hotel accommodations in the town.
Lanny didn’t mention the break with Irma; he said that she was at Shore Acres, and he was planning to go there before long. He might be back in Paris later, and would be glad to see Kurt and do what he could to promote his musical efforts. Emily Chatters worth would help, also; Kurt asked how she was, and expressed admiration for her. How much of it did he mean? Lanny wasn’t going to forget how Kurt had come to Paris as a German agent and had exploited Emily’s interest in music. Was he coming now as an agent of the Nazis? Of course he must know that Lanny would be thinking of this; their relationship would be complicated.
IV
Robbie Budd came in toward the end of the evening, well pleased with himself, having apparently made a hit with the fat General. He had been invited to stay for dinner in the ministerial residence, and with several staff officers had talked aviation and what the various nations were doing with it. Robbie had collected a lot of information, and didn’t mind revealing the fact to his son’s old friends. He didn’t have to do any play-acting, for his point of view was clear-cut and elementary—he believed in the survival of the fittest, and just at present fitness was proved by ability to appreciate and willingness to purchase the Budd-Erling P7. Since Germany apparently stood first in possession of these qualifications, the criterion was satisfactory to Kurt Meissner and Heinrich Jung.
The American of large affairs thought that he had seen some big things in the course of his life, but he admitted that he had learned something when he was escorted through the new building in Berlin which was to house the offices of the German Air Force. Three thousand rooms, if you could imagine such a thing—and instantaneous connection with every airport and military establishment in Germany. Imagine the size of the force which was going to require all that administering! Robbie talked technicalities, and the German pair listened with a glow in their cheeks, even while they didn’t understand the details. Lanny watched and thought to himself: “No, Kurt, you’re not going to Paris to learn about French music, or yet because you want to help the spread of an all-European culture!”
After the guests had left, Robbie talked about his business affairs. As he had foreseen, the fat General had wanted to lease his patents; if the Budd-Erling stood up to the tests which were scheduled for tomorrow morning, the General would offer him an annual cash subsidy, with a twenty per cent increase year after year for as long as the patents were used. That was to take the place of a royalty on each plane—since the number of planes manufactured would have to be a military secret. Robbie said that this cash payment would be velvet for the company, the investors having taken stock for their rights. It would put the concern on easy street, and Lanny could see that his father was strongly tempted. He gave no thought to the moral questions involved; if British and French planes were ever machine-gunned and driven out of the sky by Budd-Erling planes, it would teach something to those bureaucrats and brass-hats whom Robbie Budd had been fighting ever since the last war. What but a machine-gun bullet could penetrate their armor-plated skulls?
“Strictly between you and me,” remarked the manufacturer, “I believe that Goring is making a serious mistake; what he really needs is bombing-planes, for how else will he be able to get at Britain? It’s the British who will need the fighters for defense. But you see, Goring was a flier in the last war and his mind is obsessed by those memories. He talked for an hour or more about his own exploits, and made plain
that what he expects is a series of individual dogfights. He has visions of swarms of young Germans winning glory like himself, and the qualities he wants in his planes are speed and maneuverability. He doesn’t foresee the coming of heavier planes, with armor and doubled firepower. But of course it’s not up to me to teach him his business; I haven’t any bombers to sell!”
“Make him pay!” exclaimed the son; and the father replied: “Oh, boy, trust me!”
V
Lanny might have gone to witness the tests, but once had been enough for him; he was sick of images of wholesale slaughter, and conversation about it, and especially about the profits to be derived from it. It seemed to him that he had been born into a most unlovely time and place and section of society; he yearned for some remote and peaceful isle in the South Seas. That being impossible, he made an appointment with Oberleutnant Furtwaengler—now promoted to be Hauptmann—to meet him and get the painting; he would have it crated and turn it over to the care of the American Express Company. Also he was sending cablegrams concerning his other client’s paintings; it might be possible that he would have orders for some of these before Robbie was ready to leave. There would be some money to turn over to Trudi Schultz, and a lot of data which Rick might make into a series of articles.
He was sorry he hadn’t gone along with his father, who came back late in the day with a wonderful story. The plane had stood the most exacting tests, and the fat General had been so pleased that he had shown the plane’s creator some of the closely guarded secrets of the new German Air Force. Robbie had been taken to Kladow, a village near Berlin which had been turned into a center of aviation research. It was now a tract eight miles in circumference, with four thousand men at work day and night on the buildings and grounds. It was like an immense university, in fact two of them, an Academy of Air War and a Technical School of Aviation. There were models of every airplane known—to Robbie’s consternation the fat General had shown him copies of all the seven Budd-Erling models, and stood shaking with laughter as he watched the American’s face.
Also there were models of every sort of military target, and students practicing at bombing them. There was one of the most powerful radio stations in the world, and even a yacht club on a lakeshore. The goggle-eyed visitor had been escorted into one of the underground hangars, so deep that no bomb could reach them and with the entrances so camouflaged with nets and other devices that no air photographs would reveal them. Everything complete under there, including living-quarters for the operating and maintenance staffs; a reading-room with the latest technical magazines, and writing pads so that the men could make notes of anything important. “By God!” added the awe-stricken business man. “They even had a freshly sharpened pencil alongside each pad!”
What was it that caused the master of this magic thus to reveal his secrets to a stranger? What had induced him to boast that Germany was now spending upon military preparations five times as much as Britain and more than two and a half times as much as Britain and France together? Was it the sudden impulse of a braggart? Robbie guessed that it was a considered policy; the Nazis wished to frighten their opponents and to spread a legend of invincibility, against the time when the Fuhrer might be ready to make his next move. “You can see it working in the case of Italy,” he remarked. “The British are afraid to fire a gun at Suez, because they can’t really be sure that Il Duce is lying about his new air force.”
