III
‘How did you know about me?’ asked Lanny, and the answer was, ‘I had heard Herr Fröhlich over the radio, and then I was told about your kidnapping. When I had decided to cross over, one of your friends came to me and said, “They’ve got this man in Prenzlauerberg and undoubtedly they are putting him on the Conveyor. Would you be willing to take him out with you?” I said, “How can I do it?” and the friend said, “We will provide you with the order for his release, signed by Marshal Sokolovsky. It will not be a genuine signature, of course, but it will be so good that the people at the prison will not be able to tell the difference. So I said, “All right, I will try it”, and I took the chance. I admit that I was scared; but I am a colonel of the Army and they could not refuse me. They might have telephoned to headquarters and checked, but apparently they didn’t, or they were too slow about it. So here we are’.
‘We have no words to thank you’, said Laurel fervently. ‘We will do whatever we can to repay you’.
‘What I want’, was the reply, ‘is to go to England. I have friends there and have promised to join them. It is a question of getting admission’.
‘I think that should be easy’, Lanny told him. ‘I have a close friend who is a Member of Parliament. You will have to go to the British authorities and make application. I will send copies of the documents to my friend by airmail, and he will get busy on the case’.
‘I shall call you our deus ex machina’, said Laurel, and she saw the Russian looked puzzled. He knew a lot about the structure of airplane wings and jet pipes, but not so much about Greek classical drama. She explained that when those ancient playwrights had got their hero into such a mess that they could not think up a way to get him out, they brought a machine on to the stage and from it there stepped a god who set everything straight. Tokaev was amused at himself in the role of a Greek god; but he was a handsome fellow and could have served well enough.
‘You were born some twenty-four hundred years too late, said Laurel, and he replied, ‘Twenty-four hundred years ago I would have been a wild horseman riding the steppes’. The learned Lanny added, ‘A Scythian’.
IV
Alone with her husband, Laurel told about her visit to Marshal Sokolovsky. She had laid siege to General Clay, and he had personally phoned the marshal and had sent an aide to accompany her. To obtain the pass they had had to go personally to the Kommandatura in East Berlin, and a Soviet soldier had accompanied them to the H.Q. in Karlshorst, that huge group of buildings Lanny knew so well.
A woman’s eyes had noted everything, even when she was torn with anguish. First there was a reception room, where an adjutant checked the pass. Then came a writing room, with beautiful old furniture out of some castle. Then came the marshal’s room, enormous, and at the end of it sat the commander before a table almost as big as a billiard table and covered with the same green baize cloth; he sat in a high-backed Queen Anne chair upholstered in red damask; there were two similar chairs on each side of the table. The great man did not rise but invited the guests to be seated.
He asked the lady to state her case, and she did so, doing her best to keep from sobbing. Then he told her, politely but coldly, that he knew nothing about the kidnapping and did not believe that it had taken place. Such rumours were continually being spread, and they were baseless, mere propaganda. He had caused special inquiry to be made in this case and was quite sure that no one in Soviet Germany would dare to conceal from him the holding of such a prisoner. He said it several times in answer to her protests and her statements about what witnesses had telephoned. ‘We pay no attention to anonymous reports from malicious persons’.
All the time he was talking there stared down at the visitors from the wall a life-size portrait of a broad-shouldered man with a grim face and heavy dark moustache. He wore a military uniform with a coat somewhat too large for him, and his right hand was thrust in between the buttons at his breast, after the style of Napoleon Bonaparte. There were portraits of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, all bearded, but the vozhd was the biggest and grimmest. He looked down upon his subordinate, admonishing him not to deviate by a single millimetre from the party line.
‘Uncle Joe’, the Americans called him in their jovial way; but Laurel saw him otherwise. She found herself brooding over him, and presently she brought her husband a poem—and this time she said it might go into paper!
Beyond the Iron Curtain
Lonely eagle, on a peak,
Safe from any rival’s hate,
None to argue when you speak,
Loveless master of ill fate:
Are you happy all the day
On your icy, wind-swept throne?
Lonely, lonely bird of prey—
Gangster, with a heart of stone!
V
Lanny’s strength came back, and he was taken to R.I.A.S. to tell the story of his experience. He rode in a car sent by the studio, and on the front seat beside the driver sat an armed guard, paid by Laurel. She herself had the Budd automatic in her handbag, the one which Lanny had had in his suitcase and should have been wearing at the time of his kidnapping. For one woman the cold war had turned hot, and she was firmly determined that the Reds were not going to get her husband again, not unless they came with their whole army. She had but one thought, to get him out of Berlin and out of Germany as quickly as possible.
Lanny told his story, and it was effective, they assured him. They made a recording of it and repeated it, as they had done with the Kasenkina drama. A copy would be turned over to the Voice of America and it would go all over the world. Everywhere people would be helped to realise that the Reds had become criminals, with a criminal philosophy.
Surely now Lanny’s duty was done, argued the wife. There was the Peace Programme, there were the children at home, and there were all his relatives and friends waiting for him. Let him go to New York and tell the story, and then return to Edgemere and be quiet for a while. She was going to have an armed guard even there, for enemies of the Soviets had been kidnapped and murdered in America.
