One Clear Call I

by Upton Sinclair

  The son of Budd-Erling went on to explain that it was his father’s influence that had made possible this trip; and that, too, sounded plausible to an old soldier who knew all about the great firm and took it for granted that the president of such a firm would have influence and would use it on behalf of his son. Spain had always been a land of nepotism, and the old commander was busily collecting perquisites for the members of his large family. When he had got them jobs he was proud of it and would boast of the importance of the Aguilar clan. The name, accented on the second syllable, means eagle; the bird is predatory, and in Europe as well as in America has been taken by poets and statesmen as a symbol of worldly pride, pomp, and power. The word also means a gold coin—and that surely did not diminish its prestige in Spain.

  III

  There really were painters in Madrid, men who had managed to live through a revolution and a cruel civil war. Some of them painted portaits of the rich and great, the generals and the ecclesiastics, and these were able to live comfortably. Others painted landscapes, peasants at work or dancing in fiesta costumes, and these had managed to escape persecution, but not destitution. Picasso, who had painted a symbolical portrayal of bombed Guernica, had fled abroad, and so had others who had painted the people’s army. Having met all sorts of artists from boyhood, Lanny knew exactly how to talk to them. Very soon he was a friend of the bohemian world, giving a few pesetas to some poor devil of talent, and purchasing several works which he thought had real merit.

  Also there were dealers in art, and owners of paintings, from whom Lanny had purchased works in days before the war. He renewed these acquaintanceships and made himself agreeable wherever he went. In any sort of company, when the subject of world politics came up, he would smile and say humbly that the situation was beyond his capacity to form a judgment; his specialty was painting. Elegant, superior, and opulent, he spread his fame in the art world, and numbers of people came to call at his hotel. He took it for granted that every other one would be an agent of some sort, and he said exactly the right, careful things to them. He left his suitcases unlocked, and they contained letters on fashionable stationery, bearing the signatures of Americans whom any agent could look up in Who’s Who and discover to be well-known collectors. From first to last there was nothing wrong about this conocedor d’arte, and no reason for the most suspicious of governments to interfere in his affairs.

  All this took constant watchfulness, the guarding of every word, every facial expression, the very pulses of his blood. This ancient, proud land of Spain stood in Lanny’s imagination as a symbol of the evil that ruled the modern world. “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne!” Spain was supposed to be a land at peace, but it was a land crushed and writhing in suffocation. Francisco Franco’s crime of state had filled Lanny with fury, not merely because he had been here and witnessed it stage by stage, but because it was a crime against the future, against the faith by which Lanny lived.

  Ever since his youth he had been telling the workers, and the friends of social justice wherever he met them, that the way to peace and freedom lay through the ballot box, that the democratic process would enable them to take power without bloodshed and chaos. The people of Spain had followed this course and had established a duly elected parliament pledged to long-needed reforms. Then had come the man of blood and terror, the assassin of the people’s hopes; puppet of Nazi-Fascism, he had opened his country to the German and Italian bandits and had permitted them to use the people of Spain as practice targets for the new techniques of warfare—tanks and Panzer divisions, screaming divebombers and area bombing to wipe out the civilian population of whole towns.

  The result had been to provide the Communists with an argument difficult indeed for a democratic Socialist to answer. “Look!” they would say. “You tried it in Spain and what did you get?” Lanny must have heard those words a hundred times in arguments with Jesse Blackless, his “Red” uncle; Laurel had heard it more recently in her discussions with Bess. “How many more people’s governments do you have to see murdered in order to convince you that the capitalist class will never surrender power without a fight?”

  Lanny was putting his hopes in Franklin Roosevelt—and what bitter laughter that brought from the Reds. What had Roosevelt done to help the people of Spain, except to deny them the right to purchase arms in the sweet land of liberty? The first time in history that a legitimate and duly elected government was denied the right to buy arms for its own defense! Franco could get all he needed from Hitler and Mussolini, but democratic Spain couldn’t get anything, even when it came with gold in its hands! “Conspuez Roosevelt!” Lanny had heard the workers of Paris shouting at a mass meeting to demand airplanes for Spain. “Des avions pour l’Espagne!” But not even the Socialist Blum had dared to heed the cry.

  On his return home Lanny had heard the President’s defense. The country was without arms and in no position to take up the challenge of the three dictators. Britain was in an even worse position, with the menace at her very doorstep. Neither country was prepared militarily, neither was prepared ideologically. In America were the Southern senators, and the Catholic vote in the big cities, and the Church hierarchy cheering for their Spanish Defender of the Faith. Eight years ago this had been, and a presidential election coming on, even as now. “Politics!” Uncle Jesse had sneered; and Roosevelt’s answer had been, “What is the democratic process but politics? And if I lose the election, what good will that do the people of Spain? Will they get what they want from the Republicans?”

