One Clear Call I

by Upton Sinclair

  IX

  Lanny had his doubts about traveling as a passenger on a train, but the doctor said he had thought it over carefully, and it seemed to him a time for boldness. Gasoline was almost impossible to get, and private automobile travel was so rare that it would attract attention and they would be questioned at many roadblocks. But it was still possible to ride on trains, and he would have an excuse, that he was ill and needed to consult a specialist. He would need someone to escort him, and this would raise no questions whatever.

  So Lanny scrubbed and polished himself and was properly “made up” and then briefed. The doctor didn’t say how he had got the papers; Lanny knew that the means of forging papers was the first need of every underground movement, and to prevent it was the number-one effort of every secret police. It required a printshop, rubber stamps, an expert penman, and, of course, time. Lanny could guess that the orders from OSS had come quickly and that the delay had been caused by the need for such preparations.

  At about twenty hundred the doctor and his black-clad servant carrying a suitcase were transported in an old-fashioned cab to the railroad station. The train was late. The doctor sat conversing with a friend, telling about his sudden attack of illness. His servant was not called upon to speak and sat like a stone image in the darkness. When the train arrived—a small and poor one on a secondary line—the servant carefully assisted the sick man to his compartment. The conductor received a tip and was told they were not to be disturbed.

  It was just as easy as that. The pair had done their planning in advance, and now lay down and slept, at least the P.A. did, for he had got used to a career of crime and put its worries out of his mind. The train was coming down out of the mountains, and in the morning would be in the warm flatlands, and Lanny thought that would be delightful for a change. Their tickets read to Venice, but when they came to the small town of Mestre, a railroad junction six miles above Venice, the sick old gentleman said to the conductor, “I have changed my mind,” and they got off.

  He recovered his health enough to negotiate for a carriage to drive them to a fishing village by the Adriatic shore, not far from the mouth of the Piave River. He had friends who had a villa there, he explained to the liveryman. His servant solicitously helped him into the vehicle, and they had an all-day ride, eating a little food out of the suitcase, without stopping at an inn. When they neared the village, the old gentleman had another attack of illness and asked to be taken to an inn there. The servant assisted him upstairs, and put him to bed; and that was the end of the doctor’s duties, as he had explained them in advance.

  X

  At eight o’clock that evening the dutiful servant left his master’s room and went out for a stroll. There was nothing about that to attract attention. He had studied carefully a little sketch showing him where to go: down to the waterfront, and eastward, past a couple of landmarks possible to recognize in the darkness, and then to the seventh cabin on the shore. He was to knock there and say the password “Traveler,” strange to Italian ears, and he would be taken care of.

  Lanny followed the instructions. He could not keep his heart from thumping fast when he tapped on the door, for this was almost the end of his journey, and it would be a cruel jest indeed if there had been a leak and if this door were to be opened by agents of the OVRA. But no, it was a gray-bearded fisherman in a much-patched shirt who appeared in the flickering light of a candle.

  When Lanny said “Traveler” he replied quickly, “Si, Signor,” and put on his jacket and called another old fellow. Their boat had been hauled up on the beach, on a couple of rollers; they worked it down in a jiffy, and bade the traveler get in before it touched the water, so that he would not wet his boots. A lovely warm night, with a new moon in the sky; they put up the sail, and the smelly little craft slid silently out into the Adriatic.

  Lanny sat and thought: What a wonderful thing was the Office of Strategic Services, which General Donovan had built in a couple of years! How well it was named, for this was surely a strategic service, a whole series of them, ever since “Mazzinni” had managed to get out a radio message from the Dolomite Alps. Money is no object, was one of their mottoes, and they operated literally on that basis. Wherever an American life could be saved, American money would be poured out like water. That was especially true when the Commander-in-Chief of all the Armed Forces had stamped his seal upon the life in question; this was a presidential agent, and all the secret machinery had gone into action. An underground messenger had come up into the mountains, an underground doctor had left his duties, and now a red-sailed fisher-boat was gliding south into the darkness. Fishermen know the stars and how to use them in their business.

  So, when the sun came up out of Yugoslavia, there appeared near the southern horizon a small speck which caused the men to point and shout with satisfaction. It grew larger, and soon they heard it, a seaplane! How the connection had been made Lanny would never know. Perhaps there was a radio sending set in Venice, or in that inn where the doctor had put up, or even in the fisherman’s hut that night. There was sure to be one of the most powerful receiving sets in the world at the naval base of Bari which the Allies had taken a short time previously; perhaps there was one even nearer, where the Allies had established their line on the east coast, about even with the Volturno line on the west. That would be only some three hundred miles south of the head of the Adriatic, no flight at all for a seaplane.

  Anyhow, here it was. It slid down out of the sky and onto the water just ahead of the shirt-waving fishermen, and they put the boat about and put their passenger on the plane, again without wetting his boots. They pushed the boat away, and the engine started, and splash, splash, and then no more bumping—the plane was in the air and the P.A. was on his way home.

