One Clear Call I

by Upton Sinclair

  Lanny phoned at once to the President’s man. He learned that the President had gone south, and that there would be a delay. That was agreeable to Lanny, who had a lot of mail waiting, and business to attend to. He had found in Tel-Aviv a young painter of talent, and now he sent photographs to several of his clients. He told Zoltan about his adventures, and learned how many Americans had chosen Detazes as an investment for some of their war profits. An ancient but ever-strange state of affairs—where some men bled and died for their country, and others made huge fortunes out of it, and it was perfectly all right. 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.

  Irma Barnes, Lady Wickthorpe, was another Budd-Erling investor, and her fortune was surely increasing in wartime. Somewhere in the Wall Street district was the office of the J. Paramount Barnes Estate, where an aging brother of that long-deceased traction king still guarded the securities in a vault underground, kept the books, paid the various taxes, and invested the surplus in “blue chip” stocks. Lanny no longer had anything to do with it and never mentioned the subject to his daughter. Let the Barnes half of her deal with those matters!

  VIII

  There came a telephone call; Harry Hopkins was at a New York hotel, and when Lanny went there he found Professor Alston in the room. So he could make two reports in one. As always they pumped him dry about the subject he had been studying. In the main they agreed with his conclusions. He said, “If we divide Palestine, somebody will surely have to keep the Arabs off the necks of the Jews.” Hopkins smiled one of his dry smiles and responded, “I can see our Congress voting funds for military establishment over there!”

  Alston, diplomatic adviser from the days of the Paris Peace Conference, recalled how the British and the French had there tried to put off on the United States a mandate over Armenia; but Woodrow Wilson had been wise enough to duck that one. Nations wanted mandates only where there was oil or gold or coal. The three in this room were at one on the proposition of an international authority having an armed force, and a big one. They all looked forward to a long struggle over the issue. Harry the Hop remarked, “This has to be the last war, or there won’t be anybody left to fight.”

  Lanny had dinner with the white-bearded old gentleman who had been his first employer—his only one, in fact, since Lanny was a volunteer so far as F.D.R. was concerned. They spent an evening talking over old times and new problems. Lanny wanted Alston’s advice as to his new project, but didn’t feel comfortable talking in a hotel room to a person so well known as this presidential “fixer.” It happened to be a mild evening, so he suggested that they take a stroll. They went up Park Avenue, and the P.A. made sure no one was following them.

  “You know, Professor,” he explained, “Jerry Pendleton and I fixed up a scheme to persuade the German agents in Morocco that the American Army was planning to land at Dakar. I really believe we succeeded, and had something to do with the fact that there were so few U-boats off Casablanca—only a couple of them, I’ve been told. Now I have the idea of going to Madrid and trying the same stunt, or something like it. I haven’t been able to formulate a plan that satisfies me; but at the least I should be able to collect some information as to what the enemy is thinking, and as to conditions in the Axis lands.”

  “You would go as yourself?” inquired the old gentleman.

  “I couldn’t go any other way; too many prominent people know me there.”

  “It would be a pretty dangerous assignment, Lanny. Spain is for all practical purposes an Axis country. And if the Nazis have found out about you—”

  “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 agreed that something might come of such a mission. He would recommend it to the Boss, and Lanny of course would go to the OSS and be introduced to their Spanish section and get all the information and advice they had to offer. Said the “fixer,” “I will tell you something. The invasion is set for this spring, probably May, and it will be across the Channel. I don’t know the exact area—that is the General Staff’s secret.”

  Lanny replied, “I had already guessed as much as you have told me. It seems inevitable.”

  “I doubt if it will be so to the enemy. I expect him to underestimate both our forces and our nerve. He certainly did so on the North Africa proposition, and that was why you could persuade him to send his submarines to Dakar.”

  IX

  A quarter of a century had passed since these two men had begun working together, and seven years since they had been co-operating in the service of the man they referred to as “the Governor.” In that time Lanny had never asked a question about secret matters, or passed on to others anything that had been confided to him. So Alston knew him as a man to be trusted. He had lived most of his life in Europe, and had been there, and all around the world, while Alston was tied down to exhausting conferences with politicians and industrial magnates and brass hats and miscellaneous persons who held power or craved it. So now the ex-geographer plied Lanny with questions, not merely about Palestine and North Africa, but about the whole Mediterranean area. Would the British-trained Arab Desert Force be loyal to Britain or to their compatriots? Had Franco learned his lesson and would we be safe in reducing our garrison in French Morocco? What was the present attitude of labor in the various lands? How strong were the Communists among the Partisans, and would they follow Russia or their own people in the end?