“Is he?” asked Lanny; and the father replied: “How can I be sure?”
Of course Kladow was “just the nuts” for Robbie Budd. He could go back to Paris and London and tell harrowing stories about what he had seen. They would think he was exaggerating, naturally; but they couldn’t know, and vague anxiety would creep in under their brass hats. “This war,” Robbie would tell them, speaking of it as if it had already begun, “this war is going to be different from the last; it’s going to be right over your own heads, and all you diplomats, bureaucrats, and office-rats will have to dig deep holes.” They didn’t appreciate his crude American humor.
VI
For once Lanny was in agreement with his father, in the desire that Britain and France should have fighting-planes. It distressed him that the Nazis should be getting any; but Robbie had his answer all pat: “If I didn’t get Goring’s orders I mightn’t be able to keep going, and America wouldn’t have my fine fabricating-plant. With the ocean between us and our enemies, what we need is not great numbers of planes, but the means of building them quickly. If I sell a batch to Goring, I’ll go home and put the cash into building a better one; already I’ve got the ‘mock-up’ started, and a year from now I’ll have that better plane and Goring will have nothing.”
“Unless Goring uses your planes to get something in the meantime, Robbie.”
“Well, he can’t get anything from America, and that’s all you and I have to worry about.”
Robbie had turned down the offer to lease his patents; he was here to sell planes, he said, and the next day he sold twenty of them, at $21,500 each. A contract was prepared, with Lanny helping his father as translator, a service which entitled him to have his Berlin expenses charged against the company. It was Robbie’s first big deal in his new field, and there were many traps to be watched out for; the long document had to be studied phrase by phrase, and several times in a day Robbie had a telephone conference with Johannes, who knew the German language, and contracts, and the Nazis.
“You see how it is,” said the father. “Goring knows what he wants, and he puts down the cash and gets it. But what a difference in Washington! Our army men have seen just what Goring has seen, and they know that no plane can equal ours, yet they have to go through the farce of advertising specifications and inviting bids!”
“I admit that the Nazis’ is the right way to get things done,” replied the stubborn son. “But suppose it’s the wrong things?”
“You can be sure it’s the right thing in this case,” replied the patient father. “You notice the General insists upon getting his planes ahead of any other customers. I take it that something is going to happen this spring.”
VII
Lanny had promised to pay a call at the office of Heinrich Jung; that seemed a cheap return for the telephone message to the Berghof. Of course Heinrich had told all over the place the story of his friend’s visit to the Fuhrer, and now all the staff of the Reichsjugendfuhrung wanted the honor of shaking the hand which had shaken the Fuhrer’s hand only four months ago. It was a spiritual thing they sought, something which couldn’t be affected by soap and water.
As he sat beside his friend’s desk, Lanny’s eye couldn’t help roaming, and among the papers lying there, one gave him an inner start. A tiny thin pamphlet, three inches by four, strangely familiar to his eyes. It was lying so that the letters were upside down to him, but he could read the two biggest words, and guess the others: “Abraham Lincoln: Sein Leben und Seine Ideen.”
“I notice that title, Heinrich,” he said, pointing. “May I look at it?”
“Surely,” answered his friend, and handed it over.
“Abraham Lincoln. Are you circulating literature about him?”
“That is not our literature.”
Lanny read again: “Leipzig: Deutscher Nationalsocialistischer Kulturbund.”
“I have made certain that there is no such organization,” explained the official. “The thing is printed by some of our secret enemies, and is designed to deceive the persons who read it.”
“Ausserordentlich! How did you get it?”
“It was deposited in the dinner-pail of a young factory worker who has been educated by our organization. He turned it over to his Gauleiter, who forwarded it to us.”
“I should think that would be a case for the Gestapo,” ventured the caller.
“Naturlich. I called them and learned that they already have copies. We have reason to think that the thing has been printed abroad, for it has appeared near the border in several different places.”
&n
bsp; “What won’t they think of next!” exclaimed the American.
“It is a particularly vicious document,” remarked the official. “You start reading a perfectly sound story of Abraham Lincoln—I admit that I didn’t know much about him, and was interested at once. But before long I began to see that its character had changed; it became a series of poisonous remarks—all rather vague, so that the average ignorant worker might fail to realize that he was reading treason. But he would be absorbing all sorts of doubts as to the sincerity of our regime and the reality of our achievements.”
“That might be pretty dangerous, Heinrich.”
“It won’t take us long to track the thing down. There have been a whole series of schemes, each more cunning than the last, but they have all been detected and the criminals have been put where they can’t do any harm. For the most part this propaganda is being carried on with foreign money, and our job is to find out where that comes from.”
“I should think that Kurt might be of use to you in a matter like that,” ventured Lanny.
“No, Kurt wouldn’t have the right contacts for such work.” Heinrich’s bright blue Aryan eyes gazed into Lanny’s brown ones with perfect candor.
“It might be that I would have. You know, I have met a lot of those people, and have some relatives among them. They talk freely in my presence, and I might pick up a hint.”
“Herrlich, Lanny! If you hear anything, and will let me know, I’ll surely make use of it, and you will earn my everlasting gratitude.”
“You have earned mine already,” said the American, as he laid the poison-pen pamphlet back on the Nazi’s desk.
Wide Is the Gate (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 38
