The Return of Lanny Budd

by Upton Sinclair

  Stalin had no critics in Russia, at least none who was ever heard or heard of. But his military people who had to administer the Potsdam Agreement found it highly inconvenient to have the American, French, and British occupation forces stationed in the middle of their new East German satellite and having access to it by highways, railroads, and canals. The agreement had provided for free access of all residents of Berlin to all portions of the city, and that meant continual misunderstanding and clashes. It meant that the people of East Berlin had the opportunity to see how much better the people of West Berlin were being treated. It meant that freedom and slavery were allowed to mix—something which they never in history have been able to do.

  X

  Now, at the end of June, 1948, the Reds had apparently made up their minds to put an end to this annoying situation; they suddenly announced a land and water blockade of Berlin. The last railroad freight line, that by way of Helmstedt, was closed down—they said on account of technical difficulties, an entirely fraudulent statement. If the Soviets couldn’t keep a railroad marshalling yard in order the Americans would have been glad to do it for them—but they were not asked.

  Lanny Budd talked with officials, both military and civilian, about the curious Soviet practice of telling the most barefaced and obvious lies and maintaining them in spite of any facts offered in rebuttal. Was it an assertion of their ego, that truth was whatever they chose to make it? Was it a consequence of their denial of the existence of any moral law? Or was it just an expression of their contempt for their opponents? They would tell you a lie and then laugh in your face—not because they thought you believed it but because you were foolish enough not to understand that they were superior to both the truth and you. Because you were foolish enough to believe that there was actually any such thing as truth in the world! Because you were inferiors, doomed to early extinction, and it didn’t matter in the least what you believed about anything! That was really the way they felt, and lying to you was part of the process of your extermination. They, the new master class, the future possessors and rulers of the world, yielded to nothing—not even the truth!

  So now there were ‘technical difficulties’, and freight trains couldn’t be brought into Berlin. The two million people of the city would be slowly starved. They couldn’t grow potatoes on their concrete pavements, nor on lots from which the rubble of bombed buildings had not yet been cleared away. A modern city has to have electric light and power, and in Berlin this was made with coal; in the days before the war this coal had been brought from Silesia and recently it was being brought from Belgium and the Ruhr, from England and even from America. Now there would be no more of it, and the factories of Berlin would stop working and the people of Berlin would sit in darkness at night. This would make the ‘Amis’ unpopular with all West Germans, and soon the Allies would have to give up and get out.

  There was much discussion among the ‘Amis’ as to how to meet this problem. There were military men who were for accepting the gage thrown down; they would supply armed forces to convoy the trucks and freight trains, and announce to the Reds that these convoys were going through at any cost. In all probability the Reds would back down, as they had many times before when force was shown. But they might not back down, and that would mean war. If war came there could be no question but that the Allied troops in Berlin could be surrounded, cut off, and forced to surrender. They would put up a fight, and the city would be wrecked all over again, but in the end they would have to yield. The ‘moms’ had had their way, and the boys had gone home ‘on points’, and A.M.G. could do very little to keep the Russian steamroller from rolling at least as far as the Pyrennees.

  To be sure, we had the atom bomb, and we might destroy Moscow and Leningrad and the Soviet oil fields and installations; but in the meantime the Reds would be in Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, and the other great factory cities and ports of the West—and would we atom-bomb those? No, the Reds would turn them into slave-labour camps; and what would be the process of liberating them?

  Such were the questions being asked in the council chambers in Washington where the decision had to be made by the General Staff, the Cabinet, and ultimately the President. Two days after the blockade was begun the C-47s, the two-engine planes of the Army, began hauling supplies to the Tempelhoferfeld. It was announced that this ‘shuttle service’ would be continued and increased. The Communists chuckled, because they were sure the Americans meant to feed and supply themselves and let the Berliners starve.

  The Soviet military withdrew from the Allied Kommandatura in Berlin—the last of the Four Power arrangements. Marshal Sokolovsky refused to lift the blockade, and the city administration of Berlin began cutting down the electrical supply to two or three hours a day. Such was the beginning of a battle of industrial and propaganda power that would continue through the summer and the following winter and that for eleven months would be a dominating factor in all Lanny Budd’s thinking.

  He didn’t wait that long. He figured that the events could just as well be watched from his home village in New Jersey, where the mail and the newspapers were delivered twice a day and where over the radio he could get the news once or twice every hour if he was that anxious. He finished his series of talks and then flew home by way of that northern route on which the sun never set at this time of the year.

  21 IN THE TOILS OF LAW

  I

  At home Lanny found letters from Hansi and his wild Rose. The pair had not taken an apartment in Reno—this on account of the newspaper reporters. On the advice of their high-priced lawyer they had settled in a small mining town in the northern part of the state; it was high there and cool. The lawyer, familiar with the problem of well-to-do clients who wanted a divorce without publicity, gave them the name of a landlady who owned several apartments suitable for occupancy by fastidious persons. They could live there as Mr and Mrs Zinsenheimer, and when the six-week period was up Hansi could give this landlady his real name for the first time, and she would make out a receipt for the rent in that name. In this way there could be no publicity until the divorce suit was actually filed.

