The title is from a Tennyson verse, "Sunset, and evening star, and one clear call for me."
One Clear Call, ninth in the World's End series, begins exactly where the previous volume, Presidential Mission, left the reader, more or less; that is, Lanny and family are in West Coast, Florida, on a much earned holiday. This one begins beautifully - Lanny and Laurel are in a small boat early in the morning, watching the ocean sparkling blue, with occasional colourful fish flying and dropping back into the water.
"Along the shore, lined with palm trees and small houses of white, blue, and coral pink, flew a procession of pelicans, gray birds which moved their wings with slow dignity and permitted nothing to disturb their course."
A call came for Lanny, and they packed up and left to drive back.
"As they drove they listened to the radio, familiar voices of men whom they had never seen, telling them the events of the hour and explaining their import. The Japanese were being cleaned out of the Aleutians, and the Americans were holding on desperately at Guadalcanal in the Solomons; the Allies were bombing the island of Pantelleria in the Mediterranean, also various cities in the Ruhr; the Russians and Germans were sparring like two boxers, all along a two-thousand-mile line, and it was a problem which of them would begin the expected major onslaught. The airwaves echoed with Russian clamor for a second front and their refusal to accept the Mediterranean attack as an equivalent."
They drove into Washington D.C. in time to bathe and dine before Lanny went off for his appointment with the President. FDR said he needed a trusted man in Italy, because the one who'd been sent had passed on due to heart failure. Lanny spoke enough Italian to get along, and wasn't required to pose as a native. This was June 1943, just before U.S. forces were to go into Sicily, and Lanny opined that Italians were unlikely to resist.
"“What we want is to convince the Italians on the mainland that they’ve been backing the wrong horse. We’ve got the big airfields in Tunisia in working order, and we’re turning on the heat. We have grave questions to consider—for example, shall we bomb Rome? We’ll take pains to avoid hitting the Vatican and the churches; but the immense marshaling yards of the railroads are there, serving the whole peninsula to the south. Putting the railroads out of order is our most important single job.”
"“That ought to be easy,” Lanny ventured, “because they have so many tunnels.”
"“Tunnels have proved to be difficult targets for airmen; but saboteurs can get them, and we have people working on that. What I want is to have someone make contacts with the governing class and explain what unconditional surrender will mean to them. We don’t want to humiliate them, we don’t come as conquerors, but as liberators of the Italian people.”
"“But it won’t be so easy in Italy, for there the government people have the Germans on their necks. They’ll be scared as the devil; and they’re not the most dependable people in the world.”"
Lanny told the president about his being escorted out with Marie De Bruyne when fascists had kidnapped and murdered Matteotti, and Lanny tried communicating about it.
"The arrangement was that Lanny was to report to “Wild Bill” Donovan in the morning, and the Italian section of OSS would give him a thorough briefing. How he was to get into Il Duce’s realm, where he was to go and whom he was to meet, all that would be talked out, and then Lanny would report to the Boss for final instructions. His reports would have to come through OSS channels, for, alas, the United States had no ambassador and no consuls anywhere in Italy."
The usual ways of OSS wouldn't do, and Lanny met FDR again to explain he couldn't go with false papers to meet people of aristocracy and others in command in Italy, since there were Germans everywhere and hundreds of people knew him, so if caught he'd be known as a spy. On the other hand he had the perfect cover, having been given errand personally by Hitler recently to bring him information, and he could say he was in Italy on trail of someone from U.S..
"“Can you get him to believe that?”
"“I can make it impossible for him not to believe it, because the OSS can give me facts about loyal Italians here. That won’t do them any harm because Hitler can’t get at them, and his Intelligence doubtless knows about them anyhow. Meantime I have an excuse to meet the Roman governing class and play my double game with them.”
"“You’ll have to give Hitler some results to justify such an effort, won’t you?”
"“I won’t tell him anything that will do him any good, or our friends in Italy any harm. If I tell him that some of his Italian supporters are double-crossing him, how is he going to be sure? In his heart he doesn’t trust any Italian that breathes, and I might find a way to ball up his affairs for quite a time.”
"“All right, Lanny. Have it your way. What do you want from us?”
"“Just to be set ashore from a PT-boat on some beach near Ostia. They’d better carry one of those little kayaks, because I’d like to be dry-shod—there’s a lot in first appearances. I present myself to a German patrol and ask to be taken to Marshal Kesselring—he was a guest at Berchtesgaden the last time I was there. He may remember me, for there were a lot of both Nazis and Junkers who didn’t approve of the Führer’s having an American in his home at that critical time. When I meet him I’ll ask him to call Berlin 116191, and he won’t fail to be impressed by my having the Führer’s private telephone number. I’ll give Hitler my spiel, with the General listening, and the Führer will order me turned loose to do his work.”
"“That may be all right with the Germans, but what about the Italian police?”
"“Kesselring will give me a pass that will be good throughout the country. The Nazis are running it more completely every day.”
"“But that will mean you are stamped as a German agent, and you will meet only the wrong sort of people.”
"“That will serve the purpose pretty nearly as well. It’s like the negative of a photograph—it shows the same details, only everything is in reverse. The pro-German Italians will know who the pro-Americans are and will talk about them. General Donovan will give me the address of our ‘post office’ in Rome, so that I can send messages to you, and if there should be an important reason for my meeting any of our friends in Italy I can make myself known to the ‘post office’ and ask them to check on me with Donovan.”
"“All that’s going to be pretty risky business, Lanny.”
"“I’ll promise to use every precaution. I’ll be guided by circumstances and not take any steps that won’t pay off. When I’ve done all I can, I’ll see what I run into at the Führer’s headquarters.”"
FDR said Jim Stotzlmann was in town, and Lanny called him. They met over breakfast.
"“The Boss told me you’ve been having adventures.” After they had given their orders and the waiter had departed Lanny said, “I’m having an adventure now, and it mustn’t be mentioned. I want to find out something about the Italians in New York—those who are with us and those who are against us.”
"Jim’s face lighted up. “Good! I’ll introduce you to a dozen.”
"“No,” Lanny said, “I don’t want to meet them through you. It has to be by accident.” One secret agent didn’t have to say more to another.
"The heir of the Stotzlmanns thought for a moment, then said, “I’ll tell you. Come to Mrs. McLean’s shindig tonight. Everybody comes, and there’ll surely be one or two sons of sunny Italy among them.”
"“Can you get me an invitation?”
"“You won’t need it. She lets her close friends bring their friends."
"Lanny hesitated, then added, “We’ve just motored up from Florida. My wife is with me.”
"“Bring her along of course.”
"Lanny still hesitated. “My wife is a bit on the formal side. I don’t think she has ever been to an affair where she wasn’t invited.”
"“All right, I’ll get Evalyn to send her a note.”
"So, later on, Lanny went upstairs and told his wife what was coming. Her first remark was, “I have no clothes!”
"Lanny said, “Go and get yourself an outfit this morning. This is a show you mustn’t miss.”
"“I’m nobody to those people, Lanny.”
"“Yes, but they’re somebodies to you. Someday you’ll be writing a novel about Washington, and Evalyn Walsh McLean is made to order for you. Get yourself the right things so that you can look like one of them and feel at home.”
"“That might cost a thousand dollars, Lanny.”
The figure did not startle the son of Beauty Budd. “It’ll come back to you in royalties,” he declared. “Cast your bread upon the waters!”"
Laurel went shopping after Lanny had established his credit and cashed a cheque, while Lanny went to OSS to arrange his being flown to Tunis and dropped at a convenient beach. He was given a stack of documents to study, no notes.
"He found that they had done a thorough job on the aloof Roman aristocracy, also the military, the big industrialists, the political personalities. They had done it for every city, town, and village which could by any chance be involved in the war, pro or anti. Hundreds of thousands of Americans had hunted through their scrapbooks and their attics for photographs and letters, guidebooks, railroad timetables, hotel circulars—everything that might by chance yield a scrap of information useful to a secret agent or to the Armed Forces. Thousands of people had searched in the libraries, in museums, in the records of business concerns, in consular reports. Millions of details had been gathered and classified, and a P.A. might have sat in that little cubicle for a month or two and compiled material about the places he was going to visit and the people he would meet. But by that time it would be too late. His Boss had allowed him only two or three days in Washington and New York, in order to collect a few yarns to tell to the Führer of the Germans, who was mad north-northwest.
"When the P.A. came back, toward seven o’clock, he found his wife transformed. She was wearing a lovely pale blue evening gown, of that kind of simplicity which costs like smoke. She had followed his instructions and gone to a “good” place; she was proud of herself because she had found a dress that became her and had cost only three hundred dollars. Fortunately you didn’t wear a hat to an evening party, and all she had had to buy were shoes and gloves to match, and, of course, stockings, and a little handbag that had cost fifty dollars, and a handkerchief for thirty-five. She would not attempt to compete with Mrs. McLean’s Hope diamond, said to be worth several millions; Laurel would appear without jewels.
"When the pair came down to the lobby, Jim took one glance at the lady, whom he had never met before; he saw that she was “right,” and Lanny saw that he saw it. That is the way matters go in the smart world; you are “right,” and your woman is “right,” and if you’re not you don’t go but once."
They drove to the party.
"You couldn’t avoid noticing the great lady’s jewelry, nor were you supposed to. Two pear-shaped diamonds hung from her ears, and a great ruby surrounded by diamonds hung by a gold chain across her forehead. Chains of diamonds dangled all over her, and miscellaneous jewels gleamed from her fingers. The pièce de résistance was the famed Hope diamond said to be the largest in the world. It hung from a chain over her bosom and was set off by diamond sunbursts, one pinned to her dress on each side. If you expressed interest in the Hope—and of course that was why it was there—you would be invited to lift it by the chain and feel its weight; but you had to promise not to touch it, because there was an old tradition that ill luck befell anyone who so presumed."
Jim went looking for Italians since Lanny wanted to meet them, although it wasn't easy since ladies were eager to be with Jim, he was unattached post his fourth divorce and very eligible, and kind to them, but he was lucky and met the one.
"Friendship House was the council hall of all the New-Deal haters in the national capital. Here Lanny shook hands with the all-powerful Mr. Harrison Dengue, who not long ago had been working on a plan to have President Roosevelt kidnaped from his Hyde Park home and kept under the orders of persons who wanted to stop lend-lease to Russia. Here he shook hands with Congressman Ham Fish, who had allowed the Nazi agents in this country to use his congressional frank to mail out literature written by a Nazi agent. Here he met multi-millionaire Jimmie Cromwell, and publisher Cissie Patterson, and Igor Cassini, her venomous little “society” columnist.
"But Lanny was looking especially for Italians; and by extraordinary good fortune, when he and his wife entered one of the four big dining-rooms, he discovered himself seated next to the person of all persons whom he would have chosen. What had happened was that Jim had got the ear of the hostess and mentioned that his friend, the son of Budd-Erling, was interested in meeting this product of the melting pot; and Evalyn had beckoned to her steward, or whoever it was that stood near awaiting her orders. The place cards were shifted, and thus Signor Generoso Pope found himself in conversation with an agreeable gentleman who had been raised almost at the front door of Signor Pope’s native land, who had traveled all through it by motorcar, knew its cities, its art treasures and cathedrals, and had met pretty nearly every distinguished person the Signor could name."
Lanny set out to make himself agreeable.
"A warm friendship was struck up; and when the Signor learned that Mr. Budd was proceeding to New York next day, he asked the pleasure of taking him in his car. Lanny said he was delighted, and didn’t mention anything about having a wife and baby and a car of his own. Laurel would drive that car to New York, and Lanny would ride with the publisher; he would deplore the war, and also the New Deal and its extravagances, and lead this exuberant son of the south to pour out his troubled soul. When the ride was over, Lanny would know pretty nearly everything he wanted to know about the near-Fascists and the crypto-Fascists of the Italian colony of New York; and about the nine Italian generals who had been captured in North Africa and were now interned in Tennessee, from where they were diligently working for a separate peace. All this for the price of one evening ensemble, which his wife would carefully preserve for other occasions when it might be necessary to help her husband meet the “right” sort of people."
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Laurel saw that Lanny was looking at Italian pamphlets spread on table, and she knew what it meant. Lanny came across an address by Otto Kahn given by him twenty years ago at Wesleyan University advising people to trust Mussolini, and he told Laurel about it. They decided to try a seance, which Laurel now only did in Lanny's presence alone, since his work was confidential and spirits might say something. Otto Kahn came, and Lanny talked with him.
"“By the way, Otto, I just happened to come upon a copy of an address which you delivered at Wesleyan University almost twenty years ago.” ... “I believe the record shows that before he marched on Rome—in a sleeping car—Mussolini got the assurance of the American Ambassador, Richard Washburn Child, that he would get a loan of two hundred million dollars from J. P. Morgan and Company.”"
Otto Kahn was urbane as ever, remarking about one making mistakes.
"“You ought to be ashamed of yourself! My father bought some of those bonds.”
"“Well, Lanny,” was the reply, “they will always be good for wallpaper. I used to have a friend who had covered one wall of his rumpus room with souvenirs of his wrong guesses. It turned out that he had to spoil the job by peeling one of the documents off the wall. It was mining stock, and it paid the cost of the whole house. Tell your father to hold on to his bonds, because Fascism may come back—someday we may find that we need it in our own business.”"
Lanny got serious and told Otto that American forces were about to go over to Italy, and Otto could help by finding someone who knew Italy.
"“There is a man here who was young when he died; he is dark, smooth-shaven, an intellectual; handsome fellow. He says you tried to help him.”
"“What did I do?”
"“He was murdered, and you tried to tell the world about it. He is very grateful.”
"“That must be Matteotti. Can he speak directly to me?”
"“He says he will try, but his English is not good.” Lanny replied in Italian, “My Italian is not good either, but I understand it. You must know that a martyr does not die in vain. The name of Giacomo Matteotti is known not merely in Italy, but also to liberal-minded people throughout the world. They have learned that the cowardly Mussolini ordered your murder because he dared not face the exposure of his regime that you were making in the Chamber of Deputies. The world understands that you spoke for democratic Socialism, the hope of all enlightened elements in Western Europe now.”
"A grave man’s voice replied through the lips of the entranced woman. “The proof of Mussolini’s guilt exists. It is in a memorial of Filippo Filipelli, who was editor of the Fascist newspaper, Corriere Italiano, and the man who provided the assassin Dumini with the car in which I was carried away. That memorial has been suppressed for nineteen years. You should try to get a copy of it. My son Matteo will help you.”
"“I cannot take the chance of meeting members of the underground at present. What I need is the names of those in power who are ready to break with the tyrant.”
"“Galeazzo Ciano is a scoundrel, but he sees that his father-in-law’s days are numbered, and he will seek to save his own skin. One of the men who carried Mussolini’s orders to Dumini is Giovanni Contarelli, and he is one you should meet. He was then Parliamentary Secretary of the Fascist party and served his master well, but now he knows that his idol is about to tumble.”
"“Are there others?”
"The voice replied, “Cesare Rossi, head of the Press Bureau, and Aldo Finzi, Undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior, also prepared memorials concerning Mussolini’s guilt. It is necessary to be careful in dealing with these men. They are like weathercocks which turn quickly, according to the shifting of the wind.”"
Laurel saw that Lanny was looking at Italian pamphlets spread on table, and she knew what it meant. Lanny came across an address by Otto Kahn given by him twenty years ago at Wesleyan University advising people to trust Mussolini, and he told Laurel about it. They decided to try a seance, which Laurel now only did in Lanny's presence alone, since his work was confidential and spirits might say something. Otto Kahn came, and Lanny talked with him.
"“By the way, Otto, I just happened to come upon a copy of an address which you delivered at Wesleyan University almost twenty years ago.” ... “I believe the record shows that before he marched on Rome—in a sleeping car—Mussolini got the assurance of the American Ambassador, Richard Washburn Child, that he would get a loan of two hundred million dollars from J. P. Morgan and Company.”"
Otto Kahn was urbane as ever, remarking about one making mistakes.
"“You ought to be ashamed of yourself! My father bought some of those bonds.”
"“Well, Lanny,” was the reply, “they will always be good for wallpaper. I used to have a friend who had covered one wall of his rumpus room with souvenirs of his wrong guesses. It turned out that he had to spoil the job by peeling one of the documents off the wall. It was mining stock, and it paid the cost of the whole house. Tell your father to hold on to his bonds, because Fascism may come back—someday we may find that we need it in our own business.”"
Lanny got serious and told Otto that American forces were about to go over to Italy, and Otto could help by finding someone who knew Italy.
"“There is a man here who was young when he died; he is dark, smooth-shaven, an intellectual; handsome fellow. He says you tried to help him.”
"“What did I do?”
"“He was murdered, and you tried to tell the world about it. He is very grateful.”
"“That must be Matteotti. Can he speak directly to me?”
"“He says he will try, but his English is not good.” Lanny replied in Italian, “My Italian is not good either, but I understand it. You must know that a martyr does not die in vain. The name of Giacomo Matteotti is known not merely in Italy, but also to liberal-minded people throughout the world. They have learned that the cowardly Mussolini ordered your murder because he dared not face the exposure of his regime that you were making in the Chamber of Deputies. The world understands that you spoke for democratic Socialism, the hope of all enlightened elements in Western Europe now.”
"A grave man’s voice replied through the lips of the entranced woman. “The proof of Mussolini’s guilt exists. It is in a memorial of Filippo Filipelli, who was editor of the Fascist newspaper, Corriere Italiano, and the man who provided the assassin Dumini with the car in which I was carried away. That memorial has been suppressed for nineteen years. You should try to get a copy of it. My son Matteo will help you.”
"“I cannot take the chance of meeting members of the underground at present. What I need is the names of those in power who are ready to break with the tyrant.”
"“Galeazzo Ciano is a scoundrel, but he sees that his father-in-law’s days are numbered, and he will seek to save his own skin. One of the men who carried Mussolini’s orders to Dumini is Giovanni Contarelli, and he is one you should meet. He was then Parliamentary Secretary of the Fascist party and served his master well, but now he knows that his idol is about to tumble.”
"“Are there others?”
"The voice replied, “Cesare Rossi, head of the Press Bureau, and Aldo Finzi, Undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior, also prepared memorials concerning Mussolini’s guilt. It is necessary to be careful in dealing with these men. They are like weathercocks which turn quickly, according to the shifting of the wind.”"
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Lanny was flown via Bermuda and Azores to Marrakech, and they saw a convoy below before Bermuda. He answered his mother's queries about Little Lanny - his hair was still blond, but the blue eyes had turned brown - and about Robbie. Beauty asked if Bienvenu would be safe. Little Marcel Detaze was at home in the hotel and made friends with everybody, and wished uncle Lanny could stay longer. Lanny told Beauty about Vittorio being prisoner of war.
"Italy had been at war for three years and hadn’t been able to beat even the Greeks; the Italians were humiliated, hungry—and helpless.
"The program was to knock out the Mussolini gang and make a deal with the higher Army officers and the big business crowd, who would be ready to come over to our side as soon as we were ashore in force. That was the way to take advantage of the anti-German sentiment in Italy; the way to get the fleet and the air bases and save the lives of American soldiers.
"Lanny hadn’t failed to notice the Prime Minister’s persistent wooing of the Italian monarchy in his speeches; Winnie wanted to make the peninsula into a nice respectable bourgeois kingdom, as much like England as possible, and good for trade."
Lanny was to find a hotel room and call Ferguson to give him the name, and Lanny asked Ferguson to find Denis. He worked on memorising the information about Italy he'd read.
"Dino Grandi had been popular with the Cliveden set when he had been ambassador in London; Federzoni, chairman of the Italian Academy, was rumored to be getting ready to desert II Duce’s sinking ship; the same for the Count of Turin, cousin to the King; Marshal Cavallero had been involved in a shipbuilding scandal during the war and had been ousted by Mussolini; ex-Premier Orlando—good God, they were even thinking of resurrecting that aged stout souvenir of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919!"
Hotel call to say he had a visitor, and he went down to find Denis.
"The Vichyites had set up a mock government somewhere near the German border; their Army men might now be on the Russian front, or they might have been sent into Sicily. Poor Denis was obsessed by the dreadful idea that he might meet his brother on the field of battle. Such things had happened in all civil wars, in France as in America, and the elder imagined himself turning a dead body over and seeing the face which had been dear to him from infancy up to the time of la patrie’s tragic collapse."
"“You have seen real fighting, I learned from the radio.”
"“All the way from Kasserine to Cap Bon. We have stood up to the enemy, with weapons as good as his own, or better, and we have driven him back, foot by foot. We had to storm one hill after another, for a hundred miles—positions the enemy had been preparing for half a year.”"
Lanny asked what his troops would feel about going into Sicily.
"“They are dancing with impatience, Lanny. They will consider that they are on their way home. Do you suppose there is any chance of our landing on the Riviera?”
"“Nobody tells me things like that, cher ami. But there seems a good chance of your marching to Rome this year. Do you know anybody there?”
"“I have a cousin in Rome, the Marchesa di Caporini. She visited Paris not long before the war.”
"“I heard your mother speak of her, but that was before the Marchesa’s marriage. What sort of person is she?”
"“A very elegant lady, but not very happy, I believe. The Roman aristocracy must be in a bad way by now; as you Americans say, they have got a bull by the tail.”
"“Your cousin’s family is committed to the regime?”
"“She was when we saw her. She did not make a success with us because she thought Italy ought to have Nice and Savoy. We couldn’t see that such an issue was worth fighting about, but we considered it decidedly bad taste. It is painful to realize what fools we were in those days, Lanny. We really believed the dictators were generous men, planning to bring in a new regime of order and prosperity.”
"Lanny replied, “You must keep that in mind when you think about Charlot. Both you and your father taught him to believe in the New Order, as you called it. You must not blame him if he cannot change his mind as fast as you.”
"“Believe me, Lanny, I think of that all the time. If only I could get hold of him, to reason with him, to make him see what satanic actions his Nazi friends have performed!”
"The other smiled. “I am afraid he would reply by citing the satanic actions of the Russians. He would not fail to add what the British Fleet did at Oran, or Mers-el-Kébir, as you call it. I do not know what he would cite against us Americans, because he was too polite to mention that subject to me. He would surely not be pleased by our invasion of the soil of Algiers, which is called a part of Metropolitan France and therefore is sacred.”
"In the morning the P.A. strolled past the Hôtel de Ville at the hour specified, and then back again, but there was no sign of the Intelligence lieutenant. Lanny walked and inspected the great naval base of Bizerte, which was now British and American, and which would live in Army history because it rhymed with “dirty Gertie.” (It didn’t, but the GI’s weren’t going to bother their heads or tongues with the correct pronunciation of any foreign name.) These khaki-clad heroes were performing prodigies of labor, restoring docks and cranes, and at the same time unloading mountains of stuff from ships. Six times in the course of a morning stroll Lanny was stopped by MP’s and required to show his papers. These were in order, so he got a respectful “OK, sir.”
"The immense basin and its complexity of docks were full of craft of all sizes and shapes—a wonderful target for bombers, but not one showed up that morning. A new expedition was in preparation, and nobody here could have any doubt where it was going. He had seen a great flotilla arrive to take Algiers, and he knew what prolonged planning and preparation had been required. Now here was another “amphibious operation”—“Husky” it was called. This time the distance was short, one or two hundred miles across the strait to the large triangular island of Sicily. There would be enemy planes in the air, and enemy submarines in the water, and enemy guns large and small in the hills which covered the beaches. How many there would be and what forces to man them were perhaps known to those who planned the landing, but surely not to the plain “Joes” who were in near-by camps, resting before going on board the vessels.
"Only a year and a half had passed since the attack on Pearl Harbor had dragged America into this war. Miracles of production had brought an armada here, equipped with something like a quarter of a million different articles, from tiny ball bearings of the hardest steel, so small that the eye could hardly see them, to huge tanks, self-propelled tank-killing guns, and LST’s especially built to slide up on beaches and let down ramps on which the monsters could roll ashore. Most of the soldiers had but the vaguest idea of why they were in a war, but they had been told there was a job to do and they were doing it. They had seen pictures of a fellow with an ugly mug, standing on a balcony and throwing out his chest like a pouter pigeon. They called him “the Deuce,” and didn’t mean any pun, but thought that was the way his title was pronounced. A generation ago their fathers had come over and put the Kaiser “in the can”; and now there were two more, a Deuce and a Führer. A Seabee from Texas with whom Lanny got into conversation thought that the leader of the Germans was called Führer because he was in a fury all the time.
"At three o’clock there was the lieutenant, saying, “The Navy reports that it would hardly be possible to set you down on the beach at Ostia. It is well fortified and patrolled. There are barbed wire, mines, searchlights, and no doubt radar; any craft approaching would pretty surely be detected and fired on. The nearest unguarded shore is more than ten miles to the south.”
"The P.A. replied, “OK, let them land me there, and I’ll find transportation.” Said the lieutenant, “Here is a map for you to study. You will be flown in a seaplane, and I will be in front of your hotel at twenty hundred.” Lanny replied, “I’ll be ready”; and that was all. He went back to his room and learned about the roads and villages south of Ostia, then strolled and looked at more of the spectacle of Operation Husky. He had supper in another café—never the same, lest anyone should get his features fixed in mind. He returned to his room and studied until five minutes before eight, or twenty hundred as the Armed Forces called it, when he took his bag and went down to the lobby of the hotel, paid his bill, and went for a stroll.
"It was just about dusk, and he didn’t have to return to the front of the hotel, because the officer in the jeep saw him and swung round to the curb and took him in. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans had read mystery stories, spy stories, “thrillers” of one sort or another, and now they were getting a kick out of being called to enact in real life what they had read. There wasn’t any play-acting about it, because this polyglot port had been in the hands of the enemy only a few weeks ago, and any hotel waiter, cab driver, or Arab wrapped in a dirty white bedsheet might be a spy, reporting to a technician with a sending set hidden in a barn, or a fisherman’s hut, or even a load of garden truck being brought into town."
The navy seaplane put him ashore on a beach south of Ostia as promised, and dry as he needed to be.
"It was dark, but from the stars he could guess that it was after midnight; he couldn’t see the ground, but had to stumble along, ascending from the sea over rocks and weed patches. He had not brought a flashlight and would not have dared to use one. The success of his plans depended upon his getting to the German military authorities before he was picked up by the Italians. The Germans were the masters; but if the Italians got him first they might jail him as an ordinary spy, look up his past record, and never let the Germans know anything about him.
"Buildings loomed before him, outlined against the stars; he kept one hand before him as he walked, because barbed wire was to be expected. He kept waving his hand up and down in front of him, so that if he touched electrified wire it would be a quick stroke and might not be fatal. Every few steps he halted and listened for the footsteps of a sentry. It seemed most unlikely that any shore this close to Rome would be unfortified and unguarded; he knew what had been done to the beaches of Britain. But apparently hard-pressed Italy didn’t have any electrical power to spare, and not much wire; and they had an awful lot of rocky coast. Surely there should have been sentries along the shore; but although he held his breath and listened he heard nothing. Perhaps the sentry was taking a nap; anyhow, the invader, stepping softly and crouching low, came to a road, climbed onto it, and stood listening in the shadows of some sort of building."
Lanny asked an eatery manager to take him to a garage, and managed to bargain the garage manager to drop him in a suburb of Rome. He waited on a park bench, planning to walk to the Hotel De Russia, German High Command office. He had to do so without being caught by the Italian police. He managed to do so and went in, and asked for Kesselring, and sent up his card. Presently a prussian officer came down and questioned him.
"“I trust that you will not take it as a discourtesy, Herr Oberst. I am under strict orders to give no information except to Marshal von Kesselring or General von Rintelen. You must surely realize that a man would not enter the Mediterranean headquarters of the Reichswehr unless he had something that would justify his intrusion.”"
Lanny agreed to submit to a search and was led to the General's office. He insisted on speaking in private.
"“Herr Marschall,” began Lanny, when the door was closed, “I had the honor of being a guest at Berchtesgaden just before this war broke out. Many generals came and went, and I believe you were among them.”
“Oh, so you are that Herr Budd!” The great man’s manner changed quickly.
"“I was commissioned by the Führer to carry out certain investigations and to come back and report to him. His instructions were that wherever I succeeded in entering Axis territory, I was to seek out the highest German authority and request him to notify the Führer at Berlin 116191.”
"“I see that you have been entrusted with the Führer’s telephone number.”
"“He did me that honor. So far I have used it only three times.”
"“May I ask when and where you last saw the Führer?”
"“The time was last February, and the place was his field headquarters. I was flown blindfolded. My guess was western Ukraine.”
"“This is very interesting. Are you at liberty to tell me how you got into this city?”
"“Leider, Herr Marschall, my orders are to talk with no one until I have reported to the Führer. It is possible that he may send me back here, and if he does, no doubt he will instruct me to talk with you. Meantime, I have one thing to ask, that you will be so kind as to notify the Führer that his American agent is here.”
"The heavily burdened officer sat gazing fixedly at this unexpected caller: obviously a cultivated man and accustomed to good society—no raw upstart like the Nazis, whom an officer of the old army had a hard time tolerating. Well-dressed in spite of the wrinkles and well-groomed in spite of needing a shave; the visitor spoke an elegant German which must have come in part from books. He seemed at ease in spite of having put his head into a tiger’s mouth. His story must be true, the Marshal reflected, or this would have been the last room in the city of Rome to which he would have sought entrance.
"Casual as he seemed, Lanny too was studying his auditor: a man of sixty or so, smooth-shaven, with round, puffy cheeks, giving the odd effect of a chipmunk. He had bags under his eyes and other signs of the strain under which he was working. His manners were polished; but besides being “Smiling Albert” he had been called “the Crazy Butcher,” because of the way he had sacrificed his men in the desperate fighting in Tunisia. Before that he had been Luftwaffe Chief of Staff and had directed the bombing of Poland, Holland, Belgium, France, and London. Chat with him pleasantly, but don’t forget that your head is in the tiger’s mouth!"
Kesselring asked how he knew Hitler so well, and Lanny told about Kurt and Heinrich and Stubendorf. They talked of Emil and Kesselring said he was well. Kesselring called the number.
"A buzzer sounded by the desk, and the Marshal took up the “far-speaker,” as the Germans call it. “Guten Morgen, mein Führer,” he said, and a familiar voice replied, “Was haben Sie?” Hitler had the habit of talking very loud into a telephone, and Lanny, sitting by the desk, could hear the voice clearly. Adi had never entirely lost his Innviertel accent, and he snorted his gutturals as if to make the German language as Germanic as possible.
"Kesselring spoke slowly and precisely. “There is a gentleman in my office who has just arrived in Rome. He appears to be important, and it may be the part of discretion not to mention his name. He tells me he is a friend of Kurt Meissner and Heinrich Jung and has known you from the early days. He visited your field headquarters last February and you commissioned him to make certain inquiries and to bring you information.”
"Lanny held his breath as the voice from a thousand miles away made the receiver rattle.
"“Ja, ja, ich kenn’ ihn gut. Das mag wichtig sein. Schicken Sie ihn zu mir so schnell trie möglich. Mit Flugpost.”
"“Zu befehl, Mein Führer.”
"“1st das alles?”
"“Das ist alles.”
"“Gut. Sie werden den Feind ins Mittelmeer werfen. Sieg heil.”
"“Smiling Albert” hung up the receiver. For the first time since the visitor had entered his office he was justifying his name. “He says to send you by airmail!” Not realizing that Lanny had been able to hear the distant voice, he repeated the rest of the master’s words. “He says I am to throw the enemy into the Mediterranean; but evidently that doesn’t mean you. He says you are important, and I am to send you to him as quickly as possible. A dispatch plane usually leaves at noon; I’ll see if it cannot be speeded up. Is there anything you would like in the meantime?”
"“Thank you, Herr Marschall. I should like very much to wash and shave, and I could eat a bite if you have it to spare.”"
Incidentally this Marschall Kesselring was involved, or at any rate implicated, in the assassination plot subsequently headed by Colonel Stauffenberg.
............................................................................
"The previous time it had been winter, and the mountains had been covered with snow. Now it was summer, and every tiny plot of earth had its color; the hill slopes were terraced high up and tended by patient, loving hands. When the young men were torn away from their homes, the old men and women and the children carried on, keeping the vines alive and planting wheat or barley or vegetables in every nook and cranny of soil, some no bigger than a fine lady’s handkerchief. Italy was a poor land, and ever since the dawn of history its life had been a war between the peasants on the one hand and the military lords, the landlords, and the tax collectors on the other.
"The fast plane carried one pilot, one passenger, and a couple of sacks of mail, carefully sealed and chained. It rose higher and higher, until there was a crackling in the passenger’s ears. Snow-clad peaks lay ahead, and the plane sped between them, up the Brennero, a pass which Lanny had known from boyhood. He put on the overcoat which had been lent him and looked down on the long blue lakes. In days of peace luxury hotels had been built on these pine-clad shores, and now they had been taken for military headquarters, for barracks and hospitals. A few, Lanny knew, housed officer prisoners, treated according to the polite Geneva conventions, each side afraid that if it broke the rules the other side would break them even more."
The plane stopped for refuelling in Nürnberg, as before, and in Berlin, before heading East, and Lanny was blindfolded as before on the last leg. He was taken in a car to the headquarters hidden in a forest and learned accidentally that it was in Königsberg neighbourhood. He was brought in and searched far more thoroughly before being brought to Hitler.
"The P.A. knew exactly what to expect. He knew that last January Adi had lost more than half a million of his best troops by slaughter or surrender at Stalingrad, and that in May he had lost three or four hundred thousand more in Tunisia. Adi must know that the attack on Sicily could be only a matter of weeks, and that when Sicily had fallen, Italy would be only a few miles away, and Southern Italy had airfields from which his native land of Austria and his adopted land of Bavaria might be bombed day and night. F.D.R. had told his agent that America had turned out more than seven thousand airplanes in the month of May, and would raise that to eight or nine thousand during the summer; Adi might not have those figures, but would know exactly how much damage was being done to his airplane plants, his synthetic oil plants, his coal mines and steel mills and other means of war production. He would learn about them from reports which were specially prepared for him in large type, so that he could read them without revealing the fact that he was nearsighted.
"It had been the P.A.’s intention, before taking this trip, to motor or fly across the United States and pay a call upon half a dozen of the most powerful opponents of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He would visit San Simeon again, and let Mr. Hearst pour out his embittered soul, and see how near a powerful publisher could be brought to a program of action in defense of the “free enterprise” system. He would make the acquaintance of Colonel McCormick, who controlled the thinking of several million Americans in the Middle West, and who during the last presidential election had counted the days left to “save America” from the calamity of a third term. He would call on Mr. Du Pont and Mr. Pew and Mr. Gannett, wealthy gentlemen who put up the campaign funds for the reactionary wing of the Republican party. He would lead them to vent their fury, and then would take it to the Führer and multiply it by ten.
"Circumstances having blocked that program, Lanny had to fall back upon the evening and part of a morning he had spent at Friendship House, meeting a dozen of the most bitter anti-New Dealers and Nazi appeasers in the United States. He had had a talk with Mr. Harrison Dengue, the super-industrialist with a scheme to kidnap the President. Mr. Dengue had introduced him to General Gullion, Provost-Marshal of the United States, who had control of home defenses and of the Army in the New York military district in which the President’s Hyde Park home was situated. Also, Lanny had renewed his acquaintance with Senator Reynolds, who was Mrs. McLean’s son-in-law and published a paper and headed a movement with nearly all the ideas and trappings he had picked up in Naziland. Lanny had listened to the wild talk of Cissie Patterson, Colonel McCormick’s cousin and publisher of a bitterly reactionary newspaper in the national capital. And, of course, there had been the hostess, with the biggest diamond in the world on her bosom and a mule-skinner’s angry language pouring from her lips.
"Adi was living on drugs these days, and he swallowed dose after dose and called for more. Evidently he was watching American affairs closely; he had an extraordinary memory for both friends and foes, and had heard of every person his visitor named. He wanted the details regarding each one’s wealth and position and activities, and even his or her personal appearance. Lanny was careful not to name anyone he couldn’t describe; having reinforced his own knowledge with that of Jim Stotzlmann, a walking encyclopedia of social gossip, he was able to pour out a flood of “really good news.” Never in the fifteen years that he had been dealing with this genius-madman had he enjoyed such a sense of making a hit.
"What was to be done? The Führer had his program, and the only problem was to get the masters of America to understand it. There must be immediate peace between Germany and Italy on the one hand and America and Britain and France on the other. All three of the so-called democratic nations would be left with everything they had, and the smaller nations, Belgium and Holland and Denmark and Norway, would be set free. America would be at liberty to conquer the Japanese and to take the whole Pacific, and South America too if she wanted it. All that Hitler wanted was a chance to go at Russia. He wouldn’t ask help from anybody; he would put the Reds out of business and keep them out for a thousand years, and what more could any American capitalist or man of great affairs desire?
"He didn’t say that his armies might not be able to hold the Russians, but Lanny knew well what was behind the desperate urgency in his voice. Lanny had been in Berlin in February, when the Reichswehr and the Nazi party had been combing countryside and city slums for new manpower; they had taken the sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, the fifty-five-year-olds, the once- and the twice-wounded, the tubercular and the syphilitic. All these were now in the lines, and how long would they be able to hold?
"“It is the most perilous crisis in the history of the world, Herr Budd. And you Americans are making it, compelling me to send seventeen divisions to stiffen the backbone of the Italians.” Lanny did not fail to take note of the figure; it was the same that his Boss had given him a few days previously. The Führer’s lack of discretion was the despair of his generals; but perhaps he was indiscreet only as Lanny was, by forethought, telling those things which he could be sure the other person already knew.
