One Clear Call I

by Upton Sinclair

  The officer, arising to return the greeting, spoke with unexpected frankness. “Damn her soul! She is late, as women always are.”

  “Too bad, too bad, Capitán. Why don’t you teach her a lesson? Let her bad fortune be my good.”

  “What have you in mind, Señor Budd?”

  “I am on my way to a cinema and it would delight me to have your company. A German film, very high class, I believe.”

  “Carramba! I don’t like their barbarous language. They have forced me to learn to read it, but when I listen to it I am not so good.”

  “Fortunately I have a German friend who is going along. He can sit next to you and answer questions. It is an historical picture and will improve your education, to say nothing of that young lady’s.” So one plays with life in the smart world.

  A great discomfort was removed from Lanny’s mind. 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. It might seem strange that a gentleman should appear thus accoutered to take a lady out for an evening, but it was not strange in Spain. The country was supposed to have been at peace for five years, but it was really in a state of suppressed civil war. Up in the Guadarramas, not more than an hour’s drive from Madrid, the desperate guerrillas still hid, and raiding parties came down during the night and held up motorcars on the highway; not infrequently the rebels stole into the capital, hid in the aged five-story tenements, and conducted bold raids from there. No well-dressed person would dream of going into the slums at night, and few ventured there even by day.

  Heinrich came from the telephone, and he betrayed no displeasure when he was introduced to a Spanish officer. The three of them strolled down the brightly lighted boulevard and into the darkened theater. Lanny kept his promise and put Heinrich next to the capitán, and they watched the career of the red-bearded king of the Germans, here presented not as a Christian crusader, but as a champion and prophet of German racialism, making speeches that might have come out of Mein Kampf. Lanny soon forgot the dull show, thinking about the far more exciting one which he believed to be going on in the hotel. He felt pretty sure that Heinrich and his Gestapo masters were not overlooking the opportunity which he had so carefully provided.

  XI

  Back in his room Lanny turned on the light and locked the door behind him. First, like any timid old lady, he looked under the bed and into the closets; then he went to the suitcase on the chair. He surveyed it, and the carpet around it; there was no change that he could note. He had no doubt that any fingerprints would have been wiped away, and anyhow he had no fingerprint apparatus. With care he held the suitcase steady, turned the lock, and raised the cover. Again there was no sign that anything had been touched; he didn’t expect it, being sure that this important job would be done by experts.

  There was just one point—the tiny silk thread. Where was it? The least touch or jar might cause it to drop; so Lanny pressed his left hand firmly against the side of the lining to hold the thread in whatever position it happened to be. The envelope was there, he could feel it through the lining, and he began pulling the lining back, a quarter of an inch at a time, looking for the thread. It wasn’t there.

  Still holding firmly with his left hand, Lanny worked the lining loose with his right, all around the envelope; but there was no thread—until he got to the bottom of the cavity after taking out the envelope. He could feel sure that someone had come and opened that suitcase and taken the letter out, no doubt to photograph it, something which a skilled operator could do in a few seconds. The whole operation, what the OSS called “surreptitious entry,” would not have taken the American outfit more than a few minutes. Lanny had given the Gestapo more than two hours.

  He had lied to Heinrich Jung about Robbie’s letter, and Heinrich would find that out. Lanny had planned it that way, for he wasn’t trying to win back Heinrich’s trust, nor Hitler’s; he had the idea that both of them would find it easier to believe that he would lie to them than that he would tell them the truth. Now, when he got into bed, he could speculate for hours as to whether or not he had guessed their psychology correctly. The Gestapo had in their possession a photostat of a letter which the president of Budd-Erling Aircraft had taken the trouble to send to his son by special messenger, and which that careless son had failed to destroy. The envelope itself was evidence, since it bore no stamp and no postmark. It wouldn’t take the Nazis, with the help of the Spanish secret police, very long to find out that an American had been flown from Casablanca to Madrid on that day—and that he had been flown out again that night.

  The letter implored the son of Budd-Erling not to go into Holland, but to stay in Spain or in France. The meaning of that was obvious, and the only question was whether the letter was a genuine warning or a “plant.” Here was something to make the chiefs of the Gestapo lie awake at night! Lanny could be sure that copies of the letter were already on their way by airplane to Berlin. They would be widely distributed; Himmler would have one, and Göring, and all those who knew Lanny Budd would be called in to discuss his psychology. Experts of many sorts would wrinkle their brows over the problem. Der Dicke would take many more benzedrine pills because of it. Adi Schicklgruber, who slept badly and took a variety of drugs on that account, would be another who would torment his brain. “He loves me, he loves me not!”

  The verdict would depend in part upon how much and exactly what the Führer and his advisers had found out about this son of Budd-Erling. If they had found very little and had merely wanted to question him, they might still believe that he was something of a boob, a Tunichtsgut who wanted to come blundering into a war zone, trying to buy what might be a Vermeer and might be a van Meegeren. On the other hand, if they had discovered him to be a viper who had crept into the Führer’s bosom, then they would be apt to judge the letter a clever device.

