The Return of Lanny Budd

by Upton Sinclair

  ‘The letter hasn’t come’, Lanny said. ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘So far as I know. Why do you ask?’

  Lanny said, ‘Laurel had a message in a séance to the effect that he had been hanged’.

  He knew this wouldn’t make much of a hit with his old friend. German Social Democracy is Marxist and bases its theories upon old-fashioned German materialism. The universe and everything in it consists of little round solid lumps called atoms, and the behaviour of these atoms is fixed in a chain of causations that nothing can ever break. The Germans knew that, because a philosopher named Ludwig Büchner had proved it a century ago in a book called Kraft und Stoff, and Karl Marx had read it. So now a German named Bernhardt Monck tolerated with patronising kindness the fact that an old friend believed in ‘spooks’. It seemed to him a characteristically American thing that a wealthy playboy should spend ten dollars or so on a telephone call because one spook had given his wife some messages from another spook.

  The ex-sailor said politely, ‘I’ll inquire and let you know’. Then he added, ‘The airlift is flying. You should come and see it, Lanny. It’s the finest piece of propaganda ever devised. All Europe is watching it’.

  X

  Lanny went about his business for the day and did not let himself worry about Kurt Meissner. The report might not be true. He had received many psychic communications, and some had been veridical, and many more had had no relationship to reality. Those which were true produced a deep impression, while those which were not were apt to be forgotten quickly.

  In the evening he was listening to a radio programme, as they always did; it was a world in which cold war might change to hot at any moment, and if it did there might be an A-bomb over your head. So it came about that Lanny and Laurel, sitting on their front porch with Rick and Nina and listening through an open window, heard the following words: ‘A dispatch from Munich reports that Kurt Meissner, well-known German musician and onetime intimate of Hitler, was found hanged in a forest near his home on Lake Tegern. It is believed that he was murdered by Nazi fellow conspirators because he had given information to the American authorities concerning the treasure concealed in the foundations of his home’.

  So there it was, first a murder and then a miracle, for most people would call it that. Rick and Nina were witnesses, for Lanny had called them on the previous evening and told them about Laurel’s message. Rick, like most moderns, was inclined to materialism but wasn’t dogmatic about it; he couldn’t doubt the reality of psychic experiences, because Lanny’s first, at the age of seventeen, had had to do with Rick’s flying accident.

  It was a perfect demonstration of a mysterious power that lies hidden in the human psyche. There were thousands of such cases recorded in the books; Lanny had read many cases and had witnessed a few and had told other people about them, but without much result. The average person was interested, as he would have been interested in an account of a visit to the moon or to Mars; but he didn’t know what to make of the phenomena and let them slip from his mind.

  Lanny was prepared for the airmail letter he received from Monck a few days later. ‘It is really an extraordinary thing’, he said, ‘and I don’t know how to explain it; but if I believed what you believe about it, I would have to change my whole way of thinking. That is too much to expect of a man nearing sixty’. So, go on believing Büchner and Marx, and leave the facts lying unread in the libraries!

  What Lanny had to do was one concrete thing, to send off a letter to Elsa Meissner expressing his sympathy and asking what resources Kurt had left and what help she would need from Lanny. Kurt Meissner had become in fact, if not in name, an American secret agent, and his family might have a proper claim to a pension; but that would have meant cutting a lot of red tape and persuading a whole row of bureaucrats, and Lanny decided that it would be better to devote the same amount of time to selling another painting.

  23 THE NATIONS’ AIRY NAVIES

  I

  All through these weeks the Berlin airlift was constantly in Lanny’s thoughts. There came a letter from Boris Shub, saying, ‘This is the crucial struggle. It is a question of holding the people of Berlin to our side. They will stick it out, but only if they are sure we are standing by them. You ought to come over here, Lanny, and help. This is R.I.A.S.’s great hour; this is what we exist for. Can’t you help make Washington understand the importance of winning the German mind? We are willing to spend billions for guns but only a few tens of thousands for ideas’.