"Lanny followed this technique and told his chief enemy what he had observed of Allied preparations in Algiers and Bizerte. There could be no question that a landing in Sicily was being prepared, and it was hardly to be imagined that the joint armies would resist the temptation to cross the narrow strait to the Italian mainland, where they would find so many airfields, easy to repair. Lanny had obtained Roosevelt’s permission to say this, not merely to Hitler, but to the Italians he might meet. The island of Pantelleria had just been bombed into surrender, and all the airfields of Sicily and the tip of the boot were being bombed day and night; this pattern of gaining air control before attempting a landing had become standard, and no military man would fail to recognize it. Of course it was possible to bomb two areas and thus create uncertainty as to which was to be invaded; but in this case the Allies were not bothering with any such device. Their every move spoke Sicily.
"Lanny didn’t say that the Italians had been dragged into the war against their will; he said they were now frightened and sick, when they realized that they were scheduled to be blasted, first with bombs and then with artillery. The Italians in New York were as busy as bees, trying to figure out a way to prevent this, and they had evolved the idea that Italy might make a separate peace on condition that the Allies would not use the peninsula as a base from which to attack Germany or German-held territory.
"“I should say that the idea of peace between Italy and the Allies, on the basis of the inviolability of Italian territory, might make an excellent talking point, especially among Italians.”
"“You would be willing for me to tell them it is your idea?.”
"“Surely. It will tend to convince them that we are reasonable, while it is the Judeo-democracies which plan to destroy the treasures of Italian art and culture in the vain effort to break through our southern defense wall.”
"This was an important point the P.A. had gained. It would enable him to pose as Hitler’s representative in Rome, and to have something definite to propose and to ask questions about. One more thing he wanted, and that was for Hitler to want him to go. Then he would be safe against all enemies—save only Hitler’s enemies. He began, “I must not fail to warn you, mein Führer, that there are many Italians, and some of them high-placed, who have treason in their hearts; fair-weather friends who got fame and wealth by espousing your cause, but who now are getting ready to desert what they believe to be a sinking ship.”
Adi said he was aware of such people.
"“Unfortunately, mein Führer, all that I know is secondhand. I had only a few hours in Italy. I went straight to Marshal Kesselring, because I wished to take no risk of falling into the hands of the Italian police with an American passport in my pocket.”
"“You were wise in that. What do you intend to do now?”
"“I promised Signor Pope, one of my influential Italian friends in New York, that I would meet some of his friends in Rome and find out how the land lies there. I have been told that the Duce’s own son-in-law has begun to weaken, and that is the reason Il Duce removed him as foreign secretary and sent him to the Vatican, where intrigues are indigenous and do no harm.”"
Lan mentioned Count Ciano, Dino Grandi and General Badoglio. Hitler said he was well aware of each.
"Since there is nothing more I can do in the States at the moment, it has occurred to me that I might spend some time in Rome and see what information I can pick up for you. It happens by a fortunate circumstance that I can get access to the right circles because of the fact that one of my oldest friends in France has a niece who is married to a member of the Roman nobility. My French friend is Denis de Bruyne, the wealthy industrialist who helped to finance the Cagoule. He was arrested by the French police at the time their plans were exposed, some six years ago. He is a man to be trusted.”"
Hitler said he was well aware of him by reputation.
"“His niece is the Marchesa di Caporini, and if the son of Budd-Erling Aircraft were to show up in Rome, with plenty of money in his pockets and confidential messages from important Italians in New York, he would have no trouble in reaching the right persons and gaining their confidence.”
"“May I have the pleasure of furnishing the money, Herr Budd?”
"“No, mein Führer, I want to be listed as one of those persons who really believes in your cause and thinks no more about personal gain than yourself. I am still able to carry on my profession of art expert. Would you believe it, with the help of Reichsmarschall Göring’s staff I was able to purchase a couple of paintings from a Jew in Berlin and to store them in Sweden; when I got to New York I was able by paying a sum to the right party to get permission to bring them into the country, and I made enough to pay for the trip.”
"“Herrlich, Herr Budd!” For the first time that day the Führer permitted himself a chuckle. “Do you expect to do that sort of thing in Rome?”
"“That is part of my camouflage, Exzellenz. Every Italian will understand the desire to make money, and all take it for granted that American millionaires do not care what they pay for anything.”
"“Then there is nothing I can do for you?”
"“Yes; you will have to give me a letter to your Marshal, telling him that I am all right; and it might be a good idea to drop a hint to Il Duce, so that his police will let me alone.”
"“Kesselring will attend to the Italians for you. Mussolini is a difficult man to deal with, and he is in a contrary mood at present. I am going to have to have a talk with him soon and put him in his place.”
"The P.A.’s face wore an understanding smile. “A lower place than he feels entitled to, I am sure. Il Duce would not remember me, but when I was young I had two encounters with him. One was at the San Remo Conference, just after World War I. I saw him in a violent dispute with some of his comrades who resented his too sudden change of front. A year or two later at Cannes I was present when a friend of mine interviewed him for an English newspaper. You know, mein Führer, in those days we young fellows imagined we were Socialists.”"
They talked of how Hitler was the right kind of socialist, and how Lanny had come to see that through his German friends of youth. A call came, and Hitler shouted at them to have the people mentioned shot first, and get orders later.
"“There is your Prussian Adel, your Junkertum!” he burst out. “These proud gentry think they are the masters, they are the rulers of Germany for the past hundred years and they dare to set themselves against my will, they disobey my explicit orders, they plot together like so many Bolsheviks. Aber, Gott sei mein Zeuge, I will teach them their mistake! Ich bin es, ich, whom the German people have chosen as their guide, and those who oppose me I shall crush to the last scoundrel, the last traitor!”"
He calmed down as suddenly as usual, after a considerable storming while Lanny equalled, white.
"“Is there anything you wish to do in Germany?”
"Lanny replied, “As you may know, I have a half-sister living near Berlin; she is Marceline, the dancer, daughter of Marcel Detaze, the French painter whose works you possess. If I am going back by way of Berlin, I should like to take a few hours to visit her and tell her about her little son, who is with my mother. After that you may send me straight on to Rome, and I’ll report to you as quickly as I can get anything of importance.”"
"The previous time it had been winter, and the mountains had been covered with snow. Now it was summer, and every tiny plot of earth had its color; the hill slopes were terraced high up and tended by patient, loving hands. When the young men were torn away from their homes, the old men and women and the children carried on, keeping the vines alive and planting wheat or barley or vegetables in every nook and cranny of soil, some no bigger than a fine lady’s handkerchief. Italy was a poor land, and ever since the dawn of history its life had been a war between the peasants on the one hand and the military lords, the landlords, and the tax collectors on the other.
"The fast plane carried one pilot, one passenger, and a couple of sacks of mail, carefully sealed and chained. It rose higher and higher, until there was a crackling in the passenger’s ears. Snow-clad peaks lay ahead, and the plane sped between them, up the Brennero, a pass which Lanny had known from boyhood. He put on the overcoat which had been lent him and looked down on the long blue lakes. In days of peace luxury hotels had been built on these pine-clad shores, and now they had been taken for military headquarters, for barracks and hospitals. A few, Lanny knew, housed officer prisoners, treated according to the polite Geneva conventions, each side afraid that if it broke the rules the other side would break them even more."
The plane stopped for refuelling in Nürnberg, as before, and in Berlin, before heading East, and Lanny was blindfolded as before on the last leg. He was taken in a car to the headquarters hidden in a forest and learned accidentally that it was in Königsberg neighbourhood. He was brought in and searched far more thoroughly before being brought to Hitler.
"The P.A. knew exactly what to expect. He knew that last January Adi had lost more than half a million of his best troops by slaughter or surrender at Stalingrad, and that in May he had lost three or four hundred thousand more in Tunisia. Adi must know that the attack on Sicily could be only a matter of weeks, and that when Sicily had fallen, Italy would be only a few miles away, and Southern Italy had airfields from which his native land of Austria and his adopted land of Bavaria might be bombed day and night. F.D.R. had told his agent that America had turned out more than seven thousand airplanes in the month of May, and would raise that to eight or nine thousand during the summer; Adi might not have those figures, but would know exactly how much damage was being done to his airplane plants, his synthetic oil plants, his coal mines and steel mills and other means of war production. He would learn about them from reports which were specially prepared for him in large type, so that he could read them without revealing the fact that he was nearsighted.
"It had been the P.A.’s intention, before taking this trip, to motor or fly across the United States and pay a call upon half a dozen of the most powerful opponents of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He would visit San Simeon again, and let Mr. Hearst pour out his embittered soul, and see how near a powerful publisher could be brought to a program of action in defense of the “free enterprise” system. He would make the acquaintance of Colonel McCormick, who controlled the thinking of several million Americans in the Middle West, and who during the last presidential election had counted the days left to “save America” from the calamity of a third term. He would call on Mr. Du Pont and Mr. Pew and Mr. Gannett, wealthy gentlemen who put up the campaign funds for the reactionary wing of the Republican party. He would lead them to vent their fury, and then would take it to the Führer and multiply it by ten.
"Circumstances having blocked that program, Lanny had to fall back upon the evening and part of a morning he had spent at Friendship House, meeting a dozen of the most bitter anti-New Dealers and Nazi appeasers in the United States. He had had a talk with Mr. Harrison Dengue, the super-industrialist with a scheme to kidnap the President. Mr. Dengue had introduced him to General Gullion, Provost-Marshal of the United States, who had control of home defenses and of the Army in the New York military district in which the President’s Hyde Park home was situated. Also, Lanny had renewed his acquaintance with Senator Reynolds, who was Mrs. McLean’s son-in-law and published a paper and headed a movement with nearly all the ideas and trappings he had picked up in Naziland. Lanny had listened to the wild talk of Cissie Patterson, Colonel McCormick’s cousin and publisher of a bitterly reactionary newspaper in the national capital. And, of course, there had been the hostess, with the biggest diamond in the world on her bosom and a mule-skinner’s angry language pouring from her lips.
"Adi was living on drugs these days, and he swallowed dose after dose and called for more. Evidently he was watching American affairs closely; he had an extraordinary memory for both friends and foes, and had heard of every person his visitor named. He wanted the details regarding each one’s wealth and position and activities, and even his or her personal appearance. Lanny was careful not to name anyone he couldn’t describe; having reinforced his own knowledge with that of Jim Stotzlmann, a walking encyclopedia of social gossip, he was able to pour out a flood of “really good news.” Never in the fifteen years that he had been dealing with this genius-madman had he enjoyed such a sense of making a hit.
"What was to be done? The Führer had his program, and the only problem was to get the masters of America to understand it. There must be immediate peace between Germany and Italy on the one hand and America and Britain and France on the other. All three of the so-called democratic nations would be left with everything they had, and the smaller nations, Belgium and Holland and Denmark and Norway, would be set free. America would be at liberty to conquer the Japanese and to take the whole Pacific, and South America too if she wanted it. All that Hitler wanted was a chance to go at Russia. He wouldn’t ask help from anybody; he would put the Reds out of business and keep them out for a thousand years, and what more could any American capitalist or man of great affairs desire?
"He didn’t say that his armies might not be able to hold the Russians, but Lanny knew well what was behind the desperate urgency in his voice. Lanny had been in Berlin in February, when the Reichswehr and the Nazi party had been combing countryside and city slums for new manpower; they had taken the sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, the fifty-five-year-olds, the once- and the twice-wounded, the tubercular and the syphilitic. All these were now in the lines, and how long would they be able to hold?
"“It is the most perilous crisis in the history of the world, Herr Budd. And you Americans are making it, compelling me to send seventeen divisions to stiffen the backbone of the Italians.” Lanny did not fail to take note of the figure; it was the same that his Boss had given him a few days previously. The Führer’s lack of discretion was the despair of his generals; but perhaps he was indiscreet only as Lanny was, by forethought, telling those things which he could be sure the other person already knew.
"Lanny followed this technique and told his chief enemy what he had observed of Allied preparations in Algiers and Bizerte. There could be no question that a landing in Sicily was being prepared, and it was hardly to be imagined that the joint armies would resist the temptation to cross the narrow strait to the Italian mainland, where they would find so many airfields, easy to repair. Lanny had obtained Roosevelt’s permission to say this, not merely to Hitler, but to the Italians he might meet. The island of Pantelleria had just been bombed into surrender, and all the airfields of Sicily and the tip of the boot were being bombed day and night; this pattern of gaining air control before attempting a landing had become standard, and no military man would fail to recognize it. Of course it was possible to bomb two areas and thus create uncertainty as to which was to be invaded; but in this case the Allies were not bothering with any such device. Their every move spoke Sicily.
"Lanny didn’t say that the Italians had been dragged into the war against their will; he said they were now frightened and sick, when they realized that they were scheduled to be blasted, first with bombs and then with artillery. The Italians in New York were as busy as bees, trying to figure out a way to prevent this, and they had evolved the idea that Italy might make a separate peace on condition that the Allies would not use the peninsula as a base from which to attack Germany or German-held territory.
"“I should say that the idea of peace between Italy and the Allies, on the basis of the inviolability of Italian territory, might make an excellent talking point, especially among Italians.”
"“You would be willing for me to tell them it is your idea?.”
"“Surely. It will tend to convince them that we are reasonable, while it is the Judeo-democracies which plan to destroy the treasures of Italian art and culture in the vain effort to break through our southern defense wall.”
"This was an important point the P.A. had gained. It would enable him to pose as Hitler’s representative in Rome, and to have something definite to propose and to ask questions about. One more thing he wanted, and that was for Hitler to want him to go. Then he would be safe against all enemies—save only Hitler’s enemies. He began, “I must not fail to warn you, mein Führer, that there are many Italians, and some of them high-placed, who have treason in their hearts; fair-weather friends who got fame and wealth by espousing your cause, but who now are getting ready to desert what they believe to be a sinking ship.”
Adi said he was aware of such people.
"“Unfortunately, mein Führer, all that I know is secondhand. I had only a few hours in Italy. I went straight to Marshal Kesselring, because I wished to take no risk of falling into the hands of the Italian police with an American passport in my pocket.”
"“You were wise in that. What do you intend to do now?”
"“I promised Signor Pope, one of my influential Italian friends in New York, that I would meet some of his friends in Rome and find out how the land lies there. I have been told that the Duce’s own son-in-law has begun to weaken, and that is the reason Il Duce removed him as foreign secretary and sent him to the Vatican, where intrigues are indigenous and do no harm.”"
Lan mentioned Count Ciano, Dino Grandi and General Badoglio. Hitler said he was well aware of each.
"Since there is nothing more I can do in the States at the moment, it has occurred to me that I might spend some time in Rome and see what information I can pick up for you. It happens by a fortunate circumstance that I can get access to the right circles because of the fact that one of my oldest friends in France has a niece who is married to a member of the Roman nobility. My French friend is Denis de Bruyne, the wealthy industrialist who helped to finance the Cagoule. He was arrested by the French police at the time their plans were exposed, some six years ago. He is a man to be trusted.”"
Hitler said he was well aware of him by reputation.
"“His niece is the Marchesa di Caporini, and if the son of Budd-Erling Aircraft were to show up in Rome, with plenty of money in his pockets and confidential messages from important Italians in New York, he would have no trouble in reaching the right persons and gaining their confidence.”
"“May I have the pleasure of furnishing the money, Herr Budd?”
"“No, mein Führer, I want to be listed as one of those persons who really believes in your cause and thinks no more about personal gain than yourself. I am still able to carry on my profession of art expert. Would you believe it, with the help of Reichsmarschall Göring’s staff I was able to purchase a couple of paintings from a Jew in Berlin and to store them in Sweden; when I got to New York I was able by paying a sum to the right party to get permission to bring them into the country, and I made enough to pay for the trip.”
"“Herrlich, Herr Budd!” For the first time that day the Führer permitted himself a chuckle. “Do you expect to do that sort of thing in Rome?”
"“That is part of my camouflage, Exzellenz. Every Italian will understand the desire to make money, and all take it for granted that American millionaires do not care what they pay for anything.”
"“Then there is nothing I can do for you?”
"“Yes; you will have to give me a letter to your Marshal, telling him that I am all right; and it might be a good idea to drop a hint to Il Duce, so that his police will let me alone.”
"“Kesselring will attend to the Italians for you. Mussolini is a difficult man to deal with, and he is in a contrary mood at present. I am going to have to have a talk with him soon and put him in his place.”
"The P.A.’s face wore an understanding smile. “A lower place than he feels entitled to, I am sure. Il Duce would not remember me, but when I was young I had two encounters with him. One was at the San Remo Conference, just after World War I. I saw him in a violent dispute with some of his comrades who resented his too sudden change of front. A year or two later at Cannes I was present when a friend of mine interviewed him for an English newspaper. You know, mein Führer, in those days we young fellows imagined we were Socialists.”"
They talked of how Hitler was the right kind of socialist, and how Lanny had come to see that through his German friends of youth. A call came, and Hitler shouted at them to have the people mentioned shot first, and get orders later.
"“There is your Prussian Adel, your Junkertum!” he burst out. “These proud gentry think they are the masters, they are the rulers of Germany for the past hundred years and they dare to set themselves against my will, they disobey my explicit orders, they plot together like so many Bolsheviks. Aber, Gott sei mein Zeuge, I will teach them their mistake! Ich bin es, ich, whom the German people have chosen as their guide, and those who oppose me I shall crush to the last scoundrel, the last traitor!”"
He calmed down as suddenly as usual, after a considerable storming while Lanny equalled, white.
"“Is there anything you wish to do in Germany?”
"Lanny replied, “As you may know, I have a half-sister living near Berlin; she is Marceline, the dancer, daughter of Marcel Detaze, the French painter whose works you possess. If I am going back by way of Berlin, I should like to take a few hours to visit her and tell her about her little son, who is with my mother. After that you may send me straight on to Rome, and I’ll report to you as quickly as I can get anything of importance.”"
............................................................................
"Lanny was flown the same evening to Berlin and was met at the airport by an Oberleutnant of the Waffen SS who had been appointed as his escort in order to avoid possible inconveniences. Absolut korrekt, this young officer betrayed no trace of the curiosity he must have felt. He drove the American visitor to a small hotel in the suburbs, where dangers from bombing would be slight. Lanny’s first act on arrival was to telephone his old friend Heinrich Jung, who was all but speechless with delight at the sound of Lanny’s voice. He showed up for breakfast in the morning, and it turned out, most agreeably, that Oberleutnant Harz was one of his pupils from a long time back.
"He told about Kurt Meissner, who had a crippled arm and could no longer play the piano, but who composed National Socialist music of extraordinary fervor. Kurt’s spirit was undaunted, and so was Heinrich’s, and when Lanny asked the Oberleutnant, he reported that it was the same with himself. Things were going badly at the moment, and the military and party people could not help knowing it, but they had been taught a formula which they recited publicly on all occasions and doubtless said in place of prayers: Frederick the Great had been beaten on more than one occasion, but had refused to know that he was beaten, and in the end he had triumphed gloriously.
"Germans who were not in concentration camps were solidly united in defense of their sacred heritage."
"Lanny was flown the same evening to Berlin and was met at the airport by an Oberleutnant of the Waffen SS who had been appointed as his escort in order to avoid possible inconveniences. Absolut korrekt, this young officer betrayed no trace of the curiosity he must have felt. He drove the American visitor to a small hotel in the suburbs, where dangers from bombing would be slight. Lanny’s first act on arrival was to telephone his old friend Heinrich Jung, who was all but speechless with delight at the sound of Lanny’s voice. He showed up for breakfast in the morning, and it turned out, most agreeably, that Oberleutnant Harz was one of his pupils from a long time back.
"He told about Kurt Meissner, who had a crippled arm and could no longer play the piano, but who composed National Socialist music of extraordinary fervor. Kurt’s spirit was undaunted, and so was Heinrich’s, and when Lanny asked the Oberleutnant, he reported that it was the same with himself. Things were going badly at the moment, and the military and party people could not help knowing it, but they had been taught a formula which they recited publicly on all occasions and doubtless said in place of prayers: Frederick the Great had been beaten on more than one occasion, but had refused to know that he was beaten, and in the end he had triumphed gloriously.
"Germans who were not in concentration camps were solidly united in defense of their sacred heritage."
............................................................................
"Marceline Detaze, like the Germans who had money and were free, had removed herself to the country, as far as possible from bombing objectives. Being the daughter of a Frenchman and deriving her citizenship from him, she was not classified as an enemy; being the cherished Freundin of a Prussian nobleman and Wehrmacht officer, she had obtained permission to come and go as she pleased. An hour’s drive from the city she had found what had been a school for young ladies and now was a hospital for wounded officers. The extensive grounds had been turned into potato fields; but one corner had been spared because of big shade trees, and there was a gardener’s cottage which Marceline had leased for a year. She lived with an old woman for a maid, and read fiction from the school library—every afternoon she read aloud to the patients, because it was a bore to be alone. She said this apologetically, not wanting her brother to think that she had turned into a humanitarian or anything of that pretentious sort.
"Marceline had been born in the middle of World War I, and everything she had heard in later years had caused her to hate it. Now she hated World War II, for one sufficient reason, that it had ruined the career of a girl who had worked hard to have her own way, and now in the midst of her triumph had been knocked out. It was all right to talk to soldiers about Frederick the Great, but that had no meaning to a night-club dancer; the clear-sighted Marceline knew that there would be no more dancing in Germany for a long time, and that by going into Germany she had made herself hated in most of the countries that had money.
"Here she was, compelled to do her practicing in a room about fifteen feet square, and to music that came over the radio; at first she had had the use of a small stage at night, but now it was filled with beds; everything in Germany was being filled with beds for wounded men, and Marceline had to hear their stories and write letters for them. “And of course when they get anywhere near well, they want to sleep with me,” she said, having the European frankness on this subject. Lanny knew as well as she the code of the Hitlerites, that it was every woman’s duty to give sexual comfort to a soldier, and to bear a future soldier or mother of soldiers for the Fatherland whenever and however that might be possible. “I tell them that I have a lover,” she went on, “but that doesn’t mean much to them. I am afraid the doctors of this institution consider me an alien and disturbing influence.”
"It was easy enough for Lanny to believe that she was disturbing. She was twenty-five and at the height of her carefully cultivated charms. She had been fashion’s darling from the age when she had learned to stand in front of a mirror, to turn this way and that and survey herself. At the age of five she had sat at her mother’s dressing table, examining her hair, her skin, her eyes, and applying a variety of substances out of ornate expensive bottles. Later, when all these operations were completed, she went among the right sort of people, those who were wealthy and socially prominent, and when they turned to look at her the purpose of her life was achieved."
They talked about her son Marcel, their mother Beauty, and Marceline's lover Oskar, the Prussian aristocrat and war hero.
"“Tell me,” said the P.A., always on the watch to do business, “what does Oskar think about the war?”
"“Until recently the idea never occurred to him that his wonderful Army could meet defeat. But Stalingrad broke his nerve, I think; he was there, and barely got away, and lost three of his toes from frostbite. He was here a month ago, and defeat made him easier to get along with. He is sure that the Americans are going into Italy, and that the Italians will turn traitors. Do you think that will happen?”"
Lanny said anything could happen, with his neutral facade, but she had known him all her life and suddenly, lowering her voice, David he didn't have to pretend with her, and asked how he managed to get about in Germany despite being enemy alien. He replied by talking of dealing in art for high up nazis including Göring.
"“Listen,” she said, “you ought to know that you don’t have to give me any double-talk. I know you haven’t any love in your heart for this set of low-caste fellows who have thrown the world into war.”
"“Marceline, you mustn’t talk like that,” he whispered, and looked all around him and even up into the tree.
"“Mais c’est à toi que je parle,” she said, and after that she spoke French and so did he. “I like gentlemen,” she went on, “and I hate noisy rowdies, and I never had any reason to think that your taste differed from mine. I can tell you something that ought to be of interest to you, and you don’t have to say that you got it from me.”
"“No, of course not; and for your part, don’t say that you told it to me.”
"“I don’t ever talk about you. Rightly or wrongly, I’ve been convinced for some time that you are not just buying and selling objets d’art. If you get into any trouble I don’t want it to be my fault.”
"“Right, old darling. Tell me what’s on your mind.” “You know what the Americans mean when they talk about ‘Mr. Big’?” She first said it in English, then repeated it in French, “Monsieur Gros,” and when he answered that he was familiar with this linguistic device, she went on, “There are some highly placed persons who have become convinced that he is responsible for the present bad situation and are planning to get rid of him by the quickest way.”
"The P.A. answered quietly, “That is important news indeed. Can you tell me, are these highly placed persons in the political world or the military?”
"“The military. As you know, perhaps, Monsieur Gros insists upon determining strategy and giving orders, even as to details. Men who have been studying problems of strategy all their lives naturally think they know more about them and resent having an amateur step in and take control away from them. It has always been the first maxim of German policy never to become involved in a two-front war; and he got them into it. And when things go wrong he blames them, calls them foul names, shakes his fist in their faces, and has even had several of them done away with.”
"“I don’t want to ask anything that you don’t want to tell me; but naturally I am supposing that you got this information from your ami.”
"“That is correct,” replied the sister without hesitation."
Lanny warned Marceline not to mention him to Oskar, and asked if such a group would be interested in point of view of enemy, and they established a code using paintings, and the postal route via Swiss friends that Marceline had been using to write to their mother, Beauty. There were some paintings in the hospital, and when Hard returned they went together to inspect them, and they were Defreggers, so Lanny discourses about them at length, including his buying some for Berghof.
"Marceline Detaze, like the Germans who had money and were free, had removed herself to the country, as far as possible from bombing objectives. Being the daughter of a Frenchman and deriving her citizenship from him, she was not classified as an enemy; being the cherished Freundin of a Prussian nobleman and Wehrmacht officer, she had obtained permission to come and go as she pleased. An hour’s drive from the city she had found what had been a school for young ladies and now was a hospital for wounded officers. The extensive grounds had been turned into potato fields; but one corner had been spared because of big shade trees, and there was a gardener’s cottage which Marceline had leased for a year. She lived with an old woman for a maid, and read fiction from the school library—every afternoon she read aloud to the patients, because it was a bore to be alone. She said this apologetically, not wanting her brother to think that she had turned into a humanitarian or anything of that pretentious sort.
"Marceline had been born in the middle of World War I, and everything she had heard in later years had caused her to hate it. Now she hated World War II, for one sufficient reason, that it had ruined the career of a girl who had worked hard to have her own way, and now in the midst of her triumph had been knocked out. It was all right to talk to soldiers about Frederick the Great, but that had no meaning to a night-club dancer; the clear-sighted Marceline knew that there would be no more dancing in Germany for a long time, and that by going into Germany she had made herself hated in most of the countries that had money.
"Here she was, compelled to do her practicing in a room about fifteen feet square, and to music that came over the radio; at first she had had the use of a small stage at night, but now it was filled with beds; everything in Germany was being filled with beds for wounded men, and Marceline had to hear their stories and write letters for them. “And of course when they get anywhere near well, they want to sleep with me,” she said, having the European frankness on this subject. Lanny knew as well as she the code of the Hitlerites, that it was every woman’s duty to give sexual comfort to a soldier, and to bear a future soldier or mother of soldiers for the Fatherland whenever and however that might be possible. “I tell them that I have a lover,” she went on, “but that doesn’t mean much to them. I am afraid the doctors of this institution consider me an alien and disturbing influence.”
"It was easy enough for Lanny to believe that she was disturbing. She was twenty-five and at the height of her carefully cultivated charms. She had been fashion’s darling from the age when she had learned to stand in front of a mirror, to turn this way and that and survey herself. At the age of five she had sat at her mother’s dressing table, examining her hair, her skin, her eyes, and applying a variety of substances out of ornate expensive bottles. Later, when all these operations were completed, she went among the right sort of people, those who were wealthy and socially prominent, and when they turned to look at her the purpose of her life was achieved."
They talked about her son Marcel, their mother Beauty, and Marceline's lover Oskar, the Prussian aristocrat and war hero.
"“Tell me,” said the P.A., always on the watch to do business, “what does Oskar think about the war?”
"“Until recently the idea never occurred to him that his wonderful Army could meet defeat. But Stalingrad broke his nerve, I think; he was there, and barely got away, and lost three of his toes from frostbite. He was here a month ago, and defeat made him easier to get along with. He is sure that the Americans are going into Italy, and that the Italians will turn traitors. Do you think that will happen?”"
Lanny said anything could happen, with his neutral facade, but she had known him all her life and suddenly, lowering her voice, David he didn't have to pretend with her, and asked how he managed to get about in Germany despite being enemy alien. He replied by talking of dealing in art for high up nazis including Göring.
"“Listen,” she said, “you ought to know that you don’t have to give me any double-talk. I know you haven’t any love in your heart for this set of low-caste fellows who have thrown the world into war.”
"“Marceline, you mustn’t talk like that,” he whispered, and looked all around him and even up into the tree.
"“Mais c’est à toi que je parle,” she said, and after that she spoke French and so did he. “I like gentlemen,” she went on, “and I hate noisy rowdies, and I never had any reason to think that your taste differed from mine. I can tell you something that ought to be of interest to you, and you don’t have to say that you got it from me.”
"“No, of course not; and for your part, don’t say that you told it to me.”
"“I don’t ever talk about you. Rightly or wrongly, I’ve been convinced for some time that you are not just buying and selling objets d’art. If you get into any trouble I don’t want it to be my fault.”
"“Right, old darling. Tell me what’s on your mind.” “You know what the Americans mean when they talk about ‘Mr. Big’?” She first said it in English, then repeated it in French, “Monsieur Gros,” and when he answered that he was familiar with this linguistic device, she went on, “There are some highly placed persons who have become convinced that he is responsible for the present bad situation and are planning to get rid of him by the quickest way.”
"The P.A. answered quietly, “That is important news indeed. Can you tell me, are these highly placed persons in the political world or the military?”
"“The military. As you know, perhaps, Monsieur Gros insists upon determining strategy and giving orders, even as to details. Men who have been studying problems of strategy all their lives naturally think they know more about them and resent having an amateur step in and take control away from them. It has always been the first maxim of German policy never to become involved in a two-front war; and he got them into it. And when things go wrong he blames them, calls them foul names, shakes his fist in their faces, and has even had several of them done away with.”
"“I don’t want to ask anything that you don’t want to tell me; but naturally I am supposing that you got this information from your ami.”
"“That is correct,” replied the sister without hesitation."
Lanny warned Marceline not to mention him to Oskar, and asked if such a group would be interested in point of view of enemy, and they established a code using paintings, and the postal route via Swiss friends that Marceline had been using to write to their mother, Beauty. There were some paintings in the hospital, and when Hard returned they went together to inspect them, and they were Defreggers, so Lanny discourses about them at length, including his buying some for Berghof.
............................................................................
The author has a pattern of being surprisingly blind to the characters he himself has penned, and one has to wonder if this is because they are not created, or prototypes, but in fact different names and circumstances provided in the story to people who were real and close to him. This is all the more so in the circle around and close to Lanny, his beloved protagonist whose faults begin to be apparent even in the first volume. But it becomes impossible to push it under the rug by the time he gets here, ready to justify the sacrifice of Marceline, a beautiful younger sister, in an attempt to save Lanny. And it isn't the first time he finds women imperfect while males are exalted, but is a pattern despite the often glaring faults repeatedly shown in the same males.
Marceline and Lanny were brought up by their mother Beauty eighteen years apart, with very similar upbringing - she was off to fashion grooming or holidays with her set wherever the season took her, and they were mostly left to servants when not observing their mother and her fashionable set. Lanny had a father who visited and gave him what company he could, but Marceline's father died early and she was either lonely while Beauty was busy saving a German spy from French by taking him to Spain, or later had his strict Prussian values imposed on the little French-American daughter because he was Beauty's lover. Lanny took his side because he was Lanny's friend and Lanny had initiated the project of saving the German spy, so Marceline had no one on her side looking out for her really.
Calling her selfish as the author does, repeatedly, raises serious questions about his mindset and values. Does he think Beauty and her friends, busy mostly with fashion and parties, are not selfish? The other example set for Marceline was Irma, no better at any point, except when required to help people due to her position, which she does most part either for a price or setting her terms or both, and she certainly isn't an example in bringing up her daughter who is left as much to servants while Irma is holidaying about the world, as Beauty did with her children. What's more she wishes at her divorce to deprive Lanny of custody only because her daughter is to be sole heir to millions, the latter being the point most important.
One gets the impression that despite his appeal of social equality, the author is as steeped in abrahmic lore or myth abou eve being evil as any staid believer, and hence the rights of most evil males to be seen as deserving some credit, while his women in most part are seen by him as useless and frivolous if not worse. The one angel, Trudi, had to die, as did her opposite the young and beautiful heiress Lizbeth who was calm, home loving unlike the fashionable Irma, and more.
The author has a pattern of being surprisingly blind to the characters he himself has penned, and one has to wonder if this is because they are not created, or prototypes, but in fact different names and circumstances provided in the story to people who were real and close to him. This is all the more so in the circle around and close to Lanny, his beloved protagonist whose faults begin to be apparent even in the first volume. But it becomes impossible to push it under the rug by the time he gets here, ready to justify the sacrifice of Marceline, a beautiful younger sister, in an attempt to save Lanny. And it isn't the first time he finds women imperfect while males are exalted, but is a pattern despite the often glaring faults repeatedly shown in the same males.
Marceline and Lanny were brought up by their mother Beauty eighteen years apart, with very similar upbringing - she was off to fashion grooming or holidays with her set wherever the season took her, and they were mostly left to servants when not observing their mother and her fashionable set. Lanny had a father who visited and gave him what company he could, but Marceline's father died early and she was either lonely while Beauty was busy saving a German spy from French by taking him to Spain, or later had his strict Prussian values imposed on the little French-American daughter because he was Beauty's lover. Lanny took his side because he was Lanny's friend and Lanny had initiated the project of saving the German spy, so Marceline had no one on her side looking out for her really.
Calling her selfish as the author does, repeatedly, raises serious questions about his mindset and values. Does he think Beauty and her friends, busy mostly with fashion and parties, are not selfish? The other example set for Marceline was Irma, no better at any point, except when required to help people due to her position, which she does most part either for a price or setting her terms or both, and she certainly isn't an example in bringing up her daughter who is left as much to servants while Irma is holidaying about the world, as Beauty did with her children. What's more she wishes at her divorce to deprive Lanny of custody only because her daughter is to be sole heir to millions, the latter being the point most important.
One gets the impression that despite his appeal of social equality, the author is as steeped in abrahmic lore or myth abou eve being evil as any staid believer, and hence the rights of most evil males to be seen as deserving some credit, while his women in most part are seen by him as useless and frivolous if not worse. The one angel, Trudi, had to die, as did her opposite the young and beautiful heiress Lizbeth who was calm, home loving unlike the fashionable Irma, and more.
............................................................................
Flown to Rome, the place of Oberst Harz was taken by Hauptmann Schnabel who escorted him; Lanny was brought to the local Nazi headquarters - Braune Haus - and met Herr Güntelen, whom Lanny took to be a Gestapo man. Together the questioned him about his proximity to their leader, and Lanny responded at length, the session lasting through afternoon into greater part of the night, telling about whatever he could. They didn't aske about Laurel.
"They didn’t speak the word “wife.” But that didn’t meant that they didn’t know he had one."
They asked his plans, and he outlined them, about meeting various people. They suggested he report to them, which he refused, saying they could call Hitler to check that his orders were Lanny report only to him; they suggested he pretend to sympathise with allies, at which he said they should understand it was according to their own advice if they subsequently heard about his mixing with those against Germans. Lanny suggested they furnish him with a French passport in his own name, to solve some questions that might arise.
Flown to Rome, the place of Oberst Harz was taken by Hauptmann Schnabel who escorted him; Lanny was brought to the local Nazi headquarters - Braune Haus - and met Herr Güntelen, whom Lanny took to be a Gestapo man. Together the questioned him about his proximity to their leader, and Lanny responded at length, the session lasting through afternoon into greater part of the night, telling about whatever he could. They didn't aske about Laurel.
"They didn’t speak the word “wife.” But that didn’t meant that they didn’t know he had one."
They asked his plans, and he outlined them, about meeting various people. They suggested he report to them, which he refused, saying they could call Hitler to check that his orders were Lanny report only to him; they suggested he pretend to sympathise with allies, at which he said they should understand it was according to their own advice if they subsequently heard about his mixing with those against Germans. Lanny suggested they furnish him with a French passport in his own name, to solve some questions that might arise.
............................................................................
Lanny managed to get a room at the Regina-Carlton and wrote to Marchessa Di Caporini, the cousin of Marie De Bruyne who was in Rome. She called and invited him over, and while he waited for her he saw there were paintings he could look at in the mansion. The Marchessa seemed much younger than Marie and talkative unlike her, and she asked about the family, and how he managed to travel. He said he was buying what art had been overlooked by Göring.
" “Oh, the Germans have been dreadful! They have stripped the country bare.”"
She told him to call her Julie, asked about how he'd gotten involved with Marie, and talked about her marriage to De Bruyne.
"When he left Julie told him to make this place his home. He need not worry about eating her food because her husband owned much farmland not far away and they were able to get things into the city. “I am a lonely old woman,” she said, “and you bring me a breath of fresh air from France. In return I will tell you all about our corrupt fashionable world, and I’ll help you to see the paintings you want and not to be robbed too badly.”"
Next morning he visited another palace, of an elderly commendatore Cesare d'Angelo, and shown paintings in a fireproof dungeon a flight of stairs below the basement. Later they sat in his two storied library, and the commendadore wanted to know about Americans coming. They talked of precisely what Lanny wished, without him introducing the topic. The Italian was worried about safety and Lanny said he was safer right where he was, in Rome, since allies would target railroad tracks and so forth, not fine old buildings.
"The art expert went back to the Caporini palace and lunched with the family in a stately dining-room of panelled and hand-carved walnut. On one wall hung a fifteenth-century tapestry showing Romulus and Remus with their wolf, and against another wall was an immense sideboard loaded with silver and crystal from the days of Benvenuto Cellini. The meal was served by the aged manservant, not without difficulty because his hands were showing signs of palsy."