  But they could never be entirely sure; the doubt would stay in everybody’s mind and come up at every Generalstab council on strategy. It would affect military minds and alter the balance in every decision. If it should have the effect of causing a single division, intended for the Channel Coast, to be held back in Holland, if it caused a single battery of high-powered cannon intended for Cherbourg or Dieppe or Le Havre to be mounted instead at the mouth of the Scheldt or the Rhine, then thousands of American lives would be saved, and the labors of Lanny Budd and the Oh-So-Secret gentlemen in Washington would be justified many times over.

  21

  Into the Cannon’s Mouth

  I

  Lanny Budd stayed on in Madrid although he hated it. He was afraid that if he left suddenly he might convey to the Nazis the idea that he had come in order to plant a letter with them. Also, he had made the acquaintance of an official who knew about wolfram concentrates and talked freely. Moving in fashionable society, one heard much conversation about the war, and now and then somebody would drink too much good wine and blurt out a secret. Man is by nature a gregarious animal, and the impulse to share knowledge with other members of the horde is difficult to resist. There was talk about the “Blue Division” fighting on the eastern front and getting severe punishment; about sabotage being practiced in Spanish industries; and even about the plans for a revolution against Franco, whom the old families despised.

  The industry of the country, deprived of oil, was grinding slowly to a halt, and the fat little Caudillo was forced to humble his pride; in the month of May he gave way and accepted the Allies’ terms. He would expel the German agents whom the Allies had listed; he would stop the attacks of Falangist rowdies on Allied consulates; he would release to the Allies the Italian ships; and he would limit the sale of wolfram concentrates to Germany
to ten per cent of his total production. Would he keep that last promise? Franco’s officers joked about it in the presence of a genial art expert; there was a black market, and it was notorious that there had always been smugglers in Spain. These jokes were reported in the weekly letter which, with infinite precautions, the art expert managed to deliver to the American “post office.”

  One result of this settlement was that Lanny lost some of his Nazi friends. Heinrich had already gone; and now others took their departure, including the lady Fridolin. But the Allied list had apparently not been complete, and Lanny turned in the names of Germans who were still active; also of Spaniards and alleged Danes and Swiss and what-nots who had taken the places of the departed. The new arrivals cultivated the acquaintance of the charming art expert who had so much more money than they did. Now and then one of them offered to sell him secrets, but he did not take this bait. They favored him with gossip about El Caudillo’s succession of mistresses, and he listened but refrained from comment. When they brought him bad paintings, he politely feared they wouldn’t appeal to his clients. Once they brought him a good painting, and for this he paid a little more than it was worth.

  II

  May is a lovely month in the land of Castile. The sun shines, and the sky is clear; showers fall, and tiny jewels gleam on every leaf and blade of grass. There are delightful gardens, where every sort of flower blooms and the bees and the birds are busy from dawn to dark. Lanny had loved such sights in boyhood; and now a wealthy landowner gave him the use of extensive grounds, with smooth green lawns, a summer house covered with a trumpet vine, a pool with water lilies and gold and silver fish, a sun dial, and many mischievous little statues—cupids, fauns, and satyrs. Best of all, there was a library, and Lanny would take into the garden an old volume of Lope de Vega, full of a wild kind of melodrama which had thrilled Spanish audiences for more than three centuries.

  Yes, the world was full of delightful things, and always had been for the grandson of Budd Gunmakers and son of Budd-Erling. There were times when he enjoyed them wholeheartedly; but now he was restless, anxious, and troubled in conscience. What right had any man to be happy in such a critical moment of history? The month of May was the time when all the military experts agreed that the second front must be opened, if ever. The English Channel and the North Sea were unquiet bodies of water at best, and their south shores were those upon which the winds beat hardest. There was no use putting an army ashore unless you meant to keep it supplied, and the days in which you could do that were passing. The newspapers of the whole world explained this and speculated about the date which the Americans called D-day and why it was delayed.

  Lanny watched the papers and listened to a radio when he got a chance, expecting news every hour—but none came. The Allied armies in Italy were now fighting their way toward Rome, and that was something, but very little. Where was the big army, the big push? Day after day passed and nothing happened, and there wasn’t a soul of whom he could ask a question or with whom he could have a frank discussion. He had to listen to the jeers of his Axis friends and admit sorrowfully that they were right; the Yankees had given new meaning to the word bluff, also the game of poker in which you succeeded by means of it.

  Once a week Lanny wrote to his wife, and now and then to his father and his clients. There wasn’t supposed to be a censorship of mail between Franco’s land and Roosevelt’s, but Lanny was sure that letters to him had been opened, and he took no chance with letters going the other way. Those to Laurel were addressed to Agnes Drury and dealt with his art activities, his health, the pleasantness of the climate, the courtesy of the Spaniards, and similar innocuous subjects. Letters that came from Laurel were equally noncommittal: the baby was thriving, her work was progressing satisfactorily, and New York was another place where the month of May was delightful.