But Lanny couldn’t bear to tear himself away from Berlin just then; there was too much excitement. The cold war seemed about to turn hot, and no one could be sure what was going to happen in the next hour. In Moscow, Stalin had received American representatives and was carrying on negotiations for ending of the blockade; in the meantime his Red hoodlums, the so-called ‘action squads’, were raiding the City Hall in Berlin and interfering with the newly elected City Council. The City Hall was in the East sector, and these action squads were brought in Soviet Army trucks. Representatives of R.I.A.S. were there, reporting the scene, and its announcers were assaulted, the microphone was torn from their hands, and the cable was cut. American newspapermen who tried to defend the announcers were beaten, and a man and a woman reporter were forcibly detained in the building by the Soviet Military Police. The offices of American Military Government in the City Hall were raided by these police, and government documents were taken away. Western policemen endeavouring to protect the councilmen had been jailed by the Soviet Militray Police.
Lanny had got himself a small radio set, and he would lie on the bed in his hotel room and listen to these events. Then he would call a taxi, and Laurel would go with him to R.I.A.S., to consult with the people there and give what help he could. Lanny Budd had become a symbol of these events in the eyes of all the Germans, and what he said to them about it would be heeded. He pointed out what long experience had proved, that any concession made to the Soviets was invariably taken as a sign of weakness and was followed by fresh demands, fresh aggressions. The Western powers must stand firm in this crisis, and the people of Berlin must stand with them. ‘Your legislators need a vote of confidence from you’, said Lanny, ‘and we Allies need it also’.
How was that vote to be cast? The Social-Democratic party, which had polled almost half of the votes in the recent city election, was the proper group to take the leadership in this struggle. The chairman of that party
appeared on R.I.A.S. and called for an assemblage of all Berliners in front of the Reichstag building, to declare their support of the free world and their opposition to Communist violence. The City Council had been driven into the Western sectors and would have to meet there in future; let the whole population of Berlin assemble in front of the Reichstag and declare their support of their duly elected representatives.
R.I.A.S. took up this idea. ‘Berlin ruft die Welt!’ was the cry. ‘Berlin calls the world’.
‘Men and women of Berlin, nothing and nobody can prevent us from calling the world tomorrow afternoon at five o’clock at the Square of the Republic before the Reichstag! Think of Prague, think of Belgrade, think of the Eastern zone! We can still defend ourselves, still speak our minds freely. The eyes of the world are upon us! The oppressed of the world expect all from our stand. Mayor Reuter and other men and women are our speakers. Freedom is the reward, the peace of the world is at stake! Berliners from East and West, from Schöneberg, Wedding, Weissensee, Karlshorst, Charlottenburg, from all over Berlin—to the Reichstag! Tomorrow at five p.m.! Berlin calls the world! Against the blockade, against the Markgraf police, against Communist terror! The decision lies in your hands! Berlin calls the world!’
There was no way to prevent that meeting, for the people were not going to march, they were just going to come. They would come from the Western sectors, and from the Soviet sector as well. They would come by all the streets surrounding that immense square. They would come through the Tiergarten, the great ruined park which had been turned into vegetable plots. They would come by tram and by the underground, pouring out in streams. R.I.A.S. told them how to come, not getting off at the nearest station, which was in the Soviet sector, but at a station safely in the West.
A curious circumstance—the Western sectors which were under blockade were lacking in coal and had electricity only four hours a day; West Berlin could listen to R.I.A.S. only during those hours, but the Soviet sector, which got its coal from Central Germany, could listen all day and night! To make up for that lack in the West, Army jeeps and police cars travelled the streets day and night, stopping at the important intersections and making announcements through loudspeakers. These cars bore the letters R.I.A.S. written large, and everywhere they stopped there were demonstrations. They would telephone back reports to the radio station, and these reports would form material for new broadcasts.
It must have been a wonderful day and night for the Germans in the East sector, which had no free newspapers and no free political meetings. Lanny became so excited over this opportunity that he forgot his lack of sleep; he knew Berlin as well as any German, and he could point out to them that Colonel Markgraf, who commanded the Red police in East Berlin, was the same officer who had been decorated by Adolf Hitler for his exploits at Stalingrad. Thus reaction recognised its friends all over the world. Reaction was international, universal—and let freedom and the love of freedom be the same!
VI
It was a day that made history, in a place full of it. There was that tremendous Brandenburg Gate which the Prussian imperialists had built to celebrate their glory. It stood at the boundary between the Soviet and Western sectors. There was a great square and great avenues leading to it, and the burned-out Reichstag which had never been repaired. Fifteen years ago, when the Social Democrats had been on the verge of taking power in an election, Hitler’s thugs had set fire to the building in order to lay the blame upon the Reds and thus have a pretext for seizing power and setting up a dictatorship. Now the place was a symbol of freedom to the Germans, the democratic self-government which they aspired to and meant to win and hold.