  XI

  The seaplane was noisy, so Lanny couldn’t share his happiness with the pilot. He just snuggled in his corner and gloated over the luck he had enjoyed. He was out of Naziland and was never going back—unless it was in the wake of a conquering army. He would see Laurel again, and Baby Lanny, and Robbie, and F.D.R., and Alston, and other people who interested him. He would be able to tell these people what he had been doing, and would no longer have to have a dozen compartments in his mind, and remember what he was free to say to each one, and what lies he had told to Hitler and Göring and Himmler and Hess and the rest of those hateful fanatics.

  He thought: What will F.D.R. give me to do now? And right away the old caution began to assert itself in his mind. Even though he couldn’t go into Axis territory, there might be secret work that he could do. There were plenty of pro-Axis persons in the Allied lands, not excluding America, and it might be his job to keep contact with them. It wasn’t likely that they would learn that he was no longer in favor with the Führer; the Gestapo all over the world would be informed, but they wouldn’t publicize the fact that one of the Führer’s intimate friends had turned out to be an agent of the enemy. So Lanny might continue to be the friend of the great newspaper publishers and others who in their hearts considered Nazi-Fascism the one last hope of the world. He might continue to take his wife to Evalyn McLean’s soirees and to hobnob with conservative senators of both parties.

  He decided that he wouldn’t say anything to anybody until he had had a talk with the Boss. When the plane came down in the harbor of Bari, now filled with American and British vessels of all types, the young Naval Air officer who greeted him was quite evidently full of curiosity. “So you got out alive, Mr. Budd!” The bearded gentleman in a shapeless black alpaca suit too tight for him replied, “Thanks to your wonderful efficiency.” Nothing could have been more polite, or less satisfactory.

  “You are to be flown to Washington,” was the officer’s statement. “How soon can you be ready?” The traveler answered, “As soon as I I can get hold of something to read. Let me have some old newspapers and magazines if you can.” He might have added, “I haven’t seen an American newspaper or magazine for nearly two months,” but that was the wa
y he had learned not to talk. As early as boyhood, in World War I, he had learned the French motto, that enemy ears were listening. Les oreilles ennemies vous écoutent!

  A few details to be attended to; a shave by a barber, a toothbrush and a comb from the commissary, and a contact to be made with the OSS man in Bari, who was glad to get hold of some German money and to pay for it with good American dollars. Then Lanny boarded a transport plane for Algiers, and he was set down at the familiar Maison Blanche airport. Here in the black market he managed to find himself a proper suit of English tweeds at a very high price. He had a chat with Robert Murphy and arranged for him to put through a message to Newcastle, saying that Lanny was on his way home; Robbie would telephone at once to Laurel, and that would be a load off the minds of both. Lanny told the Ambassador what he had observed about conditions in Germany and Italy, that being of importance to the State Department’s leading man here. But the P.A. said nothing about what he had accomplished in Germany or how he had got out; that was for the President.

  XII

  Lanny requested a day in Marrakech, so he could see his mother. On the plane flight he wrestled with the problem, and at the last moment made up his mind that he wouldn’t tell her anything about Marceline. If there had been anything that Beauty could do about it, the situation would have been different; but there wasn’t a thing on earth for her to do, except to spend days and nights of anguish, and then quite possibly find out that it had all been a mistake. When Marceline had telephoned Lanny she had still been at liberty; and Lanny knew that she had made many friends in Germany. It was quite possible that she had sought refuge with one of these and had been hidden; that had happened in the case of American flyers, who had had no friends in Germany at all but had found somebody willing to shelter them for months, and had got out of Germany in the end. But Beauty inevitably would imagine the worst and drive herself crazy brooding over it.

  So, when he appeared at the super-elegant Hotel Mamounia, there was a happy reunion. He reported that he had been in the American zone in Italy—which was true; and that all was going well there—which was also true. Pretty soon the Army would be across the Volturno River, and the march on Rome would get under way. There was surely going to be a landing in France before long, and meantime the Russians were driving incessantly; so this dreadful war should be over in a year or two more. When Beauty said, “The Russians are going to take the whole of Central Europe and the Balkans, and who is going to stop them?” her son replied, “Yes, old darling; but the time to start worrying over that will be when Herr Schicklgruber has been put in the can.”

  What Beauty couldn’t stop worrying about was the high cost of living in French Morocco, and the impossibility of getting liquid rouge at any price. The hotel had raised its charges, and Beauty had been unable to find a villa that could be rented for a price within reason. The Army took what it wanted and left nothing—and still the officers expected you to entertain them in proper style. The art expert was able to comfort his fashionable mother with the news that the general price rise was affecting old masters; the sums which Zoltan Kertezsi was getting for Detazes in New York would enable his widow to go on living in the style to which she had accustomed herself.

  There was that lovely little boy, the painter’s grandson. He was now five, a delightful age, when they are full of intelligence but have not yet found out anything bad. Beauty adored him and spoiled him sadly, but he appeared to have a naturally sweet disposition. He had taken all this immense establishment for his playground and made no social distinctions; he knew everybody both white and brown, and had picked up Moorish words as well as French and English. In this he was abetted by his step-grandfather, who had adopted all men as brothers, and had learned the language of the brown-skinned ones and went to their hovels to pray with them. He went also to the military hospitals and spent whole days with the soldiers. He got along with the doctors because he was willing to let them have the credit for what God had done. The doctors had a phrase that had come down from ancient times, vis medicatrix naturae, meaning the healing power of nature; they admitted that they didn’t understand that power, and Parsifal would explain it to them quite simply—it was God.