  But at the end of the month came a different kind of letter, brief and businesslike: “This is to tell you that I have sold three paintings dealing with the life of Moses and am sailing for England in a few days. I have information concerning a fine portrait of the Duke of Marlborough, and the owner has arranged for me to come and view it. If it is possible for you to join me and give me your advice, I should be pleased. I am sure you will be able to interest one of your clients in this unique work of art. My address will be the Savoy Hotel. Affectionately, Agnes.”

  That surely gave Lanny a jolt. He had married a feminist, and once more she was letting him know that she meant it. She had borne him a baby, but she wasn’t going to settle down and take care of it; a baby would keep, but this war wouldn’t, and an aspiring writer was going to see some of it for herself.

  He had no trouble reading her code. “Three paintings dealing with the life of Moses” meant magazine articles which she had written about Palestine; and as for the Duke of Marlborough, he had successfully invaded the Continent, and now his lineal descendant was planning to give a repeat performance. The “owner” of this “painting” doubtless meant some magazine which had commissioned her to write about the war. Lanny was left to guess whether it was the magazine’s idea or whether Laurel’s own lively brain had hatched it. Also, whether she would be going as Mary Morrow, Laurel Creston, or Mrs. Lanning Prescott Budd. Surely it couldn’t be as Agnes Drury!

  III

  The P.A. had been thinking for some days that his work in Spain was about done. He had looked at all the paintings he could find and had tried in vain to think of some other device to persuade the German: that the Allied armada was going to Holland. Now he found himself thinking about London; it had been so long since he had been there and he really had a lot of information which he could turn over to Rick, a capable journalist who would use it in ways that would not point to an art expert as its source. In England he could surely find out what was going on and break the suspense that had become all but unbearable.

  He sent the customary cablegram to his father, saying that he had some art business in London, and was on his way to the Avenida Palace Hotel in Lisbon. He packed his suitcase and his paintings and betook himself to Salazar’s capital, certain that Robbie would pass on his message to the mysterious telephone number in Washington and that results would come. He waited two impatient days before a message was brought to him that he had a seat in the plane the next day. How those miracles were performed he never knew; he was in the hands of higher powers, such as mankind had dreamed of all through the ages—the flaming chariot which had come down for the prophet Elijah, the flying carpet which had borne Sinbad the sailor, the deus ex machina who had solved all problems for the Greek dramatists.

  It was a land plane this time, English, and very comfortable, meant for distinguished passengers: officers in uniform, couriers with dispatch cases which they never let out of their hands, and preoccupied-looking businessmen. Nobody talked about his affairs, and few wanted to talk at all. Lanny had newspapers and magazines for which he had paid multiple prices, so he was content to be quiet. Most of the way he had to read by artificial light, for one of the crewmen came through the saloon and fastened black covers over the windows. Nobody was going to look down upon that sea! Lanny occupied his imagination with what might be there. Once he had seen a convoy, hundreds of vessels, spread out in long lines and leaving a trail of black smoke a hundred miles behind them. This time, he knew, there would be thousands—three thousand, four, five—surely the greatest congregation of ships since men had gone down to the sea.

  The P.A. hadn’t been told where this plane was going to land, and he doubted if anyone else had. They were ordered to buckle their safety belts, and soon they began to feel the crackling in the ears which told them they were coming down. There was a high wind blowing, and everybody was a bit nervous, but nobody would show it. They felt the wheels touch the ground and discovered that they were at Bovingdon, an airport the P.A. had not seen before. He didn’t see much of it now, for there was a bus waiting and they were put aboard and driven at top speed to London.

  A funny thing to
have a wife and not know her name! Lanny decided that he wouldn’t go into a swank hotel and ask for several ladies; he found a vacant telephone booth—something not so easy in this crowded time—and called the hotel. No, there was no Miry Morrow registered. When he asked for Laurel Creston, yes, a lady from New York, but her room did not answer. He left word that Mr. Budd would call and then checked his bags and went for a walk around this unconquered city, the greatest in the world, built on the “unsinkable aircraft carrier.” 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.

  There were almost as many people in uniform as in civvies, the P.A. decided; and more than half the uniforms were from overseas. Some of the GI’s hurried, others strolled and gazed, getting their last look at this storied town, noting differences rather than resemblances to home. Two years and a half had passed since these tall lads had begun pouring onto the island, marching and drilling, rehearsing maneuvers on the beaches and the downs, in the forests, wherever there was uncultivated land. The islanders had got used to their unfamiliar words and nasal tones, and made a duty out of taking them into their homes and making them feel comfortable. It had been discovered that some were good and some not so good, just as was the case among the natives.

  IV

  Lanny went back to the hotel, and this time Laurel Creston was reported in. He went up to her room, and oh, what a sight! Could any husband have imagined it? A wife in uniform, a natty khaki blouse with pockets all over, a short skirt, a saucy cap, and insignia—a captain, no less. On the sleeve was a white brassard with a large letter “C”! That wasn’t for captain, but for correspondent. She had up and done this all by herself, and now she was amused by her husband’s consternation. It was a feminist’s holiday, and he pretended that he didn’t dare to touch her until she commanded, “Kiss me, sir!” Only after he had done so did she tell him that hers was only what the Army called a “simulated” rank.