Presidential Mission

by Upton Sinclair

  II

  The Countess of Wickthorpe emerged from the “lift” which was a part of her modernization of the Castle. She wore a white housedress and looked vigorous and handsome with her crown of dark brown hair. Lanny’s first thought was that the monster of embonpoint had been licked by the war; Irma appeared at least ten pounds lighter, and it became her well. She greeted him cordially, saying: “You have stayed away from us a long time!” Apparently she had never learned that he had been put on the blacklist by B4; he didn’t tell her, for the less gossip there was on that subject the better. He told her that he had found travel less easy to arrange.

  As on the last occasion, he was going to be put up in the cottage occupied by Mrs. Fanny Barnes, Irma’s mother; and, as before, he said that would be perfectly agreeable. So many friends had fled the capital, Irma explained. Some of the refugee children had gone back to London, but they might be coming again any day—there were rumors of deadly new German weapons. Lanny said he had heard such rumors; and so they got to Irma’s favorite topic, her hatred of this fratricidal conflict which was wrecking the modern world and could only end in the triumph of the Bolshevik terror. Conversation at Wickthorpe wasn’t very entertaining these days, for all roads led to Moscow.

  His Lordship came in from making the rounds of the estate. He was playing the role of country gentleman, having taken the increase of food production as the one rational thing a man could do in a mad world. He rode horseback, because petrol was so scarce. His erect figure looked well in a riding suit and his blond hair shone when he took off his hat in the sunshine. He shook hands cordially with his old friend Lanny, asked after his health and that of his father and mother, and then fell to talking casually about the state of his crops. Such was his manner, and whether you had come back after fourteen days or fourteen years wouldn’t make much difference. Ceddy took life seriously, but rarely talked about it. The only place where he permitted the expression of emotions was on the stage, and not too much of it there.

  He was deeply concerned about politics, both at home and abroad, but circumstances no longer permitted him to expound his ideas publicly. Once in the House of Lords, and then his duty was done; people knew what he thought, and some day he would have the melancholy satisfaction of saying: “You remember what I told you?” When he was among persons who agreed with him, he would speak freely, and few others were invited to the Castle nowadays. Lanny, in his role of near-Fascist, was one of these; and in the evening, seated outside in the cool twilight, the wife, the husband, and the ex-husband enjoyed the luxury of complete agreement.

  Lanny, of course, was asked about his trip around the world and about his marriage in Hongkong. He said that his wife was a writer of magazine stories, but he didn’t mention the character of her stories nor that her pen name was Mary Morrow. He answered questions about Hongkong and southern and central China, but didn’t mention that he had visited “Red” China, and said only that he had been permitted to fly out through Russia, but had had no opportunity to make observations. Much more interesting to the earl and his countess were his more recent experiences in Vichy France and North Africa. Ceddy, until recently a Foreign Office man, knew most of the appeasers in France and had done everything in his power to further their program. Now, apparently, it was too late; Churchill was in the saddle, riding madly, and Britain was approaching a precipice, beyond which was the abyss of Bolshevism.

  Lanny tried to be as cheering as he could. He said there was intense anti-Red feeling in America which was bound to produce a sharp reaction immediately after the war, however it ended. “How can it end,” asked Ceddy, “save in the ruin of Western Europe? France will be a battlefield, and Germany completely exhausted.” When Lanny said that Russia would be exhausted, too, the other answered: “Yes, but she will recover more quickly, because those people breed like rabbits. And she will have all the border states, and China, too, and how long will it take her agents to stir up revolution in India?”

  Such were the ideas which Lanny had always heard in this ancient castle. They were the ideas of the privileged in all the countries he visited, the people to whom class was more than country. Lanny hated the ideas, but it was his job to express agreement and listen, and find out what powerful persons were still spending week ends at the Castle and voicing these ideas and the latest schemes for putting pressure on statesmen to bring about a compromise peace. Lanny would go back to London and type out a report and have it delivered to the American Ambassador. No doubt when F.D.R. received it he would tell some of it to Churchill over the transatlantic telephone, and sometimes it would be news to the anti-Nazi Prime Minister and sometimes not.

  III

  When Lanny returned to London he phoned Rick, who had taken to helping one of the labor papers for the duration. Once a successful playwright, able to entertain even the carriage trade, Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Neilson now couldn’t think about anything except countering the intrigues of the Fascists and the near-Fascists all over the world. He despised the Cliveden and Wickthorpe sets and had been blasting them for years. For that reason Lanny no longer went to stay at The Reaches, Rick’s home; the two men met in secret in a little hotel they had agreed upon. Lanny booked a room there, and the lame journalist and his sympathetic wife came and spent the day.

  What a time they had, catching up with fourteen months of personal history of two families, indeed of several more, for Nina and Rick knew both Robbie and Beauty and had to be told about them, and still more important, about Lanny’s marriage, and what sort of partner he had got. He had sent a photograph, and also the stories of Mary Morrow cut out of magazines; but that wasn’t enough for Nina; she had to be told how they were getting along, and how Laurel was living, and how she took her husband’s long absences.