They spoke later in the library.
"The position of Italy was frightful, and everybody from the Pope to the beggar knew it. The Italian boot was long and narrow, and destruction would sweep over it like a scythe.
"Such was the picture in every Italian mind, as the visitor was to discover. They were a clear-sighted people, realistic and skeptical, even cynical. Mussolini had labored mightily to puff them up with pride, love of glory, the dream of a new Impero Romano; he had succeeded with part of them, especially the young, but now that dream was dead and stinking in their nostrils; their Duce was a bald-headed old lecher, suffering from stomach ulcers and syphilis; he had dragged them into this war, and Lanny would have a hard time finding anybody who would admit that he had ever wanted it. The P.A. was astonished to find how sick ordinary people were of Fascism as well as of the war, and how outspoken they were, high or low, rich or poor.
"Lanny had come expecting to hear these things in whispers, as he had heard them in Germany, where people went suddenly and opened their doors to make sure their servants were not spying, and put the tea cozy over the telephone because they had been told that the police had a secret device enabling them to hear even when the receiver was on the hook. But in Rome he found that the people’s discontent had reached the boiling point, and the only ones who pledged you to secrecy were those whose livings depended in some way upon the regime."
Lanny walked in rome, changed in two decades.
"Il Duce had put up some showy government buildings and monuments and had built a great boulevard, leading to a new Forum, named for his work. He had played a cruel joke upon his own gloria; on this Via del Impero—the Road of the Empire—he had erected a marble wall and on it had put large bronze maps, showing what the old empire had been at its height, and what the new empire had been at its start, and how step by step it had grown. He hadn’t yet got up the courage to take down the North Africa maps, and there they stayed, mocking him.
"This city, called “holy,” contained some of the vilest slums he had seen in all Europe, and Holy Mother Church was one of the greatest and richest of the landlords. That had also been the case in all the great capitals he had visited, not merely in the Mediterranean lands but in London and New York."
Lanny managed to get a room at the Regina-Carlton and wrote to Marchessa Di Caporini, the cousin of Marie De Bruyne who was in Rome. She called and invited him over, and while he waited for her he saw there were paintings he could look at in the mansion. The Marchessa seemed much younger than Marie and talkative unlike her, and she asked about the family, and how he managed to travel. He said he was buying what art had been overlooked by Göring.
" “Oh, the Germans have been dreadful! They have stripped the country bare.”"
She told him to call her Julie, asked about how he'd gotten involved with Marie, and talked about her marriage to De Bruyne.
"When he left Julie told him to make this place his home. He need not worry about eating her food because her husband owned much farmland not far away and they were able to get things into the city. “I am a lonely old woman,” she said, “and you bring me a breath of fresh air from France. In return I will tell you all about our corrupt fashionable world, and I’ll help you to see the paintings you want and not to be robbed too badly.”"
Next morning he visited another palace, of an elderly commendatore Cesare d'Angelo, and shown paintings in a fireproof dungeon a flight of stairs below the basement. Later they sat in his two storied library, and the commendadore wanted to know about Americans coming. They talked of precisely what Lanny wished, without him introducing the topic. The Italian was worried about safety and Lanny said he was safer right where he was, in Rome, since allies would target railroad tracks and so forth, not fine old buildings.
"The art expert went back to the Caporini palace and lunched with the family in a stately dining-room of panelled and hand-carved walnut. On one wall hung a fifteenth-century tapestry showing Romulus and Remus with their wolf, and against another wall was an immense sideboard loaded with silver and crystal from the days of Benvenuto Cellini. The meal was served by the aged manservant, not without difficulty because his hands were showing signs of palsy."
They spoke later in the library.
"The position of Italy was frightful, and everybody from the Pope to the beggar knew it. The Italian boot was long and narrow, and destruction would sweep over it like a scythe.
"Such was the picture in every Italian mind, as the visitor was to discover. They were a clear-sighted people, realistic and skeptical, even cynical. Mussolini had labored mightily to puff them up with pride, love of glory, the dream of a new Impero Romano; he had succeeded with part of them, especially the young, but now that dream was dead and stinking in their nostrils; their Duce was a bald-headed old lecher, suffering from stomach ulcers and syphilis; he had dragged them into this war, and Lanny would have a hard time finding anybody who would admit that he had ever wanted it. The P.A. was astonished to find how sick ordinary people were of Fascism as well as of the war, and how outspoken they were, high or low, rich or poor.
"Lanny had come expecting to hear these things in whispers, as he had heard them in Germany, where people went suddenly and opened their doors to make sure their servants were not spying, and put the tea cozy over the telephone because they had been told that the police had a secret device enabling them to hear even when the receiver was on the hook. But in Rome he found that the people’s discontent had reached the boiling point, and the only ones who pledged you to secrecy were those whose livings depended in some way upon the regime."
Lanny walked in rome, changed in two decades.
"Il Duce had put up some showy government buildings and monuments and had built a great boulevard, leading to a new Forum, named for his work. He had played a cruel joke upon his own gloria; on this Via del Impero—the Road of the Empire—he had erected a marble wall and on it had put large bronze maps, showing what the old empire had been at its height, and what the new empire had been at its start, and how step by step it had grown. He hadn’t yet got up the courage to take down the North Africa maps, and there they stayed, mocking him.
"This city, called “holy,” contained some of the vilest slums he had seen in all Europe, and Holy Mother Church was one of the greatest and richest of the landlords. That had also been the case in all the great capitals he had visited, not merely in the Mediterranean lands but in London and New York."
............................................................................
"The young men and the middle-aged of Rome were gone, all save the Fascist Militi. The women and the children were gaunt and half-starved, sad-eyed and silent. They came early and formed long queues, waiting for bread, for oil and greens; often they waited half the day, only to be sent away because the supplies were exhausted. They hid in their stifling tenements from the glare of the day, and when the sun went down they came out on the hot pavements for a breath of air. In peacetime they would have spent half the night outside, but now there was a curfew at dusk and the law was “martial.”
"Lanny had no way to find out what these people were thinking, for he was an elegantly dressed stranger and they would bear him no love. The hotel porter had warned him against venturing into the slums; crime was rampant—it thrives in war, like poverty and its evil sisters. The filth was appalling; the children had apparently no place to relieve themselves but in the streets, and they did this by daylight; the adults for the most part waited until night. Furtive beggars pursued the stroller, whining out of the corners of their mouths; children pestered him with offers of every sort of vice. The men were gone and the women were hungry; he could have bought young girls or boys for a bar of chocolate or a couple of cigarettes. Everywhere amid this misery and corruption walked the black-robed priests—“black beetles,” the hate-filled workers called them. Lanny pitied them, for he knew that many were men of conscience and had no idea of what had caused this avalanche of suffering, and would not have been allowed to do anything about it even if they had found out. The Church had made its peace with Mussolini and was ready to do the same with the next groups of exploiters, whoever they might be."
Lanny returned to talk to Commendatore d'Angelo, and decided he had to trust somebody; he mentioned his father wondering about Italians, and the elder gentleman promptly responded. They discussed Americans in North Africa, future of Italy, and viability of Prince of Piedmont as monarch instead of his father the old king.
"The cultivated Roman revealed that he and his friends had been consulting together for months as to what they could do in the crisis they foresaw. He did not name these friends, but as the conversation developed Lanny took the liberty of mentioning various persons, and it turned out that the Commendatore knew them all. When Lanny asked, “Do you suppose that General Badoglio would be willing to discuss these matters with me?” the reply was, “I think it would be an excellent thing for him to do.”"
Lanny typed his report using a borrowed typewriter he paid for using in a real estate office and code he'd devised, and sent it through the American 'post office', of which OSS had given him address.
"The young men and the middle-aged of Rome were gone, all save the Fascist Militi. The women and the children were gaunt and half-starved, sad-eyed and silent. They came early and formed long queues, waiting for bread, for oil and greens; often they waited half the day, only to be sent away because the supplies were exhausted. They hid in their stifling tenements from the glare of the day, and when the sun went down they came out on the hot pavements for a breath of air. In peacetime they would have spent half the night outside, but now there was a curfew at dusk and the law was “martial.”
"Lanny had no way to find out what these people were thinking, for he was an elegantly dressed stranger and they would bear him no love. The hotel porter had warned him against venturing into the slums; crime was rampant—it thrives in war, like poverty and its evil sisters. The filth was appalling; the children had apparently no place to relieve themselves but in the streets, and they did this by daylight; the adults for the most part waited until night. Furtive beggars pursued the stroller, whining out of the corners of their mouths; children pestered him with offers of every sort of vice. The men were gone and the women were hungry; he could have bought young girls or boys for a bar of chocolate or a couple of cigarettes. Everywhere amid this misery and corruption walked the black-robed priests—“black beetles,” the hate-filled workers called them. Lanny pitied them, for he knew that many were men of conscience and had no idea of what had caused this avalanche of suffering, and would not have been allowed to do anything about it even if they had found out. The Church had made its peace with Mussolini and was ready to do the same with the next groups of exploiters, whoever they might be."
Lanny returned to talk to Commendatore d'Angelo, and decided he had to trust somebody; he mentioned his father wondering about Italians, and the elder gentleman promptly responded. They discussed Americans in North Africa, future of Italy, and viability of Prince of Piedmont as monarch instead of his father the old king.
"The cultivated Roman revealed that he and his friends had been consulting together for months as to what they could do in the crisis they foresaw. He did not name these friends, but as the conversation developed Lanny took the liberty of mentioning various persons, and it turned out that the Commendatore knew them all. When Lanny asked, “Do you suppose that General Badoglio would be willing to discuss these matters with me?” the reply was, “I think it would be an excellent thing for him to do.”"
Lanny typed his report using a borrowed typewriter he paid for using in a real estate office and code he'd devised, and sent it through the American 'post office', of which OSS had given him address.
............................................................................
Julie insisted, despite reluctance on his part about meeting too many people, on introducing Lanny to Isabelle Colonna, associated with Galeazzo Ciano, and she in turn invited them to the golf club for a card party she gave.
"The name of the institution was the Acquasanta Golf Club. In this most pious of cities Lanny had got used to the idea of a Queen of Heaven Prison, and now he was taken to a Holy Water Golf Club. (Some wit had said, “In Rome the Faith is made; elsewhere it is received.”)"
There were three times as many women as men, young matron, and Lanny found himself centre of attention and more. They weren't fooled and knew he was American, and were not only open to affair but likely to take offence if he were to declare his inability to oblige. He was charming to every one but had no intentions of intimacy, and expected it would keep them guessing about who he was with. Ciano came in, and spoke frankly about politics, surrounded by women, with Lanny.
"At the home of Commendatore d’Angelo Lanny had his promised meeting with Il Maresciallo Badoglio. This old gentleman—he was seventy-two—had served as Mussolini’s scapegoat in the Greek campaign; he had been ordered to take his ill-prepared armies up into those wild mountains, and he had done so and got soundly thrashed by tough fighting men armed with British weapons; then, of course, he had been blamed and kicked out. Somebody besides Il Duce had to be wrong. Pietro Badoglio had retired to his country estate; he was an immensely wealthy man and represented the top of Italian society, the white hope of the monarchists, the aristocracy, the landowners, and the great manufacturers. He had been given the Supreme Order of the Annunziata, which made him a “cousin” to the King and entitled so to address him."
Lanny and the two Italian gentlemen talked about American forces arrival, and Badoglio was reserved but honest; Lanny decided this was the person to talk frankly with, and said straits of Messina weren't a problem, and railroads, or, more specifically, what the British called marshalling yards, were going to be bombed. Badoglio was concerned; poor people's homes were close, and Lanny said that was why he'd sought the interview. U.S. had a good deal of population of Italian roots, and bombing their relatives and friends wasn't the idea.
"“And yet you hold out nothing but unconditional surrender!”"
Lanny said that was for the enemies, not for friends, and no populace in North Africa had suffered after U.S. forces arrival, and he would hear of people in Sicily throwing flowers at American forces and getting chocolates. Badoglio said he was loyal to royals, and Lanny said he'd be talking to partisans if U.S. were against Italians deciding for themselves, but that wasn't so. Badoglio asked what was wanted of him, and Lanny said he should speak with his people and send a representative to Lisbon; time for action would be after Sicily and before Naples.
"“Also, we think the bombing of the railroads in Rome may help to make people realize the need of peace.”
"“Be careful, Monsieur Budd; it may work just the other way. It may infuriate the people and harden their will.”
"“Our strategists do not think so, mon Maréchal. Men fight because they hope to gain something; but the Italians have nothing to gain even by winning this war. Only today I heard the jesting remark that in Rome all the pessimists are studying German while the optimists are studying American. You see how it is, the Italians turn even the language over to us; they do not like the English so well, I am told.”
"“We have heard rumors, Monsieur Budd, that Winston Churchill looks upon Sicily as a place which might have strategical importance to his great empire.”
"“Cher Maréchal, Churchill has to have American help in taking Sicily. I am quite sure that if you will send a representative to Lisbon, you will have your mind put at rest on the point that Italy will not be dismembered.”"
The Commendatore whispered that Lanny had convinced him, so Lanny went back, and soon enough was told by the landowner that his "French friend" had called to ask if Lanny could come again in the morning. This time it was to meet Luigi Federzoni, and next day it was Count Volpi. Lanny satisfied both.
"The wretched Duce had kicked out the men of real influence and power from his cabinet and got himself a bunch of party hacks. The men of influence were uniting against him; and of course the day-and-night bombing of Italian airports and seaports and shipping was having its effect. The people of Rome were living with something more terrible than a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. Suppose one of those bombardiers were to slip and miss the railroad yards and hit a palace or a de luxe hotel instead! Refugees by the thousands had been pouring into the Holy City, and now they were getting out again and fleeing to the country. You no longer saw the Fascist insignia worn by anybody on the streets, and people like cab drivers and waiters would say to a foreign visitor, “Il Duce? I spit on him!”"
Lanny sent off reports and was fairly satisfied that it had been safe.
"One thing was certain—and Lanny would put it into his report—the Germans had broken one of the codes used by the OSS head in Switzerland. This agent had sent in a report about the doings of Count Ciano. It had been decoded, and Hitler had had a copy of it laid on Il Duce’s desk. It was a fair guess that that was the reason why Italy’s free-spoken Foreign Minister had retired to the Vatican."
He wrote the other report in German by hand and carefully thought over what was to be said. He reported that people in general were deserting their leader, and he reported the golf club atmosphere, while praising German troops; he said Badoglio hadn't given out anything, and so on. He was sure the report would be read by Gestapo and he sent it by leaving it personally at the German forces' headquarters.
Julie insisted, despite reluctance on his part about meeting too many people, on introducing Lanny to Isabelle Colonna, associated with Galeazzo Ciano, and she in turn invited them to the golf club for a card party she gave.
"The name of the institution was the Acquasanta Golf Club. In this most pious of cities Lanny had got used to the idea of a Queen of Heaven Prison, and now he was taken to a Holy Water Golf Club. (Some wit had said, “In Rome the Faith is made; elsewhere it is received.”)"
There were three times as many women as men, young matron, and Lanny found himself centre of attention and more. They weren't fooled and knew he was American, and were not only open to affair but likely to take offence if he were to declare his inability to oblige. He was charming to every one but had no intentions of intimacy, and expected it would keep them guessing about who he was with. Ciano came in, and spoke frankly about politics, surrounded by women, with Lanny.
"At the home of Commendatore d’Angelo Lanny had his promised meeting with Il Maresciallo Badoglio. This old gentleman—he was seventy-two—had served as Mussolini’s scapegoat in the Greek campaign; he had been ordered to take his ill-prepared armies up into those wild mountains, and he had done so and got soundly thrashed by tough fighting men armed with British weapons; then, of course, he had been blamed and kicked out. Somebody besides Il Duce had to be wrong. Pietro Badoglio had retired to his country estate; he was an immensely wealthy man and represented the top of Italian society, the white hope of the monarchists, the aristocracy, the landowners, and the great manufacturers. He had been given the Supreme Order of the Annunziata, which made him a “cousin” to the King and entitled so to address him."
Lanny and the two Italian gentlemen talked about American forces arrival, and Badoglio was reserved but honest; Lanny decided this was the person to talk frankly with, and said straits of Messina weren't a problem, and railroads, or, more specifically, what the British called marshalling yards, were going to be bombed. Badoglio was concerned; poor people's homes were close, and Lanny said that was why he'd sought the interview. U.S. had a good deal of population of Italian roots, and bombing their relatives and friends wasn't the idea.
"“And yet you hold out nothing but unconditional surrender!”"
Lanny said that was for the enemies, not for friends, and no populace in North Africa had suffered after U.S. forces arrival, and he would hear of people in Sicily throwing flowers at American forces and getting chocolates. Badoglio said he was loyal to royals, and Lanny said he'd be talking to partisans if U.S. were against Italians deciding for themselves, but that wasn't so. Badoglio asked what was wanted of him, and Lanny said he should speak with his people and send a representative to Lisbon; time for action would be after Sicily and before Naples.
"“Also, we think the bombing of the railroads in Rome may help to make people realize the need of peace.”
"“Be careful, Monsieur Budd; it may work just the other way. It may infuriate the people and harden their will.”
"“Our strategists do not think so, mon Maréchal. Men fight because they hope to gain something; but the Italians have nothing to gain even by winning this war. Only today I heard the jesting remark that in Rome all the pessimists are studying German while the optimists are studying American. You see how it is, the Italians turn even the language over to us; they do not like the English so well, I am told.”
"“We have heard rumors, Monsieur Budd, that Winston Churchill looks upon Sicily as a place which might have strategical importance to his great empire.”
"“Cher Maréchal, Churchill has to have American help in taking Sicily. I am quite sure that if you will send a representative to Lisbon, you will have your mind put at rest on the point that Italy will not be dismembered.”"
The Commendatore whispered that Lanny had convinced him, so Lanny went back, and soon enough was told by the landowner that his "French friend" had called to ask if Lanny could come again in the morning. This time it was to meet Luigi Federzoni, and next day it was Count Volpi. Lanny satisfied both.
"The wretched Duce had kicked out the men of real influence and power from his cabinet and got himself a bunch of party hacks. The men of influence were uniting against him; and of course the day-and-night bombing of Italian airports and seaports and shipping was having its effect. The people of Rome were living with something more terrible than a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. Suppose one of those bombardiers were to slip and miss the railroad yards and hit a palace or a de luxe hotel instead! Refugees by the thousands had been pouring into the Holy City, and now they were getting out again and fleeing to the country. You no longer saw the Fascist insignia worn by anybody on the streets, and people like cab drivers and waiters would say to a foreign visitor, “Il Duce? I spit on him!”"
Lanny sent off reports and was fairly satisfied that it had been safe.
"One thing was certain—and Lanny would put it into his report—the Germans had broken one of the codes used by the OSS head in Switzerland. This agent had sent in a report about the doings of Count Ciano. It had been decoded, and Hitler had had a copy of it laid on Il Duce’s desk. It was a fair guess that that was the reason why Italy’s free-spoken Foreign Minister had retired to the Vatican."
He wrote the other report in German by hand and carefully thought over what was to be said. He reported that people in general were deserting their leader, and he reported the golf club atmosphere, while praising German troops; he said Badoglio hadn't given out anything, and so on. He was sure the report would be read by Gestapo and he sent it by leaving it personally at the German forces' headquarters.
............................................................................
Lanny was a social success and it reflected glamour on Julie, and she pressed him to move into the Caporini palace. Lanny knew it implied another invitation, Julie had confided in him about her husband being interested in boys, and with the shortage of men in Rome his marital status wouldn't have been seen as a valid reason for him to abstain from obliging half the golf club. He had therefore lied to Julie about his marital status for sake of safety. He thought over the problem and confided in her that he was subject to a terrible malady and that had been the reason for his divorce from Irma, and thereafter was safe in Rome including the golf club.
Lanny was a social success and it reflected glamour on Julie, and she pressed him to move into the Caporini palace. Lanny knew it implied another invitation, Julie had confided in him about her husband being interested in boys, and with the shortage of men in Rome his marital status wouldn't have been seen as a valid reason for him to abstain from obliging half the golf club. He had therefore lied to Julie about his marital status for sake of safety. He thought over the problem and confided in her that he was subject to a terrible malady and that had been the reason for his divorce from Irma, and thereafter was safe in Rome including the golf club.
............................................................................
Operation Husky began on July 9, and Lanny went to Julie's to hear radio he could operate. Nazis reported allied forces being repulsed at successively more inland places and towards one another.
"General Eisenhower helped the secret agent by delivering over the radio a proclamation in which he told the people of Italy and Sicily the same things that Lanny had been telling Signor d’Angelo and Marshal Badoglio and other leading citizens. The document was signed by Roosevelt and Churchill, and Eisenhower read it in English and then had it repeated in Italian. The General’s voice was friendly and persuasive, and he told the people that Fascism was their real enemy, and that as soon as they had thrown it off they could be friends and allies of the Americans and English. The Axis radio did not repeat this message and their newspapers did not print it, but they undertook to answer its arguments, and as it happens you cannot effectively answer arguments without revealing what they are."
American bombers showered Sicily and Rome with leaflets at night, and people knew they could deliver bombs next. Lanny noticed reaction of people when he spoke Italian with a German accent in public, and nobody attacked him physically, but there was sly pleasure. Commendatore d'Angelo said bombing Rome was necessary and a palace hit would help.
The Marchesa had a friend whose villa in Frascati had paintings she said Lanny should go see, and he couldn't very well refuse. Halfway he was joined on the crowded tram by a man with a grey beard whom he suddenly recognised, but Pietro Corsatti refused to admit his identity and suddenly got off; Lanny was prepared and followed him, and told him he hadn't changed. Lanny told him in detail about what Matteotti had said in seance, and Pietro Corsatti was amazed, he'd taken such things as frauds. They spoke about American forces coming, and about Matteotti. Lanny cautioned Pete against talking about him, and Pete said he should meet Matteo, the son of Matteotti. They arranged the details, after which Lanny went on to finish the art business in Frascati and return to Rome. Two days later he got a card and went to Frascati to meet Pete at the ruins and be led on a donkey to meet Matteo.
Matteo had questions that everybody had asked, after he heard Lanny's account of his father with reverence. Lanny assured him that U.S. would deal fairly with people and they could choose the form of government they wished, after the war, and he urged Matteo to wake up his people to necessity of educating the poor. Thèy talked through the night, and Pete escorted him to the outskirts of Frascati before light. He returned on the first tram and saw the ones opposite going full, and found out the reason was that American bombers had advised people to leave Rome in leaflets that day.
He found a message from Julie that Dino Grandi wanted to meet him, and he went to meet the man whom Matteotti had exposed in the parliament before he was murdered. They met at the Caporini palace and talked of Wickthorpe set, and Lanny found that Grandi had looked up Lanny's record in Italy. Grandi asked him why he was there, and Lanny said he knew people and was able to carry messages. Grandi asked if he really knew Hitler, and Lanny said He knew him and Göring both, they'd offered to pay him but he had declined.
"Grandi revealed that Il Duce had gone to the border for a conference with Hitler, a meeting in which history might be made. He was due back soon, and then the pot might boil over, for Hitler’s demands would be likely to drive the Italians to desperation."
Commendatore d'Angelo sent a message and Lanny met him, he knew already about Grandi meeting and asked about it. In return he told about his side.
"Army was going to stand by the King, and the King was going to put Badoglio at the head of the government; at least that was the program. Mussolini was expected back from Feltre, scene of the conference with Hitler, in the morning; already the Badoglio partisans knew, or claimed to know, that Hitler was demanding more Italian troops for the Russian front, and was proposing to give up the whole of the Italian boot to the Allies and base his defense line on the River Po. It was to be hoped that Mussolini had refused the demands; certainly, to accept them would mean his own downfall."
Bombers came next morning just as Lanny finished his breakfast at a sidewalk cafe, and most people watched. Railroad yards and airfields were bombed before they left, only five out of six hundred downed. Lanny met d'Angelo later and sent off reports in two opposite directions. He heard about the turmoil in the fascist top assembly with Grandi leading the charge, and Julie took to calling him for news by mentioning a painting on the phone.
"“Vannucci” would prove to be an inside story of the meeting between II Duce and the Führer, straight from the lips of Ciano’s latest innamorata. It bore all the signs of authenticity, because it described Adi as shouting down the Duck and giving him no chance to speak for several hours. The Italian was always at a disadvantage in dealing with his German ally because he thought he could speak German, was proud of the fact, and insisted upon showing it off; his blunders irritated Hitler, who knew no foreign language and had too much sense to try to pretend otherwise."
Grandi forced a meeting of fascist grand council, where Mussolini said Italy wouldn't be invaded, and Grandi and Ciano tore into him. Lanny got the account from d'Angelo who had it from one councillor. They insisted on voting, and it was nineteen to seven for Grandi, who got it in writing. Mussolini accepted it, he was old and sick.
"When the King summoned him, he took his time about going and went with an escort of a hundred and fifty of his bodyguards in a long train of cars. But he made the mistake of posting them outside the grounds of the royal villa. Inside the grounds the Army officers had hidden some fifty of the carabiniere, also an ambulance. When Mussolini entered to the King he was told abruptly that he was dismissed, and when he went outside he was forced into the ambulance and driven away, to the Braschi Fortress, outside Rome. The cabinet resigned, and Marshal Badoglio was appointed the new Premier.
"It was eleven o’clock on Sunday night when that news was made public, and then Lanny Budd witnessed one of the strangest sights of his life. It was a moonless night, very dark and very hot; the people poured out into the streets to celebrate, many of them in their pajamas. The wild demonstration went on until morning, dancing, singing, shouting, blowing horns—it was like New Year’s Eve in Times Square, New York. People built bonfires, and what a strange sight in a blacked-out city which had been bombed less than a week ago! Soldiers in trucks raced through the streets, waving the tricolor flag—green, white, and red—of the monarchy and singing the songs of twenty years ago. Crowds gathered before the Palazzo Venezia, where once they had cheered a uniformed pouter pigeon spouting defiance to the whole world; now they kicked on the gates, spat on the walls, and cursed it. Others gathered before the Regina Coeli prison, by the Tiber bank, demanding the release of the prisoners whom the tyrant had put there. Everywhere men wearing Black Shirt uniforms were attacked on the streets."
Lanny sought a meeting with Badoglio, who wouldn't commit while Germans were present in force, said they'd wreck the country if Rome was taken by allies and objected to allies having to fight their way north through, and suggested allies stay off Italy. Lanny decided his usefulness in rome was over, and best way to leave was by Hitler sending him out. He left a message at the office of Kesselring who wasn't in town, and within the hour was taken by car to the airfield and flown North over Alps.
............................................................................
It was when plane began its descent that he realised he was going to Berghof. At Berghof after arrival, in the main hall he met Kurt. They talked until adi came in, and heard details about Rome from Lanny, who told him everything he wanted to hear. Over a cosy dinner with only Eva added, Lanny was asked to provide more details of his Rome sojourn. After dinner he played music, since Kurt had lost an arm, and later they talked more, Eva sent off. Hitler said he was looking at the possibility of a defeated Germany overrun by Russians. He asked Kurt to relocate to Switzerland where he'd be provided with funds enough to make home and live out his life with family and write an opera.
They were excused at three and flown to Berlin together in the morning. Lanny had said he needed one day each, in Berlin and Paris, latter to see Denis De Bruyne. They were brought to town by an SS officer in a car, and Lanny delivered to a smaller hotel where he was not known. He'd called Göring's office and was invited for lunch, and had seen damages to the city by then. They spoke of war, Göring saying Lanny could bear witness that Göring had opposed the Russian campaign, and they spoke of Ribbentrop.
Lanny brought up the painting he'd seen in Rome, a Titian more likely than a Giorgione, and Göring wanted it. They returned to war and Göring said he'd advise stopping but his boss wouldn't hear of it.
Operation Husky began on July 9, and Lanny went to Julie's to hear radio he could operate. Nazis reported allied forces being repulsed at successively more inland places and towards one another.
"General Eisenhower helped the secret agent by delivering over the radio a proclamation in which he told the people of Italy and Sicily the same things that Lanny had been telling Signor d’Angelo and Marshal Badoglio and other leading citizens. The document was signed by Roosevelt and Churchill, and Eisenhower read it in English and then had it repeated in Italian. The General’s voice was friendly and persuasive, and he told the people that Fascism was their real enemy, and that as soon as they had thrown it off they could be friends and allies of the Americans and English. The Axis radio did not repeat this message and their newspapers did not print it, but they undertook to answer its arguments, and as it happens you cannot effectively answer arguments without revealing what they are."
American bombers showered Sicily and Rome with leaflets at night, and people knew they could deliver bombs next. Lanny noticed reaction of people when he spoke Italian with a German accent in public, and nobody attacked him physically, but there was sly pleasure. Commendatore d'Angelo said bombing Rome was necessary and a palace hit would help.
The Marchesa had a friend whose villa in Frascati had paintings she said Lanny should go see, and he couldn't very well refuse. Halfway he was joined on the crowded tram by a man with a grey beard whom he suddenly recognised, but Pietro Corsatti refused to admit his identity and suddenly got off; Lanny was prepared and followed him, and told him he hadn't changed. Lanny told him in detail about what Matteotti had said in seance, and Pietro Corsatti was amazed, he'd taken such things as frauds. They spoke about American forces coming, and about Matteotti. Lanny cautioned Pete against talking about him, and Pete said he should meet Matteo, the son of Matteotti. They arranged the details, after which Lanny went on to finish the art business in Frascati and return to Rome. Two days later he got a card and went to Frascati to meet Pete at the ruins and be led on a donkey to meet Matteo.
Matteo had questions that everybody had asked, after he heard Lanny's account of his father with reverence. Lanny assured him that U.S. would deal fairly with people and they could choose the form of government they wished, after the war, and he urged Matteo to wake up his people to necessity of educating the poor. Thèy talked through the night, and Pete escorted him to the outskirts of Frascati before light. He returned on the first tram and saw the ones opposite going full, and found out the reason was that American bombers had advised people to leave Rome in leaflets that day.
He found a message from Julie that Dino Grandi wanted to meet him, and he went to meet the man whom Matteotti had exposed in the parliament before he was murdered. They met at the Caporini palace and talked of Wickthorpe set, and Lanny found that Grandi had looked up Lanny's record in Italy. Grandi asked him why he was there, and Lanny said he knew people and was able to carry messages. Grandi asked if he really knew Hitler, and Lanny said He knew him and Göring both, they'd offered to pay him but he had declined.
"Grandi revealed that Il Duce had gone to the border for a conference with Hitler, a meeting in which history might be made. He was due back soon, and then the pot might boil over, for Hitler’s demands would be likely to drive the Italians to desperation."
Commendatore d'Angelo sent a message and Lanny met him, he knew already about Grandi meeting and asked about it. In return he told about his side.
"Army was going to stand by the King, and the King was going to put Badoglio at the head of the government; at least that was the program. Mussolini was expected back from Feltre, scene of the conference with Hitler, in the morning; already the Badoglio partisans knew, or claimed to know, that Hitler was demanding more Italian troops for the Russian front, and was proposing to give up the whole of the Italian boot to the Allies and base his defense line on the River Po. It was to be hoped that Mussolini had refused the demands; certainly, to accept them would mean his own downfall."
Bombers came next morning just as Lanny finished his breakfast at a sidewalk cafe, and most people watched. Railroad yards and airfields were bombed before they left, only five out of six hundred downed. Lanny met d'Angelo later and sent off reports in two opposite directions. He heard about the turmoil in the fascist top assembly with Grandi leading the charge, and Julie took to calling him for news by mentioning a painting on the phone.
"“Vannucci” would prove to be an inside story of the meeting between II Duce and the Führer, straight from the lips of Ciano’s latest innamorata. It bore all the signs of authenticity, because it described Adi as shouting down the Duck and giving him no chance to speak for several hours. The Italian was always at a disadvantage in dealing with his German ally because he thought he could speak German, was proud of the fact, and insisted upon showing it off; his blunders irritated Hitler, who knew no foreign language and had too much sense to try to pretend otherwise."
Grandi forced a meeting of fascist grand council, where Mussolini said Italy wouldn't be invaded, and Grandi and Ciano tore into him. Lanny got the account from d'Angelo who had it from one councillor. They insisted on voting, and it was nineteen to seven for Grandi, who got it in writing. Mussolini accepted it, he was old and sick.
"When the King summoned him, he took his time about going and went with an escort of a hundred and fifty of his bodyguards in a long train of cars. But he made the mistake of posting them outside the grounds of the royal villa. Inside the grounds the Army officers had hidden some fifty of the carabiniere, also an ambulance. When Mussolini entered to the King he was told abruptly that he was dismissed, and when he went outside he was forced into the ambulance and driven away, to the Braschi Fortress, outside Rome. The cabinet resigned, and Marshal Badoglio was appointed the new Premier.
"It was eleven o’clock on Sunday night when that news was made public, and then Lanny Budd witnessed one of the strangest sights of his life. It was a moonless night, very dark and very hot; the people poured out into the streets to celebrate, many of them in their pajamas. The wild demonstration went on until morning, dancing, singing, shouting, blowing horns—it was like New Year’s Eve in Times Square, New York. People built bonfires, and what a strange sight in a blacked-out city which had been bombed less than a week ago! Soldiers in trucks raced through the streets, waving the tricolor flag—green, white, and red—of the monarchy and singing the songs of twenty years ago. Crowds gathered before the Palazzo Venezia, where once they had cheered a uniformed pouter pigeon spouting defiance to the whole world; now they kicked on the gates, spat on the walls, and cursed it. Others gathered before the Regina Coeli prison, by the Tiber bank, demanding the release of the prisoners whom the tyrant had put there. Everywhere men wearing Black Shirt uniforms were attacked on the streets."
Lanny sought a meeting with Badoglio, who wouldn't commit while Germans were present in force, said they'd wreck the country if Rome was taken by allies and objected to allies having to fight their way north through, and suggested allies stay off Italy. Lanny decided his usefulness in rome was over, and best way to leave was by Hitler sending him out. He left a message at the office of Kesselring who wasn't in town, and within the hour was taken by car to the airfield and flown North over Alps.
............................................................................
It was when plane began its descent that he realised he was going to Berghof. At Berghof after arrival, in the main hall he met Kurt. They talked until adi came in, and heard details about Rome from Lanny, who told him everything he wanted to hear. Over a cosy dinner with only Eva added, Lanny was asked to provide more details of his Rome sojourn. After dinner he played music, since Kurt had lost an arm, and later they talked more, Eva sent off. Hitler said he was looking at the possibility of a defeated Germany overrun by Russians. He asked Kurt to relocate to Switzerland where he'd be provided with funds enough to make home and live out his life with family and write an opera.
They were excused at three and flown to Berlin together in the morning. Lanny had said he needed one day each, in Berlin and Paris, latter to see Denis De Bruyne. They were brought to town by an SS officer in a car, and Lanny delivered to a smaller hotel where he was not known. He'd called Göring's office and was invited for lunch, and had seen damages to the city by then. They spoke of war, Göring saying Lanny could bear witness that Göring had opposed the Russian campaign, and they spoke of Ribbentrop.
Lanny brought up the painting he'd seen in Rome, a Titian more likely than a Giorgione, and Göring wanted it. They returned to war and Göring said he'd advise stopping but his boss wouldn't hear of it.
............................................................................
Lanny went to meet Marceline who was close to Berlin, taking care of Oskar who was wounded, and she wanted nothing to do either with war or politics.
"“Could you take me with you to America?”
"“No, old dear, I couldn’t. Your position is a peculiar one: under American law you have the right to choose the citizenship of your mother, but you would have to be in American territory to have that right recognized. Under both French and German law you are French because your father was. I suppose that if you could get to Sweden, the American Ambassador would have power to recognize your status; but I doubt if he would, because you came into Germany after the war broke out and you have performed here after Germany declared war on your country. You will remember that I warned you at Juan.”"
Oskar came, he'd lost an arm and was suffering. Lanny needed to steer him to the topic of conspiracy and spoke about Göring's views. Oskar asked for names of people whose views were different from following nazis, and Lanny retreated saying he coukdn t break confidence, wondering if Gestapo had gotten to Oskar to watch Lanny. After he went to rest Lanny and Marceline spoke again outside.
"Marceline promised, “I will take more interest in what he is doing and he will tell me more. If he asks about you, I will assure him he can trust you.”
"“You mean to stay then?”
"“Stay? Where can I go?”"
Lanny went to meet Marceline who was close to Berlin, taking care of Oskar who was wounded, and she wanted nothing to do either with war or politics.
"“Could you take me with you to America?”
"“No, old dear, I couldn’t. Your position is a peculiar one: under American law you have the right to choose the citizenship of your mother, but you would have to be in American territory to have that right recognized. Under both French and German law you are French because your father was. I suppose that if you could get to Sweden, the American Ambassador would have power to recognize your status; but I doubt if he would, because you came into Germany after the war broke out and you have performed here after Germany declared war on your country. You will remember that I warned you at Juan.”"
Oskar came, he'd lost an arm and was suffering. Lanny needed to steer him to the topic of conspiracy and spoke about Göring's views. Oskar asked for names of people whose views were different from following nazis, and Lanny retreated saying he coukdn t break confidence, wondering if Gestapo had gotten to Oskar to watch Lanny. After he went to rest Lanny and Marceline spoke again outside.
"Marceline promised, “I will take more interest in what he is doing and he will tell me more. If he asks about you, I will assure him he can trust you.”
"“You mean to stay then?”
"“Stay? Where can I go?”"
............................................................................