  So here was a victim, first of Hitlerism and then of Stalinism, starting a new life and really happy for the first time in many years. He loved this wonderful dry climate where the air was so clear that mountains twenty miles away appeared to be within walking distance. It was the wild and woolly West, and he was learning to ride a horse, something which had never in his life occurred to him as a possibility. Hansi played his music, and Rose never tired of listening. They read books and discussed them, they listened to the radio, including the Peace Programme, and they had dinner in a little café where no one asked them any questions. They were agreed that they never again wanted to live in a big city, and perhaps not even to enter one.

  To Edgemere, New Jersey, late one evening came a telephone call, and a familiar voice said, ‘This is Moishe’. He hadn’t expected to get Lanny and was glad to hear that he was safe at home. He said, ‘The devil has been lifted off my back. I don’t have to testify’.

  ‘Glory, hallelujah’! exclaimed Lanny, and Hansi went on to explain that the authorities had decided they had a sufficiently good case and feared the possibility that a man testifying against his wife might awaken antagonism in some woman juror. Only in the event that the jury disagreed and a second trial was required would they call upon the husband. The case against him would be dismissed for lack of evidence. Lanny asked, ‘Is that satisfactory to the rabbit lady?’ and her voice broke in, ‘I’m going to see to it that he breaks no more laws!’

  The case was coming up soon; the lawyers for the accused had asked for an extension of time, and it had been granted; but when they asked for another extension the federal judge said no. The date was a week off, and Lanny telephoned Hansi to make sure he was informed. Hansi would have to make an appearance and be discharged before the bonding company could get the bail money back. Lanny warned, ‘Don’t travel together; it’s too risky’. Hansi
replied that they had talked it over and decided; he would come by train and Rose would drive the car.

  II

  Next morning Lanny received a telephone call from a lawyer in New York who gave his name as Everett and said he was counsel for Mrs Bess Robin and wished to see her brother. Lanny gave his consent, and the man came to the Edgemere home.

  There was a peculiar situation. When Hansi had departed for his runaway vacation he had left a note for Bess, saying that the publicity and excitement had been too much for him; that he was going away to hide and let no one know where he was. He would show up on the day of the trial. Then he had gone to his local post office and left an order that mail for him was to be forwarded to Edgemere. Lanny or his wife had been putting the letters into new envelopes and addressing them to Mr Moishe Zinsenheimer in Nevada, Post offices are forbidden to give information about anybody’s address; but criminal lawyers have a way of getting what they want, and now Mr Everett came to ask where Lanny’s brother-in-law was hiding.

  Lanny didn’t need anybody to tell him what this state of affairs would mean to the defendants and their attorneys. That Hansi should have gone to a known anti-Communist suggested that he had lost sympathy with the movement and might even be intending to turn state’s witness. Lanny said promptly that it had been a regular practice for him to take care of Hansi’s mail while Hansi was away. He said that Hansi had told him nothing of his plans except that he would be back for the trial. It was evident that the lawyer had not been informed that the government planned to drop the case against Hansi, and surely it wasn’t Lanny’s business to tell him.

  A criminal lawyer acquires a view of human nature which makes it difficult for him to believe that anyone is telling the truth, and it was apparent that Mr Everett had doubts as to Lanny’s good faith. He said that for a man who stood charged with a grave crime to absent himself and not give his lawyers a chance to talk to him, or even be sure that they were his lawyers, was utterly preposterous. Lanny replied that Hansi was an artist, and artists were frequently preposterous. It was possible that he didn’t care if he was convicted or not, that he wanted to be a martyr.

  Mr Everett replied that if he was going to be a martyr he ought to be a good martyr, and he needed a good lawyer to help him. Lanny could only shrug his shoulders and make a little gesture with his hands, after the manner of a man raised in France. He said he had been out of sympathy with Hansi for some time, because he despised the Communists and Hansi knew it. But he couldn’t refuse Hansi’s request to forward his mail and to keep the address confidential.

  III

  After the lawyer had gone Lanny talked the matter over with his wife and then called Wilbur Post at the F.B.I., asking if it would be safe for him to come to the office; presumably it was no longer haunted by newspaper reporters. Post said to come, and Lanny went and told him about Everett’s visit. Post naturally was amused to hear about the troubles of ‘that friend of the oppressed’, as he called him. It seldom happens that a man who is engaged in pursuing criminals has admiration for one who is engaged in protecting them.

  Lanny said, ‘I have an idea. It seems to me a bright one, but of course it may not be’.

  ‘Shoot’! said the other, and Lanny went on, ‘You found it convenient to have a man among the Reds to tell you their plans. Has it occurred to you that it might be possible to have a man among the defence to tell you what their plans are? Everett is ready and eager to take Hansi into camp and give him a course of training, and it’s possible he might tell him to say some things that aren’t true’.