  So Lanny had to bite his tongue off, as the saying goes, and watch that wholesale murder for nearly three years. Now he had to bite every day, observing the crude luxury of Spain’s wealthy classes, the great landowners and holders of state monopolies, and the higher clergy, who owned half the arable land of the country and made speeches denying the right of any other form of worship, thus inciting the Falangist rowdies to raid and destroy Protestant churches. Contrasted with their obesity was the sheer naked starvation of the masses in their rickety slum tenements, many of them still unrepaired after bombing. 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.

  IV

  Germans came to see Lanny, and others who said they were Swiss or Danes but who he felt sure were Germans. They were all lovers of art, and some of them really knew about the subject. They took an interest in Lanny’s ideas, and he was friendly to them, inviting them to meals and talking “shop”—that is, painters, and the prices now being paid for their works in the various centers of culture. The visitors hinted at secret business to be done, and Lanny was politely interested but refrained from committing himself; they might be genuine black-marketeers, and again they might be agents of the Gestapo, trying to find out why he was here, and to get some pretext for having him expelled, either westward or—God forbid—eastward.

  He was really interested in painting, and he was content to bide his time. Sooner or later he might pick one of these gentlemen as the one upon whom to try some device. Or perhaps it would be the lovely blond lady named Fridolin, who had twice invited him to her room, and hadn’t taken offense at his refusal, but greeted him with unfailing smiles in the lobby. He would be friends with them all and try to make up his mind about each one. He agreed with them that Communism was a nightmare threatening the world, and that the Allies were making a frightful blunder in not helping Germany to overcome it; but he added that politics and world problems upset his mind and disturbed his esthetic sensibilities. It was his special task to help the peoples of both Europe and America to have beautiful paintings to contemplate. Ars longa, vita brevis!

  This cat-and-mouse game went on until one morning a telephone call and a familiar voice. Lanny exclaimed in delight, “Ist’s möglich? Was machst du in
Madrid?” Heinrich answered that he would tell him about it. When could he come? Lanny said, “Gleich!” And, to himself, “Hitler has sent him!”

  Yes, that was a pretty safe guess. Heinrich Jung was a desk man, and so far as Lanny could recall had never been outside his Fatherland. He was the logical man for the Führer to choose in order to solve the mystery of Lanny Budd’s disappearance from Germany and his reappearance in Spain. Lanny’s mind had been intrigued by the thought of both the Nummer Eins and the Nummer Zwei, and what they would be making of his escape. Heinrich wasn’t the cleverest man that Adi could have found, but he was the most honest, and the one whom both he and Lanny would be most apt to trust.

  The Jugend leader came, wearing civilian clothes, a gray tweed suit. This was the first time Lanny had seen him out of uniform in something like twenty years, and it was a mistake from the enemy’s point of view, because it made him seem unnatural. But Lanny saw the same round, blue-eyed, rather dull countenance, and underneath the tweeds the round belly slowly but steadily expanding. After their cordial exchange of greetings Heinrich explained that he had been sent to consult with the Falangistas as to their educational techniques, which hadn’t proved as successful with the youth of Spain as the methods of the Hitlerjugend in Germany. Heinrich had come as a civilian because—and he seemed a little embarrassed as he said it—the Spaniards were having trouble with the Allies just now and were trying to keep German officialdom a trifle less conspicuous. That might be true or it might be invented; no doubt Heinrich had been coached as to every word he was to say.

  Of course Lanny wouldn’t show the least trace of doubt. They were the same good companions they had been from boyhood; they carried on their conversation exactly as if the fates had not put their countries on opposite sides of a world war. “What on earth made you leave so suddenly?” demanded Heinrich. “I was planning a party for you at my home.”

  “Too bad,” replied the other, and he became very solemn in voice and aspect. “Has nobody told you anything about me?”

  “Nothing, Lanny. What do you mean?”

  “Himmler came to see me and asked me a great many questions, which made it plain that somebody had been sowing distrust of me in his mind. Then one of my friends tipped me off that I was in danger. You know what an awkward position I was in—an enemy alien in the Fatherland. I was a foredoomed victim of any slanderer or intriguer.”

  “Aber wie Schade! What did they accuse you of?”

  “How could I know? I suppose of not being a true friend to the Führer, of having abused his confidence.”

  “But why didn’t you go to the Führer and have it out with him?”

  “I had already seen him and realized what an overburdened man he was. I thought it would be a poor act of friendship to worry him with my problems. And how could I expect him to believe my word against that of his security chief, the man upon whom he depends for his very life? You know how it is, Heinrich—the Führer is surrounded by men who compete for his favor. I suppose I have made some of them jealous by enjoying too much of his trust and by being able to see him when they weren’t able to.”

  “I am shocked, Lanny, and I’m sure the Führer must be shocked if he knows about it. He is always loyal to his old friends, and it must have hurt him that you deserted him.”