  Lanny himself had never learned to pray, at least not well; like many modern men he found the idea embarrassing. His stepfather said it was because he had had too easy a time in life; and Lanny could smile to himself, for he had thought he was having some trouble not long ago. But, after all, he had got out! How would it have been if he hadn’t been able to? He imagined himself in one of the dungeons of the Gestapo; then, indeed, he might have prayed, and without embarrassment!

  The great planes now made the flight from Marrakech without stop. From Washington they brought specialists and technicians—anyone who was needed in a hurry; and on the way back their load was mostly wounded men. These men lay on pads, and it was not very comfortable, but then the flight took little more than half a day, and they were going back to God’s country. They needed attention, and the P.A. helped where he could. All the time he thought what use Parsifal would have made of such an opportunity. The best that a mere worldling could do for these victims was to assure them that the war was being won, and that there were many forms of usefulness for crippled men.

  Arriving at the Washington airport, Lanny’s first act was to telephone Baker. He was told to call back in three hours. Having learned by painful experience that long-distance calls were slow in wartime, Lanny went to the hotel to which Baker had directed him and put in the call to New York from his room. He was in his bath when the call came through, and he stood on a bath towel while he talked to his wife. They were supposed to take only three minutes, and Laurel spent most of that time trying to keep from sobbing. But she managed to gather that he was in Washington, and perfectly sound and well, and that he hoped to be home in a day or two. The baby was thriving, she told him, and she had started a new novel. Lanny said, “Fine! Fine!” And added, “We’ve got the Nazis licked.” He asked her to phone Robbie, and she told him that she had been to Newcastle recently, and all were well there, including Frances. The operator broke in, and he said, “So long!”

  XIII

  There was a playboy in Lanny’s Big Boss, just as there was in Lanny himself, and that was one of the reasons they got along so well together. Overburdened and exhausted as Franklin Roosevelt might be, he always had room in his mind for a good story; and he knew that Lanny surely had one. He made room for him late that evening and Baker brought him in the customary way. In that bedroom in which nothing was ever altered, and of which the P.A. knew every smallest item, the big man gave the visitor an extra-warm handclasp and exclaimed, “By golly, I have been worried about you!”

  Lanny grinned and said, “I was worried about myself, Governor. But here I am.”

  “You look thin,” declared the other, and Lanny admitted that he had been picking up what grub he could, and not the kind he was used to. “Tell me all about it,” commanded F.D.R., and pushed his state papers aside and settled back in his pillows for a holiday.

  Lanny told about Hitler and his Evi, about Göring and his new costumes, about Himmler and his blank face and almost colorless eyes. F.D.R. said, “You make shivers run up and down my spine.” Lanny answered, “I took it to mean that it was time to get out.” He told about the different professors, and about Erickson. That message about the V-2’s had come out, he was told, and it was tiptop stuff.

  Then came the story of Marceline and her lover. When Lanny told about the telephone call, the Boss took his own phone off the receiver and called the OSS. They were on duty at night, of course, and he called the German section and asked if there had been any word out of that country having to do with either Marceline Detaze or Oskar von Herzenberg. The reply was, “Nothing.”

  Lanny offered to cut his story short more than once, but Roosevelt wanted everything. When he came to the happy ending, the traveler of course gave full credit to the OSS for its promptness and efficiency; and that
pleased the Boss. “Wild Bill” was one of his favorites, and the organization had been his own creation, pushed through in spite of the opposition of half a dozen groups which resented being “merged.” Said F.D.R., “There is nothing a bureaucrat hates worse, because in the process he may lose a title and some authority. But it is obvious that Intelligence has to be one thing, otherwise it is confusion.”

  So everything was hunky-dory, and Lanny had spent some money which he was ordered to take out of the funds the President had entrusted to him. He had got some important information, nearly all that he had gone for; he was entitled to some kudos, but what he wanted was to be told that he had helped a bit with this war. It was coming along just fine, according to its genial Commander; the Russians were making a terrible fuss about the lack of a second front, but we were getting ready fast now, and would soon show them, and the Germans too. Lanny said, “It will be a terrible blow to Hitler if we can get across the Channel and stay.” The other replied, “Don’t quote me, but that is exactly what we are going to do.”

  The next question was, what the P.A. himself was going to do. Lanny remarked, “I’m afraid I’m no good for Germany or Italy any more.” The Boss replied, “Let’s settle that. You are positively forbidden to go again.” Lanny said, “That will please my wife, if I am free to tell her.” The answer was, “Tell her it’s final.”

  The first order was for Lanny to report to the OSS in the morning and tell them everything he could about the German underground and the Italian Partisans. After that he was to take a rest; a real vacation, a month or two. The President said, “I’ve nothing special for you right now.”