Marceline smiled. “I might make a guess that you have been doing this sort of thing for quite a while, Lanny.”
“Don’t think about it,” he said. “You might talk in your sleep.”
XIII
The young officer returned from his amours and was introduced to Herr Budd’s sister. He had seen her dancing in a Berlin night club, and made it plain that he would have preferred her to any village barmaid. That was an old story to Marceline, but it never bored her; on the contrary, it was like a drink of champagne—and this was an old story to her brother. The same thing had happened six years ago in Paris, when Lanny had been cultivating Graf von Herzenberg, the German diplomat, and had invited him and his son Oskar to a smart night spot where Marceline was beginning her career. The young officer had “fallen for her,” as the saying goes, and the father had, to all appearances, considered it the proper sort of liaison for a young aristocrat—though of course he would never think of marriage with a Franco-American danseuse, even though she happened to be the daughter of a famous painter.
Marceline explained to Oberleutnant Harz that her brother wished to inspect the paintings in the hospital entrance hall, and the three went in together. Lanny was introduced to the Intendant, and he accompanied them. The Kunstsachverständiger took one glance at the paintings and exclaimed, “These should be Defreggers!” He looked at the signatures, and sure enough, they were. This gave Lanny a chance to produce one of his suave and elegant discourses, especially impressive to this audience, because it included the statement that Defregger was the Führer’s favorite painter, and a story of how Lanny had found several examples in Vienna, and these now hung in a place of honor in the Berghof, the Führer’s Berchtesgaden retreat. If Lanny had really been buying paintings, all this would have been the last thing in the world he would have said; but he wasn’t buying paintings, he was establishing a code for Marceline.
He asked who owned the paintings, duly noted down the address, and asked his sister to communicate with the person; this story would go the rounds of the place, and many who had barely glanced at the paintings previously would now know that they were great art and would be proud of being able to tell others about them. And if ever it chanced that Herr Himmler of the Gestapo developed an interest in the letters which the daughter of Marcel Detaze was receiving from Switzerland, all he would have to do would be to send to this hospital and the matter would be explained to his full satisfaction.
When they parted Lanny had a minute or two alone with his sister. “Better make it a thousand marks a day instead of a hundred,” he said. “Those paintings should be valuable!”
BOOK TWO
The Niobe of Nations, There She Stands
4
When You Are in Rome
I
Set down on the Guidonia airfield in the Eternal City, Lanny Budd was met by another SS officer, who introduced himself as Hauptmann Schnabel. They both heiled Hitler, and the Hauptmann said that he had received instructions to take care of the Führer’s friend. He drove him to a part of the city which resembled the Quartier Latin in Paris, being given up to art studios and garrets and the small shops which serve that poor but proud sort of folk. The guest was escorted into a large building by its rear entrance; he later discovered that it was the Braune Haus, the Nazi party headquarters on the Via Margutta. Lanny had been in Brown Houses in Munich and Nürnberg and other cities and was used to seeing swastikas on furniture and balustrades and mantelpieces, and to watching overfed busybodies hurrying this way and that, carrying briefcase and barking salutes. In whatever town the Nazi armies entered, there was a Braune Haus next day, and the population learned to cross to the other side of the street to avoid passing it.
Lanny was escorted upstairs and made comfortable in a council chamber. The armchairs were upholstered in red leather with brass swastikas on the backs—a standard pattern, copied from the original in Munich. Lanny was introduced to an attentive little gentleman in civilian clothing, Herr Güntelen, whom he immediately spotted for a Gestapo man. They were exceedingly polite and told him they had received orders to afford him all possible assistance; Lanny assured them that he needed a lot of it and would be most grateful. They produced cigarettes and brandy, and Lanny told them that the Führer had converted him to the Führer’s ideas as to these indulgences, but that he had not the slightest objection to others following their own ideas. The Hauptmann, red-faced and hearty like a village butcher, partook stealthily of the brandy; the other man sipped occasionally and smoked incessantly.
Lanny said, “Meine Herren, it must be a little puzzling to you to have an American among your associates; and I for my part will feel happier if I am sure that you know me and trust me. So, if it wouldn’t bore you I should like to take some time to tell you about myself and how I came to be a friend of your cause.”
They assured him promptly that they wouldn’t be in the least bored, so Lanny began his spiel—a German word which the Americans have taken over and given a meaning which the Germans do not understand. He said at the outset, “The only way I can tell this story is by mentioning the many Germans whom I have known and who have influenced me. It happens that these are prominent persons, not merely of your party but of the Kaiserzeit. To tell about them may sound like boasting, and I beg you to believe that I have no such motive. I will tell you the facts because they are facts and explain my ability to serve your cause.”
They promised to attribute no Prahlerei, no vainglory, to him.