  ‘More than possible—probable’! declared the F.B.I. man and added, ‘We certainly should give them the chance. I’ll get hold of Frank Stuyvesant right away’. That was the Assistant U.S. Attorney who was to prosecute the case.

  Post said that if the prosecutor approved the programme he would phone Hansi Robin to come by the first plane. Lanny thought it the part of wisdom to mention that Hansi was establishing residence in Nevada with the intention of obtaining a divorce and that the lady whom he intended to marry was there also. They would probably both come, and Post said promptly, ‘For God’s sake, see that they travel separately and that the lady stays in a different hotel’.

  ‘I can do better than that’, Lanny said. ‘The lady may stay in our home’.

  The official’s reply was, ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’.

  IV

  When Hansi arrived he did not go to the F.B.I. office but kept an appointment at a fashionable uptown club where Communists were not looked for. Lanny, who knew Hansi better than anyone else in the world, stepped into his car and drove to the place. Present also were Wilbur Post and Frank Stuyvesant, the latter an ex-basketball player from City College with a mind and a tongue as springy as his feet.

  These two brought Hansi up to date on the case and told him what he was to do. He was to go to the office of Mr Everett and present himself as ready for trial. He was to say that he had had a breakdown and felt he couldn’t face the publicity; but he had gone away and lived quietly and got himself together and now was ready for the ordeal. The fact that he had had his mail forwarded by Lanny Budd meant nothing except that Lanny was an old friend and relative who had done the same service in the past.

  Hansi would have to see Bess and convince her that he was still a loyal party member. The defence might continue to be suspicious of him and might reveal little to him; they might even tell him to get another lawyer, in which case he would announce that he would defend himself. They wouldn’t like that and would try to dissuade him. Sooner or later he would learn something of their plans, and if and when he did he was to report. At that time he must make certain that he had shaken off all pursuers—even if he had to drive around in taxicabs for an hour or two or hurry through a crowded department store and out by another door. He was not to come near either the F.B.I. office or that of the federal attorney; instead he was to go to a secret address which they gave him and telephone from there.

  So Hansi went, and played his part carefully, and after some hesitations and difficulties he was taken into the conferences of those able high-priced lawyers, who, of course, were not Communists or even fellow travellers, but who believed ardently in civil liberties and in the right of every accused man to have a fair trial in court. In so believing and so doing they were upholding the high traditions of their honourable profession, and by a happy coincidence they were being paid high fees.

  It is a painful but obvious fact that criminal lawyers are sometimes tempted to become criminals. Successful lawbreakers often have a lot of money, and if the lawyers they employ are unwilling to suborn witnesses and frame testimony the criminals will look for some other lawyer who will. So it had come about that in the great metropolis there were men who had the reputation for being willing to do such things and knowing how to do them, and this reputation and knowledge was worth millions of dollars to them. The underworld has a name for such attorneys—they are ‘mouthpieces’.

  So after a while Hansi Robin came to the secret address and reported that the Dane, Johanssen, who had been caught red-handed opening the safe, was going to admit his guilt. Bess, on the contrary, was going to deny that she had ever transported any film or documents to be photographed and that she had ever had anything to do with any form of espionage. She was going to explain her visits to the neighbourhood of the Jones Electrical Works by saying that she had old friends there and had attended Saturday evening parties, and she was going to produce half-a-dozen witnesses who had been present at those parties; some of them she had picked up on her way and brought back to their homes, and some she had taken to her own home to spend the night.

  And Hansi? He was instructed to say that he had driven with his wife on many of these expeditions. They had gone to social gatherings and never anywhere near the Jones Electrical Works for secret meetings with Johanssen, a man he had never heard of. They had been purely social gatherings with a number of friends, some of them comrades and some not. H
e was to be taken and shown the house where these parties had taken place so that he would be perfectly familiar with it.

  The two government men found all this quite according to the rules of the game as it was played; they expected it and would know how to counter it. They told Hansi that he must go back to his home; no matter how repugnant it was, it was absolutely essential to convince Bess that he was standing by her and her cause. He might explain his absence by a nervous breakdown, a panic, anything he could make plausible. He could say that he wasn’t well enough to resume their marital relations.

  V

  Lanny went home and reported to his wife. Rose Pippin had showed up; she had driven across the continent as fast as the law would permit. Lanny and Laurel explained the strange situation to her, and she didn’t like it a bit, but there was nothing she could do about it. There were a lot of things in the world that she didn’t like, she admitted. In order to keep her from brooding over the situation they put her to work on the Peace Programme; they introduced her to the staff, gave her recent copies of the little paper to read, and set her to preparing a programme of her own. It wouldn’t be her first radio appearance, because Hollywood had been exploiting her. But this would be the first time she would be serious, and she meant it to be for keeps. No jokes about the habits of rabbits!