  Then came a letter from Monck, saying much the same thing but from his special point of view. ‘The Russians are coming over to us’, he said; ‘more of them every day, risking their lives. And still more of the East Germans—they have extraordinary stories, and you ought to be here to listen and put them on your radio. We all have such a feeling of impotence; the American people do not understand our problem, they do not understand the importance of education. In America, yes, but not here; they do not realise that this is a world struggle and that your country cannot win it alone’.

  Also, there was Lanny’s private business, which he could not neglect entirely; he expected to live for some years yet and he wanted to earn what he was spending. There would come a letter from one of his clients, and he would have to set aside his concern about saving the world and devote himself to thinking where he could find a good Renoir, or an Ingres, or whatever. He had to keep his files up to date, and his information about prices, which varied like waves on the ocean; some painter would rise to the top, and then before you realised it he would be on his way down again. For a while you wouldn’t buy his work because the prices were too high, and presently you wouldn’t buy his work because nobody wanted him any more. To keep in touch with these things Lanny would go into town and meet his friend Zoltan Kertezsi; they would go wandering on East Fifty-seventh Street, strolling into the dealers’ galleries, looking at what they had and listening to the gossip which dealers dispense as freely as housewives over the back fence.

  One of Lanny’s most important clients was old Mr. Harlan Winstead, who lived in once-fashionable and rich Tuxedo Park. He had been disappointed in his family life and was distrustful of nearly everybody; most of his old friends were dead, and he was afraid to make new ones. The darling of his affections was his art collection, to which Lanny had contributed scores of items. That collection would never betray him, never deceive him; its charms would never fade nor its financial values diminish. It was his intention to set it up in an absolutely fireproof building that would bear his name through the centuries. Lovers of beauty would come from all over the land to wander through the Winstead Museum, and at least a few of them would read in the catalogue the full name and career of its founder.

  Old Mr. Winstead read a great deal, especially about art. He would read about new painters and new appraisals of old painters. He would wander through his rooms and look at his collection and decide that the French Impressionists were not completely represented, or perhaps the Florentine School, or the English portraitists. He would call Lanny up and invite him to lunch, and Lanny never failed to go. The old gentleman liked him and trusted him and would follow his advice.

  From that luncheon Lanny would go back to Edgemere and consult his card file in which were listed all the paintings he had ever dealt in, or inspected and priced, or even heard rumours about. He had been collecting it for a quarter of a century, and it was precious indeed; there was a duplicate in a vault of the First National Bank of Newcastle. It had increased immediately after the war, when he had served in the operation known as ‘Monuments’, engaged in recovering a couple of hundred thousand works of art which had been stolen by the Nazis and were to be returned to their proper owners. Lanny had made notes on many of these and knew where to find the records of others; so when Mr. Winstead took up a notion to expand his collection in this line or that Lanny would say, ‘I will find out for you’.

  That meant that he had to visit Washington, or send someone, and write to deale
rs and private parties in Europe. He had to get photographs and prices and send or take them to his client. And when the client said, ‘I want this one’, Lanny would go and inspect it and make sure it was genuine and worth the price. If he could save a little money by scaring the other fellow, all right, but the important thing was to get Mr. Winstead what he wanted before the owner found another customer. Lanny’s clients seldom talked about their incomes, but from watching through the years he could figure that Mr. Winstead had about half a million dollars a year to spend on paintings. Like Irma, Lady Wickthorpe, he had turned his money over to a foundation so as to avoid ruinous income taxes. Being a conscientious New England gentleman, he would never spend this money for anything but art, the foundation’s duly established purpose.

  II

  So it came about that Lanny was required to take another trip to Germany, to inspect some fragments of that Hermann Göring collection which was to have astounded posterity through the thousand years of the Hitler Reich. Laurel didn’t want him to go, and before she gave her consent she extracted from him a pledge that he would not visit Munich or that deadly Alpine Redoubt over which the Vehmgericht kept guard. He telephoned Monck that he would come and speak for R.I.A.S. and do whatever else he could for the cause of free Europe. Monck, a trusted man in the Counter-intelligence Corps, could arrange for things like passports without delay.