II
“I am,” said Lanny Budd, “the son of a beautiful American girl who came to Paris with her brother and became an artist’s model. My father was then the European representative of Budd Gunmakers Corporation, which Americans thought was a great affair, but of course it wasn’t great according to German standards. I was raised on the French Riviera, where I met all sorts of people, artists and musicians and the fashionable set, including, of course, Germans. When I was thirteen I studied Dalcroze dancing at Hellerau, near Dresden, and there I met Kurt Meissner, a year older than I and already an accomplished musician. We became friends, and I spent several Christmases at his home in Schloss Stubendorf. It was there that I met Heinrich Jung, whose father was Oberförster of the estate, and it was through him that I first heard about Adolf Hitler and his ideas. At that time I thought myself a Socialist, though I didn’t know very well what the word meant; I was full of generous impulses and was sure that all the evils of the world could be remedied overnight. At the age of nineteen I became secretary-translator to one of President Wilson’s advisers at the Paris Peace Conference, and there I got my first disillusion. I became outraged by the unfairness of the Versailles Diktat and resigned my position as a protest against it. That is a matter of record—it was in the newspapers and you can look it up.”
“We have already done that, Herr Budd,” replied the Gestapo man.
“No doubt you have quite a dossier on me,” replied the P.A. with his genial smile. “If there is anything in it that disturbs you, I trust that you will mention it to me and give me a chance to explain. I have learned much and changed my mind in many ways in a quarter of a century, but I have never had to apologize for my objections to the Versailles peace terms. I said then that they would cause another world war and they have done so. It has been a tragedy for me, because I have friends on both sides and I have had to make up my mind, something that is difficult, since I am rather lazy and easygoing and would rather get along with everybody than fight anybody. It needed your Führer with his dynamic personality to make me face the issue. He took me up into his retreat on top of the Kehlstein and spent a couple of hours telling me what was coming and what he wanted me to do for him. Have either of you gentlemen ever seen that extraordinary place?”
“No, Herr Budd,” said the SS man, reverently. “You have had an honor vouchsafed to very few Germans.” Lanny decided that this was a party hack and a good deal of a fool; but the other man was something different and had to be handled with car
e.
“I have been able to run various errands for the Führer. I visited Vienna and Paris and London and New York in order to get information for him; I even traveled out to California to talk with Mr. Hearst and find out how far he was prepared to go in the effort to put a stop to the so-called lend-lease to England. Also I have bought paintings for the Führer—I am by profession an art expert, and Marshal Göring has seen fit to trust my judgment. I trust that you have not failed to ask him about me.”
“We have done so, Herr Budd,” said the Gestapo man.
“I have been a guest at Karinhall many times and have met many of his friends. I spent a couple of weeks in the Führer’s home just before the present war broke out and met a number of his higher officers. Some of them, I fear, were not able to understand why the Führer should have an American in his house at such a critical hour. I was not able to give them the long explanation I am giving to you.”
“We appreciate it,” said Herr Güntelen. “The more we know about you, the better we shall be able to help you.”
“Do go on,” said the other.
So Lanny talked. He was naturally glib, but he tried not to appear so. He told straightforwardly about his many German friends—a carefully screened list, of course. He told how Kurt Meissner had been his friend and mentor, and had lived in Lanny’s home on the Riviera for seven or eight years after the first World War and there had developed his musical genius. All Germany knew how the Führer honored Kurt Meissner, but few knew how much the Komponist owed to an American lady of wealth and wisdom. Lanny had only to look back upon those days, when he had really adored a great German musician, and he could speak in a way that would convince even a Gestapo man that he was in the presence of something genuine and significant. It was a shame to speak such words fraudulently; but Lanny had learned from the Germans one of their sayings, that when you are among the wolves you must howl with them.
III
This session lasted part of an afternoon and the greater part of a night. Food was brought in and they stayed on the job. After Lanny had told about General Emil Meissner, and Heinrich Jung, and Graf Stubendorf, and Graf Herzenberg, and General-Major Furtwängler, and other proper Germans who were his friends, he invited the two hosts to ask him questions, and Herr Güntelen brought up the delicate matter of Lanny’s father, who was making so many fighter planes in an effort to drive the Germans out of the air.
Lanny said, “Yes, it is indeed delicate, the most painful in the world to me. Marshal Göring knows my father well,” he added, “and knows his real attitude; others know it, for my father is a Republican and a bitter opponent of the Roosevelt administration. But he is its prisoner; his plant has been in effect commandeered. The Army tells him what to do and Army officers are there to see that he does it. But that is not all of the story; the reason the Führer sent me to America four months ago was to get the most highly secret information in the world, the moves that are under way to bring about an overturn in the American government. I am sorry that I cannot talk about that, being under the Führer’s explicit orders. You may, if you wish, call him up and ask about it.”
“Nein, nein, Herr Budd,” put in the startled SS man. “Befehl ist Befehl, and certainly we do not want to ask you about any matters that you do not feel at liberty to talk about.”
So, they knew their places, and the friend of the Führer was their master. He didn’t want them to hate him, so he hastened to add, “We all have one loyalty and serve the same cause. Is there anything else I can tell you that might be of help to you?”