Lanny was flown to Paris in the morning and had arranged to meet Denis in town. They met in his office, and talked first of war and of Budd-Erling, until Lanny mentioned meeting Denis fils. They spoke of family, and Denis said Charlot was living at Bienvenu which he'd commandeered for sake of protecting it. They spoke of the state of affairs, and Denis said he'd been wrong backing Germans; Lanny was flown to Madrid later that day, and had time in Madrid only to cable Robbie about arriving in Lisbon before he was flown there. He had to wait a while before he was flown, this time by Baker, out of Lisbon.
In Britain Baker had arranged Fordyce meeting him, so he was flown to London without hassle, and Fordyce informed him that he was to fly to Quebec in two days, there was Operation Quadrant. Lanny asked for two seats instead of one this time, intending to take Frances with him to Newcastle. He called Irma, and took a train.
"In the compartment with Lanny was a girl of five or six, an age which meant that war was her natural environment. She looked up at her mother and asked a question which would stay in Lanny’s mind for the rest of his life: “Mummy, was the bombing as bad as this in peacetime?”"
Frances met him at the station, and heard him speak at dinner, noting that the visitors were there to hear him. He told about war in Sicily. He'd promised Hitler to tell Wickthorpe set about his message, but wasn't keeping that promise. He was shown around next day and renewed his acquaintance with the two little Wickthorpe boys. Irma and Fanny barnes didn't wish to let frances go, but couldn't "prevent it.
"The pair had their conference in the library of the Castle, while the grandmother sat chafing in her little cottage, for Frances was her chief happiness in life, and she said it was like waiting to be told that she was to have her eyes cut out. Lanny was explaining to his ex-wife the danger which hung over the English people. “I cannot tell you how I know; you must take my word that I do. Hitler is speaking the truth when he says he has a new weapon; whether he is right in the idea that it will give him victory I can’t say, but I know that he believes it and is turning a great part of German science and industry to perfecting and producing this weapon.”
"“How soon will these things be ready, Lanny?”
"“That I cannot tell. There is no secret more carefully guarded. It might be a month and it might be half a year. We can be sure only that these flying bombs will come in showers, perhaps by the hundreds, and they will continue to come until we land and capture that French coast. They may even be improved so that they can come from Belgium or Holland.”
"“They will be aimed at London?”
"“That is the biggest target; but no one can be sure how accurate they will be. Who can guess how wind and weather may divert them? I am told that before the German scientists get through, they will have a bomb that flies faster than sound; then there will be no warning whatever, only a terrific explosion.”"
Lanny said he'd bring Frances back if she wasn't happy, but she was American, Robbie and Esther were eager to have her, and she was going to school. Irma gave in. Lanny called Fordyce to ask booking for second passage and went to arrange an American passport and a Canadian visa.
But meanwhile the newspapers broke the story of the Operation Quadrant, since Quebec was too close to U.S. border to keep a high level meeting secret, unlike Casablanca. So Lanny couldn't fly to Quebec or mention it to Irma, and they arranged the passage via Montreal, with Lanny asking Robbie to arrange Frances being driven from Montreal to Newcastle, with cousin Jennie who had taken care of Lanny in Newfoundland.
Lanny had a day before leaving and called Rick, and they met in the usual hotel to talk, and talked about Kurt and Wickthorpe, war and future.
"“God must be puzzled to have two English gentlemen offering him such different prayers.”
"“Count me out of the list of gentlemen,” responded the other.
"“I am a Left-Wing journalist, very poorly paid.”
"“What are you going to do, renounce the title?” inquired Lanny. This question was in order, for Rick’s father, the baronet, was in failing health and not likely to last much longer.
"“I’m not sure,” said the son. “I’ll ask the party. They talk of having me stand for Parliament.”
"“Hurrah!” exclaimed Lanny. “I’m wagering they’ll tell you to become Sir Eric. It will get you a lot of votes by mistake, and it won’t lose you many by intention.”"
Lanny thought of gentry who hated FDR and their sort in Britain who'd hate Rick, and he was reminded of
"English poet Mackay, answering the man who boasted of having no enemies:
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,
You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You’ve never turned the wrong to right,
You’ve been a coward in the fight."
............................................................................
Frances was brought to town and had eyes red from tears of parting, but was excited about flying. They flew from Prestwick on west coast of Scotland, and Frances had freedom of was meeting new people, unlike her life until now. She'd be no longer known as heiress or addressed as "your ladyship", but be plain Frances Barnes Budd.
They flew with stops at Iceland and Newfoundland, and Lanny told Frances about the man who'd walked away due to a premonition. In Montreal cousin Jennie was waiting at the Ritz-Carlton and frances was excited to meet everybody at Newcastle. Lanny called Laurel after they left, and read newspapers before his flight to Quebec.
"Allies were closing in on Messina, and that the Americans had bombed Rome a second time, including the airport from which Lanny had taken off. They had bombed Milan and Turin, Genoa and Berlin, all in the same day."
Lanny arrived in Montreal and called Baker, and had time to bathe and dine before walking over. His walking past Hotel Clarendon had him meet Jim Stotzlmann. They talked as Jim drew Lanny away from the crowd.
"“We are going to pin Winnie down this time and make him agree to the landing across the Channel.”"
Jim told him more about the conspiracy against FDR and said he had evidence against some people, which set a train of thought for Lanny. Lanny met FDR and told about Italy and Germany, Badoglio and Oskar, and about Matteo. They discussed Lanny's return to Italy, and Lanny said he shouldn't repeat the previous route of arrival, but instead get word to Hitler from Madrid or Stockholm, and that required some real material to be given him. Lanny mentioned what Jim told him, and FDR said he was aware of the conspiracies Jim mentioned.
"“Jim can make a report about it, and the more lurid he paints the situation, the better.”
"“He has already made two or three reports, and the color has deepened each time.”
"“All right then; that will save bother. Let us assume that you have the reports copied on official paper, with your letterhead and so on. You write a note to the Chief of Staff, or to Admiral Leahy, or somebody, calling attention to this dangerous situation; the documents are marked ‘top secret,’ and I take them to Hitler and tell him I paid a clerk a thousand dollars or two to have them stolen. I believe he would swallow that, and it would let him know I’m a top-notch agent.” ... “You might have Jim prepare a new report, one that would be still hotter; I might take the original to Hitler and say that it had never reached you. There is this further possibility: I might drop a hint to Hitler that his own agents in this country should take the matter up with the plotters. It is possible that he might give me the name of one of them. He gave me a contact in the days before Pearl Harbor; later I gave the name to General Donovan and learned that the fellow was safely locked up.”"
FDR said not to talk to anyone while he mulled it over, and Lanny said he'd never do that.
"“Nobody knows that I have been in Germany except the OSS people, and Ambassador Johnson in Stockholm where I came out the time before last.”
"“One person more, Lanny. I want you to talk with Harry Hopkins. Tell him the whole story, both Italy and Germany. He will probably be the one to make the decisions.”"
Lanny went walking in the country with Jim in the morning and Jim talked about the conspiracies. He'd heard a rich man's son boast about it.
"Jim had been working at his own expense with dictaphones and telephone tapping, and had a record of conversations which would have sufficed to send several prominent persons to the gallows for treason—if F.D.R. had been willing to move against them. But the Boss was easygoing, and talked about “hot air,” and the right of his enemies to shoot off their mouths, and the danger of splitting the country and giving encouragement to the enemy by taking such shooting too seriously. He would move quietly against the dissidents who were in government service, and they would take the hint that they were being watched and would pipe down.
"“What chance does the democratic tradition stand when its enemies control ninety per cent of the press and the radio and the money—plus all of the weapons? I tell you, the fellows who run the National Association of Manufacturers could take over the government of this country in twenty-four hours if ever they get mad enough to try it. And believe me, they’re going to get madder every hour in the economic crisis that will come after this war.”"
Lanny met Harry Hopkins at night, who wanted him to save the fleet as he'd done in France; Harry could give him a letter from the brother of the Admiral in command. Lanny said that would be difficult since they searched him thoroughly, and Harry said that would go on as long as Germans were in charge in Italy. He approved of Lanny's plan to give a report to Hitler.
"“I have no means of knowing what source of information he may have in this country, so that he’d be able to check up. I find it’s a good rule to tell the truth where I can.”"
Lanny met FDR again and he told about Castellano arriving in Lisbon on a false passport, authorised to make a deal with allies.
"“The newspapers seem to be worried because Stalin isn’t here.”
"“Stalin has a good excuse—we are settling the problem of the Japs too, and Russia wants to keep out of that. But we shall have to get together with Stalin soon. It won’t do us much good to lick the Nazis unless we can make friends with the Russians. We surely don’t want a Third World War!”"
............................................................................
Lanny went home to N.Y. and called Robbie, who said they were delighted with Frances. Lanny and Laurel drove to Newcastle to meet her, and after a couple of days drove out to Adirondacks to see Adella. They talked of buying a place nearby for permanent residence.
Lanny called Agnes regularly to check on the baby who had Bern left in her care, and was told Alston was in N.Y., so they returned to N.Y. and Lanny picked up Alston after dropping Laurel, and they talked while driving.
"“We have bombed Peenemünde several times this year, and our airmen come back and report that they have knocked the place out. But we have learned that airmen are inclined to optimism in regard to their achievements. Our information is that the experiments are going on and that rocket bombs are now actually in production. I don’t need to tell you how important that is to us; it might result in victory being snatched out of our hands. We cannot take the chance of having a shower of these frightful weapons falling upon our ships while our men are coming aboard in the English Channel ports.”
"“I understand, Professor, and I’ll make a try. But that won’t be an easy assignment.”
"“My point is, stick to that, rather than in helping with a job on Hitler. Neither Hitler nor any other German will surrender if he has such a weapon in his hands, and if we can get it in our hands we can knock out the whole kit and caboodle. Put your mind on getting anything you can—blueprints, technical descriptions, the formula of the combustibles they are using.”
"“How did we come to be so far behind in this matter, Professor?”
"“It is the custom to blame everything on the military mind, which is bent upon being ‘practical,’ and understands by that doing everything the way it has always been done. You cannot imagine what battles it has taken to force the adoption of new ideas. Nothing but a direct command from the President was able to get work started on atomic research, and I doubt if the general in command really believes in it to this hour. He is required to spend hundreds of millions of dollars at the demand of a bunch of young college professors who sit around and jabber mathematical formulas that sound like pure gibberish to him.”"
So Lanny prepared for his new assignment, this timed holed up in an obscure hotel suite with a young professor coaching him.
"He had to understand at least the elements of what the Americans knew about rockets and jets, and what they wanted to know from the Germans. He had to read, and then ask questions about what he didn’t understand, and then answer questions to be sure he had understood the answers. He was allowed to make notes, under the pledge that he would keep them pinned next to his heart and would destroy them before he landed anywhere on the Continent of Europe. Neither he nor young Professor Elbridge went out of the suite while this “majoring” was under way; their meals were brought to the room and they watched the waiter to be sure he didn’t pick up any papers. They had carefully searched the rooms for wiring, and now and then they opened the door to see if there was a listener in the hall. All this was melodramatic, and they made jokes while they did it—but they did it.
"“Don’t bother to try to understand the mathematics,” said the young professor, “but just learn the fact that rockets fueled with liquid oxygen can never travel farther than five hundred miles, and perhaps not quite that.”
"“Do they need to go any farther?” asked the pupil, and the answer took his breath away. “We have reports that the Germans are working on a Raketenbomber that will be capable of carrying a load of explosives halfway round the earth. They will not be satisfied with bombing London; they expect to wipe out New York and Chicago and Detroit.”
"Launching platforms for these were being built all along the coast facing England, and while these sites were being bombed, no one believed they had all been discovered. More alarming yet were experiments being carried on at Peenemünde and other places, aimed at the production of larger jet missiles, which would be able to rise into the stratosphere and there attain speeds faster than sound. The victims of such a missile would have no warning and no chance of escape; the tremendous explosion would come first, and the sound would come later—and in reverse, the louder sounds and then the less loud, as if the missile were going away instead of coming."
This applied to airplanes, making them supersonic, was where not only Germany but Italy was ahead of allies.
"Said this young physicist, “We have seen a report by Professor Wernher von Braun, the scientist in charge of jet propulsion research in Germany, in which he suggests the building of a new satellite to be launched from the earth and to circle about it, making a complete circuit in an hour and a half. Once it got above the atmosphere, about two hundred miles, it would encounter no resistance; centrifugal force would balance gravity, and it would continue in its course forever. It could be supplied by jet vehicles shot up to it, and the technicians who lived on it would be in position to issue orders to all the nations of the earth and to be obeyed. That is what war may come to, Mr. Budd!”"
Lanny went to Washington D.C. to meet Donovan and exchange information with OSS on this, including Professors Schilling and Salzmann and Plötzen. He learned that Monck was in Stockholm. Meanwhile both FDR and Churchill were back at the White House and Lanny called Baker to see if boss wanted to see him, and went as usual at night. Baker said he'd be flown to N.Y. in the morning and to England via Newfoundland, and British would fly him to Stockholm. His papers were taken care of.
FDR expressed concern about his going into Germany and Lanny said he got a kick out of being Hitler's only American friend, and he might have reason to fear when allies crossed the channel; FDR updated him about Italy having surrendered, and sent him off the talk to Churchill. They talked into small hours, about Lanny's travel and people he'd met and what he'd seen, about art and about conspiracies. Churchill said he'd have Fordyce escort Lanny from one plane to another in transit in Britain, so he needn't worry about his papers being checked.
............................................................................
Lanny arrived in Stockholm wearing the undershirt fitted with and inner pocket for papers provided by OSS, and contacted Monck and Eric Erickson. Eric invited him to dinner, and they talked of German advances in jet propulsion, rockets, and whether allies were to invade via Norway. Press correspondents accompanying North African invasion had Bern told to bring cold weather gear, and consequently German forces had been rushed to Norway using Swedish railway. Now Sweden had forbidden use of their railway for military purposes to Germany, and the soldiers were sent pretending to be tourists while their gear was sent on ships. Eric had information about German advances in rockets.
"“I am told that more than a thousand test flights have been made,” said Erickson, “and that the weapon has a range of forty miles. The Germans call it Vergeltungswaffe Eins—reprisal weapon number 1—shortened to V-1. Several of the rockets have fallen in our mountain forests, and the fragments have been carefully gathered up. It’s all very hush-hush of course, but I know one of our government experts who has studied them, and I might find out a few details if it would interest you especially.”
"“It would interest my father very much,” said Lanny, and added, “Needless to say, I won’t mention the source of the information, to him or anyone else.”
"Erickson said that he expected to be in Berlin very shortly. He would be at Karinhall part of the time, and they might meet there. He added, “I’ll see if I can bring some jet-propulsion man for you.” That was practically saying, “I know what you are up to!” But so long as Lanny hadn’t said anything definite, he hadn’t broken the rule. Before they parted the host remarked, “I am staying in town tonight, and I’ll talk to the V-1 expert at lunchtime. He wouldn’t talk frankly to you, but he will to me. We Swedes help the Allies wherever we can without getting caught. We are a free people—and besides that, we all have relatives in America.”
"Lanny agreed to come to the club in midafternoon to see what his friend had found out. At the appointed hour he presented himself, and the oil man put into his hand a legal-sized envelope, well stuffed. “This will tell you what we have been able to learn about the projectiles which have fallen in Sweden. Don’t say where or how you got it; and I advise you to get it out of the country quickly.” Lanny promised to heed this advice.
"Back in his hotel room he went without his dinner in order to study that report. The Vergeltungswaffe Eins was a robot plane, that is, one that flew without a pilot. It was jet-powered, scooping in air at the front, compressing it and heating it and then shooting it out in back. It was estimated to have a speed of about three hundred and fifty miles an hour and a range of about forty miles. The war load it would carry would be about a ton."
Having learned it and memorized the diagrams, Lanny wrote out the additional details of what hed heard from Eric, and carried it to the rendezvous with Monck, where, having met after usual precautions, he handed it over, and Monck said it would be sent off promptly. Monck cautioned him about bring seen with him, since he was watched. Lanny asked him for his contact in Germany in jet propulsion and rockets, and Monck said it was very dangerous. Lanny said he thought he could get invited, but Monck said that was only to meet the top nazis. Lanny said he could pass for a German when meeting ordinary people in places they didn't know him.
"“That’s the trouble; people change, they lose their nerve, they swallow the propaganda. You know, it is hard for any German to think of letting the Russians into the country. Then, too, spying is universal; people disappear, their homes are watched, and anyone who asks for them disappears also.”"
Lanny asked about Professor Schilling.
"“Schilling is a timid little gentleman, very much wrapped up in his specialty, and horrified to discover that it has become a war issue. He had never dreamed of such a possibility; he keeps saying that he thought only of discovering truth and now he finds himself a servant of the prince of lies. He used to be a free man in his laboratory, but now rough people pull him and haul him and give him orders, they spy on him and clamor for results. ‘I am a goose that they hope will lay a golden egg,’ he said. ‘Then they will kill me.’”"
Lanny asked if Plötzen had connected his disappearance with Lanny, and Monck said he didn't think so but couldn't be sure. Lanny asked if Plötzen nursed hatred of nazis in his heart.
"“Plötzen is a coward, and also a snob. He is a man of wealth and means to hang onto it. He is proud of his ability to be a leading theoretical physicist and at the same time preserve his social standing.”
"“Yes, but not that solid-gold Berlin plutocracy, the Herrenklub crowd. To them a scientist is a higher sort of menial, useful and necessary, but kept in his place. ... I wouldn’t advise you to put your life in Plötzen’s keeping—at least not until he has become sure that the Nazis are on the skids.””
Monck gave him the name of one of his determined contacts, Johann Seidl, a watchmaker and a Nazi block leader in Berlin. If he was alive, he could be trusted, Monck said.
"“The young Germans are no good to anybody,” said Lanny’s friend; “but when you get an old fellow who has had Socialist training you have someone to depend on.”
"“What shall I use for a password?” asked the P.A. “Tell him that you were married to Trudi Schultz,” was the reply. “He knew her, and he may have some of her drawings hidden away.”"
Next morning Lanny wrote in German on the Grand Hotel stationary to the German Minister in Stockholm, asking him to call the number he provided, to inform Hitler or his secretary Ista Schröder, that Lanny was at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm. He sent it by employing a passing boy as a courier while he watched from inside a store opposite the legation, making fairly sure that he wasn't observed by allied agents, since his pretended treason made him a fair target to both sides. He read newspapers while he waited in his hotel room and learned that Rome being taken by paratroopers hadn't taken place, so he guessed that the king and the government of Italy had lost nerve and sought protection behind allied lines, which he learned later was correct, leaving allied troops to fight it out to Rome. In a couple of hours someone knocked on his door, and having asked his name, handed him a sealed and unmarked plain envelope with a ticket inside, to a flight to Berlin scheduled for that afternoon. The man said he had a car waiting outside for Lanny, and Lanny proceeded to pack to leave. The man saw him take off, and an SS officer escorted him when he landed in Berlin, from the airfield to the New Chancellory building on Wilhelmstrasse.
............................................................................
The building had been bombed, but adi's offices weren't, and when Lanny entered he saw Heinrich, who said he'd been called to escort Lanny while adi was detained on front; they spent four days and nights together, their meals and other services provided, and they walked around.
"The widows and the orphans were not permitted to appear in mourning, but you could see the grief in their faces, and you saw crippled men in large numbers. There was a gigantic sausage machine in the east, grinding up German manhood and making thousands of new widows and orphans every day."
Other people came to see him, Major Feldman whom he'd known since he first visited parteitag at Nürnberg, and doctor Heubach who'd been at Berghof when he'd taken Laurel there. The three talked about scientific advances in Germany.
"Said this blond and bland Nazi physician, “For ages men have known that cattle and dogs and poultry should be bred only from the best males; but superstition has prevented this obvious course being taken with human breeding. Now for the first time we have a generation of young women trained to understand their highest service to the Fatherland; and the absence of men at the front need make no difference in our birthrate, because we can use the method of artificial insemination.”
"Lanny expressed interest in this point of view, and the doctor went on to point out that hitherto science had been compelled to get its knowledge of human physiology by experiments upon animals, all of which differed to greater or less extent from humans. But now, thanks to the Führer’s fervent belief in racial superiority, the scientists of the National Socialist world had an unlimited supply of human subjects, male and female, old and young, for whatever experiments might be useful to the state. The visitor from abroad said that that was a new idea to him and it seemed the most important that had yet come out of the Neue Ordnung; whereupon the doctor went into details about the wonders he had witnessed in the laboratories.
"Lanny had a hard time to keep from being sick to his stomach, but he managed to wear a look of proper scientific curiosity while Dr. Heubach told how men, women, and children of the sub-human Jewish and Polish races were being used to determine how long they could exist without food, without water, without air, and at what stages they could be revived from collapse induced by such deprivations. How much heat could they stand and how much cold? What would be the effect upon their metabolism of the removal of the gall bladder, of the large intestine, of the spleen. And so on."
The doctor had himself watched experiments at Dachau. There were various experiments including about disease treatments, about survival in arctic cold water and about air pressure.
"Always their gold teeth and fillings were knocked out, and Dr. Heubach remarked in passing that the income from these had paid the cost of the experiments."
Himmler came to see Lanny, which awed Heinrich, and Lanny spoke with him answering his queries at length. Lanny was aware of his doings.
"Genghis Khan, doubtless had been equally willing to kill, but he couldn’t have had so great a population to work on. This SS Reichsführer had ordered the deaths of several millions of Jews and several millions of Poles—Lanny had no means of estimating how many, but he knew they were being disposed of in immense extermination factories, their bodies shoved into furnaces and their bones ground up to make fertilizer for the German fields. Also there were the hundreds of thousands of Germans and other pure-blooded Aryans who did not happen to agree with Nazi ideology; they were shot, or locked up behind barbed wire to die by slow stages. No outsider knew their number, and it might be that no records were kept. ... They had some five thousand agents in foreign lands, and no doubt many secret agents in Allied lands."
Lanny proceeded to explain his meeting various people in Rome by relating that the Gestapo man he'd met there had suggested it for sake of getting information to Hitler, and Himmler asked about robbie, which was easier to respond; Himmler asked to see the papers Lanny had brought for Hitler, and Lanny said he'd rather not, unless so ordered by Hitler.
"“No doubt he will show them to you if he thinks they have value.” Lanny, extremely anxious not to offend this dangerous man, went on to suggest, “If you would call him on the telephone and ask him to change his instructions—”
"“Never mind, Herr Budd; the wait will not be long. I am pleased to learn that the Führer has a friend who is to be depended upon.”
"Was that sarcasm or was it piety? Had the P.A. made another friend or another enemy? He had no idea which. It is the nature of despotism all over the world that no man can trust any other, or be sure of the meaning of any spoken word.
"The land of Beethoven, of Goethe and Schiller, had become Turkey under the Sultan Abdul Hamid, Russia under Ivan the Terrible, Spain under Torquemada, chief of the Holy Inquisition."
The building had been bombed, but adi's offices weren't, and when Lanny entered he saw Heinrich, who said he'd been called to escort Lanny while adi was detained on front; they spent four days and nights together, their meals and other services provided, and they walked around.
"The widows and the orphans were not permitted to appear in mourning, but you could see the grief in their faces, and you saw crippled men in large numbers. There was a gigantic sausage machine in the east, grinding up German manhood and making thousands of new widows and orphans every day."
Other people came to see him, Major Feldman whom he'd known since he first visited parteitag at Nürnberg, and doctor Heubach who'd been at Berghof when he'd taken Laurel there. The three talked about scientific advances in Germany.
"Said this blond and bland Nazi physician, “For ages men have known that cattle and dogs and poultry should be bred only from the best males; but superstition has prevented this obvious course being taken with human breeding. Now for the first time we have a generation of young women trained to understand their highest service to the Fatherland; and the absence of men at the front need make no difference in our birthrate, because we can use the method of artificial insemination.”
"Lanny expressed interest in this point of view, and the doctor went on to point out that hitherto science had been compelled to get its knowledge of human physiology by experiments upon animals, all of which differed to greater or less extent from humans. But now, thanks to the Führer’s fervent belief in racial superiority, the scientists of the National Socialist world had an unlimited supply of human subjects, male and female, old and young, for whatever experiments might be useful to the state. The visitor from abroad said that that was a new idea to him and it seemed the most important that had yet come out of the Neue Ordnung; whereupon the doctor went into details about the wonders he had witnessed in the laboratories.
"Lanny had a hard time to keep from being sick to his stomach, but he managed to wear a look of proper scientific curiosity while Dr. Heubach told how men, women, and children of the sub-human Jewish and Polish races were being used to determine how long they could exist without food, without water, without air, and at what stages they could be revived from collapse induced by such deprivations. How much heat could they stand and how much cold? What would be the effect upon their metabolism of the removal of the gall bladder, of the large intestine, of the spleen. And so on."
The doctor had himself watched experiments at Dachau. There were various experiments including about disease treatments, about survival in arctic cold water and about air pressure.
"Always their gold teeth and fillings were knocked out, and Dr. Heubach remarked in passing that the income from these had paid the cost of the experiments."
Himmler came to see Lanny, which awed Heinrich, and Lanny spoke with him answering his queries at length. Lanny was aware of his doings.
"Genghis Khan, doubtless had been equally willing to kill, but he couldn’t have had so great a population to work on. This SS Reichsführer had ordered the deaths of several millions of Jews and several millions of Poles—Lanny had no means of estimating how many, but he knew they were being disposed of in immense extermination factories, their bodies shoved into furnaces and their bones ground up to make fertilizer for the German fields. Also there were the hundreds of thousands of Germans and other pure-blooded Aryans who did not happen to agree with Nazi ideology; they were shot, or locked up behind barbed wire to die by slow stages. No outsider knew their number, and it might be that no records were kept. ... They had some five thousand agents in foreign lands, and no doubt many secret agents in Allied lands."
Lanny proceeded to explain his meeting various people in Rome by relating that the Gestapo man he'd met there had suggested it for sake of getting information to Hitler, and Himmler asked about robbie, which was easier to respond; Himmler asked to see the papers Lanny had brought for Hitler, and Lanny said he'd rather not, unless so ordered by Hitler.
"“No doubt he will show them to you if he thinks they have value.” Lanny, extremely anxious not to offend this dangerous man, went on to suggest, “If you would call him on the telephone and ask him to change his instructions—”
"“Never mind, Herr Budd; the wait will not be long. I am pleased to learn that the Führer has a friend who is to be depended upon.”
"Was that sarcasm or was it piety? Had the P.A. made another friend or another enemy? He had no idea which. It is the nature of despotism all over the world that no man can trust any other, or be sure of the meaning of any spoken word.
"The land of Beethoven, of Goethe and Schiller, had become Turkey under the Sultan Abdul Hamid, Russia under Ivan the Terrible, Spain under Torquemada, chief of the Holy Inquisition."
............................................................................
Hitler was finally back, and Lanny waited for his turn to see him, while Heinrich brought news about who else was there - Papen, Pröfenik, ... - and Lanny tried to read what little he could, since non Nazi literature wasn't allowed in. Finally he was summoned at ten, and handed over the papers he'd been carrying, along with the story of how he acquired them. He told about the rich in U.S. against the war and the terror in Britain about news of German weapons.
"Führer rubbed his hands together, a characteristic gesture when he was pleased. “Tell them the worst!” he said. “Tell them that our Vergeltungswaffe Zwei will carry more than a ton and a half of explosive, and in full production will cost only a tenth as much as a bombing plane. Tell them it won’t be long before we build them so that they will release their cargo and then turn and fly back to their base; they will fly so fast that the British will not hear them until after they are gone.”"
Adi was pleased and sent for Heinrich and Eva and had Kannenberg serve goose, and he was allowed to sing for them, but in midst of Kannenberg singing came sound of sirens.
"There was danger in delay, for the British had fast bombers called Mosquitoes, and these delighted to make sneak raids, flying close to the ground to avoid the German radar. Thus the bombs often fell a few seconds after the warnings were heard, and this kept everybody anxious—which was what the malicious foe desired."
They were led to the 'Führerbunker,' a series of private apartments underground. They sat while aid paced in fury until it was over, and the guests retired to their rooms.
"Lanny Budd did not see his Führer again; he was never to see him again in this life—though he had no means of knowing that in advance. The P.A. would carry with him the image of a half-insane man pacing up and down in a room, and some nineteen or twenty months later he would read that the same man had paced that same room and then had shot himself in the head, while the onetime photographer’s assistant had swallowed cyanide in her little bedroom adjoining. And was Lanny to believe this—or was he to suppose that it was one more trick which Loki, god of lies, was playing upon mankind?"
Hitler was finally back, and Lanny waited for his turn to see him, while Heinrich brought news about who else was there - Papen, Pröfenik, ... - and Lanny tried to read what little he could, since non Nazi literature wasn't allowed in. Finally he was summoned at ten, and handed over the papers he'd been carrying, along with the story of how he acquired them. He told about the rich in U.S. against the war and the terror in Britain about news of German weapons.
"Führer rubbed his hands together, a characteristic gesture when he was pleased. “Tell them the worst!” he said. “Tell them that our Vergeltungswaffe Zwei will carry more than a ton and a half of explosive, and in full production will cost only a tenth as much as a bombing plane. Tell them it won’t be long before we build them so that they will release their cargo and then turn and fly back to their base; they will fly so fast that the British will not hear them until after they are gone.”"
Adi was pleased and sent for Heinrich and Eva and had Kannenberg serve goose, and he was allowed to sing for them, but in midst of Kannenberg singing came sound of sirens.
"There was danger in delay, for the British had fast bombers called Mosquitoes, and these delighted to make sneak raids, flying close to the ground to avoid the German radar. Thus the bombs often fell a few seconds after the warnings were heard, and this kept everybody anxious—which was what the malicious foe desired."
They were led to the 'Führerbunker,' a series of private apartments underground. They sat while aid paced in fury until it was over, and the guests retired to their rooms.
"Lanny Budd did not see his Führer again; he was never to see him again in this life—though he had no means of knowing that in advance. The P.A. would carry with him the image of a half-insane man pacing up and down in a room, and some nineteen or twenty months later he would read that the same man had paced that same room and then had shot himself in the head, while the onetime photographer’s assistant had swallowed cyanide in her little bedroom adjoining. And was Lanny to believe this—or was he to suppose that it was one more trick which Loki, god of lies, was playing upon mankind?"
............................................................................
Feldman was sent In the morning by adi to asked what Lanny required, and was provided with all the papers he'd asked for. He walled over to office of Göring who was at headquarters, and was connected on telephone. Göring said he'd be in town soon and invited Lanny to visit Karinhall. He checked into a small history close to physics institute, intending to vacate in the morning, and went to the institute to see Salzmann.
"He hadn’t got much, and didn’t expect to get much this time, but he was there because he had promised, and more important yet, because it would serve as camouflage to cover the visit he planned to make to Professor Schilling. In case the Gestapo were to make note of that visit and ask questions, Lanny could say, “The Führer asked me to meet Salzmann and Plötzen, and one of them mentioned Schilling to me last winter, as a person I ought to talk to.”"
Next he walked over to see the other scientist he'd met.
"Professor Plötzen, as different a type as you could imagine: urbane and somewhat cynical, a Weltmann and darling of fortune, keeping his position in the smart world even while he worked hard at an exacting specialty. He and Lanny had liked each other from the start and talked about various mutual friends. Lanny could not get away from the thought: Does this man suspect where my sympathies are? And where are his own?
"They chatted about atomic research, which was Plötzen’s Fach. He was saddened because he and his colleagues hadn’t been given funds enough for a real job, and of course he was eager for the smallest hint as to what was going on in the outside world. Lanny’s talk, which seemed casual, had been carefully discussed with Alston and men at OSS headquarters. Lanny would come right up to an important revelation and then fail to make it because he didn’t understand the subject and couldn’t be sure what he had heard; very tantalizing, but not the fault of a mere Kunstsachverständiger. Plötzen wouldn’t give him anything positive, but he did confirm that Germany’s atomic research was in the doldrums and that its one effort at nuclear fission was pathetically inadequate."
Lanny left, feeling he'd established himself as someone who told German scientists about allies' progress, and had lunch before visiting Professor Schilling who lived in a detached house. He met him and mentioned a that there was a fine work of art nearby by Rafaelli that he'd like to show the professor, and Schilling remembered the code which was a couple of years old. They went for a walk. They talked about what Lanny said allies needed, information about V-1 and V-2, and Schilling said it wasn't his subject, but Lanny asked if he could get information. Schilling was sceptical since a layperson wouldn't understand, and Lanny demonstrated his ability to learn by telling him everything he'd learned and telling what was required, while making it clear he'd only learned, and didn't and couldn't claim he understood or knew the subject. They arranged Lanny to return after three days or later.
............................................................................
She talked about Oskar, and then brought him out. They talked under the tree.
"The invalid officer expounded his thesis that his country had been brought to this plight by a set of gutter rats—“ignorant, low-class fanatics,” he called them—and surely the outside world could not blame the German people for this calamity."
Marceline had told Oskar about American newspapermen referring to Mr Big, and Oskar talked about Herr Grosse, which was a Jewish name. He said the problem was Herr Grosse had taken to himself all responsible military positions and issued detailed orders impossible to carry out, and asked what allies attitude would be if he were gone.
"Lanny was in position to say that he had discussed this question with persons of the highest authority and could state that the formula of unconditional surrender was meant for a criminal Regierung and not for a government of responsible persons with whom agreements could be made. Germany would be occupied in any case, but the purpose of the occupation would be to see a representative government firmly established. After having had opportunity for free and open discussion the people would be called upon to say what sort of government they wanted. “If you want official assurance on that point,” added the P.A., “it can be arranged for you to get it through one of our diplomatic offices—I suppose Switzerland would be the most convenient.”
"This pleased Oskar von Herzenberg, and it moved him to confidences. He told an extraordinary story, of which no hint had come out to the Allied world. Only two months previously a group of men had made a carefully planned effort to remove Herr Gross from the scene, and the effort had failed through the merest accident. Oskar did not say who the men were, but it became clear that they were Reichswehr officers, and that Oskar himself had had knowledge of the affair."
Here the author relates the brandy bottle bomb in plane affair, the previous attempt of the Stauffenberg group.
Lanny suggested the two visit a mountain resort in Switzerland, the Trois Rois hotel, and said they'd be contacted; he said he'd call, and Marceline could use the name of Holbein and describe an unlisted work using her imagination. Marceline was thrilled.
............................................................................
Lanny spent the night and called Göring's office from Berlin after arriving in the morning, and Göring said they were ready to leave. Lanny joined them, Baron von Behr among the other guests.
"The car sped over the Autobahn to the north, the long mournful horn warning traffic out of the way. The guests had an interesting topic of conversation, for one of the Baron’s spies had recently discovered the hiding place of a priceless collection of paintings belonging to a Jewish banker; the rascal had hidden them in a cave in the Thuringian mountains and then had sneaked away to Switzerland. Each of the treasures had been wrapped in oilcloth and tightly sealed against dampness; the list of them was a catalogue of famous names for the past five hundred years; and now the best had been brought to Karinhall, and a Kunstsachverständiger from overseas would have the delight of inspecting them. But he couldn’t buy any of them because Der Dicke couldn’t give him a clear title—not until he was able to get his hands on that “judische Schweinehund in Genf”!"
Lanny thought of FDR and his postage stamp collection.
"That was a difference between the Old World and the New, as Lanny saw it; the Old had far more culture, more subtlety, more taste—but it had also more cruelty and hatred. Take your choice between esthetics and ethics!"
"When evening came the master of the household made his appearance in a costume of flowing white silk, like a Doge of Venice, studded with jewels, with the emblematic stag of St. Hubertus on his head, and—most fantastic of incongruities—a swastika of pearls set between the stag’s antlers. Thus clad, he led his guests in a train about the mansion, showing them a domed library like that in the Vatican, with a desk twenty-six feet long, made of mahogany with bronze swastikas inlaid, and having on it two huge baroque candelabra of solid gold—so he told them—an inkstand of onyx, and a long ruler of green ivory studded with jewels.
"Eric Erickson arrived from Stockholm by plane. Göring had a business conference with him, and that set Lanny free to enjoy the paintings in his own way. He was joined by young Bruno Lohse, Baron von Behr’s assistant on the Einsatzstab, a Nazi who really loved great art and had discovered that Lanny loved it too. Later in the day this pair went for a walk in the magnificently kept forest, which had once belonged to the Prussian government, but which Göring had calmly taken for his own. Never had there been such graft since Robert Clive had been astonished by his own moderation in India."
They had the usual extravaganza of meal and train set show et al.
"Next day, which was Sunday, the P.A. was standing in front of a Rubens, a group of those immense fleshy ladies reclining nude upon a bed of grass and ferns. Red Erickson came up behind and remarked, “There are seldom any ants or mosquitoes in paintings.” When Lanny had stopped chuckling over that novel bit of art criticism, the oil man said in a low tone, “I haven’t been able to get anything yet, but I may be able to. I’ll be at the Hotel Eden for a couple of days.” Lanny said, “Thanks,” and that was all. They didn’t take a drive together this time; they had both decided that it would not be the part of wisdom to call their friendship to the attention of the Nazis.
"The son of Budd-Erling had been offered a lot of rewards in the course of his extensive travels. Prior to America’s entrance into the war both Hitler and Göring had offered to pay him for his services, an amount never specified because he had not let discussion get that far. Mr. Hearst had offered him fifty thousand a year to enter his service as a collector of confidential information. F.D.R., too, had offered payment for what Lanny preferred to do freely. Even Pierre Laval, the butcher’s son, had tried to buy him! And now the chief of the Luftwaffe, Reichsminister and Governor-General of Prussia, put on his sky-blue uniform with broad dark-blue stripes on the trousers and not less than two-score medals and decorations on his bosom; with all that magnificence he summoned a Franco-American art expert into his study and made him an offer of a million dollars. One million dollars in paintings, to be chosen from the ten thousand masterpieces to which Göring possessed a clear title—and Lanny himself would be permitted to put the price upon them. Göring’s old and valued friend would be put upon his professional honor and would state the true value of the works he wanted, and he could have them up to a total of one million dollars!