  So for the second time Lanny got his seat in an Army plane. He stepped off in London, and after telephoning Laurel to let her know that he was safe he called Wickthorpe castle and learned that Irma and Ceddy were in Scotland for the salmon fishing. He wrote them a note explaining that Frances and Scrubbie had postponed a visit to England until Lanny’s return. Then he called up Alfred Pomeroy-Nielson, M.P., and spent an evening with him. Paper was scarce in Britain, and news from across the Atlantic was meagre. Alfy wanted to hear the whole story of Bess, and how the Pater and Mater were, and all that they were doing. In return he gave an inside view of the British Labour government, which was having a hard time because money was so scarce. Next morning, on the plane flying to Nürnberg, Lanny made this into a little article, which he airmailed to Edgemere.

  The Kunstsachverständiger attended first to his business affairs. In a mansion far outside the bombed city he found an excellent collection of French Impressionist paintings. At the beginning of the century the Germans had taken much interest in this movement, and several of its own painters had become imitators. So here were Menzels and Liebermanns, and also works by Monet, Degas, and Renoir. They were what Lanny’s client wanted and their prices seemed reasonable, so he bought half-a-dozen examples and saw to their careful packing and shipment.

  Then he was free to think about his personal friends, and he had the sad duty of calling upon Emil Meissner. The one-time Wehrmacht general said that Kurt had definitely gone over to the Allied cause and had definitely expected to pay for it with his life. So far as Emil had heard, neither the American Army nor the Bavarian government had been able to find any of the conspirators; they had just faded away and quite possibly had escaped abroad. He said that the Vehmgericht was an effort to carry Germany back to the Middle Ages. ‘You can read a picture of its activities in Goethe’s Goetz von Berlichingen. They hold a formal trial in the forest at night and pass the sentence and execute it on the spot’. Then Kurt’s older brother added, ‘You do not have to trouble your conscience about it. I would far rather he died opposing nazism than have him live supporting it. There is a new Germany being born, and I believe it will survive—that is, if the Reds do not roll over us’.

  Lanny asked about Elsa. Emil had been to see the family and had given them advice. The older boys had agreed to heed their uncle’s warning and keep away from the Nazi intriguers. Elsa had enough money to get along—Kurt had been able to save some. Lanny divined that Emil didn’t know anything about the counterfeiting activities; possibly Elsa didn’t know about them either. Emil agreed that it would be wiser for him to keep away from that part of the country. He said that Lanny’s part in the discovering of the hidden gold was known and that the Neo-Nazi fanatics were really dangerous. The ex-general himself was a marked man, a traitor to Hitler. He never went out at night if he could avoid it; he slept with his Luger under his pillow and kept it in the drawer of his desk while he worked.

  III

  They talked for a while about the airlift, which Emil said was the most prominent subject in the mind of every German. A strange turn of the wheel of fortune that the Germans now rejoiced to see that they were remaining ‘occupied’. Emil said that Stalin, an Asiatic, set great store by what was called ‘face’, and now he was losing it rapidly.

  Lanny mentioned the paintings he had bought and found that his old friend knew the owner and had visited the house. When Lanny mentioned that he had a similar commission to carry out in Frankfurt the other said, ‘You may do me a favour there if you will’. He explained, ‘There is a young Luftwaffe officer, son of an old friend of mine, a classmate from my cadet days. The family belongs to the old nobility—this officer is a great-grandson of Prince Bismarck. He made a flying record in the war, shooting down thirty-five Russian fliers, and then he himself was shot down over Stalingrad and captured. You know how the Communists try to make converts of everybody, and I’m told they succeeded with many of our officers. Now this young fellow is in jail in Frankfurt. It appears that the American Army thinks he is a Soviet spy. It doesn’t seem likely, but I can’t say because I haven’t seen him for seven years. I imagine that a large percentage of those who come in from East Germany have been told to spy, whether they do it or not. Anyhow, I can’t imagine that Heinrich would be working very hard at it, his family connections being what they are’.