  They had a long stroll; and before they got back to the hotel Alston asked suddenly, “Have you forgotten everything you learned in Princeton?”

  It was a reference to atomic fission, without speaking those forbidden words. Lanny answered, “I’ve forgotten a lot, but not the essentials. The Governor saw fit to trust me with a tip a little over a year ago—that the first chain reaction had been achieved. I didn’t ask where or how.”

  “I think you ought to know a little more because your course of action may someday depend upon it. 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.”

  “That comes from having a Boss who believes in science,” remarked the P.A.

  “Partly it’s belief in science and partly it’s a gambler’s temperament; he’s a man who loves to take a chance. It will be the biggest bust in all history—one sort of bust or the other.” The onetime geographer didn’t smile.

  “I hope it happens where it’s supposed to happen,
” said Lanny, “and not over here.” He knew enough about the subject to appreciate what he had been told. We were hoping to make an atomic bomb and end the war with one bang!

  They walked on, and just before reaching the hotel Lanny ventured, “While you’re trusting me with secrets, Professor, there’s one thing I’ve worked on and that I wonder about a lot. I brought my young daughter to this country because of what I had learned about the new weapon the enemy is getting ready. But nothing seems to happen.”

  “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.”

  X

  Lanny called up Major Jim Stotzlmann and invited him to lunch. “I have a story for you,” he said, and when they met he explained, it might be a true story or not, but in wartime no clue was to be overlooked. The Major was one of those charged with the safety of the port of New York, and this came within his domain. 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.

  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.

  The scion of the Stotzlmanns had just been down to Washington. He was another man who entered the White House by the “social door”; he liked to tell his friends that F.D.R. had been present at his christening. They had both of them become what Jim called “mavericks,” that is to say, unbranded cattle, individuals who had stepped out from the herd and taken the risk of being run down and devoured by the wolves. Jim adored Franklin, calling him the greatest man in the world. Franklin would have had to be more than human, or less, if he had not been touched by such devotion. They were both of them big fellows, both warmhearted and full of fun, and both heartily despised the majority of their own class—so blind with greed, so stiff with pride, so dull beyond believing! exclaimed Jim.

  “Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?” a poet had inquired, and no one had yet found an answer; but that didn’t keep the spirit from continuing the practice. To hear Jim tell about that clan of his, famous throughout America and indeed throughout the world, was as good as a visit to a circus. Jim was fond of the clan’s head, who was well over eighty, but he said she had no more comprehension of his New Dealish ideas than if he had come from the other side of the moon. She lived alone in a palace with seventeen servants, and could not give up the idea of being a social queen even in the midst of war; forty people for dinner was a normal event. She would scold the servants unmercifully, but when one of them wanted to quit and go into war work she would burst into tears and say they were abandoning her in her old age and that she would die without them; so they would stay.

  Jim said that in 1940 he had labored hard to persuade the Governor to run for a third term; but this time the “old man” wasn’t needing any persuasion. His dander was up, and he was determined to see the war through, and the peace. He thought he could do it without any campaign, but Jim said, “They’ll smoke him out before it’s over; and God knows how he’s going to carry the load. He insists that he’s all right, but he looks exhausted, and it’s beyond imagining how a man can stand up under such pressure.”

  XI

  After a winter of colds and influenza the doctors feared a break in the President’s health and had persuaded him to take a month’s vacation. He had gone to the plantation of his friend Bernard Baruch in the tidelands of South Carolina. Lanny was asked to visit him there; and since there was no hurry, and Laurel would enjoy the trip, he chose to motor. It was the familiar Highway One most of the way, and then off on a side road. They did not go to Georgetown, the nearest town to the plantation, for they knew that the hotel there would be full of reporters. Lanny left his wife at a hotel in Andrews, met Baker by appointment, and was driven to Hobcaw Barony, as F.D.R.’s hideaway was called.