"And what did he have to do for that? Just to bring to the Luftwaffe chief the specifications and blueprints of whatever jet pursuit planes the Budd-Erling Aircraft Corporation might have in process at the present time. When Lanny looked staggered and said he had no idea how he could get such documents, Der Dicke replied, “Don’t tell me that, Lanny! They are there, and you have access to the place and must know people there who feel as you do. With your father taking the position that he does, might it not be that he would help you?”
"Lanny was stuck, for here he had been telling all the leading Nazis that his father was to all intents and purposes a prisoner of the Jewish-pluto-democratic government, compelled to serve it against his will; and if so, why shouldn’t he choose to help the German people whom he so greatly admired?"
Lanny said his father was watched closely, and wouldn't do it for reasons of business, but Lanny knew a man, he'd see what he could do, and he couldn't claim that a million dollars in paintings wasn't tempting.
"“There must be no delay, Lanny. My information is that the project is far advanced; and you know it takes time to get a new type of plane into production.”
"“I’ll do my best, alter Freund. I’m expecting to go straight home. I admit that I am tempted by the thought of your paintings.” Hitherto Lanny had proudly refused all bribes; but a million dollars, and in the form of old masters—that was beyond the powers of human nature! To refuse it could not be made to seem plausible.
"Hermann’s last words startled Lanny. “Take my advice,” he said, “and be careful in your dealings with the Führer. He is under a great strain and is not always able to control his emotions. Believe me, I know!”
"When Lanny sank to rest that night on a Rosshaarmatratze in one of the guest rooms of Karinhall, he was saying to himself, “My days in Naziland are about over!”"
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Lanny returned to Berlin driven in transport by Göring, and after an air raid and a dinner, met Professor Schilling. Schilling said he'd like to meet him after all this was over, and made sure Lanny learned what he told him before they parted ways. Lanny went to his hotel quickly and called Marceline before turning in for the night. He was flying out next day unless she had "a Holbein" for him, and she said she'd call him in the morning if she had one; he gave her the hotel number.
In the morning he had breakfast in room, unwilling to leave until there was a call. There was a knock on door and he went down to take the call.
"There was no booth, but it didn’t matter, for he didn’t expect to have much to say; just “Sehr gut, ich komme,” or else “Schade. Auf Wiedersehen.” He took up the receiver and heard Marceline’s voice, asking if he had had a pleasant night and if he was still interested in the Holbein painting. He answered that he was still interested. He knew that she was giving him a chance to make sure who was speaking, and he said, “I would like to take it to Bienvenu”—so that she could be sure who was her auditor.
"She began a speech, slowly and very distinctly, so that he might get every word. This was the speech: “I have seen the painting. It is a grim and rather frightening thing, but there can be no doubt of its power. It is called ‘Death in the Twilight.’ I urge you to see it at once; somebody else may get it, so don’t delay a moment. I am no longer at home and cannot take you to see it, but don’t fail to take my advice. Promise me.”
"“Yes, of course. Where can I see it?”
"“It is at Neuschloss.”
"“Neuschloss?” he echoed. He wasn’t usually dumb, but this quiet yet terrible series of sentences had set his heart to pounding and thrown his mind into confusion.
"“Surely you remember!” exclaimed the voice. “The place where your translator lives.”
"Lanny’s translator! He had no such person and had never needed one, except years ago in Russia. But he caught on: Marceline wanted him to translate Neuschloss. Newcastle! And that meant: Get out of Germany! It meant get out at once. Death in the Twilight! “Ja, ich verstehe,” he said. “Ich werde mir das Bild ansehen—noch heute. Wie geht es Dir?”
"“Heil Hitler!” came the response. “Lebe wohl!” And that was all; the phone was dead."
Lanny walked away from the telephones where there was no privacy, to think.
"His thoughts were in a tumult. Marceline had given him a warning that his life was in danger; that could be the only meaning of her words. “Death in the Twilight” had nothing to do with any painting by the younger Holbein. “Grim and rather frightening!” Rather, indeed! Marceline meant the Gestapo; she could mean nothing else. She had fled from them, and it might be that she had risked her life in order to warn her half-brother. Did it mean that Oskar’s plot had been discovered and that Oskar himself had been caught? Or did it mean that Oskar was a spy and had betrayed the half-brother of his Freundin? Or that Himmler had found out something else about Lanny Budd and had sent his men to arrest him? Somehow or other, Marceline had found out about it; perhaps a servant had warned her, as four years ago one had warned Laurel Creston in this same Hauptstadt of terror!
"Anyhow, Lanny had been warned, and in words there was no mistaking. “At once … don’t delay a moment.” That was somewhat out of key with the viewing of a painting and was as far as anyone would dare to go over a telephone in Naziland. The Gestapo was looking for the Füherer’s American friend; and here he was in a hotel—which was like sitting down inside a trap! Surely the first thing the Gestapo would do was to put their telephone system to work on the hotels. He was registered here in his own name and it would take but a few minutes to locate him. They might be entering the lobby at this moment. The clerk would say, “Der Herr ist in der Toilette.”
"Lanny Budd was no longer in the Toilette. He was strolling out, as nonchalantly as he could. He did not go back to his room, but strolled out by the front door and down the street. He had no hat on, but it was a pleasant cool day, and a number of men were going without hats these days; they were hard to get, and people wore no more of anything than the weather and the law required. Down the street, and around a corner, then around another corner and another, and now he was part of the crowd in a big city; now he was no longer “registered” and easy to find. Of course he might run into someone who knew him, and who knew that he was wanted by the Polizei; but that wasn’t likely. The Polizei would have his photograph, but it would take them a few hours to get it reproduced and distributed, and meantime the son of Budd-Erling was just a good-looking middle-aged gentleman out for a stroll. There were plenty of Germans who looked like him, also Danes and Frenchmen and Swiss and others.
"Lanny couldn’t go on walking the streets of Berlin all day. He must have someplace where he could sit down and think things out and wait until night. He bethought himself of a device he had used when he had been in danger in Toulon: a cinema! There you could sit in nearly complete darkness, and for as long as you pleased; there nobody paid any attention to you—being carried away into a dream world, the farther from reality the better.
"Fortunately Lanny had his purse and his billfold, also his papers; he must keep these latter for the present, for at any moment on the street he might be asked to show them. They would identify him as Lanny Budd, but there would be a chance that, for this day at least, the questioner would not have his name in mind; whereas to be caught without any papers would inevitably mean being taken to the nearest police station and thoroughly investigated.
"Lanny stopped at a small grocery, somewhat elaborately known in Germany as a Kolonialwarenladen. He bought a package of cookies called Leibnitzkeks and stowed them away in his pockets. They would last him for the day. The cinemas opened early in all German cities and closed early because of the blackout. Lanny went to the nearest, regardless of the program, and found himself a seat at the side, where other people wouldn’t stumble over him. There he sat and thought how he was going to get to Neuschloss, Connecticut!"
Lanny sat through more than one repeat of the program, thinking; the audience hissed when Goebbels was heard on the newsreel. There was a film about Frederick the great that made him sound like a Nazi and not what he'd been. Lanny couldn't go ask for protection from Hitler or Göring if Himmler was after him, and meanwhile he didn't know which side Oskar was, either.
"One thing was certain, Marceline would not have given such a warning unless she had been sure that Lanny was in dire peril. She had made it as plain as words over the telephone could be; and there was no other possible meaning for the words. If Marceline herself and Marceline alone had been in danger, she would have had no reason to risk talking. But it was Lanny who was to see the painting “Death in the Twilight,” and Lanny who was to go at once to Neuschloss! That being true, it must follow that the whole machinery of the SS and the Gestapo was at work to find Lanny Budd and arrest him. That was what the machinery was built for. A lesser offender might have called for a lesser effort; but for a man who had dared to worm his way into the Führer’s heart, to come into the Führer’s home and try to steal his secrets, such a man would constitute a supreme challenge, and all the dreadful power of the Geheime Staats-Polizei would be set to work."
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Lanny decided to meet Eric and called him, walking out of the theatre only when it was dark.
"A sudden relief to hear his voice; and Lanny said, “Do you remember the joke about the naked ladies and the ants and mosquitoes?” “I do,” was the response, and no name. Lanny was pretty sure that Red had him marked as a secret agent by now and would understand cryptic ways of communicating."
Lanny and Eric arranged to meet where Eric had picked him up last time. Lanny managed to get there and met Eric, and said he wouldn't endanger Eric by letting him help, but asked him to take out information given by Professor Schilling, and it was the same way lanny was planning to do so. He saw Eric learn it, and said Eric should leave before being questioned. They parted, and Lanny walked northwards to working class district of Moabit.
"It was a dangerous place for a well-dressed stranger, and not only on account of the Gestapo. Robberies were common in these blacked-out streets, far more common than the newspapers let the public know. The robbers would sneak up behind you and hit you over the head with a blackjack or a piece of pipe. Also, there was bitterness against foreigners, and many had been beaten up without having given any provocation. Naziland was a far different place from Deutschland of the Kaiserzeit. Lanny walked softly, and with all his senses alert; no doubt he gave as many scares as he got. When he saw flashlights ahead he knew it was a Razzia, a raid to sweep up men for the Army. He backtracked a block and went around several blocks."
He managed to find the house of the watchmaker Seidl who Monck had given him address of, and having identified himself in soft voice as partei genosse, which could mean socialist, was invited in. Lanny identified himself as husband of Trudi Schultz, which startled Seidl, and Lanny told about Trudi in short before identifying himself as Hansi Robin's brother in law. Seidl had a grandson who was a Nazi, so he couldn't hide Lanny, but took him where he'd find help. They took him to a cellar. Lanny told Seidl he had money to give, and gave him several hundred mark notes.
"“Do not spend this at any place where you are known,” he cautioned. “There is a possibility that it may have been marked by the person who gave it to me. On the black market, I imagine, people come and go and do not ask names or remember faces. I must have a complete outfit of clothing that will enable me to pass for a workingman; and I’m afraid you will have to burn everything that I have on at present. It will be a temptation to hide it or sell it; but I warn you, I have been in Berlin for some time, and have met important persons; they will be able to describe my costume in detail, and there is hardly a single article that cannot somehow or other be identified as of American or English manufacture.”"
Lanny suggested they get rid of his papers, and Seidl burnt them promptly.
"And so Lanning Prescott Budd faded out of existence in Naziland, and Hans Schultz, Kanzleibeamter was born—complete and ready for action, like the genie out of a bottle or Aphrodite out of a sea shell."
Lanny spent nine days in the cellar hidden in a cell surrounded by packing boxes and known only to two people; Seidl thought it was wiser to hide out until first fury of search was spent. Seidl came to say Gestapo was looking for Lanning Prescott Budd, and Lanny said that was he; they fed him, helped change his appearance, brought him clothes appropriate for his new identity and heard from him about truth of the war and future. Then Seidl told him he was leaving.
"“You are going in a farm cart,” he explained. “You will have to get out and walk around places where there is apt to be a roadblock. The farm people who will drive you are comrades and have done it before. The father of the family has been paid. I have brought you a needle and thread, and we’ll sew most of your money in the lining of your coat.” And so on for various details, which Lanny repeated until the old man was satisfied. Then they put out the candle, and Lanny said good-by to his doghouse and groped his way up the stairs. He exchanged a warm handclasp with his hostess and then followed his guide out into the dark street."
Seidl brought him to the marketplace and helped him into the back of a cart, and told him to lie covered with a blanket.
"This was the underground, and every person who had anything to do with it was risking his or her life. Monck had told Lanny that the Nazis had succeeded pretty well in exterminating it; but apparently it was reviving again, no doubt under the influence of Stalingrad, and Tunisia, and Sicily, and Salerno. The dumbest person in Naziland could not have failed to be impressed when Hitler declared three days of national mourning for the huge army lost in the snows of Russia in January of this year. Only the dumbest could have failed to note that the Americans had landed and advanced wherever they attempted it. How long would it be before they set out to cross the Channel? Surely not later than next spring!
"Lanny knew that an advance guard of Americans were already in Germany: many kinds of Americans who could pass for Germans—students, teachers, traveling salesmen, technicians, most of them of German descent. They were being smuggled in, well provided with German money and sometimes with radio-receiving and sending sets. They were getting information of a hundred sorts, and finding ways to get it out. They were building up a resistance, and it might well be that they had established this underground railroad on which Lanny was traveling. He had no way to know, and the railroaders themselves might not know; to them he was just “Comrade Thirty.” All Seidl had said was, “You will be passed along.”"
They came to a roadblock, and Frau Mühlen told him to get out and gave him directions to an inn called Weisse Gans, and ask anyone except police if he lost way. He managed to get there and ride the cart, and was brought to the Mühlen's farm where he was hidden in the barn loft. Next night he was taken further in a truck hidden between boxes, driven by another member of the underground railroad.
By dawn they were near Regensburg, and Lanny was hidden by the trucker in his home. After spending a day hidden from children in a closet, fed well and rested, at night he was picked up by a Dr Franz going to Munich, in a two seater car. They were within ten to twenty miles of Munich, Lanny judged by the speed and time, when there was a flat tire, and Lanny was told to hide nearby in forest until Dr Franz fixed it. But soon two army men came striding, fixed it in no time over protests of the owner, and insisted they would ride with him as far as he went.
He decided to go to Hilde Donnerstein at Obersalzberg. It was fifty miles by autobahn and longer by country roads, and when he arrived he hid himself in a shed at night and in woods in day, not daring to disclose his presence to members of her household. She came out to read sitting in the summer house as her routine on sunny days before he dared approach her.
"She got up and followed him into the forest; when they were a safe distance away from everything he stopped and confronted her. He was prepared to see dismay in her face, for she had never seen this darling of fortune in anything but the right costume, and surely never without having washed his face or shaved for two weeks.
"“Don’t be frightened,” he told her. “I am in trouble, but I promise not to involve you.”
"“For God’s sake, what has happened, Lanny?” she whispered, having made up her mind that it was really he and none other.
"“I came into Germany to buy some paintings from Göring, and one of his so-called art experts got into a rage because I exposed his having purchased some fraudulent stuff. He started the story that I was a spy, and a friend tipped me off that the Gestapo was going to put me through one of their inquisitions. I decided to get out, and I’m on my way to Italy.”"
They walked deep into the forest, with partridge flying and rabbits running, until hilde was sure there was nobody about, and talked sitting on the log, Lanny telling the lonely friend everything of the world outside she'd lost contact with.
"“Here I am chattering on!” she exclaimed. “And you in such trouble! How can I help you, Lanny?”"
He told her not to bring a basket, only parcels wrapped in paper without labels or print, and they talked of his last visit to Berghof which she'd heard of; she mentioned gossip about Eva, and got facts, which reminded her she had a servant who lived at Berchtesgaden and had a man in the mountains. Lanny asked her to get the man to chop wood, away from the house, and said he'd not mention knowing her, but get him to take Lanny across border for money.
Lanny survived in the woods in day and found food and blankets in the shed at night, and returned to woods in morning. He saw a young man come out and approached him as he was chopping wood later, and made a deal for him to take Lanny to Hallein and beyond for a small sum. They started at noon.
"Willi could not afford to turn him over to the police, because the fellow himself was a draft dodger, and while he might collect a reward, he would inevitably be forced into the Army, and the money wouldn’t be of much use to him. Lanny’s money would be better! To be sure, he might have a notion to hit Lanny over the head in the salt mine and get more money; but Lanny would try to keep behind him at all times."
Willi took him via forests and then via tunnels of Salzkammergut to the Hallein entrance of the mines, where they exited, and asked Lanny which way he intended; Lanny said Salzburg, not intending, and Willi disappeared after indicating the direction. Lanny walked South, stopping at farmhouse sheds at night, in the Salzach valley. But road had military and Nazi traffic, and he took refuge in a peasant hut up the hill, where they fed him and told him where to go in Werfen.
"He had no trouble finding the inn, and the man there proved to be a good fellow indeed; in exchange for news about his relatives he introduced Lanny to a man named Blech who had spent the night at the inn and was driving on to Bischofshofen in a wagon. For the price of ten marks he was willing to have a passenger lie amid a load of newly made harness covered with a tarpaulin. It was a bumpy ride, but it took Lanny more than thirty miles on his way, and he was content to miss the fine scenery.
"It was after dark when they arrived in the town, and the man was sorry for this poor devil who must have been pounded pretty nearly to a jelly, and took him into an eating place where there were gute Leute and saw him eat a hot meal. The talk in the place was excited, for Mussolini, prisoner of Badoglio, had been rescued by paratroopers sent by Hitler himself. Now Il Duce was in Milan, setting up a new government, which he was calling a “Republic.” If there was anybody in this Austrian inn who wished success to this government, he failed to lift his voice that night."
Blech gave him a map, and indicated the way to Bad Gastein. Lanny asked if he was a socialist, and could ask a railroad comrade to let Lanny ride to Sillian in Pustertal, in a freight car, and offered to pay. He rode up to a few miles from the border and took refuge in another peasant hut couple of miles from the border, where they agreed to help him cross over. They walked up hills and skied down for hours in dark, until they were at Dobbiaco, Toblach in German.
............................................................................
Here his German identity was over, but the real self couldn't be exposed to the Germans who were in charge, and he asked to be taken to partisans in mountains. The younger of the two men who had brought him, Giulio, wanted to join himself, and they set out west in mid afternoon. They came upon a campfire in dark, called out, and a young man emerged. Giulio told him that he wanted to join, and Lanny wanted to meet them. Lanny said he'd talk to the leader, and took him aside when he came.
Having identified himself as an OSS agent and given his code name Traveler, he asked the leader to inform the OSS so he could be taken away by them. Lanny explained the necessity of the leader not talking about Lanny to anyone else, since he'd brought out information and Gestapo was searching for him. Lanny told him about Matteo, and Rinaldo which was Pietro Corsatti, and gave him a hundred mark note for food and a pair of shoes. The leader said his name was Arnaldo, and Lanny said to tell everybody he was Pierre, and was French.
They were taken to a hideout up in the hills and Lanny was surprised it was big, with a score of people from sixteen to thirty five. Arnaldo introduced them as Giulio the Austrian who was joining, and Pierre the Frenchman whose story needed verification. The group had no radio, and wanted news.
"Lanny had picked up information from the station master at Sillian and could tell them that the Americans were at the Volturno River, some twenty-five miles north of Naples, and also had taken Foggia, the great airport."
They were happy, expecting Americans to arrive soon, and Lanny cautioned them, Italy was mountains and rivers; they said Americans could land North, but he said landing across the channel was priority. An argument started, and he was reminded of the workers' schools in Cannes and Berlin, and told them about those, about Toulon, the French fleet. He was soon adopted as their professor of world affairs. They were training themselves to fight nazis, and could use American help.
"Lanny promised, “I will report the situation; and I’m sure it won’t be long now. You must remember that America is fighting two wars, on opposite sides of the world, and has had less than two years in which to convert its machinery of production to war purposes. There are thousands of groups clamoring for supplies, and questions of priority are the gravest the General Staff has to decide.”
"“Don’t forget this,” continued Arnaldo; “most of the supplies the Germans fight with in Italy have to come on these highways and railroads.”"
Lanny spent five days at this mountain hideout, in the beauty of alpine autumn. Sixth morning there was warning about Germans coming, and they moved higher up, having packed everything to carry. They hid in a cave at night and Arnaldo sent Lanny down to hide in a peasant hut in the morning, with escorts. He got code message from Arnaldo after four days, during which his escorts had guarded him, and he was taken to a small town to the back entrance of a house, and met someone who introduced himself as Dr Moscichi. He said he was supposed to take Lanny, whom he addressed as Traveler, to coast near Venice, and Lanny was Guillermo Forli; they'd go by train, and rehearse the story. Lanny was able to clean up and trim and attired in the doctor's clothes, and left some of his money with him; doctor said plenty of funding had been provided for this important man.
They travelled to Mestre, just before Venice, and took a carriage to an inn, where the doctor retired and lanny went for a stroll on the beach as instructed, and met a local fisherman who was given the code name, and took him ou in a small boat. In the morning there was a seaplane, and Lanny boarded it and was on his way home.
............................................................................
Lanny was flown to Algiers where he spoke to Murphy, sent off a cable to Robbie, got a proper suit for high price and asked for day in Marrakech. He decided not to tell beauty about Marceline. He had a flight direct to Washington D.C. from Marrakech, and called Laurel after having called Baker. He met FDR, who wanted every detail, and when it came to that about Marceline, called OSS asking if something had come out about either Marceline Detaze or Oskar Herzenberg; there hadn't. FDR confirmed the channel crossing plan. He asked Lanny his plans, and forbade him from Germany and Italy. They discussed Lanny taking a holiday cross country driving to California, after he'd reported to OSS.
"The German section was enraptured by the information concerning the Wolf Dietrich Stollen, the salt mine under the Duernberg Mountain, and began that very day a search in the Congressional Library for data on the salt-mining industry of Austria. They promised Lanny they would report any news about Marceline Detaze and Oskar von Herzenberg; also that they would trace the matter of the young doctor who had deserted his charge and would see that he was never again invited to act as a conductor on the underground railroad."
He was flown to N.Y. , and Laurel received him, Robbie had sent a car. He was now free to name the boss, but only to her. They discussed the trip.
"They drove up to Newcastle. Never would Lanny hear the name again without translating it—Neuschloss—and thinking of poor Marceline and what might be happening to her."
He saw Frances, met the Budds, and Robbie talked to them, asking them to see the new Budd plant in New Mexico when he heard of their holiday plans. He put it as a matter of public duty in wartime for stockholders, which they both were, and a matter of interest to a writer.
"“It would give me an excuse to supply you with gasoline; and I can solve the hotel problem for you, too—I’ll give you a trailer, I’m having them built by the hundreds for my workers, both here and out there. They are made of aluminum, and very light; they have a butane-gas heater and cookstove, and connections for electric light and water; two beds with the best mattresses, closets, shelves, everything complete. You hitch it on behind your car and it follows wherever you go, and only adds about ten per cent to your fuel bill. You can travel at night and never have to worry about getting accommodations. You can go to New Mexico and see the plant and then go on to California, and when you get tired of the trailer you can sell it for more than it cost you, because it won’t cost you anything.”"
They drove from Newcastle along Atlantic coast South avoiding mountains, and turned West crossing to drive on highway along Gulf coast, Laurel having gotten used to the trailer by then. Crossing Texas, they arrived in New Mexico and climbed to the plateau Budd was on. Robbie had bought it sight unseen and hadn't yet seen the plant where his dream of producing the latest in the industry was taking shape, with experiments conducted in desert where safety could be achieved.
Robbie had informed them that his son was coming, and they were treated as not just VIP but as VGDIPs, and shown around everything; Lanny surprised them with intelligent questions, and was in turn shown more by scientists. They were offered the best house on the site, but Laurel insisted they were camping, and they ate with the workers in the canteen. The plant provided everything for the workers, houses and creche, kindergartens and entertainment.
"The P.A. sat in at conferences in which the top men discussed in highly technical terms what they were doing and hoped to do. They reported that the Germans had been two years ahead of us in getting the first jet plane into the air, and were now two years ahead of us in production. The Heinkel concern was putting out an engine with a straight-through combustion system with downstream fuel injection. The Junkers had in production what they called the Jumo 004B, with an eight-stage axial compressor. The German Army now had in service a jet interceptor plane called the Viper, which was launched by rockets and was capable of rising to thirty thousand feet in less than one minute. Lanny asked, “How do you know these things?” And the answer was, “The OSS sends us information.”
"Lanny felt chagrined because he had not been able to get any of this; but he reflected that General Donovan’s organization no doubt had scores of men working on the subject in the enemy lands. He had contributed his mite, and once or twice the scientists gave him items which he recognized; but he said nothing about it, and nobody in this place ever knew that he had been inside the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute Physics Building in the winter and again in the summer of this year.
"The American Armed Forces were preparing to spend twenty-five billions of dollars during 1944 on airplane production and development. It was a scientist’s dream of heaven, for he could have anything in the way of resources and facilities that he called for—provided only that he could show the possibility of getting something new. Lanny met elderly bespectacled gentlemen who had spent all their lives in laboratories and had thought they were lucky if they could get a few hundred dollars for an experiment, but who now asked for tens of thousands and got them. He met young chaps just out of college whose eyes shone with excitement as they explained some oddly shaped piece of steel."
Lanny was flown to Algiers where he spoke to Murphy, sent off a cable to Robbie, got a proper suit for high price and asked for day in Marrakech. He decided not to tell beauty about Marceline. He had a flight direct to Washington D.C. from Marrakech, and called Laurel after having called Baker. He met FDR, who wanted every detail, and when it came to that about Marceline, called OSS asking if something had come out about either Marceline Detaze or Oskar Herzenberg; there hadn't. FDR confirmed the channel crossing plan. He asked Lanny his plans, and forbade him from Germany and Italy. They discussed Lanny taking a holiday cross country driving to California, after he'd reported to OSS.
"The German section was enraptured by the information concerning the Wolf Dietrich Stollen, the salt mine under the Duernberg Mountain, and began that very day a search in the Congressional Library for data on the salt-mining industry of Austria. They promised Lanny they would report any news about Marceline Detaze and Oskar von Herzenberg; also that they would trace the matter of the young doctor who had deserted his charge and would see that he was never again invited to act as a conductor on the underground railroad."
He was flown to N.Y. , and Laurel received him, Robbie had sent a car. He was now free to name the boss, but only to her. They discussed the trip.
"They drove up to Newcastle. Never would Lanny hear the name again without translating it—Neuschloss—and thinking of poor Marceline and what might be happening to her."
He saw Frances, met the Budds, and Robbie talked to them, asking them to see the new Budd plant in New Mexico when he heard of their holiday plans. He put it as a matter of public duty in wartime for stockholders, which they both were, and a matter of interest to a writer.
"“It would give me an excuse to supply you with gasoline; and I can solve the hotel problem for you, too—I’ll give you a trailer, I’m having them built by the hundreds for my workers, both here and out there. They are made of aluminum, and very light; they have a butane-gas heater and cookstove, and connections for electric light and water; two beds with the best mattresses, closets, shelves, everything complete. You hitch it on behind your car and it follows wherever you go, and only adds about ten per cent to your fuel bill. You can travel at night and never have to worry about getting accommodations. You can go to New Mexico and see the plant and then go on to California, and when you get tired of the trailer you can sell it for more than it cost you, because it won’t cost you anything.”"
They drove from Newcastle along Atlantic coast South avoiding mountains, and turned West crossing to drive on highway along Gulf coast, Laurel having gotten used to the trailer by then. Crossing Texas, they arrived in New Mexico and climbed to the plateau Budd was on. Robbie had bought it sight unseen and hadn't yet seen the plant where his dream of producing the latest in the industry was taking shape, with experiments conducted in desert where safety could be achieved.
Robbie had informed them that his son was coming, and they were treated as not just VIP but as VGDIPs, and shown around everything; Lanny surprised them with intelligent questions, and was in turn shown more by scientists. They were offered the best house on the site, but Laurel insisted they were camping, and they ate with the workers in the canteen. The plant provided everything for the workers, houses and creche, kindergartens and entertainment.
"The P.A. sat in at conferences in which the top men discussed in highly technical terms what they were doing and hoped to do. They reported that the Germans had been two years ahead of us in getting the first jet plane into the air, and were now two years ahead of us in production. The Heinkel concern was putting out an engine with a straight-through combustion system with downstream fuel injection. The Junkers had in production what they called the Jumo 004B, with an eight-stage axial compressor. The German Army now had in service a jet interceptor plane called the Viper, which was launched by rockets and was capable of rising to thirty thousand feet in less than one minute. Lanny asked, “How do you know these things?” And the answer was, “The OSS sends us information.”
"Lanny felt chagrined because he had not been able to get any of this; but he reflected that General Donovan’s organization no doubt had scores of men working on the subject in the enemy lands. He had contributed his mite, and once or twice the scientists gave him items which he recognized; but he said nothing about it, and nobody in this place ever knew that he had been inside the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute Physics Building in the winter and again in the summer of this year.
"The American Armed Forces were preparing to spend twenty-five billions of dollars during 1944 on airplane production and development. It was a scientist’s dream of heaven, for he could have anything in the way of resources and facilities that he called for—provided only that he could show the possibility of getting something new. Lanny met elderly bespectacled gentlemen who had spent all their lives in laboratories and had thought they were lucky if they could get a few hundred dollars for an experiment, but who now asked for tens of thousands and got them. He met young chaps just out of college whose eyes shone with excitement as they explained some oddly shaped piece of steel."
............................................................................
Lanny sent his report and they drove on to California via Arizona, and arrived in L.A. driving through Palm Springs and Orange County before Pasadena. They couldn't fond a hotel room, but spruced up and went to Sardi's for dinner. Lanny recognised Roberta Rector, whom he'd met in Paris a decade ago and acquired half a dozen impressionist paintings for including Monet; he introduced her to Laurel, and she invited her to join them for dinner. Miss Rector had given the paintings to the County Museum, she said, and asked about buying Detazes.
"Lanny explained to his wife. “Miss Rector owns a hill in the heart of Hollywood, and on all four of her street corners she has billboards with her political opinions on them. You remember, you noticed one about India.”
"“I hope you agree with me,” said the propagandist lady. “I ask the world, what right have the British to talk about freedom when they refuse freedom to the people of India? Don’t you think I am right, Mrs. Budd?”
"“It’s a complicated question,” responded Laurel. “I am troubled by the possibility that if the British set the Indians free, they may soon be flying at one another’s throats.”
"“Well, let them; that’s their business if they want to.”
"“Don’t you believe in a police force, Miss Rector?”
"“Yes, but I wouldn’t want a British policeman in my home and neither would you, I am sure. I see that you haven’t thought these matters out, Mrs. Budd. You must let me introduce you to some of my Hindu friends and let them explain their cause.”
"When they mentioned that they were living in a trailer and had been unable to find a place to keep it, their guest said, “For heaven’s sake, come and park it on my grounds. There is all the room you want, and I’ll be delighted.” They accepted, and the woman took them out to her big limousine with a waiting chauffeur, and drove them to the place where they had parked. They followed her car, and on the way Laurel exclaimed, “What a curious human! What do you know about her?”
"Lanny said, “I know that her father was one of the big cattlemen in Texas. You see the signs ‘Rector Ranch Products,’ and he was it. Also, I know that she bought half a dozen paintings that cost ten or fifteen thousand dollars each. I was told that she has never been married, but has a grown son.”
"“What did she do that for?”
"“I don’t know; probably she’s a feminist and thinks the child should belong exclusively to the mother. She consorts with anarchists and other radicals, and no doubt is considered a dangerous character out here.”"
She showed them the house and next morning invited them for breakfast, after which Lanny drove the car to contact his clients about art he'd seen in rome, Stockholm and more; when he returned, the two women were fast friends, and Laurel decided they were moving into the house.
"Driving with her husband, Laurel retold a pitiful story. Roberta Rector had not had a baby in order to defy society; just the other way round, she had defied society because she had a baby. A rich man’s daughter whose mother had died young, she had been brought up in a splendid but lonely home. She had been a beauty, and Laurel said, “She really was, for she showed me the photographs; and you mayn’t believe it, but I do, she hadn’t been told a thing about sex and hadn’t the remotest idea what it was. At the age of eighteen she came here from Texas, and she met a Russian stage director, a brilliant and fascinating man, who seduced her. She was mad about him, and thought he loved her, and found out little by little that all he wanted was to get her money to finance the world’s most startling stage productions. When she learned that she was going to have a baby she was terrified; but then she happened to meet Emma Goldman, who talked Anarchism and Libertarianism, and advised her to make having a baby into a crusade, and say that she had done it as an act of defiance. She said that, and so the radicals all thronged about her and got her money; but she doesn’t really understand any social theories—she just accepts what the last person has told her, until she decides that that person, too, has had too much of her money.”
"“What became of the man?” Lanny asked. “He has his career, and once in a while he shows up here. Roberta is still in love with him, but she also despises him. She used to give him money, but now she has shut down on him as she has on everybody else. She has never loved any other man, and never could; she fears them, because they all want her money. She gets something over thirty thousand dollars a month and hasn’t any idea in the world what to do with it, but she can’t bear to give it away; she wants to be loved for herself alone, and she can’t find anybody who will do that.”
"“What about the son?”
"“The son is like everybody else: he wants money, more and more of it. He was sent to a so-called “progressive” school, and was allowed to do whatever he pleased because the head of the school wanted money from the mother. The son ran off with one of the girls in the school and married her and got a baby; then he couldn’t get along with’ the girl, so he divorced her and married another girl, and both girls and the boy are living in the same house—one of Roberta’s. When I asked her about that she said, ‘What can I do? The first girl has no other place to live.’ She summed up her maternal feelings in one sentence: ‘I wish the whole lot of them would go to China and stay there.’”"
Lanny sent his report and they drove on to California via Arizona, and arrived in L.A. driving through Palm Springs and Orange County before Pasadena. They couldn't fond a hotel room, but spruced up and went to Sardi's for dinner. Lanny recognised Roberta Rector, whom he'd met in Paris a decade ago and acquired half a dozen impressionist paintings for including Monet; he introduced her to Laurel, and she invited her to join them for dinner. Miss Rector had given the paintings to the County Museum, she said, and asked about buying Detazes.
"Lanny explained to his wife. “Miss Rector owns a hill in the heart of Hollywood, and on all four of her street corners she has billboards with her political opinions on them. You remember, you noticed one about India.”
"“I hope you agree with me,” said the propagandist lady. “I ask the world, what right have the British to talk about freedom when they refuse freedom to the people of India? Don’t you think I am right, Mrs. Budd?”
"“It’s a complicated question,” responded Laurel. “I am troubled by the possibility that if the British set the Indians free, they may soon be flying at one another’s throats.”
"“Well, let them; that’s their business if they want to.”
"“Don’t you believe in a police force, Miss Rector?”
"“Yes, but I wouldn’t want a British policeman in my home and neither would you, I am sure. I see that you haven’t thought these matters out, Mrs. Budd. You must let me introduce you to some of my Hindu friends and let them explain their cause.”
"When they mentioned that they were living in a trailer and had been unable to find a place to keep it, their guest said, “For heaven’s sake, come and park it on my grounds. There is all the room you want, and I’ll be delighted.” They accepted, and the woman took them out to her big limousine with a waiting chauffeur, and drove them to the place where they had parked. They followed her car, and on the way Laurel exclaimed, “What a curious human! What do you know about her?”
"Lanny said, “I know that her father was one of the big cattlemen in Texas. You see the signs ‘Rector Ranch Products,’ and he was it. Also, I know that she bought half a dozen paintings that cost ten or fifteen thousand dollars each. I was told that she has never been married, but has a grown son.”
"“What did she do that for?”
"“I don’t know; probably she’s a feminist and thinks the child should belong exclusively to the mother. She consorts with anarchists and other radicals, and no doubt is considered a dangerous character out here.”"
She showed them the house and next morning invited them for breakfast, after which Lanny drove the car to contact his clients about art he'd seen in rome, Stockholm and more; when he returned, the two women were fast friends, and Laurel decided they were moving into the house.
"Driving with her husband, Laurel retold a pitiful story. Roberta Rector had not had a baby in order to defy society; just the other way round, she had defied society because she had a baby. A rich man’s daughter whose mother had died young, she had been brought up in a splendid but lonely home. She had been a beauty, and Laurel said, “She really was, for she showed me the photographs; and you mayn’t believe it, but I do, she hadn’t been told a thing about sex and hadn’t the remotest idea what it was. At the age of eighteen she came here from Texas, and she met a Russian stage director, a brilliant and fascinating man, who seduced her. She was mad about him, and thought he loved her, and found out little by little that all he wanted was to get her money to finance the world’s most startling stage productions. When she learned that she was going to have a baby she was terrified; but then she happened to meet Emma Goldman, who talked Anarchism and Libertarianism, and advised her to make having a baby into a crusade, and say that she had done it as an act of defiance. She said that, and so the radicals all thronged about her and got her money; but she doesn’t really understand any social theories—she just accepts what the last person has told her, until she decides that that person, too, has had too much of her money.”
"“What became of the man?” Lanny asked. “He has his career, and once in a while he shows up here. Roberta is still in love with him, but she also despises him. She used to give him money, but now she has shut down on him as she has on everybody else. She has never loved any other man, and never could; she fears them, because they all want her money. She gets something over thirty thousand dollars a month and hasn’t any idea in the world what to do with it, but she can’t bear to give it away; she wants to be loved for herself alone, and she can’t find anybody who will do that.”
"“What about the son?”
"“The son is like everybody else: he wants money, more and more of it. He was sent to a so-called “progressive” school, and was allowed to do whatever he pleased because the head of the school wanted money from the mother. The son ran off with one of the girls in the school and married her and got a baby; then he couldn’t get along with’ the girl, so he divorced her and married another girl, and both girls and the boy are living in the same house—one of Roberta’s. When I asked her about that she said, ‘What can I do? The first girl has no other place to live.’ She summed up her maternal feelings in one sentence: ‘I wish the whole lot of them would go to China and stay there.’”"
............................................................................
Lanny took Laurel to meet De Lyle Armbrusters, whom he'd met on French Riviera and had used for introduction to Hollywood and eventually entry into Hearst castle.
"When they heard where Lanny and his wife were staying they were somewhat shocked. “Why do you tie yourself to that dreadful woman?” And when Lanny pretended not to know what they meant, De Lyle went on, “A woman who consorts with Reds and Pinks, and Hindu and Irish revolutionists, and all sorts of riffraff: Why don’t you come and stay with us?”"