  Lanny had to recite once more the story of his year’s adventures; and this time he didn’t have to hide anything, save only the name of President Roosevelt. He could tell Rick about China, and especially Yenan; about Ulan-Bator and Kuibyshev and Moscow, and the two-hour interview with Stalin. Rick could make notes and could use this information in his writings, of course omitting anything that might point to Lanny as a source. The same was true for France and North Africa and other lands. For years before the war Lanny had been doing what he could to light the path of the British labor movement by bringing inside stories, forecasts, and warnings to this trusted friend, who would write them up and get them published, sometimes by a secret and indirect route.

  In return Rick would tell all that he knew about the course of events; some of it inside stuff, for a baronet’s son had access to important people, even to many who did not share his political coloration but who respected him for his integrity and believed that the people had a right to know what was going on behind the scenes. In spite of all the Nazi atrocities, there were still influential persons who wanted to beat Hitler but not too badly, and who were dreaming of an agreement which would prevent the Reds from breaking into the Balkans and gaining control of the Dardanelles. Lanny told what he had heard over the week end at Wickthorpe, and Rick told what his father had heard among his associates in the Athenaeum and the Carlton clubs. Rick said there was going to be a big military powwow of the Allied staffs, beginning in a week or so, and he might be in a position to get some of the inside stuff. Lanny didn’t say that Harry Hopkins had promised to tip him off on the same subject; he just said: “Maybe I can learn something too.”

  IV

  Lanny’s arrangement with the Prime Minister had been that he was to drop a note, marked personal, to the unobtrusive young secretary, Mr. Martin. He did so, and received no direct answer, but next day was called to the telephone at his hotel, and a voice said: “Mr. Budd, this is Fordyce, whom you may possibly remember having met just before you left for home last year.” Lanny replied promptly that he would never forget. When the voice asked if he might have the pleasure of seeing Mr. Budd again, Mr. Budd said yes, and agreed to await the arrival of this representative of B4, the ultra-secr
et British Intelligence department.

  Lanny had acquired a great respect for this organization. They had done a perfect job on him, and as a professional he could appreciate it. When their representative was safely ensconced in his room and had started to present apologies, Lanny said: “Not at all, Mr. Fordyce; you were perfectly correct, on the basis of the evidence you had. You understand, I was not at liberty to reveal to you for whom I was working.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Budd. I had an uneasy suspicion about it. Also, I could guess that you might be on your way home, anyhow.”

  Lanny chuckled. “That guess was correct, and you saved me trouble by arranging for my prompt flight. So all is well, and we are friends, I trust.”

  “Righto! The Prime Minister has sent us a note, saying that you are to have everything you want. May I say, that is an unusual privilege in these times.”

  “The Prime Minister has his reasons, which some day I may be free to explain to you. Let me say straight off what I have in mind, and that is, to have a private talk with Rudolf Hess.”

  “I presume that might be arranged. You understand, he is an important prisoner of state, and especially guarded. He is a difficult prisoner and has to be treated to some extent as a mental patient. We use great care not to excite him.”

  “Knowing him well, I can readily believe that. You must know that he thinks of me as his devoted friend and sympathizer, and I wish to continue in that role. If you were to take me to him, he would know at once that I had gone over to your side, and so he would close his mouth, or possibly even break into bitter reproaches. It is my idea to make him think that I am coming to him clandestinely, and without the knowledge of his captors. I should like to have a jailer smuggle me into his room in the dead of night, and I’ll tell Hess that I have paid that jailer, say, a hundred pounds. Hess is used to bribery and corruption himself and would have no difficulty in believing such a story.”

  “I see what you mean, Mr. Budd, and it seems to me a promising idea.”

  “You will naturally wish to know what I expect to get from the prisoner. I have no wish to keep matters secret from you, and if you have a dictaphone in his sleeping room it will be all right with me—rather better, in fact, because it will save me the task of having to remember what may be a long conversation. Rudi, who is supposed to be so reticent, is really a talkative fellow among his few intimates, and I don’t suppose he has seen any of these in the past year.”

  “Indeed not; he is kept strictly, but he is fairly well informed as to the outside world, because he is permitted to have a radio set.”

  “You are indeed treating him well!”

  “We are treating him according to his rank in Germany, and of course in strict accord with the Geneva Convention. We could not fail to do this, even if we wished otherwise, because they have many prisoners of ours upon whom they might retaliate. But of course Hess is not satisfied; he argues that he came as an ambassador and should enjoy diplomatic status; we consider him a military prisoner, because he is an officer of the Luftwaffe and came in uniform. Those in charge of him have had many wrangles with him on this subject.”

  “That I can imagine; no doubt I’ll hear about it from him. You must understand that I have been posing as a Nazi sympathizer for many years, and have enjoyed the friendship of Hitler for about fifteen years, and of Hess about five. I cannot guess what I may find out from him, or rather, I could guess a great number of things which might or might not come out in our talk. One thing, I ought to be able to learn whether he has ever had any message from Germany or has been able to send one. That I am sure would be of interest to you.”