Tired as they were from their work and from all the problems of keeping alive under a blockade, they came to the square. They came not marching, just walking; they came until the square was full, and the park beyond it, and all the approaching avenues as far as the eye could see. It was estimated that there were three hundred thousand people at that meeting. Loudspeakers had been scattered all over the place so that everybody could hear what their elected mayor had to say, and the chairman of their party, and the leaders of their trade unions. Until the hour of the meeting these loudspeakers were connected with R.I.A.S., which furnished music, and at two minutes before the hour the vast audience heard these words:
‘Here before the burned-out Reichstag stand the people of Berlin. Here before the burned-out Reichstag, at the Square of the Republic, Berlin demonstrates against Communist violence. The citizens of this city have learned a great deal from the past. This city knows only too well that dictatorship, terror, force, and political chicanery ruined us once. Berlin faces the future with toughened courage and purified hearts. Berlin resolutely rejects Communist dictatorship and terror as a political instrument. Berlin fights for its freedom and its future’.
And when the elected Mayor Reuter stepped to the platform the loudspeakers spread his words: ‘Today no diplomats and generals address this meeting, but the people of Berlin raise their voice … The people of Berlin have spoken; we have done our duty and will continue to do our duty. Peoples of the world, give us your help … not only by the airlift, but by standing firmly for our common ideals, which alone can secure both our future and yours’.
The last speaker was Franz Neumann, chairman of the Social-Democratic party. Said he, ‘Berliners, do not forget that you not only defend your liberty, you also defend the freedom of those who are longing for it in the Soviet sector and the Soviet zone. We are also fighting for them … We greet the Soviet zone, we greet Germany, we greet all the peoples who love freedom with our clarion call, Freiheit! Freiheit! Freiheit!’
That had been the old Socialist battle cry in Germany. It hadn’t been heard from such a crowd in many decades. Now it rang through the square, and the meeting was closed by singing an Austrian workers’ song, ‘Brothers to the sun, to freedom’. The words were German, but the melody was Russian, and old. It was a heart-stirring revolutionary hymn, which for half a century had summoned the Russian people to the fight against tyranny. It had been written by a rebel poet in his prison cell in St. Petersburg, during a student uprising almost a hundred years ago. It had been adopted by the Peoples’ Will Party, and its members had defiantly chanted:
We may be tortured by fire,
Banished, in mines we may slave,
We may be killed without mercy,
Always remember, Be brave!
Russian rebels had sung this song during the Revolution of 1905. It had been sung by all Russians in 1917 when the Tsar was overthrown, and it had been sung in the early days of Soviet rule; but now it was heard no more—it was too revolutionary! But all Russians knew the melody, and its words were being circulated by the anti-Stalinists among the Soviet troops in Germany. Here at this enormous mass meeting sat Russian M.V.D. men and political observers in their staff cars, watching the meeting through their binoculars; inside the British sector were Soviet staff cars, lining the middle lane of the Charlottenburger Chaussee, which led to the Brandenburg Gate and to Soviet Berlin. They had come to observe whatever might occur and perhaps to pick out spies and traitors in the crowd. They too knew that melody; what they made of it they kept to themselves.
VII
Lanny carried out his promise to Colonel Tokaev. He had already telephoned to Alfy in London, and now he went with the Russian officer to consult the authorities in the British sector. There were affidavits to be made out and signed, and in due course Tokaev would be granted the status of a political refugee in free England. He would be one more friend whom Lanny would look forward to visiting on his trips.
So then it was time to depart. They said good-bye to the R.I.A.S. staff and to Lasky and his staff at Der Monat. Monck came to the hotel; he had been at Laurel’s side all through her ordeal, and she could not find words to thank him. She said she was going to mail him a gold watch from London. When she suggested having his name inscribed in it he said he might be using one or more of his aliases. No names, please!
They were to be flown directly to London. Laurel talked over the telephone with the Air Force officer who booked the flight. ‘You must give him a good pilot’, she said, and he answered that all their pilots were good. He knew what was in her mind. If that plane had to come down while crossing the Russian zone Lanny Budd would be in the enemy’s hands again! Laurel said, ‘Don’t tell anyone you are booking us’. The place was full of spies, and from time to time the Red fighter planes were ‘buzzing’ the planes of the airlift and threatening them. Laurel wouldn’t draw a free breath until they had passed the boundary of the Russian zone.
She was packing their belongings. She wouldn’t let Lanny do anything but lie down; she was handling him as if he were made of wet tissue paper. The phone rang and she answered; then she said, ‘Mr Budd cannot come to the phone. Who is it?’ She turned to Lanny. ‘He says his name—it sounds crazy—is Untersuchungsgefängnis’.
Lanny started up from the bed like any well man and stepped to the phone. ‘Hallo, alter Bursche! he exclaimed.
A laughing voice responded in English, ‘One good turn deserves another. I want you to know that I paid my debt’.
‘You have paid it a thousand times’, said Lanny. ‘Where are you?’
‘I am in your sector, but I cannot come to the hotel. I have not yet come across, but I am planning to come soon’.
‘The sooner the better’, said Lanny.
‘There are a few friends to be helped yet, then I will come. I just wanted to let you know that we have a report on your examination, and you did very well. Don’t talk about this call. Glück auf den Weg!’ And he hung up.
The Return of Lanny Budd Page 66