Lanny had told Laurel about them, he'd to pretend to be near fascist and she to be a wife without opinions. They told Roberta they were moving on and drove to the next hosts' place, and then, having had the trailer parked and decoupled, to Beverly Hills for shopping for attire suitable for Laurel to appear in their gatherings.
After a few days Lanny contacted San Simeon band was invited, and they drove up without the trailer, leaving it parked at the Armbrusters.
"Lanny warned his wife, “I have been asked to find out what this old man is doing and planning; so you have to be a Fascist for a while longer. Of course you call yourself a democrat, but you don’t work at it. You mustn’t say anything impolite about Hitler, or even about Mussolini; even though he’s been kicked out he’s still a great man, and he made the trains run on time.”
"“I’ve been reading the Examiner,” said Laurel, “so I know his ideas.”
"“No, that’s a mistake,” replied the husband. “What the old man says in the Examiner is what he wants the public to believe about him. He calls it Americanism, and it sounds fine, but what he actually believes is something out of the Middle Ages. It will be wiser for you to keep quiet and watch me draw him out.”"
They went to the main building after freshening up in their suite, and Lanny introduced Laurel to the hostess, Marion Davies. The host was busy.
"At the beginning of December President Roosevelt at last accomplished his desire to exercise his charms upon Marshal Stalin. Churchill had already been to Moscow, but Churchill’s charms were of a different sort. Stalin had a good memory and knew that Britain’s Tory leader had been calling for war on Bolshevism from the moment it had lifted its head in 1917. But the Squire of Krum Elbow was the author of the New Deal, the friend of the common man, and the enemy of the economic royalists; more than that, he was the inventor of lendlease and was shipping hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of supplies to the Soviet Union every month. Money talks, and F.D.R. was talking world order, peace, and prosperity in a voice loud enough for even the people of the Soviet Union to hear.
"Stalin had been too busy to come to Allied lands, and they had compromised upon Teheran, the capital of what had once been Persia and now was Iran. There, in the Russian Embassy, the three top leaders had a four-day conference, and now as it came to an end a formal statement was issued. That was what Mr. Hearst had been so busy with; and when he had finished he strolled over and welcomed his new guests, and after chatting for a few minutes took Lanny off to his study and spent the rest of the afternoon with him. On Lanny’s earlier visit to San Simeon he had received the handsome offer of fifty thousand dollars a year to become one of this imperial person’s political scouts, and to report to him privately what he could learn about the insides of world affairs. Now the lord of San Simeon had a chance to get some of it free of charge, and he wasn’t failing to take the chance."
A joint statement had been issued, about unity and future.
"“Bunk!” exclaimed William Randolph Hearst. “How much of Poland are they going to leave to Russia, and how much of Germany are they going to give to Poland to make up for it? And what are they going to do with Austria, and all the Balkans? Are they going to let Russia bolshevize them, and if not, how are they going to prevent it?”
How did Lanny know, the host asked, and when Lanny said he'd been in both Berlin and Rome recently, he could talk as long as he wished and be sure of close attention. Lanny told him about the top people he'd met in both places, and about Hitler's instructions to Kurt about an opera about fall of his ideology, and Hitler's message to Hearst about dire need to remove his opponent sooner than the coming elections; the host didn't rise to the bait, but renewed his offer to Lanny asking his price. Lanny refused as always and said it was his pleasure, and later wondered what the host made of the refusal.
............................................................................
Lanny called Robbie from Hollywood after returning and was told Hansi and Bess were back, so they drove back, by a different route South and were in Trenton, New Jersey, when they had to stop and find a hotel room because of a snow storm, and decided to try a seance. He'd been trying to find news of Marceline, without success, but this time it was a woman's voice, who said she'd just arrived; Lanny tried guessing who it was, until she mentioned baby Marcel; it was Madame Zyszynski. He asked her about Marceline, and she was surprised, and asked if something had happened to her; Lanny said he didn't know.
They met Hansi and Bess after they'd arrived home and seen the baby. Hansi and Bess had been performing all over Russia since it was attacked.
"The news of what the Nazis were doing to wipe out the Jewish race had been reported everywhere, but it was something so monstrous that most people in America were unable to believe it. Hansi knew that it was true, and there was death in his soul; in Russia he had put such sorrow into his music that tears ran down people’s cheeks as they listened. He didn’t know if that would happen in America, and talked sometimes of playing only for Jewish audiences. Only a people which had been persecuted for a score of centuries could understand what he was saying. “Even Bess cannot understand,” he said."
"“I love the Russian people,” he declared; “they are a great people, warmhearted and generous, and their response to music is instinctive and overwhelming. But I can’t bring myself to tolerate their government.”
"“Would you like any government, Hansi?” asked the brother-in-law.
"“You have to be there to understand the difference, Lanny. It is not like anything in our world. You meet some official, you visit in his home, you like him, and play music for him; and then someday you go to his office and find his desk vacant; you ask where he is and nobody knows; you discover that you are troubling them by your questions. You go to his home and learn that he has disappeared off the face of the earth; his own family doesn’t know what has happened. You can see that they have been weeping, but also you see that they wish you wouldn’t press them; they are afraid to talk to you. You discover that they are afraid to be known to associate with a foreigner; they are embarrassed to say so, but they don’t invite you to their homes any more. All their lives are dominated by fear.”
"“I have been told that, Hansi; I thought it was explained by the national peril.”
"“America is at war too, but I meet all sorts of foreigners here in New York, and I hardly know the difference. In Russia I was welcomed by tumultuous audiences—you can hardly imagine such scenes; but I had very few friends, and I had the feeling that most of those were selected persons. They were Bess’s sort of friends, not mine; they were the party-sort of people, who could not be corrupted by any unorthodox thing I might say. Some of them pretended not to be party members, but I had the feeling that they were playing a role, and of course I didn’t enjoy that. Even your Uncle Jesse did not talk frankly to us; and then he went away to Irkutsk, and since then has not written us a line. He too feels himself distrusted, I am sure.”"
Lanny argued, for the sake of peace in their marriage.
"“It may be, Lanny, and I hope so. But the way I see it, when men get power, they hold on to it; they come to like it, and think they are the only people who are really capable of using it; if anyone suggests otherwise he becomes an enemy, and he disappears off the face of the earth. I do not care about waging a war to remove one kind of totalitarian government and set up another. I think it is just as wicked to liquidate the bourgeoisie as to liquidate Jews and Poles.”"
Bess had spent the time persuading Laurel to become communist. When Laurel quoted Marx about parliamentary democracy, Bess had cited example of Spain, the elected Republic butchered by fascists while democracies did nothing.
Lanny called Robbie from Hollywood after returning and was told Hansi and Bess were back, so they drove back, by a different route South and were in Trenton, New Jersey, when they had to stop and find a hotel room because of a snow storm, and decided to try a seance. He'd been trying to find news of Marceline, without success, but this time it was a woman's voice, who said she'd just arrived; Lanny tried guessing who it was, until she mentioned baby Marcel; it was Madame Zyszynski. He asked her about Marceline, and she was surprised, and asked if something had happened to her; Lanny said he didn't know.
They met Hansi and Bess after they'd arrived home and seen the baby. Hansi and Bess had been performing all over Russia since it was attacked.
"The news of what the Nazis were doing to wipe out the Jewish race had been reported everywhere, but it was something so monstrous that most people in America were unable to believe it. Hansi knew that it was true, and there was death in his soul; in Russia he had put such sorrow into his music that tears ran down people’s cheeks as they listened. He didn’t know if that would happen in America, and talked sometimes of playing only for Jewish audiences. Only a people which had been persecuted for a score of centuries could understand what he was saying. “Even Bess cannot understand,” he said."
"“I love the Russian people,” he declared; “they are a great people, warmhearted and generous, and their response to music is instinctive and overwhelming. But I can’t bring myself to tolerate their government.”
"“Would you like any government, Hansi?” asked the brother-in-law.
"“You have to be there to understand the difference, Lanny. It is not like anything in our world. You meet some official, you visit in his home, you like him, and play music for him; and then someday you go to his office and find his desk vacant; you ask where he is and nobody knows; you discover that you are troubling them by your questions. You go to his home and learn that he has disappeared off the face of the earth; his own family doesn’t know what has happened. You can see that they have been weeping, but also you see that they wish you wouldn’t press them; they are afraid to talk to you. You discover that they are afraid to be known to associate with a foreigner; they are embarrassed to say so, but they don’t invite you to their homes any more. All their lives are dominated by fear.”
"“I have been told that, Hansi; I thought it was explained by the national peril.”
"“America is at war too, but I meet all sorts of foreigners here in New York, and I hardly know the difference. In Russia I was welcomed by tumultuous audiences—you can hardly imagine such scenes; but I had very few friends, and I had the feeling that most of those were selected persons. They were Bess’s sort of friends, not mine; they were the party-sort of people, who could not be corrupted by any unorthodox thing I might say. Some of them pretended not to be party members, but I had the feeling that they were playing a role, and of course I didn’t enjoy that. Even your Uncle Jesse did not talk frankly to us; and then he went away to Irkutsk, and since then has not written us a line. He too feels himself distrusted, I am sure.”"
Lanny argued, for the sake of peace in their marriage.
"“It may be, Lanny, and I hope so. But the way I see it, when men get power, they hold on to it; they come to like it, and think they are the only people who are really capable of using it; if anyone suggests otherwise he becomes an enemy, and he disappears off the face of the earth. I do not care about waging a war to remove one kind of totalitarian government and set up another. I think it is just as wicked to liquidate the bourgeoisie as to liquidate Jews and Poles.”"
Bess had spent the time persuading Laurel to become communist. When Laurel quoted Marx about parliamentary democracy, Bess had cited example of Spain, the elected Republic butchered by fascists while democracies did nothing.
............................................................................
Lanny attended to his art business.
"Everything would be fine—until he turned on the radio and was reminded of American boys dying hour by hour in trenches on the rain-swept hills of Southern Italy, of helpless Poles and Jews being packed into cattle cars and carried to some destruction camp, to be locked in a poison-gas chamber and then burned in a furnace."
They tried seances, and Lanny sent a cablegram to Beauty; she sent an airmail letter informing them about Madame Zyszynski passing on, just two days before their seance in Trenton.
"Huxley said that Herbert Spencer’s idea of a tragedy was a generalization killed by a fact; but these modern wiseacres spared themselves such pain by the simple device of disregarding the fact. When Doctor Rhine of Duke University set patiently to work and by millions of experiments proved that some human minds could call a high percentage of cards that were going to be turned up in a well-shuffled pack, and could cause a high percentage of dice to fall the way they willed it, even when the dice were thrown by a machine—what did these rigid-minded ones do to get out of that trouble? They proceeded to cast doubt upon the laws of probability, which prior to that time had been supposed to be as fixed as all the rest of mathematical science!"
Lanny contacted Baker and was told to see the President after Xmas, which the couple spent at Newcastle, àfter which they drove to Thurmont in Maryland where Laurel rested while Lanny went to see the boss, who had been halfway around the world this time, to Cairo where he'd been taken to see the pyramids and the sphinx, and met with Churchill and Madame Chiang Kai Shek; Stalin hadn't come because Russia was not at war with Japan.
"Next had come the trip to Teheran; it was just a short flight over the Russian border, but was as far as the Red Marshal would come. F.D.R. told about the flight—over the Suez Canal, and circling both Jerusalem and Bagdad on the way. They had landed at a Russian airport on the outskirts of Teheran, and the President had gone to stay at the American Legation, in a walled area outside the city; but the Russians were disturbed about this, because thirty-eight German paratroopers had just been dropped in the neighborhood, and six of them were still at large. One sharpshooter would be enough for their purposes, so the President consented to move to the Russian Embassy, which was inside the city, and where the Big Three could meet without having to travel."
Lanny asked what he was to do next, and for asked how he'd like to go to Jerusalem.
"“For the past twenty years the agents, first of Mussolini and then of Hitler, have been stirring up the Arabs against both Jews and British; there were five Arab revolts before this war began, and now the Arab lands have been getting together against the Jews in Palestine. The Arabs are fanatics and so are the Zionists, so it’s a religious quarrel as well as economic. You know how nasty that can be.”"
Lanny was to go pave the way for a meeting between FDR and the Arab king. He asked if Lanny had any art business in Palestine.
"“Good! If you wanted a museum to commission you, that could be arranged. Have you used up that money I gave you?”
"“Only a small part of it, Governor.”
"“Well, use the rest on this.”"
Lanny thought Laurel would be a valuable partner on this trip, since she could talk to women; FDR said he should take her along. Next Lanny spoke with Harry Hopkins, who grilled him thoroughly about Germany and Italy.
"Lanny found it a pleasure to answer the questions of a man who knew what he wanted and who got the meaning of every sentence before it was finished."
Harry told him about Palestine, about what books to read and more. He told about the conference in Teheran, and said Soviets had been trying to make a separate peace with Germany since the repulse of Germans in their first rush at Moscow; agents had been, first a Russian emissary in Stockholm, then one in Bulgaria, and then Japanese ambassadors at Moscow and Berlin. The Russian objective had been to get out of the war with as much territory as possible, and when Lanny expressed dismay, and Harry said he shouldn't be so naive for someone brought up in Europe; European diplomacy had always been about each one for himself and devil take the hindmost. Lanny said he thought there was ideology behind the revolution, and Harry said that is true to a certain extent, but less so behind the scenes.
"It appears to be a principle of revolutions that they degenerate, and I fear that Red Russia is no exception. All leaders think about themselves and their own power, and the longer they hold power, the more true that becomes. It is a fact that must be faced, that the aims of the Soviets are identical with those of Peter the Great: an ice-free port on the Baltic and one on the Pacific; access to the Persian Gulf and control of the Dardanelles. All those proposals came up at Teheran.”
"“And did we give in to them?”
"Harry the Hop smiled his quiet, slow smile. “We gave enough to stop the negotiations with Hitler, at least we hope so. We shall keep track of developments and make sure.”"
Lanny returned to the hotel to see laurel waiting, reading in bed; she had questions after he told her she was a duly appointed P.A. now, and kept asking about the trip to come.
"“So far I have had less than half a husband. Your work is the most important part of you.”
"He chuckled and told her, “You’re in the Army now!”"
Lanny made preparations in N.Y., buying the books Harry mentioned and scouting about art to be negotiated in Jerusalem. He consulted Zoltan Kertezsi, who knew about art world.
"He informed his associate that there was under way a movement to establish a Jewish Museum of Art in New York; it would contain not only Jewish ritual instruments, Torah, candelabra, ancient coins, and so on, but mosaics and architectural fragments, and modern Jewish paintings as well. Lanny could be looking for such things, and Zoltan offered to take the burden of arrangements off his friend’s shoulders. He went to the libraries and also to the dealers, and after two or three days he came back with a small dossier on the subject, enough to provide a P.A. with perfect camouflage in both Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv.
"The next person Lanny wanted to talk to was Johannes Robin, wise man of the world, who knew the Jews in the only way it was possible really to know them—by being one. ... He had bought a comfortable old house about halfway between New York and Newcastle, and there he had assembled his family: his devoted old wife, whom they all called Mama; the son of the murdered Freddi, who bore his father’s name; the mother of that son, who had remarried and had a husband and three children; and, for the past two years, the two children of Hansi and Bess. They all stayed together, because they had learned so dreadful a lesson of the world’s cruelty; they had been taught love by their fear of hatred."
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The author tells here about the sixteen years old young son of Freddi Robin, and makes his third noticeable mistake about his own characters; here he gives the boy's name, which had until now always been Johannes after his grandfather, as Freddi.
The first of such mistakes was lanny telling Ezra Hackabury that his ex-wife was still married and her current husband Fitz-Laing was working at a British military desk job, although this was after Marceline's debut in England when he mentioned that Fitz-Laing had died and Edna was a widow of small means, helping her rich friends of yore.
In between the author said Lanny told his third wife Laurel about Marceline, the only member of his family she hadn't met; but Marceline was present at their first meeting at house of a friend of their mother, Beauty, as was Beauty, and the two had commented with dislike about the sharp Laurel's calling Lanny a troglodyte.
The author tells here about the sixteen years old young son of Freddi Robin, and makes his third noticeable mistake about his own characters; here he gives the boy's name, which had until now always been Johannes after his grandfather, as Freddi.
The first of such mistakes was lanny telling Ezra Hackabury that his ex-wife was still married and her current husband Fitz-Laing was working at a British military desk job, although this was after Marceline's debut in England when he mentioned that Fitz-Laing had died and Edna was a widow of small means, helping her rich friends of yore.
In between the author said Lanny told his third wife Laurel about Marceline, the only member of his family she hadn't met; but Marceline was present at their first meeting at house of a friend of their mother, Beauty, as was Beauty, and the two had commented with dislike about the sharp Laurel's calling Lanny a troglodyte.
............................................................................
Lanny met another Jewish family through Johannes in preparation for his trip.
Here again the comments of the author show a mindset that has Europeans as a universal people, just as he does in dealing with India and her population, more specifically those adherents of indigenous culture and traditions, not converted by invaders.
Lanny met another Jewish family through Johannes in preparation for his trip.
Here again the comments of the author show a mindset that has Europeans as a universal people, just as he does in dealing with India and her population, more specifically those adherents of indigenous culture and traditions, not converted by invaders.
............................................................................
Lanny and Laurel were flown via Brazil to Marrakech where they met his family and told about Frances and Newcastle. Beauty was worried about Marceline, but Lanny said nothing.
" ... he improved his education by meeting an Arab propagandist who was stirring up his co-religionists in French Morocco on Nazi funds."
Thence they were flown to Jerusalem with a stopover in Cairo at Shepheard's Hotel, favourite resort of British and Americans. They put up at King David Hotel in Jerusalem, engaged a local guide named Hafiz, and after having a look at Jerusalem, rented a car and drove via dead sea and along Jordan river to Nazareth.
"What struck the tourists about this tiny land was its resemblance to the much more extensive land which they had visited only recently. Except for the buildings, and the costumes and speech of the people, they would have thought they were in Southern California. The climate was the same—rainy in winter and entirely dry in summer, blazing hot when the sun shone and nearly always cool at night. There is a joke about Los Angeles weather being always “unusual,” and it was the same here, for the combination of sea, desert, and mountains frequently caused the winds to box the compass in the course of twenty-four hours. Most of the hills were bare; the fig, the orange, and the olive grew only where they were planted and irrigated. The mountains were not high, and when you came down from them toward the Mediterranean it was like the San Gabriel plain.
"Jews were still wailing at an Arab-owned wall and being kept in order by the Transjordan Frontier Force, under the command of Brigadier John Bagot Glubb, graduate of the Woolwich Military Academy and friend of the Arab world."
They drove next day to Jaffa and Tel Aviv.
"A terrible contrast, and no one seeing it could fail to understand that the underground war going on in this Holy Land was between the Old and the New. The Jews brought in modern techniques and taught these techniques in their schools; they produced goods and made money, and then bought land from the natives. Hafiz complained bitterly of this; he didn’t say, but Lanny could guess, that the natives, ignorant and improvident, spent their money soon and then discovered that they had been robbed and ousted by hated infidel dogs.
"All this became crystal-clear when the visitors came to Tel-Aviv, the new city, the all-Jewish city, where the moderns had been free to have their own way, unblocked by ancient shrines or taboos, Hebrew, Christian, or Moslem. They had gone out of their way to break completely with the past."
Next was Carmel.
"There were even large groups of Socialist Jews, who were building co-operative stores and setting up land colonies all over Palestine. Even in the midst of war and civil strife people were planning the New Jerusalem and striving to reconcile ancient texts with modern techniques. It wasn’t at all difficult, for most of those old prophets had been red-hot radicals; ...."
They returned to Jerusalem, returned the car and settled to art business.
"Mostly it was the Jews with whom they would deal, for the Prophet of Islam had forbidden his followers to make images—this in order to save them from idol worship. Apparently he had been right—if you had art you would have idols. The innumerable statues and paintings of madonnas and saints which the Catholics had in their shrines were idols in every sense except a quibble. The Mohammedans, forbidden to have paintings and statues, worshiped shrines and tombs and two hairs from the beard of their Prophet—they were here in the Mosque of Omar, kept in a golden box and exhibited to true-believers on special occasions. Here, also, was the stone from which Mohammed had ascended into heaven."
Lanny settled to inspecting and negotiations, latter being a long process. He'd got a letter of introduction through Parsifal, to a Moorish rug merchant who'd settled in Jerusalem funding pan-islam movement, and that was his entry into the arab world. The merchant was very interested in him.
Through him, Lanny was invited to meet others, and later Laurel was invited to meet women. Later they moved to Tel Aviv and met the young builders of a new and ancient nation of every profession, often socialist, and went to see kibbutzim.
"The soil was saturated with alkalis and had to be washed before anything would grow in it; by prodigious labor they had diverted the waters of the Jordan to this purpose, and now were planting bananas, and also growing carp in ponds which the river filled for them. The members of the co-operative got no wages, but lived like the early Christians, having all things save women in common. Half their members worked in the potash plant near by and brought their wages to pay the interest on the debt incurred for building materials and tools."
They talked to them about Yenan and the many parallels in the two. The conversation always turned to the war.
"The world was being rent by the most dreadful of all wars, and the task of keeping this nascent nation alive through the storm was one which engaged the attention of every man and woman in it. The Jews were in a state of agony over what was happening to their brethren in Central Europe; fugitives were continuing to put in appearance, telling ever more frightful tales—the most merciless slaughter of a race in recent times and perhaps in all history. To save as many as possible was the desire of every Jew, and it was hard indeed for them to face the fact that the British government and military would not permit them to admit and care for the refugees.
"According to the so-called Balfour Declaration, issued before World War I, the Jews were to be permitted to establish their homeland in Palestine. Why had the British backed down and violated this pledge? The answer was written plain for all the world to read—written in a substance that was thick and black and greasy, and very difficult to erase. Every Jew, and also every Arab, knew that the oil from the great Mosul field, British-owned, was pumped through a pipe-line across the deserts of Transjordan to the port of Haifa, on the Mediterranean near the top of Palestine. To that port came a constant stream of tankers, and the oil was essential to the operation of the British Navy, the British Merchant Marine, and even British industry at home.
"Jewish immigration had stirred up the Arabs and led to the forming of the Arab League and the financing of a swarm of agitators, calling for united action by the seven states which made up the Arab world. First Mussolini and then Hitler had taken up this cause, proclaiming themselves near-Muslims and friends of all followers of the Prophet. That, no doubt, was why Adi Schicklgruber had taken the son of Budd-Erling up to his mountain hideout and there informed him that he considered the onetime camel driver the greatest man who had lived, prior to Adi himself. Anything whatever that would cripple the British Empire and enable Adi to get down to the Mediterranean and the Dardanelles ahead of Stalin!
"Now the issue was being decided by war, and all the Jews with whom Lanny talked wanted the Allies to win; but there were a few who could not see very far and hated the enemy who was nearest to them. The British were here, governing in their rather cold impersonal way. In order to keep from driving the Arabs to frenzy and causing them to destroy the pipe-lines, British officials had to keep Jewish refugees from pouring into Palestine. These refugees came in wretched rubs, likely to fall to pieces in the first storm; the passengers would try to get ashore, even by swimming; and what a hideous thing to send them back to sea with no destination—and after having caught a glimpse of the land which the Lord their God had given them!
"So a wartime truce was being broken, and there was an underground war between the British troops and a Zionist organization called the Irgun. Some refugees were always getting in, and the Arabs took note of that, and their agitators fanned the flames of hatred. ... A young Jewish engineer, no fanatic but a man of science, compared it to the situation between the Indians and the white settlers on the American continent. The Arabs were a primitive people, ignorant and helpless, with a culture many centuries out of date; the Jews brought machinery and machine techniques, and modern knowledge of a thousand sorts. Was it not in the interest of progress that they should replace the inferior culture?
"Lanny assented, but pointed out that the Americans had come to be troubled in conscience over the way they had treated the Indians, and that you could not do in the twentieth century what your forefathers had done in the sixteenth and seventeenth. To this the Jew answered that his people were prepared to grant the Arabs full political rights and all the benefits of education. The trouble was, the Arabs didn’t want to be educated, at least not in modern ideas; they were content to have their children sit on a dirt floor and scratch fleas and learn to recite texts out of the Koran which had no remotest relationship to modern life.
"Lanny, trying to draw the man out, said that he had seen Jewish boys at school in Poland under precisely the same conditions, only the book from which they were learning was the Talmud instead of the Koran. Yes, that was true, the other admitted; but modern Jews had a different sort of education and the Palestine they built would be different from the old.
"In New York you didn’t find Jews voting against Gentiles; in Detroit and Chicago you didn’t find Negroes voting against whites; all over the North you found New Deal Jews and Negroes and whites voting against reactionaries of the same races.
"But the trouble was, you couldn’t tell that to the Arabs: few of them had ever heard of either Socialism or the New Deal. The Arabs held it as their creed that everything was predetermined by Allah, and that there was no use trying to change anything. They lived under a primitive tribal regime, in which the sheiks and their relatives and friends absorbed all the surplus value and left the masses hungry, ragged, and sunk in superstition. All that immense wealth which the British and American oil companies paid for drilling and pipe-line concessions went to kings and shahs and regents, and was spent for palaces and motorcars, jewels and banquets; the toiling masses got little or no benefit from it. Here in Palestine the British were just, but entirely capitalist-minded, and they left the rich to go on exploiting the poor as they had done from ancient times in spite of all the scolding of their prophets.
"Such was the East, which Rudyard Kipling had said would never meet the West, but he was turning out to be a poor prognosticator. Right here in the land of Canaan East and West were meeting every hour, and the whole community was in turmoil caused thereby. They were meeting in China, and in India, and even in the far Pacific islands, where black men and brown were getting to know GI’s, and riding in tractors and jeeps, and having their thoughts turned upside-down by radios and phonographs and motion pictures.
"The two explorers had been sent not merely to observe these phenomena, but to advise what should or could be done about them; and so, each night before they slept, they spent an hour discussing what they had seen and what they made of it. The longer they stayed, the more clearly they realized the complexities of this problem. It would be hard indeed to persuade the Arabs to dwell in amity with the Jews in a democratically controlled state; also, there were many Christians, Roman Catholics, Eastern or Byzantine Catholic, Armenian, Coptic, and even some Protestant sects who were scarcely less unwilling. Jerusalem was the Holy City of all these groups; they had their shrines here, and the trouble was, so many of them wanted the same shrines, and to decorate them with their own kind of tinsel and jewels, and perform their own kind of exclusive rites in front of them.
"So all these groups, the three great monotheistic religions which had become the bases of Western civilization, had hardened and become dogma-ridden; they had forgotten mercy and brotherhood, and had become the means of livelihood for ecclesiastical establishments, and, worse yet, a means whereby the propertied classes kept the poor contented with their lot. Every Church organization fought for its own, and made a virtue out of excluding the others; so Jerusalem, the Holy City of God, had become a caldron of seething hatreds, a nest of vipers—even worse, for vipers do not sting one another. Here as elsewhere Lanny observed that it was the young Socialists, many of whom called themselves materialists, who were preaching peace and reconciliation, and it was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who was proclaiming a holy war throughout all the Arab world. The rabbis and the priests passed one another on the streets and glared with hatred hardly to be restrained."
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Lanny and Laurel would discuss every evening and he sent reports regularly, while she made notes about everything she saw and heard from everyone she met. They tried a seance, and it was Madame Zyszynski, who said she was on a hilltop with a shepherd in a warm country. Lanny asked her to ask the boy his name, and she couldn't understand, but he wrote down as it sounded. He went to ask a scholar connected with the library at the New Hebrew University about the words. The elderly scholar was amazed, it was very old Hebrew, nobody spoke it now. He translated it.
"“‘I am Peretz, son of Jehuda. We are of the tribe of Jehuda. We are descendants of Abraham. We have seven sheep and eleven goats. I have a twin brother.’”, and so on."
"“Perhaps the boy heard the words in a school, sir.”
"“They are not words that would be taught in any school. They sound like a boy’s conversation. In English it would be Phares, son of Judas, and we have such a person in our Book of Genesis; there is a story about him—that he was the first-born of a pair of twins, and the midwife tied a red string upon his wrist when he was the first to emerge from the womb. The name means ‘the breach.’ That was well over three thousand years ago, according to our reckoning.”"
Lanny looked up in the library.
"As Pharez, son of Judas, he was in that long line of ancestors who had been listed for Jesus by both Matthew and Luke, ... "
Lanny and Laurel would discuss every evening and he sent reports regularly, while she made notes about everything she saw and heard from everyone she met. They tried a seance, and it was Madame Zyszynski, who said she was on a hilltop with a shepherd in a warm country. Lanny asked her to ask the boy his name, and she couldn't understand, but he wrote down as it sounded. He went to ask a scholar connected with the library at the New Hebrew University about the words. The elderly scholar was amazed, it was very old Hebrew, nobody spoke it now. He translated it.
"“‘I am Peretz, son of Jehuda. We are of the tribe of Jehuda. We are descendants of Abraham. We have seven sheep and eleven goats. I have a twin brother.’”, and so on."
"“Perhaps the boy heard the words in a school, sir.”
"“They are not words that would be taught in any school. They sound like a boy’s conversation. In English it would be Phares, son of Judas, and we have such a person in our Book of Genesis; there is a story about him—that he was the first-born of a pair of twins, and the midwife tied a red string upon his wrist when he was the first to emerge from the womb. The name means ‘the breach.’ That was well over three thousand years ago, according to our reckoning.”"
Lanny looked up in the library.
"As Pharez, son of Judas, he was in that long line of ancestors who had been listed for Jesus by both Matthew and Luke, ... "
............................................................................
Lanny and Laurel took their time in Cairo to see the sites, and unexpectedly met Scrubbie, a nineteen year old veteran flyer of British military, and a grandson of Sir Alfred Pomeroy-Nielson, Bart., who was happy to see an old friend of the family, having been grounded after having been on maximum number of missions permitted to anybody. He spoke freely over lunch, about his raids and Egypt now being a training centre, about family and more. Lanny explained that he didn't get to England as much since he had taken his daughter to U.S. to live with the family of her grandfather.
They flew to Algiers via Tripoli, and Lanny went alone to see Denis fils, because he wanted to talk freely about seeing his father in Paris. He was severely wounded by an exploding shell, and would be at a desk job hence.
"Had Lanny heard about the fine record which General Giraud’s men had been making all the way up the eastern coast of Italy? Yes, Lanny had heard it; they were all doing well, even the American Japanese, the Nisei, who had the special motive of proving themselves Americans and wiping out the shame of Pearl Harbor."
Lanny and Denis talked about Charlot. Lanny said he might be in France since allies were expected to cross the channel, and he'd talk to Charlot.
Lanny met the many friends he'd made in Algiers.
"Dr. Aboulker, and his two sons, who had made their home the headquarters of the youth group, the Chantiers de la Jeunesse, which had seized the city government and held most of it until the Army had got ashore. They had risked their lives, and now they found that they were completely out of everything; no one paid any attention to them—unless it was the police spies. The elderly crippled doctor had been kept under detention for some time.
"Lanny and his wife were invited to a soiree at the home of the French General Juin, who had married an Algerian heiress and lived up on the heights in an ancient Arab villa, large in size, square in shape, and yellow in color. The visitors bought proper clothes in order that they might appear at this and other functions; they met a wealthy provincial hostess, who had been so anti-American that Lanny had been warned against her. Americans in her eyes were democratic, they were enemies of property, Jew-lovers and even Freemasons!
"But now all that was water over the dam; the lady was all smiles and charms, all pearls and diamonds; her drawing-room was full of French, British, and American uniforms, the tiptop of the armies in this main thoroughfare to the war in Italy. Lanny listened to groups of these men discussing their problems, and he did not hear of any plans to establish democratic government in these colonies, which included such large numbers of dark-skinned peoples—whom some of the officers referred to as “niggers” and others as “wogs.”
"General George Patton had come ashore at Casablanca, flourishing his two pearl-handled revolvers and roaring for action. He had swept all the way across North Africa, a couple of thousand miles; he had swept across Sicily and was now on his way up the Italian boot; he had boldly announced his intention of conducting the same sweeping operations in France and Germany. ... “Man IS war!” the commander of the Third Army had proclaimed. He was not content with the formula, “In time of peace prepare for war,” but wanted it to read, “In time of war prepare for the next one.”
"That was the program; the near-Fascists would rebuild Fascism with the label changed—probably to something religious, since “Big Charlie” was a devout Catholic and “Two-Gun Georgie” a devout Episcopalian."
Before they flew to Marrakech, Lanny asked Bob Murphy to help him contact Jerry Pendleton and Raoul Palma, both now working with OSS, and sent of notes to each, expecting to meet Jerry who was working in Casablanca; he sent his letter to Raoul, who was working in Midi, addressed to Bruges and signed “Neuchâtel”, so Raoul would know to contact him at Newcastle.
"One thing tormented Beauty’s soul, and that was the continued silence of her daughter. She besieged Lanny on the subject, and all he could tell her was that he could think of no circumstance under which friends of Marceline in the Allied world could do anything but harm to her in the Axis world. If she was dead, or in a concentration camp, she was equally beyond help for the present. If she had gone into hiding—as many people in Germany had done—the last thing she would want was any effort to find her. If she got out, she would surely let them know; meantime she was one of many millions lost, missing, displaced, or whatever the word might be, on the tormented Continent. Lanny pointed out to his mother that Marceline had a powerful friend in her Junker lover; she had made many other friends by her art. It might well be that the friend in, Switzerland who had been relaying messages for her had died, or that some law had been passed forbidding the practice. Beauty’s daughter was a capable young woman and would surely not be wanting help from enemies of the land where she had chosen to make her home."
Jerry came by train to see him. He couldn't talk about his work for OSS, which was as confidential as Lanny's, but he was worried about the war.
"The month was March, and the armies in Italy had been making no gains worth mentioning; they were stuck in front of Monte Cassino and had been pouring out blood there for weeks; they had made a landing at Anzio, a beach below Rome, and had barely been holding on by fingernails and toenails.
"“We knew that campaign was going to be tough, Jerry; up one mountain and down to another.”
"“Yes, but if we can’t take Italy, how can we expect to take France?”
"“You know where the real war will be,” he said, “and it’s not in Italy. We’re keeping a dozen or a score of German divisions occupied there, and keeping them away from the Russian front. That’s our winter contribution, and you see the result—the Russians are in Poland and also in Bessarabia.”
"“Hasn’t it occurred to you that the Germans may be going easy on the Russians, and that when the Russians have got back everything that belongs to them, they may make a deal and quit on us?”
"“I’ve heard talk about that, Jerry; but I put myself in Stalin’s place and invite myself to trust Hitler and I can’t see it. My guess is, the Russians will put the Germans to work for a generation to repair the damage they have done.”
"“Maybe so; but they may prefer to make Commies out of them, and we won’t like that either.”
"Denis had reported about the fighting in Italy: the men were lying out in foxholes in the cold rain and snow, facing the fearsome new weapons which the enemy had contrived to make misery for them. There was a thing which the GI’s called a Beetle; a crewless tank, guided by radio, low and flat, and carrying a heavy charge of explosives; it came hurtling along and crashed into an ammunition dump or other objective. There was a device for destroying railroad track, which ran on the track it destroyed; it had an immense hook in back which ripped up the sleepers; also, on each side a sort of trough, in which bombs slid down every few seconds and exploded after the hook had passed on. And whatever door the GI opened, or whatever obstacle he removed, there was sure to be a booby-trap designed to blow him out of this world. There were devilish little devices not much bigger than a fountain pen that shot up a bullet between a man’s legs, just enough to ruin him for life.
"Such were the things to which the German scientific brain had been devoting itself; and the American brain had been forced to follow suit. That appeared to be the way of all evil, it compelled the good to cease being good and to meet evil on its own evil ground. “Don’t worry,” Lanny said, “we have some surprises prepared for the Jerries, and it won’t be long before they find it out.”
"The American Jerry’s answer was, “I’m sick of waiting. All the Moors here are beginning to turn up their noses at me; and some of the French too—the high-toned ones who didn’t want us in here and are glad to see us in trouble.”"
Lanny had called Jerry to discuss his idea, about going into Spain and be close to France, before he flew back and discussed it in Washington D.C.; he wanted Jerry to be with him. Jerry thought it was dangerous, nazis could kidnap him. They were flown back with wounded soldiers to N.Y., and Laurel found that baby hadn't forgotten her, while Lanny called Washington.
............................................................................
There was a delay, so meanwhile Lanny attended to art business. He met Zoltan Kertezsi who reported about people investing in Detazes.
"Lanny drove his wife to Newcastle, and there were Robbie and all his friends and associates who had invested in Budd-Erling stocks; they were all making fortunes, and surely thought it was all right. If you had asked Robbie he would have replied, “What the heck! We couldn’t help it if we wanted to.”
"Frances was well, going to school with the other children, and entirely happy. Nobody had tried to kidnap her, and the town had got over its excitement at having an heiress come to stay. She had kept her promise to write every week to her mother, and after long delays there came replies; Frances read the latest to her father, and it contained a sentence: “No bombs have fallen anywhere near us, and there are fewer of them every day.” That implied, possibly, a hint of rebuke for the father, the idea that he had taken the child away under false pretenses. The flying bombs, the V-1’s, were still only a rumor among the insiders, and Lanny said nothing. It could be that the British and American flyers had found the launching sites and destroyed the hellish things. Only time could tell."
Lanny got a call to meet Harry Hopkins who was at a N.Y. hotel, and found Alston there too. They asked him about his observations on the recent trip. Lanny went for a walk with Alston to discuss his idea. Alston thought it was dangerous.
"“I’m not sure how much they have found out, Professor. It’s quite possible they just wanted me for questioning. I have a spiel ready for them: I am hurt by their suspicions, and by the fact that Hitler has permitted some jealous person to tell him lies about me. I wouldn’t want to try that in Berlin, but it might be good for Madrid. I’ll be careful about going out on the street alone at night.”"