  “Indeed yes, Mr. Budd. And there might be one or two other things which we could suggest that you give him a chance to talk about.”

  V

  The B4 man went on to reveal that the Number Three Nazi had recently been taken to the Maindiff Court Hospital, near the small town of Abergenny. Mr. Fordyce pronounced it so, with the accent on the third syllable; then he explained that it was spelled Abergavenny, with the accent on the fourth syllable. It was in the county of Monmouth, close to the border of Wales, and was an old town; near it was a twelfth-century Norman castle which appeared to exercise a spell upon the imagination of the unhappy prisoner. He was permitted to drive there, accompanied by an officer of the guard, and with other members of the guard following in the rear. He and his mongrel dog, called Hippo, would lie by the double moat of the ruined castle and watch the ducks on the surface of the water and the two golden carp which dwelt below.

  “We’ll be happy to motor you there,” said the agreeable agent; and when Lanny objected that he didn’t like to use up any of the nation’s precious petrol, the man said that it wouldn’t take much, only about fifteen gallons, and what they might get out of it was worth the price. “You will be the guest of B4,” he insisted. When Lanny had talked with this middle-aged gentleman a year ago, Fordyce had given the impression of being well filled out; now he was considerably slimmer, and his cheeks were not so rosy as they had been. That was the case with pretty nearly everybody in besieged London, and some of the people gave the same depressing effect as the ruins of the buildings.

  Lanny said: “I hope that you will confine discussion of this project to as few persons as possible, for I am still playing a dangerous role, and you know that there are always possibilities of a leak.”

  “No one knows about it so far except my superior, who got the order directly from the Prime Minister. The only other person who needs to know is the medical superintendent in charge of the hospital. He carries the responsibility for Hess’s welfare, and naturally we could not keep him in ignorance of a matter which will undoubtedly have an effect upon his patient, whether for the better or the worse we cannot be sure.”

  Lanny assented to that, and added: “Won’t you also have to tell one or more of the jailers?”

  “I don’t see why they need know anything about it. If you are let into Hess’s room in the middle of the night, he will not see who lets you in, and will have to accept what you tell him. It had better be the medical superintendent himself, and then none of the men will question what is going on.”

  “Fine!” exclaimed the P.A. He took out his billfold and from it extracted a folded sheet of paper which he opened. “Here is an idea.” he said. “Here are four slips of flimsy. On each I have typed the names ‘Kurvenal-Siegfried.’ The first of these is the name of a character in Wagner’s Tristan, who is described as ‘the truest of the true.’ It is the code name I gave to Hess so that he could communicate with me in England. Siegfried is the code name that Hitler gave me so that if I had anything to communicate to him I could be sure he would know where it came from.”

  “You have indeed been playing a difficult game, Mr. Budd.”

  “I have had special advantages, which were prepared a long time before this war. Now it is my idea to roll each of these slips into a little ball, and get it to Hess in his food. Such a pellet could be pressed into a chunk of bread, or into an apple, or a not-too-soft pudding. He might fail to notice one or two and swallow them; that is why I should try several times. It might be that he wouldn’t eat that particular chunk of bread, and if so, we could put the pellet into another for the next meal. It wouldn’t do any harm if he got several; they would all mean one thing to him and one only, that I was on the outside and planning to help him. He would be greatly excited, but would try to hide his excitement, and if this went on for several days, he would be prepared to have me appear in his room in the night, and to believe that I had really been corrupting his guards. We could talk in whispers and with all the atmosphere of melodrama.”

  “You Americans read detective stories, too!” was the Englishman’s comment.

  Lanny replied: “It was Sherlock Holmes who taught us most of what we know on the subject. And let me remind you that I watched the process by which you chaps lured Hess to Britain, and if there was ever a rawer piece of melodrama, I have never come upon it in any of our
‘whodunits.’”

  An Englishman’s natural color came back into the B4 man’s cheeks, and he beamed as he remarked: “It was rather good, we do admit.” He couldn’t refrain from adding: “Is ‘whodunit’ an American word, Mr. Budd? We are supposed to keep track of them, out of courtesy to your Armed Forces.”

  “It would pain you to mutilate the language in that fashion,” replied the P.A. with his most amiable smile.

  Said the Englishman: “I understand that our two armies are now in process of dividing up the burden of learning a new language. They are listing the objects which have different names and are going half-and-half on them. We are to agree that a spanner is a wrench, and you in turn are to agree that gas is petrol. So we hope to operate without confusion—except to the Hun.”

  VI

  The program they agreed upon was that Mr. Fordyce was to drive that afternoon to the town with the abbreviated Welsh name and have a confidential talk with the medical superintendent. If he approved, the pellets would be fed to the patient one each day, and on the evening of the fourth day Lanny would be driven to the place early enough to confer with the superintendent. At midnight he would be escorted to the prisoner’s room, and the guard who always slept in the room with him would be instructed to go outside until summoned again. Lanny said that was all O.K., and he would spend part of the interim making up his mind what he wanted to say to the prisoner and what he would try to get from him. If Mr. Fordyce had other suggestions, he might give them to Lanny on the drive.