  “I haven’t deserted him, Heinrich. I have been working just the same, doing what he asked me to do.”

  “How on earth did you get out of Germany?”

  “I’m not free to tell you that. There are people near the Führer who distrust Himmler and consider him an evil influence. They provided me with transportation.” The P.A. wasn’t making this up on the spur of the moment; he had thought the matter out and decided that he might cause a little worry to both the Führer and the Gestapo head. Take their minds off the war for a while!

  “Lanny, I think this is dreadful!” exclaimed the Jugend leader. “I’ll finish my duties here quickly and go straight to the Führer. He has never refused to see me no matter how busy he has been. I’ll tell him what you have said, and I can promise you he’ll pledge you safe conduct and let you come back and confront your accusers.”

  “That’s very fine of you, mein alter Heinrich, and what I would have expected. Of course I want to clear my good name; and I’ll come if you can arrange it, provided that I can manage another trip. It grows more difficult every time. My father’s influence can do a lot, but it can’t do everything, and the American authorities are very suspicious of my traveling. You see how I am—between two fires!”

  V

  Such was the beginning of a duel of wits between two men who had begun as friends in boyhood and had been made into enemies by irresistible social forces. Lanny had been deceiving Heinrich for a matter of fifteen years, and all that time Heinrich had been sincere. What a shock it must have given him to learn that this adored friend had been an enemy of Heinrich’s adored cause! 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.

  Heinrich attended to the urgent business which he said had brought him to Madrid: meeting the leaders of the Falange youth groups and tellings them the wonders which the Führer had been able to achieve with the bodies and minds of the children of Germany. As a concession to the Allies, Franco had recently abolished the Falangist militia; but that, of course, merely solidified his control of the country through the Army. 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.

  Amid his pressing duties Heinrich managed to find time to dine with Lanny and spend the evening now and then. As usual, he let Lanny take the check, because he was a poor man. Was he really poor, or was he afraid it would look suspicious if he had an expense account for entertaining American spies? At every turn Lanny had to occupy his mind with speculations like this; yet he mustn’t seem to be watching, he must be glad to see an old friend to hear the news from home. How was the family? A large and steadily growing unit—eight children, and they had all been given old Germanic names, Baldur and Horst-Michel, Ingomar and Chlodwig and Wilfried. Lanny had made it a point to remember these names, and every time he had left Germany he had given each of the little ones a present; that had made him into an American rich uncle, and Lanny wondered if the father had told them the shattering news that their benefactor was a spy and traitor to the Fatherland.

  Baldur, the eldest, a tall lad, blue-eyed and yellow-haired, had just entered the Army, proudly and gloriously; in a few weeks he would be at the front. Naturally that led the talk to the war and its progress; Lanny, who knew what Heinrich believed, was careful to believe exactly the same. The Americans had taken a couple of months to capture Cassino, and at that rate it was obvious they weren’t going to reach the Alps this year. As for the Eastern front, the German retreat was clearly strategic; they were leading the enemy into a trap, and as soon as the ground was dry this fact would become apparent to the world. Not since Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps—successful at first but a failure in the end—had there been a madder military undertaking than the American proposal to invade and conquer th
e Axis lands. Lanny said it was well known in America that this program had been forced upon the Army by a Jew-dominated President.

  Lanny had undertaken to find out about this Herr Rosenfeld for the benefit of Herr Schicklgruber, and he told how he had traveled across the American continent upon that errand, and what sentiments he had heard expressed by the powerful rich in New York, Washington, Chicago, Detroit, Hollywood, and Los Angeles. What he said didn’t have to be true; he could follow Hitler’s own formula about lying. Lanny had given thought to getting just the right sort of stories, stories which Heinrich would accept and which might cause even Heinrich’s great Leader to wonder if he had not made a mistake in doubting the good faith of this scion of American big business. It was so utterly impossible for Hitler to conceive how a man like the president of Budd-Erling could be giving aid to the Russians and not realize what a trap he had fallen into. And the fact was, Robbie was almost as puzzled about the matter as Hitler thought he should be.

  Heinrich promised to report this news to his Führer at the first opportunity, and Lanny was pretty sure he would do so. Air mail went to Berlin at least twice a day, and no doubt Heinrich could send a letter by diplomatic pouch. Adi might be at his headquarters in the Ukraine, or in the Hürtgen Forest, but he would get such a letter quickly. And sure enough three days later the Jugend official came, rosy with pride and delight, bearing a note on the private stationery of the greatest man in the world. “I have read with attention what you tell me about Herr Budd, and you may assure him that I shall be, as I have always been, pleased to receive a visit from him. Of course I will grant him safe conduct, both from and to Madrid, and I hereby authorize you to escort him to me and bring him back to Madrid whenever he is ready to come.”