Alston questioned Lanny about everything, and suddenly asked if he'd forgotten what he learned at Princeton. Lanny said he remembered the important parts, and had been informed on the progress by FDR.
"“You understand, this is the most closely guarded secret in the country. We are rushing to completion three enormous plants in widely scattered districts. The cost will go to a billion or two, and I think it’s the first time in the history of industry that full-scale operational plants have been erected without even a pilot plant to test the procedure. We have plunged into it with top priority, solely on the word of the scientists that their formulas are correct.”
"“According to my information, you made no mistake. Our English friends are in for a tough time. We’ll do what we can to help them, but I fear it won’t be much.”
"“What I’m worrying about. Professor, is that the enemy may be saving up that thing for D-day.”
"“Nothing is more likely; but worrying won’t help us. We have to do the best we can and take our losses. We have the fixed purpose to get ashore and invade Germany. The whole future of the world depends upon our carrying out that plan, and I don’t think we can be stopped.”"
Lanny called Jim Stotzlmann and met him for lunch. He had a story Jim needed to hear, being one of those in charge of safety of N.Y. port.
"In Haifa Lanny had got into conversation with a sailor who claimed to know the German agent who had set fire to the great French liner, the Normandie. That beautiful vessel now lay on her side by the pier, as big as a dozen dead whales, and it was too late to do anything for her; but according to the story the German agent was still in New York, and that was something to be looked into. Jim promised to report it to the right place."
Jim queried about Lanny's trip.
"Then he asked about Palestine. He knew some of the rich Jews who were financing that enterprise and could tell about their state of distress. They hadn’t expected such a fury of reaction from the Arabs, and now they were accusing the British of perfidy, and F.D.R. of cowardice and vacillation. Only a small percentage of Jews were Zionists, but the horror in Germany had awakened their sense of solidarity. Surely it was right that there should be some corner of the world where a persecuted people could seek shelter, and bring in their relatives and friends! Surely the British government ought to stand by their pledged word, and the American government ought to make them do it!
"What made the matter more urgent was the fact that a presidential election was coming this fall, and no party that wanted to carry the Empire State could forget the Bronx, which had more Jews in it than Palestine. Twice as many Jews in New York City as in the Jewish homeland, and now they were all buzzing like a swarm of angry bees. The Governor was worried about it; there wasn’t any Arab vote to speak of, but there was Arab oil, and our fleet, as well as the British, was using all it could get. So it was a mess."
Lanny was asked to meet FDR in South Carolina where he was recuperating, and they discussed Lanny's trip to Spain. Lanny said he thought he could get them thinking allies were going to cross at Holland.
"“I fear I can never get the Nazis to trust me again. It might be that I could have some secret documents and let their agents steal them.”
"“Go on—you got that out of E. Phillips Oppenheim. Go and talk with Wild Bill; he knows the story and I’ll OK anything he approves.”"
Accordingly Lanny met with OSS and had long discussion about Spain, after a thorough questioning about his trip, and Baker arranged his passport and passage. Lanny got a visa for Portugal and thought it better to apply in Lisbon for a visa to Spain, for which then he had to wait for a week in Lisbon.
"The newspapers published the communiqués of both sides, and both were permitted to lease store windows and mount their propaganda for passers-by to read; the Nazis won out in this, because their propaganda included photographs of blond Aryan females exhibiting everything with which nature had endowed them."
His visa came through and he took the first flight to Madrid that he could gets seat on, and having put up at the Ritz hotel, invited General Aguilar to dinner. Being seen dining with him at the hotel was important, and he explained to the general about his purpose of acquiring art from Spain for America; there were some great living painters in Spain, Lanny thought there was no law against export of their works, and he explained his ability to get around during war was due to his father's influence. General Aguilar understood it all too well about influence.
Lanny made friends with artists and established himself with art dealers. Politically he declared himself neutral.
"This was another Catholic land where the teaching of birth control was a crime, and the unwanted infants who came into the world with very little flesh on their soft bones went out again quickly, assured of eternal bliss because each one had had a cross marked on its forehead with consecrated water."
Germans came to see him, some Swiss or Dane who could be German, and Fridolin who was staying at the hotel invited him to her room and smiled at him despite his polite refusal. This went on until one morning he heard a familiar voice on the phone, it was Heinrich; Lanny said to himself, Hitler has sent him. Sure enough, Heinrich asked him after saying he was in Spain to consult about training youth, why he'd left so suddenly. Lanny said he was tipped off about Himmler, who'd come to see him, being about to arrest him; people near Hitler who were against Himmler had helped him he said, having thought it out and decided to let them worry. Heinrich promised to go straight to Hitler and tell him, and said Hitler would provide him safe conduct personally so he could confront his accusers; Lanny said he'd like nothing better, but might not be able to, given the war.
"Lanny was guessing that Heinrich had been told this, and that he had come here for the purpose of deceiving Lanny and paying him back. But there was always a chance that Lanny might be mistaken, that perhaps the Gestapo hadn’t really had anything definite against him and had merely wanted to question him. Perhaps they had sent Heinrich just to try to get Lanny back into Germany, without telling him anything against his friend. Such complications lent piquancy to the duel of wits.
"El Caudillo had surely not given up his dream of “forging an empire,” and all Spanish children were being taught that this heaven-sent leader was going to restore the country’s ancient glory by retaking all the once-Spanish lands—South and Central America, the West Indies, Mexico, Texas, California. Then Spain would be really prosperous, and every Spaniard would be a lord. Heinrich mentioned this program to his friend, and Lanny wondered, was he really naïve, or was all this a subtle pose to make Lanny believe that he was exactly the same old comrade, having no idea that Lanny was in any way different from what he had always been? If Heinrich had been coached it would surely have been a good coaching."
Heinrich attended to those duties and dined with Lanny, allowing him as usual to pay; Lanny inquired after his family, each of eight children, by name, and told him enough about meeting rich people across U.S. against the war to make Heinrich say he'd tell his boss; sure enough, in three days there was a personal letter on official embossed stationary to Heinrich, guaranteeing Lanny's safe conduct to and from Berlin; Heinrich was beside himself with excitement, but Lanny said he had business engagements, and couldn't leave immediately; he promised to come soon, and meanwhile prepared his own personal report for Hitler, to be transmitted by Heinrich. His report to FDR he thought better of and burnt, it might not be safe.
"The Germans in the course of their strategic retreat had abandoned Odessa and been surrounded in Sebastopol. The Americans were slogging their way from one mountain to the next on the Italian peninsula, and the people at home read stories of rain and mud and blood, and waited, doubting and despairing, for the Army or somebody to carry out some of the wonderful promises which had been made to the world."
Gradually Lanny had managed to get surrounded in Madrid by nazis and Nazi agents, which after Heinrich's arrival was more open, he no longer could maintain a neutral pose; he was amused to see Fridolin happy to replace him with Heinrich, which was as per Nazi doctrine, but all the same Heinrich didn't want it mentioned back home.
"They ate hearty meals in the dining-room—and perhaps none of them ever noticed that all this hospitality took place in Madrid’s swankiest hotel, and that Lanny never came to their places, never went out alone with them, and never got into a motorcar, not even a taxi, with them. He wouldn’t even visit the Velasquez Club where all the diplomatic set played tennis and swam in the pool. The Germans used one end and the Allies the other; the Spaniards circulated in between. Now and then the Japs came, and then all the others got out and left."
He seemed to never go out, had paintings brought to his room, and refused every sexual offer by either gender; nazis could find out from bell boys who knew everything.
"He seemed determined to know everything about Spanish painting; next to that came the Dutch—he read papers from Holland, all that he could get in Madrid, and others that he had ordered by mail. He persisted in inquiring about living Dutch painters when everybody knew the Dutch weren’t doing anything worth while in any of the arts—how could they, when the efficient Nazis had taken them all and put them at war work? This Budd fellow spent days in the National Library in Madrid, reading about Dutch painters and trying to find out which were still alive. Of course the efficient Nazis wouldn’t fail to track him, and to find out what books he had consulted and what questions he had asked. Imagine thinking he could keep any secrets in this Fascist city, with the Gestapo and the Spanish police working hand-in-glove on security problems!
"The secret came out when the American revealed to his dear German friend that he had in mind to get in touch with an odd character of the Dutch art world, Hans van Meegeren by name. This unsuccessful painter had discovered several remarkable works by the old master Vermeer."
Heinrich undertook to find out if Lanny could write to this Meegeren, and asked why Lanny wouldn't go clear up matters with Hitler if getting a painting by Vermeer from Meegeren was so important, but Lanny kept refusing.
"Across the foot of a mountain canyon a great dam is erected, by the labor of thousands of men and at a cost of millions of dollars. The waters of a river are pent up and form an artificial lake. A powerhouse is built, dynamos are installed, and transmission lines are run over mountaintops and down into valleys. All is made ready, and then one day an engineer in a control room pulls a small lever, and the waters of the lake rush down through the penstocks; giant turbines begin to turn, electric current leaps in a fraction of a second, and in cities hundreds of miles away an infinitude of factory wheels begin to turn and machines to roar and pound.
"So now it was with the son of Budd-Erling: everything had been prepared, and the time for action had come. He had no lever, only a fountain pen with ink in it, and a scrap of paper on which to write words. He wrote only five, all of them short and none especially impressive: “My roses are in bloom.” He sealed the paper in a plain envelope, stamped it, and addressed it to a so-called “post office” in Madrid. He hadn’t been told the details of what would happen, but he knew the game well enough to imagine every step. The message would be radioed to Washington, and within an hour after it arrived, an OSS agent would take off by plane for New York and from there to Newcastle; he would interview Robbie Budd, even if he had to wake him in the middle of the night, and would present a letter which Lanny had composed and left in the keeping of General Donovan’s office. Robbie would summon his trusted private secretary and dictate the text of that letter, have it typed on his impressive stationery—“Office of the President”—and then sign it himself. The OSS man would take the document, and it would be flown in a diplomatic pouch to Casablanca and delivered to Jerry Pendleton. Jerry would pack his suitcase, provide himself with an American passport and a forged Spanish visa, and be flown by way of Tangier to Madrid."
Lanny waited three days, and taking precautions, strolled near Prado; contact was made with minimal code, he slipped the letter in Lanny's pocket, and left, although both would have liked to talk.
"When he got into his room he locked the door and then opened the envelope. He knew the contents pretty nearly by heart, but he had to read it to make sure it was correct.
"Dear Lanny:
"Information has come to me from one of your clients that you are contemplating going into Holland to inspect paintings. I am deeply concerned, and am going to the expense of sending this letter to you by special messenger. You have many times told me that you are a grown man and have to have control of your own destiny; but for this once I am hoping you will respect your father’s judgment and grant my request to drop this most dangerous project. I do not need to tell you that I have special information, which I dare not put on paper. I simply say to you, with all the urgency at my command: DO NOT GO INTO THE LOW COUNTRIES.
"Surely there is no art matter important enough to justify you in disregarding this warning from your father. The fact that I am paying more than a thousand dollars to get this message to you without censorship ought surely to convince you that I have reasons for what I am saying. Stay where you are until summer: or if you must meet your friends, meet them in France. The climate in Holland is damp and unpleasant in spring, and I understand it is a time of bright sunshine in Spain. If it is money you need, for heaven’s sake draw on me.
"I rely upon you to destroy this letter as soon as you have read it.
"Your loving father,
"Robert Budd
"P.S. I am telling your client that I have written this, so you need not worry about failing to keep your promise to him."
Lanny carefully slid the envelope between the lining of the suitcase and the frame, with one thread from the lining held between by pressure, that fell unseen when envelope was removed. He locked his room and called Heinrich over, who was surprised his father had sent a messenger to give a letter saying he shouldn't go to Germany or Italy on any account. Heinrich argued that Lanny should come over, and Lanny said he was doing important work sending information to Hitler and Göring, which he'd rather continue via Heinrich. Lanny proposed they see a German film in town, and Heinrich said he had to cancel an appointment, but had to go down to reception. Lanny looked around, and saw a Spanish military acquaintance whose friend had delayed, and proposed he join them.
"He had been smitten by the thought that his Jugend friend, instead of telling the Gestapo to come and get a photostat of a letter in Lanny Budd’s room, might tell them to come and pick up this double-crossing spy and whisk him into France from one of the airports which they controlled. But now there would be three in the party, one of them a staff officer of the military commandant of this district, with his sword on his left side and his automatic on his right."
Back in his room Lanny checked with care by holding the envelope in place against the lining with one hand while ripping the lining up with the other, and the thread wasn't there. So now he knew it had been photographed, and would have copies sent to Hitler and Göring, and military discussing it. It might end up diverting a part of the panzer divisions, and save American lives.
Lanny continued in Madrid, partly so he wouldn't seem to hasten to leave after the letter, and partly to continue gathering information while going on with art business. In May Franco gave in to allied demands, and most of nazis surrounding Lanny left; he gave names of others in his reports, and of other falangista. His letters to Laurel were addressed to Agnes and noncommittal, as were hers. But at the end of May there was one, using paintings as code, informing him she was on her way to England. So he packed up, sent a cable to Robbie and went to Lisbon, waiting for two days before he was flown to England.
............................................................................
Lanny called Laurel at the hotel, but she wasn't in. He checked in and went for a walk.
"Lanny recalled the joke to the effect that there were so many American soldiers on the island that it would have sunk if it had not been for the barrage balloons holding it up. The Americans were swarming on the streets in many different uniforms; the balloons were visible also, huge fat silvery sausages bobbing about in a heavily clouded sky."
Back at the hotel he met Laurel who was a war correspondent now, with captain's rank. Women weren't allowed at front, but she could follow. She told him she'd found male correspondents had disappeared, and she guessed why. They went for a walk in Hyde Park to see tulips.
"The flowers bowed gently in the wind—not a gale, but what the sailors would call a stiff breeze—and that brought their thoughts back to D-day. It was from the north, and Lanny said, “That will be bad on the beaches. They’ll hardly try it tonight.” It wasn’t until later that he heard the story, that the sailing had been set for the previous night but had had to be called off on account of bad weather. Now General Ike and his staff were in a dreadful state of anxiety. Their meteorologists expected the wind to die down, but they might be mistaken, and in any case there would be swells on the beaches. On the other hand, if the landing were postponed, it would have to be for another month, on account of the tides; and here were the ships in the harbor, many with troops already on board, and all exposed to enemy bombers; here was a vast armada approaching from the Atlantic, four thousand vessels in all, and no man could guess how many U-boats lurking in wait for them. To go or not to go, that was the question."
They didn't know, but this was supposed to be D-Day, and it hadn't worked; next morning it was.
"During that night a hundred thousand men boarded ships and landing craft in Southampton and other harbors on the English south coast. During that night another enormous convoy came stealing in from the Atlantic Ocean, a couple of thousand vessels, transports, freight ships, tankers, repair ships, hospital ships. Leading the way and bringing up the rear were hundreds of war vessels of every kind and size, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and small escort vessels darting here and there at speeds up to forty miles an hour. All were equipped with marvelous new devices which enabled them to detect vessels under the sea or on the surface, and planes of any sort in the air. Radio Detection and Ranging was its full name, and the ships had automatic guns of a hundred sizes which could be turned, some of them in the fraction of a second, upon an enemy object thus reported. Their anti-aircraft shells were provided with proximity fuses, incredible little radio devices which drew the shell close to the target and caused it to explode when it was near. Keep out of the way of this new scientific armada!
"Sunrise had come early, and the landings had begun a few minutes later. Transocean, the German radio, began telling the news at once; the Germans had nothing to lose by telling—they could be sure the enemy knew what it was doing. The Allies, on the other hand, couldn’t be sure how much the Germans knew, so they kept silent. Lanny and Laurel listened to German accounts, in the English language. They told of forces coming ashore on the beaches, all the way between Le Havre and Cherbourg, a distance of about a hundred miles, and of swarms of parachutists being dropped upon the countryside, as far back as Rouen, forty miles from the sea. They were seeking to seize strategic points, destroy bridges, mine roads; the Germans said they were being mopped up, and that, of course, was according to formula.
"Three hours passed before the BBC made itself heard, and then it was only one sentence. General Ike’s press aide, who had a good voice, interrupted a program with the statement, “In ten seconds I shall make an important announcement.” He solemnly counted, “One–two–three–four–five–six–seven–eight–nine–ten.” Then, “The invasion has begun on the northern coast of France.”"
Lanny told his wife what he could about what he'd seen in Algiers and more.
"Besides the parachutists there were airborne troops, whole divisions of them, packed into glider planes, towed by elastic ropes, and turned loose to glide to the ground. During the night preceding the landing the British and Americans had dropped four such airborne divisions and two parachute divisions, somewhere between sixty and ninety thousand men. The planes which had dropped them would return for more, and for loads of supplies. The men had ground-to-air radio equipment and could tell in code where they were and what they needed; within the hour it would be dropped to them.
"Such a coming and going of planes had never been in the world before. During the entire time, a couple of weeks, that Lanny spent in London, the roar of planes was never once out of his ears. It was a sound like nothing else on earth, a multiple drone made up of hundreds of individual ones, no one of which could be distinguished. The sound never died for an instant, because as some planes passed, others came on, and all going north or south, pointing the way to the war.
"The correspondents told of scenes near the beaches: the transports and large landing craft trailing barrage balloons, to keep divebombers away; the PT-boats darting in every direction, searching for U-boats; the great battlewagons parading slowly, several miles offshore, their spotter planes picking out the targets and radioing the data. There were a dozen American battleships here, more than there had been at Pearl Harbor; some had been sunk there, and had been lifted and made over, better than ever. Some of the old fellows were no longer fast enough for sea fighting, but here, protected by cruisers and a swarm of destroyers, they were moving fortresses, hurling a tremendous weight of metal against the smoke-blanketed shore line.
"The Germans had had three years to fortify this coast. They had surveyed and plotted every beach and knew the exact angles and distances. They had mined the entire shore and all the paths, and had blocked every approach with ingeniously constructed obstacles. But on that fateful night midget submarines had crept in and laid beach markers, and a hundred or two minesweepers had worked all night, protected by airplane bombing. Channels had been cleared to the beaches, and up on the bluffs the paratroopers were raiding the pillboxes and dropping grenades into the firing slots."
Lanny and Laurel were listening to the radio, and he saw her in tears. He consoled her, and reminded her she had to be tougher to go in. Lanny called Rick. Rick and Nina came, and Lanny told them about meeting their baby. Rick and Lanny agreed that the most surprising part was absense of Luftwaffe from the scene.
"Der Dicke simply didn’t have the planes to defy the eleven thousand which the Allies had at work. What Göring had he was saving for the counterattack by which the Reichswehr was promising to drive the invaders back into the sea.
"This much was certain by the end of that day: the landing had been achieved. The invaders had taken beach after beach, including the fashionable plages of Trouville and Deauville, which both Lanny and Rick had visited in happier days. The invaders had climbed the bluffs and were spreading out, joining their paratroopers and glider men, over a front of some sixty miles. The radio reported that in Brooklyn the bearded old men of a Jewish home for the aged had put on their prayer shawls and skullcaps and marched through the streets, blowing the shofar, the ram’s horn.
"Another question—what were the Partisans doing, the French? That was news for which the public would have to wait for some time. General Ike had said over the radio, “The hour of your liberation is approaching.” He had told the Partisans to perform those duties which had been assigned to them, and he had told the rest of the population to keep out of the way and do nothing to provoke enemy reprisals. Both Lanny and Rick knew that an elaborate underground organization had been built up; planes had been flown in at night, supplies had been dropped, and a secret army had been equipped. Now, all over France, that army would go into action, blowing up bridges, wrecking rail lines, chopping down trees to block highways, raiding enemy munitions dumps and oil storage depots. These Free French knew the country they lived in, and nothing could be hidden from them; what they couldn’t destroy they would let the Allies know about, and the Air Force would come and do the job.
"The result of this uprising would show gradually and in negative ways—there just wouldn’t be any German counterattack. Plenty of resistance, desperate, hard fighting, step by step backward, but no mass advance, no driving the Allies into the sea. The Germans couldn’t get the forces up. They couldn’t run trains and they couldn’t travel the highways except at night because of the incessant bombing. They would learn the bitter lesson, which they had been teaching the rest of the world, that it is impossible to win a modern war without command of the air; also, that it is impossible to win when the Commander-in-Chief is six hundred miles away from the battlefield, and when he does not trust his commanders, and will not let them move troops without permission.
"By the end of the second day it was clear that the invasion had succeeded; the troops were ashore along a sixty-mile front; they were from five to ten miles inland and were holding while reinforcements and supplies continued to pour in behind them. The bombardment went on, for the big guns of the ships had a range of twenty miles or more and were hurling their shells into enemy entrenchments far inland. The weather was making trouble, but not too much, and the airmen maintained cover over the whole scene, keeping the enemy miserable and blocking the roads behind him.
"The Cotentin Peninsula thrusts up from France into the Channel, and at its head is the great port of Cherbourg. Now it was becoming plain that this port was the first goal of the American Army. They held the western part of the beachhead and the British had the eastern; the British goal was the railroad town of Caen, and it was a harder assignment, because Germany lay in that direction, and also the great network of railroads through Holland and Belgium and the industrial part of France. The bulk of the German armies along the Channel were east of the invasion zone, so the British would have their hands full holding on, while the Americans were able to advance. That might be hard on British feelings, but there was no helping it; they had been holding on for nearly five years, all over the world, and it had become their specialty.
"The American plan was to cut across the base of the Cotentin, thus isolating Cherbourg, and then taking it. Normandy is the name of the province, and it was from here that William the Conqueror had launched his invasion of England, not quite nine hundred years before. It is a land of granite rocks, and the houses are built of them, and each house makes an excellent fortress—from the point of view of those who hold it. Even when it has been shelled and bombed to ruins, it will be discovered that some of the enemy have stuck it out in the cellars and then come up with machine guns.
"The rest of the rocks have been patiently dragged off the fields on sledges and built into fences, or more properly, continuous stoneheaps; the underbrush has grown up through them and covered them, and so the enemy had a series of ready-made fortifications, mile after weary mile. The bocage country, it is called, the French word meaning copse. Some of the fields were pasture; others were apple orchards, and in June they were in full foliage, making a cover which could never be entirely destroyed. No matter how much the hedgerows were bombed, there would always be Jerries left in the trenches, with weapons and ammunition in abundance; it meant that thousands of American boys had to die among the poppies, or be wounded and carried back to hospitals in the English coast towns."
Tanks, guns and trucks bringing fuel and ammunition had to fight through every such bocage, there was no outflanking.
"A job for the Royal Engineers: at twenty-seven different sites in muddy coves scattered around the shores of the British Isles they had dredged out great basins, and in them had built a total of a hundred and fifty caissons made of concrete, each as big as a house. They weighed up to thousands of tons, but they would float because they were hollow; when they were completed, the water was let into the basins, and they were floated out and towed by tugs. Anti-aircraft guns were mounted on top, little PT-boats darted around them to keep off subs, and they dragged barrage balloons against divebombers. Thus guarded, they moved at three miles an hour until they reached the invasion shore. Each caisson had its appointed spot, marked by a buoy, and it had stopcocks so that water could be let in to sink it in an hour. There was a mile-long line of them, behind which great fleets of ships could lie safely.
"The sides of this artificial harbor were made by bringing in old ships, assembled from far and near, and blowing out their bottoms with dynamite. Outside, beyond the line of caissons, was a breakwater made of large watertight steel boxes, the shape of cigar boxes; they were securely anchored and served to break the force of the immense waves which beat upon this coast during storms. Inside the artificial harbors were piers made of floating steel boxes ingeniously contrived to rise and fall with the tides—tremendous tides in this Channel, as high as twenty-two feet. As many as seven Liberty ships could unload against these piers at one time. The artificial harbors were known as Mulberry and Gooseberry, and all their various parts had code names, Phoenixes and Bombardons and Whales; the old ships were Corncobs, and the invasion itself was Overlord."
Lanny cabled Robbie as usual, and Laurel was to leave on Saturday, having fought to go to war front and finally won to the extent of being allowed to go to channel ports; on Thursday, June 15th, they retired after a show and dinner, but sirens came and they had to go to a shelter. This time was different, and Lanny told Laurel that these were V-1s. Laurel said he'd been right bringing Frances to Newcastle. He'd called Irma to tell her Frances was fine, but she hadn't invited him, and here were the Wuwas, after even Germans were sceptical. It was almost impossible to fight them, and although they were aimed at London, some did go astray, so there was no safety in Southern England, just as Lanny had told her.
Lanny called Laurel at the hotel, but she wasn't in. He checked in and went for a walk.
"Lanny recalled the joke to the effect that there were so many American soldiers on the island that it would have sunk if it had not been for the barrage balloons holding it up. The Americans were swarming on the streets in many different uniforms; the balloons were visible also, huge fat silvery sausages bobbing about in a heavily clouded sky."
Back at the hotel he met Laurel who was a war correspondent now, with captain's rank. Women weren't allowed at front, but she could follow. She told him she'd found male correspondents had disappeared, and she guessed why. They went for a walk in Hyde Park to see tulips.
"The flowers bowed gently in the wind—not a gale, but what the sailors would call a stiff breeze—and that brought their thoughts back to D-day. It was from the north, and Lanny said, “That will be bad on the beaches. They’ll hardly try it tonight.” It wasn’t until later that he heard the story, that the sailing had been set for the previous night but had had to be called off on account of bad weather. Now General Ike and his staff were in a dreadful state of anxiety. Their meteorologists expected the wind to die down, but they might be mistaken, and in any case there would be swells on the beaches. On the other hand, if the landing were postponed, it would have to be for another month, on account of the tides; and here were the ships in the harbor, many with troops already on board, and all exposed to enemy bombers; here was a vast armada approaching from the Atlantic, four thousand vessels in all, and no man could guess how many U-boats lurking in wait for them. To go or not to go, that was the question."
They didn't know, but this was supposed to be D-Day, and it hadn't worked; next morning it was.
"During that night a hundred thousand men boarded ships and landing craft in Southampton and other harbors on the English south coast. During that night another enormous convoy came stealing in from the Atlantic Ocean, a couple of thousand vessels, transports, freight ships, tankers, repair ships, hospital ships. Leading the way and bringing up the rear were hundreds of war vessels of every kind and size, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and small escort vessels darting here and there at speeds up to forty miles an hour. All were equipped with marvelous new devices which enabled them to detect vessels under the sea or on the surface, and planes of any sort in the air. Radio Detection and Ranging was its full name, and the ships had automatic guns of a hundred sizes which could be turned, some of them in the fraction of a second, upon an enemy object thus reported. Their anti-aircraft shells were provided with proximity fuses, incredible little radio devices which drew the shell close to the target and caused it to explode when it was near. Keep out of the way of this new scientific armada!
"Sunrise had come early, and the landings had begun a few minutes later. Transocean, the German radio, began telling the news at once; the Germans had nothing to lose by telling—they could be sure the enemy knew what it was doing. The Allies, on the other hand, couldn’t be sure how much the Germans knew, so they kept silent. Lanny and Laurel listened to German accounts, in the English language. They told of forces coming ashore on the beaches, all the way between Le Havre and Cherbourg, a distance of about a hundred miles, and of swarms of parachutists being dropped upon the countryside, as far back as Rouen, forty miles from the sea. They were seeking to seize strategic points, destroy bridges, mine roads; the Germans said they were being mopped up, and that, of course, was according to formula.
"Three hours passed before the BBC made itself heard, and then it was only one sentence. General Ike’s press aide, who had a good voice, interrupted a program with the statement, “In ten seconds I shall make an important announcement.” He solemnly counted, “One–two–three–four–five–six–seven–eight–nine–ten.” Then, “The invasion has begun on the northern coast of France.”"
Lanny told his wife what he could about what he'd seen in Algiers and more.
"Besides the parachutists there were airborne troops, whole divisions of them, packed into glider planes, towed by elastic ropes, and turned loose to glide to the ground. During the night preceding the landing the British and Americans had dropped four such airborne divisions and two parachute divisions, somewhere between sixty and ninety thousand men. The planes which had dropped them would return for more, and for loads of supplies. The men had ground-to-air radio equipment and could tell in code where they were and what they needed; within the hour it would be dropped to them.
"Such a coming and going of planes had never been in the world before. During the entire time, a couple of weeks, that Lanny spent in London, the roar of planes was never once out of his ears. It was a sound like nothing else on earth, a multiple drone made up of hundreds of individual ones, no one of which could be distinguished. The sound never died for an instant, because as some planes passed, others came on, and all going north or south, pointing the way to the war.
"The correspondents told of scenes near the beaches: the transports and large landing craft trailing barrage balloons, to keep divebombers away; the PT-boats darting in every direction, searching for U-boats; the great battlewagons parading slowly, several miles offshore, their spotter planes picking out the targets and radioing the data. There were a dozen American battleships here, more than there had been at Pearl Harbor; some had been sunk there, and had been lifted and made over, better than ever. Some of the old fellows were no longer fast enough for sea fighting, but here, protected by cruisers and a swarm of destroyers, they were moving fortresses, hurling a tremendous weight of metal against the smoke-blanketed shore line.
"The Germans had had three years to fortify this coast. They had surveyed and plotted every beach and knew the exact angles and distances. They had mined the entire shore and all the paths, and had blocked every approach with ingeniously constructed obstacles. But on that fateful night midget submarines had crept in and laid beach markers, and a hundred or two minesweepers had worked all night, protected by airplane bombing. Channels had been cleared to the beaches, and up on the bluffs the paratroopers were raiding the pillboxes and dropping grenades into the firing slots."
Lanny and Laurel were listening to the radio, and he saw her in tears. He consoled her, and reminded her she had to be tougher to go in. Lanny called Rick. Rick and Nina came, and Lanny told them about meeting their baby. Rick and Lanny agreed that the most surprising part was absense of Luftwaffe from the scene.
"Der Dicke simply didn’t have the planes to defy the eleven thousand which the Allies had at work. What Göring had he was saving for the counterattack by which the Reichswehr was promising to drive the invaders back into the sea.
"This much was certain by the end of that day: the landing had been achieved. The invaders had taken beach after beach, including the fashionable plages of Trouville and Deauville, which both Lanny and Rick had visited in happier days. The invaders had climbed the bluffs and were spreading out, joining their paratroopers and glider men, over a front of some sixty miles. The radio reported that in Brooklyn the bearded old men of a Jewish home for the aged had put on their prayer shawls and skullcaps and marched through the streets, blowing the shofar, the ram’s horn.
"Another question—what were the Partisans doing, the French? That was news for which the public would have to wait for some time. General Ike had said over the radio, “The hour of your liberation is approaching.” He had told the Partisans to perform those duties which had been assigned to them, and he had told the rest of the population to keep out of the way and do nothing to provoke enemy reprisals. Both Lanny and Rick knew that an elaborate underground organization had been built up; planes had been flown in at night, supplies had been dropped, and a secret army had been equipped. Now, all over France, that army would go into action, blowing up bridges, wrecking rail lines, chopping down trees to block highways, raiding enemy munitions dumps and oil storage depots. These Free French knew the country they lived in, and nothing could be hidden from them; what they couldn’t destroy they would let the Allies know about, and the Air Force would come and do the job.
"The result of this uprising would show gradually and in negative ways—there just wouldn’t be any German counterattack. Plenty of resistance, desperate, hard fighting, step by step backward, but no mass advance, no driving the Allies into the sea. The Germans couldn’t get the forces up. They couldn’t run trains and they couldn’t travel the highways except at night because of the incessant bombing. They would learn the bitter lesson, which they had been teaching the rest of the world, that it is impossible to win a modern war without command of the air; also, that it is impossible to win when the Commander-in-Chief is six hundred miles away from the battlefield, and when he does not trust his commanders, and will not let them move troops without permission.
"By the end of the second day it was clear that the invasion had succeeded; the troops were ashore along a sixty-mile front; they were from five to ten miles inland and were holding while reinforcements and supplies continued to pour in behind them. The bombardment went on, for the big guns of the ships had a range of twenty miles or more and were hurling their shells into enemy entrenchments far inland. The weather was making trouble, but not too much, and the airmen maintained cover over the whole scene, keeping the enemy miserable and blocking the roads behind him.
"The Cotentin Peninsula thrusts up from France into the Channel, and at its head is the great port of Cherbourg. Now it was becoming plain that this port was the first goal of the American Army. They held the western part of the beachhead and the British had the eastern; the British goal was the railroad town of Caen, and it was a harder assignment, because Germany lay in that direction, and also the great network of railroads through Holland and Belgium and the industrial part of France. The bulk of the German armies along the Channel were east of the invasion zone, so the British would have their hands full holding on, while the Americans were able to advance. That might be hard on British feelings, but there was no helping it; they had been holding on for nearly five years, all over the world, and it had become their specialty.
"The American plan was to cut across the base of the Cotentin, thus isolating Cherbourg, and then taking it. Normandy is the name of the province, and it was from here that William the Conqueror had launched his invasion of England, not quite nine hundred years before. It is a land of granite rocks, and the houses are built of them, and each house makes an excellent fortress—from the point of view of those who hold it. Even when it has been shelled and bombed to ruins, it will be discovered that some of the enemy have stuck it out in the cellars and then come up with machine guns.
"The rest of the rocks have been patiently dragged off the fields on sledges and built into fences, or more properly, continuous stoneheaps; the underbrush has grown up through them and covered them, and so the enemy had a series of ready-made fortifications, mile after weary mile. The bocage country, it is called, the French word meaning copse. Some of the fields were pasture; others were apple orchards, and in June they were in full foliage, making a cover which could never be entirely destroyed. No matter how much the hedgerows were bombed, there would always be Jerries left in the trenches, with weapons and ammunition in abundance; it meant that thousands of American boys had to die among the poppies, or be wounded and carried back to hospitals in the English coast towns."
Tanks, guns and trucks bringing fuel and ammunition had to fight through every such bocage, there was no outflanking.
"A job for the Royal Engineers: at twenty-seven different sites in muddy coves scattered around the shores of the British Isles they had dredged out great basins, and in them had built a total of a hundred and fifty caissons made of concrete, each as big as a house. They weighed up to thousands of tons, but they would float because they were hollow; when they were completed, the water was let into the basins, and they were floated out and towed by tugs. Anti-aircraft guns were mounted on top, little PT-boats darted around them to keep off subs, and they dragged barrage balloons against divebombers. Thus guarded, they moved at three miles an hour until they reached the invasion shore. Each caisson had its appointed spot, marked by a buoy, and it had stopcocks so that water could be let in to sink it in an hour. There was a mile-long line of them, behind which great fleets of ships could lie safely.
"The sides of this artificial harbor were made by bringing in old ships, assembled from far and near, and blowing out their bottoms with dynamite. Outside, beyond the line of caissons, was a breakwater made of large watertight steel boxes, the shape of cigar boxes; they were securely anchored and served to break the force of the immense waves which beat upon this coast during storms. Inside the artificial harbors were piers made of floating steel boxes ingeniously contrived to rise and fall with the tides—tremendous tides in this Channel, as high as twenty-two feet. As many as seven Liberty ships could unload against these piers at one time. The artificial harbors were known as Mulberry and Gooseberry, and all their various parts had code names, Phoenixes and Bombardons and Whales; the old ships were Corncobs, and the invasion itself was Overlord."
Lanny cabled Robbie as usual, and Laurel was to leave on Saturday, having fought to go to war front and finally won to the extent of being allowed to go to channel ports; on Thursday, June 15th, they retired after a show and dinner, but sirens came and they had to go to a shelter. This time was different, and Lanny told Laurel that these were V-1s. Laurel said he'd been right bringing Frances to Newcastle. He'd called Irma to tell her Frances was fine, but she hadn't invited him, and here were the Wuwas, after even Germans were sceptical. It was almost impossible to fight them, and although they were aimed at London, some did go astray, so there was no safety in Southern England, just as Lanny had told her.
............................................................................
Lanny was flown to N.Y. via northern route through daylight of near summer solstice and drove to Washington D.C. after having arrived home and played with the baby, now toddling. He heard on the way about allies taking Cherbourg, and found the President beaming about allied forces having achieved crossing channel and established control of the region, having done it despite Churchill, and they talked about the V-1 strikes. The President said allied forces had discovered that they were launched from near Cherbourg.
" ... Brix, on the way to Cherbourg; it was covered by from sixteen to twenty feet of reinforced concrete, and the engineers declared that a twelve-thousand-pound bomb wouldn’t penetrate it, even by direct hit."
They talked about Spain, and Lanny told the story of Robbie's letter.
"When Lanny said he would never know whether his trick had worked, the other said it was very significant that Rommel had held off and made no real counterattack.
Lanny asked what the President wanted him to do next.
"“Something has turned up that is right up your alley,” was the busiest man’s reply. “We are organizing a team to handle the works of art that we recover from the Germans. I don’t need to tell you what a tremendous job that is going to be; they’ve been plundering the Continent, and we shall have tens of thousands of priceless objects to dig out of hiding places, and protect, and restore to their rightful owners. I’ve appointed a commission, and it occurs to me that you might be the man to take charge of the field work.”
"“You know, I’d do anything on this earth for you, but it’s no good starting on a job that I know I’m not fit for. You find a big, strong-jawed, hard-fisted businessman to run the team, and let me go along and whisper into his ear. I can be a good adviser. I know the languages and the people. I know the salt mines and the castles where the pictures will be hidden, and I know the Germans who have the secrets. I know the threats that will scare them and the bribes that will tempt them. All that might be a lot of fun; but running an office and keeping records and signing checks would worry me to death.”
"“All right, Lanny. I’ve already asked the advice of some of the people at the Fogg Museum, and no doubt they’ll suggest the right director. I’ll give you a card to them, and you can get their ideas and give them yours. But don’t say anything about the secret work you’ve been doing.”