  It is a fish-and-game preserve some six miles square, in the tideland swamps of this subtropical coast. Lanny was surprised to see a very elegant two-story mansion of red brick, surrounded by immense live oaks draped with Spanish moss. He was taken in at night, directly to the President’s room, which was on a ground floor corner. Baker had said that the Boss had been catching catfish from the dock, and Lanny knew that this must mean that he was far from well; he was a deep-sea fisherman, and proud of his prowess.

  Even with this warning Lanny was shocked by his appearance; his face was drawn and without color. Every time the P.A. came, at intervals of two or three months, he could see a difference for the worse. The plain truth was, the presidency of the United States was a murderous job, and especially so in wartime. This President was waging three wars at once, one against the Nazis, one against the Japanese, and one against his political foes; a civil war, no less a strain because it was fought with political and propaganda weapons instead of arms.

  He had been told about Lanny’s Spanish proposal, so he was ready with one of his cheery greetings, “Hello, Don Quixote!” pronouncing it in the old English fashion, “Don Quicks-ut.” He wanted to hear all about Palestine, the scenery and local color as well as the political problems. Many questions Lanny couldn’t answer—nor any other man. How far would the Jewish fanatics go in their war on the British authorities? There had been an answer since Lanny had left—several British soldiers shot from ambush. How far were the Arab threats bluff, and where was the Grand Mufti hiding? Lanny answered questions for an hour, and had the belief that everything he said would be stored away in that extraordinary mind.

  Then the problems of Spain. Lanny’s proposal had come at a crucial moment, the Boss explained; trade relations had been broken off with the treacherous Franco, to pry him loose from his Axis pals. “We mean to penetrate even his dull brain with the fact that we’re going to win this war.”

  “It’s truly inconceivable to him,” put in the other.

  “I know; but he saw something in North Africa, and he’ll see something in France before long. Meantime he gets no oil, and he won’t be able to hold out. But it’ll make matters hard for you—he and his gang don’t love Americans.”

  “I don’t need their love; it will be enough if I can make them think they can get some dollars out of me.”

  “My impression is that the Franco government doesn’t permit the exporting of art treasures.”

 
“Nevertheless, Governor, I managed to get some out, and. I imagine it will be possible now. All Fascist governments are corrupt, and Franco’s will be worse even than the Duce’s. The country is poor, the officials are underpaid, and if their families are to eat they have to make something on the side.”

  “You plan to become a bootlegger of art works?”

  “I’ll have to be guided by circumstances. If I’m only going to stay a short while, it will suffice if I whisper about being a bootlegger. So long as I don’t do anything, I can’t get into trouble; I’ll make friends, or pretended friends, and make alluring promises which I won’t have to keep. According to what I hear, war profits in Spain are going to a very small group, Franco’s big business friends who put him in power and keep him there. Many of the old families are poor and dissatisfied, and they are the ones who have the art works and might be willing to dispose of them. Also, they are in position to pick up gossip, and they usually talk freely among themselves.”

  “That sounds all right; but what will you do about the Nazi agents?”

  “I just have to wait and see about them. It’s inconceivable that they won’t get reports about me, but what will be in those reports I can’t guess. If I meet them, I’ll never know whether they are telling me the truth; I’ll just have to watch and wait. Tell me what you particularly would like me to get.”

  “There are so many things that it’s hard to know where to begin. Anything that will help us in the invasion of France—which is coming. Anything that will enable us to undermine the Axis, or to starve them. We have been getting tungsten, or what they call wolfram, from Spain and Portugal under what is called ‘preclusive buying’—paying hold-up prices, of course. I’m told we get about three-quarters of it, and one of the demands we are making of the little fat Caudillo is that he shall stop all shipment of wolfram concentrates to Germany. We demand some Italian ships that he is holding, and that he kick out certain Nazi agents we have named—the OSS will give you that list, and you will watch out for them. We demand that all German agents shall be put out of Tangier, where they keep tabs on our shipping through the Strait of Gibraltar and keep the U-boats informed. Quite a list, you see, and it’s like pulling out Franco’s teeth—but we’re giving him the gas.” The Boss chuckled.