He waited, not without inward trepidation. As the Greek hero Achilles had a vulnerable heel, as the Aryan hero Siegfried had a similar spot in his back, so Lanny was wondering if either of these men would ask, “What about your wife?” Both he and Laurel had done their best to keep the dark secret of Mary Morrow, anti-Nazi novelist far too well informed. Not even her publishers knew that she was Mrs. Lanning Prescott Budd; she had even taken the precaution to open a bank account in her pen name, so that she could cash royalty checks without detection. But the Gestapo had spread its nets so widely!
They didn’t speak the word “wife.” But that didn’t meant that they didn’t know he had one. They might be waiting to see if Lanny would mention the subject. They might have come upon other reasons for doubt and refrained from mentioning them, just waiting and watching. In this dreadful game of espionage and counterespionage there could never be any security, any relaxation; the moment a man began to think of such a thing, to long for such a thing, might be the moment of his end. And Lanny Budd did so hate this war and long to shake this burden of lies from his back!
IV
The Gestapo man said, “I think we understand you clearly, Herr Budd. Will you tell us what you plan to do and how we may be able to help you?”
Then began the second stage of the interview. Something that amused Lanny deep in his soul—only a few days ago he had been briefed by the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, and now he was being briefed by the Geheime Staats-Polizei in Rome! And on the same personalities, the same set of facts! Surely a P.A. ought to know Rome and the Romans when he got through!
He told the story that he had told the Führer and set forth in detail what the Führer had asked him to do. To find out who were the traitors among the Italians, those who were preparing to cast Mussolini out and turn the country over to the invading Americans. The SS man shook his head sadly and remarked, “It might be better, Herr Budd, to list those who are still dependable. The number would be so much smaller and easier for you to remember!”
“Do you agree with that, Herr Güntelen?” Lanny asked, and the reply was, “We are giving the traitors enough rope to hang themselves.”
“I hope that I can help you, at least with information. If you will give me a list of the individuals you suspect, I will do my best to meet them.”
“But how can you expect to circulate in Rome when so many people know that you are an American?”
“The fact that I have lived most of my life in France will make it plausible to say that I have acquired French citizenship. Would it not be possible for you to provide me with a French passport, real or fictitious, ‘and to fix it up with the Italian authorities not to raise any question about the document? If you told them it was genuine, I doubt if they could find nut otherwise in the present disorganized state of France.”
“I suppose that could be arranged.” The gimlet eyes of the Gestapo man were boring into Lanny, and he felt uneasy, lest perchance he was being too plausible, too clever. “You understand,” he continued, “I am here as an art expert. I represent American millionaires who are assembling great collections in order to cheat the conqueror death and immortalize their names as the donors. I cannot ship paintings out of Italy at present, but I can perhaps buy them and arrange for their safe storage; at any rate, I can talk about doing this and inspect examples and discuss prices. All that is an old story to me.”
“You have credentials in your profession?”
“I could call up Reichsmarschall Göring, or Baron von Behr, head of the Einsatzstab, which as you doubtless know is your government’s organization in charge of valuable art works. But I do not think that will be necessary, for the reason that I have in mind a French lady in Rome who is a cousin to some of my close friends. You probably know her, the Marchesa di Caporini.”
“We know of her.”
“Tell me, if you can, her political position at present.”
“She has been outspoken in favor of the Fascists, and so far as we have heard she is not one who has gone over to the enemy.”
“Let me explain, she is a cousin of the de Bruyne family, whose head is one of the leading industrialists in Paris. His wife was my amie for many years, a gracious and lovely person. On her deathbed she charged me to watch over her sons, and I did the best I could. The younger son. Charlot, became an officer of the Légion Tricolore, for the purpose of protecting the Vichy government against the intrigues
of its enemies. The father and both the sons were active in support of the Cagoulards, and when their efforts were exposed I tried to hide them from the French police; as a result, I got into trouble myself, and Graf Herzenberg, then with the German Embassy staff, hid me in his country place until the storm had blown over. I tell you these things so that you will understand that, while I have never met the Marchesa di Caporini, she will undoubtedly know about me and introduce me to the people I wish to meet.”
“That sounds reasonable, Herr Budd. The trouble is that through her you will be apt to meet only our own side. Social life here in Rome is sharply divided.”
“If I listen to the talk of our friends, I shall soon learn who our enemies are.”
“Yes, but it will be secondhand evidence. You will not gain the confidence of the important traitors.”
“It has been my practice to pose as an ivory-tower art lover and to leave the painful subject of politics to the politicians. My story is that it would ill become a Frenchman, in the present condition of my country, to come into Italy and give advice to the Italians.”
The P.A. paused. There was something he wanted very much to have said, but he wanted it to come from Herr Güntelen. This shrewd and observant man—he had been, as Lanny learned, an agent of the I. G. Farben cartel in the pre-Hitler days—sat thinking hard, and Lanny was trying to guess his thoughts. When the German spoke, it was suavely and persuasively. “You know, Herr Budd, there is a certain type of mind that has become very common here, the person who shades his political opinions according to those he is with. Could you not be that sort?”
One Clear Call I Page 10