Lanny said he had another idea, to go to Southern France and do what he'd done in North Africa. He told about Charlot being at Bienvenu and said he could get him to do a Darlan, especially certain by having a letter from his father, Denis De Bruyne. Lanny said OSS could drop him in a field close to to the Chateau De Bruyne and fly him out afterwards, and he should go to Bienvenu no earlier than a week ahead of allied forces. FDR told him to talk to the scientists, apart from the art people at the Fogg museum and OSS.
Accordingly Lanny talked first with OSS, Spanish section and French and German, and the instructions about him talking to the scientists, Operation Alsos, included not mentioning one topic when speaking with the other section. But before that he drove to Newcastle and then Boston, and prospect of setting up a group to work in Europe, and talking to people at the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section of the Office of Military Government, United States Army, naturally brought Peggy Remsen to his mind. Esther told him that Peggy was working with that outfit and expected to go overseas soon. He promised to see her and give what help he could.
Lanny met with the people at Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section of the Office of Military Government, United States Army, mostly young and recruited from museums across the country, for their knowledge and integrity. He told them about Europe and particularly about their German counterpart.
"The looters had taken the Musée du Jeu de Paume, the former handball court of the Bourbon kings, as a sort of clearing house for French art. Everything was brought here, and the best was exhibited to the insiders, and they took their pick. Hitler, of course, had first choice, but of late he had been too busy to exercise it. Göring had second choice, and he was the world’s greatest exerciser; he had his men on hand all the time. In various storage places which Lanny could tell about he had more than ten thousand of the greatest paintings of all schools. The best examples decorated the great rooms of Karinhall, which was intended to become a museum, and really was that now, only the public was not invited.
"The son of Budd-Erling, who had been invited many times, told about the old-time robber baron’s henchmen. The head of the Einsatzstab in Paris was Baron Kurt von Behr, an elderly aristocrat who had once lost his diplomatic post because of swindling. But that didn’t matter in these days; he was now head of the German Red Cross, which gave him a pretext for being in Paris, and for having a permanently reserved table at Maxim’s for the entertainment of his friends. He was as vain as his chief, and designed himself as many uniforms. He had the most elegant manners, and Lanny told these young people that if they captured him he would chat with them most charmingly and do his best to pull the wool over their eyes—and he would probably succeed, because it would be impossible for anyone who had been born and raised on Beacon Street to imagine such age-old corruption as this Baron represented.
"Also there was Dr. Bunjes, head of the Franco-German Art Historical Society, Göring’s own special looting group. He had published a pamphlet defending the procedure on the ground that the French might exchange the art works for planes and tanks. And there was Hofer, Göring’s “curator,” who was doing a good business on the side and might be a good person for the Army to catch. Even better might be Dr. Friedländer, who had been the director of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin. He had been arrested and brought before Göring, and Der Dicke had given him a choice of destinies, either to go into a concentration camp or to become one of Göring’s art experts. The director exclaimed, “But I am a Jew!” To that the reply was, “Wer Jude ist bestimme ich.” Who is a Jew is for me to decide!
"Another person worthy of their attention was Bruno Lohse, Baron von Behr’s assistant, young, blond, tall, and handsome. They must be warned against him, because he would lie to them. This would not be because he liked it, but because it was his duty. He was a true Nazi, and would remain one."
Lanny met Peggy whose parents lived in Boston and he visited The home, where the Monuments people gathered, and he talked to them. The military commander in chief had gathered information from everywhere, catalogues from universities and museums, descriptions and details from refugees from Europe and more, locations and photographs of castles and mines and even rooms, monasteries and caves.
"The Monuments people wanted to know, would the Nazis destroy all these treasures, or bury them underground, or carry them up into the last-stand fortress which they were reported to be planning in the Bavarian Alps? And which side would get to them first, the Americans or the Russians? Would the captured Nazis try to buy their freedom with information? And what would be the attitude of the ordinary Germans, would they hinder or help? The young experts thought Lanny was joking when he said, “Take along plenty of cigarettes and chocolates. They will be the currency.”"
Lanny met the scientists next, not the top but a younger group, in a room at Columbia. He told them about Professor Schilling and Plötzen and Salzmann, about V-1 and V-2, and about Monck, and Seidl .
"Monck was certainly a man who ought to be taken on by Alsos.
"There was also the old watchmaker who had helped Lanny to escape from Germany the last time. He was a Socialist, and Americans had the habit of thinking of a Socialist as some kind of “nut”; but it would be well for the Alsos people to realize that the German Socialists had a philosophy a century old and were the people upon whom any democratic government would have to rest. No production or even scientific work could be carried on without workers, and these workers learned about what they were doing and often understood it better than the bosses. Lanny suggested that one of the first aims of Alsos should be to get in touch with the Socialists wherever they went in the Axis lands, tell them what was wanted, and see how quickly it would be produced. He had given this same advice to the Monuments outfit, for you couldn’t move thousands of paintings without workers, and those workers might have no sympathy with the job or the masters and would enjoy revealing the secret hiding places of jewels and objets d’art."
Jim Stotzlmann was going to the convention in Chicago, but Lanny caught it on radio at home.
"To one who had been brought up in Europe it seemed a strange method of determining the future of the richest and most powerful country in the world; but that was the way it was done, and if you didn’t like it you could go back where you had come from. The fight centered about the then vice-president, Henry Wallace, ....
"Wallace had said that it ought to be possible for every person in the world to have a pint of milk every day. His enemies took that as evidence of his impractical mentality; they picked out the Hottentots as the most unlikely folk they could think of and said he wanted to give a pint of milk—presumably. American—to every Hottentot. The statesmen from the South bethought themselves how awkward it would be if every colored person got the idea of having a pint of milk every day, so they didn’t want Henry Wallace to have a chance of becoming President of the United States. They were astonished and a little frightened by the clamor of the workers in Chicago, who did want Wallace and came to the convention hall and said so. All the same, the delegates cast their votes for Senator Harry Truman, whom they knew and liked, and of whom they could feel certain that he didn’t have any eccentric ideas. In so doing they were making more history than they dreamed—something which happens frequently to humans, who are fated to live in the present, to forget the past quickly, and have no means of penetrating the future.
"It was just at this time that excited reports reached America, to the effect that a bomb had been exploded in Hitler’s headquarters, injuring him."
This was the Colonel Graf von Stauffenberg assassination attempt, and Lanny tried to catch if Oskar von Herzenberg was mentioned, but he wasn't. There were several such groups.
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The break through in Normandy came in latter part of July with British forces pinning six out of nine German divisions, and American bombers and tanks opening wedges, so Germans fell back to Avranches.
"The Americans were out of the bocage country at last, and in places where freshly landed tanks could operate freely.
"It was the American Third Army, headed by that war-loving old Episcopalian with the two pearl-handled revolvers. Georgie Patton was in his element now, doing the job for which he had been preparing all his life; he was wild with impatience, dancing with excitement, bellowing at his officers and men to keep moving, to get the supplies up, to keep hitting the enemy so that he wouldn’t have a chance to recover his balance."
Lanny realised this was serious; he called OSS, and they said his papers would be ready the next day, he should come prepared to leave.
He was provided with two sets of papers, including one for a French identity, and the OSS group in London took away everything American, providing him with a complete well worn French outfit, in which he was flown across channel and set down in the American sector and told he'd be taken to the spot on the map at night. He was flown in a tiny plane that flew very low, and landed with help of lights set in a field by partisans who met him, including Julie Palma. She took him to the Bruyne Bruyne home, and he managed to get a note signed by both the father and wife of Charlot, asking him to follow the advice of the old friend. He left as soon as that was done, having told them to not tell anyone of his visit.
He was early, Julie Palma was waiting outside and they talked about the war. Julie asked when They were going to take Paris, and Lanny thought allied forces might bypass it to race south; Julie was upset at this and urged him to tell them not to do so, the French were ready to fight with the allies and Paris more so than anything.
"She went on to point out what the Nazis might do to that most beautiful of all the world’s capitals; and how simple it would be to take it, just a few tanks and armored cars flying the American flag! When Lanny ventured to doubt if it would be quite that easy, she went into detail about the situation: three million people, burning up with hatred and ready to explode, just needing some one to give the signal, to speak the word. And they weren’t helpless; some had managed to save weapons from the days of their great disaster, and many of the young fellows had managed to steal weapons from the Germans or to get them from the Allies. All that was needed was to see the Stars and Stripes coming down the Champs Elysées, and Paris would rise to the last man and woman. But they must know that the enemy couldn’t come back!
"They had suffered such indignities, such horrors, and above all shame, that they would be willing to die by the thousands in order to wipe out the disgrace of having had to surrender, and to live under the hated Boches and see them strutting in the streets, pulling wads of paper money out of their pockets and buying up the best of everything in the city. The Nazis had kept the Parisians down by the most abominable system of hostages, a thing that had not been known in Europe since the Middle Ages. Men and women would be seized, perfectly innocent persons, just because they were respected and beloved, and would be held in prison, and ten would be shot if some Frenchman lost his head and stabbed or shot a Nazi in the streets.
"She said, “We have comrades who can tell you exactly what strength the Germans have, and what we of the Resistance can assemble.” Lanny answered, “By all means let them do so.”"
The partisans guide came to lead them to the hut where Lanny was to hide until he left, and Julie left him, but soon some partisans came to talk to him; Lanny never saw them, but identified them as baritone who he guessed was a lawyer or a doctor, tenor who he thought was young, slight and nervous, and Lanny identified him as
"Montmartre and imagined a bow tie and a beret, except that he knew the Nazis had banned the wearing of berets, which was classified among “demonstrations harmful to the state.”"
The third was bass, with a country accent, and Lanny thought he was owner of the property the hut was on.
"Frenchmen were daily risking their lives and many giving their lives in resistance to the hated foe. They had no means of knowing whether this fact had reached the outside world, and they hoped this important Monsieur Bienvenu might find some way to make their voices heard.
"The world must not suppose that this Resistance had begun only since the Americans had landed; non, pas du tout, it had been going on from the first hour of defeat. Thousands of young Frenchmen had wrapped their weapons and buried them, and later had dug them up and taken to the mountains or the maquis. The French word for underbrush, maquis, had come to be the name for the men who hid in it and came out to carry on sabotage against the enemy. “Monsieur,” said Baritone, “we have the enemy’s own figures that more than forty thousand Frenchmen have been executed during the occupation, and a hundred thousand are in concentration camps in Germany. This in addition to the quarter million who have been deported.”
Lanny heard about Nazi atrocities and resistance fighting back.
"Evidently Julie had told them that Paris might be bypassed, for this was the subject they talked about most. They knew Paris, they knew the mood of the people, and that nothing but machine guns and grenades and tanks and artillery kept them in subjection. All that was needed was a small armored force at the city’s gates, and the population would rise and barricade the streets behind the Germans and hurl building stones upon their heads. “Monsieur,” said Tenor, “I was in Paris only three days ago, and I know on authority that there are now only two German divisions there; but one is armored, and that is our trouble.”
"The three voices trembled as they plead: there were three million people in Paris, including the refugees, and they all wanted to work for the liberators. They would produce goods for the Army; they would restore bridges, rebuild railroad track, repair damaged vehicles, be a colossal force behind the armies. “Three million friends are not to be by-passed, Monsieur!” And Lanny assured them that Paris would not be forgotten, Paris would be delivered just as quickly as military security would permit. No use to drive the enemy out and then have him come back and blast the city in a siege."
Lanny waited until twilight before peering out, and it was ten before Baritone came to lead him in dark.
"Then they came to a pasture, and on the edge of it they hid in some bushes—the maquis. “Ne parlez-pas,” the man whispered, and they made not a sound.
"Suddenly Lanny’s escort sat up and cupped his hands behind his ears. The sound of a plane. Instantly the maquis sprang into life, the flashlights began to wink up toward the sky and down again. The roar of the plane came near; it dipped fast and came to rest on the meadow. The flashlights went off; the men ran out, and there was the same business of taking off packages and turning the plane about and backing it to the limit of the field. It was one of those tiny cub planes, perhaps the same which had brought Lanny, but the pilot was different.
"Baritone had escorted the passenger and given the password; now he said, “Montez,” and then, “On les aura.” The engine started up, and Lanny held his breath; it was truly a frightening thing in darkness—suppose the field wasn’t long enough or the trees too tall? But no doubt the field had been measured and photographed, and possibly the trees had been topped; anyhow, the plane rose. The mysterious silent man at the throttle knew what was below him and what was in front; the passenger had nothing to do but sit there and hope that no wandering Heinkel or Junker night fighter would swoop down upon them, a hawk upon a carrier pigeon."
General Patton wasn't amused by this scruffy, ill dressed person telling him to change his plans, but Lanny stood up to him and was patient, explaining why liberating Paris was absolutely essestial a priority; until Lanny explained who he was, and proved credentials by mentioning a confidential matter.
"“And what did the President say?”
"“He wasn’t amused, General. But I think he will be amused when I tell him about this interview. Also, I haven’t the slightest doubt that he will agree with me that it would be a grave error of strategy to leave the people of Paris at the mercy of the Nazis an hour longer than necessary. The city is like a boiler with the safety valve tied down; there is bound to be an explosion, and perhaps a frightful massacre, and not merely all France but the whole world will ask why we didn’t prevent it when we so obviously had the chance. Be sensible, General, and listen for a few moments: you naturally think about military power, but the President has to think about moral power too—prestige, morale, whatever you choose to call it. He is playing a game of world politics and knows what it is to electrify our friends and to depress our enemies. Paris is not merely a center of romance, of beauty, la ville lumière; it is a great manufacturing center; the enemy is getting the products now, and we can have them for the taking. You will have to fan your armies out—they can’t all move on one road—and if you fan a hundred miles to the north and go through Paris, that involves very little delay. Believe me, you won’t have to hold the city or to govern it; the French are all ready to take over, as I saw them do in North Africa. And the road from Orléans to Paris is a fine highway; I have driven it scores of times from my home on the Riviera.”"
General Patton said he'd give it a thought, do his duty, and couldn't care less about what people thought. The pilot had waited, weather cleared, and he was flown to London, with only time to send his report through OSS and be debriefed, before he was sent forth to travel to Bienvenu, with just enough time to call Laurel. He was flown to Algiers via Gibraltar and had only time to see Denis fils before he flew to Corsica, and he told Denis that his father had communicated to Robbie that all was well. In Corsica he was in navy's charge, and was told he'd be taken in a motorist to a beach close to Cannes; two other young passengers who had been flown from Algiers joined the motorist too, when he reported the hour before sunset. Lanny was put ashore, dry, on the beach by a seaman in a kayak, and he was close to the home he'd grown up in and lived in most of his life.
Presently he realised the navy had put him too far West, close to Villa de l'Horizon, the home of Maxine Elliott where he'd heard Winston Churchill, and he walked to the old town, to the address he'd been given, and found Raoul Palma. Raoul had been sent to meet him, and they talked about situation. Raoul told him German presence in the area was a shell; he was happy to hear about Julie, but warned Lanny that Charlot was the right-hand man of Darnand, French agent of Gestapo.
Lanny was transported to Hotel Metropole, checked in with his French identity by paying cash, and called his home number, asking for Charlot. He asked him to come, no names, and Charlot did. He didn't look happy, but even though he expected his side to lose, couldn't tolerate the thought of working with the rabble. They argued most of the day, Lanny saying it was the wish of his family that he live. Charlot went over and over, but Lanny was able to make him see Lanny had supposedly been forced to traverse only recently.
"Lanny had the advantage of having come fresh from the Allied lands; he could tell of the colossal preparations being made for Operation Anvil. What were the defenses of the Midi compared to those along the Channel? What was the roughness of the Mediterranean compared with those northern waters? Raoul had told Lanny there were few reserves back of the Riviera, and Lanny now pretended to know this, and Charlot admitted that it was true. The big battleships would pound the shore installations to pieces, the planes would do pinpoint bombing on what was left, the parachutists would seize the bridges, power plants, and airfields, and the tanks would be coming ashore in a few hours and racing everywhere. The Germans who stayed to defend the towns would be surrounded and made prisoners, and the younger son of the de Bruynes would be tried and shot. And what good would it do to his honneur, his gloire, or his patrie?
"He had recently been in London and could knock out the Nazi propaganda that the city was in ruins and the population in a panic. Of course the buzzbombs were nasty, but could anyone imagine that the killing of a few thousand more civilians would cause Britain to give up? It was just a question of digging out the launching sites, and already the British armies had broken out of Caen and were forcing their way eastward along the coast.
"Germans! Had Charlot been able to get along with them? Were they kind masters? Did they respect the honor, the dignity, of their French partners? Just as Lanny had guessed, the high-spirited young capitaine had been ill pleased with his comrades-in-arms. They had become more and more exacting and less and less patient. As things went against them, they demanded more of France, and when it was impossible to meet the demands they became insolent. Would it be too unbearable to see a French army come in and knock them off their perches?
"And then, Charlot’s colleagues, the former Jeunesses Patriotes, now evolved into the Francs-Gardes—were they all patriots and heroes? Their capitaine was forced to admit that some of them were blackguards and others of low intelligence. In short, Lanny dragged out of him the fact that for a long time he had been unhappy in his occupation and in despair for the future of his country. Once started, he poured out his confession, and Lanny gathered enough information to make his journey worth-while, even if he did not win the soul of his friend.
"But he meant to win, and he kept on until evening. The argument which clinched the matter was Lanny’s statement that by coming over in time Charlot might be saving not merely himself but his whole family. Lanny would bear witness to the part which le père and la femme had played in Charlot’s conversion, and the Partisans would know of it. Charlot bowed his head to hide the tears that welled into his eyes. “All right, Lanny,” he said, “I will do what you advise.”"
Charlot didn't expect to run away, but to take an active part, and first it was giving information, and next meeting resistance. Raoul called, and Lanny asked him to come. They were both old friends of Lanny, but had never met, being of very diverse social strata; but Raoul had his own dignity, and talking business made them forget the gap.
"Lanny said that Charlot was a man of honor and that when he gave his word he could be trusted to the death. That was enough for Raoul, and after a while he offered to go back to the hideout where he had met Lanny and try to persuade the leader of the Resistance in Cannes to come to the hotel for a conference. Raoul himself had been working in Toulon and had in Cannes no contacts which would enable him to transmit information to the Allies."
Raoul went and returned with Ribault, Provençal, who was willing to let sinners return, and Charlot poured out information which Raoul wrote down.
"When the session was over he got up and shook Charlot’s hand. “Monsieur le Capitaine, vous êtes un camarade,” he said, and that was meant to settle it. The leader took the paper and hid it in his jacket, saying that he would get the information to the Allies before the night was over."
Raoul had to get back to Toulon and Lanny asked Charlot to drive him towards his intended hideout, and Charlot dropped him part of the way whence Lanny could manage to reach mountains home of servants at Bienvenu.
"“You were right,” said the Frenchman, “and I am sure I shall never regret it.” They were the last words that Lanny was to hear from his friend."
Lanny slept in the forest, and started walking at dawn, but heard bombing and from mountainside saw planes over the whole area, bombing military targets. He climbed to home of Leese. The women and old man, working, paid no attention, until he smiled and said, "don't you know me?", and they came running, hugging and saying "monsieur Lanny!", and introduced him to the children, too young to remember him. Leese was in bed, old and shrunken, but happy to see him, and asked about everybody.
"Lanny said, “Don’t say a word about my being here. It would be very bad for me. I came up to hide until the Americans have got ashore.” They all promised, even the children promised, pas un mot! They had hidden some of the Maquis now and then, their own sort of people, fighting the harsh-voiced foreigners who came to search the peasant’s huts and storerooms and carry off his grain and olives and fruit and poultry, all the means of life he had laid up for the coming winter.
"That was what war meant to peasants all over Europe, to those fortunate ones who happened not to be in the line of march of armies or on the ground chosen for battles. It meant lugging your produce out into the forest and hiding it in caves, or in hollow trees, or in pits dug and bricked in. It meant the children keeping watch, and when the alarm was given, the women fleeing into the mountains and being hunted like wild animals by lustful men. It meant paper currency that presently became worthless, so that peasants learned to take only hard money, and change it into gold, and put it in a sock and bury it under a loose board or hearthstone."
Also, it meant refugees.
"“Thousands have come, Monsieur Lanny, and we have given more than we can spare. What good will it do if we starve in the winter and are unable to work the fields in the spring?” It was a cruel world, and perhaps only the hardhearted were fit to survive in it.
"The flood began to arrive late in the morning."
City people having been roused by the bombing had fled, some in pyjamas, some with bundles in children's carriages, and only wanted refuge in the barn, exhausted, terrified, helpless.
"“Non, non, madame, monsieur, rien, rien! Il faut partir!” The wretched ones didn’t want to go, for where was there to go to?
"These scenes went on, day and night, all the time that Lanny stayed on the place. There was an incessant stream of refugees, and they had to be scolded before they would move on. They wanted water, and you couldn’t refuse water, but you tried to make them understand that wells in these hills often went dry and that water was as precious to a farmer as food. They begged to sleep under shelter, and would swear that they had no matches or tobacco. But you couldn’t believe them; the old man declared that many a farmer who had done so had lost his barn for his kindness. Lanny observed the deeply rooted mistrust of the peasant for the city person. The city was a parasite upon the farm; the bourgeois slept late and wore fine clothes and did no real work, but charged the peasant high prices for tools and clothing and all the things he had to have.
"Against this would be the claims of common humanity. A mother wept and pleaded for a little milk to save her baby’s life. They gave her a little milk, even though their cow was going dry and there was not enough for their own children. And then, of course, the mother wanted to stay; she had found kind people, she had made a dent in the hard crust of this cruel world! An old man, apparently a gentleman, fainted from exhaustion, and what would they do about him? Who was to tell if he had really fainted, or if he was only pretending, as so many of these clever folk had learned to do?"
They hid Lanny, whom they'd known from babyhood. He'd climbed these hills and played and danced with them, and Beauty had employed all the relatives at Bienvenu that Leese, the cook and housekeeper for decades, had brought, on the estate, in whatever capacity they could work.
"They locked him and themselves inside the house so that others might not see them eating. They cut him a slice of wholewheat bread, and put on it a slice from a large onion. With a handful of dried olives that was a meal for any farm worker, and it was a meal for Lanny. A cup of wine went with it, and they drank the wine exactly as the sun crossed the meridian. He didn’t know why they did that, and they couldn’t tell him; it was a custom. They kept him out of sight, for there might be spies among these refugees, or there might be Boches running away from the Americans. Later the Boches would be licked and would surely come then—and the peasant women would join the refugees and sleep in the forest. C’est la guerre!"
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Lanny looked for three days and saw only bombing, most of it West, and decided to go there. He bargained with a one armed son-in-law of Leese to take him to a nephew of hers who'd worked as a gardener at Bienvenu, and the two walked in mountains, taking care to remain unseen by people swarming now through forests. They spent the night in a cabin, and next morning Lanny saw what he'd been expecting.
"Ahead came the tiny PT-boats and destroyers, darting here and there, on the lookout for the subs. Then came the majestic battleships and heavy cruisers; they turned in lines parallel to the shore and at once opened up with their big guns, the mightiest cannonade that Lanny had ever heard or imagined. He saw the tongues of yellow flame shoot out, and saw the shells burst on the shore before he heard the report from either explosion. But it was only a few seconds before all the reports had become a blur, a roaring as of all the thunder in the world. All the warships of all sizes were bursting with flames, and swarms of planes over the shore were adding to the racket. Even through the smoke Lanny could see that the shell bursts were bunched at certain spots; he was glad he was not on any of those spots, and wondered how many of them had been listed in the information which Raoul and Charlot had furnished."
The companion thought Germans would be coming their way, so Lanny hid another night before proceeding down to St Raphael, and saw refugees and German soldiers coming in opposite direction .
"The wonderful Navy put a hundred thousand men ashore in two days, on a seventy-mile front between Cannes and Toulon.
"The big LST’s came up to the beach and opened their huge jaws; tanks came rumbling out, or tractors towing heavy guns. Pack-laden soldiers looked like waterfalls pouring down the sides of ships. Every sort of little boat was bringing them in, and the tiny harbor of St. Raphael appeared to be solid with craft."
Lanny came to St Raphael city waterworks and saw American GIs guarding, and went up.
"“Hello, soldier,” he said.
"It was a little dark fellow, sprightly of mind, and Lanny guessed that he was from Brooklyn. “Hello,” he replied. “You American?”
"“Happily, yes.”
"“Seen any Jerries up where you come from?”
"“A dozen or so, getting away as fast as they could. Tell me, where shall I find your command post?”
"“What’s your business, Mister?”
"“I’m an OSS man.”
"“What the hell’s that? They dish up so many of these initials.”
"“Intelligence Service.”
"The “pfc” appeared suspicious. “What’s your name, Bud?”
"“That’s my name,” said Lanny with a smile, “Budd.”
"“Yeah?” The tone indicated that this was taken for fooling. “Any relation to Budd-Erling?”
"“My father is president of the company,” said Lanny, amused.
"“Zat so? My name is George Washington, and this guy here is Abe Lincoln.”
"“Pleased to meet you, George and Abe. But tell me where to find your commanding officer, because I have information that I was sent to get.”
"“Abe, take this Mister Budd-Erling to the Captain; and make sure he ain’t Benedict Arnold.”"
Lanny met Jerry Pendleton on the way, who'd arrived with the forces, and vouched for his identity to the officers, who knew nothing about the uprising Lanny had helped arrange in Cannes. They sent him to Major General John E. Dahlquist in St Raphael, who heard his story about Cannes, but Lanny couldn't insist they take Cannes, and was free to worry about Charlot. He lunched with Jerry, who suggested join them, since his knowledge of languages and places and people would be very useful.
"“This is a tiptop outfit, and you are the very guy to interview German prisoners, the maquisards, the peasants, and all the other sources of information.”"
So the army fitted him out with a uniform, a tag and a Budd automatic, and he sent off letters to the President's man, to OSS, Robbie, and Laurel.
............................................................................
"The Army had been taken by surprise by the suddenness of the enemy’s collapse; ten thousand prisoners had already been taken with losses of only five hundred. The “shell” had been broken, and it appeared to be empty. Everybody had to improvise, and an interpreter was put to work with not more than half a dozen sentences of briefing."
Lanny had to appear stern.
"He had a threat as alarming as any Feldwebel had ever employed: “Do you want to be turned over to the Russians?” Of course that wouldn’t be done, but the prisoner wouldn’t know it until later. On the other hand to “Do you want to be sent to America?” they would answer eagerly, “Ja, ja, mein Herr!” He would say, “If you tell me the truth I will have you sent to America, and if you lie to me I’ll send you to the slave camps in Siberia.”
"Generally the prisoner would tell what he knew, but now and then one would say that it was verboten to speak. Lanny would look his grimmest and reply, “Im Gegenteil, jetzt ist es Befehl”—now it is commanded. Incredible as it might seem, that would work in case after case; orders were orders, regardless of who gave them. This was true especially of the peasant Burschen, most of them from Bavaria; Lanny knew their dialect—it had helped to save his life and now it helped the Army. The soldier’s face would light up, and he would talk eagerly.
"The Prussians were tougher, and Lanny didn’t waste much time on them; there were so many more, and time was racing. Now and then came an intelligent man who really knew things and would tell them. “I hate the Nazis,” he would declare, and Lanny would ask, “Sind Sie Sozial Demokrat?” If the man answered that he was, Lanny would say, “Ich auch”—me too! But he wouldn’t tell that to the stenographer. He would add, “There is going to be a democratic Germany. Help us with everything you know.”
"An amusing circumstance: Lanny was permitted to question enlisted men, noncommissioned officers, lieutenants, and captains, but under the Geneva Convention he was not permitted to question anyone of rank higher than his own. The German officers were always informed as to their rights and would refuse to answer. After a few days Lanny’s own officers realized that his knowledge of languages was exceptional, and so they put him in a colonel’s uniform; thus he was able to deal with majors and colonels. But no generals—it was against regulations for him to wear any stars!
"He was not invited to be present when the high brass digested the data he had collected; but he could see for himself what the conclusions would be. The enemy had known for weeks that the invasion was coming but had not been able to prepare. Whole divisions had been drawn off to try to stop the attacks in the north, and there was no way to replace them. Fortifications had been begun but not finished, and few of the guns had enough ammunition. A good part of the troops were Poles, Czechs, and even Russians, and these had no stomach for the fight. One and all, they desired not to fall into the hands of the Partisans, who were infuriated and might shoot them; what they wanted was to be politely taken by the fabulously wealthy Americans and given hot coffee that wasn’t ersatz and three meals a day of American canned food. Lanny mentioned these things frequently, and he could see the light in dark Bavarian eyes and sometimes even in blue Prussian eyes."
They went North through the mountains and stopped at a small town where there'd been fighting.
"Here were not only more “krauts” to be interrogated, but also the Free French, the maquisards. They came down from the mountains, on bicycles, in horse carts, in wood-burning busses which sometimes gave out and had to be pushed up the small hills so that they could coast down the long ones. They were for the most part young fellows, of draft age, high-spirited and unwilling to be enslaved; they were tough and inured to hardships, the sort with whom Lanny had hidden out in the mountains of northeastern Italy. They were enraptured to meet a comrade, and they told hair-raising stories. They were armed for the most part with hunting rifles and some had old-fashioned pistols fit only for museums; with these they had fought Germans armed with machine guns, and had not done so badly. They had wrecked the railroads and most of the bridges in this mountainous land, and perhaps they had made a mistake, they said, laughing, for it would slow up the pursuit.
"What they all wanted was to get a Garand rifle and a bandolier of cartridges, and be allowed to go after the enemy. The Army took them on as scouts, paying them the French equivalent of two dollars a day, which was magnificent. They had to swear that they would not kill the German stragglers or the French collaborateurs; both were to be made prisoners, the former to be shipped off to the prisoner camps which had been built for the fighting in North Africa, and the latter to be imprisoned and tried under French law. After that the Partisans would go happily off, and the Army would be kept well supplied with facts about the Ninteenth German Army it was pursuing. Wherever the enemy stopped to resist, the Army would radio the location to the nearest airstrip, and the planes would come and make his life hardly worth living.
"The people in the villages put out bedsheets in token of surrender, or the tricolor, or crude imitations of the Stars and Stripes as tokens of joy. They had waited so long for this day, and they hadn’t expected it so soon. They stood by the roadside and cheered; they tried to drop peaches and pears into the men’s laps, and the girls climbed onto the running boards and hugged and kissed their deliverers. “This is the damnedest ever,” the men said, and it made them feel proud of themselves; they tried not to think about the buddies who had missed the show by getting drowned in the surf or shot while storming the fortifications. This was still going on—there were always gunshots ahead, and men coming back on litters, often with a blanket over their faces.
"As a rule men at the front know only the tiny sector where they march and fight; but Lanny, being in close contact with other officers, could ask questions. He had told them why he was so concerned about Cannes, and they reported that the city was being pounded by sea, land, and air. It held out for ten days, and of course that meant that whatever Charlot had tried to do, he had failed. Lanny had no way of finding out what had happened to him. Jerry Pendleton was also on tenterhooks, because his wife and children were in Cannes. After the surrender he could hope to find out what had happened to them and to the pension.
"Marseille, the great port which the Army had figured to take on D-day-plus-fifty, was taken in eight days, and Toulon in twelve. In the former city there had been a revolution, and the Germans and their collaborators were hunted like wild beasts. Both those ports would be put to immediate use; their capture would mean supplies not merely for Operation Anvil, but for the armies in the north via railroads and highways.
"From there were roads leading westward, downhill into the valley of the Rhône. The strategy of this bold dash became apparent; it wasn’t to take a lot of mountain scenery and glove factories; it was to outflank the enemy who had been putting up stubborn resistance all the way up the Rhône. Fast columns rushed down the valleys of two rivers, the Isère and the Drôme, that empty into the Rhône. They posted themselves on the heights which overlook the narrow valley, and their artillery fire wrecked the enemy vehicles and blocked the roads. The enemy forces, raked by machine-gun fire and bombed incessantly from the air, had to fight their way through a twelve-mile stretch of death and destruction. It was a badly shattered Nineteenth German Army which got through and fought its way on up the river.
"The route followed the River Saône, which flows into the Rhône at Lyon. Straight north, and it was more of a picnic than ever. The enemy was in flight, and didn’t have far to go, for at points to the eastward troops of Georgie Patton’s Third Army were waiting. At Dijon some twenty thousand of the enemy were caught between the two forces and brought to surrender. That meant a respite for the translator team, for when a whole army has surrendered what it knows becomes of interest only to historians; the military men move on to new fields.
"The General with the two pearl-handled revolvers had been having a joyride wilder than had ever been dreamed by any Napoleon or Alexander. His armies had romped all the way across France and into Luxembourg, and he was now defending bridgeheads which he had established across the Moselle River, between Luxembourg and Germany. Whole divisions had been surrendering to him. At the same time the British had broken out of Normandy and had been making an equally spectacular dash, getting across the Seine and rolling along the coast of the Channel, thirty or forty miles a day, surrounding and investing one small port after another. This included Dunkerque—
"Le Havre had only just been taken, and Boulogne and Calais were still under siege. To carry supplies the long distances to the front the Army had set up a system called the Red Ball Express, an endless chain of trucks rolling eastward on one highway and coming back on another.
"So great was the demand for gasoline that pipe-lines were being laid on the bed of the Channel, and also across France. Patton’s Army was being supplied by air, and had come to a halt because it couldn’t get enough."
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Lanny got a letter from Laurel, she was in Paris. He managed to get permission for a week in Paris, and managed to get flown to Paris. Getting rooms for himself was easy, and Laurel came to meet him.
"She had witnessed the parade of the American forces through the Arc de Triomphe and the frenzy of the massed inhabitants, the most thrilling sight of her lifetime. It had been dangerous to be an American that day because everybody, men and women, wanted to kiss you!"
They met Julie, who conducted them around the city, showed them the partisan headquarters that were several feet underground and protected by thick steel doors and concrete walls, and kept secret from the Germans; and the prefecture, scene of a battle with a German tank by partisans. Julie was also the one to bring news of Charlot, in a letter from Raoul, that his movement was betrayed and he was shot dead days after allies landing. Lanny drove Laurel in a rented car to the De Bruyne home to tell them of the tragedy.
Back in Paris, he wrote to his parents and his daughter, and others, about joining army back.
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SHAEF wanted him for "special interrogation purposes", and he was flown to meet Major Hartman of General Eisenhower's staff. Patton's Third Army had stalled in its consistent hard drive due to shortage of fuel supplies, because SHAEF didn't want them exposed and outflanked. British forces had been thrown in the area close to Arnhem in an attempt to support their capture of Antwerp, but had to withdraw from Arnhem.
Lanny was brought to the Command Post and met with the head of interrogation team who asked him about whether he knew any General of the German military, was he close to one, and Lanny mentioned Emil Meissner. They asked about him, what sort of a person, was he Nazi, was it likely he was involved in a conspiracy on Hitler's life, and Lanny responded in detail, that he was he was a proud Prussian of Junker mindset typical of reichswehr, very likely not at all Nazi since if he were Nazi he wouldn't be silent about it, and unlikely to curry favour by lying when captured by enemy, too proud for that.
Lanny asked if he knew Oskar Herzenberg, and Emil said he'd been betrayed and shot dead. He hadn't heard about Marceline after she stopped dancing in Berlin, and said that was likely to be good.
So the topic of the conspiracy, of nazis and of Germany was up, and Lanny heard Emil speak, for hours, about his own and generally that of most German military officers' hatred and disgust for nazis, and involvement of high officers including Admiral Canaris and General Beck in conspiracy against the nazis in general and the leader in particular. Werner von Fritsch was caught sooner and shot on East front. Canaris made the mistake of waiting for the war, and then it was too late.
Emil had been approached and converted by Henning von Tresckow. Kluge had defected when he was supposed to do it in East, and a strange story Emil told was of Himmler's conspiracy. Himmler thought he was better than Hitler, and Popitz was with him. Bohrmann told Hitler, Himmler denied, Popitz was arrested, and hence Emil surrendered. Around ten thousand people were arrested and questioned, with torture, including significant numbers from military, after the last attempt by Stauffenberg, and Emil said allies had it easier due to that.
Lanny talked about what he'd seen in England and talked of American determination to see the war to finish, and mentioned the new weapon, not yet tried. Emil had heard of atomic fission, but Lanny wouldn't confirm it. Emil guessed Lanny had been brought to persuade him to give information. They spoke a lot, and Lanny guessed that Emil was holding back,and it was to make a deal about Kurt, who, he guessed,was a spy again in France. Lanny spoke to the officer in charge, and the deal was on; Emil gave information about Kurt and about German defences, and Lanny was told they were impressed with Emil.
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They took time capturing Kurt after locating him, so they'd get everyone. Lanny was brought along. Lanny was gentle and persuaded him to change into uniform of a captain as Kurt once was, but Kurt was cold and sarcastic. Lanny rose and offered his hand , and Kurt spat in his face. Lanny wiped his face, pointed his Budd and had his prisoner walk before him, and handed him over.
Washington wanted Lanny; in Paris he authorised Laurel to take charge of Bienvenu. He flew to N.Y. via Marrakech, visited Newcastle, and drove to Hyde Park. FDR won, and discussed future with Lanny.
They took time capturing Kurt after locating him, so they'd get everyone. Lanny was brought along. Lanny was gentle and persuaded him to change into uniform of a captain as Kurt once was, but Kurt was cold and sarcastic. Lanny rose and offered his hand , and Kurt spat in his face. Lanny wiped his face, pointed his Budd and had his prisoner walk before him, and handed him over.
Washington wanted Lanny; in Paris he authorised Laurel to take charge of Bienvenu. He flew to N.Y. via Marrakech, visited Newcastle, and drove to Hyde Park. FDR won, and discussed future with Lanny.
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