  ‘It may have been just an excuse to get loose’, Lanny suggested.

  ‘Quite so; but again it may be that a young idealist has been won over to the Soviet point of view. You know how it is, they say they are for peace and democracy, and it is possible to believe their words until you see their actions. It occurs to me that you might visit him and explain the American point of view. One of the last things Kurt said to me was, “Lanny is a powerful persuader”’.

  ‘I am glad to hear that’, Lanny said. ‘I laid myself out to persuade him, because I esteemed him’.

  ‘I think you will like Heinrich’, said the other. ‘Heinrich Graf Einsiedel is his name. When I knew him he was a charming and genial lad. He was taken into the Luftwaffe at the age of eighteen, and he was only twenty-one when he was shot down, so you can see that he probably doesn’t know very much about world affairs. The Russians have had him ever since Stalingrad which means six years. You Americans have had him only three or four months, and I doubt if you are anywhere near as active propagandists as the Reds’.

  ‘Alas, no’! agreed Lanny.

  IV

  The art expert had himself flown to Frankfurt-am-Main, a city of West Germany which had been his headquarters at the war’s end, when he was helping to capture German atomic secrets; it had now become the headquarters of A.M.G. In the home of a well-to-do wine merchant, a villa on the Bockenheimer Landstrasse in the hills behind the city, he found a couple of Manets, which he knew well because they had been in Göring’s hunting lodge at Karinhall. Now they had been restored to their former owner, and Lanny bought them at a reasonable price and sent off a cablegram announcing them.

  Then he inquired concerning the Luftwaffe officer, Count Einsiedel, and learned that he was in the investigation prison in Frankfurt. Lanny then telephoned to Berlin, asking Monck to fix it up so that he could have a confidential interview with this great-grandson of Prinz von Bismarck. Monck said okay. No doubt he reminded the authorities that Lanny had been responsible for the finding of the Nazi gold, and that made him a V.I.P. Anyhow, they didn’t take him to the cell, but seated him in a comfortable room and brought the young Graf to him and left them alone. Of course there might have been a dictaphone but Lanny wouldn’t have minded; he had nothing to conceal—quite
otherwise.

  Heinrich Graf Einsiedel proved to be a tallish, slender young man, pale from his confinement. He was, as the general had said, a cheerful, even a gay person, in spite of his troubles. He said he wasn’t angry with the Americans; he was inclined to take the whole affair as a joke. They had been decent to him, except that they had kept him two or three months in solitary confinement without an explanation; he was sure they didn’t have any evidence against him and were just holding him while they tried to get some. He said he had declared a hunger strike by way of protest, but nobody had paid any attention to that, so after eighteen days he had decided to give up. He said he had come into West Germany to see his mother and some old friends; he had been visiting his mother in Wiesbaden when a couple of Army agents had picked him up. They said there was something wrong with his pass, but it was a perfectly good pass, signed by the proper authority in the American sector of Berlin.

  ‘They say you are a spy’, remarked Lanny. ‘I have been one myself, so I know all about it. Tell me’.

  Heinrich grinned. ‘You know how it is, Herr Budd. Any time anybody plans to come from the Russian zone into the Western zones he is interviewed by the M.V.D. for his pass and ordered—not invited but ordered—to send in information or to bring it. I was ordered and I said to myself with a smile, “I will write you a few inconsequentialities”—einige Belangslosigkeiten. It is silly so far as I am concerned, because I don’t know anything that they don’t know already. I am an editor—perhaps you don’t know, I am one of the editors of the Tägliche Rundschau, the newspaper in East Berlin’.

  ‘General Meissner didn’t tell me that’, Lanny said. ‘Perhaps he didn’t know it’.